Armed Vision

"crawl into a man's head & how to get inside a woman's head, being a man?" William Carlos Williams



I break out in an ugly rash thinking about frat rats. Tremendous biceps. Teeth that Colgate would be proud to endorse. Young jocks in the prime of life, spouting glittering generalities they all term Love.

Hey. Who doesn't get sucked in? Fraternity Row boasts a string of well-kept houses, large as life with handsome porchs, and handsome lounges, handsome bedrooms. And there they are: the chosen guys, just waiting to hook a nice- sized fish out of the school swimming by. They're loud, aggressive and willing to bet the last frat dollar on how well they can land the prize catch.

The initial excitement of college social life is enough to give anybody an Excedrin headache. Who gets called up is the talk of the freshman dormitory. And who gets called up twice in the same week is reason for interrogation by sorority rushing agents. It has little to do with what's stirring inside the brain, more to do wth the photography you handed the college that placed the freshman bluebook in your quivering hands. Nice, rubber smiles are cinchs. And if you have had enough, sit on a garden swing holding the cat for a photograph to look inviting. You're an instant smash! Oh, the excitement. Hanging in the balance.

Those Coke dates invitations to have a beer at Pink's at four in the afternoon and the joy of being handed a rose (long-stemmed) with a note attached: " You're in!" is celebrated with such glib pomp and circumstance that even the rose- bearers find it difficult to believe. What's it all about? beyond minutes of the dull meetings: Events. Money to burn for social affairs. A few snapshots for the yearbook of Greek girls in college shirts washing cars to benefit the physically challenged. Publicly displayed sorority pins.

It's got something to do with Fraternity House Row.


* * *



Hi, I'm Don. He comes on with a real amount of savy. Ultra-brite. And the fact that he is a senior and inside the Delta Upsilon Fraternity House at this very moment. Well. How about a date? You've got a nice face. Saw it in the bluebook. We're having a beer blast on Friday. Love it if you'd come. I've hung up the phone, and well.

Come Friday. Suzie in the next room gives me a new hairdo. electric curlers. I've used Nair and smelling like a lemming. Er, Jennifer lends me her gold choker and Francie a mohair shawl. I've adjusted the pantihose three times, been staring all night at last year's yearbook on page twelve, third row, first scowling face and been given an overdose of advice on how to handle what the girls call "the animalism". After too much of alcohol, I'm pretty nauseous, juicing up several beers in the girl's dorm for starters.

Hi, I'm Don. And there he is: signing the registrar, helping me with my coat, admiring my eyes, and hustling me out of the dorm house with the kind of flair a high school girl dreams of someday witnessing. But beyond that he's a Don Juan . . .in action. A few beers along the way, a few more while standing in front of the Delta Up. A few more in the lounge. Like every other guy he has his heart set on landing a good wet pussy. Nothing rude about it? He's been briefed since initiation on how to play that hand.

I attempt to mingle and get nowhere, it appears.

All the gals are hanging on to their dates for dear life, as the guys are gaffawing their way through an enchanting evening of moist figs.

There are missions. A keg is on tap in the bathtub.

"So, let's celebrate!", says Don. He has a room up on the second floor. He makes a note of this several times, before I am asked point-blank if 'd like to see his basketball trophies. It seeems that he's developed a terrible itch in his groin for shining them up and the possibility of getting me to show my affections for him is as good as getting him to eat Vegetarian Pizza. He's conditioning himself to sit nicely in front of other women. He had maybe had enough of the tap. I continue to stall.


. . . the crowd is thinning, thinning out. He's getting nervous. I'm either an absolute "NO" or a "perhaps, we'll see." and he can't quite figure out which. Suddenly, he is spinning around, staring into my pink-checkered gingham empire-waist-line cotten dress with dotted-swiss eyelit white lace trim and a nice baste-line I did with a pull-through tie belt, and saying, "We must go?"

We're up there. And it smells like a frat rat's bedroom, alright. A mixture of Brut cologne and dirty socks. He takes the time to give me a rundown on the victories in the athletic world, then quickly moves to the big green frog and slaps on Iron Butterfly."in a gadda da vida . . ." stuff like that. The dry music is
pumping him like an air apparatus for bikes and he's ready to glide over the window for air en route to a frail, faltering star when a buddy unexpectedly enters.

"Doesn't anybody knock around here?" and the guy is obviously soused as he rummages for something in his bottom drawer. It's obviously the two of them against the world. "I give you one hour, buddy. One." And he exits. Don is momentarily at odds. He paces the floor. Comes up with a grimace that takes the ease out of sitting on a corner of a bedspread with football helmets all over in red and black, and trying to keep my feet crossed as delicately as possible. Of all things he brings out poetry.

love
is
absurd
and
blissful
simple
pretty
nirvanic
breathless
genuine
sacred
or
not always forever but nice
most
of
the
time
it
will be
memorable
do you want me

So when he takes out his Boot-legged Cathy Albums and plugs in the sound system functionally in his shelf I ask him. "Can you turn it down?" and he adds, "But it drowns out my conscience."
"Thanks alot. Feeling guilty?"I say to him thinking of the Dylan Boot-legs as masterpieces.
"I'm about to." in a clean-cut,muddling way he says in that very dorm room filled with wonder and palaces of the mind pasted on those many many pure-minded records.