{"id":2425,"date":"2011-06-18T22:21:35","date_gmt":"2011-06-19T02:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=2425"},"modified":"2015-09-26T13:44:57","modified_gmt":"2015-09-26T17:44:57","slug":"the-class-life-and-the-sex-life-of-the-collegian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=2425","title":{"rendered":"The Class Life and the Sex Life of the Collegian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Theme Songs Page<\/a> | Previous Theme Song<\/a> | Next Theme Song<\/a><\/p>\n

The Class Life and the Sex Life of the Collegian<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m Into Something Good, by Carole King and Gerry Goffin, sung by Herman\u2019s Hermits (1964), encountered 1968<\/h2>\n

Buy it here<\/a> | See it here<\/a> | Lyrics here<\/a><\/p>\n

I received a very early tutorial in social hierarchy and sexual privilege among college students in the late 1960s.\u00a0 Philadelphia was (and is) very much the college town.\u00a0 So, setting aside the under-aged high school girls who congregated along Locust Walk, Penn\u2019s fraternity row, on weekend nights who were a special case, and the coeds at our own university who might be less impressed by us because they were our peers, there were lots of places where more chronologically appropriate and perhaps more impressionable young women were to be found.\u00a0 My first or second Sunday at Penn, our dorm counselor[1] took us to visit a couple of such places.<\/p>\n

Harcum from a Rambler<\/h3>\n

Including the counselor, there were nine of us in his little green 1957 Rambler station wagon.\u00a0 After a brief tour of historic downtown Philly and breakfast, we went off to see Bryn Mawr College, but the place hadn\u2019t opened yet, so we dropped in on its nearby neighbor, Harcum College, a two-year institution, then single-sex.\u00a0 Its reputation[2] I described this way in a letter: \u201ca veddy posh \u2026 college\u2026. The atmosphere of the place is plush and palatial, but very, very protective.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Something<\/a>

Something like this …<\/p><\/div>\n

I think it was move-in day there.\u00a0 We rolled up next to an authority figure talking with some parents, and asked him, probably a shade too boisterously, if we knew the way to Penn Dorm.\u00a0 (This dorm \u2013 no relative of the University of Pennsylvania — was supposedly where a friend of someone in the car was going to be living.)\u00a0 The fellow didn\u2019t like the look of us and warned us to stay away from the campus that day, or he\u2019d have us arrested.\u00a0 \u201cWe only want gentlemen visiting this campus.\u201d<\/p>\n

We drove away, laughing as soon as it was safe to (our dorm counselor included), and found Penn Dorm on our own.\u00a0 Things didn\u2019t immediately improve there.\u00a0 We walked in the front door, all nine of us, probably coming on as a bunch of storm troopers.\u00a0 I actually saw a parent\u2019s jaw drop as we passed.\u00a0 The young lady we were seeking turned out to be elsewhere, at a meeting with the dean, but her friends were very friendly, and very helpful.\u00a0 But eventually we came up against a den mother, accompanied by a campus cop.\u00a0 And the cop was not simpatico.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, are you guys the ones in the blue Studebaker?\u201d<\/p>\n

We weren\u2019t about to get pedantic over nameplates, but we did intend to stand our ground if we could.\u00a0 The one who knew the girl protested that we had an invitation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat did the man tell yah?\u201d the cop interrupted.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was trying to say, sir,\u201d began our friend again.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat did the man tell yah?\u00a0 He told yah to stay out, dint he?\u201d\u00a0 And he poked one of the guys with his stick to emphasize the point.<\/p>\n

Clearly, it was no time to stand our ground after all.\u00a0 We let him herd us in the direction of the door.\u00a0 But as we neared the door, someone got through to him that we were Penn men.\u00a0 The change in his demeanor was instantaneous; no more toughness.<\/p>\n

And just in time, as we were met at the door by the first gent we\u2019d been talking to.\u00a0 \u201cGentlemen,\u201d he said, \u201cI\u2019m the head of the Harcum physical plant, and I told you to stay out.\u00a0 We could throw you guys in jail.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cop protested.\u00a0 \u201cOh, they\u2019re all right, Mr. Wilson.\u00a0 They just didn\u2019t know.\u201d\u00a0 Here he actually threw his arm around me.\u00a0 \u201cThey\u2019re just guys out to have a good time.\u201d\u00a0 He addressed me: \u201cI know.\u00a0 I was a boy, too, once.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t born like this, you know.\u201d\u00a0 Referring to his girth.<\/p>\n

Mr. Wilson wasn\u2019t placated.\u00a0 \u201cNow I want you gentlemen to get out of here right now, and we won\u2019t press charges.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cop intervened.\u00a0 \u201cBut they\u2019re just Penn boys.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilson didn\u2019t bat an eyelash, but he did change his tack.\u00a0 \u201cWell, you can come back tomorrow, but we don\u2019t allow boys on the campus when the girls are moving in.\u00a0 If you act like gentlemen, you\u2019re welcome here.\u00a0 If not, don\u2019t bother coming back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Groupie Status<\/h3>\n

