The American College of Switzerland Zoo. James E. Henderson
Over the course of the next couple of days, I would meet many of the dorm residents, some memorable, some not. I met Gil at my first dinner at school, and we were allies in the first few minutes. He was a fellow military brat, in his case Air Force, and his home currently was Wiesbaden Air Force Base near Frankfurt, not forty K’s from mine. Gil was a little taller than me, with pale skin and almost white blonde hair that he brushed high off his strong, honest, blue-eyed, Boy Scout face. We shared many of the same life lessons traveling around the world with our parents. We both tended to make friends quickly but somewhat superficially so that the next move wouldn’t be as hard.
In the room between mine and Stallone’s, Tiny introduced me to Jolie and Cliff. Both were in their second year, and both were wealthy. Jolie was the adopted son of Al Jolson, “The Jazz Singer.” He had brown hair with deep-set blue gray eyes setting off his masculine, quasi-Richard Burton face. When I first walked into his room, he had a cigarette in one hand and a beer bottle in the other. He set the beer down momentarily to shake my hand. That was one of the few times I saw Jolie without a beer or a wine bottle or a mixed drink. In fact, if Jolie wasn’t an alcoholic before he came to Leysin, he became one on the Magic Mountain.
Where Jolie was ruggedly handsome, Cliff was ruggedly not! He had muddy, rusty brown hair that didn’t look natural, but I am not sure why anyone would choose that color hair. If it hadn’t stayed that impossible color the whole school year, I would have sworn that it was a bleach job gone orange. He had some pock marks and a permanent shadow of a beard that ran down his neck, which made him look older than he was. Both guys had an aloof air about them; although compared to Jolie’s cool resolve, Cliff was just plain stuck up.
In Stallone’s room I met Spyder. At first I thought his nickname came from the long thin arms and legs that spouted from his torso. His greased black hair, black turtleneck, and tight black jeans only seemed to enhance that image. However, I found that he had earned his name rock climbing the many cliffs around the area. Spyder had a large pointy nose and dark eyes that gave his thin face an intense look, and he never looked relaxed, even when he was drunk.
On the floor below I ran into Willie Perone and Baby John. What a pair they made! Willie gave the impression of coming from money, some rich Italian-American family, or perhaps The Family. He was tall, thin with a bush of brown, kinky hair crowning his head, and a pubic-hair mustache. During the year he sprouted a matching goatee. I guess I shouldn’t judge because I couldn’t even grow a mustache. If fact, the only reason I shaved was to hide the fact that, at nineteen, I could only grow peach fuzz. Willie, too, looked older that I suspect he was, as if he had already lived a long, and not always easy, life.
Baby John, on the other hand, looked youthful and bright! He was done up in the dazzling Mod clothes of Piccadilly Circus fame: striped bell-bottoms and a flowered shirt, Beetle boots and a sash for a belt. His light brown hair was bowl-cut from just over his eyes, around the sides just covering his ears, and down onto his high shirt collar in the back. Through the year his hair would grow to his shoulders, and his bangs would be tucked behind one ear. Small rectangular glasses that partially hid his blue eyes were perched on his hawk-like nose. He was playing an acoustic guitar when I came in – and it was rare to see him without it. When wandering campus or the village he also carried a knitted bag over his shoulder that he insisted was his “bean-bag” and not a purse. I would soon find that Willie and Baby John shared my love for a good philosophical debate on any given topic, made all the better with a glass of wine or bottle of beer.
Also on that floor were the Arabs. I use the term loosely. I am not sure which Middle Eastern countries they came from. Imad and Ibrahim were both stocky and dusky-skinned with dark hair and eyes. One had longer hair and wore glasses. The other had piercing black eyes and a broad smile. I am not sure which was which because I didn’t get to know them well, even after befriending Imad’s brother, Issa. You know, I am not sure that Issa even lived in the dorm. I don’t remember visiting his room. I suspect that he may have had an “official” room in the dorm but had rented a place in the village.
