to act with rectitude, seeking to live in truth or at least seeking my own truth without harming or hurting unless provoked.
Spurred on by a course taught by a wonderful professor and T. S. Eliot scholar named Eric Thompson, I decided that, for me, a principal thou-shalt-not would be not to treat people as objects but to strive for what Martin Buber brilliantly identified as I-Thou relationships, in which one spoke ontologically, with one’s entire being. This was a challenging personal commandment, and, like the commandments from Sinai, it was not absolute.
Avoiding objectification of young women was especially challenging. I was an overly libidinal young man in those prefeminist days, which the comic Lily Tomlin called “the decade of foreplay.” I was on the make. The male code I absorbed from those around me, particularly my guy friends, was a Don Juan–Hugh Hefner code contrary to the higher-minded, Martin Buber–based one that was also forming in my mind. The guy code was more like what a sleazy guy in my neighborhood we called Slimy Hymie described, when we were kids, as the goals of the Four F Club: find them, feel them, fuck them, and forget them. During my adolescence, Playboy magazine was a major influence. I avidly read Hugh Hefner’s philosophy, a manifesto on what it meant to take up a hedonistic way of life tied to a notches-on-the-headboard ideal that would become identified a generation later with the figure of the player.
I liked girls and I liked sex, and I liked the feeling of conquest that came with what we then called “getting girls.” But it was all terribly confusing, because there were girls I could get and girls I could not get, and did getting a girl for the sake of sex mean I was taking advantage of her or objectifying her? Being a would-be rake seemed cool even though also predatory, but the newer wave of feminism that would insist on not objectifying women — and eventually on full sexual equality — and throw everything out of whack had not yet begun to lap at young men like me. As long as I didn’t take someone against her will, I thought, whom was I hurting? And I told myself that I had been hurt by what I saw as unrequited love, by young women who had fat-out rejected me. Codes in conflict!
Sometimes, mostly because of my own insecurities, and in accordance with what Harvard psychologist William pollack aptly calls “the boy’s code,” I would be cruel or aggressive, would ridicule and make fun of people, but I would also feel defensive and insecure about my masculinity. I wanted to follow the commandment I had given myself not to objectify other human beings, not to see them as separate from their humanity. Thou shalt not hurt or objectify others seemed a sound, sensible commandment for me to follow scrupulously. But I found I was capable of mischief, of unwittingly hurting others or hurting them out of carelessness or out of the adolescent glee that came from putting others down. Moreover I could not be saintly or pacific, both noble ideals, because I was driven by another code rooted in my boyhood and in American film culture. This one could be whittled down to the idea that, if someone messed with me, I would mess with him or her in return.
It didn’t matter that I fed myself one of my mother’s favorite platitudes — that two wrongs don’t make a right — whenever I felt hurt or mistreated, rejected or disrespected. I wanted payback, which seemed appropriate when someone did me wrong. There was nothing philosophically high-minded about such feelings, but they were undeniable. If God or the universe wasn’t going to mete out punishment to others who screwed me over, or who screwed over the people I cared about, then I had to step up. This was principle. It was fairness. It was justice. I discovered, of course, that such thinking can be self-aggrandizing, not to mention self-endangering and self-defeating. Or just vainglorious, as in an episode with Andy S., though in that case I did manage to keep another commandment I had fashioned for myself — I kept my word.
Fast-forward. I’m a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin. I’m months away from leaving Madison for San Francisco, and I’m living with my girlfriend and future wife in an off-campus apartment. Andy S., a neighbor down the hall and a compulsive dope smoker who lives with his girlfriend, Cheryl, suggests we engage in a couple swap. I politely decline. A number of weeks later, I finish my class miles away from the apartment I rent on campus. I go to my car, open the door, and get in. All the knobs on the car’s dashboard have been removed, as has the lighter and ashtray. The seat belt is fastened across the steering wheel. I find this bizarre and perplexing, and I phone in a report to the police. Then I drive back to the apartment and park for the night. The next morning, I discover that all the items purloined the day before are back in place.
Around the time of this incident I also notice profane graffiti spray-painted on the wall outside my apartment, and I receive a couple of weird, incoherent late-night phone calls. It all seems to add up to menace. I buy a handgun. I’m not enthusiastic about the idea of owning a handgun, but I had been reading Malcolm X and Franz Fanon and, as usual, was strongly influenced by what I was reading. Turning the other cheek was not part of my morphing personal code. If some potentially malignant force was out there and was after me, I would be prepared. I related all this to Andy and a couple of other neighbors. Andy took it all in and asked incredulously, “You really bought a gun?”
Months later, only days before I was to leave for San Francisco, I learned that all of what had occurred had been done by Andy. A stoned Andy apologetically informed me of this and said he had simply been playing pranks on me. He had intended to tell me everything, but had become afraid once I purchased the gun. I thanked him for his truthfulness and assured him that, in telling me, he had done the right thing. But I also told him that it was my code to do something back. I would have to even the score. We shook hands and I thanked him again for coming clean. I had not the faintest idea what I would do as payback, but as often happens when opportunity and imagination meet, I came up with what seemed like the proper action.
A thug who drove a big Harley motorcycle periodically visited a young woman in one of the apartments on our floor, a not-too-bright beautician named Meg. She had two Chihuahuas, named Mañana and Tortilla, and this beau of hers, who looked like a motorcycle gang member, was often drunk and unruly and had on at least one occasion, it was reported to me by another neighbor, punched one of Meg’s Chihuahuas. I had had an unpleasant exchange of words with this character one night over his disorderliness and had sized him up then as a sot and a brute. After my talk with Andy, I noticed that the thug’s motorcycle was parked in the apartment drive, and on it I left the following note: “I live in apartment 23B. My name is Andy S. I bashed into your Harley.”
I was tempted to add “tough shit” but decided against it. Vainglorious? Yes. But I had kept my word and had, in my own mind at least, evened the score. I was, I told myself, being true to my personal code. It didn’t even matter to me that I didn’t know what transpired between Andy and the thug. (I do know, however, that Andy lives and thrives!)
Thou shalt not be rude or discourteous also seemed a worthy and ennobling commandment to follow. I was drawn to acting with civility and gentlemanly affability, provided there were no scores to be evened. Civility and gentlemanly affability were, in my mind, strongly linked to not objectifying others. But civility posed a problem when I was confronted by rudeness or, worse, what I took to be lack of respect for me personally or someone I cared about. And to what extent was I supposed to follow a code of gentlemanly affability when faced with manifold human discourtesy, stupidity, and cruelty?
With the long, hippie hair I had as a PhD student, I could incite others simply by my appearance and did so one day in a 7–11. A Wisconsin good old boy in hunting attire pointed me out to his buddy and fellow hunter. “Hey, Clyde,” he said, “is it a guy or a girl? Why don’t we pull its pants down and see if it’s got a dink.” I let the moment pass and stared malevolently at the guy as he paid for his goods and left the store. I felt every muscle in my body tighten, and I realized I was ready to fight, almost hoping for the opportunity to prove my strength and manhood. How foolish to be ready to fight over words, to not forgive ignorance, but how red-blooded American to want to kick ass.
Thou shalt do good deeds was another of my personal commandments. Sometimes this one was difficult to obey because my temper was short or others didn’t seem to deserve even common kindness. I wanted to do good, to be a mensch, but what did it mean to do good, and how could I know whether my motives were good or I simply wanted to feel good about myself, to be well thought of? And did it matter?
I wanted to think