Innocence

by Lucy St. John

Chapter 8

  Sonya tried a knock on the wooden door, which thumped with music and droned with conversation on the other side. It was no use. The din on the other side of the door was too much. Sonya grabbed the knob and pushed in on the door. The rest of us jockeyed for position behind her to glimpse the scene as the door cracked open.

  Sonya pushed the door open about five inches when she encountered a human blockade in the form of a towering and overweight guy with a Pabst tall boy in his hand. He took a slug of suds from the can, smiled and then shouted, “Who may I say is calling?”

  In reality, with that wall of sound in full force, his question appeared more like a silent movie. The guy’s lips moved but none of us really heard what he said.

  “What?” Sonya shouted back.

  The tall guy leaned down, then screamed in her ear.

  “Who you with, Honey?” he shouted in a blast of spittle and beer breath.

  The tall dude turned his head so Sonya could shout the answer.

  “Josh Elliot,” she began. “He invited Monica Creed. Corey Stills said the rest of us could come.”

  The dude lifted his florid face, which was flush with an alcoholic shine and sheened with sweat. He surveyed the faces of the rest of The Five, then broke into a wicked grin.

  “You let Sneaky Stills into your dorm room?” he bellowed. “Better check your underwear drawer.”

  The drinking dude cracked himself up, then took another swig of suds to calm himself down. He wiped a palm on his shirt and extended the hand to Sonya.

  “Name’s Fish,” he said.

  Sonya looked at the guy’s huge hand, then took it in hers and shook. The big, powerful guy was gentle with her, and she returned his smile.

  “Fish?” she shouted back, cocking her head in question.

  “Yeah,” he boomed. “Cause I drink like one.”

  With that, he tipped the PBR tall boy to his mouth, opened his throat to the remaining beer and guzzled down the contents. Upon finishing, he smiled, crushing the can in his hand.

  “You guys look A-Okay to me,” he said. “Matter a fact, you look real good. Come on in. You need anything, you see me. Got it?”

  He jabbed a thumb into the considerable flesh of his massive chest.

  Sonya nodded, then looked back at us.

  “Let’s do this,” she said.

  Fish opened the door and stood aside, his bloodshot eyes walking over each of our bodies approvingly as we scooted inside the dark, dank dorm room.

  A wall of sound enveloped us. So did the smell of stale beer and strong after shave, which the college men had apparently bathed in.

  The common area of the two corner suite dorm rooms was jammed with people. The guys were uniformly upper classmen. Sophomores, mostly. Usually the juniors and seniors moved off campus. Upperclassmen transferring from branch campuses do wind up in the dorms. I suspected this was the case with some of the guys here. They wore their class rank proudly. But some were just as new to sprawling Old State as us colt-like freshmen women.

  There were plenty of women packed in that room. I had a feeling. No. I knew that the party invitation had gone out selectively to the new coeds on campus. We were the pretty prey. And the upper classmen, who by virtue of their age could get easy access to beer and booze, would be the first sexual hunters to try to lure us into bed.

  As my still-adjusting eyes roved around the crowded room, which thrummed with sexual energy and conversation, I noticed that the delicate dance had already begun. Many of the men had zeroed in on their targets. They were working their playboy playbooks to perfection: Keeping the woman’s drink filled. Holding deep conversation in a dark corner. Displaying physical prowess with wild gestures, sweeps of one’s hair and deep, penetrating stares. All this, while moving closer and closer, until the parts of their bodies that were touching out-numbered those that weren’t.

  It was a fact. Close quarters such this all but required physical contact. Just pushing into the room was like rolling through a car wash. Only instead of brushes bearing down, it was other bodies. Hands, torsos, crotches, thighs and breasts. Yours and theirs, brushing and rubbing into each other as one moved deeper into the room and others moved about among the throng.

  We were right there, amid the crush of a college kegger. With Sonya leading the way, we slithered through the warm, sweaty crowd. I watched as Sonya slid between two well-muscled men, her breasts pushing into one man’s chest, her ass grinding into the other’s crotch, as they passed in the night. Sonya cast a knowing gaze up upon the man in front of her. He smiled down, just as knowingly. But no words were exchanged, as he held his full beer cup aloft, en route to his destination. And Sonya pressed on toward ours – the keg in the corner of the room.

  We had to get our red cups of beer to become official members of this, our first, official college party.

  Along the way, I rubbed up against my share of men. But I couldn’t bring myself to raise my eyes to theirs, as Sonya had so boldly done. But the close contact was invigorating, even freeing, somehow. My, did college men have hard bodies. So well-muscled. Thighs like trees. Stomachs like washboards. Arms like athletes. And in between their legs, those pronounced bulges that stood out in their jeans and shorts. Well, I felt a few of those, too, as we navigated the crush of college humanity. This wasn’t high school, anymore. That was for sure.

  Yes, there are plenty of hunks in high school. But they aren’t men. Not really. These guys were. And they made no apologies for it. They were college men living out the best times of their lives. And all the women who surrounded them at parties like this were their perks. That’s just the way it was. Plenty of women accept that bargain. Hell, they welcome it. We are sexual beings, too. And it is the twenty-first century. There is no stigma for a woman being just as sexual as any man.

  I told myself all this, even as I could almost see the sexual energy snapping like St. Elmo’s fire between the close-knit, nearly aroused bodies in the tightly packed room. All of it fueled by alcohol, raging hormones and the heady rush of young adults’ first flush of freedom.

  But I didn’t know if I was ready to buy into it. Not yet. I must have worn this reluctance and reservation like a Scarlet Letter, because I’m sure Josh Elliot sensed it as he approached us at the keg.

  Surely, he sensed it and responded accordingly.

  Boy, did he ever!