Brotherhood of Urban Mountaineers
I began climbing up the sides of buildings because Doug Mann said I should. I’d grown accustomed to friends who liked to say “Mongo! Go fight those guys!” and then laugh when I did. Doug was different. He was gonna go with me.
Normally, I’d say that me being an acknowledged expert on King Kong might play into it, and he liked climbing up the sides of buildings, but I honestly think the only thing going through Doug’s mind was that, if we fell, he’d have something less like sidewalk to fall onto. And, so, it began.
As so many of my stories begin, it began in the Christian Center at Millsaps College. For a long time, I thought this storied place would have to come down owing to the dreaded Yazoo Clay. They saved it, but at a terrible cost. Our beautifully equipped theater was sacrificed to the gods of Mississippi architecture.
Before the renovation, the upper floors of the Christian Center were a complex warren of empty spaces, most of which Brent Lefavor turned into storage space for lights, costumes, vacu-form machines, flats, drops, platforms, and more.
Making our way through these warrens was the inside path to the cupola and clock tower. Once inside the clock itself, we had access to one of the highest points in the city, if you were brave enough to step out.
Millsaps sits atop one of the highest elevations in Mississippi. The Bell Tower, sometimes called “Harmon’s Phallus” but not in a long time, sits on the very highest elevation.
From the top of the cupola, I could see the entire city, but they could not see me. A decided advantage. About a quarter mile away, we were looking directly into the windows of the University Club, atop the tallest building in Mississippi, with its base at a much lower level.
You could tell—you could feel that something was beginning.
Doug, as Doug was prone to do, fell in love, then again, then again, only the third time, he latched himself into one of the more valuable pieces of real estate in Mississippi. I’d known her since they cut the umbilical cord, and had even tentatively staked a claim, but as every boy I knew was also writing up a bid proposal, I didn’t push it.
Doug was sneaky and quicker than the rest of us. He also sang in the choir. I don’t think he actually liked singing in the choir. I think he liked girls, and that’s where the girls were. Go where the game is, my boy.
I couldn’t hold it against Doug that he was somewhat girl-crazy. At twenty, my body count was nearly thirty. What I lacked in physical beauty, I made up for in notoriety. I also learned early on that it didn’t matter if people thought a girl had compromised virtue, they responded more to being treated like a lady than anybody else. Besides, at that point, I absolutely had compromised virtue myself. Ugly as I was, I made it work.
I figured as long as I was nice to people, and didn’t betray my friends, I was in the good. I never did betray my friends. There were times when I got frightfully close with a tragically neglected girlfriend, but I never pulled the trigger. Neither did they. I was always pretty proud of that.
Pretty soon, Doug’s lady fair was joining us. Unlike us, she dressed like a Bond girl, the one as dangerous as Bond himself, who put off his advances till the end of the movie. She even had a black IDF beret from somewhere. With a machine gun, she could have been Patty Hurst. Her daddy would have eviscerated me for allowing this to go on.
I would sometimes invite the flavor of the week girl to go with us. One of them was one of my sister’s best friends, who had a regular name, but we had taken to adding the word “fucking” as a middle name. She didn’t approve, but she didn’t approve in an incredibly cute way, so it went on.
We began to branch out. Anything with more than one story was a target. It’s not that I didn’t fall. I fell quite a bit. If you’ve ever seen “Animal House” in that scene where Bluto was using a ladder to see Mandy Pepperidge undress, but then fell over backwards on his back—it was an awful lot like that. For the record, I never knew Mandy Pepperidge.
My Urban Mountaineering skills allowed me to gain access to the roof of the academic complex. From there, I learned there was actually a door to the same spot. Devising a method to compromise the lock to the door, and return it to its previously unmolested state, I was able to arrange a picnic there with a lovely Mediterranean girl, where we saw somebody set fire to an anti-poverty demonstration. The Urban Mountaineers had a rule, not unlike the Boy Scouts, where we left no trace behind.
My vertical exploits escaped the confines of the Millsaps gates pretty quickly. The whole city was game. I began going alone. Atop the long-abandoned King Edward Hotel, I surveyed my city after midnight, searching for crime and injustice like Batman. In a lot of ways, I still do, although the hotel has been lovingly restored.
King Kong climbed buildings because everybody was trying to kill him, and he needed to protect his girl. While there were a lot of girls in my life, there was only ever one “The Girl,” but I never told her, and I never took her Urban Mountaineering. She didn’t need protecting, and putting her at risk like that seemed hugely irresponsible.
When I see buildings in Jackson, it’s sort of like when I see women in Jackson. There are those I secretly climbed, and those I didn’t, but y’all don’t need to know the full list, or anything close.
We called ourselves the “Brotherhood of Urban Mountaineers,” which included some women, even the one-nighters. We drank a lot, and we made bad decisions. That’s the beauty of being young.
