Don't Follow Me, I'm Lost

by Richard Rushfield

  The only house left on campus where I was still allowed to live was Prescott—traditionally known as the party house, where the New York types and the punk-affiliated lived, as opposed to Preppy Deadhead-centric Enfield and hard-core hippie Greenwich. Throughout the eighties, Prescott’s tin village of towering ski chalets had been the scene of Hampshire’s most notable debauch eries; it was through its narrow alleys that one would search for a party on any Friday or Saturday night (or Monday or Tuesday night, for that matter). Prescott House was also the location of the campus Tavern, which, to the disgust of many, had begun carding for beer, another sign, it was said, that Hampshire had sold its soul. Although, by process of elimination and banishment, I had no choice in the matter of where I lived, it seemed that in Prescott I might find a home at last.

  I was lucky just at this moment to find a friend in Prescott with an empty room. It was a campus axiom that there were no weirder people at Hampshire than the ones who looked really normal, and Tyler was one of the leading examples. From Nebraska, of all places (Nebraska!), Tyler (whom we called Tollah, short for Ayatollah, short for the Ayatollah of Rock ’n’ Rollah) had short brown hair and he typically roamed campus in white cotton oxfords, blue jeans, and blazers. Often mistaken because of his appearance and midwestern background for the president and sole member of the campus Republican Club, he was in fact the school’s most subversive wit.

  With two rooms open, both Nathan and I moved into mod number 89, dominated by one of the school’s more Warholesque trios. Deidre, a platinum-blond Edie Sedgwick look-alike from Philadelphia’s Main Line, was a burgeoning performance artist and, with her low, barely audible voice, one of the school’s deadli est terrors. Roger, who resembled a blond David Byrne, was an abstract painter; Danielle was a Preppy Deadhead and an insanely wealthy heiress from New York City, who, thanks to some unseen deviant streak, had fallen in with the pair. I had seen the three of them lurking in the corners of various parties, scowling at the rest of the crowd, but I had been too intimidated to approach. Whenever the rest of a room became infuriated with the Supreme Dicks, the trio merely rolled their eyes at antics they had given up five years ago. On my first night in 89, Deidre started to tell my fortune with tarot cards but, after looking at the spread, refused to speak, saying, “Oh, I’m sure it won’t be that bad.”

  With Prescott to roll home to, and a gathering somewhere within forty feet or so every night, I managed to get through January Term and well into the new semester without ever setting foot in a classroom. And somehow, while the rest of the school was getting all uptight and angry, in Prescott one could still hold his head up high while sleeping until three, and then going straight to the liquor store and loafing around the Tavern playing Galaga until dinner. I found the Prescott lifestyle suited me. Had I at last come home?

  Amid the party in Prescott House, the upheaval spreading over the rest of the campus seemed a distant memory from a far-away land. One night in February, a girl in the Tavern told me about a demonstration she had gone to that day, apparently set off by some offensive graffiti that had been found.

  “What did it say?” I asked.

  “We don’t know exactly. Thank God the person who found it erased it before it could really do some damage.”

  “Well, what were you protesting about?”

  “The woman who found it said the content was sexist, homo-phobic, racist, and imperialist.”

  “All of those?”

  The girl nodded grimly. I smiled in sympathy, very happy to be safe in another land.

  The next morning, I rolled out of bed around noon and found Tollah sitting in the living room with Deidre, Danielle, Roger, and Nathan gathered around. “Danielle,” I bellowed, rubbing my eyes, “you need to drive us to the liquor store.”

  No one replied. They all sat looking glumly at the floor. “What the hell? Who died?”

  “Tyler is having a little problem,” Deidre said calmly. I sat down and they told me the story. Two nights prior, Tollah had been out wandering the campus with two other Supreme Dicks refugees—Edward, an Asian-American second-year who had transferred from University of Vermont, and Janet, a motorcycle-jacket-wearing belligerent lesbian. Drifting around, they had run into Henry.

  “Who is Henry?” I asked.

  “You know,” Tollah said. “Henry. From Northampton.”

  I nodded in unison with him. “Riiiight . . .”

  With Henry in tow they had wandered campus until well after three A.M. At one point, Tollah explained, Henry had left them and disappeared, only to return to their sides a few minutes later.

  The following morning, the graffiti was discovered, setting off the most furious manhunt since Steve Shavel stole the bell. By that very evening, the case was cracked. One young woman had recognized Edward walking in the vicinity of where the graffiti was found and had called security. By nine P.M., he had been hauled into the dean’s office. Hearing that he was about to be charged for the crime, Janet came forward to the dean to say that she had been with Edward and he hadn’t committed the vandalism. But to her dismay, the administration seemed to hear the part about “I was with Edward” while missing the part about “He didn’t do anything” and were on the verge of charging her with the crime as well. Wanting to support her, and make clear that, no, we hadn’t done anything, Tyler then came forward and admitted that he, too, had been with Edward and Janet, and, yes, he could confirm that no one had written any graffiti. The administration’s takeaway from this was—we have our three suspects!

