Enzo Januzzi Scores A Cliffhanger

      "So what makes them refrigerator biscuits?" I sputter, swallowing a savory scone stuffed with spicy beef. "You keep the roll cold," she expounds, opening the refrigerator door and pulling out a dough log in the kitchenette of her tiny apartment. "Then you cut it into rounds before filling and baking." "Clever," I exclaim, unable to stop myself from then humming a song that's been stuck in my head.      It had been a month since the field trip with Freida-Mae. Term papers, final exams, moving, and what-all (aka girlfriend) had consumed her semester's end. It took running into me at a graduation party for her to recall she'd invited me to dinner. By then I'd nearly forgotten we'd been joined at the hip for one breathtaking weekend in the Blue Ridge. I'd also caught sight of an interesting new woman wearing knee-torn army pants and toting a canvas messenger bag to our shared summer class at Virginia Commonwealth. And no...

      "I'm so done with camp food," FM concludes as we drive north in the spring green tunnel of the Blue Ridge Parkway. "Next week you're coming over for Sunday supper!" "What should I bring?" I entreat, delighted to be ordered around. "A bottle of wine and a salad. I'll make refrigerator biscuits."      Food had been wretched on our field trip, the only exceptions being her bottle of Chianti and my Hershey's Special Dark that we cracked into rectangles after the midnight wrestling match. Even the pitfall traps had a pitiful yield, with only a few fire ants and blister beetles toxic to even the stoutest of birds. I was wishing there was a Gibson-Henry College course in camp cuisine as we turned east into the pine barrens along Interstate 64 heading into the gathering grey of the piedmont.      "Let's have some music," she declares, clicking on the dashboard radio and tuning away from the teacher's AM pre-set. ...

       "Come on big guy, you can do it," encourages FM under the covers, spurring me on with words and hands. "It's been a long, hard day," I moan, mortified at my lack of response. "Fine then," she hisses, curling up toward the tent wall in the faint starlight filtering through the canvas. "Your loss."      After my last premature night with Freida-Mae, I'd made the mistake of asking around the foosball table about preventative practices. Coitus interruptus, thinking of your mother, taking a deep breath, and beating off everyday were gleefully offered in quick succession, the last of which I'd already put into action.       What I'd failed to bring to the table was the unthinkable for a twenty-year-old, being unable to get it up at all. So I laid there on my back listening to FM's rhythmic breathing and the slowing chirps of crickets, finally falling into a fitful sleep to the trickle of the little stream beside our tent.   ...

      "Wine anyone?" enjoins FM uncorking a surprise bottle of Chianti to go with our camp spaghetti and pot salad. "I knew there was a reason I love you," I retort, accepting a pour into the Biology department's ceramic mug.  "Don't damn us with your faint praise," she chides with mock indignation, hanging the bottle from a branch by it's straw fiasco. "Here's to there being an us!" I chuckle, astonished to be tent camping with my muse under a starlit sky filtering through the rhododendron grove hiding our tent.       After the ledge rescue Freida-Mae had wanted to lie on the boulder to watch the night sky, but I reminded her that blacklight collection was still needed for the lower elevation site. She laid down anyway, but soon saw the research written in the stars.       We made quick work of the trail down that was now glowing in the starlight. Then she'd set to work counting insects - triple the number of aquatic fliers a...

     "Jeez FM, how'd you get down there?" I gasp peering over the edge of the most protruding of the humpback rocks. "Slipped off," she marvels, barely visible leaning into the massif from a narrow ledge. "But hey, I stuck the landing." "Very funny!" I simper shimmying closer to the void. "Can you reach my hand?" "Just fingertips," she hisses as sparks shoot between my right hand and her left. "Go get a branch!" "Can't chance it," I decide, finally asserting some authority. "I'm taking down the sheet." "Not before you count the damned bugs you're not!"      There were twenty-two gnats, fifteen mosquitoes, nine mayflies, seven small moths, three blowflies, two june beetles, and, the piece de resistance, a gangly cranefly on the sheet suspended between branches on the back side of the rock outcropping. That was a decent haul for about thirty minutes of darkness, but we expe...

