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Jill White ’83, Awarded Full Scholarship to Bennington

—Hillander Alumni News, September 1983

The one positive side effect of being an outcast was a 4.0 average, which guaranteed another all-tuition-paid trip to an institution of higher learning. But this time, I did some research, and this time, I made sure that my next campus culture would be as different as it could be from Hillander. Though my first instinct after graduating from Hillander was to beat it out of New England faster than you could say “summa cum laude,” I fell in love with Bennington College in Vermont the minute I saw it.

Instead of the limestone and ivy that other New England colleges were known for, Bennington’s farmlike enviornment, with its converted barns and rural surroundings, comforted me. It had a small student body (under 1,000), a no-athletics policy (no tenniswear to be seen!), no grades (no worrying about that 4.0), and a strong arts and humanities curriculum. But mostly, I loved Bennington because when I visited campus, I saw a lot of people like me. No cliques, no Alissa Ford clones; just a bunch of individuals dying to express themselves through dance, art, writing, drama, their clothing and hairstyles—any way they could.

My essay and grades won me a full scholarship, so I decided to become a literature major. Once again I spent four years reading and writing, dabbling in fiction and expanding my literary literacy. But most of what I learned at Bennington had to do with friendship, something I was absolutely starved for when I arrived. I may have entered Bennington a loner, but I emerged with a tightknit circle of friends who vowed to stay that way for life.

This time, my roommate and I became best friends. Sarah Annastasatos was an art student from Long Island who loved to draw dreamy fantasy scenes of long-haired princesses riding on unicorns through enchanted forests. Despite her subjects, she was actually very talented, and it was amazing to watch her real skills and real self emerge over the years. By our junior year, her cynical, honest, red-streaked self-portrait so impressed the head of the art department that he arranged for a showing of her work at a local gallery.

Sarah’s bigger talent, however, was being a great friend.

Sarah looked a lot like her princesses; she had long, flowing, wavy dark brown, waist-length hair; giant brown eyes, topped by expressive eyebrows that always gave away what she was thinking; and a lovely, oval-shaped face with a flawless olive complexion. I liked to think of Sarah as the rock tied to the end of my kite. When I’d be dizzy with distraction, she’d focus me. If I became too worried about minutiae, she’d calm me. When I drank too much and puked, she held back my hair. And she’d never mince words when I wanted a forthright opinion. It was almost as if Sarah were the parent I never had growing up.

But Sarah was more than a caretaker to me. She was fun. She made friends easily and constantly and was always excited to share them. She was the least judgmental person I’d ever met and, as a result, our large, ever-expanding but close-knit group comprised all types of people—musicians, potheads, gays, aspiring philosophers. She was the center, the one who brought us all together. Thanks to her, for the first time in my life, I felt normal, accepted—even average. And thanks to my newfound self-esteem, I no longer felt the need to cut myself.

It was a really happy time. We’d all spend nights hiking the trails on the fringes of the campus, smoking clove cigarettes and dreaming about our futures. Sarah had admittedly the lamest taste in music and she loved to dance. She and I would spend giddy late nights in our room making up interpretive pantomimes to her cheesy Rick Springfield cassettes, laughing until our sides hurt. We remained roommates for all four years.

My other best friend was my boyfriend. Yes, believe it or not, the pariah of Hillander was actually able to land one. Joe Dryer came from a family of local dairy farmers. He studied music and was an in-demand dj with the most popular radio show on campus. Sarah introduced us one night when we were having a floor party. She knew him because she had a part-time job in the record library at the station. I nearly died of embarrassment when she called him over and said, “This is the Jill who calls in requests to your show all the time!”

“Really?” he asked, immediately interested. “The same Jill who likes to play ‘stump the dj’?”

“That’s me,” I said, trying to seem bored and not at all like I was glued to his show whenever it was on.

Joe had the best taste of all the djs, in my opinion. And he had a sexy voice. So I liked to call in and talk to him and make requests that I thought might throw him off guard. One time I thought Klaus Nomi—this bizarre German performer who wore a lot of white make-up and had a strange, operatic voice—would do it. But Joe knew him right away. “I think we have a copy of ‘Simple Man’ around here somewhere,” was his answer.

