Artie
That night at the café at the FUB, after the party at Pushkin, was not our first date. It wasn’t a date at all. If anything, Sandy had been the one dating her, except that wasn’t a date either, just an accident of the dance. I’d definitely gone overboard in the rap about Magical Mystery Tour, but I love that record, the movie not so much, and had to say what I said. Sandy thought it was BS. I didn’t. I really hoped that Temi was OK with it. Like I said, she was a gorgeous girl. Truth is truth. But she also seemed interesting. Sure, she hadn’t said much about herself except at the end. But still, she followed the stuff about the songs and about god, asked a question or two till Sandy huffed and puffed. And she laughed at my jokes and took up the ball and threw it back my way. I think she was into it. And what she said about being sent off to a boarding school intrigued me. I wish I’d been sent away too. Maybe not—frying pan and fire kinda situation. I found my reaction to her—well, the way I acted while she was around—completely surprising. At first I’d been my usual shy, withdrawn little shit, barely looking at her because clearly she was way beyond me. And she came attached to Sandy. But that passed and then she seemed to be just another one of the guys that I’d begun to meet and befriend. I liked her. She was OK. I hoped she liked me. I put it all down to the red Lebanese. Better living through chemistry, after all.[1]
When I got back to the room in Tennyson Sandy was lying on his bed reading something. “Hey, man, whatya doing?”
Sandy didn’t respond. Then he said, “I can’t believe you laid down that line of pure bullshit. God is insulation from reality and the Beatles show the way from comfort to truth. Jesus!”
I thought of not responding at all, and definitely not in kind. And then, “Well, Sandy—you take the high road and I’ll take the low road. I think I’ll be in Scotland afore ye, donchaknow.”[2]
“Shit.”
“That was good shit, though, wasn’t it. I’m running out. I hope Bert has some more I can buy.”
The gambit paid off. “I’ll get some too if he’s got it. Let’s go see if he’s in his room.”
Bert was one floor up and round the corner. We took the stairs in the common room that led to the second floor of our dorm house and knocked on Bert’s door. “Yeah,” we heard him say and went in. Bert was in a haze of smoke, mostly tobacco but we could smell some other stuff as well. Bert’s roomie, Dave, was there too. He didn’t smoke anything but was cool about Bert doing so. Dave saved my academic life that first semester. We were in the same section of calculus. By midterm time I’d stopped going to class because I’d learned all of that integral stuff in high school and didn’t need a refresher course. I’d exempted the first level of calc, plain old differentials, but missed exempting the second by a couple of points. Dave was faithful in attending the class, though, and on the night of the midterm he saw me lollygagging around getting high and asked if I was going to take the test. Shit—I’d lost track of when it was going to happen. But thanks to Dave I managed to get to the exam in time. I aced the sucker.
That night, though, we sat in the room with Bert and Dave, and Bert broke out some hash and we toked some.
Bert asked what we’d been up to. “We went to the party down at Pushkin Halls,” explained Sandy. “It was cool. You should have seen this chick I met there. She’s a piece of candy I’d like to lick all night. Right, Artie?”
“Gorgeous she is, yessir. I don’t think she’ll let much licking take place, though. She’s got a mind and will of her own, I think.”
“Just something to overcome, something to batter down. I love a challenge. I can’t wait to see her again and start . . . you know, start the process.”
Dave wanted to know the girl’s name. “Artemis,” said Sandy. “She calls herself Temi.”
“That’s a Greek name. Is she Greek?” Dave wanted to know. “I’m Greek, you know. Maybe I should take my chances with her.”
“I think she’s Greek,” I answered. “But like I said, she’s got a mind of her own. Taking chances with her won’t work unless she’s into it off her own bat.”
“Sounds like you’re pretty much into her yourself,” said Bert.
“I liked her a lot. Sandy’s her first friend, though, so . . . .”
“You got that right. I’m going to go chick hunting for Temi, and don’t want interference from anyone. Right, Dave? Artie?”
