Part Nine

Digital recording 005675 – 05/15/04 Santa Fe, New Mexico. File with: 1985-1987. Cross-index: lovers, People, college, Seth Greene, Moira Callahan, Nicholas D’Alessio, music, Thanksgiving

[Subject]: My name is Rachel Carver – it was Rachel Walsh when I was at St. John’s.

[Interviewer]: When was the last time you had any contact with Preacher Haywood?

[Subject]: I never really thought about Preacher after I left there. I saw his name in People magazine a couple years ago. I guess I wouldn’t say that I forgot about him, either. But I never really thought about him one way or the other.

[Interviewer]: Are you a Worshipper?

[Subject]: No. [laughs.]

[Interviewer]: Did you ever read Notes on Worship?

[Subject]: No. I’m not a… I’m not at all religious. Or spiritual. Or anything like that. Well… actually, when you called and said you were going to be in Santa Fe and wanted to talk to me about Preacher, I went to the main Worship web site. Just out of curiosity. But that sort of thing really isn’t for me.

[Interviewer]: Do you recall when you first met Preacher Haywood?

[Subject]: [laughs]. Well. A few days after you, I suppose. What year did we start… 1985, I guess? The first semester of my freshman year. Yeah. 1985. September, I suppose.

[Interviewer]: What do you remember about him then?

[Subject]: I remember… I remember that you and Seth didn’t really like him all that much. Remember Seth Greene? God, I can’t believe I used to go out with him. Are you going to talk to him, too? Right, I guess you won’t talk about that. OK. Well, I remember he was too pretty to be that smart, or vice-versa. [Laughs]. I remember he had a ton of tapes. Remember that? He had like four or five milk crates overflowing with tapes at the foot of his bed. When we would come by your dorm room I would rummage around through them. He had all kinds of stuff. Country, classical, rock, jazz, you name it. I remember he had a spooky memory of his own. What did he call that? Something memoria. I remember in class he could quote long passages from memory.

I remember he… can we stop the tape for a minute? Thanks. Look, Nick, there’s something you don’t know about me from back then. I mean I guess you knew that I was there on a scholarship. That I was some scruffy kid from Seattle. I didn’t exactly blend in with those super-smart preppy girls. I hung out with people like, well, like you, and Seth. And Preacher… I always figured he was one of Them. And you and Seth had me convinced of that, too, even though he was always perfectly nice to me when we came by your room. Then…

[Interviewer]: Can I turn the recorder back on?

[Subject]: No. I want to say something to you first. Listen. I never graduated from high school. When I was fourteen I got tired of being molested by my asshole stepfather and I ran away from home and lived on the street in Seattle. Panhandling, at first, but then I was… then I was a whore. No other word for it. I made enough to keep myself fed. There is a certain breed who will pay a little extra if you’re under 16, you know? Anyhow, when I was about 16 I got knocked up. And I… I didn’t get off the bus at the abortion clinic. I kept on riding until the bus was empty and when I got off I was damn near in Tacoma. And I got off right in front of a shelter called Orion Center. I took it as a sign. I… I got clean, gave my baby boy up for adoption, got a GED. And… and look, St. John’s has all these really eccentric alumni. If you look at all the funds and foundations associated with the place, there are scholarships for all kinds of goofy shit. Including a scholarship for high school dropouts, oddly enough. You had to have certain SAT scores… when I got to St. John’s I had never, in my life, heard people discuss a book over dinner. I had never met anyone who lived a life of the mind. It was scary and exciting and it made me, for the first time, more proud of my brain then my tits. And I didn’t tell anyone about my past, and nobody asked. I was just the tough girl with the short hair and the nice rack. People actually wanted to know what I thought. Seth. Seth sat down next to me in the dining hall and started conversing with me about the Unmoved Mover. It was an unlikely aphrodisiac, but that’s how I ended up with him. So I regarded everything, everything at St. John’s as something new and alien and wonderful. And scary. Things that everybody else took for granted. So that’s where I’m coming from.

[Interviewer]: You had a baby?

[Subject]: And I’m not stupid, either. I see that the light never went off on that machine. Promise me you’ll delete this.

[Interviewer]: OK.

[Subject]: So I remember that Seth disliked Preacher and Preacher, for the most part, seemed only dimly aware of Seth’s existence, which only served to piss Seth off all the more. You know, Seth was this nice Jewish boy from Long Island who went away to college and got to act like some tough punk from New York. But he wasn’t at all. My guess is that he ended up going to law school and joining his father’s tax practice. But he thought he was this rebel intellectual. He wanted to be Rimbaud, or Jack Kerouac, or at least Lou Reed.

But about halfway through the first semester I was starting to realize that, in fact, he was a bit of an asshole. Then again I’d never had an actual boyfriend before and I wasn’t sure about whether they all turned into assholes or not. I suspected that they did. Time has not entirely proven me wrong, I might add.

