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"How haughtily
he cocks his nose,
To tell what every schoolboy knows."
Jonathan Swift,
"The Country Life"
I dropped out of Brown University
right before Thanksgiving of my first year. I felt I had skimmed the cream of a
prohibitively expensive four-year education, papers were coming due, and I
was frankly restless to move on. Yet, those 9 spellbinding weeks in
Providence - justly at the time called "the Bogotá of Rhode Island" - left me
with a lifetime's worth of memories. In many ways, Brown molded me into the
man who stands before you today: an Ivy League Man: superior,
condescending, with the plush, lisping accent of the ruling class. Thirty years on, I still treasure my
University mug, ring, blazer, beanie, baseball cap, t-shirt, sweatshirt,
sweatpants, windbreaker, pennants, placemats and car stickers.
Even utter strangers naturally sense my Ivy League roots. Those lustrous
days spent upon the mountain peak of academe, bathed in the brilliant light
of immaculate reason, breathing in the high, Rocky Mountain spring water of
purest intellect, have imbued a certain effulgent je ne sais quoi
deep into my very marrow. It's who I am now - you might as well try to hide
the Koh-i-noor diamond under a cheap, thrift-store toupee.
These Hallowed
Halls
Initiation week shook me to my
very core with new experiences. As we each wrestled gigantic, quadraphonic
amplifiers into our little rooms, I mingled eagerly with my dorm mates: a
terrific group of fellas who'd soon be snapping wet towels at each other's
firm, downy buttocks at shower time! Here were the pined-for
brothers I'd never had. We'd form barbershop quartets, indulge in high-spirited
pranks and hi-jinks, compete bitterly in facial hair cultivation. We would
share our funks, fears and foot fungus, and ... finally, inevitably ... grow
into manhood together.
From countless books and movies, I also knew that before the semester was
out, at least one of us - a myopic, overly sensitive, poetry-loving,
sexually confused, bedwetter type, who really should have stayed away from
the major hallucinogens - would end up "flying" off the dormitory
roof. This would throw a bruised shadow of weltschmerz across our callow,
unformed faces, but our youthful spirits would rally on cheap plonk, and we'd end up staggering arm
in arm through the Quad, howling "Bye, Bye, American Pie"
at the top of our lungs. Because you can't grieve forever, and
because that's the way the hapless little fucker - remorselessly ostracized
though he was - would certainly have wanted it.
I'd like to dedicate this story to him.
Once the Advents were hooked up and blasting Mahavishnu's "Birds of Fire," I
scoped out the communal bathroom. Hmm, a bit of anxiety coming up here:
towel snapping was fine, but I really preferred to do my
"business" in a bolted, sealed cone of silence. "Pee-Shy" is the Latin medical term.
Deprived of the requisite
privacy, I'd have to go through the entire useless mime of gazing into the
porcelain, whistling, making small talk about the football team, shaking my John Thomas, sighing,
zipping, flushing, washing and drying - and then scamper off to the grotty,
half-abandoned toilet in the basement. The last thing I need in the
loo is a raucous, jostling hubbub. But conversely, a pin-dropping hush
doesn't work either since I obsess about ears cocked for the splash of my
meager stream against the toilet mint. And having someone stand behind me
waiting is the absolute worst! Not only do I shut down irreversibly, but
he-who-waited-impatiently couldn't help but notice with perplexity and disdain that my
whole performance was a pitiable sham.
It's a debilitating and heart-breaking disease of unmanly debasement -
let's just leave it at that. It's probably why Henry Panky became the writer of such raw emotional power.
