with others. Grass is better than MDA because MDA is feel-good in the head. With grass, or hashish, especially if you eat it in brownies, every single inch of skin is a g-spot. The entire body anticipates touch, tingles with erotic sensation. No wonder itâs illegal, they tell each other, because if it was legal, everybodyâd buy it, and everybodyâd be so busy making love theyâd have no time for anything else, including getting degrees.
The only place Kathy doesnât feel intimidated around educated people is at the Rue, the bar where university kids drink alongside factory workers, people who collect pogey or deal drugs, people who hang Gyproc and work in grocery stores. Where Walton Emerson, a university English professor, sits at a corner table in a green suede jacket with fringed sleeves, a red or blue bandana around his thinning shoulder-length hair, and holds court with students and anyone else whoâll listen to him talk while he gets pissed out of his tree on ten-cents-a-glass draft. He gives working-class kids â the proletariat, he calls them â ten-dollar bills. Or he tears the bills in half and uses them to roll joints that flare and taste like shit, but no one complains because the dopeâs free. Sometimes, if heâs really drunk, he snorts a line of cocaine through a ten-dollar tube and hands the bill, still covered in powder, to some awed young woman, saying, Wanna lick?
Kathy feels fine at the Rue, thank you very much. She understands pubs and beer. Beer is a great leveler. Anyone can get a degree in beer drinking. Most of the people she grew up with and the ones who work at her store have advanced degrees in drinking beer, just like Walton Emerson and his students.
Teach is married but he practically lives at Pete and Pennyâs. Pete says heâs never met Teachâs wife, jokes there probably isnât one, that Teach made her up because heâs actually a homo sexual. Thatâs how Pete says it, as if itâs two words. He says it in front of Teach, who doesnât say anything. Kathy thinks Peteâs right; she thinks Teach is in love with Pete.
Teach wears his pants high at the waist and tight across the groin. He wears berets, or old green and khaki chapeaux â thatâs what Teach calls hats, my chapeau, he says â from army surplus stores. Crumpled things that look like camp hats for children. Throughout the winter, Pete and Teach smoke huge amounts of marijuana and drink brandy warmed over a candle flame from snifters the size of goldfish bowls. They play war games theyâve set up in the attic. In summer, they drink LSD-laced gin and tonic and play croquet tournaments in Peteâs backyard. In between there are various drugs â a bit of speed, some MDA or mescaline, heroin once or twice, and reds when they can get them â to enhance the games of Monopoly and Risk, and the rounds of tiddlywinks and pick-up sticks they endlessly play.
âHeâs in love with you,â Pete whispers as he greets Kathy on the landing. Heâs close to her. She smells the marijuana and brandy on his breath. She looks in his eyes as he speaks, but heâs too close and her eyes cross. She looks down. He brushes her hand with his fingertips then leans away from her against the door jamb.
When Peteâs near her, Kathyâs both alert and relaxed. She never worries about what he thinks of her, yet sheâs entirely aware he watches her, and that he does think about her. His regard is sensual, but it doesnât feel sexual. Or thatâs what Kathy tells herself. Itâs as if heâs a monk, conscious of everything about her â her soul and her body, her sexuality included â but heâs above it all, just an observer.
Pete says Teach is in love with her to embarrass Kathy. He does that, gets people off balance, plays mind-fuck games, then sits back to see what happens.
âHe likes your shimmering
The only place Kathy doesnât feel intimidated around educated people is at the Rue, the bar where university kids drink alongside factory workers, people who collect pogey or deal drugs, people who hang Gyproc and work in grocery stores. Where Walton Emerson, a university English professor, sits at a corner table in a green suede jacket with fringed sleeves, a red or blue bandana around his thinning shoulder-length hair, and holds court with students and anyone else whoâll listen to him talk while he gets pissed out of his tree on ten-cents-a-glass draft. He gives working-class kids â the proletariat, he calls them â ten-dollar bills. Or he tears the bills in half and uses them to roll joints that flare and taste like shit, but no one complains because the dopeâs free. Sometimes, if heâs really drunk, he snorts a line of cocaine through a ten-dollar tube and hands the bill, still covered in powder, to some awed young woman, saying, Wanna lick?
Kathy feels fine at the Rue, thank you very much. She understands pubs and beer. Beer is a great leveler. Anyone can get a degree in beer drinking. Most of the people she grew up with and the ones who work at her store have advanced degrees in drinking beer, just like Walton Emerson and his students.
Teach is married but he practically lives at Pete and Pennyâs. Pete says heâs never met Teachâs wife, jokes there probably isnât one, that Teach made her up because heâs actually a homo sexual. Thatâs how Pete says it, as if itâs two words. He says it in front of Teach, who doesnât say anything. Kathy thinks Peteâs right; she thinks Teach is in love with Pete.
Teach wears his pants high at the waist and tight across the groin. He wears berets, or old green and khaki chapeaux â thatâs what Teach calls hats, my chapeau, he says â from army surplus stores. Crumpled things that look like camp hats for children. Throughout the winter, Pete and Teach smoke huge amounts of marijuana and drink brandy warmed over a candle flame from snifters the size of goldfish bowls. They play war games theyâve set up in the attic. In summer, they drink LSD-laced gin and tonic and play croquet tournaments in Peteâs backyard. In between there are various drugs â a bit of speed, some MDA or mescaline, heroin once or twice, and reds when they can get them â to enhance the games of Monopoly and Risk, and the rounds of tiddlywinks and pick-up sticks they endlessly play.
âHeâs in love with you,â Pete whispers as he greets Kathy on the landing. Heâs close to her. She smells the marijuana and brandy on his breath. She looks in his eyes as he speaks, but heâs too close and her eyes cross. She looks down. He brushes her hand with his fingertips then leans away from her against the door jamb.
When Peteâs near her, Kathyâs both alert and relaxed. She never worries about what he thinks of her, yet sheâs entirely aware he watches her, and that he does think about her. His regard is sensual, but it doesnât feel sexual. Or thatâs what Kathy tells herself. Itâs as if heâs a monk, conscious of everything about her â her soul and her body, her sexuality included â but heâs above it all, just an observer.
Pete says Teach is in love with her to embarrass Kathy. He does that, gets people off balance, plays mind-fuck games, then sits back to see what happens.
âHe likes your shimmering
Similar Books
