None of my years have been normal. I’m still waiting on that. Nineteen was equal parts bittersweet, intimidating, and goddamn confusing. It’d take too long to explain how boa constrictors and cannon fire figure into this, but let’s just say I had a good time. A cautious cadre of Chi Delta Chi Omega girls decided I would be the proof of concept for their skill at raising troubled sons, beginning an era of mutual love and respect that hasn’t ended yet.
Some of my purest memories were watching girls I loved become women, memories that fall on me like summer rain and spring sunshine. Simple things, quiet things, watching them walk from class to class with an armload of books: “What are you reading? “
“What are you reading, Boyd?”
I’m not gonna say anybody’s name, but they know. One’s not with us anymore; she died at the end of the summer, and I found out how her life had been filled with love.
There’s a monster inside of me that only comes out when people I love are menaced. It only came out once, in my nineteenth year. The other fella involved, after I knocked him the fuck out, apologized for his ungentlemanly behavior. He sincerely apologized, and we became friends after that—I suppose that’s my point: gentlemanly behavior, that is, the thing Southern men are supposed to be known for, but are we really?
High school didn’t suit me, so I spent my 18th year at Hinds Junior College, getting to know Clyde Muse and picking his brains about education. After a lifetime of never having time with my dad, I started going to work at six in the morning so I could be with him till classes started at ten. I made enough money to spend the week in Hollywood before busy season that summer, meet my idols, and taste the flannel cakes at Mousso and Franks in an old hotel on Hollywood Boulevard, in the land of dreams.
Hinds was one of the best places to get your nursing degree, and it was flat lousy with the most beautiful girls you ever saw doing their best to keep the company that makes Aquanet afloat. An ugly giant wearing a suit to school made an impression. There were rumors I took girls to the Mayflower, LeFleurs, and Scrooges. Pretty high cotton for a girl who went to Wingfield. I was a gentleman, but not a perfect one. The year before, my girlfriend’s dad shot himself in the head, and I tried to block the hole till the ambulance got there.
It didn’t work.
I have a pretty troubled history with girls.
Since I skipped high school graduation and had this huge gumbo of learning disabilities, a year at Hinds was to prove to my dad that I could make it at Millsaps. When I made the Presidents list twice, I photocopied it and sent a copy to every teacher who ever failed me. Was that spiteful? I feel like that might have been spiteful.
After conferring with my soon-to-be Chi Omega Companions, I joined the Kappa Alpha Order, primarily because I’m like a quadruple legacy; KAs dominated the legal and business world in Mississippi, and I told the Pikes that I might like them better, but if I became a Pike, all I’d do was party because the guys I knew who were Pikes, I also knew they knew how to party. I ended up partying pretty good anyhow.
The entire world, including me, is concerned about a case at Cornell, up to Yankee territory. It’s especially troubling to me because it reminds me of a very similar, but less intense, case that happened when I was nineteen at Millsaps College, in Jackson, Mississippi.
Like with Cornell, there were questions of consensual and non-consensual consent when you’re too drunk to consent, group sex, some of which might have been consensual, a fraternity house, alumni, changing stories, and a lot of goddamn pressure and very confusing questions about how you find justice in a case like this.
I’m not gonna say which fraternity was involved. There were four to choose from, including mine. I’m not gonna say because it doesn’t matter. To the world that wasn’t in a fraternity, every frat boy is the same, and the very last thing you want when you're trying to make partner at thirty-five is having a bunch of people still call you a “frat boy.” It was a fraternity at Millsaps that had a good reputation, equal to everybody else, then “Boom!” the world turned to shit.
I knew the woman involved. I knew she drank too much. I knew she made really unfortunate choices among men. When I tried to talk to her about it, as a friend and a gentleman, she said, “So, you trying to fuck me, fat boy?”
I wasn’t. I wasn’t trying to fuck her, and I wasn’t even that fat; I’d get a hell of a lot fatter as life became more and more difficult. Something had made her not see men as allies. I have suspicions about what, but I’m not gonna speculate.
Two weeks later, Boom! The world goes to shit.
I was not your normal nineteen-year-old at Millsaps. I had a full-time job. My dad was Chairman of the board. The man I was named after had his name on the building where we ate lunch. I literally had been hanging around Millsaps since I was in diapers and Daddy first got on the board—but more than that, I have this (really pretty destructive) character trait where whenever anyone is in trouble, especially a woman, I jump in to take as many of the blows as I can.
You hear about toxic masculinity; mine was toxic as hell to me. Because I couldn’t save Katie, and I couldn’t save Monica’s dad, and I couldn’t save my friend’s sister when she was beaten and raped by a player on the Jackson Mets, I developed this thing where I had to save everybody else because clearly I wasn’t doing my goddamn job, or all these people wouldn’t be getting hurt.
It’s the Campbell curse.
Nobody appointed me to anything or asked me to do anything. George Harmon, Stuart Good, and Jack Woodward knew that I not only had the ear of the students, but I had the ear of my dad and other board members, including Bill Goodman, and I was there that night, but a little over a hundred yards away, in another room, in another building.
