Ghosts, werewolves, and college students

NIGHT OF THE WEREWOLF

The house roared and chuckled and haw-hawed. Another joke! Another offense! It enjoyed its new denizens, although it had had many, for these new ones were its most fantastic. It especially loved the deceptions and the antagonisms and the overall tension stretched tightly from room to room like a filament of miscommunication.

The conservatives—Karlof Spenz, a wide-mouthed, wide-bodied runt who claimed descent from the royal house of Moravia; Duff Logan, a future bean-pole thin and tall army officer; Recned Packer, a burr head straight off the farm; Stinko Schultz, the stubby, former-green-beret house counselor; and Arrowhead Lawdon, the youngest and most naïve small-town boy—went toe-to-toe politically against the liberals—Gypsum Willoughby, a pock-marked intellectual farm boy; Tea Boo Alain, an effeminate but darkly bearded swirl of superstitions with his/her own ghost Perdoom; Gymbo Downes, lost-soul surfer from the coast; Baby James Bush, a fragile but ambitious Kennedyite; Red Chinson, a suave womanizer and future minister of the Lord; Cucù Samwell, a wounded but clear-headed linguist; Lothario Levitz, a Jewish lover boy; Motorman Finch, a working-class hero who knew everything about automobile engines and was learning everything about the engine of the universe: physics; and Nomachrome Wilson, the sweet-faced observer who wanted only to know and understand his fellow whack-knackers. The war and civil rights were being contested in the living room and bedrooms, so the house heard every argument, even the scream when Tea Boo discovered that someone had punched holes in the eyes of Martin Luther King Jr., whose image had hung over his/her bed like Buddha.

Ah! The deceptions, too! These were sexual. No one wanted everyone else to know exactly what he was up to, but everyone wanted to know what everyone else was up to. These cross-purposes jammed curiosity against privacy, a contest no one could win.

The house itself was deceptive—a Jekyll and Hyde house. Its front porch sat away from the street as if anchored in bourgeois respectability, while its rear teetered on stilts and a long stair led down to a shaded, fenced backyard as if sheltering wild perverse experiments.

It was a shotgun house, so a water balloon thrown with power through the front door passed through a long, narrow living room, a crowded kitchen with cooking on the right side and cleaning on the left, the edge of the perpendicular dining room, and had a good chance of splattering on the screen of the back door. Off this busy corridor, six doors led into nine rooms from front to back: two three-bed bedrooms (Lothario, Gypsum, Recned in the first; and in the second Cucù, Arrowhead, and Baby James) and a shared central bathroom on the left; one four-bed-bedroom and a bathroom on the right (Tea Boo, Nomachrome, Karlof and Gymbo)—all before the kitchen. After the kitchen came the house counselor’s bedroom (Stinko) on the left beyond the dining room with its long, narrow table and on the right a bathroom and a three-bed bedroom for senior house members (Duff, Motorman and Red).

The house reveled in its divisions and assignations, each room being a microcosm of a wider reality—loosening sexuality, psychic experimentation, and protests for or against civil rights and the war. Alcohol and parties permeated the long weekends; coffee and study, the long weeks. Sex permeated everything day and night, morning and evening. How could it not with so many young men, so eager and anxious at the same time to know how the world would work for each of them? They did learn from their books, but they also learned from one another.

Each was caught up in his own grim quest: for degree, for love, for sex, for enlightenment or for power. Some were virgins, some hadn’t been for some time, and some were trying as hard as they could not to be any longer. Gymbo exhausted himself chasing any girl he could catch. Red exhausted girl after girl since he wasn’t about to commit. Lothario had had sex since he was 12, so he was now looking for love. Nomachrome (Noma for short) could have had sex and had come close, but so far had held back.

The house relished the wonderful chaos that kicked up its spirit.

At the center Karlof stood off Tea Boo, both gay but both in denial. Karlof bragged about the beautiful women that he had had, a recent Miss Florida among them. “She was horny. She was lonely. I was her friend. We did it in the surf. God, was it great!” And he squealed so gleefully that Noma knew he was lying.

Confronting him with a curl of his bunghole mouth, Tea Boo said, “You never had a woman in your life. You’re as queer as a two dollar bill.”

Karlof squinted and smiled broadly and protested. “Call her if you don’t believe me. She’ll tell you—you ugly fag.”

Noma thought, it takes one to know one.

Tea Boo teared and huffed into his room.

Karlof threw his hands in the air, thespian that he was, laughed and went to his room, which was Noma’s room . . . and now Tea Boo’s room because Cucù and Baby James had tossed him/her out in favor of Arrowhead.

Most of the house didn’t know what to think, but Noma felt they were both gay, despite Karlof’s heterosexual braggadocio, and Tea Boo’s determined attempts at dating females. Noma had met a couple of his/her “dates” and both told him that they were just friends, “Tea Boo’s very bright, but he’s not my cup of . . . you know,” said one.

Cucù, Noma’s best friend, had been dating a cute girl named Carlota from a house down the street. Cucù and Noma had double-dated once, and Noma had seen the other couple kissing and making out on the porch.

Then one day, Cucù said, “Noma, you and I are friends.”

“Yeah, I’d say so.”

“Then I have to tell you something. I hope you understand.”

“Ok.”

“I’m gay.”

“But, what about Carlota?”

“She’s nice, but we’ve never gone beyond making out.”

“Oh.”

“Are we still friends?”

“Sure. Have you told her?”

“No, but I’m going to the next time we go out.”

