He pulled an album out and showed it to us. The cover photo depicted a young girl, naked, holding some kind of phallic silver airplane in her hand, the head pointed suggestively toward her crotch. Andy laughed. "Fucking amazing !" he said again.
He removed the record from its sleeve, placed it on the turntable, and gently lowered the stylus. Music poured from the speakers placed on either side of the window, a bluesy rumble of guitar. "Clapton is God, man. He's God !" said Andy, standing up and swaying as the song burst into life. He took another hit from the joint, shutting his eyes and tilting his head back. We stayed in Andy's room all afternoon. When the joint had been smoked down, and even the roach was nothing but a charred nub, we made a quick trip to a grocery store for chips and beer, which Andy purchased without an ID by charming the teenage checkout girl. We went in his beat-up pickup truck, a red 1958 Mercury-100. It had a three-speed automatic transmission, and whenever it would reluctantly move into another gear, Andy would yell, "It's Merc-O-Matic!" Jack and I found this hysterical, and by the time we returned to Andy's dorm room, we were all shouting, "It's Merc-O-Matic!" about every fifteen seconds or so.
Andy's roommate was there when we got back, sitting at his desk and reading. As promised, he was black. Tall and thin, he wore his hair in an afro. Upon seeing him, Andy let out another whoop.
"Chaz, my man," he said. "What's going down? These are my buddies, Ned and Jack." "Hey," Chaz said. He went back to his reading. Looking over his shoulder as I passed, I saw he was deep into Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice .
"Chaz is one of them revolutionary Negroes," Andy said as he popped open a beer and handed it to me. "What's that group you were telling me about, Chaz? The Black Cougars?"
"Panthers," Chaz said, not taking his eyes away from the book. "The Black Panthers."
"Panthers," Andy repeated. "Chaz says they're going to take the power away from white people. Sounds good to me. Let someone else be in charge for a while."
Chaz turned to look at us. "Damn right someone else needs to be in charge. Do you know for every white man being drafted to fight in Vietnam, three black men are being drafted?" "That's because someone needs to take the place of all those faggots running to Canada," Andy replied. He took another record out and dropped the needle to it. The Who's Tommy rocked the room.
"Hell, those black boys should be proud they're over there shooting gooks." Hearing Andy say the word faggot , I felt my sense of happiness fading. I had no real opinion about the war in Vietnam, and my feelings about the men who went north to avoid being drafted into the conflict were equally neutral. But through the cloudy haze of my high, I realized I was one of the faggots Andy had so casually dismissed, and I didn't want him to hate me. I looked at Jack, to see if he was having a similar reaction, and was both surprised and saddened to see that he was laughing along with Andy at the joke.
"You won't think it's so funny when you're over there trying not to get your white asses killed," said Chaz, returning to his reading.
"We can't get drafted," Jack said. "We're in college."
Chaz snorted derisively. "That's right. All you white boys are safe in college. How many black men do you think can go to college? Why do you think they're taking so many of us?" "You're here," Andy pointed out.
"And I worked like hell to get here," said Chaz. "My momma and daddy worked like dogs to save enough money so I could come here. Didn't nobody hand me a scholarship or pay my way." "Hey, I'm not here free either," Andy told him. "My grandfather's worked his farm for forty years and never asked anybody for a handout. Everything we have, he earned."
"What about your parents?" I asked, noticing he made no mention of them.
"Dead," Andy said. "Killed in a car accident when I was two. My grandparents raised me." That explained the photograph on his desk. And, I thought, probably the hand-stitched quilt as well. I imagined his grandmother piecing the blocks together and quilting the open spaces with painstaking care. What would she think, I wondered, if she could see Andy sprawled across it with a beer in one hand and his dirty feet resting on the top.
I made a silent prayer that neither Chaz nor Andy would ask me and Jack if we were at Penn on scholarships. Already I feared Andy would end our friendship if he found out about what Jack and I did with one another. I didn't want to give him—or Chaz—another reason to view us with disdain. Fortunately, the conversation waned as Andy became more and more drunk. Chaz accepted a few hits from the second joint to be rolled from Andy's stash, and soon he was laughing along with Andy and Jack as he tried to explain Eldridge Cleaver's argument for the raping of white women as a way of eroding the dominant power structure. I listened, growing more and more anxious, until finally I reminded Jack that we had a lot to do before our first day of classes began the next morning. Reluctantly, he said good-bye to our new friends and the two of us returned to our room.