I laughed. “You finally, truly impressed me with the Klaus Nomi thing,” I said, tossing him the bone that he deserved. He wasn’t my physical type, really, though he was cute in an offbeat way: small and slender with short, spiky hair dyed Gothic black. And I loved his unique sense of style—vaguely preppy oxford shirts a size too big with the shirttails always out; faded jeans; shiny black wingtip shoes. But strip him of his postpunk dj style, and he would look ordinary…like a dairy farmer. Though I wasn’t physically attracted to him, I liked him immediately—selfishly, because he seemed like a nice guy, and more selfishly, because he seemed like he was very into me. It’s hard to turn down someone who thinks you’re the coolest chick since Chrissie Hynde, especially after four years of not a soul showing any interest in you. Besides, everybody else on campus started to hook up, so I thought it was due time for me, too. Soon, I started hanging out with him when he did his shows, and he introduced me to a whole world of music that I am still obsessed with: Joy Division. REM. The Smiths.

I even lost my virginity to Joe right in the radio station. It started when I playfully sat on his lap, launching a marathon make-out session. When he cued up a particularly long song—a remix of “Everything’s Gone Green,” by New Order—one thing led to another. Making out turned into foreplay, which turned into full-on sex acts. I was the aggressor, having decided it was high time I had sex. Joe seemed scared to death at first, but then he just relaxed and went along for the ride, despite his frantic glances at the studio door. He was concerned that the station manager would pop in, or that Sarah might want to scoop up some records. But we just went at it, right there in the dj chair. Sure, it was clumsy and a little bit painful, but it was also fun and so animated that while bouncing on top of Joe’s lap I inadvertently knocked the needle across the record right as he came. After a jarring screech and some dead air, Joe threw on another platter, and then we laughed until we nearly cried. From that night on we were officially a couple.

Our sex life throughout most of our three-year relationship was pretty mediocre, however, as we were both amateurs. Still, we were inseparable for most of our time in college. I enjoyed being around him simply because he liked me for me, always making me feel beautiful with his easy acceptance and friendship.

One of my fondest memories of how sweet Joe was back then was when he took me skiing for the first time in my life. We laughed so much that day as I tumbled down the mountain. Though he was an expert, Joe didn’t seem to care that he was missing out on the black diamond trails or that I was a complete klutz with frozen red cheeks and snot running out of my nose. But that was his true essence—he was kind. I had nearly forgotten all about kindness after four years of Hillander.

But another thing I learned at Bennington, unfortunately, was how to break a heart.

Like I mentioned before, Joe’s radio show made me more music crazy than ever. I was an especially devoted fan of Third Rail, a postpunk indie band from Chicago that was just starting to pick up steam on the college circuit. I adored the lead singer, Richard Ruiz, a sexy, wiry, androgynous man whose mess of curls set off amazing fantasies that I put to use many times during sex with Joe. So when Third Rail came to Bennington during our junior year, I flipped.

Joe, through the college radio station, had a gig as an escort/gofer for any visiting band. I, of course, demanded he take me with him to meet Third Rail.

The show was at the arts center. It was loud and wild and pumped me full of confident energy. But when Joe brought me backstage, I was actually surprised at how suddenly nervous I felt.

First, Joe introduced me to some roadies. Then I met Marc Miller, the lead guitarist, who offered us something to eat. He led us to a long buffet of cold cuts. My heart stopped a little bit when I saw a tall, thin man dressed in a faded black T-shirt and jeans toss back those curls as he regarded the spread. It was Richard Ruiz. The Richard Ruiz. I sidled up near him, pretending to check out the offerings myself, and waited for the right moment for Joe to introduce us.

Then I heard Richard grumble, “Bummer. It’s all animal kill.” His voice was deep and raspy, like a growl.

As a devoted vegetarian, I saw and took my opportunity. “The Silo is open till two, and they have a pretty good veggie burger.”

He then turned toward me and shot me a slow, appreciative smile. “Is that right? Because I’d probably even kill an animal for a veggie burger just about now….”

I laughed and then gave Joe, who was standing beside me, a subtle nudge. He snapped to. “Well, she would know; she’s a hard-core vegetarian,” he answered. I nudged him again and gave him a look. “Uh, this is my girlfriend, Jill,” he said.

He would have to throw in the “girlfriend” part. I stuck out my hand. “Jill White. Good show by the way,” I said nonchalantly, trying my best to play it cool, using all my will to keep from gushing and looking like just another fan.

Richard smiled, grabbed my hand, and held it.

“Sooo,” I said, flustered, “uh, I was going to run over and grab a veggie burger myself….”

“Bring back two, then,” Richard said, releasing my hand. “One for me, one for you.”