In 1974, the University had a very hip chaplain, famous for his packed,
initiation week lectures - the gist of which was that "not everything
was the Big O." Big O? My eyes slid right and left. Huh, everyone else
seemed clear on the concept. You mean like Oscar Robertson, the great
Royals'/Bucks' player? I didn't get it, though, of course, I was a fervent Knicks
fan (Reed, Frazier, DeBusschere, Bradley, Earl the Pearl: those guys are
immortal!). Later I learned the chaplain meant the moment of orgasm. Wow,
he really was hip. Unfortunately the issue didn't really come up for me
that often - at least not involving other human beings. Still, I filed it
away: kindness, respect and friendship were more important than the Big O. Good
point. (Though never a point of view shared by my girlfriends or wives: you delivered
the O's, Bubbalouey - preferably in six-packs - or felt the goodbye boot up
your ass.)
At other lectures I was advised to "broaden my horizons," to take
courses outside my usual sphere of interest, and that led to some major errors in
judgment ("Marxist Soils & Turfgrass Management,"
"Conversational Click-Talk of the Rainforest Aborigine"). I also
attended the first meeting of the campus vegetarian society, "The Rice
& Beans Club" - very exciting, the world was changing! Friends
don't let friends butcher, skin and eat meat animals, because they're friends
too! Though apparently that relationship doesn't preclude leather belts, shoes and handbags.
All in all, a big week, a new world of virtually unlimited possibility. Maybe
I'd stay for a PhD!
Sitting in
Darkness, Soaking It In
"Don't talk to
me about naval tradition.
It's nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash."
Winston Churchill,
"Former Naval Person"
As a viable substitute to
classes, I caught like eight Lina Wertmuller movies at the dollar art
theatre. That's a shitload of histrionic passion and left-wing politics,
but I had a young man's stamina then. Ultimately I found a rare pearl in
Lina's "Swept Away:" "Sodomeez me!" the haughty
Countess hoarsely whispered to saucer-eyed Giancarlo Giannini, a simple workingman of the proletariat,
as they wrestled in the shipwrecked sand.* Gianni's head popped
up like a hound dog hearing the dinner bell. My eyes got big too seven
years later - when Dolores first expressed an identical desire, though
using extremely idiomatic English. She held the heartfelt opinion, which
has stayed with me clearly over these many years: "If there's
something better than this, God's keeping it to Himself." An original
and compelling idea, but one I've never run across in my theological
studies.
[* Footnote: Having not seen the recent remake, I don't know
if Madonna gets sodomised or not. I certainly hope so - from what I've
heard, I think she'd like it. Nonetheless, no one can make that decision except
her and her husband, the young, Scottish fellow.]
I do wish Ms. Wertmuller hadn't so often employed Italian cinema's
most repulsive motif: the obese woman sex scene. Can someone please explain
why I need to watch this? Is it a mama thing? Somebody, hello! With
Germans, it's Klaus Kinski, the weirdest looking man on the planet,
transvestite Nazis in garter belts, and dwarves. Dwarves all over the
place, beating drums, fishing for eels in horse heads, and screaming. With
Italians: grotesque circuses, pubescent boys dreaming wistfully of their
first pair of long pants, and naked, lecherous, horribly fat females.
Swedes are so relentlessly, turgidly gloomy: I'm not surprised at their
suicide statistics. Lighten up, Ingmar! Would one measly, crowd-pleasing,
fart joke kill you?
And French films! Garcón! There's no meat in my baguette! Slouching men in
berets smoke Gauloises, young women stare soulfully out bus windows,
shrieking schoolchildren uniforms race down cobble-stoned streets; in
each shot the evocative baguette. Nothing ever happens! Perhaps, in
emergencies, an eyebrow is raised. One yearns for a direct, muscle-bound
Sly Stallone with a straightforward American job to do, like killing every
Charlie in the Mekong with a Bowie knife, or outrunning enormous
fireballs in nightmarishly long tunnels, mouth twisted in horror like a hot
pretzel in Central Park.
And Europeans complain about American movies. Heal thyself, peaceniks!