     "Did you see a dark haired woman in red shorts up there?" I call to a hiker coming down into the twilight of the valley floor. "Yeah, weird that she's hanging out a sheet at dusk," he muses, pausing to glance back at the last rays of sunlight creeping up the hill. "The call of the wild," I shrug, turning off the camp stove and slapping a lid on the bubbling SpaghettiOs.      We'd come on this field trip equipped with all the camping equipment and insect collecting supplies we might need, but nowhere in that trunk full of gear was a flashlight. Sensing that Yogi Berra's assessment of right field in Yankee Stadium as "it get's late early out there" also applied to steep hollows, I decided to go get her while the getting was still good, or at least still visible.        "FM!" I howl as I stumble up the barely discernible trail winding through progressively steeper rubble.  "Cruck cruck," echoing down from the...

      "Dang, all the campgrounds are full," Freida-Mae exclaims, pointing an unveiled arm toward the sign on the gatehouse to Shenandoah National Park. "Now what?" I worry as I turn the Ford Fairlane into a dirt pullout and wind down the window in the late afternoon heat seething up onto the ridge line. "I've got to get my project set up before dark," she frets, sweat beading on her upper lip as she unfolds a Virginia map from the glove box.  "How about we head south?" I suggest, feeling the fine hairs standing up on her forearm as I reach over and point to the green line of the Blue Ridge Parkway.      I'd finally caught up with FM in the library on the Sunday evening after her sleepover. She'd immediately asked for help with an Entomology field project, and that was all the explanation either of us needed. After reviewing the teacher's suggestions, we'd decided on a comparative survey of insect species collected in two diffe...

     "Have you seen FM?" I blurt to Deb Lew sunning on a concrete bench beside the fountain in the mounting heat of a tidewater mid-morning. "She disappeared from my room." "I hate to break this to you Enzo," she elucidates while sitting up and slipping sunglasses onto her head, "but Freida-Mae's got a girlfriend."      Just like that on a mid-May Sunday morning my illusions of heteronormativity were scattered in the spray of the Gibson-Henry fountain. In a single hour I'd discovered that a fraternity brother was becoming a sister and a new lover already had a same-sex lover.       Ours was the generation after the counterculture movement of the late 1960s. Vietnam was over, hippies had become freaks, and equal rights were filtering into even a conservative small college in the south.  Still, the coming out of non-binary friends was liberating in a way I hadn't even known I'd needed.       "Well that explains a l...

     "Morning Jyz," I greet with relief that someone I know is at the sparsely attended Sunday breakfast in the Gibby-Hank cafeteria. "It would be a good morning if this wasn't my midnight snack," he titters, a trace of bright blue on bottom eyelids and crimson at the edges of full lips. "Out all night?" I query with raised eyebrows, temporarily forgetting my dilemma.      He and I sitting together at the Delta Epsilon table was a study in contrasts: A morning person and a night owl; A shy introvert and an effusive extrovert; A straight heterosexual and, apparently, a closet cross-dresser. Pete Jyzcinski had been a mystery to his fraternity brothers for three years. He'd grow progressively despondent over weeks before disappearing for a weekend, returning recharged and ebullient. I was beginning to think he had manic depression, a term I only knew from a Jimi Hendrix song, but those traces of makeup played a different tune.      "Let's j...