Willie introduced me to Issa one evening in the upper village with his wife Maha. They had unbelievable wealth. Issa’s father was a sheik or nobleman of some family in Lebanon, and his wife was the daughter of another. Their union was intended to cement relations between the two families. Issa was also stocky and dark, and he had a quiet power about him that I had not seen in his brother or his roommate. Whether that quiet power was natural or something he had learned from his father, you knew at a glance that he would be a leader of something when he got out into the world. He made a point of saying that his name is the Arabic version of Jesus. Issa’s wife, on the other hand, was just quiet. She was short and plump. That probably isn’t fair. She was attractive, but more full-figured than my teenage standards. Issa made a point of showing off her wedding ring. It had a square cut diamond in the middle the size of the nail on my pointer finger. Around the outside supporting the center stone were at least twelve or sixteen impossibly long, thin, rectangular-cut diamonds. Issa explained that the long, thin cut of each of these stones made them more valuable than the center stone. An easy guestimate was that she was wearing a 911S Porsche Targa, my dream car, on her hand.
That reminds me. Issa had one of the few cars owned by students at the college. It was a new, four-seat, MGB MkII, with synchromesh in all four gears, that could tear up the road off the mountain! Other than that, Robert’s classic Matchless motorcycle was the only other set of wheels. Robert, a stocky, dark-haired, unassuming guy with thick-rimmed glasses had a kind of Clark Kent thing going. While he was always friendly and helpful, he had a hidden power about him, not unlike his motorcycle, that got him respect, even from Stallone. I guess I should mention the Turk’s Porsche. The Turk, a strange, greasy, dark, bushy-haired guy, who, Wilds had heard, had announced he was gay, said that he had blown the transmission out of his Porsche somewhere in Italy on the road to school. He also said that his dad was going to replace it, but I never saw it, and I never had the desire to ask him about it. Gays were not people that I cared much for, especially after my freshman college roommate got drunk and crawled naked into bed with me. A brief wrestling match ensued that ended with me threatening to kill him as I held him out the second story window. I know – not very Quakerly – but I was the son of a Quaker colonel, you figure it out!
During an early group bull session in Stallone’s room, I met Bernd and Roark. They were two second-year students and already legendary studs! Wilds had told me about Bernd. Rumor was that last year he had started through the alphabet having sex with each of the coeds until the girls recognized his pattern in the K’s. He then waited a few weeks and started back from the end of the alphabet and got to the S’s before the year ended. If Bernd was attractive to the opposite sex, I didn’t see why. He was tall, a little over six feet, and gangly with slightly stooped shoulders and short-cropped brown hair. His head was too small for his body, and his nose too big, but his large blue eyes gave him a boyish look that, taken alone, might have been considered cute. He was, however, athletic. He was instructor, captain, and the best skier on the racing team, and taught several other PE classes; in fact, he had just taken over the mountain climbing class. It seems that the school's former sports director--the mountain climber, John Harlin--had not survived the prior winter. While making the celebrated first direct ascent of the Eiger's north face, his rope broke and he fell 4,000 feet. Five teammates continued the final 2,000 feet to the summit and named the climb The John Harlin Route. I heard that it was now considered the most famous, if dangerous, climb in the Alps. Anyway, perhaps athletics was Bernd’s ticket to the girls’ dorm.
Roark, on the other hand, was a handsome Swede: light brown curly hair, chiseled features, and sparkling green eyes. To hell with the girls, women swooned over this guy! He was rumored to make his tuition as a gigolo on the French and Italian Riveras each summer, and I had no doubt that he did. Roark had little desire for the girls at the school, other than the occasional, exceptionally difficult challenge. His dates came from the villages – the tourists, college staff, or wandering wives – and from surrounding towns. Women would ride the cog train or brave the winding road to visit Roark.
The bull session also included Jolie, with a cigarette and beer of course, Cliff, and Tiny. Someone had brought a case of beer, which was illegal in the dorm, but who knew! While the discussion started out about trying to find a way