Chapter 1
It was a hot September afternoon just before my sophomore year at Metropolitan was about to open, and I was lying in the sack in my dormitory room, fourth floor of Hendricks Hall, overlooking the noise and clamor of Bryant Avenue. The room was dusty and bare, like a shell waiting for its occupant to climb in. My unpacked suitcases were scattered all over, but I ignored them. I was tired and dizzy from the heat and from the long railroad trip downstate from my home in Hudson, New York. And I was having a daydream. The daydream probably started the whole mess that was going to end up so horribly later that fall.
As I lay there, I was imagining that I was walking down Broadway, and I turned a corner suddenly and smacked into this girl coming the other way. She was a tall blonde wearing Bermuda shorts and a white blouse open at the collar, and-I could see big, white, bulging, squeezable breasts. I laughed and she laughed and somehow that lit a spark, and I invited her into a local bar for a drink, and then she said, "how about going to my place," and we did, and it was an apartment near campus.
And she had all the kinds of books I like, and serious records like Bach and such, and there was harpsichord music tinkling and she had a bottle of cheap red wine. We drank, and then suddenly we were next to each other on the couch, and I was taking her blouse off and there was nothing on underneath, and I was looking straight at her big, round, pale breasts that stood up firm without any need of a bra.
And I touched them and she came to life under my touch, all fire and passion, and we stripped off our clothes and sank down on the floor, sweat-slippery bodies thrusting against each other, her breasts grinding against my body, my hands gripping her tight buttocks, and both of us were swept away on an ecstasy of glorious sex.
As daydreams go, it was a damned good one. But it mostly had the effect of reminding me that as a lover, I was a miserable failure. Here I was, Jeff Burnside, nineteen years old, Metropolitan '65, and I had never gone to bed with a woman in my life. I was wasting my whole goddam youth, I thought. As I lay there on the squeaky dorm bed, I made up my mind that this year I was going to do something about that. In my freshman year I had been too busy just managing to survive my courses to worry about socializing. But now I was a sophomore. Time to turn those daydreams into reality.
I unpacked and looked at myself in the mirror. The glass was a little warped, the image untrue, but it was good enough. I looked pretty nondescript. Sort of reddish hair, sort of blue-gray eyes, but nothing too definite in any category.
Then I thought-classes don't start for a couple of days. Your time is your own. Why not go out and get made?
Boy, what a fiasco!
I went downstairs. All around me the campus was quiet-hot, sunwashed, the grass in Holman Quad was browned and toasted by the summer heat, the long shadows of afternoon slanted down off the top of Reynolds Library. I felt good, liberated from the strangling grip of my hinkydink home town. This was the Big City. The City of Opportunity.
I went wandering down Broadway, turning corners in hopes of bumping into my daydream girl with the big breasts. No dice. On 213th Street I made a quick turn, bumped into a little old lady, and knocked her groceries out of her arms. The hell with turning corners. Daydreams never came to life.
I strolled around until it started to get dark, and stopped into a cafeteria for some eats, and then went to a movie. By myself. All around me couples were making out like crazy. I left the movie in the middle and went back to the dorms. The place was starting to look crowded as other residents arrived after their summer vacations.
Alone in my room, I pulled out my old typewriter and started to beat the keys-sublimating my sex drives with creative effort. I was writing a profound essay on the sexual nature of the college male, only in a light vein. I was planning to submit it to Don Hammer, the editor of Knave, the campus humor magazine. I had met Hammer the previous spring, and he had extended a halfhearted (and, I now think, phony) invitation for me to write for him.
So I spent half the night writing the article, and then sacked out. I dreamed that six brunettes with giant knockers were dancing nude around my bed. I visualized them down to the last detail, down to the tilt of their nipples, and the saddest thing was that my knowledge of anatomy came exclusively from men's magazine photos. I woke up in a cold sweat of desire.
Get hold of yourself, Burnside! I told myself sternly. Sex isn't everything.
Oh, no? I answered with a sneer.
I fell asleep finally. The next few days were pretty hectic, what with registration and greeting old friends and all, and the bull sessions in the dorms. I spent what spare time I had polishing and repolishing my essay, which I titled The Sexual Crisis of Modern Civilization. Around the second or third day of the new semester I climbed up into Hammond Hall at an hour when I knew Don Hammer would be in.
Hammer was a senior, active in half a dozen campus affairs. He was a goaty little fellow with protruding teeth and rimless glasses, but he was never seen around campus without a girl on his arm, usually a chesty Chesley type, and formidable rumors of his sexual prowess circulated all over campus. He came from Iowa, or maybe it was Ohio.
The door of the Knave office was open. Hammer was there, sitting behind a paper-littered desk, looking through some girly magazines. I stepped in.
"Brought you an article, Hammer," I said importantly.
He surveyed a page of bare-bosomed wenches. Without looking up he said, "Okay. Leave it on the desk."
"I'd sort of like a reading now," I said.
"Ippolito of the Critic is interested too." Critic is the Metropolitan literary mag, ultra-ultra-arty.
