Origins of the B.A. Society

Secret societies at schools in Virginia, even schools like mine, were hardly novel. My father once attempted to form his own as a sophomore at UVA. I’d co-founded a club in high school, under the auspices of introducing thoughtful discourse to the student body, but actually allowing my friends and I to get an administrative green light to convene at odd hours, act like assholes, and get official pictures taken of ourselves.

It was January. I’d come back from Christmas Break to find campus devoid of life. Winter had taken hold. The pristine landscape rendered skeletal by the cold, we shivered in the shadow of the two tits of Tinker Mountain. My first night back I walked across the hall to rouse Courtney from a television stupor.

“I don’t want to go outside,” she said. “It should never be this cold.”

Courtney was from San Antonio and therefore one of the few people in I knew whose tolerance for cold temperatures was even lower than mine.

I sighed, summoning up my best impression of a hardened Arctic explorer. “This isn’t cold. This is just January. Wait til it snows.”

Courtney shivered and swallowed. “I guess we should go out then. While going out is still a possibility.”

Thus attired for a holiday weekend with Admiral Byrd, Courtney joined me to ride downtown under high winter night skies. The local scenesters and skateboarders had dissipated, leaving us alone in the front window of the only coffee shop in Roanoke Virginia in 1995. She prattled on about her dysfunctional long-distance relationship with a twenty-four year old photographer in Rochester, NY; I used the empty campus to illustrate why most colleges had done away with short terms years ago. Hollins’ 4-1-4 system highlighted their perverse attachment to archaic attitudes and practices. “Cotillions, horses, unreported date rapes, short terms . . . It’s a fucking finishing school with accreditation. I have to transfer.”

Courtney stirred half a jar of sugar into her dainty coffee cup. “We should hang out with that chick, Lucia. She seems like she might not totally suck.”

I peered out the window toward the bookstore across the way, hoping to catch sight of some raffish townie with a leather jacket and a dog-eared copy of “Ulysses,” who would (if he existed) make a perfect boyfriend. Dismayed by the absence of activity, I turned my attention back to my coffee and the only memory I had of Lucia.

Courtney and I had gone to a reception following some campus event. One of those faculty cocktails with cheap wine and microwaveable finger foods in the elaborate parlor in the oldest building on campus. Courtney made small talk with her poetry instructor while I was trying to steal bottles of wine[1] Lucia was sitting in the back room with a non-traditional fellow student—a twenty-four year old former bartender and comic book aficionado from Illinois. I could remember a lot of details about that night (including the gummy quality of the mini-quiches and the location of the ficus tree I ducked behind to shove pilfered bottles in my backpack), but outside of the name and a vague recollection of a sharp tongue, I couldn’t remember anything about Lucia.

“The last Hollins person we tried to hang out with attempted suicide before Christmas[2],” I said.

“What’s your point?” asked Courtney.

“I dunno.” I waved to a small group of townie boys walking across the street. Our entire social circle, give or take. “Maybe we shouldn’t try to integrate anymore of our classmates into this, I dunno, is this a clique?”

“I know cliques,” said Courtney. “This is no clique. This is two of us. And a bunch of guys who only ever talk about records. Most of whom aren’t even hot. Calling this a clique is an insult to the idea of cliques. We need more friends at Hollins. Lucia doesn’t suck. We’re inviting her out tomorrow night.”

* * *

I made Courtney call Lucia.

“People don’t like me,” I said. “They have funny ideas about me here.”

Courtney shot me a look suggesting that I was both acutely paranoid and absolutely right, and dialed Lucia’s number.

“I’m not going to be surprised if she doesn’t want to hang out.” I pitched a can toward Courtney’s trash can, and noted she’d removed all of her Pearl Jam posters since before the holidays.

Courtney silenced me, and after a brief conversation, announced:

“She’s coming over.”

“Good,” I said.

***

Lucia was breathless upon arrival. It was cold, and she had apparently run from her room across the quad.