I did just that, and me, Joe, and the rest of the guys hung out talking in Richard’s dressing room until the wee hours of the morning. After my heart stopped doing that freezing-up thing, I was amazed at the confident conversation that came out of my mouth. I was talking to Richard Ruiz just like he was a regular person—like a peer. We had an especially great conversation about his lyrics, which often referenced obscure philosophers and poets. I was ecstatic that he seemed impressed by my depth of knowledge of them all.

The time flew, and at about 5 A.M., one of the roadies tapped on the door. “Guys, we really gotta go now,” he urged. “We should have hit the road hours ago. We’ve got a morning radio interview in Boston.”

So the night was coming to an end. I wanted to soak every last minute of Richard’s presence, so Joe and I helped the guys gather their things and trailed along to their bus to say good-bye. Richard picked me up in a bear hug. “Come with us,” he whispered in my ear.

When he put me down he stared intensely into my eyes. I turned to Joe, who was chatting with the drummer.

“I…I can’t,” I said weakly.

“That’s a real shame,” he said, sighing. Then he added wistfully, “Idle youth. Enslaved to everything…”

It only took me a second to recall the rest….

“…by being sensitive I have wasted my life,” I finished for him. “Rimbaud.”

“I knew you’d know that,” he said simply, offering me a smile before he turned to the calls of his bandmates.

“Let’s go, man! We’re going to be late!”

Richard gave me a disappointed wave before he climbed on the bus, and I felt like I was going to throw up once the engine hummed on. I felt like such a stupid groupie, but I was pretty certain that in the past five hours I had, for the first time in my life, fallen in love.

Joe came over in the meantime and grabbed my hand. “Are you okay?” he asked gently.

The bus slowly backed up out of the lot while Richard’s rugged voice echoed in my ears: “Enslaved to everything…”

The bus pulled away, and I still, to this day, can’t believe what I did next.

I looked at Joe; dropped his hand; quickly mumbled, “I have to go”; and chased after the bus, running down the street with all my might. When it hit the stop sign at the end of the block, I pounded on the door wildly. “Wait! I’m coming with you!” I screamed. “Open the door!”

The bus door flew open, and I ran up the steps and right into Richard, as the rest of the guys erupted in applause and whistles.

Laughing, he dragged me to the backseat and he planted his lips on mine. “I’ve wanted to do that all night,” he said. So had I.

And that’s when I first knew that I was capable of being as selfish and mean as anyone I’d ever hated…because I didn’t even think to look back out that window at Joe. I just kept kissing Richard.

In one week, we hit Boston, Providence, Hartford, New Haven, and New York. In each new city, we had the same routine: sleep late, caressing each other in the mornings; rehearsal, when I would sit in the wings and watch brilliance in action; a healthy bite to eat; and then my favorite part—the downtime, when we’d steal away to a quiet spot, like a park or a coffee shop.

Those were my favorite times, when it would be just the two of us. Richard would share lyrics he was working on, and I’d read him snippets from a short story that I’d started on the road. And I felt so special when he’d confide in me, telling me things like how he was inwardly afraid of the band hitting it big.

“I just don’t want to lose our raw edge,” he told me one day when we lingered in Boston Common.

“What makes you think you will?” I asked.

“The bigger we get, the more money we make, the more demands on our time…the more pressure to sell out,” he said.

“But that sounds like such a cliché,” I told him. “You’re above that.”

“Am I?” he said, concern covering his face. “I’m only human. It’s so easy to get sucked into the machine….”

He seemed so vulnerable. And I was so honored to be the girl he chose to bare his soul to. I dreamt of always being the girl who would ground him, no matter how famous he would become. “Even if you do hit the big time and make a lot of money, think of what you can do with that. Think of the platform you could have. Think of the people you could reach. How you could spread your ideas. What effect you could have on people—on the world!”

I could tell by his smile that he liked what he was hearing. I was inspiring him; I just knew it. Thinking about my goal to start a charity from my “Things I Want to Accomplish in Life” list, I went on: “I mean, if you end up making a lot of money, there are a lot of causes you could donate it to.” I imagined us starting a charity together, the two of us saving the world in every little way we could.

“I just want people to hear my music,” he said. “It’s that simple. I want life to stay that uncomplicated. The tragic thing is, it never will.”

“That’s why we have to live for today, then,” I said boldly, before kissing him.

“I agree,” he said. “The future doesn’t exist to me. The only thing that really does exist is the here and now.”

After that conversation, we went back to the bus and had the best here-and-now sex I could ever have imagined.

