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CONFRONTING A PORK CHOP IN 1961

Now that his parents had gone home, Marty Carr was eager to explore the campus on that perfect September day. He felt the cool breeze and the warm sun as he walked the path across the main quad, the well-tended grass edged with maroon and white flowering mums--the college colors. He was so excited to be there that he was unaware that he was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet as he walked looking at the brick buildings which seemed to him to have been there forever. For weeks, months, he'd eagerly anticipated what it would be like-the dorm room (which turned out to be smaller than he'd imagined but historic too-RB '27 had carved his initials on the closet door), the classes (he had the feeling that he wanted to learn everything), the weekend keg parties over at neighboring Halloway College-the women's school across town, where he'd heard they greeted Kent men with open arms and even, it was hopefully but erroneously rumored, open legs. The grand adventure, the new life, an adult, on his own made him feel a lot taller than 5’8¾”. 

His parents told him how lucky he was to have this opportunity. Lucky? Yes, he supposed, but he'd worked hard and damn it, he'd earned it too. He thought of the parties he'd missed where he imagined he might have gotten to feel up Big Tits Tuckburg; the basketball games down at the park with Ritchie, Izzy and Frank he'd given up to study; he thought of the SAT prep course taught by Droning Druckman that he'd endured, and he thought of the huge loan he'd have to repay. But now that he was actually there, it was all worth it: he, Marty Carr, was a student at famed Kent College .

He wandered around the campus and soon found himself at Kenwick Dining Hall where, a few weeks later, Marty would have a confrontation within himself. But on that first day he stood alone in the dark-wood paneled, high ceilinged room with brass chandeliers which smelled of furniture wax and brass polish. The only sound was the creaking of his shoes on the floor. He felt like he had wandered past a roped off area in a museum and was looking at an exhibit: portraits along one long wall, plaques and trophies for rowing and lacrosse along another. A side door opened. He thought it was someone who would tell him to leave and he was ready to make a quick apology and retreat, but it was only a kitchen worker. He tried to picture himself rowing or playing lacrosse but couldn't. He had played basketball and even made the high school team although he didn’t play much. He knew he was too short for the Kent freshman team but he was fast and had a good hook-shot so he was sure he’d shine in the intramural games.

He looked up at the portraits, they were of past presidents of the college going back a hundred years or more and he again felt pride rise up in his chest. But then, as he looked at the high cheek boned, sharp nosed, gray faced men, he felt them staring down at him out of their blue or gray eyes and he imagined that they were asking one another, "Who admitted him?" He blinked, dismissed the thought, turned away and moved toward the more recent presidents where he found one that had a faint but welcoming smile which made him smile to himself—he was really here at Kent .

He wandered back to his room opened the door and found that his new roommate, broad-shouldered and blond, who'd just arrived, was pulling shirts and pants out of his trunk. Marty, who was short and dark, was relieved to see that at least he was wearing chinos and a crew neck sweater just like him.

"Hi, I'm Marty Carr, nice to meet you."  He held out his hand.

"Harlow Bishop III," he turned around and pushed his face into a smile as they shook hands.

Harlow kept unpacking while they talked, "Where are you from?" he asked.

Marty stepped over Harlow 's lacrosse stick, " New York ."

"What town?"

Marty felt cornered, "A town called Bayside. And you?"

"Short Hills," he said with assurance, then added, "Where in New York is

Bayside? Is that near, the east side you know, York Avenue ?"

"No," Marty felt caught and dropped his voice,  "it's in Queens ."

"Oh," he was non-committal but Marty took in the dismissive look on Harlow 's face. Harlow turned from stuffing sweaters into a drawer. His lip was curled slightly as if in anticipation of relishing Marty's next answer, "So where did you go to, what was it, high school," he paused just a bare second, "or prep school?"

"Bayside High," Marty answered, but he already felt withered, like his body had shrunk and he was much smaller than before. He sat on the edge of his bed, his elbows on his knees.

"A whole bunch of us here went to Choate," Harlow affirmed, looking over at Marty to see if he even understood its prestige and therefore his own importance.

All the while Harlow was unpacking, Marty made an assessment of his shirts, tweed sports jackets and sweaters and was satisfied that if even if he didn't live in the right neighborhood or go to the right school, at least he'd brought the right kind of clothes; but, when he caught a glimpse of the labels most of which said, "Brooks Brothers," Marty felt a knot of frustration tighten in his stomach like he was the poor cousin since he'd gotten most of his things at Klein's on Union Square or Mort’s Mens’ Shop on Northern Boulevard.

