THE CRAZY ONE IN THE CAR--episode 4

Going to college 1964-1968

Freshman Year — Fall Quarter 1964

I’m becoming comfortable with campus life. Instead of studying in my room or on the banister between Third and Fourth, I’ve started going to the library. A flight of stone stairs leads to the entrance and inside is a rotunda with the octagonal information desk in the center and the vast bank of the card catalogue beyond it. Next to the card catalogue, wide marble stairs lead to the main reading room. The first time I walked up those stairs I felt light-headed, as if I were entering the upper atmosphere, the heart of learning. In the reading room are two rows of long tables under a high ceiling and at either end of the room, several alcoves each with a round study table and chairs. Whenever I’m here, I feel the way novices in the orders of medieval monks must have felt as they entered the room where older monks copied and translated and illustrated ancient manuscripts.

After a visit or two I realized that certain tables “belong” to certain fraternities and the boundaries are clear. There are tables where anyone can sit and there are tables for the privileged. Jerry and I usually sit at a small table in one of the alcoves. After Fantasticks rehearsal, I find him already there with his head bowed and his eyes lowered to the book on the table. When he senses me approaching, his head doesn’t move but his eyes look up and he smiles. 

“Room for one more?” 

“Room for you,” he says and I sit across from him and open my book. 

Sometimes I watch him study. He has short black hair and he always looks like someone who should’ve shaved yesterday. As he reads, his left hand moves slowly over the top of his head, fingers playing with his hair. I settle into my chair. It feels as if he and I have taken our place in the long history of people who have studied at this desk in this alcove at Reis Library. John Fergus is at the Crow table most nights and he comes to us and talks and jokes and that feels like a welcoming to the larger Allegheny world. Occasionally ECBIV comes, but he rarely stays long. He opens a book, turns pages, reads, looks around and suddenly, he slams the book closed. “I’m outta here.” Sometimes he goes to the radio station, sometimes he goes downtown. He doesn’t tell me what he does downtown and I don’t ask. Dan Corse spends his free time and much of his study time playing bridge in the Grill. 

At 10:00 most nights half the occupants of Reis library close their books on the tables and take a “Grill Break.” If going up the stairs to the library makes me feel like a medieval monk, going down the outside stairs of Cochran Hall to The Grill in the basement makes me feel like a Greenwich Village beatnik. Just a little over a week ago I started drinking coffee and playing bridge. I’m beginning to like both. The Grill is not a large space: some tables, a couple of booths, a juke box, two thick support columns, and a counter behind which is the  grill. The ceiling is high for a basement room and layers of cigarette smoke move in the air. There is the buzz of conversation and laughter and the occasional shout between tables. Next to the jukebox, which is always loud and which makes conversations louder, several steep stairs lead to the back hall of the first floor. 

Grill Break is prime fraternity rush time:

November 9, 1964

I went to the library today. A Phi Psi came over, studied for a while, asked me to go out to the library patio for a break and when we did, from nowhere appeared four Crows, two SAEs and another Phi Psi. It was funny.

Back inside, Stan Veltcher, the head waiter at South Hall and a Crow, cornered me. “Going to the Grill tonight?”

“Yeah, about 10:00,” I said.

“I’ll meet you there. Don’t want you getting mixed up with any SAEs or Phi Delts.”

I got tired at 9:30 and went to The Grill. I was attacked by SAEs. Stan came in. And I tried to get to the Phi Delts, but there was a Crow at every turn or a Phi Psi. And finally, I was given a brush-off by the Phi Delts.

I’m exhausted.

The electric current of fraternity rush animates everything. Rick Hentzinger, who plays Louisa’s father in The Fantasticks, is a Phi Delt. He’s funny and engaging, he has Phi Delt cheekbones, and he barely notices me beyond my stage managing and assistant director-ing responsibilities. I find myself waiting for him to say something connected to rush. He doesn’t. When a rehearsal ends, I sometimes stay around longer than I need to, hoping he will ask me to go to the The Grill. He doesn’t. And I sing silently with Louisa: Just once, just once, before the chance is gone….

I love The Fantasticks. My heart is filled with it. Without consciously trying, I’ve memorized all the lines. When an actor calls for a line, I shout it out—no need to check the script. A New York actor is playing El Gallo and when he can’t make rehearsal, I deliver all of his lines. Mr. Alton, the director, says if I were older I could be El Gallo’s understudy. In my heart, I’m singing: Take me there and make me see it, make me feel it! 

November 13 to 15 is fraternity open house weekend and the weekend ECBIV goes to Syracuse to see Barbara. Corse decides to spend his time with the Sigs and Jerry and I split our time between the Phi Psis—a couple of his wrestling team friends are Phi Psis—and the Crow House. Paul comes with us to the Crows. Earlier in the week Stan Veltcher told me that at the last rush meeting a few of the brothers had expressed doubts about me. About my seriousness. My depth. They were, Stan said, the more conservative brothers who might not understand me. They were the athletes in the house. And so at the open house, Stan steers me to Ben Klimczak and A. J. Jammer and Chris Fjort and I tell them about how much running hurdles in high school still means to me. Part of me truly wants A. J. and Ben and Chris to like me, to find me worthy; part of me wants to snap my fingers and make them disappear.

