No sign of the pilots who, hopefully, are not taking part in this madness, but safely steering the jet through its transcontinental arc as it returns to 41°54' North latitude, the precise location of both Chicago and Rome on Earth. Several hours later, the crowd settles into sleep just around the time we land in Rome’s Fiumicino Airport.
As we exit the plane, we notice that the air is sultry and there are palm trees planted in the parking lot. We stumble onto a bus and head off to the Seven Hills of Rome.
The school is located in an area of Rome called Monte Mario, the highest of the those seven hills, and consists of only two buildings. The larger one houses the residences and classrooms of the school, as well as the cafeteria in the basement, and administrative offices on the first floor. This turn-of-the-century, four-storey building on Via della Cammillucia was once home to the Pope’s Swiss Guards. I suspect the Jesuits, who run Loyola University, won it from them in a late-night card game. The other building, smaller, just one storey and almost new, is the student union. There is a bar here, with several dozen tables and a jukebox.
The long driveway that leads to the main building is impressive in a country-estate kind of way, entirely shaded with overarching trees that have been clipped into one continuous rectangular mass. One passes through a dark tunnel of forest to reach the school, leaving the bustling suburban neighbourhood of Monte Mario behind as you enter the quiet of the school grounds. From a window-lined room on the roof of the school, called the belvedere, it is possible to look out over a series of hills dotted with dwellings to the city of Rome below in the distance.
Over the next few months, I will begin to realize that there are as many eccentrics housed in this building as there are jocks, intellectuals, and beauty queens. One day, I’m standing in the wide hallway in the residence, on the second floor of the building, talking to Martin. Martin, with his tightly curled bush of brown hair, reminds me of a cross between the young Bob Dylan and Harpo Marx. He also somewhat resembles the playful and devilish Greek god, Pan.
“Where you headed, Martin?” I ask as I see him walking resolutely down the hall. In the background, we can hear our friend Jim bellowing in the shower. We have learned that Jim, who sports an impressive handlebar moustache, likes to sing opera at the top of his lungs while scrubbing. The strange thing is that he can actually sing.
The cherubic Martin smiles mischievously. “I’m going to visit the Vatican.”
I eye him up and down. “Think they’ll let you in dressed like that?”
“Sure. Why not?”
Martin is wearing a bowler hat on top of his curls, a long black cape, a white T-shirt, black shorts over fishnet stockings, and yellow running shoes. I know he’s no transvestite, or even a young cross-dresser experimenting with new styles, he’s simply cracked, like most of my other friends around here.
“Hi, Jim,” we say, as Jim, dressed only in a white towel, his hair wet and combed straight back, comes sailing down the hallway on roller skates, the noisy old type, before rollerblades made their appearance. Jim waves, the handles of his moustache flapping, as he zips past us. He roller-skates everywhere. I haven’t seen him out of his skates since we arrived in Rome.
“That guy’s crazy,” Martin observes.
We both turn as a door opens next to us, revealing Beanpole Bill, the long-suffering roommate of Martin’s best friend, Patrick. Bill is coming out into the hallway, shaking his head as he complains about Patrick. “He’s really losing it this time,” he says, swinging the door wide to reveal Patrick, all six-foot-three of him, dressed only in his white briefs, standing in the tall window of his second-floor room, facing out over what we know is the main entrance to the school. Students, male and female, are filing in and out of the entrance one storey below. Patrick stands in the window, his arms and legs akimbo like Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous figure of a man. At the top of his voice, he yells in frustration: “ALL I WANNA DO IS MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD!”
Beanpole Bill runs his hands through his hair. “Patrick’s really driving me nuts,” he complains to Martin and me. “Know what he did last week? Remember that flu that was going round?”
Martin and I nod.
“He had it bad. Pukin’. Diarrhea. The whole deal. Monday afternoon, he’s just coming back from a shower, dressed in nothing but a towel, naked underneath. He sees me standing in the room, whips back the towel, says he’s gonna fart on me. He comes over, sticks his butt out and shits on my foot!”
“That’s Patrick,” says Martin.
Irish Michael comes along. He’s only twenty-one, but looks like he could be in his forties. It’s scary how much he resembles everyone’s dad. He stops, looks Martin up and down and whistles. “Where you going, Martin, dressed like that?”
“Going to St. Peter’s. Think they’ll let me in?”
“Nope. Not a chance.”
Martin shrugs and steps into Patrick’s room. “Gotta try.” He turns to the window where Patrick still stands on full display to the uncomprehending world. “Come on, Patrick. Time to get dressed. Bring your camera. I want a photo of me in my costume in front of the Pieta.”
Irish Michael and I head off to the student union for a beer. Moments later, we stand at the bar, sipping our Italian Peronis, listening to the Beatles singing “Strawberry Fields Forever” on the jukebox. In wanders Professor Fink and orders a glass of white wine. We stand in a line, the three of us, at the tiny bar. Professor Fink teaches me art history. He is one of those professors, a German, who thinks he knows everything and wants everyone else to know it. A snob of the first order. Sometimes I think he’s actually stuffed. A Germanic mannequin. We drink and listen to the jukebox. The Beatles perfectly reflect the attitudes of a thousand million young people around the world: “Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about/Strawberry Fields forever.” Professor Fink turns around with a sneer on his face and says to no one in particular and to anyone who will listen: “Das ist not musik! Das ist noice!”
Irish Michael and I head for a table. Two of the tables in the corner of the student union are taken up, as always, by eight bridge players, almost all skinny bespectacled Jewish and WASP boys from New York City and a couple of pale girls who wear ill-fitting outdated dresses. The bridge players all look like they’re already well past middle age. They are intent on their card game. Their concentration is heroic, obsessive, complete. They will be found at these tables for the next nine months, every day from 8:00 a.m. until 11:00 in the evening. No one will ever see them outside, wandering the grounds, or in the nearby restaurants of Monte Mario. None of them will travel anywhere outside the campus. Even when they are sighted going to classes, they look like they are thinking about bridge. They are all eccentrics, visiting only with each other. They never drink. They never speak to anyone else. They never put a lira in the jukebox. They never learn a word of Italian. Bridge zombies.
Munich
At a time when it is difficult, if not impossible, for young American males to quit university and travel because of the ever-present threat of the U.S. draft, which could possibly force us to travel to the one place none of us want to go — Vietnam — the Loyola third-year abroad program is tailor-made for would-be wanderers. The school in Rome has scheduled significant vacation breaks that will allow us considerable travelling time while still in school. Ten days for American Thanksgiving, a full month for Christmas (when we will make the Istanbul trip related in Chapter 1), three weeks for Easter and, somehow, three five-day weekends in April and May.
The first major trip we take is one the school has arranged for a weekend in October. Five train cars have been reserved for the Loyola students who want to visit the Oktoberfest in Munich. Lebanese Michael and I decide to go with another friend, Wally, who is from a small town in central Ohio. Wally is interested in everything from Japanese gardens to Beat poetry, which is not at all typical of a Midwesterner from a small Ohio town. With his shock of black hair and his enormous round head on a stocky frame, he looks a bit like a cartoon character, a cross between Alfred Jarry and Charlie Brown. But he is good company and keeps Michael and me fascinated with