For back to school season, here’s an appropriately outrageous story about a set of legendary faculty parties, the kind that students can only imagine even if they happen practically every weekend.
The shenanigans are expertly crafted by Claude Clayton Smith, who himself knows from faculty parties: a longtime academic and graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he once took a class with Richard Yates, who was often a few sheets to the wind. Ask him for some stories about workshop romance (offline).
“. . . are you not ashamed
With this immodest clamorous outrage?”
—Henry VI, Part I (IV, i, 89-90)
THE AUTUMN OUTRAGE was one of several legendary parties Michael and I hosted for the faculty at the high school where we were teaching. Unlike the TGIF Michael dubbed The Time Louis Fell in The Brook, the Autumn Outrage was my inspiration, the theme perfectly fitting the goings-on at the high school, which Michael might have incorporated into his course in Problems of the 20th Century as Problems of the Desperate Faculty. I was in the English Department, and we were much younger then, when I conceived of the Autumn Outrage in order to consummate my affair with Lisa Wilson upstairs while her husband John lay drunk downstairs.
Yet fate would intervene in two ways, as is its fecking wont, the first being the letter from Adele that arrived on the very morning of the Autumn Outrage, for Chrissake, forwarded by my parents and revealing that my old flame Adele H. was now living, out of all possible places in the USA, in South Philly. Which meant that if I wanted to reignite that spark, I’d be driving back and forth between Springfield and South Philly, returning at six a.m. in order to be at school at seven-thirty, a hell of a schedule when teaching five classes and coaching three sports.
Lisa Wilson was a California girl, therefore more “hip” than the other young women on the faculty—married or otherwise—because the Revolution, with all of its free love and sweet-smelling pot, had originated in California, gradually sweeping eastward until it landed in Pennsylvania. And I suppose that sweet-smelling pot—in this case, Mexican red—was the cause of our affair, because it was after we had bonged it up together one Friday afternoon that Lisa and I became inseparable.
I was happy for the bong, its convoluted tubes cooling the hot smoke so I didn’t choke. Lisa, a pro at pot, had filled the freezer with Milky Ways. “We’ll be needing munchies,” she said.
“I want a Milky Way now,” I insisted. “It’s Friday afternoon and I’m hungry, for Chrissake.” But Lisa wouldn’t break out the munchies until she’d displayed her coffee table books while we puffed at her bong—page after page of full-color photos, every one of which leaped to life before my smoke-hazed cannabis-saturated eyes, magnifying every feature a thousand-fold and making me scream with delight.
“Outrageous!” Lisa yelled each time I screamed with delight. It was her favorite expression, and so the cat, I suppose, is out of the proverbial bag—the Autumn Outrage was named with Lisa in mind.
Tears rolled down my cheeks as I vehemently insisted that each successive photograph was the most beautiful feckin’ photo I’d ever seen. Then Lisa flipped the page and yet another photograph would leap to life—trees in which the bark seemed porous, waves that seemed to be moving—and I would laugh and scream and cry, “That’s the most beautiful feckin’ photo I’ve ever seen in my entire life!”
When John Wilson got home, we were into the munchies, smearing frozen Milky Ways on our stoned faces, the delightful cold sensation of which made my lips buzz.
“You must’ve started early,” John said, “but don’t let me interfere. I’m just gonna grab a bite to eat and head back to the library.” Happy-go-lucky guy that he was.
“Outrageous!” Lisa replied.
And so, John grabbed a bite to eat and headed back to the library—he was in grad school in Philly, intending to make his fortune in corporate law—after which I kissed Lisa for the very first time. Then I tried to drive home, so stoned that I got stuck at a traffic light at an intersection, watching the bright red orb with fascination. When the light turned green, the fascination grew a thousand-fold, but it was the caution light that blew me away. I could hear myself screaming, “That’s the most beautiful feckin’ caution light I’ve ever seen in my entire life!” To which Lisa no doubt would have replied, “Outrageous!”
It took some jerk leaning on his horn behind me to budge me from that intersection. Fortunately, at that hour, traffic was light, otherwise I might not have made it home alive. And the Autumn Outrage might never have happened.
