After transferring to art college from a much finer Institution of Higher Learning due to flunking out, I was trying mostly just to keep a low profile. I was about halfway through my first semester there when I met "Farky." Obviously that's not his real name, but the onomatopoeic disharmony aptly summarizes his personality.

Farky was an overgrown goofball that everyone loved and hated. Loved because he would do or say almost anything at any time. Rumors floating around the school involving Farky being kicked out of the CIA (actually, I believe this one), possessing an IQ of 175 (again, this one was true), dating a famous actress (well, he did graduate from a famous California college and had a year of law school under his belt before changing his life and entering art/philosophy studies), being rich (I know that this wasn't true, but many people believed it), and being the illegitimate son of a former California politician (again, not true).

Farky was so ugly that he was good looking. He had the strangest face that I've ever seen. His eyes were huge but he had a little button nose. He was a mixture of three races, and his hair was coal-black and straight like an East Indian. He looked somewhat like Steve Jobs, only better. Women were always chasing him. He drove a 1973 (or so) Chevy Vega that had been modified into a convertible in someone's garage. Farky told me that they had cut off the top with an industrial chopper, whatever that is. You get the idea.

So I met him halfway through my first semester and he fixed his attentions on me. I was scared at first because of his reputation as a slacker wacko; I needed to get good grades. I knew that he wasn't interested in me romantically (I'm not all that great looking to begin with). But he must have felt some sort of kinship with me and somehow drew me into his orbit.

I tried to avoid him at first, but he started stopping by at our apartment at all hours of the night. He had no concept of time. Before too long, I was hanging with him everywhere. We drove all over the place in the Vega and everyone in town knew it. The cops would smile, wave, and never ticket the car because they knew it was his. (He had some connections with the chief of police in this small college town that I never understood.) He never paid a traffic ticket.

Within a month I had abandoned my studious intentions and became Farky's sidekick. It was the craziest time of my life. Neither of us touched drugs, cigarettes, or alcohol. We were experimenting with an organic diet consisting of beets, whole cracked wheat, olive oil, soybeans, worms, and seaweed. Farky believed that such a diet would cause someone to make it over the century mark.

But he was inconsistent about the diet. He would arrive at two in the morning (unannounced) and ask me if I wanted to go to Denny's. We would order Grand Slam breakfasts, which meant we'd have to take dumps before leaving there. The organic diet caused a large bit of gas to constantly toot out of your ass. Adding the greasy Grand Slam on top of it made it squirt worse than a squirrel orgasm.

Farky sometimes spent as much as almost sixty minutes in the Denny's crapper. People close to the bathroom doors when Farky was on the throne would want to throw up. He liked to read Bertrand Russell when he was seated. He would toot out a fart every time he disagreed with the dusty old philosopher. Which was often.

The Fark had a lot of artistic ability. He was failing his philosophy course (on a matter of principle -- because he didn't like the prof. He refused to take any test). But he was getting all A's in art because he was really good. So he decided that he wanted to create art out of only organic materials that he was able to find locally, existing naturally in nature.

That 's when we got in trouble.

Farky had been given the project of creating a bit of sculpture for alumni center. It won't take you too much time to intuit exactly what material was in ample supply. The sculpture of the chancellor was supposed to be done in iron or brass, but he used shit. He could have gotten away with the whole episode -- after all, there was no real odor coming from that bust -- but the Fark had signed the work with his initials scratched on the back of the skull-head. Then, beneath it, was scrawled, "Compliments to Denny's".

We were both booted from the little artiste conclave. Farky and I began working at the local Alfalfa's organic supermarket, but when the management discovered Farky's prank we were both fired. They really didn't want shit pranksters as employees of an organic market.

We lost touch as I got engaged and Farky returned into law school. I heard yesterday that he was seeking political office.