You never could tell what they'd print. I hadn't approached Mark Ippolito yet, partly because I didn't know him and partly because I was sure Knave would snap the article up. But I figured it couldn't hurt to use some leverage on Hammer.
And I was right. "Okay," he said. "I'll take a look at it."
I handed the manuscript over. He read the first page very carefully, then started to skim. His facial expression didn't change. I started to visualize the big play, the double-spread illustration, the review in the campus daily, calling my article "significant ... searching ... witty...."
He got all through, rolled the sheets of paper up, pounded them against his knee. After a long, long pause he said, "I can't print crap like this, Burnside. Knave has a reputation to uphold."
I damn near fell over. That was a shot to the vitals. "What the hell do you mean?"
He kept pounding my script against his khaki-clad knee. "It's too obviously the work of-well, a frustrated virgin. Go out and find a woman if you want to write about sex."
My hands were numb. I took the script back, feeling I ought to defend myself somehow. "I didn't ask for a damn psychoanalysis, Hammer. Just for a reading. Anyhow, your opinions on the state of my virginity are irrelevant, insulting, and downright untrue."
"That's your story. But it shows, Burnside. It shows."
Suddenly I didn't feel like arguing or defending myself any more. I shoved my rejected baby onto my clipboard, glared at him awkwardly, and got out of there. For a second I saw myself through Don Hammer's eyes, and it hurt-I was a long-legged goof of a kid pretending to a sophistication I didn't have. I couldn't fool an expert. Right now I couldn't even fool myself.
In a sort of dreamy daze I started to walk down the hall. Further along, typewriters were banging away in the Daily office, and further down the hall some members of the Maske Gown were rehearsing an insipid song-and-dance routine for their next production. I felt out of phase. I stood all alone in the middle of the howling hubbub, picturing myself as a gaunt tragic figure doomed to everlasting loneliness. Hell, I was a silly kid ... but that was the way I felt right then. Only later, after all the trouble I got into, did I really begin to understand how the world worked.
Right then, in the hallway, I saw sex as the magic open-sesame that would turn me from a gawky adolescent into a man. I was troubled by the fact that I had managed to stay out of bed with females for some nineteen-plus consecutive years, which if not the world's record was still a long enough time to annoy and discourage me somewhat.
It was funny. For years my home town was known for its red-light district. Of course, it's been somewhat cleaned up of late, but only just recently. In the palmy days Hudson must have seemed to an outsider like a real hotbed of sin. But I was on the inside, born of a good family, and so I never dared venture into the wrong end of town because if I got caught it would look bad for my parents. So there I was in a city like that, and I managed to grow up pure.
In the couple of awkward, arms-length talks I had had with my father he hadn't said much more than to be sure to save it for my wedding night. Well, that was what I was seeming to be doing, whether I wanted to or not.
And I felt like I was on a treadmill. Round and round and round, with more unanswered questions popping up every day, and me never any closer to reaching any kind of equilibrium with the world about me than a circus freak. I felt pretty bitter and miserable about the whole thing.
Brooding, I -edged along the hall and practically fell into the Daily office. Metropolitan's dashing young journalists were engaged in their usual frantic occupation of getting out the day's edition. Someone tall and pimply was city editor for the day, and he was standing up behind his desk yelling, "Hey, Sid, dial extension 2525 and ask Alphonse if there's been any campus crime wave yet." Somewhere else I heard two members of the paper's managing board having a hassle over the day's editorial. And somewhere else a sports reporter was clacking out some crud about the approaching football season.
Everyone was busy. Except me. I was floating high, wide, and loose, with Don Hammer's all-too-perceptive rejection griping at me. I wondered why I had bothered to go into the Daily office. Just to watch busy people, I supposed. But I remembered that a new term had started, and that I had better get myself over to the college bookstore and grab up my needed textbooks while I still had some cash on hand from my folks' last check. I started to drift out when I saw a familiar face.
He called to me. "Hey, Burnside!"
He was Chuck Gordon, Class of '64-a lean, whippet-like junior from California or Oregon or someplace else out west. He was highly regarded on Daily as future managing-board material. I had met him last year, when he and I were in the same geology class. He didn't crack a book till the week before finals, and then put in a cram-session with me and came out with an A. I worked like a dog all term and got only B-plus. But things came easy to him. I had to admire him for his slickness.
I said, "Hello, Chuck. How was the summer?"
"Can't complain. You?"
I lifted my shoulders in what I hoped was a sophisticated shrug. "Pretty dull. But I survived." I looked at my watch. It was half past three. Time to get going.
" I'm heading over to the book store," I told him. "You going in that direction?"
"I really ought to stick around the office here. Oh, the hell with it-yeah. I'll go with you. On one condition."
"What's that?"
"That you stop off with me for a beer in the West Side afterward."
