All The Sad Young Literary Men Part 1

All the sad young literary men.

by Keith Gessen.

Prologue.

In New York, they saved.

They saved on orange juice, sliced bread, they saved on coffee. On movies, magazines, museum admission (Friday nights). Train fare, subway fare, their apartment out in Queens. It was a principle, of sorts, and they stuck to it. Mark and Sasha lived that year on the 7 train and when they got out, out in Queens, Mark would follow Sasha like a little boy as she checked the prices at the two Korean grocers, and cross-checked them, so they could save on fruits and vegetables and little Korean treats. They saved on clothes.

It was 1998 and they were in love. They were done with college, with the Moscow of Sasha's childhood, with the American suburbs of Mark's-and yet they'd somehow escaped these things with their youth intact. To be poor in New York was humiliating, a little, but to be young-to be young was divine. If you'd had more money than they had that year, you'd simply have grown old faster. And so, with smiles on their faces, they saved.

It was 1998 and they were angry. The U.S. had bombed a medicine factory in Sudan. The U.S. was inert on Kosovo-and then we started raining bombs. The Israelis continued to build settlements on the West Bank, endangering Oslo, and the Palestinians continued to arm. "Contingency and irony, sure," said Tom, in their kitchen. "But have we forgotten solidarity?" They hadn't. Mark and Sasha went to teach-ins, lectures, protests in Union Square. They attended free readings, second-run movies, eight-dollar plays. The readings were miserable, the plays were horrible, the lectures were nearly empty. Some of the movies were good.

Their friends came to visit, from Manhattan, from Brooklyn, from farther away. Val's real name was Va.s.sily and he lived in Inwood; Nick wanted to be an art critic but worked for the moment at a bank, with expensive art on its walls. Tom was a fiery radical of the far left: in college he'd read Hegel's Phenomenology; Phenomenology; in New York he mostly read the political writings of Lomaski. Toby came to visit from Milwaukee and wandered around the city, his head craned up to see the faraway tops of the buildings; he was gifted with computers but wanted to write. Sam came from Boston and couldn't stop talking about Israel; he even had an Israeli girlfriend now. in New York he mostly read the political writings of Lomaski. Toby came to visit from Milwaukee and wandered around the city, his head craned up to see the faraway tops of the buildings; he was gifted with computers but wanted to write. Sam came from Boston and couldn't stop talking about Israel; he even had an Israeli girlfriend now.

It was 1998. Mark and Sasha and their friends held down the following jobs: translator, gallery a.s.sistant, New York Times New York Times copy clerk, Web temp, investment banker, temp, temp, temp. copy clerk, Web temp, investment banker, temp, temp, temp.

Mark had always been cheap, but in college he'd become radically cheap. He went to Russia to research a project and met a girl. She had enormous green eyes and held her back straight and walked like a ballerina, the heel just in front of the toe, and she spoke English with such a proper, Old World reserve that Mark wanted to help, to put his arms around her, to tell her it was OK. One day after cla.s.ses they'd gone for coffee, sort of-there was no place to sit in all of Moscow, unless you sat outside, which is what they did, and then as it was dark he'd offered to ride the subway home with her.

"I don't believe this is something you would like to do, really," she replied, properly.

Oh, but he did! She was tiny, with her big green eyes, and they rode the train for over an hour-she lived at the very tip, the very southern tip, of the entire sprawling metropolis-and when they got out of the subway, Mark had to catch his breath. The rows of buildings, graying socialist high-rises, nine stories, thirteen stories, seventeen stories, each with its crumbling balconies, each grayer than the next, stretched into the horizon like a ma.s.sed column. Mark was terrified.

"You live here?" he said to the girl, to Sasha, immediately regretting it.

"Yes," she said.

It was just a matter of time, after that, before he declared himself. Three years later, they were in New York.

So they saved! Mark cheated, a little. They had a 4Runner, a present from his father, and Mark would drive it to the big Path-mark on Northern Boulevard. Once there, he achieved the serenity of a Zen master. The people of Queens ran around this way and that, their shopping carts like externalized stomachs. Others had coupons and carefully they held them, like counterfeiting experts, up to the items they hoped to save on, to make sure they were the ones. Mark never did. He had emptied himself of any attachment to specific foods. The only items he saw were the items already on sale. In this way he kept his calm, he tried new foods, and he saved.

