Lost in the wilderness of coeducation

In the summer of 1969, when I transferred from the University of Wyoming to SUNY Cortland, I found out I’d be living in the first coed dorm on campus.

Whoa! This put me at the front of the line of 1960s cultural change. Today, coed colleges dorms are as common as buildings named after donors no student has ever heard of, but in 1969 they were as rare as a bar in the college library. To give you an idea how archaic things were, women still had curfews.

Having grown up with three sisters, living with women was nothing special. But living with women who weren’t my sisters? That was special. It didn’t take long, however, to learn most of them were more like sisters than girlfriends. In no time at all I started stopping by to say hello, listen to the latest Santana album, or perhaps study (I did that on occasion). 

I started a friendship with one such lady, Lori, and frequently stopped by to chat. Lori became a good friend, and we spent many hours discussing a range of topics from the latest Beatle’s album to the meaning of life. It was probably my first truly gender-neutral friendship and was definitely more kinship than romance. Little did I know that she thought differently.

How did I find out? Not under the best of circumstances.

One evening I decided to take a shower. Bathrooms in those days were NOT coed. So I put on my bathrobe, grabbed my towel and toiletry kit and headed down the hall to the bathroom. I had no idea I was about to be pranked by my roommate Freaky Phil McCrea.

Phil and I met during our first semester, we became good friends and decided to room together in the spring. I’m not sure how Phil got the moniker freaky. He was the least freaky-looking person on the entire campus. With his horn-rimmed glasses, he looked like Clark Kent…only with fewer muscles. His short dark hair contrasted with virtually every other male on campus who were sporting long locks for the first time since the American Revolution. We became roommates largely because of our common love of music. The fact he had a great stereo including Acoustical Research speakers, a Kenmore amplifier and a Dual turntable didn’t hurt either. Phil’s knowledge of contemporary music was encyclopedic, and he knew more about the Beatles than anyone I’ve met, before or since. He had worked in a record store and not only knew about every rock and roll album recorded — he knew albums by their serial number.

But that spring day wasn’t about music. It was about Phil’s love of a prank. It happened to be my 21st birthday. I didn’t think many people knew about it but evidently Phil and Lori did. When I headed off to take a shower, Phil called Lori and told her to run over, as he’d organized a surprise birthday party for me. She didn’t understand what was happening because when she arrived, the only other one there was him. He convinced her everyone else would arrive when I did. Then he told her to hide in the closet and when I came in to jump out and yell “Surprise!”

Meanwhile, when I got out of the shower, my towel and bathrobe were missing, I immediately knew Phil had taken them for some nefarious reason. I was wondering how I was going to get back to my dorm room butt naked. I got creative and wrapped the shower curtain around me and headed down the hall. As I approached my room, I could hear Freaky Phil telling Lori to hide in the closet. I walked in the door soaking wet, wrapped in the shower curtain, not knowing what was going on, but knowing Lori was hiding in the closet.

I said, “Lori, get out of the closet.”

She jumped out of the closet in tears, gave me a big hug, pressed a birthday card into my hands, and rushed out of the room. I was left sitting there in a state of complete bewilderment, trying to figure out what on earth had just happened.

If I had any doubts that she wanted a more serious relationship, it ended when I looked at her card. On the cover it read, “I’m young, innocent, naive, pure-hearted, wholesome, trusting, uncorrupted, and hopelessly inexperienced…” And inside it said, “...but I’m willing to change!”

So much for a gender-neutral friendship. Although I apologized to Lori for Phil, our relationship came to an abrupt end as I wasn’t interested in anything serious, but she was. At the time I thought it was pretty funny, but it was a reflection of my age and maturity…or lack thereof.

As I prepare myself for my ninth decade, I sometimes wonder what impact that friendship had on me. Did it make me gun-shy about platonic relationships? Did it plant a little caution flag in the back of my mind warning, "Proceed carefully—emotions ahead"? It's impossible to know.

Trying to reconstruct the motivations of a twenty-year-old version of myself half a century later feels like conducting an archaeological dig with incomplete maps. Still, the fact that I continue to ask the question suggests that the experience left a deeper impression than I realized at the time.

A year and a half later I was climbing Denali and found myself in another interesting relationship, this time with a woman as my tentpartner. I have no doubt my experience with Lori better prepared me for it than it did most of the other guys. How do I know? While I was focused on the practical matters of being a good tent partner—sharing chores, keeping the tent organized, melting snow for water, and carrying my share of the load—the other guys seemed preoccupied by the fact that I was living with a female. They peppered me with questions about what it was like to live in such close quarters with a woman for weeks at a time. Wink wink, nudge nudge. We know what they were really asking.

I never quite understood their curiosity. We were all exhausted and focused on reaching the summit and getting down safely. My favorite response to their inquiries was, “She puts her pants on one leg at a time just like you do.” That usually ended the conversation.

What Lori had taught me was that friendship between men and women didn't have to be complicated unless you made it complicated. On Denali, my tent partner wasn't a mystery, a distraction, or a romantic prospect. She was simply a teammate—one whose competence, good humor, and willingness to share the hardships of the climb mattered far more than her gender. While the others seemed preoccupied with the novelty of the situation, I was grateful that Lori had taught me that lesson before setting foot on the mountain.