THE CRAZY ONE IN THE CAR--episode 3

Going to college 1964-1968

Freshman Year — Fall Quarter 1964

To get to the Phi Delt house, we walk farther from campus than for any of the other fraternity houses. And, oh my, I’m taken with it. It looks like a Victorian mansion or an English country house or something. There must be three storeys. Gables and turrets. A vast lawn leads to a long flight of stairs and a columned portico. On the porch of the portico stands Jeffrey Brinkhaven, an inch taller than I am and pounds thinner. His navy blazer, the Phi Delta Theta coat of arms positively glowing on its left pocket, hangs from his shoulders with easy grace. He has Mount Rushmore cheekbones and eyes with grotto-pool irises and heavy bored upper lids. And a head of sun-streaked brown hair swept across his forehead in a wave to make the Kennedys weep. And a Praxiteles nose with nostrils that flare just enough to suggest his disdain for all that is lesser than he. And a Michelangelo mouth that couldn’t curl or pout more intensely without risk of parody. And a bear trap jaw and a Viking chin atop a Tuscan column neck that somehow gracefully anchors it all. I feel like the horseshoer’s son the one day each year the peasants are invited to visit the manor.

“Welcome to Phi Delta Theta,” Brinkhaven says with the noblesse oblige of the lord of the manor. I can hear him thinking, “Do, however, realize that few of you are likely ever to return.”

We go through the great wooden front door into the grand entrance hall that reminds me of a forties movie—maybe the tracking shot in the house where Ingrid Bergman lives with Claude Rains in Notorious or maybe it’s Thornfield Hall where Jane Eyre meets Mr. Rochester. There is conversation, but it seems to be happening just out of sight and almost out of hearing in alcoves or in other rooms. It is quiet, subdued, even privileged. This all appeals to a part of me I am not proud of. They are handsome and well-dressed and impeccably groomed. They must have a cheekbones and jawline requirement for admission, not to mention social snobbery preferably family-bred though acceptable if merely acquired. I’ve heard the rumors that they have brothers they keep out of sight like Mrs. Rochester in the north tower and that they despise one another like the Borgias but they will do anything to keep the image intact. I know all that.

I want them to want me.

Evan Starwell comes to my side. He’s blond and vital and president of the sophomore class. Casual and friendly, he seems to know me—“I want you to meet Greg Garrison”—and he takes me up the stairs to Greg Garrison’s room. He closes the door behind us and he offers me a chair by a desk. He sits on the arm of a nearby armchair and he places his left foot forward on the floor, the perfectly polished oxblood weejun peeking out from a perfectly creased and uncuffed grey trouser leg.

Greg Garrison comes out of an adjoining room. He’s wearing his Phi Delt blazer with black slacks and cordovan weejuns. He’s shorter than Evan and there’s something manic in his eyes. Before Evan speaks, Greg extends his hand to me and as I reach mine to him, he lifts his arms and waves his hands and shrieks, “Helloooo, dahlings!”

I jump back a bit in shock and I look to Evan who smiles enough to register approval if not encouragement.

Greg goes on. “Oh my dear, that was just the greatest performance. You fairly stole the freshmen skits show. In fact, you were a fairy accomplished fellow indeed.” He sits at the edge of the desk next to the chair where I’m sitting. It’s a bit too close and I sense he’s doing it deliberately, though I can’t tell if he’s trying to establish rapport or if he wants to make me uncomfortable. Does he want me to join in? to do that character again? with him? This is fraternity rush. And Phi Delta Theta for Chrissakes. And yet, here is Greg Garrison deliberately out-effeminating anything I might do. I look to Evan, I think for help, and he’s still smiling.

“You were great,” Greg says and he drops the mincing act and moves to a chair across the room.

Evan says, “Are you going to try out for plays this year?”

I’m not sure what I should say. “I haven’t thought about it. If I have time, I guess.”

“I hear you run hurdles,”Greg says.

“Yes.”

“Impressive.”

I stay in the room for an hour or more. It’s not so much a conversation as a job interview. And Greg’s homosexual act felt like a trap. I’m relieved when someone knocks on the door and says it’s time for freshmen to leave.

Paul and Corse and Jerry and I meet in the foyer and as we go out onto the portico and down the stairs, I realize that I didn’t tour the house or meet any other Phi Delts.

