team play there a couple of times, but tonight they’d shoved the bleachers back to one side in order to make room for a raised platform at each end of the court. Long tables lined the remaining side of a large dance floor and served as a cash bar. In a burst of originality, the ceiling and walls had been decorated with red, white, and blue bunting as well as matching balloons. All I had to do was grab onto a rope and hoist myself up into the air if I needed to blend into the crowd.
One of the platforms held a podium and a row of empty chairs. The other held an aging beach music band that was cranking out ancient dance tunes. The crowd was 100 percent white. The band was 100 percent black, a veritable six-pack of Shaft lookalikes left over from the seventies, decked out in knit suits and iridescent open-necked flowered shirts. They were long and lanky, and looked monumentally bored as they moved in time to the familiar sounds of a North Carolina college crowd. It was a time warp. The dance floor was filled with young men and women dressed in madras shorts and light blue or pink work shirts—sleeves rolled up—all wearing sandals or worn topsiders on their sockless feet. They looked exactly like their parents had, as had their parents before them. It was a strange and rigid species. Gold add-a-bead necklaces winked at the throats of the girls, while the boys were distinguished by their common glassy-eyed concentration. The kegs of beer lining the walls behind the makeshift bars explained the stares. These folks were about as politically aware as slugs. They just wanted to get drunk and dance. And what the hell, they were young—and half right.
I approached the closest bar and asked the middle-aged man behind it for a margarita, straight up, no salt.
“You gotta be kidding, lady,” he said. Hmm … a northern import, no doubt. “I can give you frozen from the vat.” He flipped a thumb over his shoulder at a large commercial freezer drum, the kind that used to churn frozen custard at Dairy Queens everywhere. Now you most often found them at yuppie bars, spitting out endless ropes of frozen green goo like some kooky apparatus from a Doctor Seuss book. I groaned. Frozen margaritas could really slow you down and I needed a drink to cope with this crowd. Oh well, what’s a girl to do but risk brain freeze and make the best of it? I accepted a huge plastic glass of the mixture and noted that, as compensation, the concoction was loaded with enough tequila to put down a moose. I hoped the party organizers had remembered to line the dance floor with puke barrels.
I wandered through the frantic crowd, bumping into sweating college bodies, shrugging off overeager paws and sympathizing with the occasional adult who stood huddled in solitary misery like a disapproving schoolmarm. Working my way across the floor was a bruising experience because the place was jammed, but I’m an expert at negotiating crowded bars and I was able to elbow my way to a corner near the empty platform without spilling a drop of the margarita down my well-draped bosom.
“Nice outfit,” a kid inexplicably dressed in a satin smoking jacket told me. He held a pipe and I wanted to tell him that the days of Hugh Hefner were over. But at least he wasn’t smoking a cigar. He admired my dress again. “Kind of retro,” he added.
I smiled vaguely. What the hell did that mean? I refrained from telling him that he looked like Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor.
“Like the band?” he asked, blowing pipe smoke in my face. “I think beach music is sort of passe, but the hordes seem to find it amusing.”
I thought pretentious little whippersnappers who tried to pick up older women were even more pass6, but I kept my opinions to myself. “They’re perfect for the occasion,” I said instead. I had noticed mass movement of bodies toward the empty platform over on the far side of the gym and was pretty sure that Stoney Maloney and his crew were heading for
One of the platforms held a podium and a row of empty chairs. The other held an aging beach music band that was cranking out ancient dance tunes. The crowd was 100 percent white. The band was 100 percent black, a veritable six-pack of Shaft lookalikes left over from the seventies, decked out in knit suits and iridescent open-necked flowered shirts. They were long and lanky, and looked monumentally bored as they moved in time to the familiar sounds of a North Carolina college crowd. It was a time warp. The dance floor was filled with young men and women dressed in madras shorts and light blue or pink work shirts—sleeves rolled up—all wearing sandals or worn topsiders on their sockless feet. They looked exactly like their parents had, as had their parents before them. It was a strange and rigid species. Gold add-a-bead necklaces winked at the throats of the girls, while the boys were distinguished by their common glassy-eyed concentration. The kegs of beer lining the walls behind the makeshift bars explained the stares. These folks were about as politically aware as slugs. They just wanted to get drunk and dance. And what the hell, they were young—and half right.
I approached the closest bar and asked the middle-aged man behind it for a margarita, straight up, no salt.
“You gotta be kidding, lady,” he said. Hmm … a northern import, no doubt. “I can give you frozen from the vat.” He flipped a thumb over his shoulder at a large commercial freezer drum, the kind that used to churn frozen custard at Dairy Queens everywhere. Now you most often found them at yuppie bars, spitting out endless ropes of frozen green goo like some kooky apparatus from a Doctor Seuss book. I groaned. Frozen margaritas could really slow you down and I needed a drink to cope with this crowd. Oh well, what’s a girl to do but risk brain freeze and make the best of it? I accepted a huge plastic glass of the mixture and noted that, as compensation, the concoction was loaded with enough tequila to put down a moose. I hoped the party organizers had remembered to line the dance floor with puke barrels.
I wandered through the frantic crowd, bumping into sweating college bodies, shrugging off overeager paws and sympathizing with the occasional adult who stood huddled in solitary misery like a disapproving schoolmarm. Working my way across the floor was a bruising experience because the place was jammed, but I’m an expert at negotiating crowded bars and I was able to elbow my way to a corner near the empty platform without spilling a drop of the margarita down my well-draped bosom.
“Nice outfit,” a kid inexplicably dressed in a satin smoking jacket told me. He held a pipe and I wanted to tell him that the days of Hugh Hefner were over. But at least he wasn’t smoking a cigar. He admired my dress again. “Kind of retro,” he added.
I smiled vaguely. What the hell did that mean? I refrained from telling him that he looked like Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor.
“Like the band?” he asked, blowing pipe smoke in my face. “I think beach music is sort of passe, but the hordes seem to find it amusing.”
I thought pretentious little whippersnappers who tried to pick up older women were even more pass6, but I kept my opinions to myself. “They’re perfect for the occasion,” I said instead. I had noticed mass movement of bodies toward the empty platform over on the far side of the gym and was pretty sure that Stoney Maloney and his crew were heading for
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