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In a universe of Italians and Jews, Dave Randall stood out like a redwood in a pine forest. Well over six feet tall, he towered over most of our Long Island University classmates. He had a good four inches on me, and I was considered tall in my family. I think he was one of the first blond-haired, blue-eyed people I had ever seen in person.
I had been reading Jack Kerouac novels, so when I met Dave and he told me his father was a drunk and in prison he transformed into a celebrity in my mind. My father belonged to the upholsterer's union. He and my mother didn't even drink on New Year's Eve.
I lived in East Meadow, a New York suburban cocoon; Dave grew up in a small town outside of Tucson.
"Arizona?" I asked, never having traveled west of New Jersey. "You mean with cowboys and Indians?"
He laughed, thinking I was joking.
We became friends. I introduced him to Miles Davis and Charlie Mingus; he introduced me to Hank Williams and Charlie Pride. I told him how stultifying it was growing up in a middle-class family with parents who wanted only the best for their son. "Too much love is almost as bad as none at all," I said.
"No, it's not," he said, looking away.
We spent many Saturday nights of our freshman year under the bleachers with a couple of bottles of Thunderbird talking about women, and throwing up. Mostly throwing up. Sometimes, we'd go to fraternity parties, but neither of us fit in. He couldn't two-step to "Louie Louie," and I'd quote Woody Allen, saying I was uncomfortable in crowds of two or more.
One weekend, we hitchhiked out to Southampton since that's where the action was, we had heard. We arranged to stay at the home of a friend of a friend whose parents were away. When we got there, after getting stranded on Sunrise Highway during a thunderstorm, we found the house dark and locked up tight. We bought some wine and spent the rainy night sleeping under the back porch. The next morning we pooled our money and rode a bus back to campus. While sitting in the back of the bus, my clothes still damp, Dave laughed as I wondered aloud when the adventure would begin.
"This is it," he said.
As time passed, I found a girl impressed with my stories, and he found a number of females impressed with his. His toothy grin and Western innocence gave way to a contrived cool.
We double dated a few times, but my girlfriend was afraid of him. He had added cocaine to his taste for cheap wine and marijuana. His speech quickened to an almost incomprehensible patter. And his eyes, once clear blue, now seemed like the bloodshot and swollen slits of a much older man.
Early in my sophomore year the woman I thought I'd spend my life with broke up with me. I had gotten too serious too soon, I realize now. Dave helped me get through it. "You'll find the one you're looking for," he said in a faraway voice. "The right one's out there for guys like you."
In the meantime, he helped arrange a string of substitutes.
He and I still shared the occasional all night bull session, peppered with alcohol, pills and smoke, but the talk changed. Now he bragged of schemes to make quick money, usually involving drugs. It was my turn to feel afraid. While I talked of grad school and love, he spoke of last night's sex. "Scored a threesome, man. You ever do that?"
I shook my head. He promised to set me up.
He stumbled into my dorm room not long after that. I was working on a paper on Shakespeare's sense of irony. He smelled of weed and wine and said he knew two women who liked to party. I told him the paper was due the next day.
"You read Kerouac, man. Here's a chance for real kicks."
I had written enough of the paper so I probably could have finished it before it was due or at least gotten an extension. My girlfriend at the time, whose name I barely recall, was studying for exams and our relationship was nearing its logical conclusion. There was no reason for me to stay, just as there is no reason for me now, a man of sixty, married to the same woman for thirty-seven years, to remember, down to the tone in my voice, such an insignificant event.
"I can't," I heard myself say. "Gotta finish this paper and study for my political science final."
Dave looked at me with an older brother's disappointment. "Ah, pussy," he said. "At least loan me some money."
I had just gotten paid from a part-time job I had in the library. I gave him twenty dollars. He never showed up for his final exams.
When I returned to school the next semester word had spread faster than kudzu during a southern summer. Dave had been arrested somewhere out west for selling drugs.
I thought of finding out where he was and visiting him in jail. Hitchhiking out west to visit a buddy in prison.
Of course, I never did.
Wayne Scheer taught writing and literature in college for twenty-five years before retiring to follow his own advice and write. His work has appeared in such diverse publications as The Christian Science Monitor; Sex and Laughter, an anthology of mostly erotic stories originally printed in Slow Trains; Art and Understanding, The Better Drink, and Cynic Magazine. His writing awards include a Pushcart Prize nomination. He lives in Atlanta with his wife and can be contacted at wvscheer@aol.com.
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