“Whatever.” Sandy really depressed me. Arrogant SOB, I thought. Just cause he talked to her first . . . well, I’m not going to interfere. Whatever that means when so far it seems there’s nothing to interfere with. With that attitude, though, I have a feeling Sandy’s gonna be an SOL SOB. He deserves it.
I’d never been, or even imagined that I could be in competition with a stud like Sandy—hell, with any guy!—for the favors of a girl. The idea of competing for a girl baffled me. I wasn’t sure that any competition was going to come to pass anyway, but I could now sort of imagine it just cause Sandy was such a dick. Still, I had no clue about how to go about it or if it was even right to compete for a girl anyway.
“Favors of a girl.” Jesus! listen to yourself you fucking dope.
I left the room and went back down to mine, got out my bathroom stuff and went to do my nightly routine. I’d had acne ever since I hit puberty. My routine involved washing my face three times with this stuff called PhisoHex. It worked better than anything else I’d tried. That meant that I still got zits but felt better about it. Halfway through my college career PhisoHex was pulled from the market. Apparently the chemicals in the stuff worked their way into the bloodstream and could cause brain damage. I guess that explains a lot. After the face washing I slathered on some stuff that was supposed to dry out whiteheads. That was as good as the PhisoHex. No shaving necessary. Puberty hadn’t reached my facial follicles quite yet. I brushed my teeth, packed all the bathroom stuff back up and went to bed.
The next day, Sunday, was the last day before classes started. I wasn’t nervous about things. I was doing the calc, which should be easy, and the second class in comp cause I’d exempted the first one, and Russian. What the heck, I thought, if I was going to major in math, what better language to learn. Maybe German? I thought I’d do OK in Russian. I like to learn languages and already knew a little Latin, Spanish, and French, the Spanish much better than the French. The comp should be OK too—except that the damned section met on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Saturdays!!! At eight in the a. m. I was not looking forward to that. The only other thing I had was phys ed. We were required to do four units of phys ed to graduate. I had failed the fitness test, which was all about running a mile in less than seven minutes. Seriously. Smoking three or four packs a day, not to mention pot and hash, there was no way I could have done that. So I was in remedial phys ed. That was ok with me. I thought it would be a breeze because those who fail have nothing to prove. I’d never failed anything, but that seemed sensible to me.
I missed breakfast, as usual. I’ve never been a morning person. That eight a. m. comp class was going to be a bitch. I did make it to lunch and joined the group of kids from Tennyson that I’d been hanging out with. Other kids joined the table. There was Ellen with that kid she’d met, Peter. And next to her was Sandy, with Temi on his other side, at the far end of the table. We all said howdy as I sat down next to Dylan.
“Do you know these lovely ladies, Artie?” Jake asked. “They’re from Hemingway, where I work at the front desk at night. They’re nice folk.”
“Yeah, I met Ellen and Temi last night at the dance over in Pushkin,” I said. “Howdy again.”
Temi smiled at me and Ellen waved. “You don’t know Naomi, though, do you?” asked Ellen. Naomi was sitting down the table, across from Jake and next to Bert, with Dave next to him. She seemed all buzzed out, with square gold rimmed glasses and a huge smile. I said hi to her and Jake told her my name. “I like your glasses,” I said. She used her fingers to make two squares and then to make two circles. My glasses were also gold rimmed, but round. I laughed. She laughed.
“That’s Lonnie,” Jake continued. She was next to Dave and across from Eric the piano guy. Not to be confused with Eric the sax guy. I waved to Lonnie and she waved back
I couldn’t hear what was passing between Temi and Sandy. They were doing a private little conversation, Sandy turned towards Temi and away from the rest of us, while everyone else at the table talked to everyone else. There were twelve of us altogether, a good number to keep the talk lively. Hmmm . . . we did lack a Jesus figure.
Dave wondered how people felt about classes starting. Jake said he was more than ready cause he was bored just sitting around. “I’m too old to do all that partying, you know.” We howled in laughter. Jake had brought a refined taste for good pot back from Vietnam and we boys all knew it, none better than his roomie, Dylan. The girls knew him only as the security guy at the front desk of Hemingway, so they were on the outside of the joke but still laughed. Jake did not look like someone who wasn’t into partying, so they knew what was what even though they didn’t know.