  Sitting in the dean’s office, Tyler, Janet, and Edward suddenly thought they were about to be strip-searched and told to place their orders for their last meal. The dean charged out from behind his desk and asked them point-blank whether they had written the graffiti. The trio denied it vehemently. Pressed, however, about whether they knew who might have done it, they paused and said, it was possible that this guy Henry, when he had parted from them, just might have done something like that, they couldn’t be sure, because if he had, he had done it when he was not with them.

  They were interrogated about Henry, who, they explained, was an acquaintance from the Northampton scene. No, they didn’t know his last name, or his phone number, or how to get in touch with him, he was just someone they ran into at parties now and then. For the hours that followed, late, late into the evening, Tollah, Edward, and Janet were relentlessly drilled about this Henry character. But to the dean’s disgust, the three stuck to their stories. They were warned, however, as they were released into the cold after-midnight campus, that there was much more to come.

  The campus uproar that ensued made the noise over wet T-shirtgate seem like a child blowing on a kazoo next to the University of Michigan marching band. When word got out that the school had identified the suspects but had not yet disciplined them, rage boiled over and the campus was soon awash in a sea of protest. The protestors, this time led by the minority students group SOURCe (Students of Underrepresented Cultures), appeared everywhere—grabbing the podium at the start of classes, speaking in front of the library, stopping the music at the Tavern—to demand that at last justice be done for their people. Round-the-clock meetings were held to decide how to deal with this ultimate threat. Even the peaceful remove of Prescott was shattered as the voices of protest spoke up everywhere and began to make clear that anyone who didn’t join this movement was, in effect, in league with the perpetrators of this foul crime.

  The question of whether the suspects—names still unrevealed—should be expelled was so basic, it seemed not even to merit discussion. Of course they needed to be removed from campus at once, and every minute they were allowed to live in our midst was a minute the administration tolerated, nay, encouraged racism as the dominant means of social discourse. This was so obvious to all that it barely needed to be stated. The protestors wanted an answer to the question of how the administration would use this moment, when racism held the campus in a grip of steel, to send a message to the world that intolerance
was going to be wiped out. With an iron fist, they demanded at last that the forces of “social change” should be given not just a seat at the table, but the table itself.

  Tollah, Janet, and Edward cowered in fear that their names would be revealed as the causes of this commotion. Sequestered in round-the-clock interrogation sessions with the dean and half the administration, the trio quickly forced the negotiations into a stalemate by refusing to back down from their story. Much as the administration wanted to hand their heads to the mob on a platter, all they had to work with was one girl who had seen them walking around that night, and their admission that they had been in the company of Henry, who had been out of their sight. As seen in wet T-shirtgate, by the rules of due process that applied even to the administration of a private college, this was not enough to go on. However, the rules were about to change.

  With so many administrators involved in the case, and so many of them in deep sympathy with the demonstrators, the suspects’ names inevitably got out. They leaked initially through the rumor mill but then spread across the campus in minutes. It is heartening to look back today and see how effective word-of-mouth was in the days before the Internet, delivering this information to every last person on campus in a matter of seconds. When the names were unveiled, and it was revealed that Tollah was the white male oppressor among them, a massive “Aha!” shook the campus. This was followed by a tiny pause, and a noticeable campuswide scratching of heads when they learned the remaining two perpetrators were an Asian and a lesbian. But this only lasted a second. The movement was on the march and not to be delayed by such contradictions. Oppressors had always bribed lackeys and Uncle Toms into doing their dirty work. As the clamor against them built, Tollah spent most of his days darting from interrogation sessions to hide out in our living room, not even daring to go to class.

  The fuse had been lit and the bomb went off in short order. One afternoon, word raced through the school that an African-American first-year girl living in Dakin had been attacked while entering her dorm room.

  “Attacked?” I incredulously asked the hippie girl who brought this news to our table at SAGA.

  The girl nodded. “Her room was booby-trapped.”

  “What does that mean?” From neighboring tables shouts of horror sounded, speeches erupted, crying for justice.

  “Someone put a pin in her door so she’d stab herself. It could’ve been poisoned!”

  “Was it poisoned?” I asked.

  “No. But it easily could’ve been. She was stabbed!”

  “I don’t understand,” Zach asked. “How do you put a pin in a door so someone will stab themselves?”

  “Maybe in the keyhole,” the hippie said, growing flustered by our questions.

  “They stuck a pin in the keyhole?!”

  “I don’t know!” the girl suddenly shouted. “Why are you guys hung up on these details when racism is raging out of control and people are being attacked? This is what happens when intolerance is allowed to go unpunished, and don’t think we don’t know you’re friends with them!”

  The neighboring tables stopped what they were doing and turned to glower at us. Zach, Nathan, and I sank down in our seats. “A pin in the keyhole . . . ,” Zach muttered.

  The following morning the campus awoke to find that the Dakin house master’s living room was under occupation by protestors demanding social justice.

