June 2, 2017:
The first day and night: friends and martyrs.
A wanker whose name has evaporated: "Nothing will change until someone is willing to sacrifice himself." A wanker whose comical Hollywood parody of a Dutch name still makes me giggle: "I might."
To escape the truly horrific Commons there was a diner; a fast-food taco shop; a Thrifty's with ice cream; an excellent Mexican restaurant. My first year was all about the fast-food. Three ground beef tacos, limp fries, soda: about $4. I'd never had Mexican: the tacos were revelation. Dripping orange grease, crunchy, cool leafy lettuce, a clump of shredded cheese: each part of the whole had its own combination of flavors. Delicious. As a Freshman I walked a mile-ish there and a mile-ish back pretty much every day.
Later it was the excellent Mexican. A school colleague with a car; a very beautiful girlfriend without. Decades later she tells me we had "our table". I expect that's true. Walk through tract homes to dinner, stop for ice cream and beer on the way home. Kisses, love: lovely.
We were elitists. I was ambivalent about that. I believed and still believe in égalité: but that doesn't mean dumbing down the accomplished. The unserious students at the parent University appalled and alienated me, although I was more standoffish than confrontational. Some including my then closest friend were horrible to them. She insulted and belittled them at every turn — something of the convert's exaggerated rejection of her own past as University transfer. Her behavior embarrassed me to the point where I stopped attending classes with her.
The wanker with missing identity wankered off. The wanker with comical parody Dutch name made false offers but in the end was all about the taking.
I learned, roughly in order: Campbell; Kirk; Levi-Strauss; Freud; Marx; Joyce; Braudel; the Greeks; and finally Althusser, although through network not institution. There was "Apocalypse Now"; "Baron von Munchausen"; the opera; Neil Young; quaaludes; the Sex Pistols and the Ramones and the entire wave. There was sex, with, I think, eleven women, although sadly not all at once. There was guitar and radio, and Greece, and friends I still love. Leavened with various wankers I'm happy to be shot of.