"Andy's great, huh?" Jack said as I made my bed and unpacked the rest of my things. "Yeah," I said. "He's a nice guy."
"I like Chaz, too," Jack continued. "I've never had a Negro friend before."
"I don't think they call themselves that," I said. "I think they're just black."
"Oh," said Jack, halfheartedly putting away some clothes in his closet. "Anyway, they're both cool." I wanted to ask him why he'd laughed at Andy's remark about faggots. Before I could, he was behind me, sliding his hands around my waist and pushing his crotch into my ass suggestively. "Want to fool around?" he asked.
I almost said no. The combination of beer and pot had made me far too relaxed. But Jack continued to grind himself against me, and slowly my libido wrestled its way through the blanket of conflicting emotions in which I was wrapped. I found myself growing hard, and when Jack slipped his hand down the front of my pants and began stroking me, I gave in. Moments later, we were on my bed, naked, our limbs entwined as we celebrated our first night truly away from home. We fell asleep in my bed, our joined bodies curled into a question mark.
CHAPTER 11
Many things have been called life's great equalizer: death, education, subway cars, hospital gowns. I would add to that list the first few weeks at college. It's during this time that high school students learn that who or what they were back home doesn't necessarily apply anymore. Now that I have students of my own, I see this every fall, when a new crop of faces appears on campus and the transformations and run-ins with reality begin. The ones who were popular—the athletes and prom queens, the comedians and the simply wealthy—arrive their first day expecting to be afforded the same level of attention they enjoyed just a few short months before. Coming from a place where their accomplishments, abilities, or families were widely known and respected, they see no reason why their privileged status should not be immediately granted in this new setting.
It's easy to spot these high school celebrities. They come to their first classes smiling and confident, sitting in the front rows so as to give me an up-close experience of their wonder. They smile and toss their hair. They look at one another, searching for proof of their superiority. They have almost never read anything from the assigned reading list sent to them upon their acceptance at the school. In contrast, at the back of the room sit the outsiders. Quiet, sometimes even sullen, they arrive at college shell-shocked from their four or more years spent enduring the horrors of lower education. Kept from the upper ranks of teenage society by their appearance, habits, interests, or any multitude of sins against the code of acceptable adolescent behavior, they have learned to look on from the outside. Often they are bitter about this, although they would never admit it.
In between the front and the back, always squarely in the middle, are the rank and file. Seemingly ordinary, they neither excelled nor failed. They were usually invited to the parties, even if they were never the center of attention once there. They may have enjoyed one or two shining moments on their journey to freshman year, but they are, by and large, unremarkable as individuals. However, one never dislikes them for this. In fact, their presenc
e is comforting, for they can always be counted upon to hand their assignments in on time and contribute to class discussions.
As the first weeks of the semester pass, an interesting thing happens. The students who arrived filled with the buoyancy of popularity often discover that their stock has plummeted dramatically. No longer are they the prettiest, funniest, or most physically gifted. They're now only one of many others who share the same gifts, hitherto thought to be completely their own. Struggling for attention, their belief in themselves falters. They lose their glow. Their eyes take on a bewildered look. This is a wholly new experience for them, and they have no idea how to regain their stature.
