Inside Looking Out

He noticed it early his freshman year, but it did not bother him that much. After all, things had been that way even in high school. If he got a B+ or two, so what? He could not envision it fucking up his life. Occasionally, he wondered why the professors wanted to make his life miserable, whether they got some sort of sadistic pleasure out of knowing that he hated and feared them.

But he did not worry much. He thought they were unimportant.

* * *

Sometime in the spring of his sophomore year, he noticed a pattern had developed. It was no longer just the occasional B+ or the floater that he got stuck with. Of course, he did not get along well with his senior tutor; ever since he moved in, the tutor had gone out of his way to have an influence over his life. That was what Harvard was all about--who could wield the most amount of influence over others. And students had few opportunities to control professors or administrators. The system was just unfair.

* * *

About this time, he got into drugs. Not acid or mesc, but a lot of dope smoking. It made it easier to get through the day, and made it easier to put up with the people he had to confront. Whenever he smoked, it became clear that the world was divided into two camps. Some were for him and some were against. But at least it was clear. Once, he got stoned, sprawled out on his bed, and flipped on the stereo. And it was just like the man said: "We won't get fooled again."

One night, he smoked a little too much, and went to bed feeling sick. That night, he had a terrible dream. He could not remember it too well the next day, but the bits and pieces were frightening enough. He dreamed that in his senior year, he wrote a thesis that the Government Department rejected because of an incorrect citation. His adviser read the thesis, praised it, and had not mentioned any possibility that his footnotes might be improper. The rejection was hard enough to accept, but then the department decided to make an example of his case, and denied him credit for his tutorial. Without the credit, he did not have enough courses to graduate.

The department listened unsympathetically; his tutor, who was responsible for grading him, refused to come to his defense. It was obvious the department had pressured the tutor--after all, they had control over the tutor's future, too.

The department was using him as an example to future Government concentrators, he was told. But he knew the real truth; he knew that unseen forces were at work behind closed doors, plotting to ruin his life. And they had the advantage: They could see his closed, confidential file. It was all too real.

He woke up feeling very paranoid. Too much dope, he thought.

* * *

Paranoia strikes deep,

Into your life it will creep,

It starts when you're always afraid,

Step out of line, the men come, and take you away.

* * *

He smoked dope less often during his junior year, but did not stop completely. He managed to ditch the floater, and picked up two other roommates. One of them, a rich preppie, was perhaps the most ostentatious son-of-a-bitch he had ever met. But the preppie owned a lot of expensive stereo equipment, and was free with his dope, so it was easy to put up with his arrogant manner.

The other one was a middle-class mid-westerner trying very hard to make it at Harvard. Making it meant joining the right clubs, getting the right contacts, getting good grades. A lot of getting--that's what you get with your letter admitting you to Harvard.

* * *

He found out junior year that a great many things made very little sense. Other people seemed to understand why Harvard worked the way it did, or at least they did not let on that they were as confused as he was. He decided that they intentionally tried to deceive him. One day, walking by the Business School, he saw a sign bearing strange initials--"NATD NASCID"--and an arrow pointing down the street. Curious about the meaning of the strange initials, he followed the arrow, but could find no trace of another sign or any indication of what the initials stood for.

About this time, he began to hate television. His preppie roommate had an obsession with T.V.--watching the late movie every night, usually stoned. He could not sleep; no matter how low the preppie kept the volume, the monotonal voice drifted effortlessly into his room, settled down like a farmer guarding his melon patch.

The television screen haunted him, trailing him wherever he went. The closed circuit screen in the grocery store, the big tube in Holyoke Center, the camera in the bank, video labs in the Science Center. He hated it, and cursed George Orwell for writing 1984.

* * *

Junior year went badly. No matter how hard he worked, it made no difference. It seemed like the cards were stacked against him, as if the University had singled him out. First, the History and Lit Department assigned him a history tutor. He was interested primarily in literature. He applied to three seminars, but was rejected from all three. The Law School Board Center said he filed too late, although he knew he sent in his forms at least a week before the deadline.

More out of frustration than real commitment, he got involved in politics. The Nixon administration became his strawman. In Nixon, he saw the root to his troubles, the cause of his alienation.

He had entered college in the middle of Nixon's first term, in the middle of the most secretive and paranoid administration in the history of the nation. Nixon had accused his generation of plotting a concerted attack on American democracy, and yet it was Nixon who tried to destroy activist students through FBI infilatration.

Nixon and his fascists almost made him paranoid. Wiretapping, attempts to defame Daniel Ellsberg, lying, secret bombing--it almost made him glad to be at Harvard. Almost. He thought he might feel better if he knew who his enemies were.

* * *

They're out there.

Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them.

* * *

At least he wasn't alone. He knew that. Others had realized it long ago; Kesey in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," Pynchon in "V," Heller in "Catch-22." He had friends, people who took his side. He felt a common bond, even with the people he had never met. They, too, understood.

