Ivanhoe
In the Spring of 1971, Erik Ivanhoe drove me to the San Francisco Airport. I had a twenty dollar ticket for the redeye which would take me to San Diego. I would visit mom, get my MGB, and drive back to college for the Spring Quarter at UC Santa Cruz—my first quarter with wheels. I was excited, to say the least—I was feeling good about the coming quarter and saw a whole set of possibilities—as if the winter curtain was really lifting. Eric had been a life-saver and had given me confidence in myself that had been sorely lacking. Eric had recognized my lack of inertia, of energy, and had revived me in just one short week. It was shaping up to be everything you could want out of a freshman spring quarter.
But first, there was the redeye. I was sleepy and being so, kept to myself, waiting for the late flight. A woman sat next to me and struck up a conversation. My minimalist responses would not do, it seemed. I made eye contact. I looked at a woman who had to be five years older. That was weird. Women, five years older than me, did not sit next to me in airports and initiate conversations. They do now, but the implications, the potential flattery is quite different. She had an Indian dyed skirt, full-length with sandals and a white peasant blouse. There was lots of turquoise and silver jewelry. There were freckles, a nice smile, and thick thick wavy hair messily arranged on top of her head with a silver clip sort-of in place.
There was a wart on the tip of her nose.
The significance of the wart on her nose became clear as she she pressed me for personal information and in turn, shared some of hers. She had unusual beliefs; think Wican. She pressed me on what I knew about Stonehenge. I changed the topic to contemporary music. She asked about my birthplace, family background, where I graduated from high school, and what I did now. I reciprocated. She was a local girl, meaning the Bay Area. She read Tarot and went to nude spiritual retreats. We shared information with prolonged pauses and finally I bade goodbye as we boarded. The flight, it turned out, was fully booked and she managed to get the person with the window seat to trade with her so that she could sit next to me. I was taken aback, not flattered, but remained pleasantly quiet, giving responses to her interrogation with fewer and fewer words. Suddenly, the seat on the aisle was filled and I made desperate eye contact with—- a suit. He was groomed, middle aged, composed, and radiating confidence, I introduced myself to my new companion and initiated a conversation. Mr. Aisle seat, it turned out, was a dean of admission to the school of medicine at USC. I brightened. “I am pre-med at UC Santa Cruz,” I exclaimed. “Well isn’t that nice and just a little bit unusual,” he countered. He was polite and I tried to tease out the perceived problems I might expect getting into medical school coming from a school that would post no GPA: Santa Cruz was Pass/Fail. He did engage as the flight progressed, but Miss Window seat persisted in trying to continue our conversation.
“Hey,” she asked, “what’s your sign, anyway?” I thought I had her at last. I am an Aries and not only that, my initials spell out the sign of Aries ie RAM. I sign my art with the sign of the RAM. While I knew she would find this cosmic, I also know that my temperament and personality run counter to every characteristic you are likely to come to when reviewing zodiac profiles.
Dean: “When do you anticipate taking Bio-organic chemistry?”
Ms. Window Seat: “Did I tell you I am a witch?”
Dean: “If you are good at chemistry, you might consider petitioning to take Bio-Organic Chemistry for a grade. If you got an A, you would have a GPA of 4.0.”
Ms. Window Seat: “What time of the morning were you born?”
Dean: “Do you speak Spanish? That’s an invaluable skill on the wards.”
Ms Window Seat: “5:30 in the morning? Ahhhh, that explains it—you have countervailing water signs; that’s why you are an Aries who is sooooo mellow.”
They got off in LA and I had a forty-five minute layover to consider the humor and the trial of what I had just experienced.
I did not get either of their numbers.
Arriving in San Diego, I met my mother and accompanying her was an old High School girlfriend, the woman my mother wanted me to marry, and with whom I had had a less than pleasant break up in the Fall. They might as well have been peers as they pecked and chatted up my appearance, facial hair, length of hair, and plans for the next two days.
