Mr. Tannenbaum announced that we were all to get up, leave the seats we had taken, and find seats in alphabetical order, starting with the first seat in the first file and working back, then continuing with the first seat in the second file, and so on.
Well, I thought, slipping out of my desk, that was the end of sitting next to my new friend. We milled around, asking each other our names, laughing, exchanging remarks. Somehow, though, it panned out that (as an “Abramson”) Chuck ended up the first student in the first file of desks, and, after we’d gone through the other A’s, B’s, and C’s, I (as a “Delany”) ended up in the second seat of the second file. I wasn’t in front of him. But I was now one seat diagonally behind him.
The person sitting directly behind Chuck and, therefore, right beside me, was a bright, personable kid from Queens, with glasses, named Danny. He made some comment on some exchange between Chuck and me, and within minutes, had joined the pair of us as friends in a trio that stayed solid through the year.
“Come to order now,” Mr. Tannenbaum said, and, once more, the general level of student whispering quieted. “It seems the next thing on our agenda is to elect the class representative to the Student Government Organization.”
There was a general groan, and a girl named Debbie raised her hand to protest. “That seems awfully silly right now. None of us really knows anyone else.”
Stacking “Delaney Cards” together for his roll book (part of an archaic filing system that only incidentally mirrored my name), Mr. Tannenbaum gave one of his inward, ironic smiles. “I think the idea is that it will help get the process of knowing each other started.”
I kind of agreed with Debbie. But diagonally in front of me, Chuck immediately waved his hand. When Mr. Tannenbaum glanced at him, Chuck declared, “I nominate Chip Delany — this guy right here,” twisting around and pointing down with his upraised hand at the top of my head.
Danny’s hand was up a moment later. “I second the nomination.”
“I guess we’re getting started then.” Mr. Tannenbaum got up to write the nominees on the blackboard. “Any other nominations?”
There were three others — one was a friend of mine from Woodland, named Gene. But he’d been sitting some seats behind me, so we hadn’t, in those first minutes, done more than nod and grin at one another.
Another, a golden, good-looking Irish kid like Chuck, was named Mike.
The last was a native Bronx boy called Leo, with an incredible amount of body hair and a winning, easy manner, who, at thirteen, easily looked eighteen or older.
The four of us were called on to say something about ourselves. I don’t remember what I said — but Gene used his time to tell a silly joke that fell flat. Moments after our impromptu campaign speeches, Mr. Tannenbaum told us to go out in the hall, where we milled about and glanced at one another, trying not to feel self-conscious; and inside the class discussed the four of us and voted. Somebody came to beckon through the wire-reinforced classroom door window.
We went back in.
I had been elected.
“All the GO representatives are meeting this afternoon,” Mr. Tannenbaum told me “in room. …” He gave me the number. “It shouldn’t take very long. It’s just to set things up.”
Chuck turned round and whispered, “I’ll wait for you, and we can go home together.”
Later, I asked Chuck if there’d been any discussion, and, if so, what had been said that got me elected. But he just brushed it off: “Nobody really said anything at all.”
At lunch, however, when I got Danny alone (Danny’s and Chuck’s friendship had been cemented through the happenstance of their ending up in the same German class; and by now, we knew, all three of us had the same English teacher, a rotund gentleman with glasses, Mr. Kotter, who, when a young man had given him a not particularly sharp answer, had planted his hands on his hips that morning and said, “You know, I don’t think you’d have sense enough to pour piss out of a boot,” at which point we’d all fallen in love with him), Danny explained that when Mr. Tannenbaum had called for comments on the nominees, it came out that all the other nominators had indeed been friends of their nominees at previous schools, and Chuck, logically and coolly, had explained that’ he had never known me until today, but simply in the few minutes’ conversation we’d already had, he’d been struck by my “intelligence, levelheadedness, and insight,” and these seemed to him better credentials than simply old friends nominating old friends. The argument had carried most of the remaining students — possibly it was a better argument than I was a candidate.
The student representative meeting that afternoon was simple and untaxing. Another math teacher, a woman even taller than Mr. Tannenbaum, gave us a brief rundown of our all but nonexistent duties.
A few minutes before the end of the meeting, Chuck’s blond head swerved around outside the window; he waved to me. I kind of nodded back. The teacher saw him gesticulating outside the door, walked over, and opened it. “Are you looking for something?” she asked. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“I was waiting for a friend,” Chuck said.
“Then why don’t you just come in,” she said, “and sit down quietly.” So Chuck came in with his first day’s haul of textbooks in his arms and slid into a seat near mine.
About five minutes later, the meeting ended.
As the young reps were standing to leave, the front door of the classroom opened again and, rather breathlessly, a long-haired girl in glasses strode in and announced, half to the teacher and half to everyone else: “This is the student representatives’ meeting, isn’t it? I’m the GO Alternate. So I belong here.”
The teacher looked at her with the smile I was becoming so familiar with. She said: “Actually, I don’t think you do.”
“Oh, no,” the girl said. “I belong here.” She repeated, “I’m the Alternate for my class.”
“I mean,” the teacher said, “the meeting’s finished. We’re all going home now.”
“Well, I do belong here,” the young woman said again.
Then, realizing what was happening, she said loudly, “Oh. …” As she looked around the room, perhaps we saw each other. Perhaps we even smiled. Then she turned and strode out of the room.
Behind me, Chuck said: “Chip, that girl is weird!”
I couldn’t help thinking of Ben, though, busy in the Main Building being a genius. Certainly by comparison, she wasn’t weird at all.
Chuck and I rode home together on the downtown D train.
6.32. One other friendship I must speak about formed in that same time. Elements of it coalesced during the same minutes as those I’ve already written of. It was probably more important, at least to me as a writer, than those with Chuck or Danny. Reviewing it, however, what strikes me is how quickly the written narrative closes it out — puts it outside of language. Reading over what I’ve already written of that first day, searching for a margin in which to inscribe it, within and around what’s already written, I suspect it might well be printed in the column parallel with the above, rather than as a consecutive report — certainly that’s the way I experienced it.
Return, then, for a minute, as we came down from the roof. …
I walked into the classroom.
Chuck followed me.
As I slid into a seat behind one of the wooden desks toward the front of the room, I glanced aside at the students crowding up the aisle beside me, where I glimpsed a hand — a large hand — on which the broad nails were gnawed back behind a line of adolescent grime. The hand stayed there a second, two, tapped on a denim thigh, and was blocked by another student. I looked up, to see a tall boy — perhaps one of the two or three tallest kids in the class — with dark brown hair, peering over the heads of his classmates. He was wearing a dark brown, long-sleeved shirt. He sighed now, realizing that all the seats near the door were already taken, and began to make his way with the others around the desks to find somewhere to sit.