* * *
Lisa Wilson was not beautiful or even pretty. She had long black hair with no sheen or shine or shape to it, with dark eyes and an angular face that was not quite proportionally square, so her high cheekbones were not quite high cheekbones, just high. It was her out-front (dare I say outrageous?) personality that made her attractive. She always said what was on her mind, which made her popular with the students. And she could be irresistibly impulsive, which is why I felt that it would be easy to consummate my affair with her at the Autumn Outrage.
One Saturday morning, for example, she called up to say that we had to go to New York for her cousin’s art exhibition. Pronto. I didn’t even know she had a cousin, for Chrissake, but there I was, early one Saturday morning, driving Lisa all the way up to New York, where her cousin was having an exhibition of her paintings at a mall on the outskirts of the city. Writhing galactic magma said the reviews of Lisa’s cousin’s work, in an attempt to describe what she was attempting to express in her abstract art. I drove like hell just to get us there before the exhibition closed, twisting Lisa’s braless nipples all the way as she discoursed on art. She wasn’t getting her fill of art in the Philly area and felt she needed a dose of her cousin’s writhing galactic magma, the viewing of which was also a kind of coming-out party for me, as I was coming up to New York in the guise of Lisa’s latest lover, although we had not yet consummated our affair beyond me twisting her nipples every chance I got.
Lisa’s cousin looked a lot like Lisa and I could tell they were glad to see each other. I could also tell that her cousin was checking me out, as I myself checked out her writhing galactic magma, drawing at last what seemed to be a smile of approval from her, which made the wild drive up from Pennsylvania all the more worth it.
“I’ve got to step out for a sec,” Lisa announced to me on another such occasion not long after our trip to New York, leaving me alone in her apartment. The way she said it made it seem like she was just bopping down to the 7-11 for some Milky Ways, but I soon found myself sitting in an eerily quiet apartment for quite some time, wondering if it was proper etiquette to fire up the bong all by myself. Then Lisa’s husband John returned.
“Where’s Lisa?” he said.
“She stepped out for a sec.”
“And when was that?”
“About two hours ago.”
As luck would have it, we heard someone in the hallway and Lisa soon entered, as if on stage. “Ta daaa!” She’d been to the stylist’s and had her long hair cut short—very short—like Jean Seberg’s in Joan of Arc. Only she didn’t look like Jean Seberg in Joan of Arc because Jean Seberg had fine high cheekbones whether or not she was in Joan of Arc. But Lisa had an angular face that was not quite proportionally square, so her high cheekbones were not quite high cheekbones. Just high.
John was sanguine, if resigned. “So, you really went and did it,” he said.
“Isn’t it outrageous?” Lisa said.
“I think I’ll be going,” I said. “I told Michael I’d meet him for dinner.”
* * *
Fast forward now to the Autumn Outrage, the main objective of which, as I’ve said, was thwarted by fate in two ways. The first was the letter from Adele H. that had been forwarded to me from my parents, arriving on a Saturday morning when the Autumn Outrage was scheduled for that very evening, dividing my mind between mounting a renewed acquaintance with Adele H. while simultaneously mounting Lisa Wilson. As Thomas Jefferson had once said, a mind divided unto itself cannot stand. Or was that Abe Lincoln in reference to the feckin’ union? Well, there were now two unions that I hoped to preserve by feckin’, and there was nothing to do but take ’em one at a time.
We had decorated the finished basement of Michael’s parents’ place with construction-paper autumn leaves and signs that said Outrageous!—the latter signaling that another legendary evening was in-the-making to rival The Time Louis Fell in The Brook. The Night of Danger in The Air (coming soon!) would have to wait until spring.
People began arriving at seven-thirty and kept arriving all night, ringing the doorbell, which no one answered, then making their way into the house through the front door and across the living room into the kitchen, where the door to the basement had been left open with an arrow pointing the way, an arrow, of course, stating in bold autumn colors, Outrageous! Once downstairs, all guests were instructed to help themselves to drinks. Michael and I always chipped in about fifty bucks apiece for our outlandish parties—a tidy sum in those days—for the requisite booze and munchies, the latter including, in this case, sliced ham and rye bread and mustard and mayo for simply outrageous sandwiches.
