His curiosity prolonged to the universe. One night time, at a home social gathering, John and I ended up within the again yard, ingesting beer. Abruptly he stood up and gazed on the night time sky. “Hey,” he mentioned, “you’re taking quite a lot of reli-stu, proper? Can I ask you one thing? Do you suppose there’s a God?”
I mentioned I believed it was extremely seemingly.
“My household’s Catholic,” John mentioned. (And that was endearing, too. That he didn’t presume I knew that.) “It simply appears to me that there has to be a God. Like, how did we get right here? You already know what I imply?”
There’s an extended monologue in “Brief Eyes,” the place the character of Ice describes his masturbatory fantasies in regards to the actress Jane Fonda. At its climax, he cries out repeatedly, “Janey child! Oh, Janey child!” The soliloquy was one thing of a showstopper at each efficiency. On the night time Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis got here to see our play, the actor enjoying Ice had an thought. We had been crowded collectively within the dressing room, on the brink of go on, when he mentioned, “Hey, John, your mother’s right here tonight, proper? I used to be considering. You already know my monologue, the place I’m going ‘Janey! Janey!’ whereas I’m speaking about jerking off? Possibly I may swap ‘Janey’ out for one more identify tonight.”
It took a second to sink in. Then John started shaking his head. “No, no, no, no, no,” he mentioned, to common amusement.
You couldn’t be round him with out eager about who he was. Even for those who succeeded for a second, you’d quickly get a reminder. I keep in mind being at a loud social gathering, with loud music, and sweaty our bodies packed collectively on the dance ground. In some unspecified time in the future, I started to sense, from the flutter of exercise throughout the room, that John was current. (And that was one other factor, the way in which folks mentioned, “John”—“I simply noticed John,” “Is John right here?” “I used to be speaking to John and . . .”—by no means specifying which “John” they meant and by no means needing to.) Turning my head, I noticed John’s silhouette in opposition to the far wall. He was dancing, too, although it wasn’t straightforward for him. Nobody would let him alone. Folks stored arising, women particularly, and he would decrease his head so they may shout in his ear. (The identical ear that Jackie Kennedy had whispered in, all these years in the past.) As I watched, I spotted the tune that was enjoying was none aside from “Sympathy for the Satan,” by the Rolling Stones. Uh, oh. Right here it got here. The well-known lyric. Nothing may cease it now. I watched John as, from the stereo audio system, Mick Jagger’s voice, within the function of Lucifer, sang, “I shouted out / ‘Who killed the Kennedys’ / When in spite of everything / it was you and me.” Did John hear that? Did he hear it and block it out? Or had he stopped noticing issues like that as a result of they had been in every single place? The lyric got here and went, John confirmed no response, and all of us danced on.
My most intimate encounter with John occurred a couple of months after the run of “Brief Eyes.” It was the nighttime. I used to be making a postcoital journey to the lavatory in an off-campus condo that wasn’t mine. As I inched alongside the corridor, in boxer shorts, a door opened and John stepped out. He was additionally in boxers. It wasn’t his condo, both. We confronted one another within the darkness. After which, sizing up the state of affairs, John grinned and mentioned, “You canine!”
Me? A canine? And so designated not simply by anybody however by a Kennedy.
Magnanimously, like Henry V, he had included me in his band of brothers. Slightly contact of John-John within the night time.
He impressed fealty. You must attain again for a feudal time period like that to explain the impact he had on folks, and particularly males. On the morning of commencement, I used to be standing with John and a gaggle of men as we waited, in our caps and robes, for the sign to begin marching. Somebody handed a joint. At that second, from each route, photographers appeared. They’d left John alone throughout his time at Brown for probably the most half. However they weren’t about to forgo getting an image of him on commencement day. As they streamed towards him with cameras raised, John did one thing I’d by no means seen earlier than. He seemed embarrassed. He hung his massive good-looking head, defenseless in opposition to the method of the paparazzi. Abruptly, as if by intuition, the remainder of us clustered round him. Turning our backs to the photographers, we unfold our robes and tilted our mortarboards to protect our prince from view. I’d by no means felt something prefer it. The sense of responsibility. Of constancy. I’d’ve been kneeling earlier than John and calling out, “My liege!”
