Johnny shouldn't have had that fifth whiskey. And he shouldn't be at Buck's. It's not just the bad music, or the dried up hillbillies at the corner pool table frowning at him like he's too young to be there, or the police raid that happened last week and might just happen again tonight. He shouldn't be there because Dallas is trying to set him up with a girl again.
Dally sure gets a kick out of Johnny's red cheeks and embarrassed, shy stuttering whenever a girl is brought into the mix. But he's a good friend. He doesn't introduce Johnny to those girls to a get a rise out of him. It's like he thinks he's doing his duty as Johnny's older, more experienced friend. He'll wink at Johnny from across the room as the girl flirts, or he'll sling his arm around Johnny and whisper advice in his ear. If you insult her, she'll keep coming back. Say something offensive. Or: Push her against the wall and kiss her without asking. Chicks dig that aggressive shit. Even if Johnny did want a girl, he wouldn't follow that advice.
The music is going, a guitar so twangy it ought to be played around a campfire accompanied by beef and beans, and a voice so corny-poke it's practically yodeling. I got a feelin' called the blu-u-uues, oh lord, since my ba-by said goodbye... Soda's on the other end of the room talking horses with some rodeo boys; he's probably the only person at the party not drinking. Sylvia's there. Johnny watched her go upstairs with Dally not ten minutes ago, after Dally had introduced Johnny to a grease girl named Bev and promptly abandoned him, his older buddy obligation for the night fulfilled.
Johnny's sitting on the floor cross-legged, and the room's spinning. It's hard to focus on the conversation. Two-Bit's standing with his arm slung around a new blonde's shoulders (Johnny doesn't know her name), while Steve and his girl Evie are necking (she's sitting on his lap on the easy chair). Bev's wearing a real short skirt and sitting close to him, their outer thighs touching. He doesn't like it.
A couple times Bev put her hand on his knees, all fake casual-like, and the last time her hand grazed his inner thigh. He really doesn't like that, but he don't know how to tell her to stop. He doesn't want to hurt her feelings-he can tell by the prideful way she's smiling at him she seems to think she's doing him some big favor. And he doesn't the boys to get suspicious if they see him push a girl away. Greasers are supposed to like it when tuff girls in short skirts pull those sort of tricks.
And that's the problem. Johnny ain't normal.
Bev, the blonde, and Two-Bit are asking Johnny questions and laughing up a storm at his answers. He normally ain't talkative (to say the least) but this is his first time liquored up in any significant way and he's discovered he speaks before he remembers to stop himself. Johnny doesn't know what they find so funny about his answers, though.
He started drinking tonight so he could pretend to be drunk enough to not go upstairs with Bev if it came to that. But now he really is drunk. He feels out of body, like he can't control what he's doing or saying, and he can't remember what happened only seconds ago. He wishes Pony was there, but Darry would never let him come. That kid would have stopped him at his second drink, instead of laughing as he got more and more wasted.
"So Johnny," says Two-Bit's girl, "who do you think is the best-looking person at the party?" She winks at Bev.
"I don't know." Johnny's words are slurred. "Probably Soda." All of them laugh real hard. Even Steve and Evie's kissing is interrupted by their choked sniggers.
"No, I mean girl. The best-looking girl. Duh," she explains between chuckles. She's sort of nodding her head to her left where Bev is. Johnny's stomach forces something burning up his throat, and he makes himself to swallow it back down. He struggles to stand, the room spinning faster and faster, the floor reaching up and threatening to meet him.
"I need to go to the bathroom."
#
Johnny misses the toilet bowl, and the rim is splattered with the clear, pungent liquid of alcohol and chunks of half-digested potato from his meal of french fries earlier in the evening. Some of the vomit shot off the toilet seat and onto his clothes, splattering across the bleached white t-shirt that Soda let him borrow, and that Darry had taken the time to clean and fold carefully. He feels a wave of guilt before he's forced to curl over the toilet again, dry-heaving five or six times before the next round comes up. He's never made himself sick before, and he suddenly feels a flash of empathy for his old man. How someone could drink himself drunk every night is beyond his comprehension.