A. J.: Oh yeah, I ran hurdles too.

Me: That’s great! Highs?

A. J.: Mostly the 440s.

Me: (With feigned ohmygod breathlessness) Last year I broke the school record in the highs.

A. J.: Oh?

Me: And one of my prize possessions is the trophy I won for high scorer in the Westmoreland County Track and Field Meet when I won both the highs and the 440s.

Stan and John come by and Stan winks and John grins. 

A. J.: Well, my major sport was wrestling.

Me: Have you met Jerry Caraggino?

* * * * *

Jerry and I are in his room studying before we’ll go to the Grill. I’m at his desk and he lies on his bed on his stomach; as he reads, he moves, he shifts, he squirms. He turns onto his side and pulls his knees up a bit. I watch as the fingers of his right hand trace patterns in the hair of his left forearm and then move to his right thigh and then under his shirt onto his abs. 

He’s looking into his book and then at me and he smiles. “I’m tactile.” He holds the look a moment and goes back to reading and rubbing his feet together. I keep looking at him and a few seconds later, he looks back at me. I try to look back into my book but I can’t. 

Corse comes into the room and puts his Camels on the dresser. “Ed’s back,” he says. 

A little too quickly I jump out of the chair and run down the hall to ECBIV’s room. 

“Edward C!” 

He’s standing between the beds, almost silhouetted by the light from the window. 

“What’s up?” He’s winding an alarm clock. “Mom thinks I’ll make it to class more if I have an alarm that works.”

“So how’d it go?” I ask, almost adding, “My Secret Sharer,” but I don’t. “Did you see Barbara?”

“I did.”

“And—?”

“She’s great. We had a good time.”

I can’t tell if he’s being his usual unforthcoming self or if he wants me to pry it out of him. “Oh yeah? How good?” with what’s supposed to be comic sexual innuendo.

“There’s not much to talk about, you know? Would you do me a favor?”

No point in pushing. “Ask.”

“I have a sore back. Would you please rub it with this stuff?” He’s holding a tube of Ben-Gay. “I can’t ask anyone on the floor to do it. I don’t know them well enough.”

Is he testing me? “Sure.”

Corse appears in the doorway. “All caught up in here?”

“Jerry’s not coming to say hello?” from me.

“He went to the Grill with Felder.”

I’m surprised by the sudden sharp pang in my guts. “I thought he was going with me.”

“Well, you ran out of the room and came here, didn’t you?” He’s smiling like the superior being he enjoys thinking he is.

“Would you do me a favor?” ECBIV says to him. “I have a sore back. Would you rub some of this stuff on it for me?” 

What’s he doing?

Corse says he doesn’t like the smell. “Why don’t you ask Downs?”

“He did. And I told him I would.”

Corse grins. “Amazing.”

ECBIV grabs a jacket from the desk chair. “Pull the door closed when you leave,” he says and out he goes.

I’m looking at the door and Corse is looking at me. “Sometimes,” I say, “I can’t follow the dark shifting currents beneath all the blasé self-assurance.”

“You’re a fuckin’ tease,” says Corse. “And don’t give me the wide-eyed Who? Me? bullshit.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” It’s true, I don’t.

“You got Ed trying to figure you out, you got Jerry jumping around like a stray you might take home with you—“

“I like Ed, I like Jerry—“

“—Ed’s wishing he had the grades to pledge whatever fraternity you pledge, Jerry’s planning to go Crow whether he wants to or not—“

“That’s not—“

“—and you’re sitting here all woe is me, why are all these people acting this way.” He laughs soundlessly and shaking his head, he leaves. I sit silent and still until I’m sure he’s gone from the floor before I move. And when I leave, I pull the door closed behind me.

I am not a tease. I like ECBIV. I like Jerry. I want them to like me. I want people to like me. I like to say unexpected things. I want to be interesting, to deserve the attention and the affection of others. But I am not a tease. 

Am I?

And what the hell does that mean anyway?

* * * * *

On a chilly, drizzly November Meadville morning I walk down the hill to the bus station to meet Carolyn. Six or so others wait in the tiny lobby with me and when the bus pulls in, two go out to board the bus and the rest of us watch as the door opens and passengers come down the stairs. When Carolyn appears, I go toward her and she rolls her big green eyes and she laughs. She’s carrying an overnight bag in one hand and a purse slung over her shoulder. She always looks directly at me, even if her lips close tight to hold back words—as they do now. And then she smiles and it’s almost another laugh. 