The Spring quarter, despite this beginning was fantastic, and I would depend on Eric Ivanhoe to bail me out of an uncharacteristic jam that could have re-established the trend foretold by the flight to San Diego.
Erik Ivanhoe was the Resident Advisor on the dormitory floor where I lived my first year at college. My floor was all male and the halls and rooms filled with young men seeking out the pecking order and possible friendships our first day moving in. A note appeared on all our doors to meet in the common area on our floor and it was signed, “Ivanhoe.” We gathered and in strode a small statured man, thin, with receding hair on his temples, a long viking beard and very short hair otherwise. He wore faded jeans, high top hiking boots, and a quilted vest with no shirt. He held a liter pewter mug whose handle was of hide and weathered wood. He drank tea. He did not smile. His speech was laconic. His job was to minimize problems and this being Santa Cruz, he was not going to babysit us. “If you are going to drink or smoke, do it in your rooms with the doors closed. If you have a woman in the room, keep the door closed and if a parent of said girl knocks on your door, do not open the door.” He would referee arguments or problems between people but, he was a graduate student with a load and he really did not want to deal with stupid shit. He was a recent veteran of special forces in the US Army. Done.
He pegged me for a serious student and learned quickly that I did not use marijuana. At one point, I was talking to him in his room and he raised an eye brow. “Do you drink?
“I do!”
“Have you tried mead?” I had not. He poured me a glass. I was pleased to be taken in and in a sense, this was a sign of confidence, of a potential brotherhood. I tasted the mead and put on a brave face. One of the few smiles I would ever see on Erik’s face surfaced when he looked at me after that first swig. He had a keg of the stuff in his room. He had a refrigerator with a lock on it. By the end of the first quarter, he had given me the combination to it and I was allowed to put beer and wine in it. When bored, I would go to his room to shoot the breeze and I encountered a world never seen before. His furniture was spartan. There were a few posters, one of a viking ship on the wall. He had a small loft and a study desk built of rough hewn wood. He had a large waterbed with an Indian print bedspread. One night, there was a nude woman reading on the bed prone, while he sat at his study table with his back to her. We talked like she wasn’t even there and she never turned her head. On another night, a fully clothed and “traditional” female RA sat in a chair reading as he studied. His wardrobe was sparse and pretty much limited to what I had seen the first night. He drank copious amounts of tea and did not use tea bags, telling me his thick mustache filtered out the tea leaves just fine. And yet he was clean and groomed.
Other than in his room, I never saw Ivanhoe socialize with anyone; he was always alone when seen out on campus.
I immersed in school and my social life mirrored his in that I became more and more alone. There were no semi-nude woman reading in my bed however. I did have a roommate, Rick, a short Jewish guy who was fascinated by Freudian psychology and thought he just might go to rabbinical school after finishing college. One night, a Friday night, I was in my room at 8:30 with the lights out. Rick was partying.I wasn’t eating well, sleeping well. I was having trouble focussing……..there was a knock on the door and Ivanhoe checked in. He asked if I was OK. I was fine; it’s normal to be tucked in at 8:30 on Friday, right? He suggested that I should think about working with him during Spring Break. What did that even mean? He had contacts in Berkeley and did construction projects fixing up an old house; he could use an extra pair of hands and would pay me five dollars an hour if I joined him but the hours would be long and I would have to figure out a place in Berkeley to stay. He would be staying across the Bay.
