by Erik Tarloff
Wilson Denny
Do colleges still have parietal rules? Well, we damn sure had parietal rules at State. No member of the opposite sex could be in your dorm room at any time. Period. The administration took that in loco parentis thing really serious. And they just assumed your parents didn’t want you to be getting any.
Me and Chance, we weren’t going to let that stop us. Or at least stop us from trying. But it’s tricky when you’re sharing a room. So we worked out an arrangement. He’d read somewhere that guys in East Coast colleges, Ivy League schools, would hang a necktie on their doorknob to signal to their roommates they’d snuck a girl into the room so please keep out. Now, neither Chance or me owned a necktie between us, so that wasn’t gonna work, but we were adaptable. We put a towel on the door knob to let the other guy know we weren’t alone. It didn’t prove we were scoring, of course—Richard Pryor once called the fifties “the great pussy drought,” and while it wasn’t really as bad as all that, it was definitely a lot scanter than the heyday that was to come a few years later—but the towel on the doorknob was a sign that one or the other of us was giving the project our best shot.
And oddly enough, for the first few months, I did a lot better than he did. Good-looking guy like Chance, you wouldn’t think it, but he kept missing the bus. But me…when I first got there, I was kind of reconciled to not having any luck at all, I figured those white chicks would regard me like some sort of plague. You know, a lot of ’em must’ve been brought up to regard black folk as a lower species of humanity. But in fact it wasn’t like that at all. It must have been the first time a lot of ’em had had any contact with a brother, no momma and daddy around to disapprove, and they were maybe a little curious, or maybe they mostly just wanted to prove to me and to themselves that they weren’t prejudiced. Or, I don’t know, the exotic and the unfamiliar always seems to appeal to girls, whether it’s a black guy like me or some Italian exchange student with an accent or a guy just out of the military or whatever. A novelty. I’m not saying I had sex with all of those girls, or even most of them, ’cause I definitely didn’t, but they did go on dates with me, and a few of them did take the risk of coming back to the room. A fair amount of foreplay, and the occasional completed pass.
Chance used to tease me about it. In a humorous way. Pretend to be furious I was getting action when he wasn’t. Now, he wasn’t exactly a monk, and girls were always attracted to him, that was clear from the start. But getting laid was a challenge back then. At least in our freshman year. Girls were still torn between their upbringing and the new reality of being on their own. Plus, in addition to their religion—most of ’em, maybe all of ’em, were Christers—the culture kind of kept premarital sex a secret. It didn’t give them permission the way it would a few years later. Sex before marriage was treated like something exceptional, and something…if not downright sinful, then at least dangerous. In movies, if a girl and her boyfriend got carried away and did the deed, she also immediately got pregnant and a crisis resulted. Often ending in somebody dying. That would be the whole plot right there. So girls needed some internal adjustment before they realized they were actually free to take the plunge if they felt like it. Of course, this was before the pill. Important to bear that in mind. Taking the plunge wasn’t always risk-free. Being cautious wasn’t just about Jesus or prudishness.
But anyway, toward the end of that first year, Chance met Nancy. And they were an item for a while.
Nancy Hawkins
Was I surprised Chance’s roommate was a colored guy? Nah, I’d seen them together around campus from the start. I mean, everybody had. By the time Chance and I started seeing each other, it was old news. An accepted fact of campus life. They were almost famous in a way. These two freshmen, both really good-looking, one a Negro and one a white guy, who were kind of inseparable that year. Having coffee together in the commissary, studying together in the library, hanging out all the time. No one had seen anything like it before. They were a feature of freshman year, this sort of odd couple. I don’t mean it bothered anybody—well, I’m sure it must’ve bothered some people, but that wasn’t the main impression; I think most kids thought it was pretty cool as a matter of fact, it was possible to be naïve and sentimental about racial issues in those days without thinking about them particularly deeply—but it was sort of novel and got your attention. When parents came to visit, their kids would point out Chance and Will if they happened to be crossing the campus at the time. Like, “That’s the chapel,” and “That’s the chem lab,” and “Oh yeah, that colored guy and that Caucasian guy, that’s Chance and Will, they’re best friends.” Like they were a local point of interest.
Wilson Denny
It took Chance a couple of months to score with Nancy. He told me he was afraid his blue balls might actually turn into a chronic condition. He had this whole elaborate shtick about going to the college infirmary to tell the nurse his balls had turned a vivid shade of azure and days had gone by and they hadn’t changed back to pink. Did a whole elaborate routine, with hobbling into the infirmary—he had incredible physical performance skills, you probably know that about him already, he could have given that French guy, what’s his name, that mime guy, a run for his money, or later, Robin Williams—so he would do this awkward painful unbalanced walk and damn it, it was so vivid your own balls would start to ache—and he’d act out the probing examination by the nurse—filthy and outrageous and a complete riot—and the doctor giving him the ominous prognosis—[pompous voice] “I’m sorry, young fellow, but I’m not sure they can be saved”—and going through the ordeal of some crazy sci-fi experimental therapy, the whole works. Side-splittingly funny. Chance could be hilarious once he got going. A lot of people wouldn’t believe that about him, all they knew was the tortured soul stuff, the legendary moodiness and the world-weary angst. But he could be a scream when he got into the groove. Like Lenny Bruce almost, building these elaborate crazy fantasies, one insane thought leading to the next, one daffy idea piled precariously on top of another. And look, I was pre-med, I knew blue balls was a myth, there is no such thing, I could’ve straightened him out on that score. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to stop him when he was in full flight. Besides, I couldn’t talk. I was laughing too hard.
