Chapter 9
We spotted him up near the keg. Josh was surrounded by three women, but he didn’t seem to care. He leaned back against the wall in unpracticed perfection. His long locks falling into his eyes. Then, he would toss back his head, languidly, using a hand to brush his unruly hair back off his face. The women would watch. They would watch, and they would salivate.
Why would I ever think I’d have a chance with Josh? Why?
But as we inched up to the kegger, he noticed me. He noticed and something animated his otherwise casual, almost bored features. He pushed himself off the wall and plowed right through his admiring circle of coeds without so much as excusing himself.
He headed our way.
My way.
Josh pushed his way to the keg, where another dude was operating the tap. He wrested the black, snake-like hose from the guy, who jerked around annoyed. Then, the guy saw that it was Josh and relented, walking away with a half-filled cup.
“So you made it?” Josh said, gesturing with his free hand for my cup.
I handed it to him. Sonya watched the body language between us. All of the Five did.
I stepped forward as Josh held both the beer tap and my cup in one hand and pumped the keg with the other. His pumps were slow and sexual in a way, as the hose spouted foam, then beer into my cup.
“Thanks for the invitation,” I managed, then glanced down at my filling beer cup.
“Figured I owed you one,” Josh shrugged. “I didn’t exactly put my best foot forward today.”
“I’ll say,” Lauren Marks grunted from behind me. “Heard you really stunk it up in there.”
Just then, Chelsea Daniels kneed her outspoken roommate, who grimaced and fell silent.
“Yeah, well,” Josh allowed as he filled my cup to the brim, then lifted the frothy red cup to me. “Have a few of these, then see how sweet yours smells.”
My face flared crimson. I could barely move to take the cup. Sonya elbowed me, and I came to life. I reached for the cup with both hands. Josh held his aloft.
“To college,” he said. “And the many wonderful things we will come to know here.”
I mimicked him, lifting my cup, then guiding it to my mouth.
I sipped at first, but Josh eyed me over his cup.
“Uh-uh,” he hummed with a mouthful of beer. “Drink,” he urged, then showed me how. He tilted back his head, opened his throat and chugged the entire contents of his cup. He righted his face, and his luscious lips dripped with foam.
“Go ahead,” he said, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth.
Everyone was looking at me then. I wished I could slip through a crack in the beer-stained floor. But I couldn’t.
I tried my best, I really did. I went through the same motions Josh just exhibited. But when it came to pouring the bitter beer down my throat, it just wouldn’t go. I jerked my head upright, coughing on the foam.
A line of upperclassmen holding cans of beer toward their mouths, shook their heads in unison at my pitiful drinking display. One of them said, “You can lead a freshman chick to beer, but you can’t make her drink.”
And then with that, the guy turned to his buddies who held the sides of the unopened cans to their mouths where small holes where cut into the cans.
“Let’s show her how, boys,” the guy said, as we all watched. “Shotgun on three.”
The guy counted down, and then on cue, the guys pulled the tops on their canned beers, sending the flow shooting out the holes in the sides of the cans. The contents shot down each of their throats in seconds.
“Ahhh,” the dude exhaled in satisfaction. “You’ll learn, frosh girl. They all do. The frosh females come to the foam, sooner or later. They all do. It’s mother’s milk around here. Isn’t it, guys?”
All the guys smiled knowingly and nodded, even Josh.
I felt stupid, so I sipped at the beer. I didn’t like it any better, but I would force myself. Before I could think of a single thing to say, Sonya stepped forward.
“Wanna go again?” She jerked her head at the guy with the empty beer can.
His alcohol-animated eyes widened.
“You wanna do a shotgun?” he asked.
“If you’re up for another?” Sonya dared.
“Oh, I’m up for it, all right.” He turned to Josh. “You in?”
Josh raised his cup. “I’m cool. Besides, I should serve our guests.” Josh gestured to the rest of the Five, who held empty cups.
Amanda Livingston, a Brit weaned on beer at an early age, thrust forward her cup. “I’m ready.”
Josh took it, and set to dispensing beer from the tap. Lauren was next in line with her cup. Then, Chelsea. Even Chelsea Daniels took to the beer better than me. But she was from a place in Pennsylvania where there was nothing better to do than drink. And before her family became wealthy from their fracking rights to their land, they were rural Pennsylvania farm folk for whom Yuengling beer is one of the basic food groups.
When everyone had a beer in hand and the shotgun-prepared beer cans had been distributed to Sonya and the guys, we were ready for another toast. It was just one word, first shouted by Sonya as she carefully raised her can aloft, and then echoed by everyone:
“College!”
That one word meant change. It meant growth. It meant exploration. It meant discovery.
And it meant beer!
Sonya and the guys pulled the trigger on their shotgun beers. A fantail of foam sprayed in my face, as all the others drank their cans and cups dry. I was still sipping. Still behind. But I found if I didn’t breathe through my nose, and if I tossed my head back far enough so the beer hit my throat, instead of my tongue, I could stomach it.
The rest of them were already wiping their foam-spotted mouths and extending their cups for more. But I was catching up. And soon, the alcohol would catch up with me, turning the party into a dreamy, shimmery sexual fantasy of electric bodies throwing off sparks as they gravitated closer and closer and closer. All this, as the night wore on, and the alcohol took effect and raging hormones asserted control.
But was any of it real? Or was it my beer-induced, bleary-imagination?
I remember that evening in a series of images, experiences and sensations. All of them indelible in my mind’s eye.
“Hey, Elliot,” Sonya shouted, jabbing an elbow good-naturedly into Josh’s ribs. “You and me,” she teased. “Shots.”
Josh smiled at Sonya. Who wouldn’t? She was drop-dead gorgeous – and adventurous, to boot. Hell, downright fearless, in fact.
Sonya Kessler was an artist who truly believed that her own body was an artistic medium and that all of her experiences would feed her art. So why not feed her experience? Why not attempt to experience it all? Everything? The whole world?
In response to her challenge, Josh reached behind the keg and retrieved an amber bottle of Jack Daniels, holding it up for Sonya to inspect.
“I suppose you don’t like whiskey,” he said. “Most girls don’t.”
Sonya stepped forward, pushing her body into his, then turning her face up to his.
“I’m not most girls,” she said.
Josh smiled down.
“No,” he agreed, uncapping the whiskey.
“You sure as hell aren’t.”