Chapter 9: Foreplay




      "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 administration in the 1970s. Besides unsupervised dorms and autonomous fraternities, there were tenured faculty who partook in the general debauchery. An erudite history teacher studied hypnotic crops with the smart girls. An effusive business/econ instructor taught the handsome boys how to balance a long weekend spreadsheet. An exuberant English professor held all-night tutoring sessions on pronunciation of the best French wines. Pheromones were in the air at Gibson-Henry College for all who cared to inhale, and many did.

     


     "Welcome to my adobe!" I blurt, once again channeling my inner dork as we enter the last room tucked into a back hallway.

"Ooh, I like the southwestern motif," she exclaims, running her fingers across my poster of Mesa Verde. "Is that why you tan so well?"

"I'll have to ask my Italian grandparents," I smile at her perception, plopping into the only seat in the tiny room, my bottom bunk. "How about your dark eyes and hair?"

"My parents had to leave Lebanon when I was twelve," she explains, sitting beside me on the springy bed and leaning into my shoulder.

"The Lebanese Civil War? Jeez FM, it must have been tough losing all your friends."

"I was sad for a long time," she breathes, momentarily staring off before pushing me onto my back with "but I'm making up for it now."



 

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