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admittedly obscure clique as "the whitest
man on campus."
Andy Ben B. was my freshman roommate, and the smartest guy I had ever
known. His IQ was off the scale; it had been measured at 186 but
that was an underestimation. He also came from an obscenely rich leather-tanning
family in New Jersey and showed up in September with a brand new Porsche,
which he didn’t mind lending to his roomie. What did I know, I figured
this was a typical Harvard setup.
We spent the next few months exploring Cambridge and the insides of
each others minds, fueled by the youthful exuberance and endemic
recreational substances of the era. I was looking forward to Andy’s intellectual
camaraderie and support for at least the duration of our collegiate careers,
but alas, it was not to be.
Andy Ben B. came back from Thanksgiving break with some mescaline which
was too good to be true. In fact, it was so good that when Andy
took it, he never came down. Over the course of the next
week, to paraphrase Allen Ginsberg, I watched one of the finest minds
of my generation burst in a super-nova and then slowly disintegrate into
a babbling pool of incoherence. It was an awesome and terrible
experience.
The first three days were pure enlightenment. Andy was preternaturally
brilliant, astounding the rest of us smartasses with amazing insights
into topics as far afield as psychophysiology, economics and particle
physics. He started discussions that continued in the Chem department
and the
School of Theology. Of course, he was completely off his nut, not sleeping
or eating or attending any classes. We, his circle of friends,
were babysitting him round the clock, in tandem teams, marveling at his
genius, deathly afraid for his sanity and physical well-being.
On the fourth day Andy announced that he was retiring from Harvard,
from the modern world actually, and would spend six years traveling
and
studying the six great cultures of the human race. During the seventh
year, he would rest, and reflect, and write a book. In the meantime
he had produced a 30 page statement pointing to the solutions
of the problems of our times whose brilliance we could only surmise as
he would let no one read it, and which he proposed to hand deliver to
the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other major media outlets.
Counting in our group several members halfway through freshman psych,
including myself, we immediately saw signs of megalomania and a nasty
messianic
complex. But we had no idea what to do about it. We had reached the chapter
on diagnosis, but wouldn’t get to treatment until spring.
In retrospect what we should have done is to feed Andy a massive
dose of tranks, knock him out for a few days and get his mind and body
out of that accelerating upward death-spiral that lack of sleep and underlying
psychosis can produce.
But what did we know, back then? Besides, we were too scared to
feed him any more drugs and were beginning to have awful, dark premonitions
as to how all this would turn out.
Andy’s ravings had turned darker. All
sorts of family shit was starting to come out, a lot of it centered around
his mother, who apparently, at least in this rendition of things, was
quite a piece of work.
Meanwhile, we were becoming exhausted and increasingly freaked out by
the still brilliant but now dark and twisted meanderings of Andy’s unraveling
mind. It was increasingly obvious that old Andy would
need some sort of institutional setting to deal with this, and soon.
So it was with a desperate mixture of relief and foreboding that I took
the call one early December morning from Dean Archie Epps (been wondering
if I would ever get back to him?) asking if Andy Ben B. could stop by
for a chat. At 10, say? As I hung up the phone I knew that, for
better or worse, the gig was up.
I had a 9 o’clock class, I remember, one that I had missed several times
during the preceding week watching over Andy, so I obtained his repeated
and solemn assurances that he understood when and where he was to report. He
seemed reasonably coherent and content, and I dared to hope the worst
was over.
As well as we can piece it together, before heading over to University
Hall for his visit with Dean Epps, Andy squirreled out a deeply hidden
stash of cocaine that some other insane undergraduate had laboriously
and ingeniously wormed into the woodwork of the ancient fireplace mantle,
and about which I knew nothing, I maintain to this day. Andy proceeded
to snort the entire stash and march right in to see Archie like a drunk
deb with an over-powdered schnozz.
What went on in Dean Epps office that morning no one really knows except
Andy and Archie, and now Archie is gone. About halfway through the meeting
Dean Epps opened his office door, fearing for his life no doubt. Second
hand reports from secretaries and other students who happened to be in
the office include accounts of Andy dancing on the dean’s desk, patiently
explaining the chemical composition of dozens of psychotropicals, snatching
Archie’s pipe from his mouth and using it to do an uncanny, spot on imitation
of the dean himself, with every mannerism and inflection perfect, singing
perfectly rhymed and syncopated quatrains on the virtues of German automobiles,
Chilean women and organic psychedelics.
Two of our gang showed up near the end of the climatic performance and
it is they who reported, to our everlasting appreciation, that when he
walked out of his office Dean Archie Epps was the whitest man on campus.
Andy was taken directly to the Stillman infirmary where he was finally
tranquillized, but the damage had been done. He was institutionalized
for an extended period, eventually recovered but never returned to Harvard.
In an additional bummer, Andy’s complete mental nakedness and lack of
any prudent monitoring unleashed a torrent of stories and insights on
illegal
intoxicants
on campus which must have seemed, to an outside observer, exaggerated
and impossible. Only
his obvious insanity and complete worthlessness as a witness saved us
all
from serial
indictments.
Andy’s aforementioned Mom did try her best to get me kicked out of the
college. Probably
only the fact that I was able to prove the final fatal dose of mescaline
that pushed Andy over the edge had been obtained by him in New Jersey
over Thanksgiving saved
my ass. That and the fact that Dean Archie Epps was still a rookie
and somehow fell for my true but tawdry line of pathetic bullshit about
how we were all stunned, devastated and worried first and foremost for
Andy himself.
So here’s to Dean of Students Archie Epps, who was an exceptional presence
on campus for over 30 years, and who defied categorization or classification
except in that it may be said, with honor and pride on both parts, that
he was a Harvard man.
related
story from
The Boston Globe
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