But my point is, ’cause I’ve kind of lost the thread here, but my point is, that towel was on the doorknob a lot. I often had to find somewhere else to study, and sometimes even to sleep, and for a long time he would report to me later that Nancy was always drawing a line. The line wasn’t fixed, it was moving, he was making progress, but she kept drawing it somewhere, and for the longest time. For months. I finally got fed up with him. With her and him. I said to him, “Look, pal, if you’re not going to screw her soon, I want to get back to my room. I’m not gonna wander the halls for hours like the fucking flying Dutchman just so you can get to second base.”
George Berlin
There was some resentment about my letting Chance attend the Dramatic Literature seminar. I mean on the part of some of the other students. It was supposed to be restricted to upper division students, and I heard some grumbling. For one thing, it meant some other upper division student, some junior or senior who wanted to take the class couldn’t because it was a seminar and there were a limited number of places available. So that was one complaint, that I was depriving one of their number, and I guess it had a certain validity. Another was that a freshman would just slow everything down, everyone else would have to sit silently through his puerile contributions when the older kids had something of actual value to say. You know what kids are like, especially when they’ve finally made it to the top of the heap: jealous of their prerogatives. Intent on preserving their sense of superiority.
And for the first couple of weeks, Chance was pretty quiet. It was a seminar, participation was sort of the point, but I’d have to prompt him with questions to get him to say anything. And while what he had to say was always sensible, it was usually bri
ef, and rarely especially striking. I knew he could do better. I’d read his papers in 1A, I knew he had an original mind and a penetrating way with a text. So I was a little frustrated. It was important to me that he demonstrate his right to be there. I don’t know if he was intimidated by his classmates—by which I mean by their age—or more likely just felt it would be tactful not to be too assertive. He was aware his presence was resented by some of the other students, he’d heard some of the complaints, some of them were directed his way. So he may have felt he was there on sufferance. Or on probation.
Now, sometimes in class I’d have the students read scenes from the plays we were studying. Read them out loud, I mean. A given student taking an assigned part. These weren’t meant to be rehearsed performances, you understand, but rather…see, the point I was trying to make to them was, this isn’t material written to be read silently in one’s study, it’s written to be performed, to be sounded. So it was important for the students to learn to read plays as plays, the way, say, a musician reads a score. To actually hear the voices in their heads, not just take in the meaning in some passive way. And so I figured these little ad hoc performances, no matter how rough or stumbling, might train the kids to approach their at-home reading differently.
And you probably can imagine that most of them didn’t even try very hard to give anything resembling a performance. That might have entailed a loss of face, emoting in class like that, trying too hard. So they mostly just read the words flatly, without much expression. Playing it safe. And often they struggled just to get the words out. Even though this was an upper division class, some of the students still had trouble reading at college level. They sure as hell couldn’t write at college level, many of them. We didn’t get the cream of the crop at State.
Anyway, we were reading King Lear. I always restricted the class to only one Shakespeare play per semester, I didn’t want to scare kids away. And even though Chance was a freshman and by rights shouldn’t be in the class at all, I took a flyer and asked him to read Lear’s scene on the heath. And I have to tell you, he just knocked it out of the park. He became this crazy old man, full of rage and pain and wild madness. It was heartbreaking, chilling, frightening. The essence of tragedy. He made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I swear to God, his interpretation wouldn’t have been out of place in the Royal Shakespeare Company or the National Theater. And when he was done, there was total silence for a long few seconds, and then the whole class burst into applause. That had never happened before. A totally spontaneous ovation. They knew they’d just witnessed something incredible.
Nancy Hawkins
How was it with Willy? [pause] You mean when Chance and I were together? With Willy being around all the time? Yeah, it was fine. Actually, better than fine. The three of us got along real well. Gangbusters. But you have to understand, by the time I was with Chance, he and Willy were kind of BMOCs at State. Not in the usual sense, not by being good athletes or whatever. But just by having this aura around them. This cool aura. Partly it was the exotic nature of their friendship, and partly it was how good-looking they both were, and of course because Willy was black, that added to it, and word of Chance’s acting had gotten around, he was in a couple of drama club productions and had impressed everybody. So they were kind of the stars of our class, and they had this magic circle, a circle of two, and nobody could penetrate it. They had other friends, jointly and separately, they weren’t especially stand-offish, but they also had a kind of bond that seemed to exclude everybody else. You could be their friend, but if you tried to get too close to one or the other of them, to worm your way into the charmed circle, there was this sudden sort of chill in the air, and you either backed off right away or were made to feel really unwelcome.
