Working the Streets

Harvard students, nurtured in a womb that breeds future consulting superstars, are born ready to think out of the box. For the bold and brave, the quest for love, romance and booty sometimes takes them beyond the realm of Harvard. These students look to the larger world (Harvard Square) where countless untapped resources (employees in Harvard Square) seem to be there for the tapping. But this is a more challenging mission than those suiting up generally anticipate.

“One of the most striking differences in dating non-Harvard guys is just the degree to which you can no longer talk about inter-group gossip,” said Jess E. Oats ’02, who dated a 27-year-old from a publishing company in the Square the summer after her sophomore year. “It’s not that that is a bad thing by any means—it’s just different, and forces you to always be more creative and substantive in conversation.”

For students like Maria, who is currently devoting much of her energy to pursuing an aloof host at John Harvard’s, this very creative spirit begins as early as the first approach.

“When you’re working in the Harvard context, it can be so easy to get things rolling,” she said. “We’ve heard all the pickup lines a thousand times: ‘What house are you in?’ ‘What do you do on campus?’ Maybe the occasional, ‘So, I’m in the Porc.’ When you’re trying to bridge that gap between Harvard students and people outside though, those just won’t cut it. You have to think on your feet.”

Thinking on his feet was never an issue for Scott, a self-proclaimed player who graduated with the class of 2001. In an FM article titled “How to be a player,” Scott told the tale of his bank-teller friend who frequently called his cell phone to inform him how she “couldn’t stop thinking about him going down on her.” However, getting to this scenario was no easy task, he says. He noticed her one month in the dead of winter, her pixie blonde hair bent over the bank’s phone lines, back in the days when she worked as a mere bank receptionist. It wasn’t until he saw her sitting at a sales representative desk in March that he honed in on this juicy target.

“I remember taking off my North Face fleece and my backpack stuffed with thesis research and hiding them in a corner of the bank, so I wouldn’t look like a complete tool,” he recalled. “I walked up to her and went with the line, ‘so I noticed you’ve been promoted.’ She just sort of stared at me and said, ‘Yeah,’ nothing else. I was lost for words for a moment.”

Scott’s thesis-toiled brain didn’t fail him though, and after 10 minutes of talking and countless outbursts of laughter on her part, she was begging him to leave so she wouldn’t get “un-promoted.” He carried this crafty attitude into his first date when he treated her to a glitzy dinner in the North End replete with flowing red wine, followed by an evening performance at the Improv Asylum, a hip comedy club in Boston.

“I told her the theme of the night was uninhibited laughter,” he said. “She was all over it.”

However, not all workers in the Square are all over the rampant, imaginative seduction techniques of Harvard students. Take Mark Burk, the emerald green-eyed Adonis who works at Audio Replay on Bow Street. Burk and his coworker, Andre Sadowski, an enticing blonde, have seen tactics that range across the desperation gamut during their three years working at the store: from a female Lampoon business comper offering herself for the price of an ad to two girls coming in with a porno tape stuck in their VCR. The store’s security camera catches Harvard women who regularly jog past the store’s window stopping to stick their noses to the glass, looking for these European stallions.

One of the most memorable moments of seduction for Burk occurred in no other place than the teeming, teenage, hormone breeding ground that is Harvard Yard. Burk made the short trip to the Yard in his black Land Rover with his right-out-of-Grafton-Street street clothes serving as his only uniform. He admits this unique look distinguishes him from many other men in the television delivering profession. After setting up a television in an ogling freshman’s common room, Burk was “somewhat surprised” when this teenage vixen importuned him to stay for a drink. Being 27 and not having a Lolita complex, Burk declined. But then this battle for television-boy ass took on a more desperate character.

“She offered to walk me downstairs, which was sweet I thought,” he said. “We were standing next to the car, and I was literally giving her tips on how to use the remote, when she suddenly leaned in for a kiss. I was really confused and reached out to catch her. I thought she had tripped or something.”

However, this bold freshman woman-child might have stumbled upon one of the most harrowing aspects of pursuing or being pursued by a Cambridge townie—taking that relationship from the level of salivating stalking to the that of actual, functional, physical partnership. Emily F. Hodge ’02 has definitely experienced some of the pains of this process. During an evening of drunken revelry at the Hong Kong, Hodge happened upon an attractive, works-at-the-Big-Dig-during-the-day sized bouncer whose friendly persistence has tied up her phone lines ever since. The potential of an actual relationship though has raised some serious issues between Hodge and her roommates.

“He’s really wonderful and kind on the phone, but one of the issues is that I know nothing about him other than what he has told me,” Hodge said. “I’m hesitant to go out alone with him, just because we don’t share much of a context.”