“They either want you bad,” Corse says, “or they were keeping you away from the freshmen they really want to rush.”

“Evan Starwell and Greg Garrison are important people,” Paul says. “I wish I’d met them.”

On the way back to Baldwin, we compare notes. To me, the Sigs were welcoming and gentlemanly and kind of dull and Corse says the Crows were as geeky as Bob Denver without being as interesting and Paul thinks the Crows are really neat. When we get to Baldwin, Jerry says he’s going to iron shirts. I don’t want Paul to come to my room so I go with Jerry and Corse to theirs.

A Baldwin room holds two single beds, each against a wall with a shelf above. There’s a desk at the head of each bed and a wardrobe and dresser at the foot of each bed. The desks sit on either side of a picture window. In the space at the foot of the beds and in front of the door, Jerry sets up an ironing board. Corse throws himself onto his bed and says, “The Phi Delts blow Ralph Lipschitz; the Crows, sorry, the Cephalopods, just blow; the Sigs at least have a little class, some balls, some fucking fire.”

Jerry hasn’t said much since we left the Phi Delt house. I watch him unbutton his blue dress shirt and hang it in the closet. His white t-shirt hugs his chest and torso. His right bicep lengthens as he reaches for the iron on the shelf above his bed and then it bulges as he takes it to the ironing board. He’s about five foot nine and he moves with natural rhythm, even grace. In one sweeping movement, he lifts the iron and unwinds the cord and leans over to plug it into the wall socket and comes back to the shelf to reach for a can of spray starch. From a bundle of dampened and bunched shirts on the dresser, he takes one, shakes it out, and puts it on the ironing board. The iron is steaming.

“You move like a gymnast doing his ironing day floor routine,” I say before I can decide not to, so I continue, “or I don’t know, a mime with muscles.”

He smiles and keeps his attention on the ironing board. “It’s not so much muscle as definition.”

“It’s fluid or something, your sense of balance.” I’m starting to feel like a jerk.

He smoothes out the shirt yoke and he says, “I was a wrestler in high school. I’m out for the team now, maybe that’s what it is.”

I want him to know this: “I ran hurdles.”

He licks his finger and touches the iron and it hisses. “I was a pole vaulter.”

“That’s why your hands move the way they do.” He goes blank. “They’re expressive. Like a pole vaulting mime with muscles.” I laugh or blush or both.

Another smile from him. “Well, I play the cello.”

I hoot in admiration and he blushes. I don’t mention that I play the piano.

Corse, slouched on his bed watching us, says, “You two set the fucking mutual admiration over-achiever bar higher and higher every time you open your mouths.” His hair, blondish, falls over his forehead and small brown eyes glint behind rimless glasses. He gets off his bed, reaches for the pack of Camels on his dresser, pulls one out. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to go barf.” He walks out of the room slowly, shoulders slightly hunched, his left hand in his front jeans pocket and his right holding the cigarette between thumb and middle finger.

Jerry finishes ironing the shirt and he sets the iron down. “Just so he doesn’t smoke it in here,” he says and as he slips the shirt onto a hanger, he looks at me to share a silent putdown of smokers.

“It costs twenty-seven cents a shirt to send them out. Will you show me how to iron?”

He smiles as the tip of his tongue pushes against his lower teeth and his cocker spaniel eyes open wide. “Sure.” He turns to hang the shirt in his closet. If he had a tail, he’d be wagging it.

*****

One evening just before Halloween, the wall phone at the far end of the hall rings and Dennis Anders, whose room is closest to the phone, answers and calls out, “Phone for Downs! Female!”

Hoots from other rooms and as I race down the hall, guys in their underwear stand in doorways and grab their crotches and grunt. The phone hangs on the wall in a small sitting area at the end of the hall. If you want privacy you have to talk softly and low.

“Hello?”

“Nice floor mates you have.”

It’s Carolyn. I’m so glad, I laugh. “Rude toddlers. It’s you!”

“I can’t talk long. There are six others waiting to use the phone and one of them is timing everybody.”

“Me, too, only they’re all out here making fun of me to keep us from talking in private.”

