For a number of years, the house was underutilized, serving in turn as auxiliary space for the Architecture School, a venue for performance art, and, most recently, a student-run café. A $150 million gift from Ellis Dixon, private equity mogul and member of the class of ’77, made possible the building of a new, state-of-the-art student center, so the café had outlived its usefulness. Over the summer, the dean of student affairs decided to allocate the space to the Progressive Student Alliance, along with $100,000 for the group’s general-purpose fund. For the PSA, it was a nice upgrade from meeting at Blue Nation Coffee. They now had a permanent base from which to forward the Struggle.
* * *
“Rufus, put on some tunes,” Red said.
“Play some Björk,” Gaia said.
“I’m not playing fucking Björk again,” said Rufus, a sophomore and resident tune-meister. He favored bushy, seventies-style hair and cargo shorts. He linked his phone to a speaker with Bluetooth and played some Phish.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Red. “Israel doesn’t cut it.” Red hadn’t bothered with their little first-day protest. “There’s no juice. No one around here understands the Middle East, and why should they? It was fucked-up when they were born, and it will be fucked-up when they die. That’s all they know. We’ve tried more than once and there’s no traction.”
Red looked at the signs that said DIVEST NOW! and ZIONISM = RACISM! sitting in the corner. They would be repurposed later. Despite the warm weather, Red wore a rainbow knit cap, bulging with the effort to contain his dreadlocks. When he pulled the cap off, his Rasta-style braids spilled out like a tangle of cinnamon snakes. They contrasted vividly with his pallid complexion. Plopping on the faded couch, he lit his first joint of the day. It was one p.m. Others joined him.
Red wasn’t his given name, but it had followed him from birth when he came out of the womb with his unmistakably vibrant scalp. Later the name gelled nicely with his flavor of politics. He was a product of Buckley and Exeter, educational bona fides unsurpassed in the eyes of the Eastern establishment. That Red Wheeler was a product of that establishment, with a rich family and a trust fund of considerable heft, was something he had dedicated himself to living down, at least outwardly. He loved walking into his grandfather’s Park Avenue offices, dreadlocks screaming defiance as he strolled by all the work-slaves.
But the truth was, having money freed him from having to make any himself, from being a cog in someone else’s corporate machine. No one was going to exploit Red Wheeler. The rationalization gave him comfort.
Red was one of those people who just always seemed to be around. Every campus had a few, inhabitants who found creative ways to extend their collegiate experiences far beyond the usual boundaries. Red was in his seventh year, having found Devon much to his liking. He’d been a handful of philosophy credits shy of graduating for some time, a process he managed with care. Technically, he wasn’t enrolled at the moment at all and lived off campus.
Being at Devon relieved Red of any responsibility, from having to figure out what The Plan was. His family was big on planning. Red, not so much. He liked things one day at a time. The pursuit of progressive causes conferred a needed sense of purpose and also acted as a shield of sorts. When you’re saving the world, no one should be on your case about a goddamn plan. Better yet, progressivism came with its own prepackaged lifestyle of clothes and rallies and pleasing pharmaceuticals. It was a lifestyle Red fully embraced.
“The year just started,” Rufus said, still on Israel. “Maybe we just need to turn up the vol on this, give it time.”
Red inhaled deeply on his joint. “Fuck that … tried Israel last year … got … no traction.” The words came out in a staccato whisper and puffs of smoke as he tried not to exhale prematurely. After a few more moments, he exhaled more fully, and a fragrant cloud filled the room.
“I still can’t believe Milton said, ‘Keep up the good work,’” Gaia added. She wore small round glasses and had multicolored beads woven into her hair. “I mean, what an asshole.”
“Milton Strauss is a progressive, but he’s also part of the power structure, which is a fundamental contradiction in the dialectic.” Red really liked the word dialectic. “He’s an old-style liberal, really … but still, the man can be useful. Everyone has a part to play.”