Johnny's shaking so bad that he can't hold onto the toilet seat. Large black circles with tiny white specs of stars interrupt the tilt-a-whirl tiles.
A hand is on his back. "Easy, Johnnycake, easy. Just let it out." His hair is being pushed out of his face. He lets it out. It takes a few minutes of nothing before the last acid drops are gone. Then Dally is pulling off his soiled t-shirt and gently slapping his face.
"Don't pass out, man. Drink this," Dally says. He pushes a glass of clear liquid with a Bud logo in his face, but before Johnny even tries to straighten himself, he weakly pushes it away.
"No. No more, Dal. I can't."
"It's water, doofus." Johnny is still sitting on the floor facing the toilet. Dally kneels down behind him and holds him up, Johnny's back against his chest. Dally forces the glass against Johnny's lips; he holds his head at an angle so he's forced to drink. Johnny coughs and spits up, and then Dally's at it again. The second time the water goes down, cooling the acid-burnt, raw tunnel of his throat. The water settles in his stomach uneasily, like it's hitting the bottom of a well, and Johnny presses his palms against the cold tiles of the bathroom floor, absently noticing the mold in the speckling as he resists the urge to puke again.
"That's it," says Dally, as he makes him drink another sip. "You're gonna keep going until this glass is done. And in ten minutes, you're gonna drink another one. Man, what happened? You trying to poison yourself, you idiot? You know one of them Brumly kids died that way last year. Can you stand up? I'm gonna bring you upstairs so you can sleep it off."
When they reach the room that Dally keeps above Buck's bar, the sound of a sad Patsy Cline number becomes muffled as Dally kicks shut the broken-hinged door. He pulls off a used condom from the sheets of the bed and throws it into a pile of trash he's collecting in a brown paper grocery bag. "Not exactly interested in becoming a dad," Dally says, in an offhand, sheepish voice Johnny's never heard.
"Sit down," Dally commands. Johnny leans back on the bed and Dally kneels down and starts unlacing Johnny's shoes.
Johnny's head bobs up and down. He forces himself to straighten. He tries to force to room to be still, but that doesn't work. "How'd you know I was sick?"
"I was coming downstairs and saw Steve heading to bathroom all worried. He told me, and I told him I'd take care of you. I think he wanted to go back to his woman." Dally pulls of a shoe. "Boy, your feet stink!" he laughs.
"Dal, I don't want you setting me up with girls anymore." Johnny's holding on to the edge of the bed for his life. He shouldn't have said that, but he somehow let it slip. He thinks he might puke again, only there's nothing left to come out.
"Look, kid, don't worry." Dally is unlacing the other shoe. "It'll work out next time, you'll see. Just don't drink so much. All you need to do is get laid once, and you'll get the game. You won't be so scared of girls anymore. You don't know how good screwing feels, man. I'm not gonna let you miss out on that 'cause you're too damn shy to introduce yourself."
"Dal, I mean it. I don't want to do this anymore. Please." He's begging. He should shut up. "It's why I got drunk."
"Liquid courage?" Dally peels off the shoe.
"No. I didn't...I wanted to get drunk enough so I wouldn't have to do it. I don't want to."
"What do you mean." But Dally says it as if he knows what Johnny means.
Johnny grasps the edge of the bed to keep himself from slipping off. "Let's just drop it. I ain't feeling good."
"No, I ain't dropping it. I'm trying to do you a favor, getting you a girl, and you don't want her. Why the hell not? That chick was a babe, and she dug you."
"Dally, I don't want to screw girls-"
"Yeah, I know, blah blah blah you're nervous," Dally finishes for him. And then, he stares at Johnny as if he's never seen him before and he swallows. "Right?" Dally, who has made his hatred of queers more open than any of the other boys, stares at him as if he knows. "Right?" Dally repeats. Loud and harsh.
"Come on, man. Drop it," Johnny mumbles. His head is throbbing so hard that every other second the room and Dally is blotched out by black nothingness. He wonders if he should go to the hospital.
