The truth about Buzzy is that he was a hot rod freak. He owned a '74 Duster with enough supe to suck the teenage punks with their hot shit Camaros right off the highway...and pipes, yes, PIPES everywhere, curling out of every sheen in the auto's body.

That's Buzzy: whipping his forklift around the warehouse at $5 an hour and working on his hot rods in his spare time. That's all he knew, that's all he cared about. Short, skinny, bone-faced, red, moustache Buzzy, living down the same dullness I lived with the energy of a benny addict.

After lunch, Buzzy did his Buzzy thing while I helped unload a van full of stretcher strips with Dave from Boston College. The driver got out for a cigarette break and a Coke. He sat back on a heap of two-by-four's and argued with one of the construction workers about politics.

This guy--I found out later his name was Jimmy--said that Ronald Reagan was this country's only hope and that Nixon was the best president we ever had. He sipped his beer and leaned his taut but 30ish body back on a nail sticking out of a two-by-four, letting out a "yeeEEEEEEP!" and a shaken, amused smile as an afterthought.

Though I disagreed vehemently with everything he was saying, I didn't want to argue with him; me, the little college faggot against this square-boned Irish marine boxer from South Boston who ate beer cans.

"And that fuckin Mo Udall!" His voice was getting louder now, his assumptions more daring and outrageous, He was on his second beer.

"There's another fucking Harvard faggot who's trying to ruin this country. Him and fuckin' Timity Leary there...them fuckin' up in their ivory towers trying to tell us how bad off we are, how to live, who the fuck is he..."

Dave from BC looked at me in the middle of this chaotic tirade and flashed an evil grin.

"Fuckin' Tim Leary ruined the minds of thousands of young boys with LSD...you can't fuck with the mind," he said, pointing his index finger stiffly to the side of his crew-cut head.

I realized that I was overestimating the situation. I should try to reason with Jimmy...tell him that I go to Harvard, that's right ME. Sweating, stretcher-strip carrying, blue collar ME! And that I'm for abortion and drugs and all those things and I take LSD and smoke pot at lunch and it really means nothing because it's all a matter of living your life for yourself. Drop acid until your teeth fall out and God won't say a word. He'd never be so presumptuous again.

Probably not. His hollow face would turn redder than his sunburn, he'd suck in the beginning of a beer belly that started right above his dickies, and he'd wail the piss out of me.

Then I realized I was completely fucked. Dave from BC looked at Jimmy after he said "Harvard faggot" in the middle of his third beer and said, "Hey--he goes to Harvard!"

Jimmy stopped babbling about decency and looked at me with the bewilderment of a four-year-old boy who has just learned that Santa Claus is a big fat bimbo they pick up off the streets to sit in department stores and console whining babies and said, "But what're you doing here?"

Of all the questions Jimmy could have asked, he picked an intelligent one. He picked the one that was so far above my head that I froze chock full of dread at the thought of it. I explained to Jimmy that I am not Sartre and that all Harvard students are not rich, twitty, Aspen-in-the-winter-Acupulco-in-the-summer types. He seemed to understand this. But he continued about ivory towers and hypocrisy and repression, and I couldn't argue with him. My logical, objective arguments were irrelevent and useless when pitted against the turgid wall of bitterness and sarcasm and beer that Jimmy had thrown up around himself.

He smoked some more and mopped the sweat off his brow and hunkered back to his cab, amicably talking to me.