Biting my lip to keep from shouting my name. But suddenly I didn't know my name.

Dunes of windswept snow. The dying elms barren of leaves now in continual contorted motion, their upper branches especially, in the wind. In overcoats and hooded jackets we hurried. We were young: herded by our elders like cattle. The weakest of us would stagger and fall and be forgotten. At dusk the parkland median of University Place continued to emit a dull glowering magical snow-light while the sky, massed as usual with clouds, identical clouds I'd seen the previous day, was heavy as a ceiling about to collapse. Fraternity row. The professor would never have understood. (Or would he have understood?) Even at this time of defeat and disintegration I felt the old thrill of romance, helpless romance, seeing the large houses, and lights in every window, from a distance. And the Kappa house at the far, northern end with its stately ghost-white Doric columns illuminated by a floodlight, its high-pitched roof like an illustration in a child's storybook, the promise of warmth within. Even now.

Though I had passed many times by the spot where the man with the black-rimmed glasses had approached me with a juvenile taunt of titties, the man had never reappeared. His pale ghost lingered, at a distance. I looked for him, the abrupt surprise of him, his poky little tongue and steaming breath, I was both fearful and hopeful of seeing him, as one takes a perverse comfort in repetition, an affirmation of identity at least; but the fierce, cold weather had banked his ardor; my unfeminine behavior had discouraged his sentimental notion of girl. I'd been thinking of him as near-blind and groping without his glasses but of course he'd gotten new glasses long ago.

Will you have sugar? Cream? Dreaming with open, dry eyes I smiled until my mouth ached pouring tea into heirloom Wedgwood cups reserved for such special occasions; I was but one of several tea- and coffee -pourers; with my scaly nail-bitten fingers I handed out small silver teaspoons and small linen napkins monogrammed

.

The public rooms of the Kappa house were transformed: tall urns of white flowers, roses, carnations, gardenias, even tulips; at the Steinway piano, an older Kappa alum named Marilynne was playing stormy Liszt alternating with Broadway show tunes. It was the annual WELCOME BACK KAPPAS! reception. The guests were alums, some of whom had driven or flown long distances, as well as a number of selected university women designated as honorary Kappas for the evening; there were only a few of these, for few women were on the university faculty; predominant among them was the Dean of Women, a friend of Agnes Thayer's, or at least an ally in the ceaseless struggle to maintain standards of ladylike behavior in the face of determined assaults by male persons. The Dean of Women was a heavy-set individual with slabs of chin, pancake cheeks and merry, suspicious eyes; she wore a heather-colored tweed suit with a jacket that barely contained her sloping shelf of a bosom. The Dean of Women was the threat Mrs. Thayer and other residence housemothers wielded, for the Dean of Women had the power to expel female students from the university "for cause." Rumors were rife of her harsh judgments, which were cloaked in smiles, and a concern for "proper procedure." When the Dean of Women came through the line, given tea, cream and sugar, it seemed to me that she fixed her gaze upon me with a knowing little twitch of her mouth. Are we acquainted, my dear? Yes? Before the reception, I'd quickly showered upstairs, for my body exuded an odor of something damp, like toadstools; I had not had time to wash my thick, snarled hair, but it was partly damp, or perhaps I was perspiring, tendrils stuck to my forehead like deranged commas. Of course I'd had to remove my coat: my Kappa sisters were heartily tired of that ugly coat: I was wearing a "good" wool dress someone had lent me, and around my neck to disguise my thinness and the absence of my Kappa pin the woollen muffler which in the bustle of the reception and the flickering candlelight might have been mistaken for an elegant silk-woollen scarf.

