*HERE*??
     I was out doing some post-grad work at one of those midwest
football factory schools.  But they had a strong English department
and there was this one professor there(I'll call him Rav.), a book
of whose I'd read in a theory course as an undergrad, whom I knew
would become my next mentor.  He was barely older than I was but,
on the basis of this one book, had been made a full professor. 
He'd had offers from both Yale and Cambridge, but the idea
of being a full professor at 25 won him over.
     He was married to one of the bigger guns in the woman's
studies department(Marna) and Alison, who had traveled out with me,
was taking one of her courses.
     I would spot the professor every now and then in the least
likely of places:  at Herman's, where he was pricing catcher's
masks; at one of the sleazier local watering holes,  where he
bought me a ridiculous drink, bright pink and full of little foldy
umbrellas.  He, of course, was drinking Glenlivet.  I choked on one
of his Turkish cigarettes and he laughed and twirled one of those
umbrellas around;  at Victoria's Secret.  I was there with Alison
and we both nearly died when we saw him.  His wife was quite large. 
Later we would discover he wan't shopping for *her* at all...

     However, the day I remember most vividly is that night I saw
him in the video store.  Alison and I went in and split up, as we
always did--she to drama and I to the little adult section in the
back.  As I walked in I noticed that Alison was talking to that
woman's studies professor, who was looking through the classics
section.  
     As I entered that small room I put on my usual poker face and
did not make eye contact, as the unwritten rules of these things
go.  It had not been discovered yet that Traci Lords was underage
and they had a big assortment of her movies.  I was crouched,
looking through these, when he walked in.  My beloved mentor.  I
prayed that he was only doing research for some scathing feminist
critique of the porn industry, but of course he wasn't.  He was
studying the boxes carefully, turning them around, looking for
various stars, positions, acts.  Crouched as I was he hadn't
spotted me, but there was no way I could leave that room without
his knowing.  So I kneeled and waited.  
     "Richard!  Hi!"
     Oh Christ.
     "Hello, Professor."  
     We were the only two there.   
     "Alison is out there talking with my wife.  This is funny."  
   Funny.  Okay.
     "I don't understand, Professor."
     "Please, Richard.  Rav.  I think we can do without formality
in here."
     "I don't understand, Rav.  I'd have thought that you and--"  
   "Marna."
     "That you and Marna would be very anti-pornography."
     "Oh, we hate it passionately.  Which one's your favorite?"   
  "I feel very weird about this, Professor."
     "If you call me Professor in here again, Richard, you'll make
me blush."
     Not an easy task.  Both he and his wife were from Pakistan. 
Rav was the color of dark Karo syrup, with a pointy, impeccably-
trimmed beard that accentuated the sharp diagonals of his jawline
and cheekbones.  He also had long, delicate fingers.
     "Sorry, Rav, but doesn't Marna speak out against this stuff?" 
    "This stuff, eh?  Absolutely not.  We are neither of us
hypocrites, at least not *that* far..."
     "But still--"
     "You know what the basic problem here is, Richard?"  He turned
away from me, faced the wall of flesh, and made a kind of sweeping
gesture with his hand.  "The problem is, and this is the one we
can't seem to resolve, is that it *works*.  Most all of it *works*.
The actors are dirty-looking, the acting laughable, the situations
preposterous, but it all works.  You know what I'm saying."     
"I'm here, aren't I?"
     "Precisely.  I think one's consciousness would have to be
raised very high indeed not to be um, affected, by this."
     "Doesn't sound like much fun."
     "So, which one then?"  He made that gesture with his hand
again.
     I picked up the box for 'Battle of the Superstars'(Traci Lords
& Christy Canyon) and handed it to him.  As he looked it over I
picked out a couple of interracial anal tapes and he said, "Great. 
Hey, why don't you and Alison come over for some drinks.  We'd love
to have you.  Marna's crazy about Alison."
     Then, he added, "We'll watch a movie."
     I blushed.
     "One of *theirs*.  I wouldn't want to lose my tenure, you
know."
     "Sounds like a plan."
     So we came out of that room into the light.  The women were
waiting for us, arms folded in mock-serious poses, shaking their
heads.
     "Hey, Alison," I said.  "They had your favorite:  Backdoor
Blondes #12."
     "Dick," she laughed.
     Alison was holding 'Grande Illusion' and Marna 'City Lights'.
Rav paid for them all and we followed them back to his house, just
outside the city.  Alison got high on the way and went on and on
about 'Marna'.
     "Oh...myGod, Rich.  She is the coolest.  She's seen
everything.  And *funny*.  She's a piss."
     They lived in an old farmhouse that a noted architect had
lived in before.  He'd sold it to them fairly inexpensively, on the
condition they keep it in good shape and not change anything. 