For their less-attractive peers, the process is reversed. What were once seen as flaws suddenly become useful tools. Thinking. Dissecting. Questioning. Once considered obstacles to conformity, these traits are forged into weapons of revenge and wielded with newfound skill. It quickly dawns on the dwellers in the back rows that life has changed. Generally they blossom, becoming more confident by the day as the selves that have lain dormant awaken and stretch their limbs. One by one, they move closer to the front, displacing their former tormentors and objects of jealousy and sending them into exile. Now, this is not always true. Not every boy who bullied his way through school and girl whose lack of intellectual curiosity was pardoned due to her ample bosom and laxness of chastity is doomed to look back on the high school years as the golden ones of their lives. Nor does every student who ate lunch alone while thinking dark thoughts about the laughing clique nibbling their sandwiches two tables over enter an intellectual cocoon upon arrival at university and emerge three weeks late a golden-winged butterfly. However, it is not uncommon. College, unlike high school, is a wide-open playing field. Whereas before students lived in a closed community with a more or less immutable class structure (generally beginning with the jocks and descending through the uselessly beautiful before arriving at the merely smart), college is an entire world, with different continents and cultures and societies, some secret and some not. Success is attainable to all willing to put forth the effort, and it is this that ultimately distinguishes one student from another. If it is the formerly ignored who succeed more often than the formerly glorified, this is perhaps the universe's way of maintaining some balance. Another truth is that those in the middle tend to stay in the middle. It is safe there, and usually those students who have experienced such safety for most of their lives feel no need to test its boundaries. I say this having been one of those for whom being in the middle had become a way of life. I neither stood out nor hid. I simply was. Because of this, I found my first weeks at Penn State to be mostly a matter of figuring out where my classes were and how to get to them on time. For Jack, however, things were slightly more difficult. Used to being a star, he now found himself one among many others stars. He still shined, but now his light was mixed with that of others who shined just as brightly. Even among his baseball teammates he was only one of several boys who had arrived there due to their ability to field a ball or hit it an impressive distance. Also, he was a freshman, a fact the older players would not let him or any of the other first-year players forget.
"I probably won't even get to start," Jack complained to me after his first meeting with the team. "Not until I'm a sophomore." I was only partially sympathetic. Although it had been only a few days, I was finding my classes to be exciting, and without Jack's shadow to obscure me from view, I was beginning to see myself as someone who existed apart from him. I still loved him, though, and I wanted him to be happy. I spent several hours that night reassuring him that he was someone special, neglecting my reading of Beowulf for Survey of English Literature so that I could get on my knees and show him how wonderful I thought he was. Jack sat on the edge of the bed, his fingers entwined in my hair, and slowly his old confidence returned. Because it was our first semester, we had mostly introductory classes assigned to all incoming students: American History I, Composition, Introduction to Critical Thinking, and the like. But we were allowed two electives each, courses we could take as a way of helping us decide what we might want to major in when the time came to declare our futures. I'd chosen Intro to Eastern Philosophy and, because my father demanded it, Fundamentals of Business Administration. Jack had opted for Art Appreciation and, because he thought it suited him, Public Speaking. As there were several sections of each of the basic classes, we found ourselves sharing only two. We each also had one class in common with Andy Kowalski, Jack his art appreciation class and me my course in philosophy. As a result of these common threads, and also because he kept asking us, we found ourselves spending most of our free time with Andy in his room. Largely this was due to the fact that Andy's stereo, beer, and pot were in the room, and it was easier for Jack and I to go up there than it was for him to carry it all down four flights of stairs to our room. Also it was because Chaz was so seldom there. Having befriended some other black students on campus, he was devoting a lot of his energy and time to helping them organize protests against the school administration's allegedly racist policies. Still, he managed to find time to get high with us at least several times a week, during which he would chastise our lack of political awareness and we would ask if we could touch his afro, a request he always refused. It was, I think, the third week of September when Andy first mentioned a girlfriend. "Her name is Linda, and she looks kind of like Linda McCartney, only with bigger tits," he said. "She likes it when I bang her in the ass. Have you guys ever done that?"
He and I were supposed to be reading about the life of Lao-Tzu and the development of Taoism. Jack was supposed to be writing an essay about the role of slavery in launching the Civil War. Instead, we were listening to the Flying Burrito Brothers' The Gilded Palace of Sin and smoking a joint. I'd never heard anything like the music of Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman, and was blown away by the sound. I was stretched out on Chaz's bed, while Andy sat on his with his back against the wall, and Jack sat cross-legged on the floor.
When Andy asked his question, Jack and I looked at one another and laughed. Andy looked at us. "What?" he said.
"We've done it," I said, feeling brave because of my high.
"You guys have girls back home?" asked Andy.
"Nothing steady," Jack said. "Just casual stuff."
