The Local News by Miriam Gershow Page B

really condemned.
    “That’s what made him such a good defensive end,” Tip said. “Un-fucking-breakable.”
    I didn’t want to talk about Danny. I was feeling good. “You know what I think about football?” I said loudly. “You know?”
    “No, what?” Tip said. Lola was watching me with her regular bright-eyed expression, ever hopeful.
    “One word,” I said. “Homoeroticism.”
    Tip squinted at me. Lola put her hand to her mouth.
    “An excuse for boys to touch boys. An all-male environment that condones a level of physical contact that borders on the erotic.” I laughed. Lola laughed too, but in a nervous way. I couldtell that this wasn’t necessarily the best idea, but the drunkenness propelled me forward. Even that first time, I could see how it made for a good excuse. “Like a fraternity. Like a monastery,” I said.
    “Monks?” Tip said. “You’re saying monks are homos?”
    “No, not necessarily. But maybe some men are drawn to monkhood because of a need to repress and fulfill unspeakable urges.”
    I went on for a while about a monk’s vow of chastity. I compared that to football’s bullying heterosexuality. I think I said something about fraternity gang rape. I talked and talked. I was warm-cheeked and emboldened. I could feel my eyeballs.
    “So now we’re rapists?” Tip said, two deep lines creasing his brow. Lola was still at it with the nervous laugh.
    “No, no, you don’t get it.” I tried explaining it more, though I started losing my train of thought. I was on something about the movie I’d seen in social studies the year before about the African clan whose men would take monthlong retreats together when Tip broke in with, “You’re crazy, Pasternak. You’re one of those people who knows so much stuff, it makes them crazy.”
    He was smiling at me, but his brow was still tightly knit and I saw something of a glare in his eyes. It was a shade of the old Tip, the one who held my fridge door closed with one broad hand when I tried to get a pop out. I glimpsed quickly how I may have gotten careless and overly familiar, saw the way things could go wrong be-tween us. It gave me that same uneasy feeling I used to get in conversations with Danny, when he would turn red-faced, sure that some comment or offhand remark was intended to make fun of him. It was still early enough in the night—I was still more or less in control of my faculties—that I was able to right things, socking Tip lightly in the arm, saying simply, distractingly, “I’ve come to like beer.”
    This made him laugh. Lola stroked his shoulder like he was her pet. He was shaking his head, looking openmouthed at me like
Where did I find this one?
    Later, in the bathroom, I peed longer than I’d ever peed before. My breathing was loud and strange, almost panting. I was sweaty, hot from the contrast between outside and in. There was no toilet paper. In the bathtub there was one red shoe. “One red shoe,” I said out loud, which seemed funny. There was no hand soap. The hand towel lay crumpled and dirty on the floor. I wiped my hands along my jeans. I stared for a long time in the mirror at my pores—how had I never noticed before they were so huge?—and at my red splotchy face.
    I let the crowd bandy me about in the hallway. They were an ocean of people, elbows, earrings, fingernails, and I tried to make myself rubbery and soft for when they knocked into me. Someone said my name; I couldn’t tell who. The carpet felt spongy beneath me. A girl said, “Are you okay?” and I told her I was fine. She put a hand on the small of my back, which seemed nice, and I leaned a little back into it. “Whoa, girl,” she said.
    The rest of the party passed in a blur. We kept drinking. Aside from the brief hiccup, Tip seemed to have anointed himself, alongside Lola, as my steward and protector. He led me at some point into the kitchen, where I witnessed my first beer bong, Tip guzzling an endless amount of beer through a