           Harlow lay down on his bed, tossed a soccer ball against the wall, caught it, and casually said, "I'm the third generation in my family to come here," then nonchalantly asked, "where did your father go to college?"

Marty couldn't tell him that his father didn't go to college so he mumbled, " Princeton ."

Harlow raised an eyebrow in disbelief. Marty felt deflated. Just then Fats Domino singing, "Ain't That A Shame," was boomed into the room from one end of the hall and then someone from the other end of the hall turned up E. Power Biggs playing the Bach Cantata and Fugue on a huge pipe organ. Marty and Harlow were caught in the deafening war of the music worlds which invaded their room even though the door was closed. Marty felt like a huge wave was pounding down on him and he put a pillow over his head but Harlow ran out and shouted over the music, " Will you assholes turn it down!" The music was turned off and laughter came from the organ music side, while, "You just don't appreciate the finer things in life," came from the Fats Domino fan. Marty envied how he was able to handle the situation in the dorm and that only made him feel more inadequate.

As it turned out, Marty didn't see much of him in the following days because Harlow was always paling around with his old friends from Choate. That was just fine with Marty.

          A few days before classes started, Marty took the book lists from each of his courses and went to the bookstore. He loaded up a shopping cart with a troubling stack of books: he couldn’t imagine reading all those books in a year let alone a semester. Most daunting was the thick chemistry book with the periodic table printed on the front cover but he was excited about the heavy book of readings for Contemporary Civilization with dozens of small drawings of the greats from Aristotle to Thomas Jefferson.

When he got on line to pay he had to add up their cost several times because he didn’t believe the total at first. He’d just looked in his check book to make sure he had enough money when a fellow he'd sat next to at an orientation lecture taped him on the shoulder, "Marty?" Marty turned around and saw a heavy set boy with a blond crew cut, wearing a flannel shirt.

"Hi, Mike Durkheim. We met at the orientation."

          "Oh sure I remember!" said Marty enthusiastically. He smiled broadly, glad to find a friendly face, "How's it going?"

The line moved up. There was an announcement that some books to be used later in the term would be in stock next week.

          "I don't know about you, but I hadn't figured books would cost so much. I'm a small town guy--a little place outside of Utica --not like some of these prep school guys with rich daddies."

          Someone called out, "If you have Phillips for calculus forget the book-its all in the class notes."

          "I'm not either. I went to a public high school and my roommate acts as if that's a sure sign of having some disease."

          "You too? I thought I was the only one getting that crap--they think I'm a hick."

          "I'm from Bayside, Queens -you know, part of New York City-not a hick but not from a fancy neighborhood."

          Mike stood up tall as if he were saluting, "I'm a proud son of Kemperton, population 5,300, home of the Catawba grape."

          They both laughed.

          The line moved up and Marty paid then turned, "Take it easy, I'll see you in C.Civ." Despite the sky laden with low hanging clouds, he bounced off to his dorm feeling lighter than at any time since the first day when he walked across the main quad.

The following Monday, Marty followed a stream of students into the august Paul Christianson Lecture Hall for Contemporary Civilization 101. He saw a seat next to Mike and started toward it. Mike noticed Marty coming over and pointed to the seat inviting him to sit next to him. Mike smiled broadly showing his crooked front teeth, “Hi, how are you doing? I hear some guys in your dorm were so drunk they passed out at The Maroon and White.”

“Yeah, some classy guys,” joked Marty, “I guess we’d better try some heavy drinking.”

Mike looked around at the students who were just finding seats while Marty looked up at the high domed ceiling painted with scenes from the New Testament-- during orientation they'd said they were from the time when Kent was an Episcopal college. At precisely 10:00 , Professor Wentworth in his signature striped bow tie, stood up at the lectern, tapped the microphone to get everyone's attention and gave an overview of the first part of the course. He began cheerfully, "The Gilgamesh Epic from Babylon as well as the Code of Hammurabi, both to be read by the next class," he looked over his half-glasses at the class to emphasize the point, "were part of the background for the Old Testament which is important mainly because the Old Testament was the basis for the New Testament which superceded it and became the basis for Western Civilization." Marty squirmed then bristled. After class he reviewed his notes and thought—My God, it looks like Wentworth thinks the Old Testament is a relic.

