A Snippet from Phil: Horn Dog & Candy Man Extraordinaire

East Lansing Episode

Marc and Todd live in an apartment on the eastern edge of campus. They wanted to keep the band together (Haute Boys weren’t official) but Stuart lacked initiative. He has lived in the same room on the same floor in the same dorm going on three years, now. During his freshman year, he roomed blind. Sophomore year, he shared the suite with Marc and Todd. This year, with Marc and Todd abandoning him (Stuart’s words), he had no choice (again, Stu’s words) other than to accept another random placement. (His new roommate allegedly believes in astral projection and takes part in its practice.)

Ironically, while Stuart was living in the suite with Marc and Todd, after finally securing preferred campus housing, he started coming back to Flint almost every weekend. The weekend visits were triggered by beginning to date a senior in high school he met at El Oasis on the always hopping Thanksgiving holiday. He and J Dog had not had much luck during their first year of college. In Stu’s case, this dire situation persisted into his sophomore year, even though he was now living with cool guys who were soon to become a cool band. On the big holiday weekend, Stuart and J Dog desperately vowed in J Dog’s Grand Blanc living room that they were going to meet chicks: one way or another. Thanksgiving was going to mean something this year. It hadn’t meant much to Stu since his grandfather had died. This vow probably took place just before they went out to buy 40-ouncers of Mickey’s malt liquor for courage. On that night, Stuart met a pretty girl with braces. They danced. He wrote her phone number down on the inside cover of a book of matches. There were phone calls. Before Christmas, Stuart was catching the Greyhound bus at the last minute, leaving Marc the freedom to entertain coeds in their dorm room at will. Her mother did not think she should be dating a college guy. Her mother was not wrong.

“Guess you brought a lot of hot girls back to your dorm room while Stuart was away.” I say to this Marc while glancing at Todd. We are having lunch at Olga’s. From the look of the crease on his forehead, I surmise that he is memorizing the menu.

Todd smirks. “The babes were lined up, weren’t they Marc?” Todd seems at home at Olga’s, as if he were lounging beside Marc’s family’s in-ground swimming pool, sipping a piña colada during summer break.

Stuart’s high schooler was, and is, a sweet girl. A very sweet girl. And damn cute, too. I know her from the bar. Her friends buy my candy on a regular basis. The relationship did not last long. She would trap me in a booth at El Oasis and grill me about Stuart’s whereabouts. Was he here? Was he in the parking lot? Was he drunk? Did he leave? What did he say? Was he high? From my vantage, it seemed like Stuart became more and more unrecognizable as the winter passed. His behavior became more reckless the tighter they became. He drank more, took more chances. Embarrassed himself more often on the dance floor and in the men’s room. My observation has been that he has a gift for the art of sabotage.

“Did you happen to like his girlfriend?” I ask. “Did you get a chance to meet her?”

“It’s too bad,” Marc says.

Todd agrees. “Nice girl, but young.” She is only a year younger than him, though. However, she had yet to leave home, I will give him that. Still, it was doomed. Through Marc and Todd, I have learned that the upperclassmen on Stuart’s floor have dubbed him Doctor Doom.

We are sitting at a table in the center of the dining room. The East Lansing white collar workers and sales people are enjoying lunch. They hate their jobs. They hate their lives. They need some candy. A couple of sorority sisters are enduring a perfunctory visit from their mothers.

I am drinking a girlie drink.

“Would you guys like a complimentary copy of Skag?” I have driven bundles of Skag down to East Lansing for Joe. He sells them at Wherehouse Records, Campus Corner and Flat, Black and Circular.

“Yeah, sure,” Todd says.

The traffic on Grand River flashes past the large front windows. The room appears to be in shock, as if—similar to the bars that do not open up until much later in the day—there is something totally recognizable yet unspeakable that happens here on a regular basis after midnight. We are surrounded by some wondrous sense of embarrassment.

“Let’s talk about the show,” I say as our waitress deposits plastic, eggshell white, egg-shaped platters of food on our wobbly table.

Todd asks for a refill.

Marc is good looking and assertive. He does not hold back. But he lacks Todd’s self-assurance. As dogs go, he is a barker. Todd is not an unattractive person, but my guess is that it is his sense of calm which drives his success. He is a chunky lab. They have been good friends since their junior high days. Todd has had more girlfriends. Marc’s preppy demeanor is friendly and attractive while passive-aggressively suggesting self-made money. He is clever and witty, and I can see why he and Stu might make good roommates. They are opposites with a similar taste in music. Todd’s abstracted, always late-to-class, C-average personality hints at being a trust fund kid. His concert t-shirt and faded jeans suggest he does not need to wear his wealth. I like them both. I turn over my silverware. “Have you guys ever been to a hall show?”

“Not in Flint,” Todd replies.

“We’ve been to St. Andrew’s,” Marc says.

“Yeah, not quite the same,” I reply. “They don’t exactly allow slam dancing at St. Andrew’s last I checked.”

“I don’t know,” Todd says. He is not pushing back.

Our waitress returns with a bottle of Grey Poupon for Marc’s burger. Todd is picking at a Caesar salad.

