1978

When I graduated from highschool, I had already been accepted to the EE program at USC. I had no idea what I was in for.

The four most beautiful women I had ever met in my entire life I found within two months of attending USC. The first was Iranian. Mind you this was 1978 and the Iranian Revolution was in full swing. Friends of the Shah had evidently gotten out ahead of time and a few of them landed their sons and daughters at the University. Iranian, at the time, became synonymous with 'obscenely wealthy'; if there was a red Ferrari anywhere around the campus, you knew who it belonged to. This mysterious woman had large brown eyes and thick jet black eyebrows. I endeavored to speak, but not before chatting up some other Iranian students for some basic Farsi lessons. My moment came at the student union as we crossed paths. Everyone knew who she was, probably some sort of royalty. I spoke my greeting. She stopped and smiled briefly. My eyes drifted up to her eyebrows. They were so, so thick. Her complexion was milky brown and perfect. Her eyes went from happy surprise, to xray vision curiosity, to imperious contempt in the space of 3 seconds. I stood there, most certainly drooling, with my jaw open, unable to comprehend her wealth and beauty all at once. But I saw her fully. I looked at her face and she looked at my face. The moment is frozen in time.

Rochelle was from North Las Vegas. She had fine features and very long straight hair that she kept in a single Pocahontas braid that went halfway down the sweet sway of her back. Basically, she dissed me for Rodney, a knucklehead kid from my own neighborhood who had grown impossibly large and played football. That's all I want to say about her.

You see, I was convinced that I had the plan for my life worked out. I had already interned at Bachelor Chemical Company programming FORTRAN thermodynamics programs over the summer. My boss wanted me to become a ChemE, but I was only in love with computers. I was going to get my bachelor's in EE then the MSEE and then the Engineer's degree. I would build computers. All I really wanted to do was program, but in 1978 it was very difficult for me to express this desire as a 17 year old black kid from around the way who only got Bs and Cs in Algebra & Physics. I got As in Geometry, French, Public Speaking and honors Computer classes, but you know how EE departments are. My advisor was one of those characters who believed in the stigma of Affirmative Action even before there was Affirmative Action. Aside from all that, the plan was to find the perfect woman at USC and marry her after 3 years of going steady. Freshman year was all about choosing the right one.

There were Kappas at USC in 1978. They ruled the world. I had never heard of Kappa Alpha Psi or any of the black fraternities. My father had pledged the local frat at UConn, and other than a beer stein with a crescent on it and a funny looking pin that he had given to my mother, I knew nothing about frats. The Kappas all had canes. They were extraordinarily cool. They performed their steps at the outdoor parties behind the union. Recall that these were the days when people used to make huge freak lines. If you have no memories of the kind of dancing that went on to Chic's Le Freak, I'm sorry that I cannot help you. All I can say is that as a 17 year old boy, I nearly squirt myself just watching. At the center of this standing orgy were the Kappas. They seemed to have magical power.

The queen of the sororities was a Delta named Dawn. Dawn looked exactly like the blacklight posters of Angela Davis, except her afro was short and she made Angela look kind of frumpy. She was the kind of woman behind which men seemed to float in cartoon physics as if smelling an irresistible aroma. I didn't even bother trying to speak to Dawn. I was still in thrall to peer pressure in the way boys are. No thought one has is valid unless validated into coolness through the posse. To announce a desire to talk to Dawn, as a freshman, as a non-Kappa, as a non-Business Major was beyond absurd. So me and my two boys, T and 'Dre sat in front of VKC with diving score cards and judged the women walking by. We paid special attention to the shoes. This was our great insight - women who painted their toenails red were at the top of the sexual food chain, those in Earth shoes were lesbians. Needless to say, we got wrote up in the Daily Trojan.

All Trojans, and most especially the black ones can tell you stories about Evening of Soul. Back in the days when you essentially had to handcuff the Dean to a radiator and put a gun to his cracker skull for him to say "Yes, black culture belongs on this campus." we had Evening of Soul. It would take many years of struggle before there could be multiple events of such magnitude. Many years later, we would fill Bovard Auditorium for a special screening of Spike Lee's School Daze. The very idea was unthinkable when I was a freshman at USC. In 1978 open auditions were held, and my baby brother Robert got to play Travis in the EOS production of "A Raisin in the Sun". At the time, I had purchased that red bass guitar from the pawn shop on Vermont and Jefferson that had been taunting me for months. Yes I could play the bassline for 'Good Times', but the man who was auditioning to play in the orchestra for the Evening of Soul could pop his thumb like Louis Johnson. He played "Ain't We Funkin' Now?", and again I sat there transfixed with my tonsils showing. Little Rob did just fine, he was a cute kid and of course he remembered all of his lines. Ahh, the Evening of Soul, it was so Town & Gown & Brown.

