In Their Own Words

A Picture's Worth

A Picture's Worth

The memories. Ahh yes. They come pouring forth from long unexplored recesses of my mind. Strange. The memories of the tutorials, the seminars, the lectures and the classes—the very reason for attending Fair Harvard—are shrouded, misty. Sure. I recall John Finley’s final Hum 3 lecture. I remember being awed by Professors James Q. Wilson and Otto Eckstein as well as being astounded by Stanley Hoffman and Michael Waltzer. But I haven’t the foggiest memory of what any of them actually said.

But my strongest memory is in Kodachrome because it actually exists as a three by five picture in my album. This picture shows three young men, one black, one white and one Asian, standing against a backdrop of Mount Baker in Washington State. They—actually we—looked happy, but tired just as one would expect after a days climb.

The three are pictured together in one frame, but they are apart. One could sense nervousness in the scene, a feeling that if the three were forced to get closer or by some accident, touched each other, walls would be breached and secrets, dark, deep secrets might be unleashed upon their world.

Leo Egashira, Craig Davidson and I were hiding a secret from each other and from ourselves. Each of us was gay. On that day, in that time, a mere twenty odd years ago, we were not willing to test or risk our friendship by admitting to the love whose “name cannot be spoken.”

I do not know when Craig and Leo came out. I do know that Craig went on to become an activist for gay and lesbian rights. Before he died, he became the founding director of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. Leo became and is, one of the most naturally out and gay persons that I know.

Me, I knew that I was gay for the longest time (maybe I should have taken a hint from my athletic abilities, or lack thereof, but I did not like Julie Garland, so how could I be gay?), but I did not realize it until years later.

During a visit to San Francisco (where else?), Leo took me to my first gay bar and got me on the floor to dance with him. In the years since we came out to each other and then to our friends and finally to the world, I have come to learn that, far from threatening our friendship, the sharing of our secrets fortified my courage and enriched my life.

I, for one, would not have made it to this 25th Reunion without my Harvard friends. When I look at that Kodachrome, I realize how very fortunate I am to have known the people that Harvard put in my life. How richer I am because of them.

Come to think of it, I do remember one Harvard lecture. Was it not John Finley who, in his class on the Greek Classics, first introduced this member of the Class of ‘76 to the lesson, “to thine own self be true”? Thank you Harvard, and thank you Leo for teaching me how to dance.

Straddling The Fence

Straddling The Fence

Pretty much everyone’s college years are a cusp, an ontological R&D period of flux during which one is moving between immaturity and maturity, between the certainties of childhood and the settledness (or inertia) of adulthood, between furtive sex hidden from one’s parents and furtive sex hidden from one’s children.

But our years at college look particularly cusp-like to me.

My strongest memory of the first week at Harvard is using my pre-med roommate’s digital calculator—it was, miraculously, no bigger than a telephone, and none of us had ever seen one; then, during our junior and senior years, Apple and Microsoft were founded, and in our 20s we were all using PCs.

Freshman year, most of my friends were proud users of soft drugs. That fall I decided to comp for the Lampoon as the result of a chance encounter with a celebrated Lampoon genius mid-acid-trip—his, not mine. And that winter, a roommate and I managed to buy a one-pound slab of hashish, a gorgeous and remarkable object I still recall vividly.

But in the summer of 1974, I cut my shoulder-length hair short, for no reason except that long hair suddenly seemed symbolically pointless, and by junior year, almost no one I knew was taking a lot of drugs.

The last great Vietnam demonstration happened, I’m pretty sure, in the fall of 1973—my one and only chance to chant anti-American slogans in a huge mob marching down Commonwealth Avenue. Given that Congress had voted to stop all bombing in Indochina three months earlier, it felt like nostalgic playacting even at the time, a wishful last-ditch attempt to live the glamorous New Left undergraduate life of our formed-in-the-60s adolescent imaginations.

When I got on the Lampoon in 1972, it was in no sense a pre-professional hatchery; when I left in 1976, the National Lampoon was a huge success, Saturday Night Live had been on the air for a year, and the Lampoon hegemony over American television comedy had begun.

When we entered Harvard, there were no women lawyers; when we graduated, it was already clear that one day soon, all lawyers would be women.

And so on.

