came, my bags and boxes were packed and ready. On Saturday, September 6, I packed it all into the 1966 Ford Fairlane station wagon Jack’s father had given him as a graduation gift. All four of our parents stood on the porch of the Graces’ house as we said our good-byes. Our mothers cried and our fathers shook our hands, telling us to drive carefully. We promised, hugging first our own mothers and then each other’s. Then we got into the Ford, gave a final honk of the horn, and started the 200-mile journey to our new life.
CHAPTER 10
A college dorm on the first day of a new term resembles nothing so much as a sea lion rookery during the winter birthing season. Upperclassmen, appointed to oversee the operations, herd the newcomers with a practiced, weary air, while the freshmen pups tumble over one another in their hurry, all wide-eyed excitement mixed with fear of the unknown. An infectious madness surrounds the proceedings, and it’s impossible not to be swept up in it. Soon things will settle into a more sedate routine, but those first few days are pure bedlam. If you are one of the fresh arrivals, you feel half-explorer, half-clown, vulnerable in your newness but determined to make your way in this unfamiliar world.
As Jack and I carried our belongings into Pinchot Hall and up to our room on the third floor, we passed through a circus of sights, sounds, and smells. The voices of the Grateful Dead mingled with Janis Joplin’s as Jimi Hendrix’s guitar wailed behind them. Men of all kinds moved in and out of doorways, enthusiastically greeting old friends and nodding curtly at new faces. Most had hair longer than that of Jack and myself, and it appeared that growing a beard would be one of our first priorities. Peace sign posters and images of Che Guevara graced many dorm room walls, and the scent of pot was ever-present, in bold defiance of the numerous warnings we’d received in our new-student packets about the university’s no-tolerance policy on drugs.
Our room was number 308. It was a double, as we’d requested on our applications, and it was completely unremarkable in every way. To the left of the door was a closet, then a long L-shaped desk, the shorter leg of which extended into the room and separated the work space from the sleeping area, which featured a twin bed situated against the wall. The right-hand side of the room was a mirror image of the left, as if the entire building had been rolled from an assembly line. Not that we much cared what it looked like. Pinchot (named after two-time Pennsylvania governor and avid conservationist Gifford Pinchot) was the newest of what were called the East Halls, built in 1967 and therefore mostly free from the wear and tear inflicted by previous occupants. Rising ten stories above the green lawns, it felt to us like our very own castle.
As we unpacked, we discovered that our mothers had followed the packing list sent by the school’s office of student housing to the letter. They had also apparently done their shopping together. Opening a box marked BEDDING, we found inside two corduroy bedspreads, both blue, as well as two sets of sheets in the same hue. Matching towels waited for us at the bottom of the carton. We stacked it all on our beds in two tidy little blue pyramids.
“Are you guys brothers or something?”
We turned around to see Andy Kowalski regarding us with an amused smile. We didn’t know it was Andy, of course, never having seen him before. What we saw was a big, broad boy wearing bluejeans and no shirt. His light brown hair was shaggy but not overly long, his cheeks were covered in stubble, and around his neck was a leather thong on which were threaded three ceramic beads the color of fire. Against his tanned skin they shone like rubies. His chest was patterned with hair, which trickled down his stomach and disappeared into the top of his jeans. His feet were bare.
“I’m Andy,” he said, giving us a name to put with his face. He then repeated the question, “So, are you two brothers? All your stuff matches. That’s why I asked.”
“No,” Jack answered, as usual speaking for both of us. “Not really. I’m Jack, and this is Ned. We’re neighbors. From back home, I mean. Philadelphia.”
Andy nodded and smiled again, as if everything was now perfectly clear to him. “Got it,” he said. “City boys. I’m from Crawford County.”
The part he didn’t say—and didn’t need to—was that he was a farm boy. I could tell by his way of talking. Like many people from Western Pennsylvania, he identified himself by his county, not his city. It was a holdover from the days when farm boards, and not the government, were the principal holders of power in a region. Although that had changed, many in the farming communities still saw themselves as being united against the threat of bureaucracy. Since many small towns had similar or identical names, or had yet to even make it onto maps, a person’s county of residence made for the most easily-recognized form of identification. To Andy, hailing from Crawford County was akin to being part of a clan.
“We don’t live in Philly exactly,” I said, correcting myself. “We live a little outside it.”
I don’t know why I felt the need to de-citify myself and Jack. I suppose I feared that Andy would think us snobs, and for some reason I wanted him to like us. He was the first person we’d met since arriving at Penn, the first person, really, we’d met outside of our old lives. I wanted it to go well.
“Well, how would you not-quite-city boys like to share a joint with me?” Andy asked.
I hesitated, but Jack immediately said, “Sure.”
“Come on,” Andy directed. “Let’s go to my room.”
His room was on Pinchot’s seventh floor. A double like ours, the right side was Andy’s space. The bed was covered with an actual quilt made of hand-pieced squares in the traditional Jacob’s Ladder pattern favored by the Amish. On the desk was a photograph of Andy with two people I assumed to be his parents, although they seemed a little old to hold those positions in his life. A poster of Jane Fonda in her Barbarella getup was taped on the wall beside the bed, and a dog-eared copy of Timothy Leary’s The Psychedelic Experience lay on the floor.
Andy shut the door and sat down on the edge of the bed. Reaching beneath it, he pulled out a wooden box about six inches long by four inches wide. Like the quilt, it too looked handmade, the wood rubbed to a soft glow. Andy removed the lid from the box and took from inside it a small bag of pot and some rolling papers. Taking a paper, he folded one edge over to form a vee, into which he poured some of the marijuana. Then, with what looked like practiced hands, he rolled the cigarette using his thumbs, gave the edge a quick lick, and sealed everything shut by running a finger along the resulting seam.
The whole process took less than a minute. It reminded me of a scene in True Grit, which Jack and I had seen back in June the weekend it opened, where Kim Darby as Mattie Ross, the feisty teenage tomboy hunting down her father’s killer, rolled a cigarette for John Wayne’s sheriff Rooster Cogburn and placed it in his mouth. Mattie’s brazen action said a lot about who she was—independent, free, and nobody’s fool. Andy’s said something similar. By inviting us to share a joint with him, he was welcoming us in. By showing us how well he could roll one, he was displaying a sophistication and bravado that set him apart as someone willing to court danger. It was his first attempt at seduction, as far as Jack and I were concerned, and it worked.
“What about your roommate?” I asked as Andy lit the joint and inhaled deeply.
He held the toke for a long time, finally releasing the smoke in a gentle stream. It curled up from his mouth, like the dying breath of a dragon. “What about him?” he asked, passing the cigarette to Jack.
“Will he mind?” I said. “About, you know, this?” I waved at the joint, which Jack was inexpertly sucking on.
Andy laughed. “Shit, no,” he said. “He won’t mind. He’s a Negro.” He laughed again, as if this explanation was complete in itself.
Jack held the joint out to me. I took it from him, pinching it between my thumb and forefinger. Andy was watching me, and I wanted him to think I knew what I was doing. Putting the joint to my lips, I inhaled deeply. My lungs inflated, filled with the acrid smoke. The burn was intense, much more than anything I’d experienced the few times Jack and I had smoked pot before. I wanted badly to cough, but I forced myself not to. I held the breath as long as I could,