My first impression of Lucia was that she was much more like my friends from high school than anyone else I’d met at Hollins. She was bold, funny, a bit of a hippie, and easily able to recognize my profound lack of badassitude with a single glance. This was both a relief and a disappointment. I thought she was spunky and a little weird and a timely reminder that all girls weren’t vain, estrogen-addled nutcases with no sense of humor. In fact, hanging out with Lucia was so blissfully free of angst and manipulation that I forgot to ask her if she had any suicidal tendencies until well after she introduced the subject: “Before Christmas, a girl on my hall attempted suicide. We cleaned up her room after the ambulance came.”[3]

Her tone suggested pity, a little disgust, and the very blackest of black comedy, employed when things get so disturbing nothing else seems appropriate. It was the way I talked about Hollins in general. I liked her.

“We’re going downtown to hang out with townies, listen to punk rock, and irritate the local police department,” I said. “If you’re into that, I’m driving.”

She shrugged. “What the hell.”

***

With the addition of a third party, I felt even less inclined to attend my farce of a short-term class. It was called something like “Agitators and Extremists.” I’d missed short-term registration, after pressing engagements[4] forced my late return from fall break, and it sounded like the least boring of the available alternatives.

I’d reviewed my revolutionary history over Christmas. At the time I was somewhat enamored with “Lipstick Traces,” and looked forward to making the broad jumps in logic necessary to discuss both Guy Debord and the New Model Army in the same essay question.

On the first day of class, I arrived in fine form, and found a classroom full of docile khaki-clad blondes calmly discussing the radical leftist stance of the Indigo Girls. The professor, a round, middle-aged Gloria Steinem wanna-be, wasn’t much of an improvement. She spent the first two full class periods on Angela Davis’s hair, and the following two class periods on Angela Davis’s bone structure. On the fifth day, during an impassioned paean to Angela Davis’s earrings, I went to the bathroom and didn’t come back except to turn in a paper on the last day.

***

Courtney worked at the circulation desk at the library three days a week. On those nights, left to fend for myself until midnight, I worked on a long fictional project about the Florida suburbs, based, in part, on my experiences at my cousin’s wedding. The dorms were quiet, as many of our classmates (including my roommate) chose to spend short term on internships and foreign travel. Those remaining--too lazy, too poor, too unoriginal to find opportunities elsewhere--took to leaving our doors open to the empty halls. We visited room to room, and ceased even superficial adherence to campus rules regarding intoxicants. It was the only time that I remember liking my hallmates.

One night, I let a girl down the hall dye my hair a brilliant, iridescent red. “I love doing this,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to be a stylist, but my father won’t hear of it.”

Later, as I admired her professional results, I told Courtney about her comments.

“Seems silly,” I said. “If she wants to go to beauty school instead of college, fucking let her go to beauty school. It would save somebody some money, at least.”

Courtney smirked. “Money’s not an issue,” she said. “That girl has plenty of it. She’s a fucking Rockefeller.”

I rolled my eyes. “She can’t be that rich.”

“No seriously. She’s a Rockefeller. As in Center. As in literally.” Courtney bummed a cigarette and looked off down the hall toward the girl’s room. She neglected to take her usual potshot at rich people.

“Maybe we should invite her to come out with us,” I said.

“Are you kidding?” asked Courtney. “If we’re going to do that, we might as well ask Misti.”

***

From the first day of living in the dorms, Misti was preceded by a extraordinary trail of rumor and speculation, it was hard for me to believe she hadn’t made national news. The story cited by most involved an accident, with terrible and mysterious consequences, a historic lawsuit, and a resulting monetary settlement which experienced exponential growth each time the story was told.

The elaborate details added to that narrative varied by the teller, and often involved exotic locales, celebrities, expensive, self-destructive extracurricular activities, glamorous ennui, and, at least once, a dissolute member of a European royal family. By the time I actually met Misti, I’d been treated to at least six unique versions of her biography from at least as many narrators.

As far as first impressions go, she didn’t disappoint. Misti had a casual elegance that seemed to me both old-fashioned and enviable. She was the sort of girl who went to sun on the quad dressed for Monte Carlo, circa 1959. All broad-brimmed black straw hats and Italian sandals and exotic jewelry and copies of French Vogue and Vanity Fair. She was blonde and thin and charming, and apart from her tendency to talk like a Valley Girl when excited, she reminded me of Holly Golightly, had she been played by Grace Kelly. This was, I would learn, no accident.