Dally bites his lower lip. "You don't want to screw girls because...you don't want to screw girls." His voice breaks over the second half of the sentence, not wanting it to be true. "You a queer?" It doesn't come out quite like a question should.
"Na-no." But Johnny stumbles on the word.
Dally, who more than anybody in the world knows him, really knows him now. Johnny braces himself for a fist to the face, which would probably kill him at the moment, but the seconds pass, and it doesn't come. He can hear Dally's heavy breathing.
"Like you needed one more shitty thing in your life," Dally finally mutters, and starts cussing up a storm.
"Dal, I know you're mad..." Johnny begins, trying to figure out a way to save their friendship, trying to figure out a way to make Dally keep his secret. He's desperate, he's seconds away from losing Dally, the most important person in his life. Johnny tries to stand up, but he's so drunk that he falls to the floor.
"Of course I mad, man! I'm pissed!" Dally shouts.
"Please just-" He tries to right himself, but he's too sauced to stand.
"Do you know what people are gonna do if they find out? Do you have any idea the type of hell queers go through, man? Shoot." Dally pulls his hand through his tow-colored hair. "You better keep this quiet, you hear me, kid? You hear me?" Dally jerks him up. He must see Johnny's queasy look, because he abruptly quits being so rough and steers him back onto the bed.
"You know I always got your back, Johnnycake, but I can't hover around you every second to protect you. And that's what you'll need if you get found out. Damn it!" Dally kicks the bedpost. It rattles. Johnny pulls his arms around his stomach.
"I'm sorry, Dal." There are tears in Johnny's eyes; he's too scared of the consequences of Dally's discovering to consider the meaning of Dally's words. He only gets the anger behind them. "Don't hate me. I know I deserve it, but please don't. I don't mean to be this way."
Johnny's warm all the sudden, warm and suffocated in a comforting way, and Dally's arms are around him. "I don't hate you, kid. Stop crying." He didn't know he was until Dally mentioned it. He guesses that's what liquor does to you.
"I'm disgusting," Johnny whispers into Dally's chest.
"You ain't disgusting."
"That's not what you said about queers before," his voice is muffled by Dally's chest. "You called that guy who everybody was saying was queer pathetic and disgusting and you kicked in his chair that one time you were drunk and we were at the movies."
"Well, it's different now."
"How?" Johnny asks.
"'Cause it's you. And yeah, maybe I do find that sorta thing gross, you know that and there's no getting around it, but, but...what we got is more important than how I feel about that. Other fags are pathetic and disgusting, but not you. And I won't ever let anybody humiliate you for it, or jump you for it, or even give you a rude look. You're my buddy. No matter what. You dig?"
Johnny nods. Even though he doesn't quite get it, how Dally can hate everybody like him, except him. But all that matters is that they're still buddies and it's going to be okay. His head throbs.
"And anyway," Dally reasons, "it's not like you've been with a guy before, and you're still pretty young and probably confused, and you might change your mind once you're with a girl, so it's not like you're really a fag."
Johnny wants to tell him no, that's not it at all, this is what I am and who I am, even if it's wrong. But he doesn't say anything, because Dally is being so good to him about it. Because, in his own way, Dally accepts him. Even if he has to rationalize it.
"But you gotta keep it quiet, okay? I mean it. Don't even tell the boys. I'm not saying they'd hurt you, but lord knows Two-Bit can't keep his mouth shut and Pony and Soda'd probably go out and become some sort of activist for the queers or something, making it all obvious, you know how they are. And I don't want you acting on it. If rumor gets out... Johnny, I don't wanna scare you, but that beating? That's gonna be your normal. Promise me something kid?"
"Anything."
"Keep your mouth shut." Dally pauses. "And your legs." Dally ruffles his hair. But he does it gruffly, and Johnny's so sick right now the motion makes him retch again. He can't tell whether or not Dally intended the gesture to be affectionate, but what knows for sure is that there was a hardness to Dally's voice. He meant what he said.
"I promise." Johnny's face is somehow on the pillow, and even though his eyes are closed, everything's still spinning.