It Was 1978 & I Was Partying My Way Through College Like Everyone Else...
Previously, Part 17: Well, I Love That Dirty Water. Oh Boston, You're My Home...
As nice as the studio apartment on Beacon St. was, it was far from Utopian. Sure, there wasn’t a trucker screaming into his CB radio at all hours of the night like there was at Dick’s boarding house in East Walpole. And there weren’t any mushrooms growing out of the floor in the bathroom like there were in the bungalow by the lake on Quincy St. in Sharon. And I didn’t have any heated arguments about parking like I had with Barney while living in the in-law apartment on Pond St.. Still, there was a large cockroach population and one realtor who stunk up the shared bathroom like clockwork every morning before I even hit the snooze button.
Since the building was constructed in 1899, there wasn’t a fan in the bathroom, forcing me to use a tried and true method that always worked for my family in the small bathroom in our house back in the '60s. When someone would spend some quality time on the throne and stink up the bathroom, as they were exiting, everyone would yell, “Light a match!” The combination of shit and sulfur wasn’t pleasant, but it sure beat the stink of straight-up shit.
As much as I complained about the colony of cockroaches sharing my living quarters rent-free, there wasn’t anything the realty company could do except call an exterminator, who never solved the problem. When I’d get home at 3:00 am, after tending bar or bouncing at Father's Fore in Cambridge, as soon as I unlocked the door and flipped on the light, I could hear them scatter. I even got to watch a few stragglers dance across the marble floor. City living, I guess…
Initially, I thought it would be great living two doors down from the backside of Al Capone’s Pizza, but every rat in Kenmore Square shared my affinity for the Za, and the sidewalk outside my building was packed with hungry rats waiting their turn to crawl in and out of Capone's overflowing dumpster. Some kids living across the street in the BU dorms had pellet guns and turned shooting rats into an intramural sport.
But despite all its shortcomings, I thoroughly enjoyed living at 587 Beacon. It helped that my girlfriend was only a mile down on Beacon St., and Fenway Park was less than a quarter mile away.
When I wasn’t at her dorm or with her in my studio apartment, we took long walks and frequented Faneuil Hall and other popular spots in Boston. And we sat in the nosebleeds at Fenway more times than she wanted.
It was Fall of '78, the best time of year to be in Boston. For me, it was the new beginning I so desperately needed.
I wasn’t trying to get A’s in my classes at Northeastern. I was happy getting B’s with very little effort. That was until I took an English class…
On the first day, the professor told the class we’d be spending the entire semester reading and dissecting Nathaniel Hawthorne’s allegorical short story, Young Goodman Brown. And that we'd be writing multiple papers about its meaning. It sounded easy peasy to me…
When I completed my first paper, cocky me assumed I'd aced it. So did one of my fellow physical education majors, Dyke. Up to that point, I had only heard dyke used as a derogatory slur to describe a masculine lesbian, but it’s a legit name that has its roots in the late 16th, early 17th century when many Dutch males were given the name at birth.
Dyke was a great guy and a pretty damn good hockey player. Where I was into baseball, football, and basketball, Dyke was more into the winter sports like hockey, downhill skiing, and snowboarding. He was a chill dude with medium-length, straight, dark brown hair, a thick mustache, and a mile-wide, highly contagious smile that had the power to brighten anybody's day.
When we got our first paper back, the professor flunked the entire class—ripped us a new one, too. He told us we weren't in high school anymore and needed to learn how to write a paper, which he said we would be able to do by the end of the semester if we paid attention
At that moment, I hated that bastard, and so did Dyke.
For the next couple of months, we dissected Young Goodman Brown and wrote lots of papers. It was brutal. The guy didn't hand out A’s or even B’s. A fucking C was the top grade in the class. It was so frustrating.
The term paper was the most important and heavily weighted towards our final grade. It was the culmination of everything we had learned.
Written in 1835, Young Goodman Brown takes place in Salem, Massachusetts. Driven by curiosity, a desire to test his Puritan faith, and a subconscious desire to engage in the unknown, Brown sets out to confront temptation and the devil himself, though initially conflicted.
Despite his wife Faith's warning not to go, Brown enters the dark, sinful forest at midnight, hears Faith's voice, and goes looking for her. He finds his friends and other townspeople in a clearing, standing by a flaming altar of rocks, initiating the only non-members, a vision of himself and his wife. He calls out for Faith to resist, but the scene fades to Brown back home in Salem, unsure if what he had seen was real or a dream.
After that night, Brown loses faith in his wife and all humanity and questions the devout Christian community he's lived in. The story concludes, "And when he had lived long, and was borne to his grave…they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom."
It was a fucking brilliant story, and although we were all forced to read it several times, I never grew tired of it, understanding it more each time. It had a profound effect on me, making me suspicious of people in my inner circle…
The term paper had to answer the question, “Was Young Goodman Brown’s journey into the dark, sinful forest and everything he saw on that night real or imagined?” It had to be a minimum of 700 words.
No term paper is off limits to a friendly bet, and Dyke and I wagered a pitcher of beer at the Cask 'n Flaggon on who would get the higher grade. The paper had to be handed in a week before the final exam, which was given during the last class.
When I finished, mine was only 580 words. I considered adding 120 words to get to 700 but decided it was perfect the way it was, and adding words would ruin it. Everything was hand-written back then, which also factored into my decision not to re-write.
Neither Dyke nor I was willing to discuss our term papers with each other. It was all very hush-hush. The professor said he'd return the graded term papers to students as they handed in their final exam.
Dyke finished the final before me or anyone else, he was a good student, and when he handed it to the professor, he got his term paper back. I looked up from my exam and watched closely to see his expression, and he looked pretty fuckin happy. Like someone who thought he was gonna drink at least one free pitcher of beer that night…
He was out the door waiting in the hallway for a few minutes before I got up, handed in my final exam and got my paper back.
I looked down at my paper. I received an A- from one of the toughest grading professors in the English department. I cracked a big fuckin smile, intentionally bigger than Dyke's, sending a message that I was confident I had him beat.
We slow-walked down the hallway, side-by-side, holding the front of our papers tightly against our chests like poker players playing their cards close to their vests. Then Dyke said, “You first!”
I retorted, “No, you first!”
We went back and forth, neither wanting to be the first to reveal our grade. Then I figured, fuck it, I got a fuckin A-, no way he beats that. I flipped my paper over and boasted, “A minus motherfucker!” And then I started doing my victory dance.
But Dyke was still smiling… Uh-oh. Could he have pulled off the upset, or was I just a bad fucking dancer?
He flipped his paper over, and there it was; he pulled off the upset with a straight A. I couldn’t fuckin believe it. He trash-talked me all the way to the Cask and for most of the night. I can't say that it wasn't well-deserved.
I bought the first pitcher, but it wasn’t the last. He and I got utterly and thoroughly annihilated. We split the tab, and after a long night of drinking, we stumbled home…
My paper argued that since Goodman Brown's 'dying hour was gloom' because of that night, it didn't matter whether his journey or the events were real or imagined…
I was well on my way to partying my way through college, like everyone else…
To be continued…
*All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental…