Jerry the Freudian had a tattoo of Hermann Ebbinghaus on one arm and a cigar on the other. Jerry the Freudian was a graduate student when I was an undergrad. Hermann Ebbinghaus was his all-time favorite psychologist. The cigar, of course, was just a cigar.

The first time I went to the Inn Complete, the grad student bar in Syracuse where I went to school, was for office hours with my philosophy t.a., Scott Mendels. Scott caught my eye as I walked in and he gestured me over to his crowded table with a hook of his nervous cigarette. The group was in the thrall of Jerry The Freudian, who was reading a student's paper aloud. The paper explored the latent homosexual themes of the movie 'The Usual Suspects.' The body of the paper was built upon the idea that the actors the author found particularly attractive supported the thesis, while the casting of character actor Dan Hedaya was the main argument against.

            After the reading, I was introduced to the group. Chris From-Anthro (anthropology), smoky Cathy Guitierrez (comparative Religion) and her Troyboy (Chaucer, just Chaucer), Peaches (museum science), Spooky (economics), Meatloaf Paul (sociology), Surly Bill (cartography), and Jerry the Freudian (psychology). As they ran down the list of nicknames, I felt like I was meeting the Little Rascals. Or in a scene in Goodfellas. Goodfellas is the better analogy, I think, because the lot of them were grad students the way Liotta, Pesci, and DeNiro were gangsters. Bigger than life. They were who you wanted to be. Except for Thursday nights, when some of them were a ska band and you wouldn't trade places with them for the world.  

            That night I had my first beer, smoked my first joint, and got my first tattoo. I lie. I didn't get a tattoo. I did go to my first tattoo parlor. Scott, Jerry and I went, drunk and high like we were on shore leave, to a tattoo parlor where Johnny Vampire (com law) worked. Johnny Vampire was a friend of Spooky's from when they both bounced at a Goth Club downtown. Neither were very big, but according to Johnny Vampire, physical size isn't what intimidates that crowd. We didn't hang out with him very much. Spooky and Meatloaf Paul were Goths-in-recovery, which was way more our speed than the other kind. Johnny Vampire gave the group tattoos like he was giving out candy for Halloween so that was where the three of us went that evening. Jerry the Freudian got "parfois..." done under the cigar in a way intentionally reminiscent of Magritte's The Treason of Images . That's the one with "this is not a pipe" written in French under the pipe. Jerry got "parfois...", that's "sometimes" in French, ellipsis and all, done under the cigar. It took Johnny Vampire a few hours. No one would tell me if that was fast or slow.

            All this is to say that I fell in with the grad kids. Jerry the Freudian most of all. The way he'd laugh his little laugh every single time I called him "Mister the Freudian." In his mind, that never stopped being clever. For my part, I took to the way that he made a project of corrupting me, body and soul. Not in a homosexual themes kind of way, although I loved him and he loved me. No, he mentored me in debauch - drugs and women. We lived life like we were in a Tom Waits song. He made out like I was Thompson and he my gonzo Psychologist. He'd even preface handing me my share of our drugs with lines like "as your therapist, I advise you to ingest the following."

The college environment was a safe one for experimentation of all kinds and Jerry had done everything and lived everywhere and I think that he was able to see all the filthy degeneracy through my virgin eyes, and enjoy it anew. It seemed that he got as big a kick out of unsheltering me as he did from my calling him "Mister the Freudian."

            At this point, I must diverge from the narrative. A story must be told involving Meatloaf Paul. Meatloaf Paul looks like Meatloaf. The singer, not the meal. He's a paler, gothier, and proportionally smaller version of Meatloaf. Briefly. Meatloaf Paul and I went to a concert in a barn in Saratoga Springs. During the show, a guy dances into Paul. Repeatedly. Each time, staring at Paul, challenging him with his eyes. Paul's a big guy. He's no Meatloaf or anything, and he's head and shoulders shorter than me, but Paul's a big guy. But Paul's not looking to fight. Eventually - and bear in mind, Paul told me this story -- it's his story, I'm just relating it - Paul shifted a little to show he was with me. I am a big guy. Bigger than Paul, bigger than Meatloaf, bigger than I am now, and needless to say, very much bigger than the guy who keeps dancing into Paul. Apparently, the guy looked me up and down, apologized to Paul and danced away. The thing to take away from this story is that I was completely oblivious to the whole exchange. If I had attempted to be threatening, hell, if I'd opened my mouth, consensus has it, I couldn't intimidate anyone. But oblivious, I am a menace.

            The reason I tell Paul's story is that I imagine it contributed to the mugging. On one post-Bacchanalian morning, Jerry the Freudian and I were walking back from a sorority house, through the park. It had snowed that night, and the park was whiter than the sky, in a terrible, terrible way. The cocktail of drugs was working its way out of our systems little bit by little bit, each part leaving kicking and screaming, like spoiled children, voices careening off the white all around us. Everything hurt like a sitcom hangover. For some reason to do with the counterculture, we were without coats or even long-sleeved shirts. We were, however, wearing more than this old Asian man in his drawers who was doing calisthenics there in the snowy park. I couldn't wrap my mind around the guy at all. It was like David Lynch had dropped him there just to fuck with me. All I could do when   I saw that Asian man was become livid at David Lynch. I tried to tell Jerry, but it hurt too much in too many places to try to make sounds. Well, it hurt me too much. Jerry told me that he had decided that what we needed was a hair from the dog that bit us. I opened my empty wallet to him and shook my head. That hurt too. Jerry told me it was his treat and then swore when he saw his wallet was empty as well.   

            He cocked his head for me to follow as he approached the old Asian man. It was like a dream or an out of body experience in that as Jerry walked over, I was already at the part where he was mugging the old man, but when it actually happened, I had my eyes closed and was willing my ears shut too. I could feel the man looking all the way up at me. I could only imagine how intimidating I must have been. I couldn't smile or say something to alleviate my menace even if I wanted to betray Jerry. I was a grimace, standing there motionless. I was a stoic six foot six sneer. I felt terrible. I felt worse when I could feel Jerry looking at me as the old man beat the holy living shit out of him while I just stood there, unmoving, wishing I was somewhere else.

            Remember in Stand By Me, where the Star Trek kid sees the deer and never tells his friends about it? The boys shared the rest of the adventure, but the deer was just for him. That's what the savage beating of Jerry the Freudian at the hands of an occidental octogenarian at dawn was not like at all. Not only was it in the school paper and the city paper, but Jerry was arrested briefly and as harshly expelled as you could imagine. It's more like in Henry V, where Hal remembers the depraved old days with Falstaff fondly, but knows that he is free of them, for better or worse. Only, I'm clearly not about to become king or anything. And I still have the occasional debauched weekend. And I keep in contact with Jerry the Freudian via email, which Hal and Falstaff couldn't really take advantage of. It's too bad really. For them.