THE CRAZY ONE IN THE CAR -- episode 36
Going to college 1964-1968
Summer 1968
“David, may I interrupt?”
It’s Korvach, standing in the archway to the living room like a marionette on a proscenium stage. I should have gone to my room to learn the Fantasticks lines. Not that that would have stopped him. Yesterday I was on my bed before rehearsal, script in hand, when I heard his gentle knuckle knock. At least he waited until I said “Yeah” before opening the door.
“I’m thinking of making veal scallopini for dinner,” he had said, “and I wanted to ask if you approve.”
“I’ve never had veal scallopini, so go for it.”
“Do you like veal?”
“Think of yourself as opening a door for me.”
“Oh my, a provocative idea.” He had smiled a secret something which I ignored. “And I was thinking asparagus with hollandaise sauce. Would that be satisfactory?”
“Terrific.”
“You’re not allergic, are you?”
“Allergic to nothing. Nothing I eat anyway.”
He’d laughed as if we’d shared a joke.
“Okay, you may go back to learning your lines.”
“Thanks.”
The door had closed. And a moment later, a knock.
“David, I apologize, but one more thing, may I?” The door opened. “From now on, will you put all your laundry in the hamper? I had to go looking for a missing sock this morning.”
He smiled conspiratorially. “And I noticed there aren’t any briefs in your laundry bag. Are you going commando?”
I may throttle the son of a bitch. “Freeballer Me.”
“It’s the summer of my Freeballing High Hurdler,” he had said, and as he spun around to leave, “My Commando Actor.”
And today, now, he is standing in the archway and I close the script and look at him without a smile. He comes into the living room and perches on the arm of the sofa and crosses his legs and folds his hands on his knees and lifts up through the spine.
“You didn’t come home last night.”
I must not engage because if I do, I will say something cruel. “After the party a couple of us crashed at Baker’s apartment.”
“You might have called.”
I open the script, turn a page.
He breaks a little. “Da-a-vid.”
“You’re whimpering.”
He goes taut again. “I waited up for you.”
“Don’t be a simp.” I started calling him ‘simp’ during rehearsals for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I imagine myself as Richard Burton when I say it.
“David!” A little harsher.
“You’re a whimpering simp.”
“Stop.”
“A simpering wimp.”
His eyes narrow and his mouth tightens. But his marionette spine collapses just a bit.
“I’m sorry.” And now he’s going to get runny on me. “I know I promised not to be so possessive, that I would try not to be upset when you do things without me.”
He raises his chin to let the moment pass. “Where are you going to graduate school?”
I laugh, though it’s closer to a bark. “You may remember that the Selective Service has ordered me to appear in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, this very Wednesday, July tenth, for my military draft physical.”
“I do indeed remember, but may I remind you that you must also think—”
“I’m not thinking. I can’t think.”
He purses his lips and before he says anything else, I continue. “I can’t think past this physical. This deferment.”
“May I tell you something I haven’t discussed with you?”
“Sure.”
“Yesterday in the mail I got this.” He holds up a letter. He’s smiling with a kind of triumphant joy. “I waited up for you last night so that I might show it to you. Share it with you.”
He wants me to say something. I keep looking at him.
“Loyola University of Chicago, which institution shall shortly award me a Doctor of Philosophy degree in English Language and Literature, is prepared to accept you into its graduate program—”
“Wha—?”
“—and the English Department is prepared to offer you a teaching assistantship.”
He’s serious.
“Professor Khorvack, in four days I must appear at the Greensburg Armory with a whole lot of other young men and we will take off our clothes and be poked and prodded as a preliminary to being drafted into—”
“You must also prepare to carry on once you get a deferment from the draft.”
“I graduated from Allegheny College with a 2.2 cum. and I didn’t take the—the graduate tests—what are they?”
“GREs.”
“Yeah. And I haven’t applied to Loyola.”
He lifts his spine a little straighter. “I have taken the liberty of talking about you with Dr. Wilt, the head of the English Department graduate committee—”
He’s not kidding.
“—and as I am treasured by the Loyola University English Department and my word is trusted, all I asked is that they take a chance with you.”
He means it.
“And all I ask of you is that you let me touch my lips to your penis.”
Quicker than whatsisname’s wife I am become an appalled pillar of something or other.
And he knows he’s knocked me off balance. “You should experience it and it should be with someone who cares.”
Not completely off balance: “What makes you think I haven’t experienced it?”
He gets off the arm of the sofa and he kneels between my legs. Should I punch the creepy shit? With his good hand he unbuttons my pants and pulls the zipper down.
My dick is limp.
He works for it.
Last night I went downtown to find someone to spend the night with, but I couldn’t do it. So I came back up the hill and I went to the party at Baker’s apartment.
July 6, 1968
I tried the queer bit with Khorvack. It doesn’t work and I couldn’t stand it. He gave me $25 and he said he’d give me his $800 summer school salary and pay full expenses if I go to California with him at the end of the summer.
Whorting has agreed to write what he can to support a draft deferment for psychological reasons—though he isn’t hopeful—and the appointment with the draft psychiatrist isn’t until August 20.
And I’m hoping that if I can forget my ego and my pride and open myself to Carolyn, maybe I can recover what I once thought I could have with her. I love her.
If I can get the deferment and if Carolyn will take the chance with me—well, two nearly impossible ifs.
In the meantime, I guess I’ll go to Loyola.
*****
Mom sent me a check for two hundred dollars and I bought a ’62 three-on-the-column Ford Falcon. In high school, when Carolyn was teaching me to drive a stick shift, she said one day I’d be grateful to her.
I’m driving myself home tomorrow because she said she’d see me.
The Crazy One in the Car is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely co-incidental.