Distillation of goodwill
I had the same college room for all three years of my undergraduate life. I stayed put in A6 Kenny. This was a significant concession. Other students were shunted all over the place during their time at the university, while I only needed to get used to one set of arrangements. Even so, of course, the human context changed around me, and I was deprived of the little arrangements that had grown up with the people I knew. P. D. Hughes, for instance, went to Lensfield Road, which was very sad. My set of immediate connections was destroyed as decisively as if a child had swept a cobweb away with a stick, and I had to start spinning the old charm-threads from scratch.
Still, there were compensations to the process of starting all over again. I was an initiate, an adept, and could often answer freshmen’s questions. I learned to presume on my seniority when it came to asking for little bits of portering. I told myself it was the new-bugs’ privilege to oblige me. I owed them nothing for their trouble. I cultivated mild insensitivity, a much healthier thing than spending your whole time conscious of being in the world’s debt.
Belatedly I was beginning to find my feet. With my change of course I could tell myself I was a freshman all over again, only this time I could play the system a lot better. I attended the Societies Fair on my own. Second-years normally gave the whole jamboree a miss, since their social lives needed less propping up, but I threw myself confidently into the maelstrøm of the Corn Exchange. I hitch-lifted without any trouble. In fact it was intoxicatingly easy. Why wasn’t it always like this? I suppose because this was a meandering and a milling crowd, rather than a bustling one. I tried different approaches. Everything seemed to work. I felt like a gambler on a winning streak.
For a short time even the corniest lines brought me a smile and a hand on the tiller. ‘Hey, man, can you help me keep on truckin’ to the next stall but one?’ That worked more than once, on those with hippy pretentions. Drawling ‘Sister, Do You Know the Way to San José?’ produced as much of a beam on one young woman’s face (oddly reddened, a drinker’s face on someone who was little more than a girl) as if I’d stuffed a handful of fivers into the pocket of her coat, a military coat which was far too big for her. She pushed me where I wanted to go and then took my name and college address. She said she’d be in touch. The wheelchair ran perfectly without the need for a motor, chugging smoothly on a distillation of goodwill.
I made a beeline for the Zoology Club, which I was charmed to learn held ‘conversaziones’ rather than meetings as such. That was what was missing from my Cambridge life — conversaziones. Then, as I negotiated the loudly echoing spaces of the Corn Exchange, idly wondering which human ripple I would graciously allow to carry me forward, I could hear a subdued rhythmic chanting. It struck me immediately as ominous, before I could make out a word.
Eventually I could make out the slogan being broadcast: Two Four Six Eight — Gay Is Just as Good as Straight. Crazily I thought that everyone would look at me, that my blushing in that confined space would spark an explosion. It wasn’t so much a blush, more of a heart attack displaced on to my face. And so soon after I had mentally disparaged another human being for undue redness of complexion!
I experienced horripilation, yes, and lowered body temperature, but none of the other classic signs of the proximity of God. What I felt was the proximity of terrible fear. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.
Every now and then the chant was replaced by another, which went Three Five Seven Nine — Lesbians Are Mighty Fine. This was much less threatening to my peace of mind. In any case, since it was uttered by male voices exclusively, the slogan gave the impression of hearsay rather than any great conviction.
I can’t explain my panic flight. I seemed to have lost a lot of confidence. As a Vulcan schoolboy I had been positively cheeky when confronted with evangelicals, taunting Billy Graham’s minions with their gnawed fingernails and penchant for hell-fire. As a freshman I had groped a botanist in the presence of my bedmaker. Now I had relapsed. I had become re-infected with depressive strains of narrow-mindedness, guilt and shame. Perhaps it’s an indication of how low my state of being actually was, during this my higher education.
With a heavy heart I realised that sooner or later I would have to come to terms with the Cambridge Wing of the Gay Liberation Front, or CHAP, as it was actually called, rather than drive round Trumpington looking for the Monarchist League. But not just yet. Perhaps my dread was based, deep down, on something quite simple. This was one group whose rejection I wouldn’t be able to shrug off. If they wouldn’t have me, who would? If these untouchables refused any contact with me then there was no further to fall.
Didn’t have the hips for the job
In the meantime, their slogan echoed in my head for the rest of the day. The trouble with such ear-catching formulations is that they’re so vulnerable to rewording. After Two Four Six Eight my mind kept supplying starker conclusions for the couplet.
Cheery Chants Won’t Change Your Fate.
Join and Feel the Force of Hate.
Not to mention: John Will Never Find a Mate.
The red-faced young woman who had taken my address at the Societies Fair tracked me down in my Kenny lair a few days later. She was tiny and elfin, with masses of red hair and many scarves. She wore glasses with octagonal lenses, which were fashionable at the time. I dare say she was modelling her style on Janis Joplin, as so many women did in those days, except that she didn’t have the hips for the job, and somehow I doubted that she’d ever drunk anything stronger than Earl Grey. She did have a lot of vitality, though. She lit up my room like a little auburn bonfire.
‘Oh, hello,’ she said, as if we’d bumped into each other on the street. ‘Good to see you again. I was just wondering — would you like to be part of a Day of Action for disabled people?’
Would I? I didn’t know. What would it involve? I played for time, saying, ‘I really don’t know — some of my best friends were disabled, of course.’ This wasn’t even true, not since the day I had left Vulcan School and started to sink slowly into the mainstream.
She said, ‘You might enjoy it. We’re planning a consciousness-raising event, though actually it may turn into a zap.’
‘Very good. What is a zap?’
‘You really don’t know? Oh, man … a zap is a piece of direct action intended to open people’s eyes and bring about radical change.’
‘Can you give me an example?’
‘Easy. You know the drinks containers there used to be deposits on, so that you could return them and get a refund? Big business wants you to throw away your bottles and buy new ones. So consciousness-raising would be getting everyone to realise that this is wasteful and stupid, and zapping would be dumping, let’s say, a million bottles outside the headquarters of Coca-Cola.’
‘I see.’ The idea of being dumped outside an uncaring institution had a certain appeal. Perhaps this dynamic waif would chain me to the railings outside Downing and set in motion some very overdue radical change. ‘Can you give me some more details?’
‘We plan to do a comprehensive survey of facilities in Cambridge — shop, restaurants, pubs. To see whether disabled people are fairly treated. Whether they can get into those places, for a start.’