Starting Over

by Dan Wakefield

  “Ah!” Gafferty whispered, leaning forward, “but Dean Hardy no doubt thinks you both have the capability and drive to go on and eventually get the degree, even though you don’t have it yet!”

  “Wait a minute,” Shell said, “if the first party is for the losers, why would they be invited first? If you ask me, the second party is for the people the Dean considers second-rate.”

  “No, no,” Gafferty argued, “he wants to have the party for the losers first so he can get it out of the way, fulfill his obligation, and then be free to enjoy entertaining the people he likes at the second party.”

  Hunched over a small table in the corner of the school cafeteria, Potter, Gafferty, and Shell were chainsmoking, nervously dropping unfinished cigarettes into half-filled styrofoam cups of coffee grown cold, and joining in the general speculation that was sweeping the faculty about the meaning of the two separate cocktail parties Dean Hardy was holding during the semester break. Like Kremlinologists, the teachers analyzed the hidden meanings of all that the Dean did and said, and special significance was placed on the invitation lists of his social functions, on the assumption that these provided pertinent clues to who was In and who Out. The fact that over the break he was giving two parties, inviting all faculty members to his home, but on separate nights, had given rise to a frenzied examination of the implications of which people were attending which party.

  Much to the chagrin of the avid theorists, it was casually pointed out by someone from the science department that the guest list of the first party was made up of all those faculty members whose last names began with A–L, while the second list consisted of those from M–Z.

  Potter asked Marilyn to come to the party with him, though he warned her it wasn’t likely to be a lot of laughs; he was asking her as a friend to give him support and comfort in getting through it. With her own secret love affair going full force, Marilyn was in a good mood and happy to oblige.

  The party was pretty much as Potter imagined it would be, with one significant surprise. He knew it almost as soon as he entered the living room; there was someone out of the routine faculty context. He picked up the presence of the unidentified person without even looking at her, like a blip on a radar screen. Somewhere in a corner of the room, in a corner of his vision. He didn’t even look right away. He preferred to wait, and savor the suspense.

  “Yes,” he said, grinning in agreement with whatever it was Harriet Hardy had gushed at him. He hoped it was something he was supposed to agree with. He got a cut-glass cup of punch for himself and Marilyn, feeling some of it trickle stickily down his hand as he ladled it out, trying to avoid the armada of floating strawberries. It was another one of those kinds of parties.

  Blip.

  The girl had glossy brown hair that curled under and up just at her neckline, and she wore a silver bar in it, the way girls used to do. The plain black dress she wore with a simple silver pin was the sort of ornament Potter associated with girls of his own era who were considered “sophisticated.” She tilted her chin up as she exhaled from her cigarette, as if she had learned to smoke by watching old Debutante movies.

  “She’s cute, isn’t she,” Marilyn whispered.

  Potter felt himself blushing. “Huh? Who?”

  “The girlie,” Marilyn said.

  “Jesus, have you started reading my mind? I’ve hardly even looked at her.”

  “Reading your mind on occasions like this is like watching a wide-screen movie with stereophonic sound.”

  Potter sighed. “That obvious, huh?”

  “Well, I know you. Maybe it’s not so easy for everyone else.”

  “I wonder who she is. I can’t imagine our Dean inviting a student to this thing.”

  “Find out,” Marilyn said. “I’ll mingle.”

  Potter began edging around the room toward the girl, trying not to be obvious, stopping to exchange greetings with his colleagues and their wives, mouthing the required rote, but never letting his target get out of the edge of his private radar screen.

  Blip.

  He moved up just as she was fishing for a match, and flipped open his trusty Zippo.

  “Thanks,” she said, taking an excessive drag.

  “I haven’t seen you before,” Potter said with concerned interest. “Are you at Gilpen?”

  “Am I what?”

  “A student. At Gilpen.”

  “Oh, no. I’m sorry. I always forget the name of it. Where Dr. Hardy is.”

  “Gilpen Junior College.”

  “Yes, of course. No, we’re friends of the Hardys. My family.”

