In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

C H APTER 20 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 The Way Louisiana Girls Smelled My BEST FRIEND IN MY SINGLE YEAR AT NEDERLAND H IGH SCHOOL WAS Wayland Austin, who dyed his blonde hair black to be different, and who became a favorite of my mother because of his manners and chann. Once when he had come by to pick me up in his '50 Ford, she asked me why I also insisted in going places with Pete Hardy, another classmate not nearly so pleasing to mothers as Wayland. "I don't like that Pete Hardy," she said. "He always looks like he's up to something. Wayland is who you ought to spend time with." She was right. Pete looked like he was up to something because he certainly wanted to be but was never able to get up to the level required for dissipation . Wayland Austin, an accomplished conversationalist with older women, looked the part ofa steady reliable ooy, ever ready for a polite joke and a laugh, and he was all that. But he also was the one who introduced me to life across the river, to deeper acquaintance with alcohol and tobacco, and ro girls ready to date a skinny ooy heretofore accustomed mainly to reading books and lying aoout what he hadn't done yet and wanted desperately to do. The first time Wayland took me across the Sabine to the sin centers of Cajun Louisiana we pulled into the parking lot of the Big Oak Qub well after dark. When we got out ofthe car, we could hear the blast ofguitars, drums, and saxophones coming from the band and cutting through the mist and Spanish moss hanging in the trees. It was Jay Richard and the Blues Kings doing a cover of Jimmy Reed's "Honest I Do," and it seemed to lift us off the gravel of the parking lot and float us into the building. Inside, we ordered drinks, kept our eyes avetted ftom those of any males milling about, and scanned the ctowd for signs of females willing to dance. "Don't tell anybody we're ftom Texas," Wayland warned me. "These Louisiana guys don't like Texans worth a damn. They will kick your ass." 87 88 HOME TRUTHS "What if somelxxly asks me where I'm fromr' I said. "Lie," Wayland said. "Tell them you're from Lake Charles or Sulphur. Say you working on an oil rig. Act like you're not still in schooL" That was easier said than done, but I flung in and tried every time anylxxly spoke to me, which was seldom. The girls I approached for dancing had nothing to say, either taking the hand I extended and joining me on the dance floor or refusing to acknowledge the offering to join me in a clinch dance by simply looking away when I walked up to where they were. The first thing I noticed when one accepted the gambit was the overwhelmingly different way Louisiana females smelled as compared to the girls I had sneaked offfrom home to dance with before in Texas at the Catholic recreation hall in Nederland on Friday nights. This new smell wasn't unpleasant, but it was deeper and less perfumed than that from the high school sophomores I picked out for approach at home. The hair ofthe Louisiana girls was damp with sweat from dancing in the heat and humidity of the unairconditioned Big Oak Club, they pushed their faces right into the space between my cheek and my neck, and they had little or nothing to say. They weren't there to become my friend or romantic interest. They wanted to dance, they wanted to drink, they wanted to smoke filter-tipped cigarettes, and they wanted to do all that with somelxxly who acted like he knew what he was doing. I was out ofmy league, and I knew it. But Ididn't let that bother me, satisfied to the core that some of them would let me hold them tight, stumble about the dance floor, and smell that musky scent arising from Louisiana girls. It was hot, I was sweating, the music was so loud I couldn't hear my own voice when I tried to make small talk, but I could feel myself becoming by the minute-there in a honky-tonk across the river- less ofa reader of books and more of a male animal in the hunt. I would have something to lie about back in...

Share