Charley

The steamroller painting sits upstairs, on the floor of my guest room, leaning against a wall.  Not on display.  I'm not sure how long it's been there, or why I put it there.  But there it sits.  

I've glanced at it occasionally, absent-mindedly, as I walked by, but today I looked at it carefully.  It's actually a rather revolting painting, a brutal painting of a piece of heavy equipment.  In the background is a non-descript maintenance building at my university. 

Of course, there's a story behind the painting.

The painter was my roommate.  Charley.  Charley and I roomed together for one quarter only, the first quarter of my sophomore year.  Freshmen were, for the most part, all housed in freshman dormitories, with other freshmen.  Once past the freshman year, we were thrown in with members of other classes -- whether in fraternities, eating clubs, or dorms .

I was a shy introvert.  My freshman roommate had been a bit more social, but also an introvert.  He was an engineering student, but also a lover of classical music.  We got along fine.

Rooming with Charley as a sophomore was a different experience.  Charley's primary interests were drinking (often in our room), and accompanying his own singing on the guitar (badly).  I think of good old Charley whenever I hear someone sing "House of the Rising Sun."  It goes without saying that Charley was a slob, and that our room was a mess.  He was a year ahead of me, and clearly regarded me as something of a nuisance.  His friends would drop by frequently before dinner for a "cocktail hour" -- a euphemism. My presence at my desk was ignored.

I rebelled finally when one night, about midnight, he woke me up and said his "girl friend" wanted to spend the night with him -- would I mind going somewhere else?  He did take my refusal philosophically, with quiet resignation.

We were not ideal roommates.   It was the same quarter during which I was undergoing a religious conversion.  Like many young people with newly developed interests in religion, I was a bit Manichean in my instincts.  I saw things in terms of black and white.  Worse, I saw people in terms of good or bad, worthwhile or worthless.

Despite our unsuitability as roommates, I regret not having gotten to know Charley better.  We would never have been buddies, but he wasn't worthless.

Charley, admittedly, was crude and vulgar.  At age 20, many young guys are crude and vulgar, and I, for my part, was unnecessarily prim and prudish.  Despite his lack of gentility, however, and an apparently limited amount of artistic talent,  Charley had bravely enrolled in a painting class that quarter.  He had a growing stack of completed canvases on his side of the room.  

Total barbarians don't paint, badly or otherwise.

He had a painting of a young woman, presumably his girlfriend, that he worked on all quarter.  Her countenance changed radically from week to week, depending -- I gather -- on how their relationship was developing.  Sometimes, she looked almost attractive.  Other times, demonic.

But wait, there's more.  He also was entranced by medieval Japanese poetry.  In translation, of course.  He would read bits of it to me and ask me, "Isn't that cool?"  He was reading medieval Japanese poetry because he was taking a class in medieval Japanese poetry, but doesn't even his choice of class say something good about him?  And he wasn't just showing up for class to get a grade.  He dug it.  Something in medieval Japanese poetry appealed to his soul.  Yes, he had a soul.   

But I couldn't see the artist in him, or the (possible) poet.  I couldn't see past the booze and the odd hours and the cussing.  Charley didn't stick around beyond the first quarter.  Looking back, I don't really blame him.  He  offered me a choice of his paintings as a farewell present.  No, not the young woman, he sighed, but any of the other ones.

I chose the steamroller.

After we broke for Christmas, I never heard from him again.  He left the entire dorm, not just my room.  But he didn't leave the university.  I looked him up in the alumni directory just today.  He graduated on schedule.  He's still alive, and living in Las Vegas.

Toward the end of our quarter together, Charley talked to me about his family.  He had two younger siblings.  Somewhat wistfully, he recalled that when they were young, his dad would call the three kids "Mairzy Doats," and "Dozy Doats," and "Liddle Lamzy Divey."  

He was Mairzy Doats.  While telling me the story, he sounded like he sometimes wished he were still Mairzy Doats.  At the time, I found it hard to imagine Charley as Mairzy Doats, but that's how I now like to remember him.