The others, seven or eight of them, nodded in agreement, passing around the joint. They often deferred to Red, as he was older and had seen his share of the Struggle—G7 Summits, Occupy, Black Lives Matter, the Women’s March, Antifa … Red was universally acknowledged to be “woke” and drifted seamlessly between causes. When Trump won, he rallied four hundred students into the middle of East Quad for a primal scream at three a.m. It got over two hundred thousand views on YouTube. He’d originally made his name as a sophomore when he led a student movement to force the endowment to divest from fossil fuel companies. Borrowing from the eighties playbook when Devon antiapartheid demonstrators constructed a shantytown, he rallied students to build a “zero net energy village” right in Bingham Plaza. Consisting mostly of unsightly yurts, slapdash lean-tos, and other tent-like structures, it prompted Milton Strauss to announce over a billion dollars of divestment. Red was quoted in The New York Times.
There were always rumors around Red after that, talk of some hacking, maybe even with Anonymous, the infamous hacker collective known for wearing Guy Fawkes masks. Red did little to dispel these rumors, keeping a Guy Fawkes mask lying casually around his apartment. The truth was he never got any further than Comp Sci 101 way back in freshman year.
If there had been such a thing as president of the PSA, it would certainly have been Red, but the group eschewed such bourgeois power structures in favor of the more progressive practice of “general consensus.” This often took the form of finger snapping, which meant “I approve.” Someone once told Red that snapping could be traced to the beatniks, who would gather in coffeehouses, reciting poems suffused with cultural rebellion. Listeners would snap as each verbal dagger struck its mark, not unlike African-American churchgoers chiming “Amen” during an inspired sermon. Red didn’t know if the story was true, but he liked to think so.
“We have to make it about Devon somehow, otherwise people won’t give a shit. You think the average GPA-sucking zombie around here cares about fucking Israel? But they do care about the cozy little bed they’re sleeping in called Devon University. We need them to question everything they think they know by exposing the elitism and the systemic privilege.”
Red also liked the word systemic.
“All these rich kids, man … so fat and comfortable in their patriarchal bubble, so intellectually constipated … they don’t know struggle. We gotta bring the whole thing down.” That Red was rich and had been living off his family’s money at Devon for seven years went unsaid, had the contradiction even occurred to anyone. Being woke proffered a certain moral license.
As the group thought on this and other weighty issues of social justice, the purple cannabis cloud grew around them.
“You guys see the Republican Club invited that fascist Potter to speak?” someone asked. Robert Potter was a Republican senator from Texas known for his conservative stance on immigration.
“We’ll see about that, won’t we?” Red grinned.
“Hey, I got my first gig,” Rufus said, studying his iPhone. “Beta house.”
Rufus, whose nom de fête was RoofRaza, was a purveyor of electronic dance music, commonly known as EDM. His reputation as a campus DJ had taken hold toward the end of the previous year when the frats gave him a gig or two. “Four hundred cash money, baby.”
“Fraternity dicks,” Gaia said.
“Maybe so,” said Rufus, “but it’s beaucoup bucks.”
The Dix
AT LEAST LULU KNEW SOMEONE in this god-awful place. Shelley Kisner had been two years ahead of her at Dalton. They weren’t great friends, but generally hung out in the same Manhattan circles. Shelley’s family had an estate in Southampton. W
hile not as much to Lulu’s tastes as East Hampton—Southampton was filled with all those tedious finance types—it was something. They knew the same clubs and many of the same people. Shelley had texted a few days before, and they agreed to meet up in the Dixon Student Center, known to all as the Dix.
Lulu browsed her iPhone while waiting for Shelley to arrive. There were stories on Facebook about a devastating earthquake in Chile. Lulu’s thumbs got busy.
Thoughts and prayers for those suffering in #Chile. #SoSad
Click, posted.
Lulu liked to send out frequent prayer requests on Facebook, not that she had ever literally prayed herself. She refreshed her screen every few seconds. Seventeen likes in less than a minute. A trace of dopamine stimulated her prefrontal cortex, giving off a slight high. She was about to hit refresh again when Shelley plopped her Fendi bag down on the table.
“Well, hey, Harris.”
