!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT!*****!!!!!
It drizzled the evening of Columbus Day as we headed to the musty theatre. I wore a London Fog raincoat my mother insisted I bring to Radcliffe, a scarf covering my hair. Jeanne sported an umbrella, while Marci just clomped along, bare-headed, rain dripping down her nose onto her tennis shoes. In her jeans, she seemed at tune with the crowds around us.
We’d misjudged the time it took to walk the few blocks to the Square. Marcia saw the line waiting to get in, observed, “I don’t want to stand out here getting wet. Let’s go buy our tickets, then wait in the coffee shop there next door?” Maybe you should have worn a hat, I thought to myself.
Inside the little cafe, Marcia seemed at ease ordering a “cup, black,” while Jeanne had no trouble with “cream and some sugar, please.” I’d never been a coffee drinker, never even tried it before, but I didn’t want them to know that. I rummaged in my brain for the safest way to try the stuff for the first time, and said, “Same,” while pointing to Jeanne. The waitress was back in no time, carrying three mugs covered with the Harvard Ve-ri-tas shield, steaming and smelling…well it was enticing. I demurely tried a sip. A little harsh, mellowed by the cream. I added another dollop of sugar to staunch the taste.
“Anything special this weekend?” I asked
“I’m going home. I’ve got a bunch of laundry piling up, it’s starting to smell.” Marcia lived an hour away in Rhode Island and could easily get there on the train to Providence.
“I’m going to hole up and finally learn about DNA and RNA and ribosomes and proteins. They’re just starting to figure it all out, and they expect us to understand it? You?”
Mike was driving up Saturday morning. We’d have all day and evening, then he’d go back when the dorm closed. I explained all this to Marcia’s intense interest. Jeanne seemed a little distracted. I went on. “Have you heard anything about changing the dorm rules?”
Marcia seemed up on the rumors. “After that strike last year, about living off-campus, they put together a group, faculty, staff, and some students, to look at housing. A girl I went to high school with knows one of the student reps. She says they’re talking about doing away with sign out, with rules about guests, everything. The idea is, they want to encourage us to stay on-campus, to not go off-off.”
Jeanne perked up and repeated, “‘Off-off’? What’s that?”
“We already have the ‘off-campus’ living option. When you get to be a junior, you can pick a room in one of the apartments right next to campus, which the school owns. It’s not much different that being in Cabot, but it’s more like home than a dorm. ‘Off-off’ means you pay rent for an apartment not owned by the school. You still have to pay student activity fees, though. That’s already happening, and they don’t want everybody to do it, so making dorms less cloistered is supposed to …”
I interrupted. “When? When are they going to change those rules. Not that I mind, really, I like the quiet after ten, like knowing that I won’t run into a stranger in the bathroom, that I can walk around in whatever.”
“I don’t know. Maybe next semester? Anyway, I heard that with all this being planned, the RAs and the house mothers are already starting to kind of look the other way on all that.”
It was time to get in line for the movie. I’d drunk the full cup, and noticed I was starting to feel a little funny, more alive, almost like I had an electric charge buzzing around me. I hoped it wouldn’t keep me up half the night.
Mike arrived two days later, a little after ten. I was waiting for him in the downstairs lounge, reading a book our RA had told me about, The Second Sex, by a woman named Betty Friedan. I slammed it shut and tucked it tight against my side when Mike strode in.
“What’s that?”, he asked, pointing at the book. No “Hi”, no “Are are you?”, no “I missed you.” I’d gotten used to his direct, to-the-point greetings. I knew he’d eventually smile, listen, and maybe even melt in front of me. Still, it was jarring.
“Nothing. Something for class. Let’s go upstairs, show you my room, OK? How was the drive, any trouble?”
“It’s freeway all the way, on Saturday morning not too many trucks on the Turnpike. Even driving here over the bridge, no problem. I parked right outside on Walker Street.”
