Going Crazy At Harvard

Some people are going crazy at Harvard. Those who really flip out end up in Stillman or McLean's. But others, not quite mad enough, have to hang around here until they freak out and someone notices.

Those people-those who are waiting for that draft-free vacation in the sky-are often hard to find. You may not know any of them. You should.

I

IN THE living room of a suite in Kirkland House there is an armchair. That is where Doug sits-indeed, that is where Doug lives. It is an old chair, an uncomfortable chair, a smelly chair (a drunken kid from across the hall pissed on it once)-but Doug doesn't care. Why should he?

"The way I see it," he said a few weeks ago, "there's nothing much going on outside this room worth doing. Hell, I have four roommates-there's always something happening around here that I can do. Ted'll come in and put on a record, and I can listen to that. Or Dixon'll come in and get stoned with some friends, and I can get high. You know, someone will turn on the TV. Something like that."

He took a pack of cigarettes from the carton in his lap, took a cigarette from the pack and lit it. "It's a good thing too-that something's always happening here. I mean, I just don't have much energy these days. Just doesn't seem to be any reason why I should start anything on my own. Shit, I haven't put a record on myself since last year."

Doug reads a lot. He can't do the reading for his courses-he is never up in time to go to a class to get a reading list-but there is other stuff to read. Someone will leave a book on the coffee table, and, if it stays there long enough, Doug will eventually pick it up and read it. Last week he read a sci-fi novel, Thomas Berger's Little Big Man, a collection of Doald Barthelme short stories and a cookbook.

"That cookbook made me hungry," he said.

IT WASN'T always this way. Doug came to Harvard like most other people-the pride of his large public high school, semi-athletic, a go-getter, eager to learn about the cinema. But, during freshman year, he began to notice the audacity, and even stupidity, of certain demands Harvard made on him. When his expose section man asked for a paper comparing Catcher in the Rye and Lord of the Flies, Doug wrote mainly about the covers ("One is red with white type, one is white with red type..."), and the section man nearly flunked him. Soon Doug started to miss hour exams, write papers on the wrong topics, and fill in courses incorrectly on his study card.

He had girl problems too. He wrote letters to his two girl friends back home and inadvertently reversed the addresses on the envelopes. Both girls responded with "Dear John" letters, and Doug is now planning to take these and other "Dear John's" he has collected through the years and turn them into a book.

"That's my big project," he says. "They're all so funny. One girl, Cathy, wrote me this whole long four-page letter and added the "Dear John" part as a P.S."

After the girls from home busted up with him, Doug turned to film and politics. He went to a dozen movies a week, bought lots of film books, and occasionally attended SDS meetings at night. As a result, he landed on academic probation, was busted at University Hal and is in debt $300 to the Coop. (He plans to file for bankruptcy if the Coop prosecutes.)

Now Doug has given up politics and going to the movies. He doesn't read the paper anymore. ("As far as I'm concerned the war ended in April," he said), but he does like the July issue of a small film magazine, which has been sitting around the living room all fall. It has a shot-by-shot analysis of Z as its feature story, and Doug takes a look at it nearly every day.

"It pretty much fills up the after noon," he said. "You know, I get up at 2:30, take a shower until three, then sit in front of the fan in my room for an hour..."

"What?"

"You know, to get my hair-dry. I've got to be careful; I'm going bald, I think. Anyway, then I read a little about Z-and then it's dinner. Hey, what time is it? I think it's dinnertime now..."

The door opened and Ted, a roommate, came in. "Doug, man," he said. "How about some dinner?"

"I thought it was time," said Doug.

"Doug," he roommate went on. "Done any studying for our Anthro exam tomorrow?"

" Our anthro exam?"

"Yeah. Didn't you know?"

"Jesus. I totally forgot. I was planning to drop that course anyway. Wish I had remembered to take care of that."

"Well, what are you gonna do, man?" asked Ted.

Doug laughed. "I'll figure it out. I've skipped exams before. It's kind of fun when they call you up to see if you overslept..."

"But it's in the afternoon."

