Raise The Walls To Hide These Flaws

It was late summer, 1994 and I returned to Euphegenia for my second year.  When dad dropped me off at good old Wilton Hall, it felt like someone hit the Play button on my life again which, for the last three months had been on a forced Pause.  It had to be.  Working in a hellish factory, constantly being yelled at by chubby guys in wife-beaters with mullets and porn 'staches, while also being treated like a freeloader in what I thought was my home was not my real life.  I was sure of it.  Everything on campus looked just as I’d left it.  It felt like coming home.  Although, just as when I’d gone to my parents’ house at the beginning of the summer and discovered there’d been major change, I was about to experience a change here at my old familiar dormitory.  I was about to meet my new roommate. 

Early in the June, I received the one call I’d hear from Artemis all summer.  The first thing he asked was “did you hear about Milton?”  I told him no, of course not.  I hadn’t heard much about anyone that summer.  It was then that Artemis filled me in about Milt’s attempts to be green by showering with a friend.  Of course that friend was that aforementioned female student who lived on campus and he’d been kicked out.  As I think back now, I don’t even remember if anything happened to her.  I wondered if her “scary-ass Jamaican" boyfriend (he was actually Bahamian), as Artemis and some of the other black kids that hung around our room called him, ever found out.  Come to think of it, not only do I not know if she got in trouble with the school, I’m not even sure she was ever seen again after that summer! 

I’m kidding of course.  I’m sure she was fine.  Allegedly.  But Milt was out. The school had zero tolerance for, well, they didn't get specific. There'd been stories of other couples busted for making the beast with two backs who'd received slaps on the genitals, or even no punishment at all. Yet my black roommate performed a naked Heimlich maneuver on a white girl and he was booted. Done and done. Unfortunately, it also turned out, Artemis was gone too. 
Not kicked out. He told me he was not coming back in the fall.  I don’t think he’d done too much better than me academically that first year.  More to the point I just don’t think his family could afford the rising costs of private school, nor did they want to get buried in loans. Whatever it was, his time as a student at Euphegenia College was over.  My roommate, my friend, my brother, and one of the funniest, most talented people I’ve ever known was gone.  I had this strange, foreboding sense that I was on my own the rest of this journey.  Fortunately he'd maintain one connection to the school that would keep him popping in from time-to-time.

I’ve mentioned before what a beautiful natural landscape the campus was.  Well, something about it in the spring took on a whole new dimension.  It was as if Jesus took a spring break and handed the keys to a different deity, Aphrodite the goddess of love.  When the foliage was a bloom, so it seemed were the genitalia.  Especially in the young men.  Most upperclassmen were already attached by this point in their college experience.  After all, declaring a significant other was nearly as important as your major.  But it seemed when the sun came out and things warmed up a little, we boys woke out of a funk.  Like bears rising from hibernation, we were out of the caves and ravenous, on the hunt with our snouts constantly in the air (something else constantly in our paws.) 

Artemis had not been immune to love’s lonely call.  Apparently he was giving off the right pheromones as well.  One day I was nosing around the bookshop after lunch (probably looking for a Snickers bar) and was approached by a girl named Holly.  I knew her, but I didn’t know her.  We didn’t run in similar circles.  Holly was a girl jock.  She was stocky, with a blonde boy cut and barely any makeup.  But don’t mistake me, she was beautiful.  She had these wide, crystal blue eyes and a gorgeous natural face.  She was a right off the assembly line from Holland, Michigan.  They must manufacture and implant those eyes there.  Even recently a woman came into my office and it came up she was originally from Michigan.  She was shocked when I asked without any further indication if she was from Holland.  When she asked how I’d guessed I gave a more diplomatic answer for the sake of my job, but the truth is she had those same bright blue peepers.

Turns out the little Dutch girl, who had never dated a non-Caucasian in her life had taken a liking to my roomie.  I guess they’d been sat next to each other or something and he’d had her laughing through an entire lecture.  He had that gift, and normally without trying.  That was just his nature.  Just like we were in junior high, she had come to me to find out about him.  At first it was just “I love your roommate.  He’s so funny.”  But it quickly progressed to “so does Artemis have a girlfriend?” 

Why no, I had smiled.  And I guess that was all it took.  She asked me to tell him to call her.  So I did.  They were more or less inseparable after that. When they were physically apart, I'd find him on the phone in our room with her for hours. One day, I came in and he was lying on his bunk with the phone to his head. He put his hand over the receiver and whispered "listen to this." She was singing the Cranberries song "Linger." I felt awkward that he invited me into such an intimate moment without her knowing, but it also was sweet.        

