That Host of the Hudson, Genius, and Lust

Twenty eight years ago, to this reporter’s honest approximation, South Harlem suffered that fantastic series of underground shivers that only a dangerous assembly of genius can enjoy. The details of the period are hard to come by, but 1980 in Morningside Park was made of something thick and evil, and it convalesced a little to the west, in the brains of those Ivy-League spiders. I remember a morning in 2003, sitting in the small Goonie Café on 108th during a bout of research and recovery, sifting borrowed archived files, when I read the headline, “Columbia: Public Sex On Campus at All-Time High, Average GPA Skyrockets” and shouting, “I was there! I know that man!” as I pointed to a photo of the Jackson 5 on the opposite page. My date looked up at me from a book, Beckett or something of the sort. She called my bluff.

“Carry on,” I told her and poured myself another shot.

The article’s byline was small, but I read the name “Arnie Dorswhiler” and it was dated 1979. Vanessa made a point of putting her foot on mine. Annoyed, I pushed my foot straight up her skirt until she was sitting on it. I looked her dead in the eye.

“What?” I asked.

“What?” she asked in return.

“Are you satisfied?” I said.

“This hurts, baby. Are you almost done?” she said.

I knew that she could never fully understand the girth of the journey that had just begun.

“You’d better leave.” I looked away and wrote Arnie’s name in a thick red book.

“Why?” she asked.

“There’s danger ahead.” She refused to go, so we took a cab back downtown, but at 76th I made my escape on foot when traffic lulled, and she had no chance of catching up. Ducked inside a pizzeria, I called a good friend who I knew from my old home: Reno, that strange no-man’s-land squeezed between the insane weightlessness of California and that country club called Texas, exclusive and gilded with gritz, owned by an albino god.

“Jeremy, get me Arnie Dorswhiler.” I said.

“Who?”

“Man from the late ’70s. Wrote on sex and scholarship. Maybe still in New York. Need interview, immediately. By the end of the week, at the latest. Probably fat by now, but never let them surprise you with speed.” I hung up. The gravity of my discovery began to settle, and I noticed a pressure in my lungs, and a sort of Catholic hand swept my chest towards some desire for confession. I was not totally sure I had morality on my side, but this was 2003, after all! The decade, the millennium, was well underway but still needed proof of its merit. Here I was with some import and scandal, something hidden for over 20 years!

A nice dark haired man at the pizza cash register watched me approach, and I told him what was at stake. He seemed like the confessional sort.

“The Columbia Sex Cult, sir! Don’t you see? The entire balance of sexuality and academia colliding in some sort of explosion of juices and number crunching! A cult! Imagine the secrets and elation they’ve been keeping from the world!”

He had a narrow grasp of English, so I let him be for a time. A few minutes later, I shouted the same, in hopes that the sheer magnificence of my enthusiasm could drive the meaning home. I think he understood, more or less, and he eventually offered me his hand and guided me to the door. I appreciated the gesture and manners, and I told him so before I stepped back into the noontime sun.

In the heat, I realized that some time could best be spent preparing for my inevitable interview. After a short taxi ride, I found myself under the golden awning of Vanessa’s apartment building, made of bricks and some sort of brown stuff— sandstone? It seems unlikely. The doorman was a chubby, but generally kind, sort of fellow, and I admired his inclination towards the capitalistic sensibility:

“Miss Garring told me to not let you in if you came back,” he said. I gave him twenty dollars and a pat on the ass.

Inside Vanessa’s room, she wasn’t there. I made myself a drink, a mix of some rum and coke, and something clear and strong. I decided to examine the headline and article more closely. Arnie’s writing was printed in eleven point font and a square, bold typeface. The contents of the article were generally as I expected: vagaries abounded with occasional name-dropping and statistics shining through like detour signs in white snow. Arnie would help me decipher this cryptogram when we met face to face. There was a picture of the Columbia campus littered with the disposed undergarments of hundreds of womenfolk. Why no men’s clothing could be seen is hard to say, but I can only assume it was for the sake of comfort and practicality. Next to that photo was a picture of some administrative dean with a smug smile. I was suddenly gripped by terror, and realized that this plot went all the way to the top. The Manhattan Project had never ended; the bomb was only the beginning!

Vanessa came in to find me passed out on the floor with the paper shredded beside me. Hours later, I woke up to find myself still on the floor and Vanessa in bed. I grabbed scissors from the kitchen, snuck next to her slumbering form, and peeled back her sheets. I snipped her panties from her thighs and put them in my pocket. I would need them for reference later. I left the apartment around midnight intending to go north. Columbia would need firsthand examination.

There was something sick in the moon as I passed under it, and it grinned wickedly at the perversities it had witnessed in the names of nature and science. I romped up the city streets, wondering what power lust tempts from those genius minds.