Kate, a Berkeley student, a year older than me and a graduate from Coronado High School was open to my staying in her apartment during Spring Break; she planned to be gone for much of that time as would her roommates. She lived on the third floor of an old apartment building on the North Side of the Berkeley Campus. Erik showed up at 6:00 AM my first day of work downstairs in a World War II vintage jeep. He drove us into the hills to an old home that was just a hundred yards from the football stadium. Our work was in the basement where for a week I learned to cut rebar, set forms, pour concrete by hand and clean up. There was a World War II troop carrying truck for hauling materials; with Eric wearing his standard uniform (again, a vest with no sleeves/no shirt) he was not Erik Ivanhoe, but Erik the Red exploring the new world. Eric was tough; when I put hack saw blades in backwards and ruined them, he docked my pay—- for a guy tracking to medical school, I should be able to figure out something as basic as that. I learned how much rebar weighed and how many lengths I could carry in one load. I learned it is handy to have work gloves; they were provided and my pay docked to pay for them. Eric took me out for Pizza one night on Telegraph Avenue. It was a beautiful beautiful circus of images and the pizzeria served me beer though I had only just turned nineteen years.
He dropped me off early in the week, the day Kate and her roommates had left. I realized I had locked myself out of Kate’s apartment after he drove off. There was a three story ventilation shaft that might allow me access through a bathroom window from the hallway, but I had no nerve for that. At twilight, I clambered onto the fire escape and in full view of anyone caring to watch, this raggedy kid climbed up to her floor and broke a window to gain access. I cleaned up my mess and took a bath. Only when I was done and thinking about dinner did I find on the dining room table a bag of Marijuana with a note: Randy, have a great week and help yourself.
What could have gone wrong?
I had the window replaced and puttied within 24 hours. No one would be the wiser.
I went home confident despite my late night travel. Driving up to Santa Cruz in my MGB was always a great day. The Spring quarter started and I had money in my pocket, comradery with Erik, still the laconic RA, and improving academic performance. Half way through the Spring quarter, a Spring Fair popped up on the quad between the two dormitories at College V. The sun was glorious that day. There were hip artists, hucksters, sellers of hippy exotica, and more walking the quad. One woman had a boa constrictor draped over her shoulders and asked if I would like to have it crawl across my back as I lay sunning. “Sure,” I said. The feeling was indescribable! At sunset, the quad looked a mess with booths half torn down and paper banners fluttering about. Inspired, I gathered it all and in the middle of the cement portion of the quad, I erected a teepee of wood and set it on fire, drawing up a portable chair. Before I knew it, hundreds of people were gathered. There were guitars! There was singing! IIt was inspiring! And I had done it! Unexpectedly, a loud explosion and debris surged from the fire. We put it out quickly. People were scared, but no one was hurt. I felt…………. vulnerable.
Erik, hearing about the explosion came out. He found me and asked me to relate the events. His eyebrows shot up when he realized I had started the fire. “You did not know that there are air bubbles in set concrete that when heated, will exert great pressure and lead to an explosion?”
I did not know that.
The concrete was damaged; there was a three by three foot patch of now blackened and uneven surface. There was debris everywhere. The next morning, he had me out there with broom and wheelbarrow; I cleaned up my mess and that was the end of it. There was no investigation, no request for money. I think Eric had my back administratively but in those times, I think at Santa Cruz, where marijuana could be grown from flower pots outside dorm windows, that I really had little to fear. With occasional direction from Erik, I was slowly learning about the world unrelated to my studies and how to navigate more responsibly. He offered me life experience that could have easily passed me by.
Eric would invite me for a second spring break. That time, I mostly painted, both outside and interior walls for a large three story house, again in the hills of Berkeley. I was in my element doing this as I painted houses during the summers during and after High School. I listened to the only album available, Rubber Soul, ten times a day for five days doing that work. I had arranged to leave the dorms and had a room rented downtown in Santa Cruz for the Spring quarter. I had built my own bed, inspired by Erik out of redwood four by fours, two by fours, steel bolts, and planks. I could break it down and store it on the rack of my MGB. A four inch foam pad served as mattress. I needed sheets. Being a science major, and having experienced the odd dimensions of dormitory beds (long and very narrow) I made my bed four by seven feet which of course, did not fit standard sheets. Eric loved that. Hearing the dimensions found him smiling for the second time in my experience. He took me to a large department store in Oakland to get sheets that would serve.