“I hate salads,” he says. “What was I thinking?”

Marc spreads a dollop of mustard on the underside of the upper bun of his medium-rare cooked burger. “This thing is still alive!” He is perplexed. “We were really hoping you would bring the girls.”

“Yeah, man. Where are the Sirens?”

“You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to keep the two of them on board with this project,” I say.

“Well, it wouldn’t be so hard if they got to know us.” Why, I wonder, have things not worked out for Marc as well as one might expect? He needs to get laid. The waitress returns to refill their sodas. It is obvious that she has taken a shine to him with his fiercely chiseled Feargal Sharkey features.

“Do you need another drink?” she asks. I notice that they do not add, hon, in East Lansing.

“I don’t, thank you.” I am the most congenial fellow she will ever meet. I look away. “Are you guys still practicing at all?”

“You’re talking to a couple of pros,” Marc says. “’I’ve finally learned a few chords.”

“It’ll be fine,” Todd says.

The sorority girls and their mothers get up to leave. There is a moment of quiet bickering over how much money to leave as a tip. I overhear one girl say, “She was such a bitch.”

For some unexpected reason, her mother is sympathetic to the plights of waitresses. “Oh, stop.” She lightly taps her naughty daughter’s forearm.

I am momentarily distracted by a mild electrical charge on the fringe of my groin. “What about Stuart?” I ask. “How’s he doing? I worry about him. I hate to admit it, but I do.”

“Stuart’s Stuart,” Todd says.

Marc nods in agreement, a bit of hamburger bun protruding from the corner of his mouth.

“He writes decent lyrics,” I say.

“He’s the people’s poet.”

“He is that. He’s something, all right. He’s been drinking a lot—“

Marc swallows, interrupts. “That’s Stuart.”

Todd nods in agreement.

The Haute Boys are in complete agreement. One night a girl asked Stuart to go for a walk on campus. They walked to the rapids to feed the ducks. She didn’t come back to his room afterwards despite an invitation; Stuart never called her back. On a different night, a girl from his sister floor led him into the woods to make out, but nothing really happened. I think this kind of disappointment led to desperation. He was momentarily in love with a swimmer. He had a huge crush on a Jewish girl in his American Thought and Language class. The swimmer asked him to meet for coffee on a wet-hair-freezing winter morning and stood him up. The Jewish girl had a Jewish boyfriend. The conversation within the restaurant is lively. Allows us to focus on our food for a moment while each of us entertains our separate thoughts. Marc, I imagine, is thinking about a ten-page paper for a stats class while Todd considers a mid-afternoon nap in a hammock on the balcony of their apartment.

“Did you guys ever meet Nigel?” My reconnaissance continues. I am still collecting and collating anecdotes and facts about this guy.

“Nigel? No—“

“But you know about him, right? You’ve heard stories? I mean he’s basically Stuart’s favorite topic of conversation. Give Stuart a beer and he can go on and on about this guy.”

Marc smiles. Todd chuckles. I have come completely clean. “Guys, we can’t let Stuart fuck this up. He’s a bit of a nut job. But don’t get me wrong. I love the guy.” I leave it at that.

Stir my drink.

“What about his grandfather? This newly found Indian ancestry Stuart seems obsessed with.” The flashing cars on Grand River are hypnotizing.

“The Indian?”

“Exactly.”

“Yeah, man.”

“Do you buy it?”

“Why not?” Marc says, cocking an eyebrow.

“I am not questioning the authenticity of Stuart’s grandfather’s Indian heritage. I just mean the rest of it—“

“The rest of what?”

I pause for a moment to look from one to the other. I look them directly in the eyes. “All the drunken ranting—“

One night Stuart somehow wound up in a car in the parking lot of El Oasis with a girl he hardly knew: an art student from MSU. The car was easily identified by the fog on the windows. His sweet high school girl with the braces returned from her search, cold and teary-eyed, tried to ply me with drinks. She needed me to buy them. Her treat, though. It was completely unnecessary. I was a willing accomplice. I understood the assignment.

“My car?” I asked her.

“Mine,” she replied.

All of us saboteurs.

When the check comes, Marc points to himself and Todd and playfully, suggestively informs the waitress that the two of them are a couple. “Oh, Todd,” he says. “You pay the big check.”

Todd softly punches the meat of his shoulder. But the message is clear: we are not gay—he is being a dick.

The waitress wrinkles her nose.

“I’ve got it,” I say, taking charge of the moment. I am the manager of the band. I am a future Wolverine. I am treating these Spartans. We shake hands out on the sidewalk. “Please just keep me informed, okay?” A gentle request. Kid gloves. “The magazines are in my car. Walk with me?”

“Maybe next time,” Todd says. “I have to meet my study group at the Union.” He accentuates study group with air quotes, adding, “I basically do all the fucking work.”

Marc is still in the bathroom.

I walk around the corner and head for the alley. Downtown is bustling. Many of the students have Walkmans. The bicyclists all have a death wish. The frat boys are dressed like a scene from St. Elmo’s Fire.