They kept a budget. At the beginning of the week they gave themselves seventy dollars for food and transport. Impossible? Basically impossible, yes, but not if you never go for "drinks" at a bar, never walk into a restaurant, and never ever buy an item of clothing not at the Salvation Army on Spring Street and Lafayette. Sasha herself was perpetually amazed. "I see girls in there," she reported, "they have three-hundred-dollar shoes, but they are looking for a jacket, a blouse, they would like to look like me."

"Whereas you already do," said Mark.

"Tak," said Sasha. said Sasha. "Imenno tak." "Imenno tak." Exactly. Exactly.

And, slowly, Mark's Russian was improving. He made his meager living now by translating industrial manuals into English. Sasha helped. The rest of the time he studied Soviet history and wondered if he should apply to graduate school. Sasha worked at a gallery and painted watercolors. She thought they should have children. It was 1998 and the rest of the world was rich.

Their friends came over and Sasha fed them. All together they argued and argued-there was so much to argue about! Val looked through their art books and gave talks about the painters-about Goya, about Rembrandt. Sasha told him about the Russian icon-painters, about the profound influence of religious anti-representationalism on Russian art. Tom explained the latest political developments. Sam talked about Israel and the writing world: who was publishing in the New American, New American, who was publishing in who was publishing in Debate. Debate. Mark listened always and observed. It was clear what some of them would do with their lives; it was less clear about the others. In the case of Mark, for example, it was unclear. Mark listened always and observed. It was clear what some of them would do with their lives; it was less clear about the others. In the case of Mark, for example, it was unclear.

Occasionally he and Sasha had terrible fights. She was so quiet; she was so small. One time they met up in the city to watch a free movie in Bryant Park. Mark was already at the library on 42nd Street, and Sasha was at home, so she was to bring some food. But she was in a hurry and forgot. Trying to hide his annoyance, Mark led them around midtown looking for a place to eat. Finally they walked into a deli. The salad bar was closed. The sandwiches cost six-fifty, seven dollars. Mark concluded to himself that he would have a Snickers bar, but Sasha should eat.

"That's all right," she said. "I don't need anything."

"You need to eat something," he insisted. "It's a long movie."

"No, I'm fine."

"ORDER A SANDWICH!"

"Bozhe moi," she said, my G.o.d, and without another word walked out the door. He followed her quietly and Snickers-less. They did not go to the movie. she said, my G.o.d, and without another word walked out the door. He followed her quietly and Snickers-less. They did not go to the movie.

Things like that. And sometimes Sasha would lie in bed for days and refuse to get up. But this pa.s.sed, it usually pa.s.sed, and anyway they were in this together. In an emergency, it was understood, Mark would be able to find a real job. So they were pledged to avoid emergency. Or maybe only Mark was pledged to avoid it. There were other issues, of course. There are always other issues.

But most of all Mark and Sasha and their friends worried about history and themselves. They read and listened and wrote and argued. What would happen to them? Were they good enough, strong enough, smart enough? Were they hard enough, mean enough, did they believe in themselves enough, and would they stick together when push came to shove, would they tell the truth despite all consequences? They were right about Al-Shifa; they were right about the settlements. About Kosovo they were right and wrong. But what if they were missing it? What if it it was happening, in New York, not a few blocks from them, what if they knew someone to whom it was happening, or who was making it happen-what if they were blind to it? What if it wasn't them? was happening, in New York, not a few blocks from them, what if they knew someone to whom it was happening, or who was making it happen-what if they were blind to it? What if it wasn't them?

In their apartment, in their beautiful Queens apartment, Mark and Sasha knew only that they had each other. And they also knew-even in 1998, they knew-that this would not be enough.

The Vice President's Daughter.

It was just at the point when things were finally cracking up for me that I ran into Lauren and her father on Madison Avenue. Jillian, my fiancee, was visiting her family in California and I, I had raced up to New York in our car. I didn't know what I was going to do there, in fact the people I contacted to announce my trip were people I barely knew-but the main thing was to get out of our apartment. The life I had then was slipping away, I could feel it, and I had developed the notion that some nudge, some shift or alternately some miracle, might help me fit everything back into place. I would hold on to Jillian, I hoped, and last until the next election, and then we'd see.