But they made an exception for me. Probably not because of any quality of my own, much as I’d love to think so. More a sort of honorary deal, like I got an exemption because I was dating Chance. Admission into the members’ lounge was like a perk that came with the position. And they were both so much fun and so interesting, it felt like a real privilege. A lot of people don’t know how funny Chance could be when he was in the right mood, but he was a riot sometimes, and Willy was always good for a laugh. And they set each other off. Sometimes one would catch the other’s eye and they’d just start giggling. It was great to be part of that.
And all my girlfriends envied me. They envied me being with Chance of course, but also my being allowed to hang out with both of them. Independent of the romantic aspect. Hanging out in their dorm room, which was against the rules but I did it all the time and we never got into serious trouble for it, just chatting away or listening to music—Willy had this great collection of jazz LPs and they were on the Victrola all the time—and hanging out in the commissary or picnicking in the quad or whatever. And then, the next year, spending most of my free time in their apartment off-campus.
And this isn’t a very noble reason to enjoy anyone’s company, but when other people envy your being able to do it, that does add to the appeal. You know, from what I’ve read, it was really boring to be part of, say, Frank Sinatra’s entourage, or Elvis Presley’s, you just sat around waiting for the king to express a desire and then you had to hop to, but still, the fact that everybody who wasn’t in their entourage wished they could be made it feel like you were the luckiest person on earth.
What was Chance like as a lover? You mean…not from a romantic point of view, but from the physical side? Holy cow, that’s an awfully personal question. That really crosses a line. I’m certainly not going to answer it. Except I’ll say this: We were young, we were ardent, and we were…beginners. Okay?
Wilson Denny
Nancy finally came across toward the end of May, as I recall. A huge relief for all concerned. It‘s my understanding that the deciding factor involved her roommate, Nancy’s roommate, almost as much as it involved Chance. She found out this girl—they had become good friends, not inseparable buddies like Chance and me exactly, but they were pretty close—she found out that her roommate had been having sex with her boyfriend on a regular basis since high school. It must have been eye-opening for Nancy. A shock. Her roommate, and I can’t even remember the girl’s name anymore, but her roommate was a straight-A student and a fine upstanding citizen and a big Eisenhower supporter and went to chapel every Sunday, so I guess finding out that such a person was also enthusiastic about fucking caused Nancy to reassess her options.
And while it no doubt was a cause for jubilation for Chance, it sure as hell made my life easier too. This roommate—oh wait, I remember her name all of a sudden, it was Elizabeth something. [pause] Elizabeth Copeland! God, in what part of your brain are these data stored? She lived an hour or two from campus, I mean her folks did, and she often went home for weekends. In order to have sex with her boyfriend, I think that was the main motivation, although of course her parents thought it was to visit them. But now, Nancy, finally realizing that sex wasn’t necessarily a badge of shame, that even Republicans and Christers do the nasty, Nancy finally felt okay about it. More than okay. She became a devotee. She started sneaking Chance into her room on weekends and whenever her roommate was out—I don’t know if they used the towel-on-the-doorknob trick or not—and as a result I finally could rely on being able to sleep in my own bed. Sometimes during the week they’d have an afternoon tryst in our room, but that wasn’t the same kind of inconvenience. In fact, it probably improved my grades, since I used to hide out in the library to let them do their business, and once I was there, there wasn’t much to do but study. So maybe I owe making the Dean’s List to Nancy’s newly liberated libido. And since my grades helped me get into NYU Med, I suppose you could say I owe my whole career to Nancy’s decision to let go of her virginity.
Nancy Hawkins
Early junior year, a couple of weeks before Christmas break, Chance told me he was quitting State, he was dropping out. He was just wasting his time at college, he said. H
is mind was made up. He was going to go to New York, maybe apply to the Actors Studio, maybe even try to find an agent. He knew what he wanted to do with his life, and he had some notion of what he needed to do to make it happen, and nothing he was doing at college was helping him get there.
He asked me to come with him. It was as close to a declaration of seriousness as he’d ever gotten, but frankly, I don’t think he really meant it. I didn’t think so even at the time. I was touched, kind of, but I also found it hard to take seriously. Here’s how I interpreted it, what I thought he was saying: “Listen, I’m not breaking up with you, I’m breaking up with my life here. And to prove it, I’m asking you if you want to come with me.” It was sweet in its way, considerate, he was making it clear that it wasn’t a personal rejection, but of course it kind of was. I was part of the life he needed to leave behind. I’m not sure I could have put it into words back then, but on some more basic level, some non-verbal level, I understood. Whatever he was after, whatever kind of life he wanted for himself, it sure as heck didn’t include me. Or it might have at first, and then wouldn’t have. I knew that, knew it without having to think about it.
And frankly, I wouldn’t have been tempted regardless. I didn’t want to go to New York. I had no business in New York. And I wanted to finish school. I had my own life to consider. Plus, it was clear I’d just have been a drag on him if I’d gone. He was going to be hoeing a very rough road for the next couple of years; you didn’t have to be sophisticated about show business to know how tough it would be. Plus, a whole new life would be opening up for him whether he was successful or not. The last thing in the world he needed was some girl from back home depending on him.