Copyright ©1987, 1989, 1991 by Richard Seltzer
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Frank woke with a start as the car lurched to the left. His roommate, Nick, was at the driver's wheel. In the back was Brian, from down the hall. It was the last weekend in September, 1968 -- their junior year. They were on their way from Yale to Thomas More College in Dickinson, Mass. A girl Brian had met at Cape Cod had set the other two up with blind dates. This was their first trip in Nick's family car. (The year before, they had all had to beg for rides.) They saw it as the beginning of a new stage in their "social life"; and much as they joked about blind dates, they were all looking forward to it.
"We need a brave bold man to stir the blood of the nation!" bellowed Nick. From the grin on his face, he evidently enjoyed the sound of his own words, enjoyed the pose he was striking -- driving at 70 mph up I-91 in the brand-new Pontiac Grand Prix his parents had bought for him. With his right hand he juggled a football, while with his left he steered the car, unevenly, but with supreme confidence.
They disagreed about many things -- especially politics. Brian was a hawk. Despite his 4F eyesight, he was trying to get into ROTC. Nick -- athletic, tall, and obsessed with touch football -- was an unconscientious objector. It wasn't a matter of morals and principles; it was simply a matter of life and death. He didn't want to get drafted because he didn't want to get killed.
"McCarthy," answered Frank.
"No spirit. No will to win," Brian shot back. "He acts like God chose him for some mission, but he doesn't really want any part of it. He's a modern-day Jonah, not a 'brave, bold man.'"
Frank objected, "I'd say that's a sign of a truly great man -- that he recognizes the moral necessity of a course of action and he takes responsibility for it, regardless of his personal wants or ambitions."
"All hail the selfless saint!" exclaimed Nick. "'We pray to thee, Saint Gene, to save us from evil.' Give him a medal. Paint an icon of him. But for a leader, I'd rather have someone of flesh and bone, with human failings and ambitions -- someone who knows what he wants and goes for it, despite everything and everyone. That's the one I'd give the ball to. That's the one I'd call a 'leader.'"
"So you're looking for another Kennedy?" asked Frank.
"Two down and one to go," commented Brian.
"So who do you want, Brian?" quipped Nick. "If it weren't for this stupid nomination process that takes away all the real choices, who would you vote for in November?"
"Why, Frank here, of course -- the moderate, the peacemaker."
"You're full of shit," concluded Nick and threw the football at him. "And the system's full of shit. It's either Nixon or Humphrey -- heads or tails, Tweedle-Dee or Tweedle-Dum. It's the same coin either way. And it wouldn't have been any different if McCarthy had gotten the nomination. Whoever sits in the White House learns to play the game -- the great old American game of placeball. Buy your tickets right here, folks. See the Minnesota twins in action -- St. Gene and Baby Huey. But if it's going to be a game, I want it to be a good one. I want a leader with spirit and imagination, humanity and emotion, the kind of guy who fights his way forward every last inch of the way."
"A Man for All Seasons," replied Brian.
"So that's why we're on our way to Thomas More College," added Frank. "This is a pilgrimage to do the great man honor. You had no intention at all of playing touch with the young ladies there, of seeing how far you could go, and how much you could score."
"Are you sure there really is such a place?" Nick asked Brian. "I mean, who ever heard of Thomas More College? Who's ever been there? Are you sure that girl you met on the Cape wasn't putting you on? Are you sure she isn't off having the laugh of her life at having sent us off to nowhere?"
"Utopia," Frank interjected.
"What?"
"That's what the title of More's book means -- Nowhere."
"Well, seriously, guys, this place -- if there is such a place -- must be so small it's the college-equivalent of a one-room schoolhouse. I tried looking it up in a college directory, and all I could find was a Thomas More College in the Bronx and another one that's part of the University of Saskatchewan. This place we're going is Nowhereland."
Yale was a center of political turmoil and anti-war protest.There were draft protests, war protests, and agitation to do away with grades and to admit women. Both professors and students seemed to believe they alone were responsible for the fate of the world.
But Thomas More College was remote from all that. It was stately and serene, true to its traditions and to its role of providing a liberal education.
All through the turbulence of the Viet Nam era, when other schools dropped their dress codes and their grading systems, Thomas More kept its old rules and stayed an all-girls school -- a haven for extended childhood, a place where you could have time to grow up.
Every dormitory had its house mother, a stern, no-nonsense nun, who ruled like a benevolent tyrant. Male visitors were never allowed beyond the Victorian-furnished sitting room. They had study hall hours for the freshmen and sophomores. Only seniors could have cars on campus. It was an anachronism. The administration was totally oblivious to the trends of the day.
Francie -- Brian's girl -- was waiting for them, reading a history book while sitting on a tree stump near the front gate. She had met him over the summer, while waitressing at a restaurant in Hyannis where Brian was a bus boy. She had set up her friend Marge with Nick, and her roommate Doreen with Frank.