I had just been to the Met and was now looking for a place to get a coffee and check my e-mail when I first recognized Lauren and then, without bodyguards and without ceremony, her father. I had seen him at campaign stops, I had written and thought about him almost without interruption for an entire year of my life, but I'd never been this close, and he'd never been so alone. I was carrying a book under my arm, and some papers, I think, with phone numbers and e-mails, and finally my cell phone was in my hand like a compa.s.s because I guess I was hoping some of the people I'd called would call me back. I stopped on the street and stood for a second before Lauren saw me. On Madison Avenue she looked happy, flushed, a walking advertis.e.m.e.nt for our civilization, while her father wore his beard, his infamous beard, and I was surprised by how substantial he looked, how physically powerful. I wanted to say to Lauren "I'm sorry," though she didn't look like she needed it, and "I wish you were President" to her father, who looked like he did. I saw him flinch from me a little-from the way I froze on the sidewalk he might have thought I was another illwisher, another nut-but soon it was all over: Lauren looked at me, shabby and scattered with my phone in my hand, and I looked at the former Vice President, and we all paused for a moment while I kissed the Vice President's daughter on the cheek, she a.s.sured me they were in a terrible hurry though it was nice to see me, and they crossed northward while I waited for the light.

I think I could have screamed. I walked down 80th Street, down the long hard residential blocks before Lexington, and I felt myself outside myself, and saw us all for what we were. Sorrow touched me; I was touched, on East 80th Street, by sorrow. My phone rang finally in my hand and it was Jillian, my Jillian, and I did not pick up.

I was hurt, of course, that I had not been introduced to the former Vice President, but I had no cause to be offended. Lauren's friendship with me was contingent on her friendship with Ferdinand, my old roommate, and Ferdinand was a complicated person. In his particular line, I always said, he was a genius. "You're an astute observer of history" is how I explained it to him once. According to Hegel, I said, for I had read fifty pages of Hegel, the world-historical hero is necessarily something of a philosopher, and sort of extrapolates-

"It's always like that," Ferdinand interrupted. It was our soph.o.m.ore year, and we were gathered around a big circular table in the Leverett House dining hall, where day in and day out I tried to apply the lessons from my cla.s.ses to the great sociorelational problems of our time-Ferdinand's s.e.x life, usually. On this day I had a huge bowl of green peas in front of me, and a chicken parm sandwich, and I was sipping from a cranberry-grapefruit mixture, which I'd patented-swirling and sipping and discoursing on the higher thoughts. "It's always like that," said Ferdinand. "You tell a goat to draw G.o.d, he'll draw a goat. Philosophers are goats."

"Yeah, OK," I conceded. "But this is about you, the philosopher-stud. You've sensed something in the air, a shift in the historical mood of the female cla.s.s, and you've acted. What is it?"

Ferdinand considered this, slowly, wondering whether I was making fun of him, and then began to laugh his deliberate, n.o.body's-fool laugh. It opened with a lengthy enunciated "ennhh," asking, waiting for you to come along, and then it burst forth like applause.

So he laughed now, he didn't answer, and that was OK. I knew I wouldn't learn the secrets of the world-spirit from Ferdinand, nor would I learn how to pick up women. I wouldn't even learn how to dress from him, because he was tall and narrow, he could order clothes directly from the catalogs, which with my build (I was a high school fullback) I couldn't do. About the only thing I learned from Ferdinand was that women were perspicacious, prophetic, for they saw in him what I at first did not. He struck me as vain, deluded, skinny. I didn't get it. "Boy, am I glad they gave me you," he said on the first day of college, after we'd moved ourselves into Matthews, sent our awkward parents home, and opened my bottle of peppermint schnapps (the best I could do) and his dime bag of mediocre weed (the best he could do). "I was afraid they'd stick me with some total nerd," he said. I was flattered. "Or an Asian."

"What?"

"Much bigger chance of their being a nerd. Don't you think?"