  The bells of freedom sounded across the campus while one question sat in every throat. “What the hell is the Dakin house master’s living room?” And so the first duty of the provisional government of the Dakin House Master’s Living Room was to explain that the staff supervisor of Dakin House, known as the house master, actually lived in the little building attached to the Dakin House office and that the living room was, well, her living room. They went on to explain that without this critical piece of real estate in the administration’s command-and-control structure, the campus would shriek to its long-promised standstill. It came out later that the living room had actually been selected because the house master suggested to some kibbitzing protestors that they would be comfortable there, what with couches, reclin ers, television, plenty of floor space for sleeping bags, and easy access to the kitchen in the next room. Which would raise the question, to almost no one, if the person whose space was being taken over had offered up the space as a convenient and comfortable place for a takeover, and helped the demonstrators move in, how taken over were they really? Was a slumber party the same as a takeover?

  Students poured into the Dakin Quad to cheer on the occupation force. Classes were canceled and people walked around grinning with a sense of exhilaration, smiling and laughing like Parisians after the liberation. Since Hampshire’s founding, at some point in the semester in every class, the professor would clear his throat and gently intone, “When I was in Chicago in ’68 . . .” For my friends, this was the cherished signal that it was time to begin our naps. However, for another slice of the campus our faculty’s tales of the 1960s antiwar movement were glimpses into the great epic of our time; they clung to and repeated these stories as though a figure out of Homer had stepped up to the lectern and said, “Lemme tell you what was going on with Achilles that day. . . .”

  At last our time had come. And everyone needed to stand together, everyone. Banners were draped across the administration buildings; speeches were heard day and night in the Dakin Quad. The names of the living-room occupiers—the SOURCE leadership—were intoned as mythical titans standing bravely before an impossibly invincible adversary. So impressed were the faculty by the nobility of this movement that even before the occupiers had issued their demands they agreed (unanimously, of course) that they should be excused from any schoolwork they were forced to miss during the occupation.

  After the initial hoopla, the uncomfortable question loomed, what exactly were the occupiers’ demands? That the school end racism, of course. (And sexism, and imperialism, et cetera.) And, needless to say, rid the campus of racists (and sexists and imperialists). But beyond that, details remained murky. The occupiers dug in to sort through the hard business of what exactly they wanted while volunteers shuttled in food and treats from the dining hall, forming a human shield out front to repel any SWAT team raids or commando assaults.

  For the Ayatollah, Janet, and Edward, in the midst of seemingly permanent interrogation, the uprising proved to the administration that their suspects had beyond a doubt “disturbed the community.” If the community was upset, it followed that someone must have upset them. The fact that the occupiers would be missing class and jeopardizing their education was laid at the trio’s feet. Added to their list of crimes was creating an environment that had directly led to the assault on an innocent first-year; in the eyes of the demonstrators, Tollah might as well have personally put that pin in her doorjamb, or her doorknob, or wherever. (It would be rumored months later that the first-year had admitted to the administration that she had put the pin in the door herself as a ploy to get her parents to let her leave school and come home. But that would be revealed far too late to do Tollah much good. And when that news did leak out, people would still make the case that if she hadn’t been in a community where she felt unsafe, she wouldn’t have been forced to do that.)

  Tollah, Edward, and Janet’s conversations with the administration went more or less along the same lines as my discussions had gone during wet T-shirtgate, albeit with an even more acrimonious tone; the fact that the three were not delivering themselves to justice drove the administration to rage. The circular dialogue went roughly:—Aren’t you sorry about what you’ve started?

  —But we didn’t do anything.

  —If you didn’t do anything, then why is the entire school in an uproar?

  —Because they’re crazy?

  —They’re crazy for wanting to feel safe in their own community?

  —They’re crazy for thinking it’s our fault that they don’t, when we didn’t do anything.

  —I think you just pr
oved right there how insensitive you are to what people of color go through at this school.

  —(Edward) But I am people of color.

  —Then you should understand.

  Through it all, they stuck to their story about the mysterious Henry who had appeared and might possibly, for all they knew, have committed the heinous crime when he was out of their sight.

  Soon conversations about the trauma the graffiti had wrought became even more pained. Those who supported the occupiers (i.e., everyone) upbraided me and any of the trio’s circle who appeared in public, hollering in our faces about how the graffiti had unleashed a tidal wave of hate across the campus, making three-quarters of the campus cower in their beds each night for fear of the intolerance running wild. If I dared bring up, “But no one even knows what the graffiti said,” of course I was only proving my insensitivity and inability to empathize with the underrepresented experience.

  At Prescott House, which I had thought immune from political ferment, the war finally came home. A small portion of the Prescott residents got actively involved in the movement and between them managed to put a damper on the entire house. On the weekends, parties no longer spilled out on the staircase. The Tavern became the scene of solemn discussions of how best to support the movement. The mood of the house was begrudging support; yes, the campus had a real problem, and, yes, we, too, would do our part to fight it. Those who didn’t agree found it best to keep their yaps shut.

  Even Elizabeth, in near permanent drug-addled lockdown with her group of friends, took notice. One quiet night in the middle of the hoopla, I made my first trip in six weeks to her mod. I found her sitting with five other girls on the floor of her room, listening to a Bad Brains album and smoking hash, the bunch of them looking to all appearances like a witches’ coven gnawing on the bones of their latest victim. She looked up and said, “Hiiiii,” with enough enthusiasm in her voice that I wondered if she was mistaking me for someone else. “What have you been up to, man?” she asked.