Enzo Januzzi Scores A Cliffhanger

      "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...