The Game Player by Rafael Yglesias Page A

of the arguments were with people who couldn’t be made to care about ending it; with maddening casualness they admitted the War was bad. And college became a necessity not for a career, but to stay out of the Army.
    It was frightening: one day I woke up and I was in a fight to the death with my parents.
    And perhaps a week later, all of us were in a vicious civil war. My friend Joseph, the little Kissinger, who had never listened to rock music, suddenly decided to tape, on New Year’s Eve 1967, WABC’s countdown of the top one hundred hits for the year. By February 1968 his hair was almost to his shoulders and his quick, clever eyes were often chaotically colored from smoking hash. The girls were in jeans and makeup had become an embarrassing formality rarely encountered.
    And I knew the Sexual Revolution was for real when in the fall of 1968 I wandered into the music department and suddenly came upon timid, pudgy Frankie breathlessly kissing an equally timid, pudgy girl whose blouse was open to his rough massaging of a single pink nipple.
    My point is that the tensions between the second-best academic students and the best, were lost in the shocks of these cultural quakes. It wasn’t clear that you should be a straight-A student. And the measure of the upheaval’s force was that Brian, by far our best performing athlete (he somehow managed to outproduce the stronger boys) gave up his place on the starting squads of our two major teams: football and baseball.
    He never mentioned any reaction to that decision of his, but one day, when I was consulting my advisor, Mrs. Rosenbloom (I came to like her), he was with me and she said to him at the end, “I was speaking to Mr. Crowder in an advisors’ meeting and he told me what Mr. White was saying about you.”
    â€œHe’s upset because I quit the teams,” Brian said.
    â€œYes.” She lifted my file off the desk and reached for one of her desk drawers. “But that’s no excuse for saying you are selfish.” While she looked down to find the place for my records, I glanced at Brian and was amazed by the intensity of his face.
    â€œIt is selfish,” he said. “I have to concentrate on my academic work and I’m overloaded with clubs and meetings—”
    â€œI know, my dear, you’ve practically carried your rather, I’m sorry to say, disheveled class. I just wanted you to know, since I think Mr. Crowder is too diffident to tell you, that he, I, and practically all of your teachers went into the principal’s office and told him to get Mr. White off your back.”
    Brian’s face loosened in a funny way. “Really?”
    Mrs. Rosenbloom, hearing something unusual in his tone, looked intently at him. “Yes, Brian, we all value you very much. And the principal had heard about it and had no faith in Mr. White’s attitude. He said that White wasn’t in time with today’s students.”
    Brian spoke quickly, “Thank you very, very much.” He turned to leave, but then reversed himself. “I have to go. I’m sorry. But thank you.” He banged into the door on his way out and we heard him rush down the stairs.
    â€œPoor boy, he must have been very upset. I didn’t know.” Mrs. Rosenbloom looked sternly at me. “Did you?”
    â€œNo, I didn’t,” I said in the hasty tone of someone denying guilt.
    â€œHe holds things inside too much.” She looked for my reaction, but I had no intention of giving anything away. “Very goyish,” she added.
    I think I would have agreed with her a year before, but it seemed to me that his dark side was drawing out like a long ignored infection: no explosions, just ooze. Though he was Student Councilman, he left most of his work to another boy; and, apart from schoolwork, he was disciplined about only one of his extracurricular activities: chess. He refused to try out for any of the roles in the