Flashback: Who the Hell Is Kesey?

Table of Contents • Family Tree

Marcus had met Kesey their freshman year in college when the fates arranged to have them room together in an ancient dorm with uneven floors and rattling radiator pipes.

If opposites attract, he and Kesey were a perfect match: Marcus self-conscious, bookish-ly smart, and able to master any subject if he was willing to work hard enough. Kesey, larger than life, supremely confident, and unfailingly kind. Able to master any subject seemingly without effort, as if by osmosis.

A pre-med student at first, Kesey could do LSD all weekend and show up bright and shiny, ready to dissect unwitting frogs Monday morning. Marcus, on the other hand, maintained a 3.7 average only by dint of his hard-won ability to write coherent sentences even in extremis, a place that Kesey insisted they spend a lot of time visiting together.

Marcus would never forget the first time he saw Kesey. Having made a half dozen trips up and down three flights carrying boxes of books and clothes to his assigned freshman-year dorm room, his face was grime-y and his t-shirt was soaked with sweat when a guy with the build of a tight end and the air of big money appeared in the doorway, wearing a 3-piece suit and followed by his equally impeccably dressed parents. Pointing to the bed in the corner where Marcus was arranging his clothes, he said, “Oh, sorry, but that’s my bed,” in a tone that was accusing and forgiving at the same. Surely there must have been a mistake. Perfectly understandable.

After setting the suitcase down, the guy reached out his hand. “You must be Marcus…Quel plaisir.” Before Marcus had a chance to respond, the guy turned back to his parents, “You remember reading about Marcus?” And, before they had a chance to respond, he went back over to them, “Thanks, Father” (a handshake); “Thanks, Mother.” (A light hug and kiss on the cheek.) “Marcus and I will be fine now. How ‘bout I give you a call after dinner?”

As their footsteps disappeared down the corridor, Kendall (or, at least, that’s what Marcus thought his new roommate’s name was) shut the door behind him, tore off his coat and tie, crumpled them up, and threw them on the floor before draping himself over the well-worn leather armchair in the corner.

“I’ve waited 18 years for this day,” he groaned letting out more air than Marcus could imagine two lungs held. “Sorry about all that…take whatever bed you like. And forget Kendall. My friends call me Kesey. For good reason. Parents don’t know. What about you? Marcus? Marco? With a ‘c’ right? Maybe Tony. Tony?” Marc Anthony. Sorry, that was stupid. Aurelius is the one I like. Marcus, that is. Want to get stoned?”

Kesey was the perfect person to take over Marcus’s real-world education where Sid had left off.

Once classes began, he could only roll his eyes when Marcus's sturm and drung over due dates for assignments led to him making short-sighted comments such as, “No really Kesey, not this weekend. I have a Poli Sci exam on Monday and a Russian Lit. paper due Wednesday.”

Kesey didn’t see what any of that had to do with eating hash brownies for dessert on Friday and mushrooms for breakfast on Saturday. And he could usually convince Marcus to go along for the ride.

“Where are your priorities, Marc?” Kesey would demand. “You could ace that Poli Sci exam with Richard Nixon breathing down your neck.”

As Marcus tried to parse the analogy, Kesey added, “Of course, at least he could have shown you how to cheat.”

“Maybe,” Marcus would say doubtfully, “but I don’t have a clue what to write about Resurrection mythology in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.”

“Did you read the book?”

“Of course I did,”

“Well, that was your first mistake. Nothing can be done about that now. OK. Let me give you the big picture:” Kesey was becoming increasingly proficient at extricating his roomie from whatever neural sinkhole he’d disappeared down.

“It’s about some tragic romantic babe throwing herself in front of a train, right?” Kesey asked, unfettered by any real knowledge of the book’s plot.

“But,” Marcus said, “The professor wants us to focus on Tolstoy’s religious insights.”

“That’s a bait and switch,” Kesey countered. “Classic Cody fake out. He figures you’ll go straight to Jesus. You need to go further back. Old Testament. Remember the guy who worked seven years for one babe and then another seven for the one he really wanted. And his son…the guy with dream about the ladder? You see, Marcus, the book actually is an endless loop, just like those old paintings of angels going up and down by the painter they named the sandwiches after…no, not him, it was the infinity in a grain of sand guy…talk about hallucinations! Regardless, those people were no angels^⁠. Now let’s do some mushrooms, highlight a few key paragraphs, and get that stupid paper out of the way.”

While these study habits may have been unconventional, they usually yielded papers that were so deconstructive of typical perspectives, even seasoned professors were unable to determine whether they should be dismissed or lauded. (They usually chose the latter, if only to live up to the college’s professed commitment to original thinking.)

Flashbacks and Esoterica.

From time to time, throughout the series, I’ll be including “bonus” chapters that provide additional background on the characters and the somewhat unconventional, if not contrarian, perspectives that underlie the project. This is the first example. There’ll be links to all of them in the Table of Contents and relevant chapters.