Chapter 4: No Static At All

 



     "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 everyone's favorite towny named Trey.

     I'd rarely shown my face at either joint in my three years at Gibby-Hank, though my Delta Ep brothers had brought me along a few times. A crowd of people jammed into a small space rocking with music was sure to set off what I would come to know as agoraphobia. Beads of sweat running down the anxious face of a large man was not exactly a conversation starter, so I'd soon beat a beeline back to the fraternity house.



     "There's my bartender," enchants Freida-Mae with dark eyebrows raised as Jyz prods me toward her door. "My roommate's gone for the weekend so I need you."

"Got it, Kahlo," I wheeze taking the tap line and relieved to have a task that puts me in proximity to the reason I'm chancing a crowd.

"Don't call me that," she blurts pushing into the hallway before calling back "though I do love the fuck out of her."

"How about FM?" I shout from the keg so she can hear it over the thrum of voices and My Sharona.

I just make out her thumbs-up on a slim wrist poking above the sloshing beer cups before she disappears down the hall.






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