Joe Gommers drops his trou and moons me and Bill Maher swats Joe’s ass with a rolled-up Playboy, which encourages everyone else to cheer them on.

“Are you coming home for Thankgiving?”

“Can’t,” I say. “My running crew assignment for Intro to Drama is stage managing The Fantasticks and it goes up that weekend.”

“Then you can’t come here either. Shit. So how about if I come there?”

“For Thanksgiving?”

“How about I go home for Thanksgiving Wednesday night, get a bus to Meadville Saturday morning, stay the night, and get a bus back to Pittsburgh Sunday to fly back to Chicago Sunday night?”

“You’d do that?”

This touches off whispers in the background and at least one anticipatory growl.

“I want to see you. I want to see this place you love so much. Do you want to see me?”

“Yes!”

“Mother says I’m running after you and being cheap--”

“What!”

“Do you think I’m being cheap?” It’s a straightforward question.

“Wha—!”

“Running after you?”

“I can’t leave ’cause I’m doing this play, so if you can cut your visit home by a day to come here, that’s great.”

Somebody shouts “Yes!” and somebody else adds, “Fuckin’ A!”

“Okay then. I’ll risk pushing mother’s blood pressure into heart attack range.”

Several more guys are dropping trou and opening their shirts and rubbing one another’s chests and moaning and cackling.

“It sounds like you’re outside the monkey house at the zoo.”

“I am.”

“I’ll send the details when I figure everything out.”

“This is great.”

“Okay then” and there’s an instant when I think she’s going to say “I love you” but it becomes “Okay bye.”

Back in my room, Corse is sitting on my bed, leaning against the wall, smoking. Before he taps ashes onto the floor, I dump the pennies from my pennies jar and hand it to him. He smirks out a “Thank you” and he flicks ashes on the floor. “I talked to a couple of Sigs at the Grill today and they asked if I know you. I told them you’re already pretty much eatin’ Crow. Who was that on the phone?”

I don’t tell him he’s an asshole but I do tell him about Carolyn.

ECBIV appears in the doorway. “Wanna shoot some pool?”

“I’m out,” Corse says. “Just needed a smoke and CaraVagina said if I lit up in the room he’d bite my prick off the next time he’s suckin’ it.”

In the doorway as he steps past ECBIV, he says, “Ask Downs about the snatch who called him a few minutes ago. It’ll make you jealous.”

ECBIV watches him go down the hall. “Nice guy,” he says. “Nice mouth.”

“I don’t know why he comes here. He doesn’t much like me.”

“He likes you.” He settles onto Bob’s bed. “He’s jealous. Who called?”

“My girl friend. Carolyn. He’s not jealous of me.”

“She in school?”

“Northwestern. Chicago.”

“Evanston. Good school. Does she miss you?”

“She’s coming Saturday of Thanksgiving.”

And I tell him the story of Carolyn and Dave, Reader’s Digest version: Boy from Whitney, a Western Pennsylvania coal mining “patch”—and later from Lawson Heights, a housing development outside Latrobe—goes to high school in town and meets Girl from the managerial class who lives on The Hill. Boy is socially clueless and Girl and her Hill Crowd friends make fun of him. Boy endures. Boy and Girl eventually get together and are together still.

“So what’s the problem?”

I tell him I can’t wait to see her—but I’ve been thinking that would happen during Christmas vacation. At home. In Latrobe. Something about having her come to Allegheny makes me uneasy. He says he understands.

Before going to bed, I write in my diary.

October 27, 1964

He told me about Barbara. His Carolyn, as he put it. He had been a transfer student last year, his senior year of high school; he became popular, finally dated this sought-after sophomore and he ended up liking her. She has a boyfriend in Vermont. Her parents invited the boyfriend to visit her in Syracuse and Barbara said to ECBIV, “Please don’t call or write while he’s at my house.”

ECBIV’s friends laughed when he sent her a dozen yellow roses.

She’s something very special to him. But he realizes he doesn’t want to date her. He’s not sure what it is. Or why.

In a couple of weeks he’s going to see her in Syracuse and he told me that he had asked a couple of the guys on Fourth to go with him. “That was before I met you or I would’ve asked you.”

He and I are so much alike physically as well as emotionally. I feel almost like the captain in “The Secret Sharer.”

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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.