As it turned out, all that cusp-ness provided a useful foretaste of the 90s and early 00s, which have been in so many ways (technologically, economically, culturally) a time of extreme flux. At an impressionable age we became accustomed to being both one thing and its seeming opposite (analog and digital, bohemian and bourgeois, old and youngish), which was—I think—a good thing.

Let Them Eat Cake

Let Them Eat Cake

This week I join my fellow “mid-fortysomethings” in returning to the scene of many fond memories—academic and extracurricular pursuits, parties, romances and above all—friendships. Any self-absorbed pride in professional achievements and status will be quickly shattered by remembering that these friends know the real “truth” about me from college and medical school. I look forward to reminiscing with my Adams House roommates about our many pranks. These were (mostly) harmless, adolescent, idiotic and sophomoric forms of mischief born out of the monotony of studying for finals—in other words, some of the highlights of my Harvard education. Discounting activities previously reported in the Harvard Crimson Crime Report, or those still within the statute of limitations, I’ll recount one of our Finals week traditions.

Remember those perfectly geometric, box-shaped pieces of dessert cake we had every night? One of our favorite pastimes was to doctor them up with creative fillings. We would core out a hole from the bottom into which we could pour salad dressing, cottage cheese or other liquid condiments. We would then sneak these altered desserts back onto the cafeteria counter, and monitor the lucky, unsuspecting recipient.

After the main course, dessert time would reward us with a predictable pattern of entertaining facial expressions. Ingestion was immediately followed by 1) the grimacing pucker, 2) the horrified, double take “stare” at the item, 3) a confused period of closer inspection and finally 4) total disgust as the plate was slid to the opposite end of the table. Some indignant recipients brought their findings to the cafeteria staff (the Adams House “pink” lady). Most amazing was how many people eagerly proceeded to polish off the rest of the dessert.

Within our group, I was the best at the incision and debridement step. As our surgical technique improved, we operated on Twinkies, éclairs, and dinner rolls. Later in life, drawing upon these very same skills, I went on to pursue a career practicing and teaching ophthalmic microsurgery. And to think, I owe it all to Harvard!

Life Comes Without A Script

Life Comes Without A Script

There is no single memory that comes to mind when I think of myself at Harvard 25 years ago—rather a stream of images, fitful, fleeting, snapshots that capture what historian Erving Goffman would call The Theatricality of Everyday Life.

I knew so little about Harvard when I applied that I counted on being a Drama major. Since that concentration has never existed I chose Fine Arts, but spent most of my time in extracurricular activities, off and on stage, either as director or actor.

The defining moments of my life at Harvard were spent waiting in the wings: I remember counting the bodies of sailors dangling on ropes to open the Gilbert & Sullivan production of H.M.S. Pinafore at the Agassiz.

Or my proud (and fearless) entrance in pajamas as the ingénue in Noel Coward’s Present Laughter. My vampy goth get-up as a witch in the Leverett House production of Dark of the Moon.

We were decidedly ’70s in our use of drama for therapeutic ends. I explored my Shadow self in Peter Frisch’s famous mask workshop and held encounter sessions with my best girlfriends while directing Megan Terry’s Calm Down Mother at the Loeb Ex.

I so inhabited the lead in Tennessee Williams’ one-act This Property Is Condemned, that I condemned myself to a bout of mono and spent the evening of the show in the infirmary.

There were movie moments, too—set pieces in real life that were overblown, theatrical gestures.

I remember throwing my drink at a flirtatious student bartender at a Hasty Pudding party and then waking up next to him the next day.

Or being caught kissing the wrong fellow in the Ibis room at the top of the Lampoon castle and watching him tumble headfirst down the stone stairs after my boyfriend slugged him.

The image that keeps resurfacing, however, is a sweet one, not sexy, sickly, or violent.

I was in a play called The Kitchen, by Arnold Wesker, again at the Loeb and directed by Peter Frisch. My part was that of a gum-cracking waitress and I chewed wads of Bazooka that I parked on my dressing table mirror when I wasn’t onstage.

One night, it was April I believe, we were surprised by a late snowstorm, and when I couldn’t find my gum to go back on after Intermission, a fellow cast member (the Chef in the play) beckoned me outside, and there he’d built me a snow bunny, with a wad of pink bubble gum for a nose.

It was a lovely courtship gesture, and perhaps my fondest memory of Harvard.