  “Live here in Boston?”

  “They do. I’m at Barnard.”

  “Ah. Home for semester break?”

  “Sort of.”

  Potter glanced around the room, in what he hoped was a casual manner. “Your parents here?”

  “They’re in Bermuda.”

  “Oh. That’s too bad—I mean that you’re not there too.”

  “Not really. Under the circumstances.”

  “Circumstances?”

  “Just family—uh—hassle,” she said, shrugging elaborately.

  “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “I know.”

  He offered to get her a punch, and surveying the room, was flashed an understanding wink of approval by Marilyn, who was being solicitously attended by a couple of Business Administration teachers.

  The girl’s name was Trevor Marshall. A family name. They called her Trevvy. Her father was big in Electronics. Her mother was Virginia society. While they were in Bermuda, Trevvy was staying alone in the family townhouse on Chestnut Street. She said she’d love to have dinner with Potter the next evening.

  Back at his apartment with her after the Veal Piccata at Stella’s, Potter learned that Trevvy’s family hassle had resulted over her having to have an abortion just after Thanksgiving.

  Potter was surprised. “I wouldn’t have thought—uh—that you’d have to have one,” he said.

  “I was pregnant,” she explained.

  “Yes, but I mean—I thought that nowadays—”

  “I’m allergic to the pill.”

  “Yes, but there are so many—uh—”

  “I forgot my foam.”

  “Oh. Well. I guess that can happen.”

  “It happened,” she said, “to me.”

  She started to sob.

  “I’m sorry,” Potter said.

  He held her, comforting. She clung to him. Very hard.

  Then they were on the floor.

  They were undressing one another and Potter suddenly stopped and said, “Listen—I hate to mention it, but do you have—uh—your—”

  “Emko,” she said.

  She stood up, pulled the dress over her head, picked up her purse, and went to the bathroom.

  When she strolled back, nude and graceful and composed, her perfect small body decorated only with the pale imprint of the area where last summer’s bikini had been worn, Potter almost tackled her. He had a kind of erection he had almost forgotten about. There are erections and erections. And then there are erections. There are ones that just barely earn the title, that barely are able to get you inside. Then there are nice stiff ones that feel strong and powerful. And then, sometimes, occasionally, the same old prick outdoes itself, seems to swell beyond its own capacity, grows gloriously super-stiff and majestic, attains the proportions of heroism, and brings to its owner the experience of grandeur.

  That was the kind of hard-on he had.

  Hot out of his mind, thinking of nothing but his prick, he rolled on top of her on the floor, starting to force it. She gently pushed him a little bit away, gave a gentle nibble at his ear lobe, and whispered something.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Take a slow trip,” she said.

  “Oh—sure—I’m sorry,” he said, relaxing a little, feeling embarrassed, thinking to himself, “And a child shall lead you.”

  He saw her the next night, and the next, hoping
and thinking that in spite of the fact she was only twenty something might really come of this. She was so damn sophisticated, maybe the age difference wouldn’t matter. Maybe he would go down and see her in New York; she could come up to visit him in Boston. Maybe this would turn into something.

  Sometimes, talking to her, he felt she was really forty years old.

  Other times he thought she was ten.

  She cried a great deal.

  The fourth time he was with her she asked if he wanted some acid and he explained very carefully and with what he hoped was tolerance and understanding that he didn’t want any himself, it was not his own thing, he had enough problems with his head already (he was conscious of saying “head” instead of mind, trying to speak her language), and after that she said it was a shame because she had just taken some herself an hour before. He shouldn’t worry, it was a wonderful kind, called Shimmering Rainbow.

  The names of the alleged different brands of acid sounded to Potter like the brand names of scented soaps.

  He told her she was a goddamn little fool.

  She became mute, and then hysterical, claiming she saw the Devil on his ceiling.

  Angry but scared, Potter stayed up with her all night, trying to be reassuring and helpful, trying not to let his anger show.

  “I’ll probably never see you again,” she said calmly when he took her home at dawn after a silent breakfast.

