"The children, very soon, did not need me at all, except as a benign adult presence. They began talking to one another. They were talking of their desire to know one another. Each was trying to enter into the experience of the other. The exchanges were sharp and remarkably candid, but never fogged by an unadmitted fear of hostility. They were trying to become whole." -James Baldwin, about teaching at BGSU, as quoted by Dr. Ernest Champion
In fall of 1979, we lived in a pumpkin-colored house on S. Church St in Bowling Green, OH. The color was a misunderstanding of what "autumn gold" would turn out to be, from when my roommates painted the house that summer. I can't recall exactly but assume the dinner was Ted's idea. I just shake my head now in wry amusement. A bunch of white, middle class 20 and 21 year olds from northwest Ohio inviting James Baldwin over for dinner.
Baldwin had originally taught at BGSU the previous spring, for a course through the new Ethnic Studies department about his own books. I believe now Ted pushed me to take the course when he first heard about it, not sure why I didn't, but once Baldwin arrived halfway through, he was unrelenting: "You HAVE to come to this class!!!" I had a Personality Theory class at the same time but cut my class and went along with him anyhow. Once I did, I never went back to learn more about Freud.
It's representative of my early college years that I walked away without a backward glance. College: The Early Years were oftentimes much more about life than learning. I started and stopped more times than I can remember now, registered for entire quarters and didn't go, went to some classes a few times and dropped out. A nice spring day, a random comment from a professor, a new romance. Anything could sidetrack me then. When I finally went back in the 90s as a serious student, I was surprised to find I had managed credit for that personality class after all, with a C. I vaguely remember running in to take the multiple choice final, so assume rushing through and checking psychologists' names at random must have worked out better than I'd thought.
Baldwin's class was in one of the big round lecture rooms. (I want to say 220 Math-Science but can't believe my memory can accurately pull up that bit of information.) I do know we divided ourselves up on either side of the room by race, and that's what we talked about, sometimes angrily, tripping over each others' stories, both sides doing exactly what Baldwin remembers: trying to explain and understand. We talked about South Africa and America and our own lives. I remember some of the faces still, and Baldwin at the front of the class, always pushing us to question, to learn more.
I grew up in a small town in Ohio. I literally knew no one at all who was black until I went to college. The one thing I credit my mother for more than anything else in my life is she taught me early and often that "everyone is the same inside, no matter what color their skin." She'd left that town as a young adult and lived in NYC and she knew when she took us back as young children, those weren't lessons we'd learn on our own. During Baldwin's first class, it occurred to me that I wasn't alone in my isolation. In many cases, both sides of the room were learning about the other for the first time.
I don't know if Ted started his friendship with Jimmy that quarter or not. It's easy to assume he stayed after class, continuing whatever discussion had started earlier, easy to imagine him walking along afterwards, still expounding on whatever thoughts he'd been in the middle of. Baldwin came back as a visiting professor the following fall and we all signed up for his class. He chose our reading list: Things Fall Apart, Heart of Darkness, Native Son. Somewhere along the line, we invited him over for dinner.
The preparations took all day. I remember part of our menu. I made stir-fried vegetables. Ted made shish kabob and homemade cinnamon rolls. I think Susan baked bread. Jeff was missing in action throughout the day, and rushed in shortly before dinner with his contribution: a bottle of scotch. When we complained about his late entrance, he said it didn't matter. He had Glenlivet! Eventually everything was ready and our guests arrived. We believed we were just having dinner with James Baldwin but 3 or 4 people from the university came too, real grown-ups. I can't begin to imagine how they decided to come along or what talk there might have been at the fact he was joining us at all.
I still laugh to myself even after all these years at how our dinner turned out. Ted pushing his platter of shish kabobs on everyone. The nicely dressed woman from the university across from me, looking uncomfortable. Dr. Champion next to her, enjoying our food and having a good time. Jimmy and Jeff side by side on one end on the table, sharing the scotch. Much to Ted's dismay, Baldwin barely ate anything, although I'm still pleased to say he did sample my vegetables. As it turned out, Jeff's bottle of scotch trumped all the food we'd made. I assume the rest of us drank wine as they got drunker and Jeff got louder and louder, the rest of us drowned out and either watching the two of them or our plates. I have no idea now what they were arguing about but even then I realized this was a complete disaster socially and absolutely wonderful just the same.
I am uncertain whether or not to tell what happened next. Perhaps this part of the story is too titillating to share but I think it counts for something as well. I believe the others left shortly after dinner, but Jimmy and my friends moved into the living room, still drinking and talking. I missed the actual exchange but came back to find he had propositioned my roommate. To me at that time it was a non-issue. So what? Ted was a beautiful man, and Baldwin was gay. Of course now I realize my lack of interest in the whole drama had something to do with gender. For a 20 year old woman, being hit on was something that could happen anytime. For Ted, it was an enormous deal. For Baldwin? I can't begin to know his motivation. I don't believe he expected to get a yes. Perhaps it was just the drinking and the adoration and a spur of the moment "why not try?" but I wonder if maybe it wasn't a small reminder of who he really was. I'm not the wise dad you wish you had. I'm a gay man and if we're to become friends, you need to face that. They must have worked it out somehow because they all did remain friends until he died.
I have to be clear here. Jimmy wasn't my friend. In those days I was quieter, taking it all in, outshone perhaps by the flash of Jeff and Ted, the little sister tagging along. Another time, Jeff decided we would drop by Jimmy's apartment. It was probably midnight and we'd been drinking. I was skeptical but he brashly insisted it would be fine, and it was. We sat around the dining room table in that standard Bowling Green rental and finished a 6 pack of Heineken. That night he talked to me. I can remember his face and his eyes and I know he talked about love. I wish I could remember his words.
Out of everything from then, the one thing he said that I recall the most clearly is that what was most challenging about teaching us was how to answer the "question behind the question," that he had to find the exact words to answer what we said with our words and what we were asking with our eyes. It was a strange concept to me then. How can you answer questions people weren't even asking? Now of course I understand the eyes really do reflect our soul, and I appreciate the concern he took with all of us to find the right answers.
I remember him as always unrelentingly kind and patient, and yet even then I knew that for all his fame and recognition, for all the people who loved James Baldwin the writer, he was still a lonely man who drank too much. I cringe now a little at my own youthful naivety. Did I expect exuberant happiness from a gay black man who'd lived during those times? Still I wonder now if being face to face with the reality of fame didn't shape my own choices to some degree, to live with little concern about external "success" and work instead on who I am.
Baldwin called us "children" and I can imagine our outrage at the time to be thought of in those terms, but we were still kids, weren't we? Children whose childhood had been steeped in the changes of the 60s and 70s. We were passionate and dramatically confident, barely aware of the gathering mists of our individual issues and insanities. We watched everything that went on in the world and we were certain we would change it.
I love us all then, those I've remained friends with for more than 30 years and those I knew only briefly. We crammed more life into those few years than I have managed in many of my decades since. We're all nearly the same age as Baldwin was then and I can see now how delightful we must have been to him. I understand that part of growing gracefully into these years is being able to enjoy seeing our children live through the things we remember, and to believe the torch will be passed on. And the world did change, didn't it? For all we find wrong with it still today, in many ways it's a world he wouldn't recognize.
I may have fallen short at times but I'd like to believe that most of my life I've spoken out about right and wrong, continued to think and care. I'd like to believe he'd like me now still, be proud in a way of the person I've been and become. If I could tell him one more thing, I would say thanks. Thank you, Mr. Baldwin, for everything.