We became friends during a first semester philosophy class, and fell into a regular pattern of skipping at least once to drive to the handful of stores that carried designer labels in Roanoke. I read magazines while Misti tried on dresses. She told the occasional outrageous anecdote—involving clubs in Miami or European escapades—but tended to withhold information

I thought Misti would be a welcome addition to our nights out. If nothing else, she would add sophistication, however manufactured, to our rumpled triumvirate, and likely usurp me as most over-dressed.

“I think Misti is an excellent idea,” I told Courtney.

“Misti goes to frat parties,” said Courtney.

I shrugged. “You went to frat parties until two months ago. I can’t see how that has any real bearing on anything.”

Courtney pursed her lips. “She’s not exactly punk rock.”

The only thing more ridiculous than Courtney’s statement was its tone of intimacy. As if she was the arbiter of all things punk rock. As if being punk rock was a rare and enviable genetic strain. As if we were dogmatic, street-hardened Mohicans with anarchy tattoos. As if being punk rock could ever be a requirement for anything.

I coughed, and blinked to focus on her facial expression.

Totally sincere.

“Lucia listens to Phish. You wear overalls. I like Joni Mitchell. I don’t think Misti poses any real threat.” I turned on my heel and stalked down the hallway feeling a tinge of guilt. After all, Courtney’s purism and group xenophobia were at least partially my fault. I’d been the one to utter the p-word on the first day of classes.

I knocked on Misti’s door and found reading and listening to Mahler.

“We’re going to see Lucia. She’s sick,” I said. “Then we thought we might go downtown and see a crappy band play. You in?”

Misti turned down her music and ran a hand through her hair. “Could we get an espresso?”

“They have espresso downtown,” I said.

She sighed and turned the corner of a page with a manicured fingernail. “All right. I’m in.”

I closed her door behind me and sashayed down the hall, passing Courtney on my way into my room.

“She’s coming,” I said.

“She won’t enjoy it,” said Courtney.

“That’s her business,” I said. “Let’s go.”

***

It took about three hours for the four of us to acclimate to each other, as a group, in a group. It took about three days for one of us—I don’t remember which one—to propose an ironic title.[5] BA Society. Bad Ass Society. So-called for our utter lack of bad assitude, regardless of what some members might have you believe. Lucia supplied us with a secret handshake, and the rest of us set down rules for membership. The only one I remember had to do with an enthusiasm for smoking cigarettes. The rest merely insured our group could not be breached by any outsiders—save the recipients of a few honorary memberships. Like those of any good secret society, most of our proceedings were silly, self-indulgent and meaningless to outsiders.

But I can’t tell you everything.

That would be breaking the rules.

---

[1] Tricky, when all you’ve got for camouflage is a backpack and a beaded sweater, but not impossible.

[2] Sadly, true. Fortunately, she was unsuccessful. I don’t remember much about her now either, except her name (which I will not mention here), the electric green crewcut she gave herself prior to chasing a bottle of Xanax with a fifth of Jack Daniels, and her observation that my preference for cars with standard transmission meant that I had penis envy

[3] Total suicide count, my first semester of college: 2 attempts; 1 successful. Out of a college of less than 1000 students.

[4] An extra day spent in Wilmington, NC with my best friend, side trip to Poindexter Records (Durham) for new releases, an hour of loafing at the Duke Coffeehouse, and an attempt to short-cut back to Roanoke on Highway 29 that landed me in another dimension, maybe Danville, VA, very late at night.

[5] Lucia says: “At the risk of sounding pompous, I do believe I came up with the moniker of B.A. Society. I distinctly remember standing outside of Tinker one night, doing a little jig up on a wall of some sort, loudly proclaiming we were Bad Ass, and we should call ourselves the Bad Ass Society. I know you were there, and wholeheartedly agreed.” Thank you for clearing that up, Lucia.

