Behind the Mask: The Phantom

The Phantom has been prevailed upon to provide some background on the name of his blog.

As a rule, The Phantom prefers to live out of sight, to reveal as little as possible about himself, to live in his skull cave with his wolf, his horse and assorted family members who may drift in and out from time to time.  As readers of the comic strip will know, the Phantom line began in 1570 something when pirates killed the Phantom's ancestor and the original Phantom swore on the skull of his father's murderer to avenge such piracy, to fight for the right and to punish wrong. Succeeding generations kept up the fight for right and justice and the comic strip.

One of the wonderful things about this strip is that, while there were always adventures afoot, things changed only glacially, so when the Phantom's brother went off to college, where he had no access to a daily newspaper, he could come home on vacation and pick up the story line without problem--having missed the intervening 3 months. The only other comic strip with this sort of  glacial quality was Prince Valiant, but there was no way the Phantom or his brother or any member of his family could ever wear his hair like that.

When the Phantom himself went off to college, he was placed, freshman year,  in a room off a stairwell. This particular dorm was populated mostly with upper classmen and a variety of jocks, from a variety of teams. The Phantom himself was actually a recruited athlete but the college happened to be part of the Ivy League, so no scholarship was involved and once admitted, you had no commitment to actually show up in the coach's office. The Phantom did, however feel honor bound to post at the coach's office,  but when he was handed the travel schedule for the team, he realized he would have to miss chemistry laboratories which were held late Thursday afternoon and the team was frequently traveling then. Since the Phantom was pre-med, this presented a problem. 

The Phantom was 18 years old and decided he could either enter into a lathered pursuit of the variety of female pulchritude on campus, do his sport and join a fraternity or he could go to class and when he was not in class he could live at the library or in the laboratories and he could time his visits to the Ratty (the campus cafeteria) in such a way he could eat his meals alone,  and in under 5 minutes.

The Phantom lived by a schedule he drew up every morning and popped into his front shirt pocket,  and he did not dwaddle. He did not go to the Ivy room for coffee after class. He did not go on dates. He went to the library whenever he was not in class, where he camped out in the stacks at a study carrell, which he claimed at 8 AM each morning and to which he returned between classes. He left only for his 5 minute forays to  the Ratty and he did not return to his dorm until 10 PM, where he threw down his books, showered, and went to bed. Any stray dorm rats who happened to be visiting his roommate left the room. Very few fellows--the dorms were all male in those days--ever actually saw the Phantom. Some claimed he did not actually exist and he was the creation of the Phantom's roommate, who wanted a room to himself and simply claimed to have this imaginary roommate. 

At the other end of the third floor hallway, in a stairwell room, lived the son of a prominent Providence, Rhode Island physician named Jim. Jim had a receding hairline and a personality disorder. He did things like rolling bowling balls from the top of the third floor stairwell down the stairs to the landing on the first floor, which sounded, from inside the stairwell rooms, like bombs were going off. Alternatively, when he tired of noisy disruptions, he simply urinated down the stairs after filling his bladder with as much beer as he could gulp down, hoping to someday reach the first floor landing from the third floor landing, but his stream never got much past the second floor, although you could definitely smell the urine as soon as you opened the ground floor door into the dorm. 

Jim did not lay eyes upon the Phantom until halfway through Spring term, when he decided to try rolling his bowling balls down the stairwell at the Phantom's end of the hall.  

Oh, he was told, that would not be a good idea. That guy who lives with the wrestler in that stairwell room lives in there. "Who is this guy?" Jim asked. And then Jim was told of the Phantom's strange, inaccessible, life. 

"He never comes out of the library except to sleep here?" Jim asked.
"And to go to the Ratty for 5 minutes each meal. And to go to class."
"He never goes to parties?"
"Never."
"He can't study Saturday nights. The library closes at 11 Saturday nights, so where's he go?"
"His roommate says he comes home, does his laundry, and writes letters and goes to bed."
"Nothing settles down in this quadrangle until after 2 AM. How's he going to go to bed in the middle of a tornado? This sounds like bull---."
"Well, if you don't believe it, just wait for him Saturday. Library closes at 11 PM. It's a fifteen minute walk. He lives by a schedule card he keeps in his pocket. He should be at his door say, 11:15."
At 11:15 PM Saturday nights Jim was usually at the top of his stairwell urinating, or he was down in the party room swilling beer.  Sometimes he was puking on the stone porch in front of the dorm. But that Saturday night he sat on the stairs at 11:15 PM and he could hear the door open at the bottom of the stairwell.  Jim had finished off a six pack and he was sitting on the stair, at the top of the landing and he could hear the Phantom bounding up the stairs. 
The Phantom saw Jim sitting there and looked him right in the eye, neither hostile nor friendly, neither interested nor uninterested. And he put his key in the lock, shifting his books to his left hand as he did it, all the while never taking his eyes from Jim's rheumy eyes.  The Phantom unlocked his door and pushed it open and looked over his shoulder at Jim before stepping  into his room.
"You're like some friggin Phantom,"  Jim said.

The Phantom turned around to face Jim. A half smile played around the Phantom's lips but his eyes were as expressionless as a shark's.

Jim took one step back, toward the hall door.

"You're that guy who pisses down the other stairwell," the Phantom said.  "Your father's rich and you're drinking your way through school. And you got the place twenty other guys wanted so you could spend your time pissing down stairwells. Congratulations."

Jim was not a small person: Six two, two twenty maybe. The Phantom was less than six feet and no more than one sixty, but he stood about ten inches from Jim and looked right into his face with a look which hungered for Jim's vital organs. Jim turned and fled through the door to the hallway.

Back down in the party room, the music was going and everyone was waiting to see if Jim had sighted the white whale.

"He's like a Phantom," Jim said. "I think I saw his back as he went in the door."

So that's how the Phantom got his name. The Phantom, having always liked the comic strip accepted the name--although he never  acquired a skull ring, or a horse or even a wolf--and eventually, the Phantom grew to like the name.

During the first three years in college, the Phantom spoke to nobody but his room mate, or  he spoke in class but otherwise, he spoke to very few people. There were few people he actually had to speak to. He could go through the cafeteria line withou saying a word. He could enter and leave the library without even eye contact with another person. He knew fewer than a dozen people, mostly other pre meds.  

His senior year, after his medical school applications were all in, he got a girl friend and he started talking to more people.

For the first three years, he spoke to the bare minimum.

 But now, the Phantom speaks.  

Ironically, now that the Phantom speaks, nobody replies. The Phantom has two blogs. When people respond to anything on the Phantom's blog, they do so on the other blog. Maybe it's that security thing where you have to type in letters to prove your not a spam. For whatever reason, nobody speaks back to the Phantom.