Marge and Doreen had been reluctant and skeptical.
"What do you know about this guy anyway?" asked Doreen. "Did you ever talk?"
"Not much," Francie admitted. "But blind and almost blind dates do have their benefits."
"What?"
"When Brian takes off his glasses, he's almost blind. And it's like he wants to know you completely with those hands. You know, like a voyeur wants to eat you up with his eyes, Brian wants to do it with his hands -- those wonderful hands."
"Gross!" laughed Doreen. "You're just a dirty old lady."
But they agreed to the dates, nonetheless -- afterall, the only alternative to these dates was the on-campus mixer.
Now Francie led the boys to Rasmussen Hall -- a large and stately Victorian house, with a winding marble staircase, like the setting of an old movie. Doreen was waiting just outside the front door. "Heave it here!" she hollered to Nick. He threw her a long, off-target pass that would have gone through a window if she hadn't snagged it one-handed. She threw it back at him with a perfect spiral. "Do you think they want to play a little touch?" she asked Francie, with a wink.
"Not now, Doreen. Brian and I are going to get some pizza across the street. We'll be back with it in about 15 minutes. That ought to give Marge time to get her act together. Meanwhile, why don't you make Nick and Frank here comfortable in the sitting room."
"Nick and Frank?" Doreen repeated, all too clearly disappointed to learn that Frank wasn't Nick and vice versa.
She sat between them on the sofa, and made an effort to get a conversation started with Frank. But very soon, she started talking about football, and Nick chimed in with anecdotes about Brian Dowling, Calvin Hill, and the comic strip Bull Tales that Gary Trudeau was writing about the Yale team in the Yale Daily News.
Frank found himself scanning the geometric patterns of the silk wallpaper, and the comic gargoyle shapes hand-carved in the molding that ran round the top of the room. He sensed it was going to be a painfully long weekend. Then a shadow broke his line of sight and a pair of blue-green eyes flashed at him from the top of the stairs.
Marge was five foot three, with jet black hair and a Botticelli face. Her hair was cut short, but a curl that couldn't be suppressed pushed it out wide at the sides. After making eye contact, she stepped forward quickly, then caught herself and held back, then rushed forward again.
"Nick, this is Marge," Doreen reluctantly introduced them.
"Pleased to meet you, Nick," she replied, never once taking her eyes off Frank, who still hadn't taken his eyes off her.
"And this is Frank."
Marge sat in a nearby chair, and she and Frank intermittently stared at one another, interrupted only by their self-consciousness, feeling foolish that others could see they were staring, until once again they forgot that there was anyone else in the world.
Francie and Brian returned with the pizza and put up a couple of card tables in the corner. Frank and Marge -- now sitting close to one another -- talked a little and smiled a lot, and laughed uncomfortably when there was nothing to say. She told about her sister Rose, who had graduated the year before and was "strikingly beautiful." He couldn't think of anything interesting to say about his brothers; so he talked about Charlie instead -- his prodigal uncle who one day would be a great movie director.
Francie and Brian went off to see 2001: A Space Odyssey at a drive-in in the next town. Doreen and Nick, who by nature seemed to belong together, went off to "play touch." That left Marge and Frank to stroll around the campus by starlight.
As if by accident, when walking out of the dorm, Marge and Frank's hands touched. A painful spark of electricity jumped between them and they pulled back. Then they reached out deliberately and firmly grasped one another's hands.
They passed Rosary Hall, the library; Aristotle Hall, the academic building; Dominican, the largest dormitory, where Marge had spent freshman and sophomore years; and the Eisenhower student center. Then they strolled the gently spacious, undulating grounds in the shade and seclusion of high stone walls and hundred-year-old elms, which had been spared by the Dutch Elm disease.
"We're small," she explained. "There are just 300 students, and we're insulated from many of the concerns of the day."
"You mean there's no protest movement here?"
"I said we're insulated, not that we're lobotomized. Yes, there's protest; but it's muted, not as strident, not as all-important as you and your friends seem to believe."
Under normal circumstances, Frank would have said that it's different when you're subject to the draft, when your life may actually depend on the political decisions you're protesting, when to be kicked out or to flunk out means to be drafted immediately, so the college administration and its policies and grading system becomes an extension of the military-industrial complex. But this wasn't an ordinary night. Such thoughts never formed. He was absorbed in the touch of her fingers in his, in the sound of her voice, in the full ripe richness of the fall air, and the brightness of the stars.
"Last spring," she continued, "some of the girls mounted a protest march on the administration building. They had a set of demands that covered everything from having to wait on tables in the dining hall to the Tonkin Resolution. Half a dozen of them were suspended. But they're all back now.
"Sure, we're sometimes frustrated at all that seems antiquated and unnecessary here. But most of us really love this place and respect it. That's partly why we chose to come here in the first place. We take pride in the nineteenth century rules and the artificial atmosphere that we love to hate."