2000

The Castle. Heidelberg, Germany. Early May

1979

The kitchen. 109 Westwood Road.

Hands

I’m a chronic nailbiter.

I don’t know when I started, and imagine the only technique capable of making me stop at this point would be something painful and Pavlovian. And that probably wouldn’t work. I think you have to really want to quit biting your nails, and I don’t really care. I was cursed with ugly hands with stumpy fingers that I have managed to bruise, callous, and scar regularly since childhood[1]. I’ll never be mistaken for a Victorian noblewoman or a professional hand model, but whatever. On my list of physical insecurities, the hands barely make the cut, so I’m not worried.

Having never had fingernails, I don’t know what I’m missing. They appear helpful opening cellophane wrappers, and look like an excellent tool for navel lint removal. I’m aware there are many different kinds of manicures, and that breaking a nail can be both painful and very sad. I’ve often enjoyed the sound of long fingernails clacking against a keyboard at the next desk, and have heard terrifying stories about the damage caused by sparring teenage girls with full-set acrylics. I find myself admiring the 4” spiral talons sported by my favorite check-out girl at the local craft sore. They’re a glossy dark purple with a metallic stripe and always remind me of a royal curly-cue straw.

My mother and grandmother found my gnawed fingernails uncouth. They were cited from time to time as evidence of negligence on my part, an overt sign of weakness that would betray me on dates, in job interviews, in making new friends. To drive the point home, an urban legend would be introduced and I would hear about how just last week “a friend of Mr. Hamilton’s ex-wife’s sister’s husband’s second cousin twice removed was biting her nails and two days later she caught smallpox and suffered, unloved and unwanted, in an alleyway frequented by hookers and drug dealers. All she ever wanted was to find true love and happiness, but all she found was pain and death and her last words, delivered to a rat the size of a Yorkshire Terrier, were ‘If only I’d taken better care of my cuticles, and had a nice manicure every now and then . . .’ And that’s a true story.”

Most of the time I hadn’t the foggiest idea who Mr Hamilton was—whether he was real or imagined—so stories about his extended family rarely hit home. What I did know was that it would be pretty hard to catch smallpox from biting your nails, unless you had really bad hygiene and a dangerously lax supervisor at the CDC.

When I tried to explain this I’d add that I’d noticed no boy, no potential employer, no conversation partner peering down their nose at my fingernails. In fact, the only person who usually paid attention to anyone else’s hands was me. I memorized the shape of the space between fingers, and noted the size of knuckles, the diameter of the palm, the spot on the pinky where the guidance counselor had fucked up her nail polish, the long scratch on the thumb where the boy down the street’s cat registered its complaint.

This hyperawareness of hands played a supporting role in my ability to identify musicians—a convenient party trick when you’re friends with girls who want to date boys in bands. It’s easier than it sounds, mostly because musicians like to show off their hands. They’ll tap tabletops elaborately and clutch their coffee cups with fingertips. The type of instrument played can be determined by the location of calluses, length of nails, or habit of holding almost anything like a drumstick.

Like many piano players, I was a reacher—compulsively fanning out my fingers to their widest span. At my peak, I could cover an octave and a half from pinky to thumb on my left hand. It meant I could play Chopin without cheating. And even if no one else noticed, I liked to simulate on the edge of diner tabletops during high school. To me, it was a physical feat on par with running five miles, or mastering the chin-up[2].

I wasn’t a great musician. I was barely a good one. At the height of my game—about age sixteen for those playing at home—I would attend recitals and auditions and be roundly shamed by some fleet-fingered eight-year-old. In retrospect, my only real skill was a slightly better than average ability to recognize notes and play by ear (a habit my first piano teacher tried, unsuccessfully, to break me of). This served me well once a year when my mother would seduce me to play the piano at her black-tie Christmas functions with promises of open bar and mild praise from a gaggle of local country clubbers. I’d slouch uncomfortably at the keyboard, trying to pretend I didn’t look like a freak in whatever off the rack taffeta monstrosity I was wearing, and entertain myself by inserting a couple bars of The Clash into the lite-jazz rendition of “O Holy Night,” to see if anyone else noticed. [3]

