Stop me, if I've told this story before.
When you get my age, you tend to tell the same stories over and over to people with various levels of tolerance. This particular blog has over 800 posts (and not quite twice than on the Mad Dog blog) so I can't recall.
But I am prompted to tell this story for a number of reasons, mostly having to do with articles in the Globe about meritocracy, which got me reflecting on how we measure intellectual achievement, and "qualifications" and how we award the glittering prizes of academia, and also because we recently welcomed into the family my new granddaughter, who happens to be Eurasian.
All of which triggered a flashback to Eva Inoue, a woman I met, on very brief acquaintance, when I was a sophomore in college. The fact is, I had one date with her, our first and last, which was actually quite a successful and pleasant experience, but, for reasons which will become clear, went nowhere, for very good reasons.
When I was a sophomore, I roomed with a very gaudy senior, who spoke dozens of languages and spent most of his time in the main library's Humanities Reading room lounge, which was separated from the actual reading room where students read books reserved for various classes (long before the internet) at desks but then pushed through the swinging glass doors and flopped down in the capacious couches in the lounge, to talk, flirt, smoke and be young. The reading room lounges were the social hot spots of the campus for a certain set of student who were serious enough about Camus and Kant and Kierkegaard to not want to simply hang out in bars, but who did not see spending all their time studying.
Why, you might ask, would a senior want to live with a sophomore? I was a very desirable roommate, mainly because I was never there. Because he had lived in this dorm, Diman House, longer than any other student, Nick was entitled to his choice of rooms and he choose the largest room on the 3rd floor, which had been meant to be some sort of lounge but was converted to a two bedded room. It was also across the hall from the bathroom and next to the stair well, so it was convenient. I got up at 6:30, ran for 20 minutes, showered and was out of the room by 7:30 so I could make my 8 o'clock class. I came home to drop off books and pick up other books at noon, left for the library and did not come home until 10 or 10:30 PM.
When I got home, the room was usually filled with slackers from several different floors, but upon my arrival, they deferentially got up and melted away, out the door and Nick would either read in bed or go down to the first floor lounge and watch TV.
We both studied at "The Rock," the Rockefeller Library, the aforementioned main library, and several times over the course of the evening, I'd go down to the Humanities Reading Room lounge because there were bathrooms down there. As I'd pass through, I'd nod and wave to Nick, who was usually surrounded by fetching young women, eager to talk about the comparative virtues of Camus vs. Sartre as philosophers and as novelists. The women were Pembrokers, or "Brokers" which really meant they were simply co-eds, but the women's college had not been completely absorbed into the university, just as Radcliffe was not actually Harvard. Brokers, as a rule were smarter than the male students at the college--if you wanted to know where you are on the curve in class grading, the wags said, you look around the classroom and add up the number of 'Brokers and add the number of Asians and that is where you began, so 10 Brokers and 4 Asians, you were number 15 on the grading curve.
One night, I got home at my usual hour and walked to my desk at the far end of the room, threw down my books and slumped onto my bed to take off my snow covered boots and noticed that none of the ten or so slackers had budged. They all just stood or sat where they had been when I walked in and stared at me, with a sort of determined looked I had never seen before from them. It was as if I had violated some unspoken rule and they were there to let me know they weren't going to stand for it.
Nick got up off his bed and took a few paces toward me and, backed up by his friends, spoke.
I should say now I was aware there was a certain level of wariness, if not trepidation, about me in the dorm. Because I never hung out in the TV lounge, or attended the Saturday night party, or lingered over dinner at the Ratty (the student dining hall), I was called, "The Phantom," from which this blog derives its name. One of the most psychopathic boys in the dorm, Jim Metcalf, a boy who urinated down the stairwells when the urge took hold of him, a boy who liked bouncing a bowling ball from the third floor down to the ground floor in the stairwell because he loved the explosive sound it made and he knew it jangled up the nerves of the students who lived in the stairwell rooms, this guy, I was told, was terrified of me. This is in the days before school shootings, but we did have storied axe murderers, and Jim, hearing about my habits visibly blanched, and said, "He doesn't even come to the parties, Saturday night? That's not normal! This guy is not normal!" And so he avoided me like the proverbial plague and I had only once or twice ever laid eyes on him, or his back, as he took flight like a gazelle pursued.
