Crossroads by Mary Morris Page A

gay and was serving some kind of brownish punch. And by
Rupert, our host, who wore white jeans and red suspenders but no shirt. His chest was covered with thick, black hair. They called Rupert’s girlfriend, whose real name was Natalie, Chiquita Banana, and I never found out why. Natalie, who told me to call her Chiquita because everyone else did, took me aside. “You here with Bobby?”
    â€œWell, he brought us to the party.”
    â€œSo that means you’re with him.” She wore a black T-shirt and no bra and she chewed a wad of gum in the side of her cheek. She was a freshman at Douglass and told me that almost everyone at this party went to Rutgers. “Oh, good,” I said. “Jennie should feel right at home.” I was growing more comfortable with misrepresenting ourselves, but I wondered if our clothes were correct. We wore jeans, T-shirts, sandals, but we both had bras. But it wasn’t just the clothes. I knew that, in no way, was I still able to resemble Chiquita.
    â€œI go to school in New York.”
    â€œIt’s dangerous. I hate that city.”
    â€œYou get used to it.”
    â€œHave fun with Bobby.” She grinned at me, envious, I thought. Then she disappeared into the crowd.
    I found Jennie talking with Victor and helping him pour hard punch. “Watch out,” Victor said, handing me a cup and straightening his earring. “It’s a real sleeper. Bottles of hard stuff.”
    The punch was in an old bathtub and there was plenty of it.
    â€œWe can’t stay late,” I whispered to Jennie.
    â€œWould you relax and have some fun?”
    Rupert had fixed up the garage for the party. It was clear that he came from some wealth. The garage was equipped with a quadraphonic system, complete with tape deck, headsets, a million records, and a tuner that looked like an EKG. Sound floated around me and seemed to come from all directions. I sipped my punch until I found I was having trouble standing, so I sat down on one of the three mattresses on the floor.
    Couples lay in each other’s arms. A bleary-eyed boy passed me a joint and I took a toke. This isn’t a good idea, a small voice somewhere in the middle of my pituitary gland said. The girl who’d been lying in the arms of the bleary-eyed boy, a tiny, red-headed child, got up and walked away and began kissing a rather tall, gawky boy who leaned against a wall. They walked outside. The Village People sang “YMCA.” Then Kansas sang “Dust in the Wind,” making me feel mortal, vulnerable. After that, I didn’t recognize the music, and the bleary-eyed boy sat stupefied and looking lonely in the corner. I asked him what the music was and he knew all the groups. They had space-age names. Flying Saucer, Satellite Returns, Lunar Module, Jet Stream. Pink Floyd sang “Dark Side of the Moon,” which put the bleary-eyed boy into a trance until the red-haired girl returned and, no questions asked, the boy took her back.
    Other couples drifted in and out of each other’s arms with equal facility and I felt like an anthropologist, trying to understand how these primitives bonded. “Hey, how’ya doing?” Bobby flopped down on the mattress beside me, squeezing my left biceps.
    â€œI’m a little sleepy.”
    â€œOh, that’s the punch.” He took a joint out of the air, it seemed, puffed it, and passed it back into the air.
    â€œWhat’s in it?”
    â€œIt’s easier to tell you what’s not in it.”
    â€œOh, great.” I leaned my head back against his arm. It took me a few moments to realize he was rubbing my arm with his index finger in a gentle circular motion whose intent could not be mistaken. After a few complete elliptical orbits, he whispered, “Wanta see the house?”
    â€œMaybe we could just go for a walk?”
    â€œNaw, too many mosquitoes. You’ll get eaten alive.” He was pulling me to my feet