"Okay," I said. It was a good idea. I felt I could use a beer to wash away the taste of the afternoon, and I was glad to have some company. Anyone's company. Even a hard-driving louse like Chuck Gordon. And maybe hanging around Gordon would bring me good luck, in my present condition of frustration. He was supposed to be one of the biggest makeout men on campus. They said he had a pet project of making every girl in Chesley College, and that he was surprisingly close to completing the project. And considering that there are around a thousand girls over there, it means he's been doing swell even if he's only two percent of the way there. Me, I would have settled for just one girl, right then.
Gordon and I sauntered down the steps into Henry Hawks Lobby, where some guy was peddling football tickets, and drifted out into Hol-man Quadrangle. It was a warmish September afternoon-not the soul-stifling soggy heat of the summer, but a kind of pleasant springy-fall warmth.
As usual, the Quad, chief outdoor gathering place of the Metropolitan undergrads, was jammed with loafers who sprawled over every sittable bit of concrete in sight. There were some Chesley girls in the Quad, each of them surrounded by a cluster of eager upperclassmen. Here and there I spotted a day-student-one of those miserable fellows who spends two or three hours a day riding the subway between Brooklyn and Metropolitan, or the Bronx and Metropolitan, and who never gets to think of college as anything much more than an extension of high school, but tougher. Almost half of Metropolitan's population consists of these guys-at nightfall, the college fragments and a thousand of the splinters go every which way all over the city.
As we proceeded up the Quad toward 216th Street, Gordon suddenly nudged me. "Hold it. There's a girl I want to say hello to."
She was sitting alone on a stone bench just outside Davis Hall. She looked like a sweet mid-western type-clean, neat, blonde-in the inevitable plaid Bermuda shorts, long black socks, and white woolen sweater. The sweater was pretty tight and two good-sized bumps were protruding. All in all she looked astonishingly like the girl I kept daydreaming about, except that I knew this one didn't have an apartment off-campus, probably didn't like cheap Chianti, and almost certainly didn't put out. She had the wholesome look that spells virgin in capital letters. I was obscurely annoyed that an operator like Chuck Gordon should have an eye out for her, even if I didn't know her myself.
She was bent over a vast textbook. For a moment Gordon paused above her, surveying the way her breasts pushed the front of her sweater out. Then he cleared his throat. She glanced up, surprised.
"Oh-Chuck."
"Want you to meet a dear friend of mine," he said. "Carol West, meet Jeff Burnside."
She gave me about half a glance; her mind was somewhere else. "Pleased to meet you."
Gordon said, "What are you doing out here? Waiting for some lucky inhabitant of yonder dorm?"
"Nothing of the kind," she said, reddening. "I'm just killing time till four o'clock. I want to take a reserve book out of the college library, and regulations are regula-"
"Oh, just wiggle your fanny in front of one of the student librarians," Gordon said scornfully. "You'll discover how fast those regulations can get broken. Anyway, it's almost a quarter of four. They don't stick that hard to the rules."
She looked doubtful. She also looked anxious to get rid of Chuck, a fact which made me privately rejoice a little.
He went on, "Come along, huh? I know one of the librarians. Jack Eigenfeld's on duty now. He'll let you have your book-"
"No. No, really, Chuck. I can wait. Please?"
He must have caught something of a hint in her voice, because he gave up. He sighed and said, "Try to do a Chesley girl a favor, and-oh, well. See you around, kid."
We left hurriedly, turning up the walk and heading for the book store. When we were out of earshot Gordon said, "There's a lesson for you, Burnside. The real true-blue Chesley girl will never break a university rule, whether it's Thou Shalt Not Take Out A Reserve Book Ten Minutes Early or Thou Shalt Not Commit Fornication."
I clamped my lips tight shut. I wanted to tell Chuck that the real reason Carol West hadn't gone with him was that she was waiting for someone. Even I could see that. Otherwise she'd have been inside the library, not sitting around near the dorms.
And I knew what was on his mind. It annoyed me. Sure, I wanted to get made worse than anything in the world. But I wasn't out to make a nice girl, like Carol. Just any old dog would have done.
Chuck said, "Carol's a nice kid, but she's regulations-happy."
"Aren't they all?" Right now it seemed to me that every girl in the world was sternly defending her chastity against all comers, or at least against me.
"Thank the Lord, no! But she is. Sweet, though. It's going to be a challenge to make her."
Just a goddam challenge, I thought. A challenge. I choked back the part of me that puritanically wanted to flatten Gordon's thin-bridged nose, and gave dominance to the part of me that envied him.
"Do you think you can? Make her, I mean?" I said, awed.
We reached the entrance to the book store. "Maybe," he said dreamily. "Maybe not. Some of them are absolutely unmakable-but not all. This one's a soph. She's dating some kid in your class; I don't know who. But she's my first big project this fall."
I looked at him. And I knew one reason why I hadn't had any luck with girls. I had the wrong attitudes. I was a little shocked, deep down inside, by the idea of taking a girl to bed. I told myself that I was going to have to cultivate a cynical attitude like Chuck's. Otherwise I might stay a neurotic male virgin all my life.
Right then and there on the steps of the book store I made up my mind. To hell with puritanism. If Chuck wanted to seduce Carol West, good for him. And no more piety for me, either. All I wanted was a good make.