  “Don’t be silly,” he said, knowing she was exactly right.

  Dean Hardy called and said he would like for Potter to come by and have a little private chat.

  Shit! As if it weren’t reckless enough getting involved with a twenty-year-old girl who was suffering the traumas of abortion and acid, Potter had to pick one whose family was a friend of the goddamn Dean of the college where he taught. He figured that’s what Hardy wanted to have a private little chat about. His scandalous affair with the daughter of dear friends of the Hardy family.

  As it turned out that was not the subject at all, but the matter the Dean did want to discuss was not a whole lot more comforting to Potter.

  “Tell me, Phil,” Dean Hardy said, tamping down his pipe as he and Potter sat in big leather chairs in his study with glasses of brandy, “what are your plans?”

  Potter suffered a sort of multiple déjà vu of all the times he had been asked that question, ever since he could remember, by his father, his future father-in-law, his guidance counselor at high school, his troop leader at Boy Scout Camp Guitche-Goo-Mee, his marriage counselor, his acting teachers, the head of the PR firm he had worked for, girls he had slept with on summer vacations, his CO in the Navy. He wondered if the “primal scream” might be traced back to the fact that when a baby came out of the womb a doctor was there to slap it on the ass and say “Tell me, kid, what are your plans?” But now he was thirty-four years old. And still being asked.

  He envisioned a future scene after death, finding himself in a neat office being interviewed by a man in a business suit, a man who was puffing a pipe and leafing through a folder marked “Potter, Philip.” The man looked up from the folder and asked pleasantly, “Tell me, Mr. Potter, now that your life is finalized, what are your plans?”

  “I don’t mean anything personal of course,” Dean Hardy said, “but career-wise.”

  What it all boiled down to was the inevitable ultimatum that Potter knew would eventually come, but not so soon: if he wanted to think beyond another year of teaching he would have to start work on his Ph.D. Potter said he would seriously consider it because he had found his teaching experience so rewarding; he would begin to look into the possibilities of his working toward the degree, and try to have some specific plans in mind that he could report on to the Dean before spring vacation. The Dean expressed his delight and offered his full cooperation.

  The idea of going back to school at his age, of listening to lectures and writing papers, of sucking up to professors, of writing an interminable thesis, was about as appealing to Potter as the suggestion that he go into the desert, remove all his clothes, pour honey on his genitals and have himself tied to an anthill.

  Back home, Potter got a drink and a notebook. He opened the notebook to an empty page and wrote “Possibilities.” Under that he scrawled—“Teaching—grad work.” He sat for a long time after that, finished his drink, made himself a new one, then took up the notebook again and wrote “PR—Charlie Bray.”

  Charlie Bray was a partner in one of the bigger Boston PR firms, a friendly, old-fashioned sort of a guy whom Potter had invited to come and talk to his PR seminar in hopes of pepping it up, getting the students turned on by a successful, practicing PR guy who was right here in Boston. But Charlie didn’t produce the desired effect. He had made a long, rambling talk, building up to a dramatic bit about how hard it was to define Public Relations, but how through his many years’ experience he had come up with an answer, and he was going to reveal it right there, in that classroom. With everyone awaiting a fantastic revelation, a gem of pure insight and shimmering imagination, Bray paused, leaned forward, and as if giving away the secret of the universe, said, “Public Relations is simply this—doing good and telling about it!” Potter thanked him profusely and dismissed the class in order to spare Bray from embarrassing questions or comments. Bray had taken him for a drink at The Statler, and, buoyed by his chance to perform before an audience and unaware that he had bombed, he praised Public Relations education, praised Potter in particular, and said if he ever wanted to get back in the field, back in on the action, there might well be a place for him at Sondheim and Bray. Potter thanked him, and tried to seem grateful, but hadn’t really taken it seriously. Now, faced with the conundrum of his Future again, he wrote down Charlie Bray’s name and then underlined it.

