Previously, Part 17: Well, I Love That Dirty Water.
I even got to watch a few stragglers dance across the marble floor.
City living, I guess…
But despite all its shortcomings, I thoroughly enjoyed living at 587 Beacon.
And we sat in the nosebleeds at Fenway more times than she wanted.
It was Fall of ‘78, the best time of year to be in Boston.
For me, it was the new beginning I so desperately needed.
I wasnt trying to get As in my classes at Northeastern.
I was happy getting Bs with very little effort.
And that we’d be writing multiple papers about its meaning.
It sounded easy peasy to me…
When I completed my first paper, cocky me assumed I’d aced it.
So did one of my fellow physical education majors,Dyke.
Dyke was a great guy and a pretty damn good hockey player.
For the next couple of months, we dissected Young Goodman Brown and wrote lots of papers.
The guy didn’t hand out As or even Bs.
A fucking C was the top grade in the class.
It was so frustrating.
The term paper was the most important and heavily weighted towards our final grade.
It was the culmination of everything we had learned.
Written in 1835,Young Goodman Browntakes place in Salem, Massachusetts.
It had a profound effect on me, making me suspicious of people in my inner circle…
When I finished, mine was only 580 words.
Everything was hand-written back then, which also factored into my decision not to re-write.
Neither Dyke nor I was willing to discuss our term papers with each other.
It was all very hush-hush.
The professor said he’d return the graded term papers to students as they handed in their final exam.
Like someone who thought he was gonna drink at least one free pitcher of beer that night…
I looked down at my paper.
I received an A- from one of the toughest grading professors in the English department.
Then Dyke said,You first!
I retorted,No, you first!
We went back and forth, neither wanting to be the first to reveal our grade.
Then I figured, fuck it, I got a fuckin A-, no way he beats that.
But Dyke was still smiling… Uh-oh.
Could he have pulled off the upset, or was I just a bad fucking dancer?
He trash-talked me all the way to theCaskand for most of the night.
I can’t say that it wasn’t well-deserved.
I bought the first pitcher, but it wasnt the last.
He and I got utterly and thoroughly annihilated.
Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental…