We spent the day in Boston, walking through the theatre district and by the Old North Church downtown off the Commons. He was fascinated by the old cemeteries salted amongst the buildings.
“Look at those gravestones! The oldest ones, they have that devil face. Then later, mid 1700s, it starts to soften a bit, like a Jolly Roger with wings. Maybe death was getting less frightening?”
Boston, especially on a weekend, is filled with college and university students, maybe 50-60,000 of us. Mike and I we felt at home in some ways. Our clothes, though, stood out a bit. We still sported slacks and skirts, button down cotton shirts, clean overcoats. The wave of dressing down, outfitting yourself at the surplus store, had started.
After dinner at Durgin Park, slabs of roast beef all around, we took the T back to Cambridge, for my second viewing of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Mike was quickly drawn in to the fast-paced black and white sci-fi fantasy in which a middle-aged man in small-town California finds everyone around him acting strange, numb, slow. He discovers that giant pea pods are being laid next to his sleeping neighbors, replacing them with perfect replicas who act like unfeeling robots. Near the end, as he goes a little crazy, he trys to stop a truck load of pods from heading out of town, towards Los Angeles. A police man, actually one of the pod people, hauls him off the truck and begins to beat him with a night stick. With that, the crowd in the theatre starts booing, hissing, even throwing wadded up paper at the screen.
Befuddled, Mike asked, “What are they doing? What’s that all about?”
I was beginning to learn it was my job to bring Mike out of the ‘50s into the ‘60s. He seemed stuck in a backwater, oblivious to changes happening around him. “The police – pigs,” I whispered. “We had a demonstration here last week at the Square, against the war. Cops started beating some kids, making them all bloody, arresting them. Didn’t you hear about that? Isn’t anything like happening in CT?” The movie had ended, credits rolled, and I went on, normal voice now. “Nobody likes the cops here. They’re the bad guys.” Mike looked puzzled. “Didn’t you hear about the Mobe?” Mike’s befuddled expression grew wider. “The mobilization against the war. Like last spring, when they marched on Washington. A bunch of people are going to march on the Pentagon, from the Lincoln Memorial. Phil Ochs is going to sing. Dr. Spock, that pediatrician, he’s going to speak. I’d like to go, but I’ve got so much stuff I have to study for.”
Mike was pensive the whole way back to Cabot, saying nothing. I walked beside him. As we left the Ave, he laid his arm around my waist, squeezed me a little, and finally said, “Yeah. I guess the war’s not right. But what can we do? We can’t vote, not yet. We – I – want to stay in school, need to get those grades to get into med school.”
“But people are dying. Not just us, all those people who live there, too. And the ones from here, the ones who have to go, they don’t have a chance like you do, no college deferral. The poorest people, the ones who live in the ghettos, the blacks – they’re the ones who are dying, and for what? For what, Mike?”
“I know, I know. I always thought the police were the good guys, though. Every little kid wants to be a fireman, or a policeman, right? Why do they have to sound so hateful, those people at the movie? Are you turning into one of them, one of the protesters?”
“I know, I know. I always thought the police were the good guys, though. Every little kid wants to be a fireman, or a policeman, right? Why do they have to sound so hateful, those people at the movie? Are you turning into one of them, one of the protesters?”
“I don’t like the war. Like you say, it’s not right. But last some point, we have to act on what we think what we feel, don’t we?”
Mike stayed quiet, as if he were mulling two sides of an argument over and over in his mind, just as he would for a debate, trying to find the answers, the right things to say, for both sides. It was nearly ten, and he had to leave. I patted his cheek, he rubbed my nose, and off he went, down the stairs and back out on the road.
“I don’t like the war. Like you say, it’s not right. But at some point, we have to act on what we think what we feel, don’t we?”
Mike stayed quiet, as if he were mulling two sides of an argument over and over in his mind, just as he would for a debate, trying to find the answers, the right things to say, for both sides. It was nearly ten, and he had to leave. I patted his cheek, he rubbed my nose, and off he went, down the stairs and back out on the road.