"I guess," I said. And, in short, when washed and J.Crewed Ferdinand suggested we hit the bars, I did not refuse-it seemed like just the thing to do before getting down, finally, to the books. And Ferdinand was a good companion, at first, though he was loud and obnoxious and I couldn't tell what sort of person he'd been in high school. His family had money but did not seem to come, so to speak, from education-whereas my forefathers had been huddled over Talmuds, then Soviet literary journals, for many generations. But I have always been attracted to cruel, acerbic people, and Ferdinand was fantastically acerbic. He knew right away that our cla.s.smates were a bunch of jerks. "Total douchebag" was about the extent of his commentary on most of the people we met over the next few days. "Major league DB." He referred to girls he didn't like as "a.s.sholes," and somehow this cracked me up. Intent on showing that my high school drinking had been significant, that first night I got absurdly drunk and threw up on the bushes next to Boylston Hall. "Dude," said a relatively sober Ferdinand as I rejoined him, "you've christened the Yard. In nomine Patris. In nomine Patris. And we only just got here." The next day he was relating the story to everyone we met. "Who's got the best roommate?" he'd demand. I was embarra.s.sed and proud. And we only just got here." The next day he was relating the story to everyone we met. "Who's got the best roommate?" he'd demand. I was embarra.s.sed and proud.

But there were also calculations going on in Ferdinand's mind. The bars were his business, the girls were his destiny, and on the fourth night of college we had our first conflict. That day we'd gone to the Salvation Army near Central Square and bought a monstrous yellow paisley couch for fifty dollars, and saved money by carrying it the mile back to our dorm. We took little rest stops in the heat and traffic of Ma.s.s Ave and sat down on our new couch, lounging. When we got back to Matthews we showered and then sat on the couch again, newly home, as Ferdinand smoked an illegal cigarette ("What's the point of college," he said, coughing, "if you can't smoke?") and I began to choose my cla.s.ses. When he finished his smoke, Ferdinand announced it was time to go out.

"No thanks," I said. I had now spent three nights getting very drunk. I knew I'd held long conversations with people, including the prettiest of my new cla.s.smates, but I couldn't remember any-one's name, and in general I had a bad feeling about the whole thing. Now I was constructing a complicated chart, my first big a.s.signment in college, which would tell me the cla.s.ses that would most quickly fulfill the reading list with which my favorite high school history teacher had sent me off into the world. "Homer," it began. "Herodotus. Tacitus. Augustine. Lactantius."

"You can do that later," said Ferdinand. "Now is the time for the bars. You have to lay the groundwork. Tomorrow will be too late."

"Forty bucks a night for groundwork," I grumbled.

"Yeah," he admitted. "But you need to spend money to earn money. You coming?"

I told him no and he was out the door. I sat there that night, the course guide and the CUE guide and the Confi guide and my long, increasingly Anglocentric list-"Chaucer," it continued. "Jonson. Johnson. Sterne. Burke. Carlyle. Thackeray. Eliot."-all strewn across our paisley couch, and felt sad for myself, and sorry. To arrive at Harvard and find-Ferdinand! It was infuriating. It was absurd. Our dorm was in the very center of the Yard, our windows opened onto the little quadrangle between Matthews, Straus, and Ma.s.sachusetts Hall. It was still warm and outside a few people were playing Frisbee. Were they douchebags? Maybe, but I could have gone out there and said h.e.l.lo, laid the groundwork, maybe now they were douchebags but later on they'd be geniuses? Then again, they kept dropping the Frisbee, those guys, and it was like they'd never played before. It was all too sad. I opened Ferdinand's CD book, having no CDs of my own-a few years earlier I'd made the determination, based on my extensive purchasing of ca.s.sette tapes throughout junior high, that the compact disc was a technology bound for speedy obsolescence, and decided to wait it out-but Ferdinand's collection was all greatest hits, greatest hits, Allman Brothers, greatest hits. All those hours, those irretrievable hours, I'd spent studying for the SATs. All those days, those irretrievable sunny days when I flipped through the catalogs, considered my applications, wondered at the roundedness of my character-and now Ferdinand was my roommate? He was the first in a series of disappointments at that bitter place, though eventually I think they formed a pattern, and I tried to read it.