"Whatever. Maybe I'll go to a movie so they can't find me-like Z."

"It's a good film," said Ted.

"You're telling me ?" said Doug. He paused, "Nah-who am I kidding? I can't go into Boston, Boston ?" He laughed, then asked Ted to wait on dinner a second until he could comb his hair.

After Doug disappeared into the bathroom, Ted turned to me, smiled, and said, "He's something, isn't he? He's happy, at least."

"You think so?" I asked. "Sure," said Ted. "Doug is different from the rest of us. Do you know he is the only person I know in this whole fucking school who has never-not once-threatened to kill himself?"

II

"FUCK IT!" cried Carol, as her Cricket lighter jammed at Lehman Hall last week. It's a tough world, and Carol is finding it tougher all the time. I offered her a match, but she put her filtered Gauloise away, saying "The hell with it, I've got to give up smoking anyway."

But Carol isn't about to give up smoking. Because smoking Gauloises lit by Cricket lighters is part of her life here. It is essential to her existence-as essential as her Espresso coffee pot, her subscription to the New Yorker, her four rings, her Marimekko clothing, and the lonely preppies who offer her weekend trips to the Caribbean.

I don't know Carol particularly well, but she is always eager to tell me what's going on "Maybe I should go with Paul," she said "He needs someone-he's really mixed up-and a few days of sun might be nice"

"So why don't you go?" I asked.

"I don't know. It might be fun. It just doesn't seem right, that's all." She will let Paul take her to dinner at Locke-Ober's instead.

"You know," she went on, "it's a new term and it just doesn't feel any different from the last one. I don't know what I did last term. Classes, of course, all that. But what else? I sat around Lehman Hall and waited for something to happen. I tried out for a part at the Loeb, and I made call backs, but that was it... Maybe I'll write a novel."

"About what?"

"Everything that's happened."

She reached for a cigarette at last and let me light it with a match. A sad-eyed boy came over.

"Hi, Carol."

"Bill," she said very loudly and happily, "How are you?"

"Okay. Not bad. Okay." He sat down.

"What have you been doing?"

"Working on a movie at the VAC mainly, Hanging in there."

"Well, is there a part in it for me?" Carol asked, all tease.

Bill paused, then said much more earnestly than the situation seemed to call for: "Actually, there is. I had been meaning to call you. If you want it, it's yours."

Carol's expression changed from one of coyness to one of professionalism. "I just might want to do it," she said. "Can I think it over?"

"Sure, sure," said Bill. "Let me know anytime you decide."

Carol looked away and Bill, perhaps sensing his time was up, muttered good-bye and left. He kept his eyes glued to her as he backed away from the table. After all, Carol is one of the beautiful girls of Radcliffe.

She took a sip from her cup of coffee. I asked her if she wanted something to eat. "You're looking awfully thin," I said.

"Yeah, I know. But I'm fasting now."

"Fasting?"

"I do it for three or four days every couple of weeks. It clears out the system, makes me feel pure. I don't eat much anyway, and I've given up meat entirely."

I asked her if I could walk her anywhere, for I had to get going.

"No, I think I'll stick around. I bought the Times, " she said. "I think I'll read the Times. " Her eyes, which had been surveying the room, turned to me now. "If you want," she said, "you can come for tea tomorrow. I'm really happy these days. Things have been pretty good-I want to tell you about it." Then Carol gave me the address of her apartment, and I left.

WHEN I got to her place at four the next day, the girl who shares her apartment answered the door, wearing a bathrobe. I didn't know her, so I introduced myself.

"Yes, yes," she said. "Carol told me. "I'm afraid she can't make it. She's very upset and wants to stay in her room."

"God, I'm sorry," I said. "Is there anything I can do? What's the matter?"

"Who knows? It just happens. She freaked out, that's all, and she wants to be alone... Listen, if you want some tea anyway, I have some 'Constant Comment.' It would just take a second..."

"No... I wish there was something I could do. Freaked out-it's only four in the afternoon..."