“Thank God, a familiar face.” Lulu stood up and exchanged air kisses, both cheeks, then walked to the Starbucks vendor and ordered double espressos. The sounds of foosball punctuated the otherwise relative quiet, even though the many rows of tables were actually quite crowded.
The Dix, previously known as Bancroft Hall, was an enormous building intentionally designed to look like the Parthenon, with an imposing thirty-foot-high colonnade of Corinthian columns running down its length on either side. The inside had recently been renovated by Ellis Dixon’s gift. It was a cavernous space with various food vendors around the periphery. Devon’s masters once imagined Bancroft, built a century ago, as a temple of learning. They probably didn’t anticipate the Subway and Einstein Bagels franchises. Flags from all the nations represented by the student body hung from the high rafters. This year there were ninety-three. Rows of long tables were interspersed with “pod” areas featuring comfortable oversize chairs and various table games.
“Why is it so damn quiet?” Lulu asked.
“Look around.” Shelley waved at the silent rows of people. “Behold, a Friday night at Devon.” Sure enough, other than the clack-clack-clack of foosball, the most noticeable sound was the click-click-click of keyboards. Row after row of fellow students, pecking, a susurrus of white noise. “If they’re not studying, they’re playing computer games online, particularly the Asians. A lot of them are probably playing together, but they won’t speak, not directly. All their communication is through the games. This is their idea of socializing, having proximity to each other. On weeknights, they get serious and go to one of the libraries.”
“Is it always like this?” Lulu affected a bored look. Is that Song over there?
“This utterly banal? Pretty much.”
“I hate this,” Lulu said.
“Can’t say I disagree.”
“Why are we here again?”
“The Dix or Devon?”
“Well, both I guess, but I meant here at the Dix.”
“We are ‘minding the gap.’”
Shelley had just a hint of an English accent, painstakingly cultivated during a summer spent as an intern at Sotheby’s in London. Minding the gap reminded Lulu of—what else?—the London Underground, although she couldn’t imagine what that had to do with their present situation. What she’d give to be in London now … Annabel’s, Henley, perhaps Ascot … maybe this coming summer. Sheldon wouldn’t mind.
Someone dropped a full can of Red Bull nearby, snapping Lulu out of her brief reverie.
“What gap?” Lulu asked.
“The gap is that expanse of time between dinner, which the Philistines here eat at about six, if you can imagine, and the evening’s festivities. It can be four or five hours. No one’s ever come up with the right solution, although there’s lots of pre-gaming—you know, the drinking before the drinking. Personally, I can’t ingest alcohol for seven hours straight, at least not the way some people around here do. I’d be calling to the seals.”
“What?”
“Vomiting.”
“Thank you for that image.”
“This is college, dear, and I did use a metaphor.”
Changing the subject, Lulu asked, “So … what about the male of the species around here?”
Shelley leaned back. “Let me answer that with a question. How many … boys, in this vast expanse of the Dixon Student Center, would you let touch you?”
Lulu looked around, wrinkling her nose. Taking in a sample of several dozen nearby Devon males, she quickly realized the question had been rhetorical. She slumped in her chair.
“But…” Shelley let the word hang in the air. “There are certain ponds in which the fishing is better than, well, the Dix. They are small ones, and you need to know where they are, but they are there. Things at Devon may be desperate, but it’s not beyond hope.”
She had Lulu’s attention.
“C’mon, let’s go,” Shelley said.
“Where?”
“Just trust me. You should meet some of the right people. Not everyone here is from … wherever it is these people are from.” Shelley gave a dismissive wave to a nearby pod of students, still clicking and clacking.
“But I’m not dressed,” Lulu said, still clad in an ensemble of Bandier yoga gear.
“We’ll swing by your room. You’re in Duffy, right? It’s practically on the way.”
The Society of Fellingham
THE EARLY-EVENING AIR was cooling as they made their way up Randolph Street, about a block from campus. Lulu, wearing a Ralph Lauren knee-length coat, was feeling a hint of optimism for the first time in her brief career at Devon. Where were they off to?
They came to a modest three-story shingled home, wedged between two others. Shelley rang the bell, which gave off the Big Ben chimes. “I should tell you, they’re a bit eccentric, but just go with it, okay?”