So we learned that being a Penn guy gave us preferential access to women.\u00a0 In a town filled with colleges and universities, many of them dedicated to the education of women,[3] this was welcome information.\u00a0 And later experience only confirmed it. In that town, apart from Princeton University, safely sequestered over an hour away, Penn, my school, had the most \u2013 the only word that comes to mind is what Frank Zappa called \u201cgroupie status.\u201d\u00a0 Not a perfect analogy, but it will do.[4]<\/p>\n

During my freshman year, I took full advantage of this advantage.\u00a0 In practice this meant that I went to mixer dances[5] at schools all over and met young women there, or they came to mixers at Penn.\u00a0 And then I\u2019d date them, but always briefly or superficially.\u00a0 Lots of us were dating lots of people.\u00a0 I had a couple of real heart-flutters, but they weren\u2019t returned.[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

In the midst of all this I met Cindy, a black-haired lass (or at least that was the color of what I discovered was her fall) at one of the dances.\u00a0 I want to say it was at the Palestra, the great basketball floor at Penn, but I could be wrong about this.\u00a0 This would have been around the end of the first semester, or the very beginning of the second.\u00a0 Cindy went to Rosemont, a Catholic school, then single-sex, though since that time, like Harcum, it has gone co-ed.\u00a0 Cindy glommed hard onto me after our first dance together.<\/p>\n

Cashing In On Cachet<\/h3>\n

I wish I could remember her more clearly, but the fact that I can\u2019t exactly underlines the problem.\u00a0 The tone of what I do remember about her is all class markers, from her smoking to her accent.\u00a0 Think of the bridge-and-tunnel strivers in Saturday Night Fever<\/em> and I think you\u2019ll have the picture of what I saw.\u00a0 At that point though, I was mainly thinking about sex.<\/p>\n

And I fear it was class that she saw as well.\u00a0 Everywhere I\u2019d ever been, everything I\u2019d ever done, was equipping me for life in the professional classes.\u00a0 It was who all my parents were, it was where I was going to school, it was in my aspirations and my accent.\u00a0 I was, in sum, a Penn man.\u00a0 And I don\u2019t think for a minute she was blind to that.\u00a0 If I\u2019d looked exactly the same but gone to St. Joe\u2019s, I doubt I would have held nearly the allure.\u00a0 After all, women of my own social class found me perfectly resistible, in droves.<\/p>\n

And now we get to the Theme Song piece.\u00a0 We parted, I\u2019m pretty sure somewhere in downtown Philadelphia, most likely the Suburban Station, and I know we had made a promise to get together at a date both certain and soon.\u00a0 I believe it had been raining, and I had my umbrella (furled), as I was walking across a wet square.\u00a0 That\u2019s when I\u2019m Into Something Good<\/em> came unbidden to my mind.\u00a0 And why not?\u00a0 The lyrics fit my situation pretty closely.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s the kind of girl who\u2019s not too shy<\/em> : Check!<\/p>\n

She danced close to me like I hoped she would<\/em>: Check!<\/p>\n

We only danced for a minute or two \/ But then she stuck close to me the whole night through<\/em>: Check!<\/p>\n

I walked her home and she held my hand \/ I knew it couldn’t be just a one-night stand \/ So I asked to see her next week and she told me I could<\/em>: Also check!<\/p>\n

There had been something about the way she kissed goodnight that had made it clear to me I could probably go anywhere on the proverbial basepath with her.\u00a0 And then her tongue had been in my ear at some point as well.\u00a0 I started singing the song to myself.\u00a0 I went through it several times, clicking the point of the umbrella on the Philadelphia sidewalks as I made my way back.<\/p>\n

Sounds as if I was all set to cash in on my cachet.<\/p>\n

The prospect became more explicit on my next date with her.\u00a0 Again, I wish my memories were clearer, but that exactly illustrates the problem.\u00a0 Putting together little clues in my memory, I believe we started the evening at my dorm room, where there was some making out, then dinner and a movie downtown.\u00a0 Only two things vividly stand out in my mind about that date.\u00a0 One was that when I first caught sight of her, the long black hair was gone.\u00a0 What I\u2019d seen was a fall, not her real hair.\u00a0 With it shorter, she wasn\u2019t nearly as attractive; I was taken aback.\u00a0 In retrospect, I believe she was posing me some kind of test: was I sufficiently attracted to her without the help from the fall that she could trust her body and her heart to me? \u00a0And beneath that test, a bigger one: was I okay with the class difference?<\/p>\n