Well, the astute party-goers making their way downstairs might have noticed a hall off the upstairs kitchen, leading to several bedrooms where some happened to throw their coats. But at the end of that hall was a little den with a day bed, which I planned to use as a night bed, once Lisa was primed and her husband was dead drunk. My main chore for the evening was to prevent Lisa from slipping into a dark mood, as she could on occasion, which I did by twisting her nipples whenever the occasion presented itself—when we were dancing, for example, or as she exclaimed Outrageous! whenever someone new descended the stairs into the basement.
One person in that category was my younger brother from New England, who, in retrospect, might have carried my letter from Adele H. himself, thus saving my parents the postage, only my parents didn’t know he was coming, nor do I think they would have approved, what with the example I’d be setting if all went well. Having heard of The Time Louis Fell in The Brook, my brother had driven down in his Jeep, with the top down, bringing a date to whom he promised a wild evening after the long day’s drive.
“Outrageous!” Lisa exclaimed when I introduced her to him. “All the way from New England in a Jeep with the top down! You’re just like your brother!” Which was news to me.
It was about midnight when John Wilson conked off on a couch in the corner of the basement while others danced non-stop to “The Age of Aquarius,” which someone was playing over and over again as if trying to set a record for the Guinness Book of World Records. Given all those sweating bodies, writhing like the galactic magma of Lisa’s cousin’s abstract expressionist art, the air temperature had risen considerably. In fact, it was more than stuffy, and so I winked at Lisa and said, nodding at her husband in the corner, “I hear the air’s cooler upstairs—in that little den at the end of the hall.”
“Outrageous!” Lisa said. “Time to let it all hang out and flap in the breeze!” Lisa was always for letting things hang out and flap in the breeze.
Well, it was in taking those stairs too hastily—in order to take Lisa Wilson on that day bed in the den at the end of the hall—that made the outrageous mixture of beer, liquor, and ham-on-rye sandwiches with mustard and mayo in my stomach do its flip of fate, just as Lisa and I reeled into that den and she was lifting her sweater over her head, exposing her large and firm nipple-twisted breasts. Which was when I puked all over that day bed, the one I’d been intending to use as a night bed.
I know it has been written that, having made your bed you must lie in it, and I suppose Lisa Wilson knew that too, but my vehement vomiting only served to bring on one of her dark moods. After which there was nothing to do but respond to the outrageous letter that had been forwarded to me from Adele H., which I did that very weekend, as soon as my hangover left town.
* * *
Her reply was swift, and two weeks later I drove into town to see her, dressed in blue jeans and a blue turtleneck under a blue button-down shirt. In retrospect, all that blue seems symbolically appropriate, good English teacher that I was.
When I rang the bell to her apartment Adele answered with a finger to her lip. “Shhh,” she said. “Derrick’s not quite asleep.”
“Derrick?”
“My son. He’s four.”
“Ah.” Her letter had not mentioned Derrick. Just that she’d left her husband and was getting a divorce. “Well,” I said. “I like kids.”
The apartment in which Adele had just set up shop in her role as a soon-to-be-divorced-woman-who-has-just-written-to-her-old-flame, was rather plain and bare and half-furnished, given that Ronald—the father of Derrick—had taken the other half of the furnishings. Ronald is how Adele referred to her husband. She didn’t call him Ron or Ronnie but Ronald, which struck me as strange.
But now, as when I’d first glimpsed Adele at an undergraduate mixer years ago, I found myself paralyzed, until she took the lead—a bad sign, in retrospect—getting up to check on Derrick (the little bugger was fast asleep), then putting a record on her stereo, something slow and dreamy.
“Would you like to dance?” she said.
And once she was in my arms, of course, it was only a few short dance steps down the hall into the bedroom, where we did what we’d never been able to do in college, an act that, a week later in the very same bed, we repeated under the influence of some Mexican Red. Which Lisa Wilson—somehow sensing a sea change—had graciously provided.
