At some places, it would be difficult to raise a quorum for a game like bladderball, with its deranged, inchoate release of energy and its attendant pranks. At Harvard, it is unusual for 3000 people to participate in anything at all, let alone dangerous forms of institutionalized madness, but at Yale things like bladderball come to seem quite natural, an organic part of life there, a phase in a universally felt, all-consuming cycle of tension and release.
Dean Griffin describes the ordinary Yale student as "a quite straightforward, cheerful type of person." An upperclassman who leans more toward the abnormality theory of life at Yale puts it differently: "Your average Joe Blow student fucks around in the library for four hours pretending to study and then goes to a bar and gets drunk."
His theory of the personality is supported by a complex account of Yale decadence. There are the less important elements, such as "preppie decadence," which takes place in secret societies, and there are more widespread but still comparatively innocent varieties.
"Yale," our friend says, "has a very well-defined, academic kind of decadence--you know, a blow-out party, kegs of beer, people throwing up. Just standard collegiate stuff." A local phenomenon called "gatoring" seems to fit this category; gatoring is a kind of dance, usually performed by two or more males, that involves the prominent display of genitalia. But the dance is only a subcategory of a larger practice the Yale Daily News Magazine calls "sloaning (attracting public attention to ones genitals)."
"The more serious decadence," this upperclassman says significantly, "is off campus." It is difficult for a visitor to Yale to understand what this can mean, beyond the usual serious drug use; and it is here, too, that the imaginations of the believers in normalcy reach their limit. One example of the extent of depravity at Yale is a group of about ten seniors called the Buttfucks, most of whom live together off campus.
One Buttfuck spokesman, who plans to join Charles Reich in California after he gets his degree this February, said last week that the group began a few years ago as a "severe, organized counterreaction" to academic pressure. At first the Buttfucks limited their activities to a sort of "nameless, roving aggression," along the lines of stealing parking meters, destroying bathrooms, that sort of thing. Two years ago they elected a parking meter named Pancho Valdez to a post in student government. (For months afterwards, "Free Pancho Valdez" graffiti could be seen all over the Yale campus.) But their major foray into public depravity on a grand scale, an event every Yale upperclassman remembers, was something called BUTTFUCK '74.
As reconstructed from the accounts of Buttfucks who were present, the affair seems to have been a kind of spiritual occasion. It was heavily advertised in advance by posters bearing the words "BUTTFUCK '74" and a picture of Yo Mo Dobro Jo, billed as a 19 year-old perfect asshole; beneath Yo Mo Dobro Jo, who was seated in something like a lotus position, was the inscription "Hum Tits to Yo Mo Dobro Jo." The poster aroused the ire of local residents and administrators but, a Buttfuck says, "we persuaded them that it would only be a nice, fun, kinky party."
What actually happened in the Ezra Stiles College dining room on that evening last year is difficult to say with any certainly, partly because virtually all of the witnesses perceived the event with the assistance of psychedelic drugs. A few things are clear: that Yo Mo Dobro Jo was borne in upon a toilet seat clutching aloft in his right hand a dildo, and in his left some other spiritual object; that beer and spumoni were served, as symbols of the blood and body of the guest of honor; that after the intonation of some godly words, symbolic meatballs were cut away from a jockstrap and eaten; that residents of the Yale-New Haven Mental Hospital, on evening leave, presented the guest of honor with a painting entitled The Criminal Penis Entering the Mouth of the Nun; and that the "Scriptures of the Holy Rectum," or excerpts therefrom, were read aloud to the assembled body.
That was the high point of the Buttfucks' public depravity. Yale has freshmen now who have never heard of the group. Even Pancho Valdez is gone now, "sort of stolen back by the police this summer." Graduation looms for the Buttfucks, who say they have settled into "a quiet, domestic depravity." They are not particularly concerned about academic pressure, although Yo Mo Dobro Jo himself talks about a continuing sexual tension at Yale; "the sexual scene basically just isn't very cool," he says.
The Buttfucks, no less than people who have their noses more firmly on the grindstone, feel there is something lacking in their education. Yale's children enter the real world less than whole, or believe they do--in the way they deal with other people, for example, they feel somehow narrow, somehow deformed. In some ways this feeling is related to a complaint that can be heard elsewhere in the Ivy League these days, that colleges are like sausage factories, stuffing narrow, repressed professional casings. The Buttfucks, who have a perspective on this, say that the people who cannot bend with the pressure become burned-out candle-makers in Sausalito.
Faculty, administrators and other promulgators of normalcy, all question the breadth of vision of the Buttfucks and their sympathizers. Sausalito just does not have that large a population of ex-Yalies. To normalists, the depravity theory is a symptom of youthful short-sightedness: things are not really so painful as they seem, and perhaps a little pain is a healthy, natural part of growing up. From their point of view you cannot argue with results--most products of the Yale environment turn out to be as vigorous, capable, diligent and even happy in their real-world occupations as they were at Yale--sometimes, perhaps, even more so.