and are pitching sixteenpounders at the crowd. Several other people go down around me, including the blonde in the silver cocktail dress. For a moment I don’t mind anomie. What more intimate way to meet women? Then I see fists spinning above heads and I close my eyes against a spray of flying glass. The guitarist of the April Wine Impersonators is pleading over the mike for order, which only seems to fuel the rampage.
As I peer out from under a booth, the melee parts just long enough for me to spy a man dressed in a lime green leisure suit smash a pitcher of beer over another man’s velour beret. Mountain is just off to the left laying out a hairy-looking cretin with beaver teeth. His face becomes strangely tranquil and uncomplicated, that orgiastic cruelty illuminating his eyes as he sets to his task. I’d lay eight-to-one he was the cause of the insurrection. Oh, but he is a maestro with those fists, that right hand like a wrecking ball. And don’t we all love to do things we’re good at? What am I good at, I wonder? Well, I can play Scrabble fairly well, and I can cook a mean Hamburger Helper. I’m a good surfer. I love music. I’m a marvelous bullshit artist, so good in fact that most people are convinced I’m always telling the truth, which takes all the fun out of it.
The cops will be here any minute or the bowling alley will burn down, so I decide to ease out into the free-for-all and coax Mountain from the premises. The going is not easy. A bar stool flies through the air. Three women, arms locked, are doing the cancan on a fat guy who seems to be enjoying himself. Here comes a slim, young debaucher swinging across the room on one of the light fixtures. The whole spectacle is like the closing sequence in Blazing Saddles with walls coming down and the dancers flailing with the cowboys. The guitarist is down in the fray now, hammering someone with his Les Paul.
I make distinct progress toward Mountain but then the hordes crush all around again and I’m flung against the plywood skirt of the bandstand next to a very nice pair of legs wrapped at the juncture with blue panties. I would like to enjoy these legs, but someone kicks me in the head. I am aware I have drunk too many assholes. I wonder if I will be trampled and killed or wake up tomorrow in a hospital with a permanent boot print on my face. I hear someone shout, “Cops!” and I see their blue menace and steel. Now Mountain is pulling me up by my shirt and dragging me till I get my feet. “Come on, Deadwood,” he growls cheerfully. Then the bang of the emergency exit doors and an exhilarating rush of cold air.
We beat for the car. It’s hard to run in platform shoes. I vow that this is the end of my disco days and living in a culture where to attract women you must dress like one. Mountain’s car is parked down by the Cinerama. The streaks of madly spinning red lights flash across our backs as we jump into his El Camino. Mountain turns the key and takes off without looking back. We jump out of the driveway down by the Mayfair, swing through a green light, and head west on University Avenue. I glance over my shoulder to see more police cars pouring into the lot.
“What happened?” I say, touching my jaw.
“Guy swung at me,” he says, still out of breath. “Said I was staring at his girl. I had to knock him out.”
“You know, one time, Mountain, I’d like to go out drinking with you and have a quiet night.”
He shrugs as if to say, Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim. “You all right?” he says, taking a right on Fifty-Fourth Street.
“Yeah, just a little kick in the head,” I say. “And a burnt nose.”
“How’d that happen?”
“Some asshole.”
“Where you wanna go next?”
“How about Madagascar?”
“Is that the new one in PB?”
“No, that’s an island in the Indian Ocean just off the African coast.”
Mountain turns to stare at me. The spinning lights of a cop car zip past.
“I’m serious, man. Why not?” I ask. “What have you got here that’s worth staying for?”
He checks his mirror. “We’ll be back in school in two weeks,” he says.
“I wish I’d brought a change of shoes,” I grumble, rubbing my ankles. “These heels are killing me.”
“To hell with those assholes,” he says. “Let’s go get us some margaritas.”
4.
NEVER HAS A SUMMER PASSED WITH SUCH AGREEABLE speed, and now even school is something to look forward to. My second semester at Humboldt, or Ho-Hum State, as Mountain likes to call it, picks up right where I left it. All the lads are back. Though Karlo, Tee Willie, and the Tooley boys haven’t changed much, I’ve cast aside my sissy pirate blouses and platform shoes, sheared off my salon-curled hair, sold my jewelry, and flushed my contacts down the toilet (tired of bloodshot eyes and crawling around on the floor looking for a lost lens). The era of the hetero woman-man is over. Mick, you can wipe off your bloody lipstick. With my short hair and new plastic-framed glasses, it takes a few moments for my old comrades to recognize me. Also, I’ve decided to ease back on the festivities a bit since I’m going to need at least a B average to gain entrance into a decent law school.
But the parties never stop coming, and it seems a waste to let them pass without me. One night, only a few weeks after school starts, there’s a poker game down in the Tooley room. We’ve bought a half gallon of Safeway gin, which some are mixing with orange juice, others dry vermouth and green olives on toothpicks. Mountain and I are in the second category, swilling freely and making Gaelic jokes.
“Shut your piehole, Edgar Donahoe,” says Andy. “The bet’s to you.”
“I’m not anti- Gaelic,” I mutter, dashing off my ninth martini. “Just because I’ve never been to a Gaelic bar.”
Mountain fans his cards in his meaty hands, shakes his head, and says in a perfect New England accent: “I say aftuh we shoot the Demo-crats, we send all the Gaelics back to San Francis – co.”
I throw away my cards. “In the words of a famous Cartesian, ‘I quit, therefore I fold.’”
Brian loads the long bong, packing in that sticky, pinesmelling sinsemilla that costs forty dollars for a quarter ounce but is worth it, people, let me tell you.
There’s another kid named Andy, a bedazzled freshman just grateful to be in our sophomoric presence, sitting at the end of our makeshift table and obediently losing his money. “Tell you what,” I say. “Let’s all be mountain ranges. I’ll be the Himalayas.” I point to Karlo. “You be the Pyrenees. Tee Willie, you’re the Sangre de Cristos. And you two …” I indicate Andy and Andy. “You guys be the Andes.”
Oh whore whore whore. My compatriots laugh so hard some of the chips fall off the table. I find this a good time to mix another Safeway martini. Am I not hilarious when I’m swacked?
“What about me?” says Mountain, pouting. “I want to be Mount Sinai.”
“You’re drunk, Moses.”
“Hot puppies.”
“Deal the cards, doughface!” shouts Karlo. “And fix me a bong.”
“Seven stud.”
“What’s
