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Show 186 remorse to be friendly to me but the others, when we met in the hall, looked at me curiously, as if I was someone else's pet animal. Amelia came by once just to see it and wrinkled her nose at the smell. "Well, at least it's better than that hole at the Co-op," she said, and the next day gave me a moving-in gift, a bottle of Airwick. Well, she ttsW lived in a bourgeois building in a bourgeois neighborhood, a square brick sixplex with no style at all. Carpeted stairs, always clean. It was disgusting. I felt better about my place. So autumn came, I started classes and talked Freedom while she talked Free Love and pushed for a production of Lysistrata. I was majoring in psychology because while I was at Purdue I had heard one of those engineers say that he didn't believe in psychology, that no such thing existed, and so I was going to get my degree and then spread the gospel, enlighten the world. Me and Freud. Amelia played the title role in Lysistrata but I didn't even read for a part, too afraid I would get one and have to walk on stage with a fake erection. I didn't psychoanalyze myself either; once more I hung around backstage and helped where I could, mainly to keep one of the Spartans from monopolizing Amelia's time. Opening night I got an extra ticket and asked Ben Gordon to go. I needed all the friends I could get. He was a tall guy, just a little soft looking, with black hair and white skin like he needed to get out in the sun more. But he was a handsome guy, and I sort of liked him, so we went to opening night. That really is a dirty play. Sitting there with an audience I was shocked all over again and laughed immoderately. Ben just sat there and "JooK«* at Amelia. Afterwards he asked if I knew her. "Sure. She's my best friend." "What do you mean, friend?" |