And I had grand notions, too. I had quit football because I was too small, but also so that I could read Kierkegaard. My history teacher's list was nice, but here was Fear and Trembling. Fear and Trembling. Here Here The Sickness Unto Death. The Sickness Unto Death. I considered dipping into Weber. Occasionally the word I considered dipping into Weber. Occasionally the word Foucault Foucault would float from my tongue, a trial balloon. In such moods I denounced Ferdinand-he was not Harvard!- but at the end of the year I stayed with him. We were hanging out with lacrosse players and their girlfriends, I was badly drunk three nights a week, and some of my morning cla.s.ses went by unattended, went by anyway, while I lay in bed moaning. In the weeks before rooming groups were due, I made a few halfhearted sorties in the Freshman Union to some of the more articulate kids I'd met in my cla.s.ses, but they were as wary as they were intelligent, their groups had congealed and they liked it that way, and anyhow I hadn't yet learned how to talk with them: instead of would float from my tongue, a trial balloon. In such moods I denounced Ferdinand-he was not Harvard!- but at the end of the year I stayed with him. We were hanging out with lacrosse players and their girlfriends, I was badly drunk three nights a week, and some of my morning cla.s.ses went by unattended, went by anyway, while I lay in bed moaning. In the weeks before rooming groups were due, I made a few halfhearted sorties in the Freshman Union to some of the more articulate kids I'd met in my cla.s.ses, but they were as wary as they were intelligent, their groups had congealed and they liked it that way, and anyhow I hadn't yet learned how to talk with them: instead of Foucault Foucault the word the word douchebag douchebag kept escaping, like a dark secret, from my lips. One late night in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Owl Club, Ben, a slight and drunken lacrosse player, asked shyly if he could room with Ferdinand and me, and we said OK. So that spring the three of us joined hands together for the housing lottery, and stepped over, without really knowing what we were doing, into the chasm of the rest of our lives. kept escaping, like a dark secret, from my lips. One late night in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Owl Club, Ben, a slight and drunken lacrosse player, asked shyly if he could room with Ferdinand and me, and we said OK. So that spring the three of us joined hands together for the housing lottery, and stepped over, without really knowing what we were doing, into the chasm of the rest of our lives.

That summer I failed to intern at the Washington Post Washington Post or even to write travel copy for the student travel guide. Instead I went back to Maryland and worked as a camp counselor, and at the end of most every day, exhausted, I would drive to my mother's grave and water the tree my father and I had planted there. I don't know what significance this has, but it sticks in my mind from that time. Perhaps because memory is a faulty organ, or anyway a very mechanical one that works through repet.i.tion, I remember the nightly exhaustion, from carrying eight-year-old campers, and the heat, and the watering. Then I would go home and take a nap, and at night, when there wasn't much to do, I'd go driving just as I had in high school and try to figure things out. I used to think that by driving and driving through the suburbs of Maryland I'd finally just break through, break out; and then, finally, I did, I left. And now where was I? My mother's old Oldsmobile still ran, and I went up 32, I went down 32, and time permitting I'd pull over at some highway McDonald's and try to get through the or even to write travel copy for the student travel guide. Instead I went back to Maryland and worked as a camp counselor, and at the end of most every day, exhausted, I would drive to my mother's grave and water the tree my father and I had planted there. I don't know what significance this has, but it sticks in my mind from that time. Perhaps because memory is a faulty organ, or anyway a very mechanical one that works through repet.i.tion, I remember the nightly exhaustion, from carrying eight-year-old campers, and the heat, and the watering. Then I would go home and take a nap, and at night, when there wasn't much to do, I'd go driving just as I had in high school and try to figure things out. I used to think that by driving and driving through the suburbs of Maryland I'd finally just break through, break out; and then, finally, I did, I left. And now where was I? My mother's old Oldsmobile still ran, and I went up 32, I went down 32, and time permitting I'd pull over at some highway McDonald's and try to get through the Confessions Confessions of Rousseau. The books he had read as a child, said Rousseau, "gave me odd and romantic notions of human life, of which experiences and reflection have never wholly cured me." I resolved, also, never to be cured. I went to the parties we still threw that summer, melancholy keggers at which we told tales of our heroic college exploits, and got drunk, just as in college, and once in a while, to salve my wounded heart, the not-yet-graduated Amy Gould would let me kiss her behind a tree. of Rousseau. The books he had read as a child, said Rousseau, "gave me odd and romantic notions of human life, of which experiences and reflection have never wholly cured me." I resolved, also, never to be cured. I went to the parties we still threw that summer, melancholy keggers at which we told tales of our heroic college exploits, and got drunk, just as in college, and once in a while, to salve my wounded heart, the not-yet-graduated Amy Gould would let me kiss her behind a tree.

