“I’d bring you a bottle of champagne, if that’s what it took.” She considered this. “Well, no. Not on my salary. A bottle of Cold Duck, though.”
“Doors open at seven-thirty?” Actually I knew they did. The posters were up all over the school.
“Right.”
“And it’s just a record-hop. No band. That’s good.”
“Why?”
“Live bands can cause problems. I shapped a dance once where the drummer sold home brew beer at intermission. That was a pleasant experience.”
“Were there fights?” She sounded horrified. Also fascinated.
“Nope, but there was a whole lot of puking. The stuff was spunky.”
“This was in Florida?”
It had been at Lisbon High, in 2009, so I told her yes, in Florida. I also told her I’d be happy to co-chaperone the hop.
“Thank you so much, George.”
“My pleasure, ma’am.”
And it absolutely was.
The Pep Club was in charge of the Sadie Hawkins, and they’d done a bang-up job: lots of crepe streamers wafting down from the gymnasium rafters (silver and gold, of course), lots of ginger ale punch, lemon-snap cookies, and red velvet cupcakes provided by the Future Homemakers of America. The Art Department-small but dedicated-contributed a cartoon mural that showed the immortal Miss Hawkins herself, chasing after the eligible bachelors of Dogpatch. Mattie Shaw and Mike’s girlfriend, Bobbi Jill, did most of the work, and they were justifiably proud. I wondered if they still would be seven or eight years from now, when the first wave of women’s libbers started burning their bras and demonstrating for full reproductive rights. Not to mention wearing tee-shirts that said things like I AM NOT PROPERTY and A WOMAN NEEDS A MAN LIKE A FISH NEEDS A BICYCLE.
The night’s DJ and master of ceremonies was Donald Bellingham, a sophomore. He arrived with a totally ginchy record collection in not one but two Samsonite suitcases. With my permission (Sadie just looked bewildered), he hooked up his Webcor phonograph and his dad’s preamp to the school’s PA system. The gym was big enough to provide natural reverb, and after a few preliminary feedback shrieks, he got a booming sound that was awesome. Although born in Jodie, Donald was a permanent resident of Rockville, in the state of Daddy Cool. He wore pink-rimmed specs with thick lenses, belt-in-the-back slacks, and saddle shoes so grotesquely square they were authentically crazy, man. His face was an exploding zit-factory below a Brylcreem-loaded Bobby Rydell duck’s ass. He looked like he might get his first kiss from a real live girl around the age of forty-two, but he was fast and funny with the mike, and his record collection (which he called “the stack-o-wax” and “Donny B.’s round mound of sound”) was, as previously noted, the ginchiest.
“Let’s kick-start this party with a blast from the past, a rock n roll relic from the grooveyard of cool, a golden gasser, a platter that matters, move your feet to the real gone beat of Danny… and the JOOONIERS! ”
“At the Hop” nuked the gym. The dance started as most of them do in the early sixties, just the girls jitterbugging with the girls. Feet in penny loafers flew. Petticoats swirled. After awhile, though, the floor started to fill up with boy-girl couples… for the fast dances, at least, more current stuff like “Hit the Road Jack” and “Quarter to Three.”
Not many of the kids would have made the cut on Dancing with the Stars, but they were young and enthusiastic and obviously having a ball. It made me happy to see them. Later, if Donny B. didn’t have the good sense to lower the lights a bit, I’d do it myself. Sadie was nervous at first, ready for trouble, but these kids had just come to have fun. There were no invading hordes from Henderson or any other school. She saw that and began to loosen up a little.
After about forty minutes of nonstop music (and four red velvet cupcakes), I leaned toward Sadie and said, “Time for Warden Amberson to do his first circuit of the building and make sure no one in the exercise yard is engaging in inappropriate behavior.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“I want you to keep an eye on the punch bowl. If any young man approaches it with a bottle of anything, even cough syrup, I want you to threaten him with electrocution or castration, whichever you think might be more effective.”
She leaned back against the wall and laughed until tears sparkled in the corners of her eyes. “Get out of here, George, you’re awful. ”
I went. I was glad I’d made her laugh, but even after three years, it was easy to forget how much more effect sexually tinged jokes have in the Land of Ago.
I caught a couple making out in one of the more shadowy nooks on the east side of the gym-he prospecting inside her sweater, she apparently trying to suck his lips off. When I tapped the young prospector on the shoulder, they leaped apart. “Save it for The Bluffs after the dance,” I said. “For now, go on back to the gym. Walk slow. Cool off. Get some punch.”