“What was I thinking? Mother was pissed but she had to let me come.”

“Good Great God alive,” I say, “It’s you! You’re here!” and she blushes not with shyness but with a reflexive deflection of praise of any kind. I open my arms and she keeps her travel bag in her hand and she hugs me briefly. We look at each other and I offer a quick public kiss. 

“Let’s get out of here,” she says and indicating the bag, “This is all I brought.”

I take it from her and we walk. She’s wearing a green woolen jacket and a matching knit hat.

“On the ride up,” she says, “it kept getting grayer and drizzlier and I thought, is this a sign of things to come? Should I have stayed in Latrobe?”

“The gods work in mysterious ways.”

“You’re still so damn handsome.”

“Then we’re a matching pair ‘cause you’ve always been the damn handsomest woman I know.” 

She rolls her eyes. She’s six feet tall and I love that we can look straight on at each other. She’s had her hair cut short. It falls just to her jawline and curves gently forward. She’s wearing jeans. I’m glad to see her, happy she’s here, why did I doubt it?

“I love your haircut,” I say, “you’re beautiful.” 

She laughs with slight embarrassment and so do I.

“Are you still smart?” she says, “smarter than me?”

“I’m in college, but I’m not at Northwestern.”

We’re testing the waters, feeling out the tenor of our relationship. We walk up the hill together. The air is damp and chilly, no wind. 

“My friend Maryann wants to know why I’m staying in the girls’ dorm, why you didn’t get me a room in a hotel,” and she laughs as she adds, “I told her we wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway.”

“We’ll go past a little motel used just for that purpose. Not sure what its real name is but everyone calls it Pig Inn.” 

We’re falling into our bantering rhythm like two dancers finding their footwork after a separation and as we laugh past The Mead Inn and its several dark doors, she says, “Can we be nice to each other for the next sixteen hours or so?” 

When we get to South Hall, I buzz my friend Claudia and she comes down and takes Carolyn up to her room. I wait in the lobby.

I fell hard for Carolyn Crawford freshman year of high school. She was smart and pretty and funny and independent. She wore plaid pleated skirts with knee socks and white blouses. Or crew neck sweaters with the sleeves pushed up to mid-forearm, white shirt collar and cuffs showing. Her hands were long and thin, her fingers longer and thinner. I loved to watch them move, sometimes like beings with separate consciousnesses. We had every class together and one of her best friends, Ginny Dowel, sat in front of me in home room and we talked about Carolyn. Carolyn invited me to hay rides and dances at the country club and I told Ginny how much I liked her. I went to Hill Crowd parties. Carolyn and her friend Patty Carter set the tone with pronouncements and jokes and ridicule and since I knew nothing about how to behave in such social gatherings, I became odd man out and often the object of their jokes and ridicule. 

There was a Hill Crowd party nearly every weekend. My mother said, “They could make a party out of a bottle of Coke.” At one party early on, Patty handed me a glass of Coke and I could see something swirling at the bottom of the glass and I thought it must be something that rich people put in their drinks so I said nothing. When the glass was empty, Patty came by and said, “That was dirt from the flower garden.” 

Enraged. Humiliated. I could have thrown the glass at her as she walked away. I could have run out of the house in shame. But I said nothing. Did nothing. I wanted to be with Carolyn. I wanted to deserve her. She had laughing green eyes and she could be sarcastic and she could be sweet and she could be wide-eyed or in charge. She was the leader of the Hill Crowd and I liked her. For a while early in our junior year she dated C. B. Something-or-Other from a nearby town. Patty told me I was making a fool of myself after all this time and I probably was. And then in home room Ginny would say things like, “Carolyn thinks C.B. is boring. You might have a chance with her” and “C. B. is drunk all the time, you should ask Carolyn out.” Sometime in the late fall Carolyn and I got together. It seemed to just happen. At last I had what I’d been obsessing over for two years. During those two years I had learned to protect myself, to snap out a self-deprecating joke or a caustic put-down before anyone could snap one at me. And when one was snapped at me, I learned to snap back even harder. It became the undercurrent of our relationship. When it was funny, we laughed together. When it wasn’t funny, evenings ended with unkind words and tears. What was behind it all?

From my diary junior year of high school, January 13, 1963  

I was so messed up yesterday that I couldn’t write anything. Just the fact that she’s a girl should do something to me. I’ve been wondering if I’m sane—normal. Yesterday I was going crazy just thinking about it. Today Keith called and we got to talking about it. I told him that kissing Carolyn did nothing to me. I even hinted at my thoughts about my normalcy. He said he felt the same way last year about Judy—that he felt nothing, no thrill at all, when he was with her. And then he went through the same thing as I did. He said he’s glad someone knows what he felt like. I’m glad someone knows what I feel, even if it’s less intense today. At least I can now think that maybe all this is normal—or at least it’s not abnormal.

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The Crazy One in the Car is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely co-incidental.