Tufts University - Jumbo Yearbook (Medford, MA)

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YEAR OF THE FESTER (Want-Ad Blues) The doors of East Hall closed with a sigh, and Norman Squid stood for a while on the asphalt, in a spot of peachy sunlight, hearing a far distant sound of a twanging electric guitar running up and down scales of vibrant rock; the music seems to cause the puffy white clouds to roll across the windy blue March sky, the campus to come alive thinking of Spring, and its people to venture forth like nervous groundhogs in the first warm sunlight. Norman s cratched his unshaven beard, disgruntled from his talk with Professor Braintree of the English Department. Under his arm was a short-story, a poem, and a 2-page something or other entitled The One-Hundred Inevitables. Braintree was a fat man with frosty hair and spectacles, whose smile looked as if he ' d be more at home in a barber shop. With a Ph.D. in Psychology besides, he ' s a potential threat if the conversation becomes too personal. He ' s been known to use his psychological scissors on personal writings of poor misguided fools like Norman who scribble and type up for Writing Class all the crazy mixed-up dreams they have after a good Saturday night. Your stories, Norman, show some fantastic imagination, but you ' re out in the clouds with it. Come back to earth. Write about real people with wild imaginations. Write about myself? My life on this boring campus? Why do you think I need fantasy? Try it. Let me see something every two weeks. The campus is boring because you, my friend, are boring. I ' ll write about writing, about being a writer, thought Norman, which is an awful hard thing to do walking down the steps to the Library when classes everywhere are letting out for lunch. Writing about being a writer is hard, too, if you don ' t know how to be one. Norman pondered this and walked it almost into the ground by the time he reached the steps to his house on Whiteplains Circle. On the front lawn Limping Crowe, an Indian friend who lived in Norman ' s house, was showing a few kids how to tie knots, and Bad-News Drizzle was reading Economics on the front porch, smoking a cigarette. Howdy-do said Bad-News. Looks like rain and more inflation. Bad news is no news to me. I ' m gonna go write a story about myself. And Norman bounded up the stairs to the third floor, to his peculiar little room next to the john. Dorothy ' s been here, the room ' s clean, the bed ' s made, and there ' s a fucking resume on the typewriter. A note says Norman — remember what your father said — no more money in june. You have to finish your resume. I ' ve typed your name and address, you do the rest. I also left a copy of the Help-Wanted Ads on your bed. See you ... And sure enough, it is typed, neatly Norman Q. Squid, 25 Whiteplains Circle, Slumberville, Ass. 02144 Norman felt inclined to add more biographical data, and he ended up adding paragraphs: 9

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I came to this fraternity house looking for comfortable seclusion. Dorm life had made me quite hung-up about my personal bodily functions. I found a house of total strangers led by a strange fat man masquerading as a student and a fraternity president. His name was Leopold, and he ruled with an iron skillet and a constantly smoking cigar, until one day the house was mysteriously fire-bombed. Now it was quite a known thing that Leopold was some sort of magician. The smell of his room was peculiar, and it wasn ' t all coming from the dead frogs he kept in his closet for experiments. Rumor has it that he sat for a solid year masturbating at the tender feet of the Great Phaedrus, teacher of the Mystical Arts at the University of Transylvania. A respected and credible witness had testified that Leopold had made lightning appear in a closed room. When the fire-bombing occurred, Leopold was working in the restaurant where he was head chef. Leopold loved food. Living next to the john, I ' ve had the misfortune of smelling wafts of a mixed aroma of pizza, diarrhea and mouldy fish. The smell would follow him into his gloomy third floor room like Peter Lorre following Sydney Greenstreeet. Two days after the fire-bombing (which caught me asleep with my favorite person, and we made a break naked down the fire-escape), Leopold packed his bags into his ' 44 Nash and headed south, rumor has him in South America, yage country. As he slammed the door he yelled something about shrinking our heads. All of the fraternity rituals and initiation materials and frat robes went with him, packed away in a steamer trunk. Within moments after Leopold ' s departure, the house suddenly came alive. Doors opened, stereos blared, people shouted about the Curse of Leopold and the Death of the Fraternity. We became a close- knit group, all integrating our activities, doing them out in the open instead of in seclusion. There was Limping Crowe, sitting cross-legged in candle light reading ancient philosophical texts; Bad News reading Time Magazine in his easy chair; Bartholomew Martin, a guitar-pickin ' New Englander who ' d travelled far and wide searching for the legendary Blind Umo Mundah, reading William Blake while listening to Bob Dylan; Zukie Bundy, reading Zap Comix while listening to the Supremes; Nelson and Marchetti playing Parchese while Ichabod Osbourne and Leo Di Genero passed joints and beers, waiting their turn. We were known for a while as the Freak Frat until we allowed women in the house for the first time, and we changed the name to Opium Acres , and Spacy with her Dog Jarvis moved in along with Jude and Spotts the tops, and finally a girl nobody knew, a quiet, beautiful brown-haired co-ed named Janis, who in time became my lover... There was a knock on the door. Lover? Can I come in? It was Dorothy. No! You unplugged my stereo to plug in this wretched typewriter, you hid my dope and my Morrocan bongo drums, and you probably threw out my roaches!