Andy nodded approvingly. "Yeah, Linda said I could see other chicks if I want to," he said. "She's really cool like that. We don't tie each other down." "So, she can see other guys?" I asked him.
Andy shrugged. "Guys. Girls. Whatever she wants."
"She likes girls?" said Jack.
"Who doesn't?" replied Andy, grinning and picking up another beer. "Sometimes she and I do it with other girls, yeah. It's no big deal." I wanted to ask Andy if he'd ever done it with another guy, but I couldn't. For a boy from a small farm town, he was much more experienced than Jack and I. I was intimidated by what I thought of as his worldliness, so I sipped my beer and concentrated on Lao-Tzu. I was trying to understand the concept of "action through inaction" and was having a difficult time, and not only because the image of Andy, Linda, and another girl refused to leave my mind. I was being asked to think about things beyond my previous experience, and like most first attempts, it was somewhat painful. Even if I hadn't understood my world fully, I had at least not felt awed by it. Now I was being asked to consider points of view that not only had never occurred to me, but which stood in stark contrast to what I'd been taught was true. Andy, apparently determined that if he wasn't going to study, no one was, insisted on continuing the discussion.
"Have you met any girls here you want to hang with?" he asked. Jack shook his head. "I've got too much to think about," he said. "I don't have time." It was a believable excuse, and one I used myself when Andy asked me the same question. But Andy was not to be put off so easily. "We should get some girls together and really party," he suggested. "You know, get down with some good hash. Maybe mushrooms. You guys ever do mushrooms?"
When we answered in the negative, he promi
sed us that we would all have to do mushrooms, and soon. "You won't believe the stuff you see," he assured us. "Have you read Castaneda? The Teachings of Don Juan ?" He didn't wait for an answer. "It's fucking powerful, man. It's all about expanding your consciousness. That's what we should be reading, not this bullshit." He closed his philosophy textbook and tossed it onto the floor. "Life isn't in there," he said, pointing at the book, then pointing to his head.
"It's in here. You just have to let it out."
All of a sudden he leapt off the bed and jumped on top of me. Ripping the book from my hands, he pushed it aside and rapped on my forehead with his knuckles.
"Let it out!" he said. "Come on."
I had no idea what he wanted me to do. He was straddling me, looking down into my face and grinning. He looked like some kind of wildman, all shaggy hair and craziness. He tapped my forehead again, then leaned down and kissed it. Then he was on his feet again and changing the record, which had stopped. It took me a minute before I realized that I had a hard-on. When I did, I was both surprised and frightened. Had Andy brought out that reaction in me? I wondered. Or was it coincidental? I hadn't been conscious of becoming aroused, but the evidence was against me. I looked at him, taking a record from its sleeve and examining it, and the image of him and Linda, naked and rutting, flashed across my vision. Andy's ass was moving up and down as he pumped away at Linda. I quickly willed the thought away. On the floor, Jack was oblivious. He was attempting to roll a joint, and was failing. The pot was falling on the carpet like green snow. Andy, seeing it, sat beside Jack and started to show him how to do it properly while Led Zeppelin emerged from the stereo. I rolled onto my stomach and pressed myself into the quilt on Chaz's bed, picking up my book and trying to focus on the words in front of my face. In that one minute, the comfort I'd felt in Andy's presence evaporated. Helplessly, my body had responded to his, and I felt that I had somehow betrayed Jack. Worse, I realized that I was excited. But why? I had found attraction in men besides Jack, but never had I considered what it would be like to be with them in any real way. Now, closing my eyes, I saw Andy once again, only this time he was pumping himself into me, and not Linda. Meanwhile, he sat beside the boy who had been my lover for more than four years, not two feet away from me, both of them oblivious to my infidelity. I felt sick. My stomach began to rise, and I suddenly needed to be anywhere but in Andy's room. Getting up, I excused myself and left, running toward the bathrooms that were situated in the middle of the hall. I made it into a stall just in time, dropping to my knees and retching. My insides emptied themselves again and again as I relieved myself of the pain knotting my guts. The stale smell of vomit filled my nose, and I threw up some more. Miserable, I flushed the toilet, slumped onto the floor, and began to cry.