Then summer was over, and I returned to school for more of what I'd left. The couch, my old television, our Simpsons Simpsons tape; my laptop in the library, the lectures at ten in the morning, the wind as I walked to them among a herd of faces, very few of whom were my friends. Ferdinand, for his part, only accelerated his activity. His groundwork had paid off. He had, as F. Scott Fitzgerald once said of his friend John Peale Bishop, "an insatiable p.e.n.i.s," and by second semester soph.o.m.ore year he was running a hotel room, as he liked to put it, out of Leverett J-12. No one knew this better than I, who as his bunk mate had to journey to the yellow common-room couch every time I heard an extra pair of footsteps accompany him through the door. Things got so busy that I suggested to Ben, who'd won the coin flip at the beginning of the year and thus his own room, that he give up his place to Ferdinand and move in with me. "No way," said Ben. "What about when I get laid?" There was a pause. "Look," he said, "a coin toss is a coin toss. Or isn't it?" It was, it was, and so I continued to make the trip, and to be honest I didn't mind. Ferdinand was not discriminating, not at all; he had a ma.s.sive tolerance for giggliness or crudeness from attractive women, but just as often they were very impressive, the women, and increasingly so. The silhouettes of the daughters of our professors, and of hedge-fund presidents, junk-bond kings, and Hollywood impresarios, flickered through our hallways, whispered good-bye in the morning, walked quietly out. They were the sorts of women that, if you had a rule against sleepovers, for them you'd make an exception. tape; my laptop in the library, the lectures at ten in the morning, the wind as I walked to them among a herd of faces, very few of whom were my friends. Ferdinand, for his part, only accelerated his activity. His groundwork had paid off. He had, as F. Scott Fitzgerald once said of his friend John Peale Bishop, "an insatiable p.e.n.i.s," and by second semester soph.o.m.ore year he was running a hotel room, as he liked to put it, out of Leverett J-12. No one knew this better than I, who as his bunk mate had to journey to the yellow common-room couch every time I heard an extra pair of footsteps accompany him through the door. Things got so busy that I suggested to Ben, who'd won the coin flip at the beginning of the year and thus his own room, that he give up his place to Ferdinand and move in with me. "No way," said Ben. "What about when I get laid?" There was a pause. "Look," he said, "a coin toss is a coin toss. Or isn't it?" It was, it was, and so I continued to make the trip, and to be honest I didn't mind. Ferdinand was not discriminating, not at all; he had a ma.s.sive tolerance for giggliness or crudeness from attractive women, but just as often they were very impressive, the women, and increasingly so. The silhouettes of the daughters of our professors, and of hedge-fund presidents, junk-bond kings, and Hollywood impresarios, flickered through our hallways, whispered good-bye in the morning, walked quietly out. They were the sorts of women that, if you had a rule against sleepovers, for them you'd make an exception.

And then one day-it was a cold lazy Sunday in what was now our junior year, we had all, even me, gone out the night before and spent the day lying half ruined and miserable on the couch, watching football-Ferdinand came home with Lauren, whose father was Vice President of the United States. Four of us were there, in various states of recline, Ben and I and Nick and Sully, and we accepted her presence with a lordly calm. We were all here together at this college, after all, this just and cla.s.sless place, all our destinies were set at zero, and anything was possible, was the idea. Anything was possible, but it was hard not to notice how much Lauren resembled her father-she was blond where he was dark, but otherwise they shared the same soft features, and the slight blurriness or sensual weakness in the mouth, and they were handsome in a similar way, and also a little regal and a little outsized. We acted casually enough, we thought, but it was hard not to feel that here, in our room, we were finally coming into contact with greater things.