A Life-long Love of
Literature
At the University bookstore, I bought
Oin Groin's Objectivist masterpiece, "Atlas Shrugged,"* wheel-barrowed it
back to the dorm, and block and tackled it through my window. I was
thunderstruck. As Dylan put it, "and every one of them words rang true
and glowed like burning coals ... like it was written in my soul from me to
you, tangled up in blue." That's exactly how I felt - except for the
tangled up in blue part - and at the end of John Galt's rapturous 531 page
speech on the sanctity of the dollar, a lightbulb exploded in my brain
pan, and I cheered! Self-interest is golden! Rich people are better than poor people! Income taxes
are a perversion of natural law! Charity is self-defeating! What a relief her bright,
moral clarity has been to me these many years.
[* Footnote: There was some dispute on my dorm hallway
exactly how Ms. Rand's first name was pronounced. One thing led to another,
add in a fat dollop of freshman silliness, and she became known as
"Oin Groin." No disrespect was intended to this seminal thinker
or her fanatic, glassy-eyed adherents.]
Memorably, at the same time I
purchased Ms. Groin's masterpiece, I also found a Penthouse pictorial
featuring a reasonable facsimile of the lovely Linda Lashkey, the high
school honor student I had so unsuccessfully coveted. (I wasn't an Ivy Leaguer then.) Do
women understand this about men and pornography? That elusive Xanadu
consists in finding someone who looks similar - a slight resemblance will
suffice (a hairstyle, a tilt of the nose, a mischievous glint in the eye) -
to your wife's best friend, or the redheaded Tai Bo enthusiast next door,
or the boss's secretary, Annaliese of the short leather skirts. She stares
back at you from all fours, whimpering like a puppy or as demanding as a
gym coach (both approaches work for me): she can't wait another second
for your big, stiff dick.*
[* Footnote: As a matter of protocol, a centerfold girl
always refers to one's small or average-sized penis as "your big,
stiff dick," "your humongous, rock-hard cock," or
combinations thereof. But the way the world is changing, who knows how long
this last vestige of old-world courtesy will last?]
Brotherhood
Once a week, six or seven dorm buddies gathered, stoned,
starved and salivating like rottweilers, around a single, bubbling,
extra-large cheese pizza. Conversational niceties were avoided: we ate
fast, hunched like cons over their food trays, grievously burning our
tongues and mouth tops, barely chewing the oily carcass strips of our
rapidly dwindling pie. Every eye feverishly weighed precise equations of
slice size, slices eaten per person, slices remaining in box - all measured
against our ravening, unsated munchies. "Hey, baloney plug, you
already had like two slices!" "They were small ones,
beagle-dink!" "So were mine, ass bag!" After the box
was picked clean, licked, and boiled down for the broth, we'd thrash out
the latest scuttlebutt in postmodern deconstructionism over a second
doobie, then adjourn for a couple violent hours of "Hamburg
Frisbee" in the closed off hallway.
Innocent Daydreams
of Unsoiled Love
"Paul, thou art
beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad."
The Holy Bible, Acts
26:24
Brown nurtured two memorable titillations. The first, much
to my initial consternation, concerned a curly-headed boy in blue satin gym
shorts with a tight ass and nice basket on the b-ball court. Quickly
ripening into my first overtly gay fantasy, this threw me for a profound
loop: "Am I a homosexual? Is pecker size more important than friendship?
Do I subconsciously crave to be "sodomeezed?" Yet with a
hearty gusto that frankly astonished me, I dove into the spirit of having
something perilously new to consider at night as I tried to keep my ancient
bedsprings from squeaking (while six feet away, my roommate, Chet,
attempted the same Herculean feat with similar success).
"Hmm, let's see. OK: how about we're both in the locker room?
Good start! I've always loved locker room fantasies, though frolicking
nymphomaniacs had previously dominated the cast ("Do you think my
breasts are too small?" "Absolutely not!" "How about my
bottom? Is it too big?" A graceful pirouette, panties pulled halfway
down ala the Coppertone Girl, a coquettish peek over the shoulder.