Four Men, One Room

Four Men, One Room

The secret formula that matched four freshman from the class of ‘76 in a corner suite of Wigglesworth Hall produced a very wiggy experience. On paper, the match was perfectly balanced: two midwesterners and two east coasters, although one roommate’s mother swore that one of the midwesterner’s had an east coast accent. We all rolled our eyes, not realizing that mom’s intuition proved to be a good sign. Each of us had an element of adaptability that made the year’s living experience a blast.

The four of us rallied early on to deal with the ridiculous Harvard Band march down Mass. Ave. during football season. One of the guys knew a med student who provided us with surgical tubing. This tubing was essential to launching water balloons from our third-floor window.

Too bad all of us missed the final draft induction for Vietnam because we had a wicked aim. The tuba dude didn’t have a chance.

Our barrage of water balloons scattered the band all over Mass. Ave. “That’ll learn them to wake us up on Saturday mornings.” No sooner were we reveling in our victory than we had to scram from University police knocking at our door. Thank goodness Depression-era architects saw the wisdom of putting fire-doors between suites which could serve as escapes from one entry to another for whatever reason.

Our spat with authority didn’t stop after that. One Saturday morning the four of us decided to catch a Harvard football game. We didn’t have our raccoon coats, but one of us had a military knapsack to hide the half-gallon of Mogan David during the game. Given a collective IQ of over 500 you would think we would know how to strap the knapsack tight. But no, we loaded our vino only to have it tumble out of the sack in the middle of the Wigglesworth entry onto Mass. Ave. and at the feet of President Bok.

Quick to respond, President Bok smiled and said, “bad luck.”

Spirits undaunted, we found other opportunities to find blotto-ville.

Periodically we’d make a field trip to library cubicles at Radcliffe on Friday nights and sip on Southern Comfort. If we didn’t see a streaker traipse through the book stacks, we’d wrap it up and head for Casablanca or some other watering hole in Harvard Square.

Perhaps the most telling experience was a night of munchies that descended upon the Wigglesworth suite while watching Saturday Night Live. One of the roommates mistook a candle shaped as a hamburger for something eatable. The next day we were trying to match dental records with teeth imprints on the wax hamburger while stumbling over a half dozen spent pizza boxes.

Sometimes, higher intellectual pursuits crept into the Wiggleworth suite. One night, an amorous interlude in one of the bedrooms was interrupted by a voice from outside. Jon, the aspiring creative writer, had climbed up a tree next to our Wigglesworth suite and in the midst of a full moon, three stories high, he recited lines from Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Clearly, Harvard Yard had pearls of wisdom beyond the classroom.

Several of our freshmen encounters had prophetic attributes. Our roommate with creative writing aspirations decided to set his alarm at 3 a.m. everyday. When asked by his bunkmate why he was waking up at this time, he responded by saying that he wanted to record his dreams. After a few episodes of these nightly roosts and reading the creative writing, the bunkmate suggested that his roommate bag the alarm clock and forego creative writing for non-fiction. The advice was prophetic, because a Pulitzer Prize was realized many years later for non-fiction writing.

In another instance of uncanny foreboding, one of the roommates came back to Wigglesworth livid and reported that his freshman expository writing teacher slipped his final grade into an envelope with his girlfriend’s grade. Furthermore, the expos instructor asked when the two were getting married. What seemed like a preposterous question after barely completing the first semester at Harvard College turned out to be a reality seven years later.

Despite our wacky camaraderie, each of us elected to go our own way after freshman year. One took a year off while the other three either found new roommates or single suites. Too bad the Dean’s office didn’t apply that secret formula for matching classmates sophomore year. Who knows what a second year of roommate matching would have produced?

My Harvard Date

My Harvard Date

I prepped for Harvard—if prepped is the right word for it—at a large public high school in Fort Worth, Texas. The dominant social activity there was going out on dates. From the day I turned sixteen and got my driver’s license until I graduated, I took girls out on dates as often as possible in our family’s Dodge.

We went to the Jack-in-the-Box (my first date), to the movies and to the Six Flags amusement park. I took dates to the junior prom and the senior prom, on both occasions wearing a goofy rented tuxedo and presenting my date with a large corsage.

I blush to think about all this now, of course, but at the time dating seemed pretty cool. Then I got to Harvard and, without thinking any more about it than I would have thought about asking my roommates to head over to the Casa B. for drinks, I asked a cute girl I had noticed in my introduction-to-psychology class out on a date.