Maria, whose charming drunkenness earned her the attention last year of a waiter at Cambridge Common, faced similar worries when her bar friend solicited her for dates.

“I must confess that at first he sort of scared me,” she said. “He had this crazy, creative hair, and he was always making all these offers—‘I’ll take you downtown. I’ll take you to afterparties.’ I’d never put myself in that situation alone…Not even to mention that my fake ID, which he didn’t realize was fake, might not have worked at some of those places.”

Harvard students and Square workers tend to clash over the locale of their initial dates. For even though Harvard students spend a lot of time here—at Harvard—it seems many of them would prefer to keep their dates on safe, home turf. This makes little sense to real people who aren’t cursed with Crimson-tinted tunnel vision. Burk, who has dated more than 20 Harvard students and three professors in the past three years, has always simply assumed these women wanted to be taken downtown and introduced into the wider world of Boston.

“I feel for Harvard women,” Burk said. “They don’t want to date the average college Joe. We have perspective and I think we are great outlets for girls who want to see new things. I love to be a gentleman and take a woman downtown to Audubon [Circle Restaurant & Bar] or Biba, for instance.”

Sadowski peeked out from behind a broken DVD player to add his viewpoint on the enlightenment that comes to their lucky dates.

“We’ve taken dates to New York, Montreal, wherever the moment is taking us,” he chimed in, in his thick Polish accent.

For Melia I. Marden ’03, who has dated three Toscanini’s workers during her college days, some of the new things she’s seen on her dates have been rather jarring.

“My freshman year I had the most miserable Toscanini’s date—so bad it was funny,” Marden said. “He took me out to coffee, which was fine, but then we went back to his house and all of his roommates were all doing heroin. I had no idea what to do; it was incredibly awkward and bizarre.”

However, for many students who have dated Cambridge workers, some of the more awkward moments have come when their dates have been exposed to more close-minded Harvard blockmates and friends. Scott recalled how his bank-teller friend would become “very quiet” whenever they were in a room full of Harvard coeds; and Hodge said she definitely felt a little embarrassed when her drunk roommates suddenly thought it was a good idea to interrogate other workers at the Hong Kong about her knight in colorful tattoos. However, Oats witnessed one of the most predominate trends that shows up when women let their sexual energies loose into the Square—the growing jealousy of non-understanding and threatened Harvard males.

“My guy friends were really not very supportive of my relationship,” she said. “I think it is because we have a predetermined set of characteristics by which we judge people here… if someone said to me they were dating a football player in the Delphic who lived in Currier, I could say I almost know the guy, because I’ve been exposed to people who fit similar profiles. My guy friends were at a complete loss on how to see and understand this guy, and I think that is what made them unhappy with the situation.”

But an awareness of life outside of Ec 10 books and the latest final club party is exactly what draws some Harvard students to look for dates in the great outdoors of Harvard Square. Scott recounts how dating the bank teller often seemed like a “break in his day,” one of the few times when he didn’t feel like he had to be performing to rigorous Harvard perfectionist standards.

“There is a certain degree of mutual complaining among Harvard students,” he said. “But I always knew I could talk about schoolwork with roommates and friends, so my relationship with [her] was a wonderful because it didn’t let me feel sorry for myself in that sense. She elevated me in many ways as well… It was also wonderful because I never felt insecure, or like I had to perpetually be on with this girl. I could just be myself. I could cancel a date when I was tired. I was entirely in charge.”

However, interestingly enough, all of the students interviewed said that if they were entirely in charge of their destinies and were faced with choosing between two different potential dates whose only glaring difference was whether or not they were enrolled at Harvard, that they would choose to date the Harvard student.

“I guess it’s because I study a lot,” Maria admitted. “It would be hard to date a real-world person because if you wanted to see them on Saturdays or Sundays you would have to do real things. If you were dating another Harvard student you could tell them you have three midterms, you need to go to the library and that they should come see you there. They’d understand those weeks when you’re dying.”

Maybe one telling detail in this equation is the way Scott’s relationship died out with his bank-telling golden girl. The year was drawing to a close, and Scott’s wide range of activities and farewell dinners kept making it harder for him to make those visits to the bank. Now, settled in another city, in one of those coveted e-recruiting super-jobs, Scott can only reflect on his days dating an “unmarriageable” bank buddy.

“I don’t know where she is today,” he said. “Someone told me toward the end that she might have been pursuing another relationship in Maine, and I think she kept going up there. To confess though, I just got too busy to even go in and check.”