I don’t think there was any effort to keep it quiet on campus. Everybody knew. Everybody had an opinion. Boys approached me, boys I’d known for almost nineteen years, to say that I had a responsibility to help the boys who were charged because I was a frat boy just like them, and it made my eye twitch. I am NOT just like them.
Meeting with Stuart Good a few times a week, we tried to hammer out something to address student confidence, since everybody had an opinion and felt like whatever they were doing was also being challenged. From Daddy and Bill Goodman, I knew that all the boys were trying to sue us, as well as the girl's father.
There’s a story I tell sometimes, divorced from its larger context. This girl’s father had made some money, but he drank quite a lot, and he could be really belligerent. I knew that before all this happened. I’m not gonna speculate as to whether he abused his daughter, but if there’s a stereotype for that, he was it. Stereotypes don’t tell the tale, though.
One day, I was opening the mail with Daddy, and the phone rang. I picked up, and it was a very angry man for Daddy. He seemed drunk to me. Talking to Daddy, this girl’s father said he was leaving now to drive to Jackson and kick George Harmon’s ass.
Although I got along with Dr. Harmon, a lot of people didn’t. I have no idea what he said or did to make this man want to drive across state lines to come kick George’s ass, but he was on his way.
In the old Grille, there was this big round table by the door, and the KA’s somehow claimed it. I dunno if we claimed it or if we just always had somebody sitting there. In those days, the entire grill was a smoking section.
After my nine o’clock class, I was gonna get coffee and a smoke with my nere-do-well friends, and I, against Doug’s advice, sat with my back to the door. While I explained to my fraternity brothers that an insane man was driving to Jackson to kick George Harmon’s ass, I heard a voice behind me say, “I bet he don’t”
I looked at Weidie and said, “he’s behind me, isn’t he?”
George was a pretty good athelete. He was constantly trying to kick my ass in squash or something. He coulda taken that guy. He never made it to Millsaps. I suppose there were too many bars in the way.
So, we’re trying to work our way through this. The woman had three sworn descriptions of what happened, none of which matched—everybody, including me, believed she was raped, but she wasn’t making it easy on anybody, and the boys' lawyers were hammering down on Bill Goodman, which is a goddamn stupid idea, but they weren’t from here.
The DA was a guy I knew, and I admired. Bill Goodman and Daddy both made it clear to him that it’d be doing the school a solid if his office would take over the case, but for whatever reason, he felt like it was all on Millsaps. Bill Goodman made a pretty strong case that this was actually a crime, but the DA decided he wanted none of it, or very little.
With Bill Goodman’s advice, the School, through Stuart Good’s office, worked out a deal. I never felt like justice was done to either the accused or the accuser, but this was extremely complicated. I read her statements. They didn’t match. The school stood to be sued by everybody. The boys wanted us to just drop it because her case was “weak,” but we had an obligation to our women students and their parents to show that we were on their side, and we owed this girl, troubled as she was, some sort of justice.
But, I dunno, baby. It’s been more than forty years, and I still have questions.
When I was in high school, there was a girl who had been caught blowing two of my friends, and there were reliable reports of several more, but not me. She’d been with these guys I hung out with all the time, but not me,
so I asked her.
I pulled her aside and we sat in my car and I asked her. Why not me? I mean, I know I’m ugly, but I’m not that ugly, and I’m not as ugly as some of the guys on her list. What the hell was wrong with me? I didn’t even want to have sex with her. I just wanted to know what she saw in me and found lacking.
I didn’t think I was angry or pressuring her, but she started screaming, “Let me out! Let me out!” and fumbling to open the car door. What the hell, man?
So then I had to try to convince people that I wasn’t trying to rape her or anything. She kept saying, “You know what you did!”
But no, I still don’t know what I did. I asked the wrong goddman question, that’s for sure.
So, I apologized.
A wise friend once said, “Being penetrated and doing the penetrating are forever separate ideas. You can’t see their perspective, and they can’t see yours.”
No matter what happens, nobody is gonna be satisfied with what happens at Cornell. The president has decided to throw in with the accused. Considering how often h e’s been the accused in cases like this, I’m not surprised, but the President of the United States shouldn’t ever be seen as preferring one side over the other.
A couple of years ago, I wrote a fictionalized version of my 19th year, trying to change enough details that you couldn't really connect what I was writing to the actual event. I let a very small group of people read it, and they immediately saw through my disguise, so I put it away. I don’t have the right to tell either this woman's story or the people she accused.
It’s fundamentally important to me that people feel like they can send their daughters to Millsaps and know, with a high level of confidence, that they are safe. Friday, I had lunch at Millsaps with Brent and Kathleen, who was a daughter when I was an undergraduate, and Erin, who was a daughter when I came back after lance’s heart attack. I spoke to and waved to something like a dozen other daughters and as many of the boys as I have met.
As a question of honor, I’m obligated to protect and guide them all, but it sure can get complicated.
I feel like gentlemanly behavior has been in flux during the MAGA movement. There’s been some very questionable things, starting with the Epstein files and Donald Trump buying a teen beauty pagent so he can go back stage while they’re dressing and nobody can stop him. He literally said this on Howard Stern, and yet people still voted for him.
The lady said I have a thousand daughters, and with any luck I’ll have a thousand lives to protect them, but for this one, this one daughter, even though I tried. I know in my heart I failed her.