After the lecture one morning, I ambled down to where she was sitting, introduced myself, and said, “So, I was wondering if you might want to go with me to a Judy Collins concert in Boston Friday night.”

The instant those words popped out of my mouth, I knew that everything about the proposition was wrong.

My first clue was the bewildered look on the face of the girl in question. Her name was Isabel Swift and she had prepped for Harvard at the all-girls Madeira School outside of Washington, D.C. I don’t think Isabel had ever even heard of dating.

But she accepted, probably because she was too startled to think up any good reason not to, and we did actually go to the Judy Collins concert together. The two things I remember most vividly about the date were that Judy Collins got sick and sang for only 30 minutes, and that my face, ears and the back of my neck burned red the entire time, from embarrassment.

Why such trauma? Even now I don’t totally understand. Certainly it was nothing Isabel said or did. She was a game, good sport about the whole affair. Mostly, I think, it was my own confusion and insecurity. In one instant—the instant I asked her to go on a date—the full depth of my cultural, social and even intellectual naiveté was exposed, to myself if to no one else.

Not all girls go out on dates the way we did back in Fort Worth. Not all teachers can be won over by the jockish charm of a good old boy showing a little interest in their subject. Not all battles can be won with just a little bit of effort and some sincere good will. The brave new world I had chosen to enter by coming to Harvard was not going to be a cakewalk.

I walked Isabel home from the Harvard Square subway stop to her Radcliffe dorm room despite her protestations that it was unnecessary. I did so in part because I was stubborn about good Southern manners, but also because I wanted to prove to her that I was at least aware enough of eastern-sophisticated-feminist norms to not try to kiss her goodnight. It was a way of salvaging a little dignity. And so it ended well.

If I run into Isabel at the reunion, I will be eager to hear what she remembers about our long-ago date, if anything. I read in a magazine recently that for twenty years she has been an editor (now the top editor) for the Harlequin series of romance books. Surely there is some kind of poetic lesson in that.

A Blur Of Impressions

A Blur Of Impressions

The year we all arrived in Cambridge was 1972, and that autumn brought women to the dorms in Harvard Yard for the first time. There were only four co-ed dorms at first, and Hollis, my home, was one of them.

Of course, the women were all in a separate entry, or on separate floors, but no matter. We thought we were on the cutting edge of history.

That this situation led to good friendships, and the occasional home invasion, was taken in stride.

That was the fall Henry Kissinger trumpeted “peace is at hand,” as carried on the front page of The Crimson. For many of us, with Vietnam still hanging uncertainly over our heads, it was a headline that made us rejoice.

The years are a blur of impressions now, filled with glimpses of professors and classes, friends and activities. I remember Nobel Prize-winning scientist George Wald, teaching Nat. Sci. 5, interjecting modestly upon occasion, “I knew Albert Einstein, you see. And I once told Albert...” Wald never lacked ego, but he was riveting.

Robert Kiely and David Perkins, teaching English and American literature of the 20thCentury, could make it come alive. “Pull down they vanity!” roared Perkins, reading Ezra Pound. “Come up, you fearful Jesuit,” intoned Kiely, doing James Joyce in an Irish brogue. They made us feel it.

In part, that’s why I made my life in words and writing.

Dressed in white ties, tails, or formal black dresses, we sang Brahms’ “Requiem” in the Collegium Musicum. Banging cymbals in the Marching Band, we shouted to Yalies at the Harvard-Yale game, “You may be winning, but you have to go back to New Haven.”

I met friends from all over the country and some from abroad. I learned about John Coltrane, the Allman Brothers and Jimmy Buffett from them. We even met Buffet at a concert in Boston once and hung out in his dressing room between shows.

We wanted domes, brick and ivy for our house, but many of us ended up in Mather. We jogged along the Charles, ate cheesesteak subs at Tommy’s Lunch and labored for hours in the stacks at Widener. We learned French impressionism, American transcendentalism, Keynesian economics and behavioral psychology.

I typed my thesis work on a typewriter like most everyone else. Mine was on T.S.Eliot: “The evolution of The Waste Land from the original manuscripts to the finished version.” Like the world Eliot envisioned, it was chaotic.

We went to mixers, swapped stories about romantic encounters with classmates and some even counted them. I spent much of my sophomore year at Wellesley.

Aging though we are, we all still remember these stories, plenty of them. The friendships and the memories endure.