       "What's...under...this...bed?" gasps Freida-Mae as the springs squeak with each thrust.  "T...V...room," I groan from under her, inching closer to bursting.  "Then let's get under the sheets," she gushes, rolling off and kicking off flip-flops. "Are you sure you don't want me to walk you home?" I query, offering one last chance to not regret it in the morning. "Oui oui," she laughs hitting the light as she unfurls a tube top over slim shoulders. "But let's keep on underpants."      It was a new experience making out with such an assertive woman. I only knew of dominance and submission as historical terms from Tess of the d'Urbervilles , an assigned book in last year's colloquy class on Literature and Film. In my experience, tops and bottoms were parts of the softball uniforms that I'd passed out in previous seasons, but at least I knew enough to go along with a good thing when it was slapping...

      "Stop harassing my band!" Freida-Mae commands from the top of the stairs. "Well hello to you, too," I counter from a middle step before rethinking my strategy. "So great you could play, but they tried to steal our stereo." "Here I am looking for a little late night company and you go and spoil my future gigs," she pouts, but with amusement in her partially-lidded eyes.      That was all the invitation I needed to hop up the rest of the steps and walk with her down to my room. I was still a little wobbly from the foray at Phi Kap so she held my elbow and steered us past the common bathroom and the back stairwell. It was usually only seniors who got the lone rooms in the Delta Epsilon house, but my roommate had his own single with a girlfriend who was an RA in the dorm next door.       College students away from home for the first time will have sex, so we might as well help them along - that seemed to be the attitude of the administ...

     "Januzzi, where've you been all night?" Jyz bays over the thrum of Johny Henry and the Hammers hammering out their last song. "Your girl was up there on congas." "Never mind that, where's our stereo?," I blurt, yanking the sleeve of his tee stretched over a bulging biceps. "Get Burkhardt!" he roars, striding around the band stand to the side door of the stone fraternity house.      Where I'd been was out with Deb Lew and Josie at the Phi Kap house. After being jilted again by FM, I'd made us screwdrivers while sneaking peeks at them pulling on jeans and camisoles, brushing hair, and choosing boots. I even helped out with the makeup by dabbing a little eye black on lower lids, a trick I'd learned as the softball trainer. By the time they were ready, it was getting a little hot in that dorm room.      Then they'd taken me by the arms and wizard-stepped across campus, the three of us belting "follow the yellowbrick ...

      "Good run you two!" I console after their second place finish.  "Fuck that!" Deb Lew scowls as she throws down the heavy wooden crossbar. "Burkhardt said this was the fastest chariot." "That was before Phi Kap built one from a bicycle frame," I shrug, relieved to notice amusement in the crinkles of her eyes. "Guess we'll have to go to the Phi Kap dance then," she chides as they're walking away. "What about our deal?" I cry out before they get out of earshot across the field.  "Pick us up at nine!" Deb Lew hollers, both her and Frieda-Mae glancing back before disappearing into the campus.      Big events in the Gibson-Henry extracurricular calendar were usually capped by Saturday night parties in the eight fraternities. Camptown was the largest annual party, and Delta Ep was hosting a Richmond blues band on a small stage we built to one side of the large, wooden-floored living room. I was in charge of th...

      "Yo Zo," grunts Deb Lew from the pile after her Alma Wood team tumbles to the tug-of-war title. "We heard you're a pretty good announcer." "I've only called the intramural basketball championship," I shrug, reaching a hand to help her up from the packed earth of the football practice field where Camptown events are being held. "If you'll do the chariot race, I'll get you a date with Freida-Mae," she bargains with a coy grin, going right for the jugular.      The truth is that I would have announced the chariot race just because a sweaty, athletic woman asked me to. Show me an inch of interest and I'll imagine a mile of magnetism. Her offer to set me up with FM was just gravy on the biscuits.      The spring festival at Gibson-Henry College, like those biscuits and gravy, seemed a southern tradition, but the antebellum origin of Camptown was above the Mason-Dixon line. A young composer named Stephen Foster had passed thro...

