Off Harvard Time

Billy hangs high on the wall of Cabot Dining Hall. The framed photo focuses on his gaping mouth, out of which rolls a thick red tongue pierced by a full-sized steel fork. A makeshift title cut from a newspaper—the superlative, “Most Likely to...SUBVERT THE SYSTEM”—accompanies the picture.

A petite dining hall worker clutches her hands to her chest and gazes up at the picture affectionately. “That’s my Billy!”

The 27-year-old busboy saunters over, black cap flippantly propped on his thinning dark hair.

“Some student was taking a photography class, and he just came in and took a couple pictures of me,” he says. “So I stuck a fork through my tongue.”

The day after his eighteenth birthday, Billy got his tongue pierced. Over the years, he’s stretched out the hole to its present size—capable of accommodating a fork. To demonstrate how he did this, he deftly pushes his tongue about in his mouth and pops out two thick metal stems. He then easily slips his index finger through the fleshy chasm. He wiggles it.

According to Billy, the student photographer sneaked into Cabot’s serving area one night and replaced the frame’s rustic image—it used to be a pitcher of water—with Billy’s demonic likeness.

A few of Billy’s older female coworkers congregate below the picture and giggle furtively. Though the picture swap occurred a few years ago, management still hasn’t realized it, they say.

Ever since Billy—more formally, William A. Campbell III—began working for Harvard University Dining Services a bit over a decade ago, Cabot Dining Hall has never been quite the same. He willingly tests the limits, mostly for his own amusement, and he’s not too sure where he’s headed—and he may not even really care.

“I don’t really put myself out for huge goals,” he says. “I don’t put much thought process into it.”

If Billy isn’t hunched over, pushing around cartons of glass cups, or standing outside on a cigarette break, he drifts about the dining hall with eyes languorously half-shut.

ID swiper Mary A. Quinlan sits by the swipe machine and titters, amused at the thought of finding Billy in the dining hall. “He’s wandering,” she says. “Not aimlessly. But he’s wandering.”