They'd agreed.
     The house was way back off the road and had a long, tree-
shrouded driveway.  It was a clear spring night and I parked my
Duster perpendicular to his Saab.
     Inside, the first word that I think I said was 'Tardis'.     
"Tardis?" asked Alison.
     "That's just what we thought the first time we saw the place,
too.  You know, Alison, it's from the Dr. Who show.  His little
booth..."
     "Oh.  Yeah yeah yeah.  You're right."
     Somehow, the place was way bigger inside than it looked from
the outside.  Lots of odd angles and surprisingly-placed mirrors. 
And some big sliding-glass doors that led from a garden area inside
straight to gardens out back.  It was an incredible house--perfect
for Rav and Marna.
     Rav got some drinks together and brought them into the tv
room.  They had a big Sony hooked into a Nakamichi stereo with a
Harmon Kardon tape deck.
     They had lots of art everywhere, pretty evenly-divided between
reproductions of Impressionist masterpieces(ballet dancers,
sunflowers, etc.) and originals(Kenny Scharf, Keith Haring, etc.). 
     Eclectic and cool; this was Alison's dream house.
     Rav put on a tape of, of all things, a recent Dead show.  Rav
and Marna sat on a black leather couch, I and Alison cross-legged
at their feet.  As Rav started rolling a joint, carding off of
'Double Fantasy'(ick), he said, "I guess it's silly to ask if you
get high."
     It was silly because Alison had already fished her six-
chambered pipe from her purse and handed it to him.  
     She said, "There's a bunch of resin in there, if you want to
dig it out."
     He just filled it and lit it with a white-tipped match he
struck afainst the edge of a coffee table.
     The tv room had a great big skylight in it, and Alison leaned
back until her head was in my lap and tried to pick out
constellations.  "That's so bright.  Is that the North Star?"     
Marna said, "That's Venus.  Second stone from the sun."     
"Hippie," said Alison, and Marna choked laughing on her hit.     
"Look!" said Alison, pointing up.
     It was a shooting star, a meteor, and it made a long white
trail over the skylight.
     "Nice."
     "How's your Lacan, Alison?"
     'Feminine Sexuality' was one of the books she'd had to read
for Marna's course.
     "Not bad.  He's tough.  I always get the feeling I'm missing
a lot in the translation, but my French sucks.  Why?"
     Marna answered.  "Rav's had this idea bouncing around for a
while now.  Tell them."
     "This is great pot," said Alison.  "Better than what we find. 
Where do you--"
     "If I told you a certain dean would be--"
     Alison covered her ears, "La la la I'm not listening la la
la..."
     "Tell them your idea," said Marna.
     "All right, you're familiar with the 'mirror phase', right?" 
    The 'mirror phase', for Lacan, is essentially that moment when
the infant child makes the connection between that person in the
mirror and him or herself; realizes that this hand is his hand,
this arm her arm, etc.
     "Have you ever tried acid?" asked Marna.
     "Wow, you *are* hippies.  But yes, we dosed last weekend in
fact."
     "Well, lsd, if you're receptive that way, can take you back
through early stages of development."
     "Yeah," said Alison.  "Sometimes it's like part of my brain
knows--"
     "Intellectually."
     "Yeah, intellectually.  The left brain I guess.  I know that
I'm in an anal stage again, and the other half, well--"
     "Wants to make a gift of your feces."
     "Hey," said Alison, turning to punch me lightly in the ribs. 
"And sometimes it's hard to understand that my hands are really
*mine*, that I can make them do what I want them to--"
     "Okay," said Rav.  "Great.  So imagine the planet Earth as an
infant child.  When would you say its 'mirror phase' occurred?"   
  Alison raised her hand.  I tickled her underarm.
     "Yes, Alison?"
     "About the time Columbus--"
     "Late 14, early 1500's"
     "hit America and Magellan circumnavigated and Mercator
started--"
     "Now you're projecting," said Marna, and Alison and I pelted
her with corn chips.
     "No," said Rav.  "You're right.  Everything changed when they
started making globes and the world instantly became finite.  In a
way it had never been before."
     "Neat."
     "The anal stage didn't come until the twentieth century," said
Marna, "when everyone started giving us all this *shit*."
     More corn chip pelting.
     Then, Rav put in 'City Lights' and we watched all but the X-
rated movies and we stayed over.
     Neither of us could sleep that night.  Through the walls we
could hear the two professors, copulating like animals.  We walked
down to the kitchen and made some drinks and sat in the garden. 
The roses were just beginning to open up and we stayed outside the
rest of the night, looking up at the stars, at the infinity over
our heads.