News of the Spirit Read Free

all kinds of gyrations on the bandstand. It was Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts. The music was so loud, the beat so strong, that you couldn’t listen to it and stand still. The Hot Nuts were singing an interminable song; everybody seemed to know the chorus, which went, “Nuts, hot nuts, get ’em from the peanut man. Nuts, hot nuts, get ’em any way you can.” We started dancing. I always worried about this—all I’d ever done before college, in the way of dancing, was the shag with my aunt Dee and a long, formless
clutch
with Don Fetterman, but with Rutherford it didn’t matter.
    People made a circle around us and started clapping.Nobody looked at me. All eyes were on Rutherford, whose dancing reminded me of the way chickens back home flopped around after Daddy cut their heads off. At first I was embarrassed. But then I caught on—Rutherford was a real
character
. I kept up with him the best I could, and then I got tickled and started laughing so hard I could barely dance.
This is fun
, I realized suddenly. This is what I’m
supposed
to be doing. This is college.
    About an hour later we heard the news, which was delivered to us by a tweed-jacketed professor who walked onstage, bringing the music to a ragged, grinding halt. He grabbed the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said thickly—and I remember thinking how odd this form of address seemed—“ladies and gentlemen, the President has been shot.”
    The whole scene started to churn, as if we were in a kaleidoscope—the blue day, the green grass, the stately columned buildings. People were running and sobbing. Rutherford’s hand under my elbow steered me back to his fraternity house, where everyone was clustered around several TVs, talking too loud. All the weekend festivities were canceled. We were to return to school immediately. Rutherford seemed relieved by this prospect, having fallen silent—perhaps because he’d quit drinking, or because conversation alone wasn’t worth the effort it took if nothing else (sex) might be forthcoming. He gave me a perfunctory kiss on the cheek and turned to go.
    I was about to board the bus when somebody grabbed me, hard, from behind. I whirled around. It was Lily, red-cheeked and glassy-eyed, her blond hair springing out wildly above her blue sweater. Her hot-pink lipstick was smeared; her pretty, pointed face looked vivid and alive. A dark-haired boy stood close behind her, his arm around her waist.
    “Listen,” Lily hissed at me. “Sign me in, will you?”
    “What?” I had heard her, but I couldn’t believe it.
    “Sign me in.” Lily squeezed my shoulder. I could smell her perfume. Then she was gone.
    I sat in a rear seat by myself and cried all the way back to school.
    I CAUGHT ON FAST THAT AS FAR AS COLLEGE BOYS WERE concerned, girls fell into either the Whore or the Saint category. Girls knew that if they gave in and
did it
, then boys wouldn’t respect them, and word would get around, and they would never get a husband. The whole point of college was to get a husband.
    I had not known anything about this system before I arrived there. It put a serious obstacle in my path toward becoming a great writer.
    Lily, who clearly had given up her burden long since, fell into the Whore category. But the odd thing about it was that she didn’t seem to mind, and she swore she didn’t want a husband, anyway. “Honey, a husband is the
last
thing onmy list!” she’d say, giggling. Lily was the smartest one of us, even though she went to great lengths to hide this fact.
    Later, in 1966, she and the head of the philosophy department, Dr. Wiener, would stage the only demonstration ever held on our campus, walking slowly around the blooming quadrangle carrying signs that read “Get out of Vietnam,” while the rest of us, well oiled and sunning on the rooftops, clutched our bikini tops and peered down curiously at the two of them.
    If Lily was the smartest, Melissa was the dumbest, the nicest, and the least