"-what do I want from-life? Or-"
"No, girl. From me."
There. It was said.
No playfulness between us. No sexual banter. Though there was (I saw, helpless) the swagger of the man's body, the ease of his knifeblade-body, the incline of his head. He began to whistle in his thin tuneless way; you could see it must've been a terrific way of provoking his elders. And maybe rolling his eyes. Big white-orbed Negro eyes. There was the hand-knitted cap pulled low on his forehead, crinkling his skin. A caption beneath this face might read WANTED.
I was taken by surprise. Yet I could not show it. I would examine my obsession with this man as if it was a problem: an intellectual puzzle intriguing to us both. For we were students of philosophy, engaged in a common quest for truth; for paring back myths and subterfuge in the pursuit of truth; and what is philosophy but the ceaseless and indefatigable invention of and "solving" of problems? I understood that Vernor Matheius was asking frankly What do you want from me that you imagine I can provide you? And what would you presume to provide me, in return?
By the calendar it was early April. Yet snow remained on the ground like strips of grimy Styrofoam. We walked with our heads ducked against the wind in our common effort; we walked without speaking; Vernor Matheius had posed a question to me which I would not answer glibly; I was in fact stymied by how to answer it at all; his whistling was both companionable and meant to distance him from me; air gusted about us like roiling thoughts. I thought with a smile If the would-be assailant should see me, he would be forced to re-define me. And if my Kappa ex-sisters should see me?
Without asking me, without a word of explanation, Vernor Matheius steered me to Allen Street, to a pub called Downy's. Was he really taking me here? Would we be entering this noisy, crowded campus pub together, like a couple? Vernor Matheius a head taller than the diminutive white girl at his side? In the smoky interior, eyes moved upon us; there was an unmistakable shifting of attention, on the part of a number of individuals; a reflexive instinct, and nothing personal. Of course, Vernor Matheius took not the slightest notice. He was accustomed to being looked-at, and maybe stared-at. He was accustomed to being visible.
Vernor Matheius nudged me toward the rear of the pub. Into a small booth in a corner. On the old-wood walls were orange Syracuse pennants; laminated newspaper pages, SYRACUSE WARRIORS TROUNCE CORNELL. I had never been in Downy's before but it was a place much liked by Kappas, and when Vernor went to the bar to get drinks I saw that I was being observed, eyes shifting on me and away, by several Kappas, in the company of their fraternity boyfriends. Oh my God. Look. And who she's with. I felt a thrill of defiance, vindication. They had known I was a bad girl, and this was the proof.
Vernor Matheius returned finally with two tall glasses of beer. He'd had to wait at the bar, but you could see the bartenders were busy. And finally he was served. And made his way back to the booth. My first taste of beer, and it seemed to scald my mouth. The bitter dank smell. I thought of my vanished father. The delicious poison he'd been able to extract from alcohol. Vernor Matheius drank, and laughed, his chunky white teeth laughing, not at me but-"This place, know what it makes me think of?" I shook my head, leaning forward to hear. The table beneath my elbows was made of old timber, two crude planks varnished to a dark sheen, covered in carved initials, inked phrases, cigarette burns. "Schopenhauer. The Will. The triumph of the Will." He gestured at the crowd, the smoky haze penetrated by shrill voices and laughter. I said, with an air of contrition, that I didn't know much about Schopenhauer; Vernor Matheius shrugged as if he'd have been surprised, if I had; he was a natural teacher, or preacher; hadn't he said, he'd studied in a seminary, he began to speak of Schopenhauer and his "quarrel" with the philosopher who believed that the individual is but the phenomenon and not the thing-in-itself; though he had to concur with Schopenhauer that in strife, sex, reproduction the individual is the dupe of the species-"The unenlightened individual, that is." When he'd been twenty-four, it was philosophy that had opened his eyes; philosophy that was "an ice pick, a scalpel"; philosophy that was a surgical instrument for analysis, dissection, debridement, and comprehension. I listened fascinated. I had never heard anyone speak so passionately. And to me. If I hadn't already been in love with Vernor Matheius I would have fallen in love with him now, within the space of a few minutes; I was lost to him; mesmerized by his voice; his intelligence; the purity of his conviction, and its impersonality. Vernor Matheius's voice amid the drunken clamor of the pub at this, its most crowded hour. How he yearned, he said, for a "life of the mind"; for the clarity of "pure, blazing, fearless thought" to illuminate the murk of history and of time. " 'Better that the world should perish than that I, or any other human being, should believe a lie'-as Bertrand Russell said. Wittgenstein's mentor at first, and then his rival and enemy." When he fell silent, I could not think of a worthy reply; I tried to smile, and didn't succeed; I was overwhelmed by him, like a swimmer who has ventured into a river not knowing how quickly the land falls away, how powerful the undertow. Vernor Matheius saw my perplexity and said it was an irony, wasn't it, he was being trained to teach, yet he hadn't the patience for teaching, at least not undergraduates; probably he wouldn't wind up teaching if he could survive somehow else, there was the example of Wittgenstein who'd been a gardener, for a while; working with your hands is a good antidote for too much thinking; anyway, it wouldn't matter how poor he was; he, Vernor Matheius, was used to being poor; his parents were both dead, long ago; his family was scattered; he himself had no intention of ever marrying, and still less would he sire offspring; he declared he had no interest in perpetuating his precious genes, or the very species Homo sapiens-"They can get along without this fellow's contribution."
But how sad, was my immediate thought. I said, "Oh, I understand."
He laughed for some reason, I hoped not at me; and I laughed with him. He was a man, I saw, who liked to laugh; yet didn't have much opportunity to laugh; for the professional study of philosophy doesn't inspire laughter, nor any degree of mirth; just as the earthy smell of death is excluded from the philosophical examination of finitude and death, so too laughter is excluded; it was a somber, sobering vocation. I thought I will help him to laugh. Inspiration, fueled by the giddiness of the moment. Several awkward swallows of beer. Trying not to gag. Yes, I would inspire laughter in this man; I refused to be one of the women who diminish, not increase, a man's laughter; I refused to be a woman who made Woman my life. Quickly I told Vernor what was only true: I agreed with him, I didn't want to marry, didn't want to have babies. (But was this so? Ida had married, Ida had had babies.) Vernor laughed carelessly saying he'd never met a "female" who wasn't maternal-"In her heart, if you could penetrate it. Or another organ." Hotly I said, "There are exceptions." "No exception 'proves the rule.' Only disproves it." I was left behind in all this. Vaguely I smiled lifting my glass. Vernor drained his glass, went to buy another. I sat basking, or dazed, in the aftermath of his words. Had he praised me? Had he made an exception of me?
A couple now. Perceived as such.
It hurt me to recall how, in the Kappa house, I'd overheard my Kappa sisters speak of "niggers." Not meanly, not with malice, but matter-of-factly. One of our house boys was a Negro, that's to say a "nigger." There were categories of girls whom Christian sororities automatically cut: "niggers," "Jews."