“Wow,” I kept screaming, “this is the wildest feck of my entire feckin’ life!” Under the influence of cannabis, I felt like twelve-ply sponge rubber.
“Oh my, oh my!” Adele kept muttering. I was afraid our laughing and screaming would wake Derrick. But the little bugger proved to be very cooperative.
And so on to The Night of Danger in The Air, the theme of which caught on ex post facto. This particular outrageous party was held in the townhouse I had bought with the intention of living there with Barb, a married woman on the faculty with whom I’d had an affair before I’d had an affair with Lisa Wilson. Now I wanted to live there with my Adele H., our love boat apparently having come in after she’d missed the original one all those years ago. But there’s such a thing as trying too hard.
People began arriving at seven-thirty or so and kept arriving all night, ringing the doorbell, which no one answered, then making their way into the house and down the front hall toward the kitchen, where the door to the dimly-lit rec room in the basement had been left open. There was no arrow pointing the way this time as at Michael’s parents’ place, nor any signs stating Outrageous! in bold autumn colors. Everyone knew the drill. Once downstairs, you were instructed to help yourself to drinks. The munchies included peanuts and potato chips and marshmallows, later to be seen flying about that rec room like shrapnel in Vietnam. But if you can’t throw marshmallows in your own townhouse, where the hell can you throw them?
“Outrageous!” Lisa Wilson said, descending the steps with an air of expectation. Her Jean Seberg hairstyle had grown in quite a bit, but she still didn’t look anything like Jean Seberg.
“Where’s John?” I asked, as if I cared.
“Sitting this one out.”
“Too bad,” I said. “I wanted him to meet Adele,” who just happened to be standing beside me in the role of unofficial hostess. And so, I did the honors.
“Lisa, Adele. Adele, Lisa.”
“How do you do?” Adele said in her most gracious voice.
“Outrageous!” Lisa retorted. “I hear you like Mexican Red!”
Adele looked at me, confused. I hadn’t revealed the source of our Mexican Red, which meant I hadn’t told her about Lisa Wilson. But suddenly I could tell that she detected an air of familiarity between Lisa and me, as if there was unfinished business somewhere, like on a day bed that might have served as a night bed.
“Where’s your brother?” Lisa asked.
“Sitting this one out.” Then I took Adele by the hand and led her to the record player I’d purloined from the high school English Department for the occasion, over which we huddled while perusing a stack of oldies-but-goodies.
Delbert and Mary Lou, a married couple from school, arrived about mid-way through the evening when there were already about fifty people downstairs. They’d had difficulties with their baby-sitter. Mary Lou was very pregnant and I patted her belly.
“I like kids,” I said, putting my arm about Adele’s waist, a shit-eating grin on my face. “Come to think of it, Adele, we ought to run up to New England sometime to see my folks. We could take Derrick.”
But it was a mistake to mention Derrick. It seemed to remind Adele that Derrick was home in their half-furnished apartment with a half-assed babysitter he didn’t really like. Our main sitter had fallen in love and was no longer baby-sitting. Such is the way of the world when it comes to babysitters.
“We’ll see,” Adele said flatly.
“Wearing panties?” I whispered through my shit-eating grin, betraying a condition in which she often met me at her apartment door.
“We’ll see,” she repeated.
Then Michael motioned me aside to whisper something as well, pointing out that the rookie in the Math Department—a genuine ingenue from Nebraska by the name of Mary White—had incredible breasts beneath her V-neck sweater. Moreover, Mary White, being new on the faculty, seemed a bit lost among the older faculty. And so, Michael felt, I should go over and welcome her, since it was my townhouse, for Chrissake.
What he meant was, I was paying too much attention to Adele. (Adele H.’s will do that to you.) But what the hell? I was thinking. Everybody knows the drill—drink ’em up, munch ’em up, and boogie on down. Thus far I’d been doing just the first of those three—hence the shit-eating grin on my face—and since it was my townhouse, as Michael had pointed out, I now had to chit-chat with Mary White, whom I’d seen only once or twice during the entire school year.
“Hello, Mary White,” I said, leaving Adele with Mary Lou. Then I quoted Tennyson, whom I was teaching to my high school seniors at the time. It was spring, after all, and “In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of—?”