The other is a picture of the two of us, at the end of the date, making out hot and heavy in some underground corner of the catacombs under Center City, not far from the Suburban Station, before I took her to her train.\u00a0 My hands were all over her, and she was moaning.\u00a0 I seemed to be passing her test.\u00a0 But I was failing the bigger test of my own character.\u00a0 Droit de seigneur<\/em> is as corrupting for the lord as it is degrading to the serf.<\/p>\n

But in the end I passed that test.\u00a0 After agonizing over it for a few days, I sent Cindy a letter telling as much of the truth as I could bear to tell.\u00a0 Which was a lot. \u00a0We weren\u2019t right for each other, I wrote.\u00a0 And that much was true.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t spell out the reasons for the mismatch, and the hints I gave were deliberately wrong.\u00a0 But the rest of what I wrote was also true.\u00a0 I said it was obvious we were going to be having sex if we went on, and while I wasn\u2019t sure where I stood on the official Catholic line on this, I knew sex was serious, and if it wasn\u2019t kept for marriage, at least it should be kept for something committed.\u00a0 Strange, now, to note that I was speaking my mind about sex, but not about class.\u00a0 My Catholic upbringing had given me a vocabulary and a straightforwardness for one but not the other.<\/p>\n

Cindy, bless her, wrote back, saying that it was a great compliment to her that I would look at the relationship so squarely.\u00a0 She acknowledged that the impending sex would have put her in conflict.\u00a0 (Catholic kids had that burden.)\u00a0 And she ended by addressing, somewhat more squarely than I had dared to, the class issue.\u00a0 She was sorry she had \u201cdisappointed\u201d me in that regard, she said.<\/p>\n

She could have spared herself that apology.\u00a0 None of us has anything to apologize for about where one comes from, Cindy least of all.<\/p>\n

Classist at Heart<\/h3>\n

In a strange way, then, I guess the promise of that song was fulfilled.\u00a0 I was in for something good when I met Cindy.\u00a0 It was brief, it was abortive, but it was good, especially in how it ended.\u00a0 And it left me confronting, if not remotely solving, my own classism. \u00a0If one\u2019s early affairs are about learning, this was a great success, something good.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

[1] That\u2019s right, the same gentleman I mentioned in my earlier Theater Days piece.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[2] I can\u2019t speak to the reality.\u00a0 To the best of my recollection this was the only time I was there.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[3] I used to call them girls\u2019 schools, but my wife assures me there is no way to say this without sounding sexist.\u00a0 We don\u2019t say boys\u2019 schools, and we never did.\u00a0 So I guess that\u2019s fair.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[4] My guess is that if you went back today, you might find Penn absolutely paramount in the \u201cgroupie status\u201d contest.\u00a0 But this was a slew of U.S. News & World Report rankings ago.\u00a0 (In fact, those rankings<\/a> didn\u2019t even start until 12 years after I graduated.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[5] Though it astonishes me, I see no trace of this former staple of campus social life when I visit academia today.\u00a0 People just don\u2019t go to dances, or they don\u2019t do it much.\u00a0 Of course men and women still find each other, but to all appearances they do it in other ways.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[6] There was Lucy, for instance, whose steadfast look and voice swept me off my feet, and who kissed me back, but who did not share my love of jazz and made me take her home early from the Quaker City Jazz Festival and wouldn\u2019t go out with me again.\u00a0 There was Ellie, who flirted hard, but wouldn\u2019t go out with me because I was a gentile.\u00a0 There was Cathy, who would go out with me but not very happily \u2013 because I was a gentile.\u00a0 There was Laurie, a late-model beatnik, who had no problems with me being a gentile, but did have problems with my not being my friend Bill; she and Bill managed to make each other miserable for some time after I lost interest.<\/p>\n

Source for Rambler image here<\/a><\/p>\n

Copyright (c) Jack L. B. Gohn, except for photographs<\/p>\n

Theme Songs Page<\/a> | Previous Theme Song <\/a>| Next Theme Song<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

But in the end I passed that test. After agonizing over it for a few days, I sent Cindy a letter telling as much of the truth as I could bear to tell. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,968],"tags":[2015,2689,2809,2796,2798,2789,2802,2602,2804,2799,2790,2797,2792,2791,2794,2805,2800,2806,2795,2807,2808,2793,2801,2810,2803,2464],"class_list":["post-2425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-closeup","category-theme-songs","tag-2015","tag-2689","tag-bridge-and-tunnel-crowd","tag-bryn-mawr-college","tag-campus-police","tag-carole-king","tag-catholic-guilt","tag-center-city","tag-college-rankings","tag-frank-zappa","tag-gerry-goffin","tag-harcum-college","tag-hermans-hermits","tag-im-into-something-good","tag-locust-walk","tag-mixers","tag-palestra","tag-quaker-city-jazz-festival","tag-rambler","tag-rosemont","tag-saturday-night-fever","tag-social-class","tag-st-joseph-college","tag-suburban-station","tag-u-s-news-world-report","tag-university-of-pennsylvania"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2425"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5502,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2425\/revisions\/5502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}