To her credit Holly was very good for Artemis.  She pulled him out of his shell, for as hilarious and boisterous as he could be, Artemis was naturally a shy guy.  He didn’t like to go many places or do many things.  He was very childlike.  Even in his only other relationship prior to her, Artemis wasn’t much of a suitor.  He had a little high school girlfriend, but they actually never went on many, if any dates.  His family would not have approved, as she too was white.  It was more of an “at school” relationship. 

They did go to Junior/Senior Banquet together (our form of Prom, but without dancing or four best friends desperately trying to lose their virginity or fucking an apple pie.)  That was the only time I ever saw them on any kind of date situation.  When Artemis came to Euphegenia our freshman year, he didn’t call her for nearly three months.  He was more or less done with her and didn’t know how to handle it.  Artemis was emotionally immature. I don't think his mother gave him much freedom to become an adult. He’d never been in a romantic relationship before and therefore had never broken up with anyone. I actually felt bad for the girl.  Imagine being a 16 year-old girl and your boyfriend ships off to college and you never receive one phone call or a letter or any contact at all.  This was long before email, let alone social networking sites where perhaps it would have been easier for him to stay in touch without much effort. 

Finally, she somehow got the phone number to our room (I still don’t know how, . . . allegedly) and called him.  They had a long conversation and from what I could gather by watching his face, she was less than pleased.  It wasn’t pretty.  What was already barely a relationship was by the end of the phone call no longer a relationship at all.  He confided in me after that call that he did indeed feel badly as he had probably handled that situation poorly.  I could only laugh, “you think?!?”   

He was not that same boy with Holly.  He became a man with her, in more ways than one.  They had taken to sneaking off campus on the weekends and staying in a cheap motel.  For a while it was simply to have some alone time, and not to mess around.  It was hard to develop any kind of intimacy, not just physical under the restrictions placed upon us on campus.  I knew about it, and some of her friends did too.  It was no big deal. In fact it was adorable the first time he told me they had slept together. "No man," he said, "I mean it. We just slept. We got pizza, watched movies all night, and fell asleep." He was damn near giddy about it. Still, I also remember quite clearly the Sunday evening Artemis came back to our room and, after a moment of pacing the room, said in a hushed voice “Holly and I had sex.” 

At the risk of knowing how uncomfortable this would make him, it was so damn cute!  He was shocked and confused but again, also giddy.  Understand, if his mother found out he’d had premarital sex, let alone with a white girl, she would have driven from Milwaukee to literally beat his ass with one of his father's wingtips!  Even at 18 years old.  He’d committed a cardinal sin in the eyes of our religion, but especially his denomination.  Fortunately he didn’t care.  There was a new air about him.  At the risk of sounding cliché, there was a spring in his step.  I don’t know for sure if he was her first, but Holly was his.  First anything in fact.  I damn near expected him to leap up and click his heals when he headed out to meet her for dinner.  As I said, Holly changed him.  She made a man of him. 

They were very much in love.  Their relationship was so strong and so happy that everything that made them seem like opposites disappeared.  This was an age when things were supposedly progressive, but trust me that on that small campus, interracial couples did not go unnoticed.  There was quiet judgment.  Some not even so quiet.  One day a soccer player whom I’d had some funny conversations with and I thought was an alright guy came up to me to inquire about them.

“Artemis and Holly are dating?” he asked.

“Yeah, for about a month or so,” I answered.

“Hmm,” he’d responded.  He was quiet a beat as we walked.  “You’re okay with that?” 

It actually took me a minute to process.  I didn’t have feelings for Holly.  Artemis and I were not on the down-low.  So what else could possibly make me not okay with it?  Oh, I got it.  She was a precious white maiden, while he was the savage black buck defiling her in a Motel 6.  I answered, annoyed, that Artemis was a really great guy and he wouldn’t hurt her.  I also mentioned he wasn’t as tough as they assumed, just because he was black, and that Holly could probably kick his scrawny ass if he messed with her.  The guy wasn’t satisfied with my answer, but carried on without mentioning it again.  In fairness, I learned later he and Holly had known each other before Euphegenia and he carried a pretty big torch for her.

  I’m not trying to be Mr. Liberal or a social justice warrior when I say this - it's honestly how it was. I have vivid memories of being a kid visiting my grandparents in southern Indiana and hearing people scream at interracial couples "salt and pepper!" And they weren't intending for them to "push it real good" when they did. When it came to Holly and Artemis, I actually forgot one was black and one was white.  Trust me that is saying something because Artemis was dark, and Holly was so white she was practically clear.  They were just my friends.  And when we all hung out, it was a blast. There was no racial divide. Because of their relationship, Holly became part of my life and a great friend.  So while I was saddened that Artemis wasn’t coming back, there was some solace that she would be there and we’d both be missing a shared partner.