!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!
That semester, Bev and Leslie moved into an off-off campus apartment. Once a single family home, each of the three stories had been carved into a separate unit with tiny bedrooms, kitchen, bath, and a dining/living area flowing out to a bay window overlooking Walker Street. They started holding Friday evening dinner parties, experimenting with macrobiotic recipes featuring chickpeas, rice and lentils.
“But no sugar, milk, or butter?” Jeanne asked, the first time we went over. “Isn’t it a little bland?”
Bev answered, “Maybe, but I’m learning a lot about spices now. Besides, I’ve lost 15 pounds since June. You might consider it, Jeanne. It’s one of the best reasons to go off-campus, cooking for ourselves. None of that heavy dorm food any more.”
They looked so adult, so grown-up, Bev and Leslie, managing an entire sit-down meal for themselves and the three of us. White linen covered the scarred wooden desk they’d converted into a dining table. Mismatched plates, stemware, and utensils from a thrift store proudly sat arrayed in front of wobbly straight-backed chairs. Marcia, Jeanne, and I caught up on our summers while Bev and Les made several trips bringing all the platters in.
A slight giggle as she spoke, Marcia confided, “Well, I decided that ‘everything but…’ vow isn’t worth it.”
Jeanne looked puzzled, then seemed to remember, “Oh…oh! Who?”
“Some guy from high school, we met each other one night by accident on line for a movie. We were both there alone, ended up sitting together. It was The Thomas Crowne Affair. After Bonnie & Clyde, I wanted to see Faye Dunaway again. She was so elegant! Anyway, in the dark, he looked a little like Steve McQueen, so one thing just led to another, I guess.”
Jeanne looked worried. “It was…OK? Fun?”
“We kept it up all summer, so I guess I’d have to say, ‘Yes’. But he goes to Stanford, so that’s over now.” Marcia turned to me. “You still with Mike?”
A simple enough question, I thought. I scratched my forehead where the new hair bristled and itched. Even with these friends, I wasn’t ready to verbalize the nagging little worries forming like the first fluff of cloud on the horizon of a glorious, sunny summer afternoon. “We didn’t spend all that much time together, me going to the Vineyard and Chicago, him to Colorado. We both had jobs, too. We did manage to get together some, so I have to say, yeah, I’m still with Mike.”
Leslie entered with a bowl of hummus and a plate of floppy pita bread. “You still love him, Janie?” she sneered sarcastically. My scar under that itchy hair throbbed. Why did I always feel like I was defending something evil when I talked about Mike with Leslie? My consternation must have shown, as she went on, “I’m just kidding. He’s a good guy. A little young, maybe, but a good guy.”
I realised Leslie’s chest jiggled as she turned back to the kitchen. I leaned over and whispered, “Is she not wearing a bra?”
Jeanne said, “Walking around school this past week, I noticed, everybody came back dressed…differently.”
It was true. I may have been one of the few girls still wearing John Meyer skirts. Almost everyone else had a different uniform. Some were in Army surplus chic, baggy pants and wrinkled khaki jackets, the urban revolutionary look. Others, the ones who’d been in California that summer, had on shimmery flowing floor length dresses and tinkling jewelry. Some would take a silky Indian bedspread with paisley patterns, wrap it around their waist, and call it good. Incense wafted down the dorm halls that fall, with sitar or gamelan music replacing raspy Dylan or warbling folk tunes.
I wasn’t ready for any of that. The jeans I’d worn in Chicago lay at the bottom of a dresser drawer. Mike and I were planning on seeing Funny Girl the next evening when he came up from W. Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice still seemed to me the epitome of every Jewish girl’s dreams.
On the way back from the movie, I asked him, “What did you think?”
He hesitated. “I like the way she sings, sure. She’s so…strong, emotional. Passionate, puts everything she has into the music, the way she builds to the end of a piece.” He paused, looked away. “But then, Janis Joplin’s like that, too. And she screeches howls, lets it all come out.”
Intellectually, I couldn’t deny that. I could see why people liked her. But emotionally, she was too raw, all id and anger sometimes. No hope, no dreams, just the agony of the blues. Afraid to argue over music, I switched to, “What classes did you finally sign up for?”
Relieved, he announced, “I’m thinking more about Philosophy, Religion, and Psych, that stuff. I also liked that German Literature in Translation class I took last year.”
“Because…”
“I like Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, so much.”
“Why”
“He combined that rational, analytic, structured German thing with a passion and emotion. Then there’s Gunter Grass, Herman Hesse. That’s the kind of stuff I like in books, I think. I’m done with most of the med school requirements now. So I’m switching to stuff I think is fun.”
“Like?”
“The Divine Comedy.”
Puzzled, I raised my eyebrows.
He laughed, “After last year’s first semester fiasco – I got ‘C’s’ in Organic Chem and English Lit, remember? – I want to take it easier this year. This one’s a gut. Everybody gets an ‘A’, I heard, it’s mostly for the football players. All we have to do is read, not the whole thing, just the first part, about Hell. Then, I’m taking Contemporary Theology of India, as a Pass/Fail. Physics, that’s the last thing I need for med school. And, and another Pass/Fail, Analysis of Interpersonal Behavior.”
“What’s that?”
“Have you ever heard of a ’T-Group’? Training Group? It’s what they do out on the west coast, where people just sit in a room, in a a circle, and talk to each other, than analyze the group dynamics.”
“Still headed for psychiatry,” I mused.
“Yeah. And I’m realising that if I take five classes each semester, not four, I could finish in three years.”
“Then you’d go right to med school?”
“Probably not. Some of them, like Harvard, have an age requirement, you have to be 21 to enroll. I’d only be 20. So I’m only taking four courses this semester, then five the next two. I’d get the last semester free”
“So what would you do?”
“I don’t know. Go somewhere? Work somewhere? I don’t have to figure that out yet. What about you?”
“Oh, the usual. English, and a movie class. Then there’s this class they just started this year, part of the new Women’s Studies program. Leslie told me about it, it’s with a new professor they hired, Dr. Shulmeister. The first books are ones I’ve already read, Freidan and de Beauvoir. After that, it’s supposed to get more into literature and philosophy. I think I’m really going to like it. Finally, I liked Jerome Kagan so much, that professor in my Psych Intro class, I’m going to take his Child Development this year.”
“It’s still kids and psych, right?”
“It’s still kids and psych.”