Lauren began to come by in the evenings, and often she was drunk. Are the rich very different from you and me? Judge for yourself. She was drunk, and it was my role to sit in the room I shared with Ferdinand and try to work on my junior paper. "It's important that you do this," Ferdinand told me. "You need to be, like, the Scholar. It creates an atmosphere."

I didn't like this very much. "Why can't someone else be the Scholar?"

"Because," he answered, leaving, "you're our last best hope. And, anyway, you never go out."

"I do too!" I called after him. Immediately I put on my coat and walked out into the night. But Ferdinand was right, of course; I had become a shut-in, a recluse, and outside the room and outside my carrel I wasn't sure what to do. The libraries were closed now, and when I ducked behind big redbrick Leverett to walk along the Charles, the wind came off the river mixed with a hard dust. I went to the Grille finally and drank a four-dollar pitcher without talking to anyone-by this point I didn't know anyone-and then, defeated, I went back home. I had a paper to write. That semester I was working on Lincoln, and something of his tragedy had entered my bones, so that if I was n.o.ble I was n.o.ble like Lincoln, and if I was solemn I was solemn like Lincoln.

I was open to influence then, to any influence. I was ready to rearrange myself, if that's what it took. Because the plans that I'd had for myself had faltered, somewhere, and I could not tell why. Does he who fights douchebags become, inevitably, something of a douchebag? I don't know. Maybe.

I was lost.

One night as I worked on Lincoln, Lauren came into the bedroom to visit. Ferdinand had gone out for cigarettes, and it was just me.

"Whatcha doing?" she asked. She was a little drunk, she wore jeans and a loose light-blue cardigan over a white T-shirt, and she set herself down on the corner of my bed.

"Nothing," I said. "A little Lincoln." In fact I had an idea about Lincoln that I'd stolen from Edmund Wilson-that by his eloquence he had foisted his interpretation of the war on future generations-and I was now trying to so muddle this idea with quotations from various French theorists that it might come to seem my own. But I didn't feel like sharing all of this with Lauren.

Perhaps she sensed my disapproval, my remove, because immediately she tried to bridge it.

"Ferdinand says you're from Clarksville?"

"Yup."

"It's nice up there."

"It's up and down. We were in between."

"Oh, it doesn't matter," she said quickly. "I hate being rich. Don't you think money is so dumb?"

"I don't know," I said. Of course I did think it, but abstractly. My parents had done fine, financially, especially after my mother also became a computer programmer, but they never had the sense that they would do fine indefinitely. It was occasionally suggested during money-related arguments in our household that computers might get canceled. "I don't know," I repeated. "I guess there's no use being ashamed of it."

"I just wish I could be more like you," she said. "You know? Sort of serious and scholarly."

"And I wish," said I, "that I could be you."

"We could trade," she decided. She leaned over toward me in such a way that I could see down her shirt, but what struck me then was just her nearness, her girliness. "But you have to warn me first-why don't you like being you?"

"I don't know." I shrugged. Jesus, where to begin? "I just-" And here something happened to me that had happened to me once or twice before, always with women: a moment of unpremeditated screaming honesty, of saying out loud what had remained in my mind only a kind of vagueness, a foreboding, not even a thought. "I just don't understand what people want from me," I said. "I just don't really understand what I'm doing."

Her eyebrows went up, momentarily. She looked great doing it-I realized her features were so generous that her mouth and brow and jaw could absorb a great deal of emotion without actually seeming to move. A few years later, during the campaign and on her father's face, it would be called "stiffness." That's not what it was. "Yes," she said now. "I feel like that too. I see people looking at me and I don't know what they mean. Or what they see, you know?"

"But you get along with them."

"I'm not as grouchy as you," she said, shrugging. I liked it how she shrugged, and when she smiled at me I smiled back. I disapproved of her, disapproval was what I knew, but she seemed so young to me then, so changeable.

And so I pushed my luck and asked, "How are things with Ferdinand?"

"Ferdinand . . . ," lying back woozily on my bed. I wasn't a big bed-maker but on this day, miraculously, I'd made it, and cleared off my clothes to boot.

"Listen," I said, standing up, standing over her. "What do you see in him?"

"Ferdinand?" With some difficulty she propped herself up on an elbow. "I don't know. He's . . . fun. And I'm-" She lay back down, lounging. "You know, I'm just in college."

