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.