They stopped by the pond, and without either of them making the first move, their lips touched tentatively. While she continued to talk, he gently nuzzled her neck and kissed her repeatedly under the ear.
"The college was originally named Thomas More as a compromise between a Protestant farmer with money and an order of Catholic nuns with a calling for the teaching profession," she went on. "The goal the two had in common was to make the world a better place through practical action -- a realist's version of utopia."
"So you really like this place?"
"Yes," she answered without hesitation.
"You think it's some kind of utopia?"
"No. More like Camelot."
"And you'd like to be a Guenivere with two brave knights fighting over you?" he ventured.
"One would be enough," she replied. "But two, yes two would probably be better." She smiled and kissed him, and they made the kiss linger on and on. They focused all of their conscious being in those tiny flickering points of contact where their dry tense expectant lips first touched and then pressed tentatively together.
Frank had never had a physical or emotional experience like this before; and while the kiss continued, he began to wonder what could and should happen next. What would she expect of him? He didn't want to go too fast or too slow. It was such a beautiful moment, he didn't want it to end; but he was also afraid he'd make a fool of himself by trying to drag it on too long. His self-consciousness mounted until he finally summoned up courage enough to break the kiss, and hug and nuzzle and feel and caress. She held him tight too, and offered no resistance wherever his hands roamed -- to the sides of her breasts, and then in an upsurge of boldness, curiosity, and desire, he slipped a hand inside her blouse, inside her bra, and firmly held her breast.
For a moment he felt proud of himself, like he had made a conquest. This was the first time he had ever touched a woman's breast.
Then he sensed she wasn't responding, that his boldness wasn't leading her to heightened passion, as always seemed to happen in movies.
He pulled back enough to look her in the eyes, while keeping his hand in place.
She made no effort to remove it, but clearly she prefered him not to do that. So he took his hand away, and, as if in thanks, she kissed again, this time daring to brush and peck in gentle caressing motion. And he kissed back in kind, with much greater confidence, relieved of the burden of trying to figure out what to do next, relieved of his agonizing self-consciousness, totally absorbed in her. It was as if they had made a silent treaty -- confessing not only their mutual attraction, but their mutual respect as well.
"Can you come down to Yale for a weekend?" he asked as soon as that kiss ended.
"Yes."
"Next weekend?"
She hesitated, then replied, "In three weeks."
"Terrific. Then it's settled," he concluded.
"Yes. It's settled," she smiled. She, too, was clearly relieved.
They walked over to the College Inn across the street and ordered ice cream and cokes. Sometimes they talked and sometimes they just smiled at each other. Both were relaxed and happy that this magical evening was continuing and taking on new dimensions. They were enjoying it like a roller coaster ride -- beyond their control and a bit scary, but safe now, too, because they had established a mutual bond and set a date.
"When I was growing up in Maryland..." she began.
"I grew up in Maryland, too."
"That's funny. I knew someone then who reminds me of you, in a funny sort of way. We were both just little kids. We lived next door, but hardly saw much of one another -- boys just didn't play with girls or girls with boys. Only once did we spend much time together. We were seven then, and his babysitter had taken off and left him alone, and he came crying over to our house, and we stayed up half the night playing Monopoly together."
"Maggie Callahan?"
"Frankie?"
"Good grief! It's absolutely incredible. You were just ten when you moved away, and I never imagined..."
"What's Rockville like now?"
"We don't live there either. It's a come-and-go kind of place. We moved away two years after you. We live in Philadelphia now."
"And we live in Boston. God!" she exclaimed, "I can still see your panic-stricken face when you came to our house that night. I thought it was so grown-up of me to help you and play with you at a time like that -- I thought we'd be friends forever. But the very next day you ignored me, just like you always had before."
"I was so embarrassed, and I was afraid you'd tell everyone. What a crazy kid I was not to have made friends with you then."
"And what a crazy babysitter you had."
"That was my Uncle Charlie -- the one I mentioned before, the movie-maker."
"Yes, Charlie -- I should have recognized the name. The legendary Charlie. My father still tells that story -- with lots of embellishment. And what does Charlie do now aside from make amateur movies?"
"They aren't just amateur, really. He has professional talent. One of his first flicks won an award in Germany. That's where he met his wife Irene. She teaches at the University of Maryland now, in both mathematics and literature. She's an extraordinary woman, with a remarkable imagination."
"You say that with such passion," she noted.
"Well, if you could just see her and hear her, you'd know what I mean. Why one night last summer..." And he told her about ghost bags, and began the tale of Saint Smith, but before he could finish, Brian and Nick arrived, and it was time to go.
Briefly, to himself, he considered staying overnight at the College Inn and going back by bus the next day. But the night was perfect as it was, and he was afraid to stay too long and break the magic.
Links to the rest of Sandcastles
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