“I’m a little nervous,” said Ellen. “I mean, I did ok in high school, but this is supposed to be a whole nother thing. I don’t know if I’m ready for it.”
“Not to worry,” said the wise fool, sophomore Peter. “I’m around to help whenever you need help. Just call on me and I’ll send it along.”[3]
“Those Beatles are everywhere, aren’t they,” Dylan said.
“We were having a good rap about them last night,” I said. “You know, just before I came over to your room to say goodnight. Sandy and Temi were in it. I think I said things about Magical Mystery Tour that Sandy didn’t like. Temi seemed OK with it, though. We talked in the FUB after she left for her dorm.”
Intent on Temi though he was, Sandy heard what I said. “You met with Temi in Faulkner?” he demanded to know.
“Nah. I took her down from our floor through to the FUB. I’d have taken her all the way home, but Jake was going to be a good protector, so I didn’t.” I hadn’t known that Jake was the front desk guy at Hemingway, but a little white misrepresentation never hurt anyone.
Sandy was not happy. He huffed, stood up, grabbed hold of Temi, forced her to stand up too, and off they went to dump their trash and bin their dishes. They left the dining hall together. I couldn’t see Temi’s face, so had no idea how she reacted to being manhandled—OK, not really manhandled. I’m exaggerating. A little.
No doubt remembering last night and Sandy’s warning to stand clear of Temi, Bert and Dave looked at each other and smirked. Ellen seemed a bit peeved. “Well so much for my plans this afternoon. I was going to go downtown with Temi to get some munchies for our room. Peter—take me, please.”
“Gladly!”
“Why don’t we all go downtown?” asked Dylan. “Think of the excitement—all those shops closed on Sunday, all that asphalt and cement. So very groovy!”
Eric and Lonnie said they were going to stay at the FUB and mess around on the piano. Everyone else said sure and went downtown.
Artemis
Sandy was being a little more than a little pushy at lunch. He sorta cornered me off at the end of the table so I had no one else to talk to. He talked and talked, mostly about himself and what he wanted to do in his life and in his four years in college. He couldn’t wait to get into a fraternity and couldn’t understand why the school forced fraternities to delay their rush until well into the semester.
“Don’t you think it’s so that new kids can have a running start with the classes, Sandy?”
“Oh yeah, the nanny administration. We’re all grownups and can make our own decisions. I don’t need any dean of students telling me what to do and what not to do. It’s the same thing with the government. Why’s pot illegal? I mean, compared to alcohol pot’s just like the most benign drug ever. I want to smoke pot whenever I want, and I want to rush fraternities as soon as I can.”
“Aren’t all laws like that, though? Why not make stealing legal? Or murder? Those laws limit you just as much as the dean of students does!”
“Yeah, well, I remember thou shalt not steal and thou shalt not kill from the Bible. Nothing in there about rushing fraternities or smoking pot!”
“True. True. So you think that if the Bible doesn’t say no, then it’s ok?”
“More or less. You got to adjust things because of human nature, but for the most part it’s the Bible that lays out the rules. That’s why I want to be a psychologist, you know. I want to find out what’s humming and buzzing deep in human beings that makes rules make sense even if the Bible doesn’t state the rule right out loud. You know the Old Testament says nothing about limiting a man’s sexual appetite. Well, it gives rules for this and that situation, but it also says that you can have many wives and concubines and it’s all good. And then the New Testament put an end to that. The original Mormons went back to polygamy being OK, so there’s that, but I want to know why the Bible made that change. What about human brains makes the change necessary? Is it really necessary? Why can’t guys have as many women, wives, as they want? It doesn’t make biological sense, you know. A guy can impregnate a thousand women at a time. Well, you know what I mean. What in the human mind makes that not OK so that the New Testament stopped that freedom? I’m going to have a psychology practice like you’ve never seen. And I’m going to make a mint doing it.”