Sex with Richard at that time was incredibly eye-opening for me. It was intense, grown-up, sensual, and explosive, instead of the fumbling, quick and wanting variety that I experienced with Joe. With Richard, I finally understood what all the fuss was about in Cosmo. Richard taught me the reason every issue had a “discover your G-spot” coverline, and he found A through F, too; it was like a veritable octave of pleasure each time we went at it. Which was at least twice a day.

My least favorite time during that week was showtime, crazily enough. The euphoric rush I felt during my first Third Rail concert became replaced by worry and insecurity. Before going onstage, Richard would warp into another zone, with rituals that I didn’t understand and that he didn’t care to share with me. There was a connection he shared with his bandmates—and only his bandmates. During those times, I’d feel like a true outsider, and I’d sit in the audience, feeling like just another fan. And when he’d be out there onstage, tossing his charm into the audience, I fretted whether he was catching another girl’s eye—there were so many groupies screaming his name—and I wondered if he even thought of me at all. When he wasn’t making eye contact with me while singing, I’d sulk. And I worried constantly about him meeting other girls. His bandmates, after all, went through dozens of girls in that week, tossing them aside like broken guitar strings.

At first, I’d feel superior to the groupie girls the other band members would hook up with. After all, it was different for Richard and me. What we had wasn’t disposable. It was meaningful and real. It was love. But then it started to bother me that Richard didn’t bat an eye about their behavior, like when Bobby Crash, the drummer, had two girls going—one preshow, one postshow. I couldn’t stand the thought of Richard doing that to me. I couldn’t even bear the idea that he had been with others before me.

Yes, very mature of me, I admit. But I was frantically in love. Every minute I searched for some clue that he felt the same way. I decided that when he did catch my eye during performances, validation was there.

I stayed away for an intense, whirlwind week of music, sex, and veggie burgers. And I would have stayed on, even, but the guys were then going west, and I didn’t have any money for the airfare and no one offered to pay, despite several dropped hints.

“You need to go back to school,” Richard told me.

“I could go back anytime, anywhere,” I said, pleading inside that he’d beg me to stay.

“I don’t want to be responsible for you screwing up your education,” he said. “Go back to school. I’ll call you when we come back east again.”

Parting was agony for me, while Richard seemed to take it in stride. I was having a hard time keeping my cool. I wanted to tell him that I loved him, right then and there at dumpy Port Authority, but knew that would be too banal. I knew he wouldn’t communicate by those means either. Instead, he recited a line from another Rimbaud poem:

“Life is the farce which everyone has to perform,” he said to me before I left. He was right. I wanted to continue the fantasy. But life was inevitable.

The journey back to school was long, and as I came back down to earth, guilt was my encroaching seatmate, though I tried to distract myself with thoughts of Richard’s promise to call and what he might say. I wondered if he was missing me at that moment just as much as I was missing him, but I still couldn’t help think of Joe. I hoped he’d understand, but even Joe’s patience had its limits. The week was eye-opening in that it convinced me that we really didn’t belong together.

Joe was the first person I went to see once I got back to campus, before I even stopped in my room. I tentatively knocked on his door. “It’s me,” I announced. “Open up if you’re still talking to me.”

After a spirit-crushing minute, the door did open. “Barely,” Joe said shortly. He looked tired.

“I don’t know what to say….” I started.

He sighed. “That was a shitty thing to do to someone who is supposed to be your boyfriend,” he said.

“I know,” I agreed. But the thing was, he didn’t feel like my boyfriend. I knew it even if he didn’t. The feeling I had for Richard that week was what I thought having a boyfriend should feel like—constant, big rushes of emotion and intensity.

“So maybe we shouldn’t be boyfriend and girlfriend anymore,” I went on quietly, as a few hallmates filed past. I looked past him into his room. “Can we talk about this inside?”

Joe impatiently pulled open the door and sat on his bed. I awkwardly sat next to him.

“Admit it, Joe,” I ventured. “I’ve been terrible at the girlfriend thing. And you deserve someone who’s better at it.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know…. I don’t want you out of my life,” he said begrudgingly.

And I didn’t want him out of my life, either. “Of course not!” I reassured him. “But we don’t have to cling to the notion of ‘boyfriend/girlfriend’ just to be around each other. I think we’ll make better friends than lovers, don’t you?”

He shrugged. “If that’s what you want.”

I knew this was hard for him, but I was also convinced that this was the right thing to do. I looked at him pleadingly. I had been living on adrenaline for a week and my exhilaration was fast turning into exhaustion and I wanted this awkward conversation to be over. “I think we’ll be great friends without all that other pressure.”

