The Electric Eye

I held out a fistful of crumpled dollar bills and flashed my teeth. The braces had come off two years ago. Now all I needed were breasts.

It was my junior year. All the preppy kids were sock-hopping in our Atlanta high school gym, while my friends and I pursued less wholesome activities. We met in the 7-Eleven parking lot, under the neon Budweiser sign that strobed and buzzed. After we pooled our cash and assessed each other’s makeup, we dispatched the evening’s most alluring girl to intercept the first lone male customer who appeared.

Tonight, I’d been elected. My guts knotted as I tapped the man’s sleeve. “Buy us some Boone’s Farm?”

 “Uh, sure. I guess,” Random Guy said, giving me the full eyeball sweep.

He took the cash and entered the store. Within two minutes, he delivered our brown bag-wrapped bottle and slid some change into my trembling hand before skulking away.

Old or young, men hardly ever refused us. They rarely even said anything suggestive, and we never worried we’d be assaulted. What we did fear was that one of our parents might cruise by and bust us in the act. Deb’s mama would have grounded her for life. Angie’s would have whupped her with a leather belt, Southern style, and Jill’s daddy—well, we never actually knew what went on at Jill’s house, but sometimes she showed up at school with peculiar bruises that she tried to hide and refused to discuss.

My own father left the disciplining to Mom, who never hit me with anything except her sharply pointed words. “Your reputation is priceless,” she’d told me that very evening. “Guard it carefully.”

Glasses perched on the tip of his nose, my dad looked up from his editing. He nodded wisely. I waited until they both glanced away and rolled my eyes so vigorously that one of my tinted contact lenses almost popped out.

A few months earlier, in 1969, Dad had accepted a job at Emory University, uprooting us from Kingston, Ontario to the Deep South. I still seethed with resentment. For the first time in my life, being Canadian was a liability. I’d been sent home from school for wearing skirts that were too short. I’d been forced to attend pep rallies and watch our elite drill team march around in formations like nascent Nazis. I’d been mocked for my accent.

Really, Mom had no business lecturing me about anything. Still, thank God she hadn’t—yet—caught me asking strangers to buy me liquor.

Once we got hold of our cheap wine, we passed the bottle and took turns chugging. Then, nicely liquored up, we piled into Angie’s car. She was from Alabama, and she knew Jesus loved her—making her our safest bet. Her wreck of a car, Jezebel, never broke down and always got us home safely, practically on autopilot. Jill, Deb and I sprawled across the passenger seats, hanging our arms and legs out the windows and giggling.

Inevitably Deb groaned. Her face was greenish. “Oh, oh.”

“Pull over!” I yelled to Angie, who executed the maneuver as smartly as if she were sober.

Deb dropped to her knees by the roadside. I held her long brown hair back as she heaved. Afterward, I handed her a stick of Doublemint, so she’d be minty fresh in case later anybody asked her to dance.

On we continued, all the way to The Electric Eye—a teen hangout catering to the non-drill team crowd. It was in the A&P Plaza where Mom bought our groceries. From the outside, it blended in with the rest of the mall, but as we lined up, the sidewalk vibrated under our feet.

We paid our two-buck fee and entered the murky darkness. The only drinks on tap at the bar were nonalcoholic; we bypassed it and edged our way through dense cigarette smoke toward the band. The talent changed from week to week, but the amped-up volume was always a full-body sensory assault. After tonight, my head would ring for three days, and I’d probably be deaf by forty—but really, one might as well be dead by forty.

Back then, girls didn’t dance with each other. My friends and I hovered, trying to lock eyes with the desirables and avoiding the socially-awkwards. Given the band’s unrelenting barrage of Sly and the Family Stone harmonic progressions, a boy’s best move was a nonchalant head flick in the direction of the swaying bodies. Not as successful were the attempts to converse over the booming bass lines. To this day, my cheeks flame when I remember the time I kept yelling “yes” to a guy who was only asking me for a light. When we both realized what each of us wanted, we staggered away in opposite directions as if we’d been dealt mortal blows. The humiliation was profound, and I vowed never to return.

A week later, hopped up on cheap wine, I was back, feeling flirty in my new fringed suede vest and matching boots. I put my weight on my left foot and did a hip thrust to the right, striving for my best Cheryl Tiegs impression. Nobody asked me to dance. I struck another pose.

Angie was across the room, regaling the bartender with one of her outrageous yarns—or trying to save his soul. Jo and Deb were both partnered up and undulating on the dance floor to something that might have been Sugarloaf’s “Green-Eyed Lady,” if the walloping bass line could be trusted. I mentally ticked off things I could be doing other than standing here feeling scorned. My much-avoided Sociology essay was growing in appeal, but I had no way of getting home.