I didn’t know what to say. Polygamy—ok. It sounded like females were property and the men had their property rights and no law should make that any different than it was in those Old Testament times except that Christ had changed his divine mind. That sucked. I decided to ask, “What’s the word for having many husbands? I mean, if polygamy is ok, or was ok or should be ok—I don’t know what way you’re headed on that—what about polywhatever, many hubbies?”
“Oh no, no no. A man has got to know who’s the father of a kid. There’s two commandments about that, like no adultery and no coveting a neighbor’s wife. That’s the limits on sex that the Bible does have. And it’s because of knowing who the father is. I wouldn’t want to raise some other guy’s kid! And if one woman has a lot of husbands how’re you supposed to tell who the kid belongs to? No, you can’t have a stable society like that. No!”
So kids were supposed to be property too? And clearly Sandy had no plans to adopt kids. I felt we were getting deeper into stuff I didn’t want to think about. “What classes are you signed up for, Sandy?” Am I smooth, or what?
He listed the courses. Psych 101 at the top of the list naturally. Everything else was sort of expected—a comp class, a language class, German because psych and all, a math class, a phys ed. My classes were the same except for the psych. Instead I had biology. I’d always been interested in how critters worked. My high school had an easy elementary bio class, but that was it. I wanted to learn more. And I was taking Greek. I knew a little from my parents’ home use, but they didn’t know a whole lot of Greek themselves so that was limited. My grandparents on both sides were native speakers, but they’d died when I was pretty young, one after the other. So I thought I owed it to them, to my background, to learn.
As we went through our classes, Sandy suddenly looked up and over to Artie. I hadn’t heard what Artie said, but Sandy had. And he was angry. The exchange between him and Artie ended with Sandy standing up, making me stand up too, and hauling us both off out of the dining hall.
“What’s wrong, Sandy?”
“Did you walk down to Faulkner with Artie last night?”
“Yeah. He was nice enough to take me there. Should I say he escorted me?” The zing didn’t touch Sandy. “Anyway, we had some pastry and something to drink too. I was munchified, you know—that was Artie’s word for it. Funny guy.”
Whatever it was that had set him off, what I said made him even angrier. He muttered to himself, grabbed my hand and made me walk next to him, real close. It wasn’t exactly walking hand in hand, at least from my angle, but I guess if anyone saw us they’d think we were holding hands. I didn’t like it, but I also didn’t feel I could just get loose and walk away.
“Where are you going, Sandy? And could you please loosen up a little with the hand?”
“Sure. Sure. Sorry. I’m just . . . you know, I’m just really happy to be with you and want to, you know, to be with you so you’re with me. Not making a whole lot of sense, am I?”
“Not really. But whatever. Where are you taking me?”
“I thought we’d go down to fraternity row and scout out the houses. I’ve looked at all of them before, but I’m not sure where I want to rush. Maybe you can help me decide.”
“I have no clue at all about fraternities, or sororities. I’m not into that kind of thing.”
“What do you mean by that kind of thing?”
“Oh you know, the whole being judged worthy according to some entirely arbitrary set of policies and mandates and all that stuff. It seems to be a kind of fake exclusivity, you know.”
“Hmmm . . . isn’t all exclusivity fake? What makes the Ritz exclusive? I know—it takes a lot of bucks to stay there. But the buck criteria is just as arbitrary as whatever a fraternity sets up as its standard. And what’s wrong with being exclusive anyway?”
“Yeah, I can see that.” What I didn’t say was that I’d love to live in a world where there was no exclusive anything because everyone was equal. It’s not that I hate money or status—far from it. But I’d seen enough of the nuns choosing some girls to be their pets and giving them privileges and power over other girls, and I didn’t want any part of that, period.
We got down to fraternity row, one of two in and around campus, and looked at the houses. Some of the buildings were huge, impressive—meant to impress, it seemed. I guess it would be nice to live in a place like that. But then I thought of the kind of people who would enjoy being a brother just to have all the privileges of their exclusive home. Nope. I’d rather not.
