Your Nostalgia is Killing Me

     We parked behind a Peugeot in Cindy’s circular drive and chased the sound of voices down a slate path that led to the back of the house. The path widened and became a patio around a pool whose surface sparkled with heat and reflected moonlight. “Jesus,” Lottie said, either in warning or exclamation, or both. “Yeah, really,” I said, staring at the pool, the patio, the curtained French doors thrown open to the lawn, and at the tanned girls in halter tops and peasant skirts lounging in iron chairs at the poolside, and the boys in shorts and polo shirts standing in the living room by the liquor cabinet, mixing drinks with sneaky names—Slow Comfortable Screw, Sex on the Beach—and playing Bob Dylan on the stereo.
     At the edge of the patio, we stopped. I was careful to pause at the start of things. There was a chance I would giggle, or sing show tunes, or play with my hair. I had to remind myself to be cool. So far, none of the girls had seen us. Most of them were cheerleaders, like Cindy, and they could have been as far away as a football field, they seemed so out of reach. Still, some of them were my friends.
     I liked to hang out with girls because they were not afraid of anything. They were the real boys, lying, fearless, obscene, and indestructible. When they were not babysitting for their moms’ friends, they cut class and drove drunk and made out in parked cars with boys so trashy even I could shun them. Or they crossed the Delaware River into Pennsylvania where they passed for legal in redneck bars and shot pool with bearded guys who lived in hippie communes out past Easton.
     And they never got caught. Girls were shrewd. They were painful and impressive. Yet they made a show of their magnificence in order to attract—who? Jesus? Hollywood? Eternity? No, boys. The object of their charm and guts and rage was teenage boys.
     Except Lottie. She didn’t care about men, maybe because she had so many brothers. Cindy, in contrast, was all about guys. And the guys at her party were stalking out of the house, across the lawn, gleaming like open razors.
     Ten, twelve guys. Who were they? Cindy had rounded up a bunch of cute guys for her cheerleader girlfriends. Preppy white boys from Princeton. Older, richer. Nineteen was older. They would have better weed and their own cars.
     Strangers. Nobody I knew, which should have been a relief. A dozen guys who hadn’t heard I was a fag. But that was almost worse. Because now I would have to watch them find out.