     "Refills!" screams Debi Lewis poking me in the back with two large steins.  "Jesus, were you in the closet?" I blurt after stumbling into the keg. "That door is to our half of the suite," she laughs nodding to the back of the room and calling "Hey Josie, come meet the bartender!" "Hi" waves a shy girl in a stunning tube top slipping a tanned arm around Deb Lew's belly, her sunkissed locks spilling over her roommate's shoulder.      This was my first encounter with gay intimacy, and it was stunning indeed. Homosexuality may have been more open in New York or Richmond just before the AIDS pandemic, but it wasn't yet safe to come out in the Virginia countryside. The relative privacy of dorm rooms was another story.      Social anxiety is a fickle friend. A group of strangers can set off panic, but a single interpersonal contact can counteract the crowd. My night was saved right fast by the openness of FM's suite mates ...

       "It's packed in there," I shriek peering in the quadruple-pane window of a heavy oak door into Alma Wood dormitory. "Why do you think they call it a party?" Jyz laughs, turning the clanky brass knob and pushing in with a broad shoulder. "You coming?" "Think I'll pass," I groan while breaking into a sweat and fighting to urge flee. "Come on you pussy!" he chides, grabbing my velour pullover and dragging me through the hip-to-hip students holding plastic cups overhead to keep from spilling.      The Virginia drinking age was eighteen in 1980, but alcohol was only sold in the state stores. Kegs, however, could be procured from certain bars, and two of them in Magnolia had a brisk market in college parties. On the railroad square beside campus was the preferred happy hour spot called Brothers, a beer and crab place owned by two cousins. Cheaper beer, however, was available down at the strip mall at Billy's, a dive run by ...

       "Hey Burkhardt, can we catch you a minute?" calls out a sweat-shirted girl from across the fountain as he and I are heading back to the house after an advanced history class entitled The War Between the States. "What's up Deb Lew, Freida-Mae?" he greets while leading us to the edge of the glimmering pool. "We heard Delta Ep's got a fast chariot," glares Debi Lewis hopping onto the ledge and wielding a stick. "Well our pledges won last year," he smiles up at her and then over at Freida-Mae with her own stick propped on a shoulder to unveil a delicate earlobe beneath black curls. "Is Alma Wood running a team?" "Yep, and please, please, please can we borrow your buggy?" Deb Lew begs, her now prayerful stance suffused in the spring green of the maples and oaks surrounding the plaza.      Spring in the Virginia piedmont was glorious with magnolias bursting into blush blooms under the verdant foliage of a deciduous fo...

     "Anyone know that cute freshmen skating in the Old Gym?" I call out to the two brothers having a heated foosball match in the Delta Ep living room. "That's Freida-Mae Marzouk rehabbing a knee," observes Burkhardt while blocking a shot and flipping the little white ball out to mid-field. "Afraid-Of-Me,"grunts Pete Jyzcinski slamming a handgrip to shoot the ball toward goal. "Great name for a bossy bitch." "Might make a mean little sister," I ponder as Burkhardt pulls the shaft hard for another stop. "We could use someone to tell us what to do to clean up around here."      What I could really use was a new girlfriend now that MG was gone. Running mates with French benefits was how our relationship had evolved after the previous year's softball championship. Then she graduated a month later, leaving me to a lonely junior year so far. It wasn't in my nature to initiate a date, and the assertive coeds who might h...

      "Need a hand?" I call to a woman-on-wheels splayed across the creaky slats of a banked wooden track circling twenty feet above the worn parquet floor of a tiny basketball court. "Never!" she fairly yells with a quick flash of anger, scrambling onto her purple-pommed skates before skidding in a flailing panic down into the flimsy railing with an ominous crack.       The Old Gym at Gibson-Henry College was being replaced in 1980 by a state-of-the-art structure replete with twin courts, olympic pool, and separate men's and women's locker rooms. The piedmont Virginia school had only started admitting girls in 1971, and facilities were slowly following suit one building at a time.      The equalizing sex ratio during my three years there was just fine for a newly trim body. I'd started out as an overweight trainer for the developing women's sports programs. Then one of the softball players, a senior exchange student from France, had all...