Sandy seemed really interested in one house, one of the most impressive ones, TKE, Tau Kappa Epsilon. I was a little disappointed because the letters were no different from standard Roman ones. What’s the point of having a Greek name if you can’t use different Greek letters? But Sandy wasn’t interested in Greek. He was interested in exclusivity and selectivity and feeling special. Well, TKE house would work for that.
We’d gone on to the other frat row after that. We must have been walking for more than an hour, Sandy holding onto my hand almost all the time, and I was getting thirsty. And hungry. “Hey,” I said, “we’re like two blocks from downtown. Wanna go get something to eat and drink?”
“Sure. Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been down here just a couple of times. I have no idea where is good.”
“I’ve been to a few places,” Sandy said. “There’s a nice coffee house I sorta like. Wanna go there?”
“Sure. If you recommend it, it must be pretty exclusive.”
I meant it as a joke, but Sandy took it seriously. He rolled his eyes and grabbed my hand a little harder. Off we went to the coffee house.
There were a lot of kids walking around, including upper class kids who’d come up for the start of school the next day. We dodged and weaved around them. Until we ran into the group we’d eaten lunch with. Ellen waved and said “There you are—you abandoned me so I had all these guys replace you.”
I laughed. “I am worth seven of you all. All right! I am hot stuff for sure!” Everyone laughed, including Sandy. “Where are you headed to? We’re trying to get to this coffee house that Sandy says is pretty nifty. Want to come hang out?”
They all looked at each other, shrugged, and agreed to come along. The ten of us took up a lot of sidewalk space, and we plowed through the crowds of kids until we got to the coffee house.
Artie was walking next to Naomi. She was a nice girl. A little weird, maybe, but nice. I think maybe she’d had one LSD trip too many or something. But she was nice. She and Artie were yucking it up, but everyone else was just strolling along enjoying the crowds. When we got to the coffee house we found that they didn’t have a table large enough to seat all ten of us, so we had to split off into two groups. Sandy and I sat with Bert and Dave and Jake. The other guys—Artie and Naomi and Dylan and Ellen and Peter—sat at the other table. At least the tables were right next to each other.
The waitress came and we all ordered something to eat and drink. Separate bills, please. That didn’t make the waitress very happy. Our table didn’t have a lot of conversation going, but the other guys were talking up a storm. I eavesdropped. Peter and Naomi were hitting it off because Naomi was into art as much as Peter was. I heard her say that she’d been up at school for the summer semester and had taken an art class that let her mess around with the kilns making weird pottery. I’d seen some of it in her room. She loved working with clay and wanted to do a lot more of it. Peter was more into painting, he said, but also grooved on the kilns.
Ellen didn’t seem too happy that Peter was paying more attention to Naomi than to her. But then Peter turned to her and got her involved in the art talk as well. I knew that Ellen was thinking of majoring in art history, so it was easy for her to get into it.
Meanwhile Dylan and Artie were going at it over some philosophy thing. Dylan was taking a class in classical philosophy and Artie was giving him a hard time about Plato, of all things. “Ooohhh! The realm of abstract idea, dude—hope you don’t get a nosebleed.” That was Artie. I guess I wasn’t surprised to hear something like that coming from him. Dylan shot back defending idealism, and back and forth it went. I couldn’t follow it closely from our table, but it sounded like they were enjoying themselves royally.
Sandy broke the silence at our table with something or other about fraternities. Jake didn’t exactly roll his eyes but did say that he’d had enough manly camaraderie in the Army. Bert said he had no interest in joining any group that would admit him as a member. Ha ha we all said. “Oh roomie, did you steal that from Groucho or what?”[4] Dave and Bert got into riff after riff of Marxisms. Pretty funny stuff.
We ate our food and drank our drinks, and then we all ambled off to campus, slowly getting back to our dorms. In the FUB we parted company, the girls going one way, with Peter attached to Ellen of course, and the boys the other. We agreed to meet in the dining hall for dinner.
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