I’d like to tell you the end of my formal musical training coincided with some grand realization of mediocrity, that I stopped playing piano regularly because I recognized my talents lay elsewhere, and chose to spend my time cultivating the skills that really mattered. Of course, this is not true. I quit playing the piano because it seemed less cool than playing the guitar, and I arrived at the conclusion that I would rather be Keith Richards than Billy Joel. And I assumed the transition would be easy. I had a decent handle on 88 piano keys. Six strings seemed less than daunting. After all, most of the guitar players I knew were all but self-taught. I had a decade of formal training to their dog-eared stack of guitar player back issues. I would take the world by storm with my prodigious talents and keen ear for melody. I would be the one girl, in all the world, who could outplay the boys. At night, I would sit home and consider my incipient fame. The spoils of celebrity and genius. Would I be a mega-star selling out stadiums? Or would I be more of a seminal figure, ushering in the next big thing by influencing countless other musicians? Would I be a sexy, slinky, rock and roller? An eccentric genius? An arty impresario? A snarling, political punk rocker? Would I subvert the image cult? Would I become a fashion icon? Would I move to London? Would I develop a drug addiction? Would I be invited for dinner at Kim and Thurston’s house? Would I have groupies?

A decade, some change, three guitars, and at least six semi-imaginary bands later, I’m forced to admit the answer to these questions is a resounding no. My guitar playing skills are roughly equal to my mathematical ability. I still flub the most simplistic formulas, and whatever limited dexterity I may have once shown on a piano is simply a foregone conclusion when transferred to a fretboard. This has been, to put it mildly, something of a bummer.

My mother started playing the guitar when she was about fifteen. Her fater, child of a musical family, bought her a thin-necked, steel-stringed Gibson for her sixteenth birthday. She played regularly and took to spending her nights holding impromptu jam sessions with friends under picnic shelters at various Roanoke, VA city parks.

By the time she got to college, she was good enough to attract the attention of a Richmond DJ who offered to record her demo. He probably thought she was a capable guitarist with a nice, sultry singing voice. She also had long, straight, dark hair, big green eyes, a nice body, and long legs[4]. In a world of plain-faced folk singers with no make-up, my mother had a penchant for mascara, high heels, and day-glo minidresses. Physically it was Joan Baez meets Nancy Sinatra. Vocally she was Judy Collins meets Dusty Springfield. To put it bluntly, she was marketable.

Alas, my god-fearing grandparents prohibited her from cutting a record, worried that a record deal might interfere with her ability to marry well, and left my mother’s possible musical career up for speculation. She didn’t retaliate, but graduated from college, married a man from a wealthy family, and occasionally lugged the guitar out once or twice a year to entertain her children. As time passed, her desire to play the guitar was subsumed by her desire to have nice fingernails, and that was pretty much the end of it. This was unfortunate, because by the time I wanted to learn, she was investing in regular manicures, and already reminding me that employers would notice if I didn’t take better care of my nails.

I can’t say anything. Not when I sit two feet from a guitar that gets played about twice a month, when I’m suffering from insomnia, and sit up at four am playing (but never perfecting) Kinks songs for my cat. Coated in a thin layer of dust, it stands as a kind of monument to all of my aborted ambitions—music, painting, acting, academics, the one completed, and three uncompleted books, stalled in revision on my hard drive.

I used to tell people that I wrote because I was a failed musician. The truth is I write because it’s easier than being a musician, because I lack the drive to practice, because I’d rather tell myself stories about being a musician than actually play an instrument, because I could never endure the sort of criticism I once meted out, because I’m too impatient and too competitive and too easily distracted.

Because, at the end, I just don’t have the right hands.

---

[1] The most recent of which being a long purple burn scar on my left ring finger, achieved during the Annual Thanksgiving potluck when I fumbled while removing the turkey from the oven

[2] Physical skills I have, of this writing, yet to accomplish.

[3] Kudos to the guy who plays the piano at the Durham Nordstrom for trying this same trick with the White Stripes recently.

[4] My mother is 5’10 barefoot.