The other guys in the dorm were not that intimidated; they just thought I was odd and to their great credit, they gave me my distance and did not try to interfere with my schedule. They were pleasant in the bathroom if they found themselves standing next to me shaving and they smiled and nodded in the stairwells, or on the sidewalks from the dorm to the Ratty or the library, if they passed me, the way you might acknowledge an officer if you passed him along the way, not saluting, but sort of respectful like.
But this night, there was a difference and Nick quickly got to the point: "Eva Inoue wants to go out with you," he said portentously.
"Oh," I said, not understanding who Eva Inoue was or why she might want to go out with me or what the significance of that desire might be. "Who is Eva Inoue?"
A collective groan arose from the assembled collegians.
They all exchanged glances, as if they were going to have to communicate with a space alien who likely had only very limited knowledge of Earth speak.
"Uh," said one of them. "She is the one girl any of us would give our right nut to go out with."
That struck me as a serious sort of woman, but I could not resist asking, "And why would that be?"
"First of all," said another, "She is drop dead gorgeous, one of maybe three verifiably beautiful Brokers on the Hill."
"And insanely brilliant," added Nick, hoping to appeal to my better angels. "She gets papers back which don't just have 'A' on the top, but the professor writes, and I'm quoting, 'In thirty years at this college I have never read a better paper.' And all like that."
"So," I said, "Sounds like a nice girl for one of you guys."
"You didn't hear me," Nick said, exasperated. "She wants to go out with you!"
"But I've never met her. Why?"
Nick threw one of his innocent looks in my direction, shrugging, hands held palms upward, "Well, she's seen you in the lounge and she might have asked me about you, seeing you wave in our direction and I might have told her about you, a little."
"Must have been quite a description for her to want to go out with me like this."
"What does it matter?" one of the slackers expostulated.
"She is Eva..." another sputtered.
"She has never come to a Diman House party. If you go out with her, you could bring her."
I could now see their stake in this. Scarlett O'Hara might just swoop in and be surrounded by the Diman House groupies and new luster would accrue to the House and who knows who else might have a chance with her.
"What did you tell her about me?" I asked Nick.
"Oh, nothing," Nick sputtered, not meeting my eyes, "A little about you, like how all you ever do is study and how we call you the Phantom, and how even Jim Metcalf leaves you alone--she knows Jim and hates him--and all like that. Nothing that isn't true."
The mob walked me down to the pay telephone at the end of the hall and shoved a paper with Eva's number at the Andrews dorm, and when I protested I didn't have a dime, one was shoved into my hand and they stood around listening to be sure I didn't wimp out.
"Hello?"
"Hi, I'm trying to reach Eva Inoue."
"You got her."
"Sorry to call so late, but..."
"S'alright," she said. "I guess you just got back from the library."
"I did. You're right, and I wonder if you might be free Saturday night?"
"Sure."
"Oh. You're sure? It's sort of short notice. We could make it next weekend or the one after."
"No," she said. "You might get distracted by some organic chemistry homework and forget all about me."
"Oh," I said, "You know more about me than I do about you."
"For sure," she laughed. "But we'll fix that Saturday. Where are we going?"
"No idea."
"Well, Trinity Rep is doing something interesting, we could do that."
"Fine. When?"
"If we leave at seven that should be plenty of time."
"Good, see you then."
"Come to the desk at Andrews."
"Right."
"Where is Trinity Rep," I asked turning to the crowd outside the phone cubby.
A loud groan. We'll show you.
I had to call my parents to be sure they put money into my checking account to cover the cost of the tickets, the cab fare and whatever we might do for dinner.