Around eleven o’clock, it happened— a touch on my forearm. I peeped up into dark eyes under sweeping black eyebrows. His mouth and jaw were firm and manly. His hair was meticulous chaos.

But I wasn’t about to make the same mistake again. Maybe he just wanted a cigarette, or a stick of gum, or my girlfriend’s phone number. I drew myself up to my full five-foot stature and offered him an enigmatic stare.

He waggled his cleft chin toward the dance floor. Was this really happening? My heart thumped, as he took my hand and drew me into the sweaty mass—just as the music stopped. I turned to go, but he didn’t set me free, and when the band struck up the next tune, we danced.

My rule was that slow songs should be avoided, but it was too late. The band twanged away, trying to do justice to a schmaltzy ditty by Bread, and the man—he was at least seventeen—drew me into his arms and fitted himself into the embryonic curves of my body. My nose was squashed against his sternum. He smelled of Brut and pot. I hoovered him in, as we two-footed around in spirals.

“Make It with You” was a long song. Suggestive, too. I’d like to make it with you. Actually, more than suggestive. As the band wailed on, he pressed closer. I felt womanly as his appreciation of me grew. Up until now, hard-ons had grossed me out. Somehow, this was different.

The final chord faded, and we merged into the best kiss, with full-on tonguing and cushiony, insistent lips. My toes clenched inside my boots as I felt the slight scrape of his budding facial hair against my cheek. We stood locked in place until the band went on break, and he asked for my name and number. I wrote it out; he folded it carefully and put it in his pocket. He told me his name was Ben, and he’d call soon.

Angie grabbed my arm. We had to leave—Deb had been sick all over the girls’ bathroom, and our curfews were coming up quickly. Ben and I had a final soul-stirring smooch, and I allowed myself to be pulled away.

No cool boy would call a girl the next day, or even the day after that, so at first I didn’t panic. I fantasized about Ben and what we could do together. Maybe we’d get tickets and go to the Alice Cooper concert. Maybe he could be my date for prom—but only if he didn’t think it too lame. Whatever we chose to do, there’d be lots of kissing, and—I hardly dared imagine it—more, whatever that might entail. I doodled “Ben” all over my notebooks. I waited for him to contact me.

But as I kept crossing off the dates on my 1970 Gemini calendar, I gradually realized he was never going to phone. I’d be alone forever, doomed to spend my life trying to de-frizz my hair on jumbo curlers, while all the southern belles got the cute boys.

I stopped returning my friends’ calls and stayed in my room, listening to Gordon Lightfoot and crying. I told my mom I was too sick to go to school. She didn’t argue, but she gave me a meaningful look—the kind I never understood but that involved severely pinched eyebrows and lip wrinkles.

After I’d played hooky for two days, she slipped a note under my door. It was four pages long, filled with her advice—in other words, useless in this modern, urban age of flower power and free love. My temples throbbed as I read it.

Being a lady can be a bit of a bore, but it certainly takes willpower and decency. Boys are funny—they are easily aroused sexually and then appear to be hurt if you don’t consent to be a human garbage can. However, those girls who think they will become popular by consenting can never regain what they lose. Moral: Your reputation is a precious thing—don’t let it be suspect because a boy’s word will be believed.

We didn’t discuss her note—not that day and not for the next fifty years, either—but to keep her from ever writing another such gruesome message, I pulled myself together. I faked cheeriness and went back to school. I never saw Ben again—which is just as well, because I would have gone out of my way to flout my mother’s instructions. Human garbage can?—hell, yeah, sign me up!

For months, I searched for him at The Electric Eye. I danced with other boys, but never felt the same magnetic attraction. I went back to being the dependable one, saving my friends from themselves when they were sick or so drunk they couldn’t function. I was a more or less good daughter. Despite the ringing in my ears, I didn’t go deaf.

Eventually, I dated, but I wasn’t tempted to become a human garbage can—at least, not overnight. In senior year I got straight A’s and scored well enough on my SATs to be accepted at Queen’s University, a blessed thousand miles north in the Promised Land. There’d be no Electric Eye there, but there’d be no beady-eyed mother, either.

Before I left Atlanta, I attended my high school graduation, dressed in my pristine white gown like all the other girls, virginal or not. When they gave me my diploma, I swung the gold tassel to the other side of my mortarboard—proof that I was moving on to the next stage of life. A rush of sweet freedom zinged from my heels to my shoulder blades, almost bearing me aloft.

In the audience, a woman hooted. The timbre was familiar, but there was no way that my proper mother would make such a vulgar noise. I scanned the crowd. Dear god, there she was—high up in the stands, hollering and clapping, in her state of emancipated euphoria. I grinned and tossed her a kiss. From far away, I couldn’t make out the blue of her eyes, but I felt love and pride beaming down on me. Old-fashioned and overprotective, maybe—but organic, not electric.