To which Mary White said nothing. She was rather short but rather pretty, with incredible breasts beneath her V-neck sweater.
“You’re supposed to fill in the blank,” I said. “It’s a game. This is a party and we’re playing a game. It’s Tennyson.”
Mary White laughed. “But I’m in the Math Department—”
“Then your number’s up!”
Mary White laughed again, and so I began again. “You’re the first caller from Philly and you have to fill in the blank: In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of—?”
“A garden?”
“Where are you from, Mary White?”
“Omaha.”
“Well, then, Mary White, what do animals in Nebraska do in the spring?”
Mary White blushed. I was right about her breasts.
“Love!” I shouted, loud enough for Adele to hear. “In the spring a young man’s
fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love!”
But what Mary White needed at that point was a drink. Because she really did have lovely breasts beneath that V-neck sweater.
* * *
It was about midnight when I threw the first marshmallow. We had little bowls of marshmallows all around the place and I really don’t know at whom I threw the first one. Things were quite loud by then. We’d been having a dance contest—couple #1, couple #2, etc.—and someone was acting as judge, forcing the couple whose number was called to sit down, at which point everybody clapped or booed.
“Your number’s up!” I shouted when Mary White had to sit down. She’d been dancing with Delbert, who’d been dancing by himself—what with Mary Lou as big as a barn—until the dance contest necessitated that everyone had to grab a partner. At which point he’d grabbed Mary White while Lisa Wilson swiped a drunken arm at me. She’d just had her tubes tied, because, as she confided, she’d been in a dark mood. “Why would anyone,” she said, “want to bring children into this polluted world, anyway?”
“Our number’s up!” Delbert agreed, dancing off by himself and leaving Mary White alone with her two big breasts. Delbert often danced by himself, even when Mary Lou wasn’t pregnant. It was just a thing Delbert did, like wearing bowties he tied himself.
So maybe Lisa Wilson was the target of that marshmallow I threw, for taking a swipe at my arm as if I was free to dance with her. Or maybe I threw it at Delbert for leaving Mary White alone with her two big breasts. It was hard to see in that dimly-lit rec room, what with some people, like Delbert, smoking cigarettes, so maybe the person at whom I’d thrown that first innocent marshmallow wasn’t even the person at whom I’d been aiming. But it didn’t matter, because the dance contest, with about ten couples that still hadn’t yet been asked to sit down, suddenly erupted into a major marshmallow fight.
“Incoming!” I yelled, English teacher that I was. It was a very appropriate image. The feckin’ Vietnam War was still raging, for Chrissake, and this marshmallow war raged until the last marshmallow had been thrown. At which point I noticed that Adele seemed a bit disappointed with me, as if there was something inherently wrong with people throwing marshmallows in their own townhouse, so she excused herself and disappeared upstairs. But I was the only one who seemed to notice. Lisa Wilson, picking up marshmallows from the floor, was going toe-to-toe with Delbert at point blank range.
“My number’s up!” I said, taking Mary White by the hand. “But somebody’s got to finish this feckin’ dance contest. If you can’t finish a dance contest in your own feckin’ townhouse, where the hell can you finish it?”
“This is quite a party,” Mary White said.
I squeezed my belly against the big breasts beneath her V-neck sweater. She was appropriately drunk now. “There’s danger in the air,” I said, intending it cryptically, as if there were a day bed somewhere that might serve as a night bed for anyone interested.
“Danger in the air?” Mary White repeated, thus becoming the first caller from Nebraska to name that tune. “In the spring I thought it was supposed to be love?”
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Claude Clayton Smith, Professor Emeritus of English, Ohio Northern University, is the author of eight books and co-editor/translator of four. His own work has been translated into five languages, including Russian and Chinese. Gauntlet in the Gulf, his first venture as a solo editor, was published in March of 2023. He holds a DA from Carnegie-Mellon, MFA in fiction from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, MAT from Yale, and BA from Wesleyan. For details on his writing and teaching career, visit his website: claudeclaytonsmith.wordpress.com.