“Okay,” he said, but I could tell he was let down. “But I’ll need some time before we start hanging out again.”

“I understand,” I said. “As long as you don’t hate me…. I couldn’t live with that.”

“I could never hate you,” he said. “But I just need to be away from you for a while.”

I nodded. “I’m just a big, dorky fan girl, I guess,” I said, downplaying the incident, but knowing inside that Richard was the true love I had waited my life to meet.

Joe laughed a little. “Yeah,” he said, “you are a groupie, aren’t you?” He laughed again, this time with a bit of an angry edge. “I guess I don’t blame you, though,” he said, shrugging. “I mean, that took balls. It must have been a pretty cool adventure. Not to mention the free concerts.”

“Yeah,” I said, glossing over his groupie comment. “Though it was pretty tiring.” I went on to tell him a few details about the whirlwind week. I knew his anger would prevent him from understanding what had happened between Richard and me. And I certainly didn’t want to hurt him any more than I already had.

After another apology from me and some tears, we parted as friends. I loved Joe, but I realized that I wasn’t in love with him and, complete retrospective truth be told, if I hadn’t been so flattered that he wanted to be my boyfriend, I never would have considered him anything but a friend. We hugged and I was so relieved that he didn’t hate me.

Sarah, on the other hand, was a different story. When I floated back to my room, I was met by her hard, scolding stare.

“Nice of you to check in,” she snapped.

“Huh? Joe didn’t tell you where I went?” I asked, completely oblivious.

She was sitting at her art table, her hands smudged with charcoal. She wiped them off impatiently as I flopped, exhausted, onto my bed. “He told me. But you could have called,” she said.

“Sorry,” I said, midyawn, before closing my eyes for a much needed nap, which made her even angrier. I didn’t think I could take any more confrontation in one day. I kept my eyes closed.

She came over to the bed and shook me until my eyes snapped open. “You missed your World Lit presentation, you know,” she pressed.

“I know,” I said, probably a little too defensively. I didn’t get her concern. Why would she care?

She grew annoyed with my apathy. “Don’t you ever think about consequences?!” she hollered. “And how could you just leave Joe standing there like that?!”

I couldn’t believe how mad she was, and I sat up. “Look, I spoke to Joe and he’s okay,” I assured her. “But I don’t get why you’re so ticked off.”

Then Sarah’s whole face fell, and she looked like she might cry. “I was ticked off because I wasn’t sure if you’d come back,” she whimpered. “What would I do here without my best friend?”

I couldn’t believe it. While I couldn’t get over that someone like Richard Ruiz craved my presence, it was even more surprising to me that someone cared about my absence. I thought back to those times that my parents would just up and leave. I remembered wondering if they’d come back, wondering if they even thought of me and Alex when they were gone. I remembered the feeling of abandonment all too well. And I suddenly knew how Sarah felt.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, this time meaning it. Then I gave her a bone-crushing hug. “Thank you for caring so much.”

Once again, I felt so fortunate for having such understanding friends. Almost losing them wasn’t worth it, I realized, especially when Richard didn’t call. Sarah stayed up many nights listening to me whine and cry about it. I was completely infatuated, and I was constantly thinking about where he was and what he might be doing and with whom. I was convinced that I never should have left him to go back to school, that it was my fault for not being available to him. Thoughts that he might have met someone new tortured me. I’d plague Sarah with those fears on too many nights. And when she wasn’t talking me down from the ledge of heartbreak, she was convincing me that hitchhiking cross-country to find him wasn’t a sane thing to do. Looking back now, I’m so glad that I didn’t screw up my future—and my friendships—for a one-sided obsession. Sarah slapped a real epiphany into me, though, when I relapsed, moaning in a moment of temporary insanity about not wanting to be alone and that I should maybe even consider getting back with Joe.

“What?!” Sarah screamed. “Now you’ve gone crazy. Listen to yourself. There’s nothing wrong with being single when you’re twenty-one years old, you idiot!”

I laughed my head off when she said that, because she was right, I was acting like a loser. It hit me. Yes, I was twenty-one, and I had a long love life ahead of me. I hoped.

While my time at Hillander stretched out like an endless ocean journey in an inflatable raft—with holes—the four years at Bennington felt like a cruise on a souped-up speedboat. I was amazed at graduation how quickly the time had passed. I was even more stunned at what had occurred over the span.

I had come into Bennington a scared, overweight, insecure prep-school outcast. I left healthy, happy, and secure in knowing exactly who Jill White was. As hard as it was for me to let go of my college years, I felt ready for the real world.