Brothers

Four of them came upon me in the middle of the night. The rank smell of beer breath. The chill of covers being ripped away. The shock of hands clamping down my arms and legs. “What are you doing?” I yelled; “Let me go. You’re drunk!”

Lefty, one of my fraternity “brothers” and the ringleader, said, “Don’t worry Mike, we are just going to clean you up! You and all these crazy ideas you’ve been spouting around campus.” I had just returned from a semester-long program in Washington, D.C. studying American government while attending teach-ins and protests about the Vietnam War on the side. It was an awakening, and it didn’t settle well in the local college and Appalachian community where I was raised. I came back with a ponytail, full beard, bell bottoms, a beaded necklace, and a skeptical attitude in the classroom.

The gang of brothers chopped off the ponytail and shaved my beard as I twisted and squirmed to break free. Alone and shivering, I surveyed the damage. I was bleeding from several cuts, had a collection of bruises, and a horrific backache. Worse yet, I felt betrayed. I had lived with these guys for two years. We helped each other on homework, partied together, and supported one another through hard times. I had grown up with an abusive dad and was trying to escape the violence. This was the push I needed to find a new direction.

Sisters

Two weeks after the attack, I was crossing the quad when I first saw Joan. I was struck by her flowing auburn hair falling nearly to the hemline of her mini-skirt, exposing long fuzzy-haired legs. Her wide set green eyes, and broad, freckled face gave her an alluring, sleepy look as she strode across campus.

I soon learned her name and discovered I was only one of many admirers, but Joan had a reputation for rejecting come-ons as well as conventional school practices. She was a presence, with a following of the few young feminists on campus.

We met at the first teach-in on the Vietnam War organized by two, dissident faculty members. About 12 students showed up, all males calmly filing through the door, except for Joan, who marched in like a contractor preparing for a demolition. Early in the conversation, she stood, paused while scanning the room with a skeptical frown, and said, “Just exactly what is the place for women in the Anti-War movement?”

No one responded, but I was bursting with ideas. At the end of the meeting, I approached Joan feeling like a bashful teen walking across the gym floor towards a girl at a Friday night school dance. “I don’t have an answer to your question,” I stammered, desperately trying to sound authoritative. “But I have been reading about sexism in the civil rights movement, most recently Casey Hayden’s essay. Have you read it?”

Joan looked me over skeptically, head to toe. I was skinny, well over six feet tall with a poor posture, always slumping as though I was stuck with a 40-pound backpack digging into my shoulders. I was banged up from the attack, with a nicked and bruised face, overshadowing my strong forehead, high cheekbones and oversized hazel eyes. I had worry lines cutting through my brow no doubt from years of dealing with my family at home.

My hair was growing out in clumps like an unkept lawn sprouting grass after the first spring showers. I was wearing a beaded necklace underneath a wrinkled flannel unbuttoned three from the top. After a lengthy pause, our eyes met; “You must be the only other person on this campus who’s read Hayden’s essay! Yea, let’s get a coffee … better than that, a beer!”

From that moment, we were inseparable, hanging out with a small group of kindred spirits, female and male students alike, partying and planning events to raise student consciousness. We were a self-righteous lot but also savvy about our surroundings. Many of the students attending the college came from families in small towns of the Northern Appalachian coal region.

Knowing this demographic gave us a hook for framing our teach-ins. I remember our focus on social class dealt with coal mining economies, the everyday hardships of working the mines compared to the ease of work associated with the professions, all male dominated, that serviced these communities, undertakers to bankers.

We had faculty allies. But the school administration suppressed our educational initiative, blocking any funding from student government and denying the use of school facilities for planned events. Still our numbers grew as did opposition, particularly from fraternities whose members came from privileged families in the region and felt threatened by our teach-ins about local issues of class and gender.

Months later, we eloped and headed to Washington, DC where I had been accepted into a graduate program, and Joan landed a job as the first female reporter for a labor union newspaper. We were excited to be in DC, but unhappy with our university-subsidized apartment in an old, urban high-rise building. The noise and separation from the earth were foreign to our upbringing, and we missed the camaraderie of college friends.

We complained about the apartment for weeks, until Joan looked at me late one evening. “This apartment is eating at our happiness! We don’t look forward to coming home and when we are here, we’re using the stereo to drown out all the noise. Not to enjoy the music!”

I nodded, “I can’t study here. I’m on campus too much. We’re used to hearing birds chirping, smelling fresh air, and watching deer cut through the yards back in PA.”

Joan stood up, “Here, it’s nothing but pigeons and cockroaches! We have no garden and hardly any plants. Let’s get out of here!”

“Yes!” We embraced and sighed like punctured balloons. We read the ads around campus with real purpose. About two weeks into our effort, we saw a notice in an alternative newspaper inviting couples to apply to join Londonderry, a communal farm being formed in the nearby Maryland countryside. We immediately responded, explaining why we were a perfect fit.

A few weeks later, Polly, one of the three women founders, called us. Joan took the call, waving me over to listen in. Our faces were meshed around the rotary phone’s earpiece, “We’re forming a feminist collective. Your letter about how the two of you came together moved us. We’d like you to come for a visit. Expect to be blown away by the beauty, but you should think long and hard about the work. It’s going to require caring for the property and meshing with our collectivist ideals.”

As soon as we hung up the phone, I looked at Joa, “It sounds amazing, but how would I fit into a feminist collective? I don’t even know what that means! I’ve got reading to do.”

Joan put her arms around my neck. “Babe,” she declared, “Don’t be so academic. “We got this!” With a grin big enough to cause all her freckles to dance about, she added, “I’ve given you all the training you need.” As we fell into our bed laughing, Joan rolled on top of me.

Two months later, we were walking the grounds of Londonderry. It was springtime, 1969, our lives in renewal like the earth at our feet.

 

Michael Musheno has published extensively in university presses, including the University of Michigan and Chicago Presses, on issues of public affairs that draw upon the stories of others, mostly frontline workers in the public sector. Three of his stories have appeared in earlier issues of The RavensPerch.