"Hmm, this calls for a closer look."). All right, what's next?
Umm, ok ...what about ... his gym shorts are pushed down around his ankles?
Wow! That struck a chord! Jeez, this is a lot like my old fantasies - we're
definitely on the right track. Then ......." Squeak, squeak,
squeak, a long, smothered exhalation, and the slow, delicious slide into a
well-earned night's sleep. Goodnight Chet; goodnight Henry. Another full
day of higher education come and gone. They were running through my fingers
like water.
With mixed feelings of melancholy and relief - Adios my guapo muchacho! - my
quixotic fixation with basketball boy soon passed, and the whimsical, forbidden thrill of homosexuality
has never quite returned to the piquant fervor of those fairy-tale days
of autumn.
A girl in my religious studies class ("Basting the Lingam, Waxing the
Yoni: Ancient Lessons for Modern Times") reassuringly filled Pistol Pete's place in my overheated
libido, and concomitantly restored my cherished self-image of sneering,
brawny machismo. In baggy green army pants and thick glasses, with long
dirty-blonde hair of no particular distinction, and hints of moderately
heavy breasts under bulky sweatshirts, she provided a richly contemplative
complement to the Shiva & Parvati lap-dancing slideshows of tiny
Professor Mrs. Hiroshi. (Among other things, I learned that "Big
O" is an exact translation from Vedic Sanskrit, though
early Aryans held the experience in significantly higher esteem
than the chaplain. In fact, only cows and soma-milk ranked higher in the cosmic scheme of things.)
But shy as I was, beyond returning a dropped pencil, I never even exchanged a
word with my demure and unattainable Astarte. I yearned to stroke her
strong knee and lush quadriceps, while crooning the Song of Solomon in its
original Hebrew - but somehow never found the courage or the pretext, or, for that matter, learned Hebrew.
Moreover, she was a sophisticated junior, and I merely a squirrelly if
precocious freshman. (The college world is fiercely ageist. Furthermore, I
was in my freakishly skinny phase.) So I just sat quietly, one row
behind her, basking in her heat, swept away by the musky pheromones
emanating unconsciously from a girl crossing to womanhood. Amen &
hosanna. Hey nonny nonny.
Twenty years later the same approach provided similar contentment in yoga
class - which happily featured mirrored walls besides. Row upon tightly packed
row of flushed, supple women in low-cut leotards performing "downward
facing dog" scant inches from my quivering muzzle. (I remained rigidly focused
in an unblinking "hyena pose".) Fullness piled upon fullness, the
land of milk and honey, "blessed is the man that endureth
temptation." At heart I remain a simple pilgrim, ever seeking the Mystical
Beloved.
Moving On, A Better
Man (Like Shane)
"Wear your
learning, like your watch in a private pocket:
and do not merely pull it out...
merely to show that you have one."
The Earl of
Chesterfield
My exit interview could not have gone more smoothly. In a
heartening display of solidarity, every single one of my counselors and
professors, as well as most of my dorm and class mates, filed passionate
and closely-argued friend-of-the-court briefs begging the Dean to make no
attempt at dissuading me from the speediest departure possible.
Now, with an Ivy League education tucked safely under my belt, it was time to give
back to the world some of what I had been so magnanimously bequeathed.
Poised to make my bold mark, I joined the bustling, egalitarian world of
business. And right off the bat, in my very first interview, the Kroger
Deli Manager loved me - "I teach you everything, Henry Panky! It's an
excellent career!" "Jeez, Mr. Llud-Gerky, thanks!" Then, in
what proved to be a recurring theme, the relationship quickly soured due to
certain intractable issues, which have dogged me all my life (truculent
disinterest, theft, noisome personal hygiene, public finger-sniffing, and
supercilious snottiness to superiors, co-workers and customers).
Lucky for me, I interview well, and - I'm an Ivy Leaguer!
By Henry E. Panky
"The Humorist Our Times Probably Deserve"
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