He called his cousin, Bob, a Senior at NYU, who was studying comparative religion. "Of course," said Bob, "that's what some Christians believe but that jerk just assumes that western religion means Christianity: we aren't even on his radar."

"What do you mean, not even on his radar? Like Jews don't exist?"

"Look Mart," he’d called him Mart from the time they were twelve and he abbreviated everyone’s name, "some of these guys think we are an anachronism, like we should have disappeared."

"Which guys?" Marty demanded, feeling his face get red with anger.

"Well, Toynbee for one and apparently your professor for another."

"Bastard!” Marty smacked the side of the phone booth and said, “I’m getting out of that class.”

"You can try but what are you going to tell them when they ask why--that you don’t like his opinions?”

“Okay, so what do I do? I can’t sit there for a semester and listen to that crap!”

“Look Mart, you’ve got to play the game. You've just got to know that it's his point of view and on the exams tell him what he wants to hear."

"Play the game. He insults us and I have to just sit there?” Marty cried out into the receiver.

"You want to pass? Besides you don’t know enough to challenge him."

"Thanks, that's a lot of help, " he said sarcastically.

“Welcome to the real world, Mart.”

          When Marty left the phone booth his face was red with frustration. He felt like he was in a trap and didn’t know how to squirm out of it.

A few weeks into the term Marty got on line at Kenwick as usual. He looked ahead at the people in line and over the tables in the large open room hoping to see Mike Durkheim. He wasn't there, neither was Bill Thompson who he’d sat next to in English and who’d sent Marty howling with laughter when he did an imitation of Jerry Lewis in “The Geisha Boy.” He took a paper napkin and silverware and put them on a scratched brown plastic tray. He helped himself to a glass of water, a little bowl of salad, then reached for the white plate with the maroon trim and college seal on which the main course had been served. There were some mashed potatoes, carrots and then a piece of meat he couldn't identify. He stared at it as he put the plate on his tray. It wasn't the usual mystery meat, which generally came in the form of meat loaf. This meat had a bone on one side and was larger than a lamb chop. Its gravy covered up part of the college seal. After going through the line he circled around to look at the menu board: "Pork Chop Au Jus," looked down at his plate and mumbled, "Oh shit!" He took his tray and sat down off to the side.

He looked behind him when he heard loud laughter from a near-by table as two students he didn’t recognize were howling over something or another. Marty noticed a guy he recognized from his Chemistry class leaning over to read the newspaper while he ate.  Marty picked up his fork and looked down at his plate feeling surprised at his discomfort. His mother served lobster tails for dinner, what, he wondered, would make him hesitate to eat a pork chop now? To avoid the issue, he started on the salad. While chewing on a tomato Marty smiled to himself when he thought of his Grandpa, a practicing atheist, who his mother caught eating shrimp chow main at a Chinese Restaurant on Yom Kippur; but he was so embarrassed, (or maybe he was just afraid of  grandma) that he made Marty's mother swear not to tell. He looked around the room and thought, here they would think it strange if I didn't eat it. He cut a piece of lettuce with the side of his fork. He couldn't remember even his father ever eating pork chops and he put up Christmas cards every year on the mantle, and every year his mother pleaded, "We're Jews-we don't decorate the house for Christmas." His father ignored her. Marty took a deep breath and let it out trying to exhale the confusion he felt. Three guys came in wearing sweat shirts and stowed their lacrosse sticks under a table before they got on line for food.

Marty finished the salad and it was time to start on the main course. Again he avoided the pork chop and dug into the carrots which had created a small puddle of water around them. He tilted the plate, resting one end on his knife and moved the carrots to higher ground then reached for the salt. A heavy-set guy at the next table must have told a joke because the half-dozen students around him were laughing. Marty couldn't hear what was so funny.

While chewing a fork full of carrots, Marty noticed someone who reminded him of Bobby Goldstein. He pictured being at his Bar Mitzvah (the only time he was ever in a Synagogue) and remembered sitting through the service with its passages in Hebrew he couldn't read, sung in melodies he didn't know and feeling like a stranger. But he looked around the room with the babble of students, the occasional laughter, the loud speaker announcement reminding the rowing crew that practice was cancelled and it occurred to him that feeling like a stranger in the synagogue felt different from being a stranger here.