It was no secret that I wanted to live on campus. I had to take the bus to college. I lived at home with my little brothers and sister 5 miles down Jefferson Blvd. Steve was way up in the new coed Residence West where they threw frisbees in the hallways and had pajama parties. Steve was my only homeboy whom I knew all the way back from 7th grade. Steve had much more ego than I, and was destined to become an attorney. He was fearless and unleashed and ultimately had a hand in reviving the Alpha chapter at USC. He resented the Kappas domination of the social scene, and even as a freshman suggested a new coed 'frasority'. I always wonder what happened to Steve. The last time I saw him, about 12 years ago, he was rollerblading in Hermosa Beach. He was dressed exactly like the Simon Phoenix character from Demolition Man (complete with blond hair) and was selling securities off off Wall Street.

What was a secret was that I wanted to live in 'The Swamp' which was filled to the brim with wise-cracking, subversive, geeky whiteboys. In 1978 I registered to vote and later cast my ballot for John Anderson. I was only 17 but the student who registered me said it didn't matter, nobody ever checked other than him. What was most fascinating to me were the classified and political sections of the L.A. Reader. It was the most cantankerous thing I had ever read. Here was a newspaper with curse words and rambling cryptic messages in the back pages, rants against the system, my great introduction to the world of snark. I wanted to be in there. I wanted to play Moog synthesizers, program computers and repair pinball machines. I wanted to figure out a way to hack the timesharing system. I heard it was possible. All of the idiot business students in the graduate school ran their programs on the timesharing system, but they were less complicated than STREK. So if you could write one for them, they'd pay you. Once you did that, you could get into the brotherhood of the computer center. TSO cost fifty cents per second of CPU time. I just ran up my bill until they disabled my account, but I figured that since I was mastering STREK, they'd recognize me as a brother. It didn't happen.

There were always black dance parties at the school. Who could stop them? At one such party, I met the final woman. All I know was that she was from Pomona and she had come all the way to USC with her friends. I rescued her from a knucklehead with my impeccable manners. We danced to 'One Nation Under A Groove' and the world was perfect. My blowout afro was long enough to frame my vision. I used strawberry herbal essence shampoo. I wore black platform shoes and my cousin's long silk bicycle shirt. She had a soft, intelligent voice. I walked her around the dark campus. We found a quiet place and kissed for hours. I lost her name, her phone number. I lost her completely.

USC was a tragedy of mine. Our family could not afford it. My fee bill, that horrible gold piece of paper, for thousands of dollars laid unpaid. I left after one semester.

I learned how to play Atari Football and Foosball. I absolutely killed in my Freshman writing class. I sat through boring math classes and incomprehensible physics lectures. I listened to my friend M who was the big weed dealer on campus tell me about how he lost his virginity on the roof of one of the dorms. I teased the student who was the famous voice of Lucy Van Pelt in the animated Peanuts shows on TV. I work-studied in the mechanical engineering department and robbed the petty cash of a few dollars. I played more STREK. I listened to the Trojan Marching band practice interminably. I stared at OJ Simpson's Heisman trophy. I went to the weekly movies. I peered furtively at women studying in the stacks wondering if she might be the one who wrote sexy graffiti. I creeped around to watch the lasers in Olin Hall. I watched the rebroadcast of Roots in EVK with whitegirls and without blowing up. But mostly I hung out at University Village eating sicilian pizza, playing Pac Man and waiting for the inevitable day when they would kick me to the curb. I slowly disintegrated. Our appeal to the California Student Aid Commission came to naught. Their second assessment came back saying we could pay even more. I don't know if my father tried to get a second on the house, not that it was worth much more than 3 years' tuition anyway. I asked if there was any way we could afford it. He only said 'no'.

Somewhere, lost to the sands of time are scribbled diary entries whose ink shows the smear of teardrops. I had learned the hardest way that cash rules everything around me. I had always been a very bright if not disciplined student. I didn't care so much about the grades as the knowing. It was about being in the middle of interesting things, not pleasing the authorities with barfback. The Jesuits hadn't prepared me for the white upper middle-class, I retreated to the black upper middle-class, but I was no longer college material, so I turned around and marched straight to the ghetto.