as Plato said, from one realm to the next, from belief to knowledge. Even now I can't say just what it meant except that I was overwhelmed, a parched man suddenly up to his knees in cool water.
'Mr. Mason?' Dr. Stanton asked again.
For the first time in my life I could see. Or I was blinded. Or there's no difference. I slapped my head. The other students looked up at me.
'I don't-' I cast around, looking at the ruffled paperback of
'What is it, Mr. Mason?'
'I don't-' And I saw myself on Empire Road, that narrow gash of houses, that stretch of failure – the cruelty of Pete Decker at one end, the frailty of Eli Boyle at the other. That would always be
'Mr. Mason?' Dr. Stanton said. 'What is it?'
'I don't-' Every dream is an escape.
'Mr. Mason!'
The really shitty thing is this: When someone dies, you never get to see him again. Never. How can you possibly deal with the unfairness of that? How can you deal with the death of the best person you know, the death of everything true and good?
I looked up at Dr. Stanton. 'I don't-' I wiped my eyes. 'I don't believe in God.'
4
What I meant to accomplish with this confession was not a recounting of the grief-induced, sophomoric insights (though technically I was a junior) that I had in college but something more, something transcendent.
I am a failure even at being sad.
So again, I apologize, Caroline. I only wanted to make the point that I wasn't always like this – or rather like the obnoxious young politician who was handed his hat in the 2000 congressional elections, the desperate man who drove to Eli Boyle's house two days ago with murder in his heart, who walked gingerly across the lawn to Eli's carriage house, who climbed silently up those steps.
At least for a short time, beginning in the fall of 1985 and ending more than eight years later, in the spring of 1994, I was free.
Though I hadn't known how to express it that day in class (atheism not really being the point), the combination of Ben's death and Dr. Stanton's class transformed me, untethered me from all that I'd believed.
I moved out of the frat house and into an apartment above a garage in Wallingford. I quit all my campus posts and all the self-serving organizations I had joined. I gave the Dodge back to my parents and bought an old ten- speed bicycle. I grew my hair out, stopped shaving, and started wearing secondhand clothing; I favored army fatigues and flannel shirts. I stopped wearing my glass eye and went back to the eye patch – a bit self-consciously at first, but old habits die hardest. I sat for hours on the Ave on lotused legs, reading poetry and smiling at strangers. I became one of those people you step around on the sidewalk, a step removed from panhandler.
Strangely enough, this didn't affect my social life as much as I feared it would. I didn't get involved seriously with anyone, but I screwed constantly. It turned out there was no shortage of girls who were looking for sad, hygienically challenged men, girls who smelled like patchouli or clove cigarettes, nice girls who seemed like the sort that Dana would've become, the sort that Ben would've dated, girls who didn't really comb their hair, who majored in comparative literature and international studies, who carried string-tied journals in their worn backpacks and rode bicycles for transportation, girls who talked knowledgeably about rain forests and dominant cultures and art-house movies.
I went almost six years without seeing a shaved armpit.
I exchanged the politics of me for the politics of them. And there were plenty of them to help. I raised money for AIDS patients, African famine relief, and Central American refugees. I volunteered at schools and community centers in Seattle's Central District and at shelters downtown. Free of the strictures of my self-loathing and its corresponding ambition, I ambled in good conscience about the campus, and the city – a better man. Of course, the cynic might look at me now – disgraced politician, low-rent attorney – and doubt the sincerity of this transformation. For them, I offer this one proof:
For ten years, I did not run for a goddamned thing.
'You know, it's possible to go a bit overboard with this kind of thing,' Dr. Stanton finally said when I showed him the tattoo on my lower back – the Chinese symbol for compassion (at least that's what I was told; I found out later it was actually the symbol for
'Look, I'm not really the mentor type,' he said. 'I'm sorry about your brother and I'm glad you found something meaningful in my class, but that was Plato. That wasn't me. I don't even
I was amused and impressed by his protests, which seemed in keeping with the modesty and intelligence that a great mentor should have. Still, it was he who encouraged me to continue along in my previous poli-sci/ pre-law track ('Don't throw the baby out with the that I could do more good as a lawyer than 'playing bongos on some street corner.'
So I spent three years getting my master's in sociology at the University of Washington and then found my way into a lesser law school, not so much out of some deep desire to practice law, but out of a much deeper desire not to leave college, the brick womb of my rebirth. I lingered in law school as long as they would have me, taking a few classes here and there, constantly changing my emphasis.
Dr. Stanton finally gave in to my need for a mentor, and he and I met once a week for lunch, during which time I would share with him some new plan for using my law degree to bring about unlikely social change. I was forever trying to earn his respect, and forever getting his good-natured scorn instead. I will list a few of my ideas and Dr. Stanton's responses, ideas that I should really have registered with the Patent Office's Department of Hubris. I planned to:
Open a nonprofit legal services clinic for indigent elderly men ('There's a great deal of money to be made in hobo law,' Dr. Stanton said); establish a safe house and law office for battered women; use the same house to care for and represent homeless children and orphans; organize a team of lawyers to sue for third-world debt relief and the international removal of land mines ('I do like the idea of sending lawyers to treaties and then sue the government over them; and offer free representation to the families of executed prisoners ('Yes. Help Dutch's family get his handguns
Richard Stanton was – and remains – the finest and truest person I know in the world. We would meet at one of the bars near the campus, spend the first half of our lunch with me fantasizing about my conscience-clearing law career and the second half with Dr. Stanton complaining about the poli-sci department and the university as a whole. He felt no respect from his colleagues; he was mistrusted, he said, because of his television and private- sector background – 'Nobody likes a convert, Mr. Mason' – and at the same time, he was seen as something of a simple traditionalist within more progressive academic circles because he rarely published and insisted on teaching forms that had been long taken for granted and left behind. He drank more and more during these lunches, and often stayed to drink alone after I left, although he was the kind of drunk who knew he was ingesting a depressant and so he grew quieter and more reflective with each glass of draft beer – no raised voices or lampshades for him. At the end of our lunches, he always seemed on the verge of tears. Somewhere in there I became aware of a horrible event in his past, right around the time he went in for the earring and the pony-tail, something that caused him tremendous guilt and sorrow. He left a woman behind, I think – his wife, probably, but it seemed to be more than that – and either he assumed that I knew the details or he believed the details were beside the point, because he only thwarted every attempt I made to find out what happened. ('What