A tiny slot in the door slid open, the kind of thing Lulu associated with a Depression-era speakeasy. A pair of eyes glared out. “Who goes there?” The voice had a British accent. Or maybe it was what Sheldon called a Locust Valley lockjaw. Was that still a thing?
“You know who it is, Winny, you damn twit. And she’s with me.” Shelley nodded toward Lulu.
The slot window closed with a thwack and the door swung open, revealing a remarkably pale young man with slicked-back hair and a double-breasted blazer with some kind of crest on the breast pocket. “Shel! How are you, darling? How was the summer?”
“Same old. You know the drill.”
“Well, it’s about time you showed up. Who is your terribly attractive friend?”
“This is Harris. She’s a fellow New Yorker. We like her.” It was understood that New York meant “Manhattan,” and only certain parts.
“Lulu.”
“A great pleasure, Lulu Harris. I am Winslow Gubbins. You may call me Win. Welcome to Fellinghams.” Win had wavy brown hair and a sallow complexion. Lulu noticed he dropped the h in Fellingham—Felling-um—and he said it in the plural, the way a Brit would do.
“Please, entre.” They walked through the foyer into a living room. “It’s not much, but it’s home. Toby, two Pimm’s Cups for our new arrivals.” Win gestured to an elderly black man in a white jacket who was tending bar. He mixed Pimm’s No. 1 with Sprite, garnishing the drink with wedges of orange and lime.
Lulu accepted her drink and took in her surroundings. Perhaps twenty people were milling around, chatting, all well dressed by Devon standards. One or two wore white dinner jackets, although for what Lulu could scarcely imagine. Several seemed to have accents of indeterminable origin. There was faded but comfortable-looking furniture, the bar, and a large fireplace. The décor was slightly fussy and worn. There was also a what … scepter?… over the mantel. It had colorful inlaid stones. Overall, the place looked like what it was: a small, unremarkable house in Havenport. Except for the scepter.
“Winny and I met in London when I was at Sotheby’s,” Shelley said. “He’s as close as we come to an Englishman around here, so that qualifies him to be president of this dubious establ
ishment.”
“High Scepter, s’il vous plaît.”
“Sorry, High Scepter. Anyway, Lulu’s father is a very important entertainment lawyer,” offered Shelley.
“Is that right? Whom does he represent? Anyone we know?” It wasn’t clear if the question was directed at Lulu or Shelley.
“Oh, I’m sure,” Shelley said, looking at Lulu over the rim of her traditional Collins glass.
“He’s New York based, so Broadway and TV, mostly,” answered Lulu.
“Fascinating,” said Win, managing not to seem fascinated at all.
“I told Lulu that Devon is not the social wasteland she thinks it is,” Shelley said.
“Well, it is, God knows, but there are redoubts of civility,” Win said.
“I take it you mean here?” Lulu said. Win just smiled, eyebrows arched. “So, where is here, exactly?”
“Fellinghams. I thought we covered that.”
“She wants to know what goes on here, you wanker,” Shelley said.
“What goes on here, what goes on here … How shall I say it? We are a haven, a refuge, if you will, for a certain sort. We value the arts and have frequent soirées, most notably for Lord Fellingham’s birthday. We are comfortable in formal wear, and most of us speak several languages.”
“Je vois,” Lulu said. I see.
“Ah, très fábuleux, ma chère.” Win clinked his glass on Lulu’s, pleased with their mutual fabulousness. “But we really should talk to Frazier.” Turning, Win waved across the room. “Frazier, a moment.”
Frazier disengaged from a conversation with a rail-thin brunette with enormous gold hoop earrings and traversed the room. “Hello, Shel.” His eyes turned to Lulu. “Well, whom do we have here?”
“Meet Lulu … Harris?”
“Yes, Harris.”
“Harris.” Win let the word hang there for a moment, as if divining the name’s uncertain provenance. “Well, Lulu, meet Frazier Langham, our society historian. Frazier, meet Lulu Harris, freshman.”
Campusland: A Novel Page 4