Several days passed but my roommate never showed up–in fact, I didn't see him again for almost a week. A couple of times I went over to his desk to see what he was listening to on his record player. There was no Elvis or Kingsmen, but stacks of French language records. There were books in French by Proust, Rousseau, Voltaire, and others in English like The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx. One well-worn book with multiple book marks was by someone called Rimbaud.
There was a map of Southeast Asia with a country called Vietnam circled in red–never heard of it! There was a folded up map of western Europe with Paris, France also circled in red. Shit! Who was this guy? I began making friends on my dorm floor, which took the sting out of my roommate situation.
Others said that they had seen him on campus but didn't know his name. Then one rainy evening I returned from the library, walked into my room and there he was. His desk lamp was on, and he was reading some book. It all looked a little eerie, but this time he held out his hand and introduced himself. With that gesture, a relationship began that would impact my thinking and my life.
His name was Jon Marqua, and I didn't know it then, but Jon would become kind of a titular head of a small group of us that would grow close over the coming years. We were the exceptional ones; we were the outsiders who chose to plunge deeply into all issues. We were the young philosophers who read the great books and had the great questions.
Jon was a 25-year-old French Jew from Independence, Missouri, who had an intelligence off the charts–not in any show-off way, but you knew when you got around him that his brain burned hot. Our group (there were four of us) knew that Jon was not to be intellectually fucked with. He was an exceptional guy, and you felt a little privileged to be around him. It was from Jon that my interest in French culture took root.
He was a man of mystery. He would disappear and we didn't know where he was. One time he hadn't been back at the room for a couple of days when I saw him in the college library with this black gal. He didn't see me, but they were making out in the stacks. They were in the bowels of this college library that smelled of old books and paper, and they were going at it hot and heavy. I never asked him about her or any of the other women that I knew he was sexing, both on and off campus. Jon never talked about women or sex.
Jon had a way of expressing himself that seemed to jump out of the pages of leftist literature. Sometimes I would say, “Jon, how you going today?” and he would respond in varied ways depending on his mood. “I'm a Jew, what do you think?” Or, “I'm just getting by, but struggle is my brother!” Or, “I'm like an olive in a martini–the more I'm crushed, the better I am.” He was just surprising like that.
Jon had no money–apparently he was on scholarships. He lived a Spartan life. I remember lying on my bed one afternoon, and gazing into his closet. It was almost bare– two blue shirts, one extra pair of army green slacks, a thin tie, and a worn, black blazer with brass buttons, and that was it.
Actually, he was a pretty good looking guy with sharp features, straight black hair, a good build, blue eyes and fair complexion. He didn't want to, but he stood out in a crowd. He had a way about him that was enigmatic. He just seemed to show up at times, and he always wore these scuffed up dark green Hush Puppies, so he didn't make any noise when he walked. I liked him, and I liked him a lot, and all of us wanted him to like us, but you just never knew. When he was not around, conversation would invariably come around to Marqua.
The American “way,” or what I supposed it to be, just didn't seem to have affected this man–he didn't seem to have the same needs as the rest of us. As I would find out, all he wanted was to go to Paris, France. He was a Biology major, and that was how he was going to somehow make his living in Europe. His language skills were to be the keys to a second identity–his frames of reference were exotic. I loved his mind, and his tongue could be as biting as a snake. More than once, I saw him destroy others in debate, so I was always careful around him, at least at the beginning of our time together.
Jon was several years ahead of the rest of our group, but as time went by, most of us began to catch up to him, at least in some mature way. We would come back from our summers and holidays, and he would ask, “Well, what are you reading?” I wasn't ready for that at first.
My years in high school were academically pretty bleak–I just played sports and enjoyed the moment. But after my freshman year at college, I began to change. I began to read good books. I began to read the New York Times, and because of Jon, I began to read translated foreign authors. For the first time in my life, I began to admire the life of the mind and I felt myself moving away from my past.
As I said earlier, this college was loaded with incredible professors, major minds who had published and had deep resumes. I became friends with several, but there was one man who was all intrigue–a campus deity–and that was Professor Johnson, Professor of French and French culture.
I would often see him walking mysteriously on campus or in the Library. He would always be dressed in black which accentuated his white hair. He always wore a beret and carried a silver capped cane, and it was obvious to me that this man had stories to tell–but who could approach him? He was that daunting.
Then one winter day I saw this tall, lean, dark figure walking in the snow. It was Johnson, and next to him, speaking French, walked Jon Marqua. I just shook my head in some disbelief and said to myself, “Man, look at that. Marqua knows this Prof.” Over at the Student Union, I saw a couple of my fellow deviants and told them what I had seen. Marqua knew the God!
I was a senior when “the letter” came. It was from Jon Marqua and it was addressed to Professor Johnson who invited me to read it. Little did I know then that the letter would have such a profound affect on my life.
Apparently, Johnson knew about our group, and not only approved of it, but supported our cerebral moments and our liberal, if not radical, positions. He told me to come to his office to see the letter and said that if I needed translation, he would help.
On my way to his office, I thought about Marqua. I knew Jon had graduated, had graduated with honors, had moved to France and was working in some laboratory in Paris. None of us had heard much more than that, so it was with some concern, and a lot of curiosity, that I knocked on Dr. Johnson's office door. This was intense stuff, I thought. As a senior, I had lost some of my intimidation, but I still felt inferior to some of these teachers–and he was one. His door was the old fashion type with a frosted window with his name and title on it. I knocked and saw this shadow move toward me. He opened the door, we introduced ourselves, he shook my hand and offered me a chair. We both sat down. He then mentioned that Jon had often spoken of our student group to him. With a wink he told me of his own student years, and the exhilaration of thought, and his first times in Paris. He looked at me with understanding and I could feel his humanity, and I felt better about being there.
Every now and then, one is presented with something that is like putting a lighted match on the back of your hand. You know that fire is hot and will burn, but for some weird reason you do it anyway, and the experience stays in your mind until the finish line. Jon's letter was like that. It was written in French and I couldn't read French, so Professor Johnson read it. The words were complex, hard-hitting and insightful, and on top of it all, it was very philosophical. As I sat there listening, I knew my world was on the edge, and changes were coming.
It was l965, and the shit was beginning to hit the fan all around the country. Vietnam was all over us, and it seemed corrupt leadership was in control, both in Europe and in Washington D.C. Anybody under thirty, even the super patriots, knew the shit house was starting to burn.
Jon wrote of these issues and spoke of the general dissatisfaction of Europe's youth, as they, like us, began to challenge old post-war elites who were digging in to hold their power. Old class systems and social designs were tottering with age. According to Marqua's letter, it was not going to take much to light the match.
He was right. Events in America were moving quicker, and places like Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia were becoming hot topics. Enrollments in college humanities