So many women! So many names! Faces! And most of these Kappas. Many of the alums were young, stylish, good-looking women who'd graduated from the university within the past ten years; others were well into their thirties, and others were well into middle age but all were bonded: the Kappa pin, ebony and gilt, with the tiny gold chain, proudly worn above their left breasts like a jeweled nipple. How inadequate I felt: a freak among normal females. Some of the women had maintained youthful, even voluptuous figures but many had grown plump, stout, fattish, fat. My older Kappa sisters, skilled at such receptions, moved among the women smiling happily and shaking hands vigorously. The purpose of our annual alumni tea: to Jorge strong links between alums and actives, to renew our bond of sisterhood, and TO HAVE A TERRIFIC TIME! We younger Kappas were not to be trusted to mingle with the well-to-do alums; the most charming, good-looking Kappas had been unsigned to these women, whose names were sacrosanct in the Syracuse chapter for their generous donations in past years. There was Mrs. K____________________ whose husband was chairman of the board of G____________________; there was Mrs. T____________________ whose husband was an investment banker with ____________________ Trust; there was Mrs. H ____________________ whose husband owned T____________________ Realtors; there, seated on a settee in a corner of the festive living room, a half-dozen beaming young Kappas paying court to her, was the legendary Mrs. D____________________ whose daughter had been a Kappa Class of '45 who'd died shortly after graduation and so in honor of the girl Mrs. D____________________ had established a million-dollar legacy for the Syracuse chapter of Kappa Gamma Pi. It was understood that Mrs. D____________________ would remember the chapter in her will, but Mrs. D____________________ would not be the only alum, and we'd been warned not to "underestimate" any of the older women no matter how ordinary they might appear to the untrained eye. None of these scruples were my concern at the present, for sophomores exclusively were serving; we'd been drilled at length in "proper behavior" by our social director Judi as well as the ubiquitous Mrs. Thayer, who had also supervised an exhausting five-hour bout of silver polishing by our overworked housekeeper Geraldine, the day before.

Remember, we were grimly warned, you are a Kappa. At all times.

We were instructed to move about gracefully with heavy silver trays bearing Wedgwood plates of petit fours, hot buttered scones and other delicate pastries; uncertain of ourselves as waitresses, we smiled without pause. Especially, I smiled. I would not think of my terrifying near-breakdown in philosophy class but of exalted, abstract philosophical queries. If there is God are we in God? If there is God how can we not be in God? Yet in God now? Here, in the Kappa house at 91 University Place? In the belly of the beast? Distinguished elders from Plato to Spinoza, from Aristotle to Nietzsche would have paled at these shrieks of female laughter like ripping silk. The humming buzzing confusion of William James's universe would be drowned out by these raised ecstatic Kappa voices. The air was porous and intoxicating with perfume, powder, hair spray. We lived in a robust era of American military vigilance abroad, the ceaseless scrutiny of "atheistic communism" that would soon erupt in a cataclysmic war with a remote Far East nation allegedly

Communist-threatened, about which no one in this gathering knew the most elementary facts; it was a heady macho era, and yet an era of voluptuous female figures and bouffant hairstyles teased and tormented and lacquered to the sheen of hornets' nests, like those heraldic heads on ancient scrolls and on the walls of ancient tombs. Little wonder that dainty pastries and cups of sweetened tea and coffee were being consumed with appetite on all sides. To reproduce the species, one must be fertile; to be fertile, one must eat. Only I, at the center of my attenuated universe, had no appetite. It was Spinoza who seemed to wish to believe Things could have been produced by God in no other manner and in no other order than they have been produced. I saw in a flash that I might revolutionize all of philosophy by daring to ask Why do you wish to believe what you claim to believe? Breathing open-mouthed, dazed by my sudden brilliance, I foresaw that such an inquiry would meet with hostility from (male) philosophers; and all philosophers were (male); though never once in all of classic philosophy is a penis acknowledged, let alone the concept penis. My inquiry would meet with hostility because it presupposed that there were purely contingent factors in life having little, or nothing, to do with philosophical speculation, only to do with the haphazard motions of individuals desperately seeking to survive. Only survive! I doubted that I would have Spinoza's stubborn integrity: offered a "decent" winter coat in place of my old, shamefully worn coat, would I have declined, as Spinoza famously declined such an offer? My hand shook, offering a Wedgwood teacup to DEBBI JACKSON '49 TROY NY.