  Wearied by his effort at planning for the future he closed the notebook and turned on the Tonight Show. Potter had watched the talk shows so often he had come to feel part of them, as if he were actually an unseen guest just beyond the camera angle. He felt that Johnny and David and Dick were talking to him, Phil Potter, that he was right alongside them in one of those chairs. He didn’t feel he was merely among the great unknown mass audience, but that he was a regular insider who knocked around with Johnny and David and Dick, got drunk with Ed McMahon, and hung out in Vegas with Doc Severinsen. It seemed only right that he finally be interviewed himself, in person, on one of the shows. Best of all, the Tonight Show.

  He began to see it. First of all Johnny finishing a commercial and saying to the whole world out there watching, “Would you welcome please, Mr. Phil Potter!” Perhaps Doc Severinsen from his personal knowledge of Potter would have picked the Vanderbilt alma mater song, jazzed up, of course, as the theme for his entry, and Potter, cool and smiling, would emerge through the high curtains, parting them gracefully (he hated to see the guests who fumbled their way through the curtains), and would stride to the platform to shake hands with Johnny and Ed and their other guests of the evening—Zsa Zsa and Gore and Don Rickles and Aretha. The men would smile and shake his hand, Aretha would give him a peck on the cheek, and Zsa Zsa would call him “Phil, dahling” and hit him with a smoldering caress that would have the audience screeching and whistling.

  “Phil, it’s good to see you again.” Johnny smiles, tapping his pencil.

  “Good to be back, Johnny.”

  “Now, Phil, for those of our viewing audience—those very few—who don’t know all about you, could you tell us something about your career?”

  “Well, Johnny, as you know, I’m a failure.”

  Gasps and giggles from the audience.

  “Failure? What does that entail? I don’t think I’ve heard that term recently.”

  “Well, Johnny, you’re right in thinking it’s kind of outdated. You see, ‘Failure’ was a popular term in the late Fifties and early Sixties—when I was becoming one.”

  Laughter. Camera pans to beautiful girls in the audience who are obviously taken with Potter’s clever wit and can’t wait to mob him w
hen the show is over.

  “You see, Johnny,” Potter continues, “the opposite of ‘Failure’ was ‘Success,’ which is now exemplified by someone like, say, President Nixon.”

  The audience breaks up.

  “When I first realized that I had a knack for being a ‘Failure,’ Johnny, was back when—”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt you, Phil, but we have a message from one of our sponsors. Stay tuned, folks, and we’ll be right back to hear about the fascinating career of Phil Potter, an old-fashioned ‘Failure’—and perhaps he’ll tell us something about his plans for the future.…”

  Applause.

  Alpo.

  4

  With Marilyn going to New York every weekend, Potter set out on a series of haphazard sexual adventures, not out of lust so much as loneliness and boredom. He picked up girls wherever he could—sitting in Cambridge coffeehouses, waiting in line at his bank to cash a check, eating a cheeseburger at Brigham’s, waiting for the subway, shopping for records at The Minuteman. He smiled, cajoled, joked, winked, bought them drinks, took them back to his place and put on the ritual records. Once he got them as far as his living room he was pretty sure of getting them from there into bed. On rare occasions, however, the living room was as far as they would go.

  The rebuff that hurt most came at the hands of a BU student whom he picked up at an art gallery on Newbury Street. He took her to dinner at Casa Mexico in Cambridge, and she agreed without hesitation to go back to his place for drinks. About halfway through the first drink, she wondered if he minded her asking a personal question.

  “Of course not,” he said, imagining he had nothing to hide.

  “How old are you?”

  Potter felt the tips of his ears getting hot. He had never had a girl ask his age before.

  “Why do you ask?” he said, feigning a casual tone.

  “I’d just like to know.”

  In his own mind, Potter still thought of himself as being twenty-eight. In his twenties, he had never been able to imagine himself being thirty years old. Much less any older. Like most people, he had taken his youth for granted, assuming it would be a permanent condition, imagining against all reason that only people such as his parents got old. But he knew all that was of little interest to the girl.