"WHY are all these invalids around here?" asked Roger. He sat way down in his chair, as he lingered over coffee in the Adams House dining hall. He raised his hand and pointed around the room. "Two wheelchairs, three guys on crutches, an armcast, there's a guy with a patch over his eye... Shit!"

A number of things have gone wildly wrong for Roger this year, but he doesn't like to talk about it. So he smiles a lot and jokes a lot.

He lit a cigarette. "I was talking to Larry the other day. He said, "The more you get to know people, the more you want to kill them.' I don't know anybody, but, looking around this place, I think he's right. May everyone in this room perish..."

A boy waved hello to Roger. After he had passed the table. Roger turned to me, pointed in the boy's direction, and said," May his hair catch fire. May he burn with his books. May he smother in his smile."

"Come on, what's the matter?" I asked.

"You really want to know?.... Well, it's like this. I wish I were dead. No-wait, wait-I wish you were dead."

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

Roger smiled. "Let me put it this way. In September I dropped mescaline with this girl and I fell in love with her, I think. Who knows? Any way. I went to see her right after that, and I found out that she was 43 years old..."

"Sure, Roger."

"Okay, Don't believe me. But listen to October. In October I went to a couple of classes-I didn't know anyone in the classes-and I started to do nasty things."

"Yeah?"

"You bet. In one seminar, I leaped up in the middle of class and stuck my hand down this girl's dress and ripped open the front."

"God, what happened?"

"She started to cry. It was awful. She was Women's Lib, too... But that's nothing. One day in a lecture, I started telling loud anti-semitic jokes. Right in the middle of Lowell Lec! And I'm Jewish... Which reminds me: too many Jews around this place. It was okay for them to let me in, but who needs the rest of this riff-raff? Wasps, too. They should farm out Wasps."

Roger lit another cigarette and looked down at his cup of coffee. Then he looked up and said, "This coffee eats shit!" He ran over to one of the benign service ladies and yelled, "This coffee eats shit! This coffee eats shit! This coffee eats shit!" He was very loud about it.