My mother was delighted: "Your first date at college! Who is she?"
"Oh, just some girl from the library."
"Figures," said my father.
During the intermission, I spotted my graduate student lab instructor from organic chemistry class in the crowd. He was a very nice and funny Nigerian with that lovely British accent and I went over to talk to him, grateful for a familiar face. Within minutes his date, a very blonde Swedish woman, another grad student in organic chemistry (who would turn out to be my lab instructor for the 2nd semester) joined us and she kissed his cheek and held his hand. This being Providence, Rhode Island, my Nigerian lab instructor was the only Black guy in the room, and the racially mixed couple was getting a lot of surreptitious attention from the theater going throng, a very White audience. Just as I was noticing the racial thing, Eva, who, did I mention is Eurasian? shows up and loops her arm through mine and shakes hands with the only other mix race couple in the room and we all have a wonderful good time until intermission was over.
I never got anything less than an "A" in organic chemistry lab assignments both semesters--a greater enhancement to my grade than all the hours spent in the library. Completely random. Not right. Sort of a "Risky Business" effect.
Anyway, we got back to the dorm after the show and the Diman House crowd was in a major swoon at our belated entrance. The play had ended at 8:30 and by the time we made it back to campus it was 9:30. The band was enough to knock you through the window with sound volume and I got some beers for us and we escaped to the stone patio outside. It was a cool October night and sitting on the stone wall was bracing but tolerable and she leaned against me with her shoulder.
She leaned over to kiss me after one beer and she was the sort of girl who could be a major distraction.
"The thing is," I said, "I didn't come to college to have an experience. I am here to get passed it. This is a stop along the line to medical school, if I'm lucky."
"Well, you certainly are not homosexual," she said.
"This is true," I said. "But how can you know that?"
"The way you look at women. The way you handle me. The way you're reacting to me right now. We could be up in your room in a heartbeat."
"But what then?" I said. "Girlfriends take time, or they should take time. I don't have time. I have a study schedule. I'm not smart enough to just study the night before the exam."
"I get it," Eva said. "It's nothing personal."
"Now, if you could just get back to me in about two years," said, "All my premed course will be done by senior year."
"Oh, well, that's an attractive offer!" she laughed. "No, you go do your dedicated thing. I can respect that. My father is Japanese."
"And your mother Austrian," I noted. "Which sounds like a recipe for obsessive compulsiveness."
"Something I struggle to avoid," she said. "But I can respect it, even if I don't want it for myself."
Eva made Phi Beta Kappa her junior year, the earliest you can be voted in.
My grades by senior year were good enough to be considered for that honor society but the letter announcing your "election" into the society says very clearly, "You have been elected into Phi Beta Kappa."
When I got my letter in the campus mailbox I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt who had led the voting in my favor.
Of course, I have no way of really knowing that. It's a belief I cling to, for some reason. It may be the Miss Havisham effect, from "Great Expectations," --if you come into a great fortune you look around and say, well who else could have done this?
But I'm pretty sure it was Eva.
Eva did not wait for me. By our senior year she married a guy who was a budding poet, and when Alan Ginsberg came to campus, he and Eva hung out with him. She found a right guy for her. She became a professor of classics, a scholar of Prometheus, the guy who brought fire from the gods and gave it to man and who paid dearly for that. And she understood about fire and how it could burn you and how I had demurred when it came to the fire she represented. I could have quoted her from the Odyssey and the sirens who sang so alluringly, Odysseus had to plug the ears of his crew and have himself tied to the mast so he could not respond to the siren call and steer his ship away from the course he had plotted to get home. I'm sure she was familiar with all that story.
So, now I have this honor, this Phi Beta Kappa key for which I'm very grateful, but when I think of how I studied all those hours and what really pushed me over the top had nothing to do with those hours, but with the one time I did not study, just took the night off to be with a girl and enjoy life, it makes you wonder about "qualifications" and the meritocracy.