Erik challenged me that Spring a couple different ways. On one occasion, we went to San Francisco where he stayed. He showed me a black powder pistol he had made. I did not have to ask why; if anyone would use modern machines to make an antique pistol, it was the guy with the long beard and short hair. We had Roman meal for breakfast. There were products for sale in those days with that name: Roman Meal bread. Roman Meal appealed to me because of my love of the military of antiquity. Roman meal rates up there with mead as something you don’t have to try to come to an expected conclusion. We went to a steam bath in downtown San Francisco. His motives were pure for those of you now alarmed. We both were amused by the man who got belligerent when the proprietor would not allow him a private room with two women. “I did this last week! What’s different now?”
“What’s different now,” said the proprietor, “is that I am here this week. It is against our policy.” The threesome left in a huff. We got supper hot and then Eric, of course, challenged me to jump in the pool of nearly ice cold water. I could not do it. He could. And then we left.
At the end of the break that second year, he told me that the last winter’s frost had killed a number of the Eucalyptus trees on the hills overlooking Berkeley and Oakland. “We can make a mint if we take down dead trees this Spring. Why don’t you take a quarter off and work with me doing that.” I did not take that challenge and I sometimes wish that maybe I had. I would have made money and furthered my education in a very different manner than that of the spring quarter of my sophomore year.
Erik did not graduate from UCSC so far as I know; he moved to Berkeley and did odd jobs in construction, not having a contractor’s license. We corresponded occasionally as I finished up my undergraduate studies and started Medical School. His stationary always had a small viking ship, brow breaching a wave, and in old English script, “Roderick Ivanhoe” below it. Our correspondence trickled to Christmas greetings. In retrospect, he was clearly depressed. The tone and the content of his communications was minimal. Struggling to make work work, single, holding to his standards. How are you doing? Fine, indeed……….
I was delighted when Kernie met him. It was a hastily put together meeting, somewhere in the East bay. We drove up from Salinas where I was doing my residency shortly after our marriage. It was important to me that he meet Kernie and to see me moving on in Residency. He really liked Kernie. He seemed pleased for me but remained reserved and our visit constrained and short. The Christmas greetings remained our only communication and one year, he did not respond. I was busy and did not put too much thought into it but one day in February, I got a letter. Erik’s sister took the time to write me having received my newsy Christmas letter. She was sorry to tell me that Eric had accidentally killed himself cleaning his black powder gun.
That someone I know might commit suicide should not be terribly surprising, given the national statistics. What will confound me for my whole life is how blind I was—and remain— to the signs, at least until they meet the standard of a two by four hitting the side of my head. In my clinical world, tools were developed to help us all uniformly bring at least the possibility to our attention. Even so, I often caught on enough to ask way down the line of a patient’s journey. I had more failures than successes intervening to help. Intervening with someone depressed enough to plan a suicide is no small thing—even if you fail, it is not on you but there is always that question, “what if……” and nothing but time helps soften the edge to the answers.
Eric would be happy to know that his help with my education made the conclusion about this accident quite obvious. I felt and still feel great regret. He was so old for his age and I was so young for mine and yet, we had a connection. Like so many of us when young, the intensity of feeling and appreciation of life is so easily lost in the momentum of our busy lives.
I wish I could have somehow helped him though even with all my acquired skill and knowledge, I am not really sure how I might have. I wish I could have had made more time to continue and grow the friendship into my adulthood. I wish I could have made a difference. It occurred to me on a Memorial Day that I had no clear knowledge of the specifics of Erik’s military service. Like most veterans I have known, he did not bring it up. I can imagine a scenario whereby Erik had unrecognized PTSD and despite the passive signals that were clearly there, no one picked up on it or offered an intervention. I am approaching twice Eric’s age when he died. I hope I can recognize and act more meaningfully whatever the contact as I continue to age and learn.
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