The friend laughed at my concern. "You don't understand," she said, "It happens all the time. Carol isn't on anything. Shes just the type of person, who, you know, freaks out without drugs..."

III

"WHY are all these invalids around here?" asked Roger. He sat way down in his chair, as he lingered over coffee in the Adams House dining hall. He raised his hand and pointed around the room. "Two wheelchairs, three guys on crutches, an armcast, there's a guy with a patch over his eye... Shit!"

A number of things have gone wildly wrong for Roger this year, but he doesn't like to talk about it. So he smiles a lot and jokes a lot.

He lit a cigarette. "I was talking to Larry the other day. He said, "The more you get to know people, the more you want to kill them.' I don't know anybody, but, looking around this place, I think he's right. May everyone in this room perish..."

A boy waved hello to Roger. After he had passed the table. Roger turned to me, pointed in the boy's direction, and said," May his hair catch fire. May he burn with his books. May he smother in his smile."

"Come on, what's the matter?" I asked.

"You really want to know?.... Well, it's like this. I wish I were dead. No-wait, wait-I wish you were dead."

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

Roger smiled. "Let me put it this way. In September I dropped mescaline with this girl and I fell in love with her, I think. Who knows? Any way. I went to see her right after that, and I found out that she was 43 years old..."

"Sure, Roger."

"Okay, Don't believe me. But listen to October. In October I went to a couple of classes-I didn't know anyone in the classes-and I started to do nasty things."

"Yeah?"

"You bet. In one seminar, I leaped up in the middle of class and stuck my hand down this girl's dress and ripped open the front."

"God, what happened?"

"She started to cry. It was awful. She was Women's Lib, too... But that's nothing. One day in a lecture, I started telling loud anti-semitic jokes. Right in the middle of Lowell Lec! And I'm Jewish... Which reminds me: too many Jews around this place. It was okay for them to let me in, but who needs the rest of this riff-raff? Wasps, too. They should farm out Wasps."

Roger lit another cigarette and looked down at his cup of coffee. Then he looked up and said, "This coffee eats shit!" He ran over to one of the benign service ladies and yelled, "This coffee eats shit! This coffee eats shit! This coffee eats shit!" He was very loud about it.

BACK at the table, Roger snarled at someone else who waved hello at him. "That guy goes to class," he said, "at ten o'clock in the morning!"

I asked Roger what he did with himself. "Not much," he replied. "Movies-many, many movies. I spend a lot of time at the movies. I don't even care what movie. Goodbye, Mr. Chips, The Sterile Cuckoo, Lost in the Fog... "

"Lost in the Fog? That's not a movie."

"Yes, well, perhaps you're right," said Roger. "So, anyhow. I see a lot of movies. And then, sometimes, I get lost in the fog. And I go to the bathroom a lot. And I walk around the Common late at night looking for dead dogs, sometimes simultaneously pulling snot out of my nose with a paper clip."

"Are things that bad?"

"What do you mean, that bad? That good, man. That's good!"

"This coffee is shit," I said.

"Now you're talking," said Roger. He was speaking quite rapidly now. "But you haven't heard the best part yet. Yesterday, I wrote a paper. And tomorrow, I am writing another paper. And Friday, I am going to smoke dope and go to bed with some girl. And Saturday, I am going to another movie. And Sunday, I am going to church. And Monday, I am going to a class. And Tuesday..."

"WHAT'S WRONG, ROGER?" I think I was yelling.

"Nothing. Really, nothing. I am not depressed. I am not happy. I would like to see these cripples sent off to a farm somewhere, but that is it."

"That's it?"

"Yes. And I am very bored, and I don't know what I am going to do after I graduate. And I want to go to Guatemala."

"Guatemala?"

"Or Brooklyn. Oh, one other thing. I sleep very well, I get lots of sleep."

"I don't see how you find the time."

"Oh, yes, I get plenty of sleep. Only one problem there, and I can't quite explain it."

"What's that?" I asked.

"Nothing, actually. It's just that every nigh-like clockwork at four a.m.-I wake up, jump out of bed, and scream my lungs out."