The Lars club.

The professor who was teaching the Dostoevsky class Grinch and I were taking at the University of Wisconsin chose to begin by having us read Nikolai Chernyshevsky's 1863 novel, What Is to be Done? That Lenin would later borrow that title was no accident; it was a proto-communist melodrama about the lives of the Russian peasantry. The professor insisted that everything Dostoevsky ever wrote was written in direct response to this little book.

We could understand why Dostoevsky could get that pissed. The novel was absolutely insufferable, with drama and dialogue on a par with Ayn Rand. Yet we spent nearly the first half of the semester on the damn thing?much more time than would be devoted to Notes from the Underground, The Devils, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov combined.

When he finally got around to wrapping things up, he asked the class if anyone had any comments to make about the book in general. The kid sitting two seats down from me slowly raised his pudgy hand. This was an interesting development. The kid hadn't made a sound all semester. He would just shuffle into the classroom in his leather jacket and his black watch cap, clutching a battered briefcase held together with two yellow bungie cords. He'd take his seat two down from me, open the case, remove a piece of paper and a pen and take notes, all in complete silence.

He was an intriguing-looking character. He had chipmunk cheeks, combed his flat brown bangs straight down over his forehead, wore large, 70s-style glasses with tortoise-shell frames and tinted lenses, and seemed to have suffered a mild stroke or something, as the left half of his face sagged a bit. Grinch and I had speculated about him a little, but never went so far as to actually engage him in conversation. All we knew about him was that his name was Lars.

When the professor called on him he opened his mouth for the first time, and in a voice that was nasal, whiny and slow, he said, "If?I saw any of these people on the street?I would want?to kill them."

In that instant, Grinch and I had a new hero.

Lars was about as close to being a true nihilist as either of us had ever met. He didn't give much of a damn about anything, it seemed, except to hate it. By all appearances, he was a bitter, slovenly character who, apart from going to class, didn't seem to do much of anything except drink beer, chainsmoke and listen to punk rock records. He never smiled, never laughed, rarely spoke. Yet everyone we knew, if they didn't know Lars personally, at least knew of him. And most everyone did their own impression of him whenever his name came up.

The one time I did see him almost smile was when Grinch and I ran into him at a protest outside the student union. An Israeli student organization and a Palestinian student organization were trying to hold competing rallies, but ended up going nose to nose with each other instead. We weren't there on account of either group; we were just there to watch the show. Voices were raised and potential violence was crackling through the air like electricity.

Then spontaneously, the three of us began rocking back and forth, clapping our hands slowly and arrhythmically above our heads, singing a decidedly off-key rendition of "Give Peace a Chance."

Lars seemed to enjoy that. (Minutes later, Grinch would jump into the narrow space separating the two lines of screaming protesters, put his hands out to either side and tell them, "Now, c'mon?I want you guys to shake hands and be nice.")

For the most part, Lars didn't have a nice word for anybody. He hated liberals and conservatives alike, had no patience for hippies, feminists, businessmen or cops. He liked Motorhead. That was about it.

"I like going to see Motorhead," he told me once. "Whenever I leave a Motorhead show, I always smell like diesel fuel." (And he was right, you know).

Over the months and years, though, I started to see a different side of Lars. I think the first time I noticed he might be warming up to me was when he gave me a tape he'd made. He'd titled it "The Hate Tape," and it included early songs by G.G. Allin (long before anyone had heard of him), Tesco Vee's "Lesbian Death Dirge," the Angry Samoans' "Ballad of Jerry Curlan," some live Mentors (he loved the Mentors), a rant by Freddie Blassie and some Jim Jones.

Not long after giving me the tape, he asked me if I wanted to meet him for lunch. I forget where the place was, exactly, but I remember that it was a cafeteria of some sort. Not being terribly hungry, I just grabbed a beer and took a seat. A few moments later, Lars showed up carrying a plastic tray. On the tray were two salads, each buried under a half-gallon of Thousand Island dressing.

"One's for you," he said, as if he were saying, "Your dog's dead."

"That's okay," I told him. "I'm not very hungry."

He looked up at me through his tinted lenses and bangs. "But? I bought it for you," he said, sounding hurt. I understood (having no choice) and began picking at the salad, thinking how odd it was that Lars should decide on salad. Maybe it was cheap.

"Besides", he added, "it's good for you."

I was coming to the conclusion that this Lars character was a bit more complex than we'd given him credit for. This was confirmed a week later when he asked me over to his house.

I strolled over one afternoon and rang the buzzer. He was renting a two-bedroom house with a roommate on a pleasant, quiet Madison side street.

This oughtta be something, I thought. Bet it's a nightmare inside?and it'll probably smell really bad, too.

Lars opened the door and let me in. It was the first time I'd seen him without his cap and leather jacket (he wore both year-round). That afternoon he was wearing a light blue turtleneck. Somehow, he looked taller and slimmer than usual. I stepped inside, prepared for the worst. Grinch and I always assumed he was one of those Crusties we'd heard about.

He led me into the living room, told me to take a seat on the couch and stepped back into the kitchen.

The place was immaculate and bright. The carpet was vacuumed, the wooden floors were polished, the tables were dusted, the furniture in good repair. There was nothing spraypainted on the walls, no rats huddling in the corners. It was even more disconcerting this way, somehow. It made me nervous.

There was no television, I noticed. In its place in front of the couch was a USA Today box filled with magazines.

A moment later, Lars returned from the kitchen carrying another tray. Instead of cheap salads in plastic bowls, this one held two large mugs of coffee, a bowl of sugar and a cream dispenser. I nearly screamed and threw myself out the front window. This wasn't Lars. At least it wasn't "Lars." Not the one I'd come to make wild assumptions about, anyway. That "Lars" would never be a perfect host.

But this one was. He sat down, loaded his coffee with sugar and started showing me his favorite magazines.

Lars and I stayed in touch sporadically through the mail for a few years after I left town. Then it just sort of petered out, as these things do. It's been nearly 20 years now. Hard to imagine sometimes.

In the end, I realized that I didn't really know a damn thing about him. I think he was from the Milwaukee area, but I wasn't sure. I never heard him say a word about his parents. He hinted that he was occasionally invited up on stage with bands to make hellacious honking sounds with his saxophone. He regularly fell into deep, profound love with women who never seemed to love him back. He had terrible handwriting. He was one of four people who actually paid money to buy a Pain Amplifiers tape. ("It was awful," he would tell me later.) And I never, ever asked him why the left half of his face sagged the way it did.

Mostly what I know about Lars are those ridiculous stories Grinch and I invented about him when he wasn't around. For some reason, I find them comforting.