And he did. Then the next weekend he invited Noma to a party, but not as a date. “Come along,” he said. “We’re going to Thornton’s. If you don’t mind being around a bunch of homos.”

Noma had met Thornton and thought him pleasant and he had nothing else to do, so curious he went. To his surprise, Gypsum went, too, although Noma had rarely seen him raise his head from his books. Also to Noma’s surprise, neither Tea Boo nor Karlof had been invited.

The evening started with Thornton, Dave (his roommate), Cucù, Gypsum and Noma sitting around the kitchen table and drinking and smoking and talking. Bottles of gin and rum were unscrewed and poured forth. The talk first bubbled as a discourse on the war and civil rights. Then it boiled into a discussion of who was gay and who wasn’t.

Gypsum had begun smoking—in fact, chain smoking—although Noma had never seen him smoke before. Gypsum threw down another drink and snarled, “Tea Boo is dirty and vile.”

Cucù nodded and said, “I second that.”

Noma said, “What about Karlof?”

Gypsum growled, “A lying fag. I think the lady doth protest too much.” Then he began laughing and giggling.

“Who’s Karlof?” asked Thornton on his second rum and coke.

“A thes-s-s-pian,” Gypsum lisped.

“A More-raving princess,” said Cucù and everybody laughed.

Noma lost track of the rants, but suddenly the others seemed to be pairing off and heading for bedrooms. Noma curled up on a sofa despite offers to join one or another couple. “No thanks. I’m good.”

The next morning after breakfast, they returned to the house, which had been deprived of their fuel for its chaos. It felt cheated upon, cuckolded by another house where chaos had gone.

The house counselor Stinko suspected pleasurable misbehavior and threatened to kick anyone out of the house who was sexing and drugging. “I want everybody straight!” he screamed, his face reddening above bulging veins. Then he stomped off to study in the library.

Red led a cabal to put Stinko’s hollow-legged, metal bedposts up on empty coke bottles. “He’s a flopper,” said Red. “When he slams himself on top, these’ll shatter like hand grenades.”

The cabal went to bed and waited. Late they heard the ex-soldier’s booted stomp into the house, the boots and clothes hitting the floor, the shower running, then—the house held its breath—the shower ceased—minutes to go—then the flop and bottles popped and bed banged on floor. Feet raging along the floor, lights coming on, doors flying open, “Everybody out! Who did this!” shrieked the counselor.

The residents were dumb as muted bells, pealing inside only.

“No tell, no food!” screamed Stinko.

Baby James, budding advocate, said, “You can’t do that.” He pushed his glasses up on his nose bridge.

“Then it’s shepherd’s pie all week! And lights out at ten!”

“How will you study?” said Noma.

“I like shepherd’s pie,” said Arrowhead sincerely.

“Ah, fuck all of you,” said Stinko and stomped back to his room. The cabal, feeling a little guilty, followed him back to his room and cleaned up the broken glass.

The house sighed pleasurably.

After that night, Stinko eased up, realizing that his charges weren’t the commies, the VC enemy; just searching fellow Americans.

But still tensions stretched tautly.

Tea Boo and Karlof struggled lustfully against each other, pointing fingers, calling names, showing rumps.

Tea Boo touted the supernatural strength of his ghost Perdoom, who stalked him/her and threatened him/her and all around him/her.

So Karlof hung a Greek cross above his bed.

Karlof hinted that werewolf blood ran in his veins; his family after all came from the Carpathian mountain range.

So Tea Boo hung a Roman cross above his/her bed.

And another above Noma’s bed.

And gave Gymbo a pendant cross to wear.

“To protect you against that monster,” explained Tea Boo.

Gymbo and Noma accepted the protection more to appease Tea Boo than out of fear of Karlof. Everyone else in the house was creeped out.

The house itself chuckled at the brilliant irrationality.

Then came the night of the werewolf.

Barely asleep, Noma heard a gasp and a dropped drink hit the floor and a fumbling opening of doors and crying. He looked up and saw Tea Boo in bathrobe and head towel like Norma Jean stagger backwards out of the room.

What now? he thought.

Gymbo also woke, rubbed his eyes, and mumbled, “What’s going on?”

Both got out of bed and went out to the living room where the house’s villagers were gathering.

Tea Boo gasped, “Shut him in! Close the door! Karlof’s turning! The moon is full!”

Noma did so, but he stepped inside, so he was alone in the dark in the room.

Across the room, Karlof snoozed supine, his face up, his wide mouth grinning, his incisors glowing in the dark: his canines had been spotlighted by a pinhole shaft of light from the streetlight shining through a torn shade—the house’s little joke.

Noma stepped out where the fearful mob had gathered and said, “It’s just a trick of the light, but it is weird. Everybody step inside and I’ll close the door, so you can see.”

Shaken Tea Boo wouldn’t go, his/her fears too present.

But the others did and saw the trick the house had played on all of them. The crowd dispersed with giggling relief.

On the way back to his room as he passed Tea Boo, Cucù said, “You two need to do each other and get it over with.”

The house roared with laughter.

END


This story is loosely based on experiences I had during my freshman and sophomore years at Florida State University.  It's an amalgam of events and people that I knew condensed into one semester.  I was in a scholarship house with fourteen other young men.  The house, except for its personification, was pretty much as described.  Four of us turned out to be gender-challenged, although only one had been secure enough to come entirely out of the closet.  All of us were intelligent and most academically gifted and ambitious.  We did argue about civil rights and the Vietnam War and drank alcohol freely.  I found the atmosphere simultaneously stimulating and aggravating.

"Night of the Werewolf" was first published in 2009 in the short story collection Touch Me .