When he finished the carrots he pushed the gravy off the mashed potatoes and started on them trying to ignore the pork chop.  After finishing everything but the pork chop, he was still starving so he went up to see if there were any substitutes. None. He threaded his way through the tables with two, three, six other students eating enthusiastically. He sat down and stared at the pork chop. The longer he stared the less alien it looked. He looked over and watched Dick Stein and Steve Greenberg chewing on the bone. He poked at it with his fork, lifted it up and examined the bottom. It looked like a big lamb chop and a part of him hoped that they would have just called it a lamb chop. He was even tempted, for just the briefest moment, to pretend that it was a lamb chop. But why, he wondered, would he have to pretend? On a family trip to Florida a few years earlier, he ate shrimp for dinner and hadn't pretended it was tuna fish. The jumble inside him was giving him heartburn.

He stared at the pork chop then looked around the room at his classmates, at Dick and Steve who were sitting with Randell Smythe and Clay Swensen. Randall took out a pack of Chesterfields , confidently tapped them out and offered cigarettes to the others. Marty wanted to sit with them, be one of them, have Randall offer him a cigarette even though he hadn't smoked since he tried a few cigarettes back when he was a sophomore in high school. They leaned forward so that Clay, who had flicked up the top of the lighter and stroked the wheel all in one confident motion to bring up the flame, held it out to the others. They each leaned forward, held the cigarette in the flame and drew the smoke in deeply. Marty watched them, their heads together, a single column of smoke rose up from their circle. He looked up at the men in portraits who seemed to him, to be watching the smokers with approval. Marty got up and went over to Dick to ask him a question about the philosophy readings: were they supposed to read Aquinas’ proofs or Kant’s antinomies first. Dick was dismissive, “Obviously, Aquinas’ proofs.” Marty felt dumb but still hoped that Randall would offer him a cigarette and invite him to join them. He waited a few seconds and when Dick looked at him as if to ask what else he wanted, Marty turned and trudged back to his table with his head down.

He stood there looking at the pork chop then around the room at Dick and Steve with Randall and Clay sitting together and wondered whether Dick and Steve were just pretending to be one of them. He sat down and wondered if his father were 18 and here now if he'd be one of them. He knew that his father changed the family name from Cohen to Carr when he was 18 or 20 and Marty had never really thought about it until right then. He felt the anger at his father rise in his throat. It seemed to Marty at that moment, that his father had committed an act of betrayal or done something traitorous in trying to 'pass'. Marty mused, "Fat chance, he couldn't pass any more than I could." Like Marty he had brown eyes and a prominent nose. Once Marty even caught him looking in the mirror as he pushed his nose this way and that, holding his hand over parts of it to see how he'd look if it had been smaller. Actually Marty was proud of his nose. Once when he was 12, several of his cousins who were about the same age measured noses and Marty had won. His cousin Steve even ventured the theory, " A big nose means a big dick." Marty half believed it for a year or so.

Marty looked out across the room and saw Harlow huddled with his old Choate buddies and saw Randell and Clay get up to leave. He searched for a friendly face and didn't find one. He glanced at the portraits of the presidents, all elderly men with gray or white hair like his great-grandfather except he had a yarmulke, an unruly gray beard and smiling eyes. Marty knew him only from the tinted photograph on a table in their living room but he loved that man and always had from the time he first saw the photo when he was a little boy. Sometimes when no one was around, he would sit looking at it and talking to it, sharing secrets and feeling his great-grandfather's reassurance. Marty wondered what he would have thought of his great grandson sitting there, if he could have imagined such a thing. He sat down and looked at the pork chop then closed his eyes and imagined the picture of his great-grandfather. For the first time in many years Marty imagined speaking to him and asked him what he should do. The reply was, “Who do you want to be?”

Marty sat looking at his plate. The murmur of voices, the occasional guffaw, the scraping of chairs and the clanking of dishes seemed to recede into the background. He looked around the room then pushed the plate away decisively. It was a rare moment of clarity but it left him with both the terrible chill of loneliness and proud of himself too. He made a mental note that some time he’d like to look at some books about Judaism but for now he treated himself to two desserts-they had his favorite, chocolate cake. Then he decided to take the evening off to watch the game and see if Orlando Cepeda would hit another home run for the Giants.