I looked at her-closely, closely. She resembled royalty, I tell you. She was practically the leader of the free world. Yet she lacked speech. I-on the other hand-standing in that little room, my fingertips still warm from the keyboard-I did not lack it!

"But that's just it!" I began. "I mean, we're in college. It's time to get serious! It's time to get to the bottom of things. The meaning of them. I mean-"

As I began to expound on this, I thought I saw her looking at me in a way I hadn't seen a woman look at me in a long time. Probably she wasn't, or she was just startled by all the words, but already in my mind, in my loins, I sensed a looming ethical dilemma. And I took a deep breath, a pause, because first I needed to tell her what I thought of things, and I needed to blow her mind. It wasn't Ferdinand himself that I wanted to dissuade her from, exactly, and not in favor of me, per se, but the idea of Ferdinand, and the idea of me: it was important that I arrange these properly in her mind. Because fun fun-I turned the word over in my mind. Did she mean s.e.x? Boats? Ice cream? There was right action and wrong action. There was Kierkegaard. There was fun, and then there were those ten minutes before the Grille closed, the music turned off, the lights coming up to reveal the beer spilled on the floor, the plastic cups lying there, and people's coats had fallen off the little coat ledge in the corner, and you'd be going home alone. How was I going to explain all this to anyone? To Lauren, for example, poor privileged Lauren for whom no amount of grooming and training (and we were all getting it, in our way, the grooming and the training) would turn her into the person she actually wanted to be? To Lauren, who'd pa.s.sed out on my bed?

This was all in 1997. It was before the scandals broke, one after the other, in a rising, crescendoing spiral of tawdriness, and before it became clear that though her father was innocent, he lacked the skill to distance himself in quite the right way-that even his innocence appeared somehow manipulative. For now, the economy was moving along, the Serbs were off the hills above Sarajevo, the party of the opposition was in confusion and disarray. Ferdinand discovered Diesel jeans and, walking around with Lauren, looked better than ever. I began to think that she was right, right about everything, and though we didn't talk much after that episode in my room-I wrote her a long e-mail, and she didn't write back- I suspect it was the happiest time of Lauren's life.

And then, about a month after the e-mail, things came to a head in Leverett J-12. I had been buried in the library, reading all of Lincoln's little notes and letters, all sixteen volumes, and finishing my great Lincoln paper, though admittedly much of my time was spent imagining what it would be like already to be the author of a great Lincoln paper. Would I grant interviews? But now things were getting tense, the deadline was nine in the morning, and I had to finish the Lincoln, for no one else would. When they stumbled in at around three I was already in bed, turning some final phrases over in my mind. When I heard them pause in the front hall and then paw each other for a while-transparent were the ways of Ferdinand to me-I knew I should get up. The trip to the couch was momentous, and though I wore a fairly new T-shirt and my best boxers I felt underdressed. I took my laptop along, and they smiled sheepishly at me, apologizing, as they walked past into the bedroom. And Lauren, happy and seeing me there on the ridiculous couch, my face illuminated in simulated concentration by the bright nimbus of the monitor, Lauren winked.

For the next two hours I sat at my laptop, that small and nimble machine, its purr doing little to m.u.f.fle their sounds.

At first they wrestled, she giggled, he growled.

"My shirt's chafing me, man," I heard Ferdinand say, cracking up. "I'm taking it off."

A bit later I heard his shoes thud against the floor, separately. Hers followed, together and daintily, as if she'd not only taken them off simultaneously, but tried to lighten their fall. And presently, I thought I heard from the bedroom little wistful sounds, hesitating, like Ferdinand's laugh, as they rubbed against each other.

"My pants," he then said. "They're chafing me." They giggled and again there was a furious rustling. His ambition was like a little engine, his secretary said of Lincoln, that knew no rest.

What now? Was he sucking on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s? He'd explained to me once that if a girl has larger b.r.e.a.s.t.s, you can be rougher with them-was he being rougher? I suppose he ma.s.saged her inner thighs.

And then there was a silence, some quick rustling. "No," she said, regretfully but sharply. "You're drunk."

"I'm s.h.i.t-faced," he agreed.

"Me too."