* * *

The preppie just would not shut up. For days the preppie had been telling him how paranoid he had become. The preppie droned on and on; he appeared to listening, but actually heard very little of what the preppie said. It was a new-found talent, and it enabled him to cope.

Anyway, the preppie's theory ate shit. It went something like this: Unable to admit his limitations, he had constructed this paranoid world, where administrators and professors conspired to get him. Enough disappointments occurred to feed his fear; in a very real sense the system provided millions of opportunities for people bent on destroying other people. The preppie said that his paranoia made it possible for him to accept failure because in his world, failure was not his fault.

It was too bad, he thought, the preppie was no longer on his side.

* * *

. . . you think this is too horrible to have really happened, this is too awful to be the truth! But, please. It's still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it's the truth even if it didn't happen.

* * *

Sometimes he wanted to write about it. He finally jotted down some notes, but it made him thirsty. On his way to the Square for a drink, he stopped at the newsstand. On the cover of that month's issue of Harper's magazine: Paranoia.

* * *

Second semester, he tried to get into a creative writing seminar. The interview went well, and at the end, the professor told him that unless ten Faulkners applied, he would be admitted.

When the list was posted, his name was not on it. He phoned up the professor, who had forgotten the promise. He reminded her; she replied: "Well, I guess I got ten Faulkners. Besides, I don't make promises."

* * *

"Absence caused by misreading the examination schedule or other forms of carelessness will not be excused except by special action of the Administrative Board."

* * *

The preppie talked incessantly about a new T.V. show called the "Prisoner." In the show, Patrick McGoogan plays a retired British secret agent who is kidnapped. He is unable to discover which side--his own or the enemy--has captured him. Whenever he asks where he is, he is told "the Village." He buys a map at the General Store, but the map shows only the village, the mountains, and the sea. No roads are shown. He asks the store manager for a more detailed map, and is told: "There are none; there is no demand for one. No one wants to leave the Village."

* * *

In the summer between junior and senior year, he took law boards, scoring over 700. When he returned in the fall, he applied to the top law schools, including Harvard. Both his board score and his grade point hovered above the arbitrary level set by Harvard in order to gain admittance. Things were looking up.

* * *

They'll stone you when you're trying to be so good.

They'll stone you just like they said they would.

They'll stone you when you're trying to go home.

They'll stone you when you're left all alone.

* * *

He had no fear of being left out. He was used to that. But he did have an obsessive fear of being locked in. The last day of his junior year, he was still cleaning up his room and packing his things when they locked the only exit to the House. They had locked him in. The superintendent had left for the day, and he had no way to get out. It was enough to drive a crazy person sane.

* * *

No one could tell him advanced standing was an advantage. When he chose to stay four years, it was as if he had provoked some hidden beast, who rose up to strike him down. When he went to have a picture taken for his new bursar's card, they had no card for him. He had completed three years of school, and as an advanced standing student, he no longer existed.

The last week of junior year, he received a note saying that if he did not pay his term bill, he could not graduate.

He did not pay it. A small victory.

* * *

He spent senior year watching Woody Allen movies. He saw "Bananas" four times.

* * *

He also wrote a thesis. And took his generals. He headed into orals confident that he would graduate magna cum laude. After all, he had magnas from both his thesis readers, from both his written-generals readers, and he had magna grades.

One of his oral examiners was an English professor who requested to be on his orals board. The department had already lined up an English examiner; the professor resolutely offered to do the history part.

After the orals, the professor refused to recommend anything higher than a cum. Other professors attempted to convince their colleague to relent.

In once sense, he felt vindicated. They had gotten him in the end. All magnas, and yet one egomaniac English professor could screw him. It even made him feel important: These were not unimportant people who had set out to get him. This was the kingpin, the big fish.

At least it made sense.

* * *

Law school was a different matter. He spent hours on the telephone to schools that had lost his application, not received his recommendations, misplaced his transcript, did not know he existed, could not give him any idea of when his application would be processed and did not know why the LSAT sent them someone else's score (which was 620).

They all promised to send him a postcard verifying that his application was complete.

None came.

* * *

By May he had not heard, even though other people with the same board score and the same grades had received acceptances. By June, he still had not heard, although he spoke with the admissions board three times. They said his application was not complete.

* * *

Right and left there are other things happening just as bad--crazy horrible things too goofy and outlandish to cry about and too much true to laugh about--but the fog is getting thick enough I don't have to watch . . . Idiot, you just had a nightmare; things as crazy as a big machine room in the bowels of a dam where people are cut up by robot workers don't exist.

But if they don't exist, how can a man see them?

* * *

He received a note that said he had not paid his term bill, and he could not graduate.

He paid it in cash at the Comptroller's Office on the third floor of Holyoke Center.

Steven M. Luxenberg, who wrote this piece, would not let us sign his name to it because he was afraid they would get him for it.