I remember stopping by your dorm room to get you one night and Preacher came in from taking a shower wearing nothing but a towel and I guess Seth noticed that I was not looking at Preacher’s cassettes anymore. Seth began some tirade about how Preacher had no taste in music and I remember Preacher really got the better of him, saying how he, Preacher, had listened to whatever he liked and didn’t feel obligated to like or dislike something because of the social statement it made about him, while Seth chose music based solely on the reaction his listening would elicit in others. Which was absolutely right, and I think that might have been the moment I realized that I was like a Sonic Youth album to Seth – he was only with me because it would reinforce this image of himself that he wanted the world to have. That he was only with me because Rimbaud would have taken up with some smart but rough-edged streetwalker. Except, of course, a boy. [Laughs].

Then at Thanksgiving Seth didn’t even invite me home. I mean he knew I had no place to go. He should have at least offered one of those I’m-asking-but-please-say-no sort of invitations. But if he had shown up with his two-fisted little schiksa girlfriend it would have killed his mother. Plus when he was talking about the girl he was boffing at college I could be taller and blonder if I wasn’t actually there in the room with him.

I later learned that he never even smoked around his parents. What a pussy. What a phony, posing, pussy.

So anyhow I ended up at the Island of Misfit Toys. I went both Thanksgivings I was in Annapolis.

In retrospect I don’t know how Preacher did it. He convinced the administration to let us use the dining hall AND kitchen. They made him have a faculty chaperon and he got that visiting professor from Yugoslavia, what was his name? The mathematics guy. He thought he spoke English, but I don’t know anyone who ever understood a word he said. Anyhow, that guy was there as our chaperon and Preacher handed him a bottle of brandy and the guy was unconscious before we even served dinner. There were a bunch of us in the kitchen. Until I was married, it was the best Thanksgiving I ever had. In fact in some respects it’s still the best. Everyone was in a good mood, we were all laughing, Preacher was cooking – he was a good cook – and we had a videotape of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer we watched after dinner. Preacher and I cleaned up. He could be kind of anal retentive about cleaning up. I guess, as his roommate, you know all about that. I helped because, well, because I was warm and well-fed and happy and didn’t want to sleep alone that night. And I guess in the back of my mind I knew that the best way to indicate my unhappiness with Seth was to screw his arch-enemy. Even if Preacher didn’t realize he was Seth’s arch-enemy. Seth knew it, that was what was important.

But mostly I just found him so easy to talk to. You were his roommate. You know what that was like. People who didn't know Preacher thought he was this real extrovert because everywhere he went he ended up becoming friends with people, ended up having these long heartfelt conversations with them... but really he didn't say that much. It was the other people who started talking to him. If you never met him it's hard to describe.

So spent a long time talking and then we went back to your dorm room – I guess you were with your folks? – and he played fado music for me. I guess that was Preacher’s lasting contribution to my life, actually. I still like fado. And we started making out, and… how much biographical detail do you want? [Laughs].

[Interviewer]: As much as you can give.

[Subject]: Well, I remember he was taking his time. I appreciated that. Seth tended to fuck like I was still on the clock. I remember my shirt was on the floor and so was his and we were hot and heavy but also light and airy – we were laughing and making out at the same time -- and I made the mistake of giggling and saying, “this will kill Seth.”

And that put the brakes on everything. He stopped, and put his arms around me, and looked close into my eyes, and started talking. He told me about how great I was and that I needed someone who would worship me and that if even the tiniest part of me thought that this had anything to do with Seth then it would be all wrong. That I deserved to be wanted for me, and me only.

Despite my best efforts I couldn’t get things started up again, which was both physically and emotionally disappointing to me. But we had a good long talk that night and I told him all about my life in Seattle, the things I just told you and more things, too, and he never said a word to anyone.

He was the first guy who’d ever declined to sleep with me when given the opportunity. I couldn’t decide if I liked that or not. I’m still not sure, actually.

Anyhow I dumped Seth without a second thought when he got back from Long Island. Not because I liked Preacher more – although I did – but because Preacher had helped me understand something I’d already started to realize about myself. That I deserved better. Or at least different. I have to tell you, I’m the only one of my friends who’s never been divorced, and in part it’s because with everybody I ever dated I would ask myself if he met the sort of worthiness test Preacher laid out for me that night. So I guess in that sense Preacher has been an influence on me, even if I didn't think of him specifically. And Bob and I went to Portugal on our honeymoon -- I guess that's Preacher's fault, too, right? But I married Bob because he was the person who passed that test.

Preacher didn’t even try to pass it. He couldn't have. He would have been the first to admit this. He was meant for... something else. What exactly wasn't clear, but something big. But he and I stayed friends for the next couple of years. I left for the Santa Fe campus in my junior year and kind of lost track of him after that. Although there was a rumor all the way in Santa Fe that he was having an affair with one of the professors – was that true? Right, I guess you won’t say. Anyhow if you see him tell him I said hi. You know thinking about him, seeing that website – I might go read his book now.

[...]

[Editor’s note: Rachel Walsh is now a senior trial attorney with the New Mexico Attorney General’s office. As always, I lied about turning off/erasing/deleting recordings. This is cross-indexed with “lovers” due to my somewhat expanded definition of “lover” and due to the fact that, at least while I was in college, everybody thought he’d nailed her that Thanksgiving weekend. There are at least three other interviews wherein Haywood’s former classmates give lists of people they thought he slept with, and Rachel Walsh is mentioned on two of them.]