Whitehead Colson - Sag Harbor

Stepping inside, I saw they'd done a lot of work to the place since its roller-rink days. Instead of bodies drifting in circles, now people's minds performed endless circuits, gliding through need-a-drink wanna-dance like-to-fuck need-a-drink, the club-land loop of desire. People waded in and out of the human surf around the bars, holding drinks above their shoulders to keep them above water. Waitresses in nipple-popping T-shirts, battle-worn from a summer of rough duty, carried trays up to the VIP section on the second floor, the ring of tables circling the dance floor. How nice to look down on those below! Look at her, that one looks like she's into it. The DJ cut it up in his perch, interpreting the crowd through Lennon sunglasses, the twisting bodies like tea leaves. He took counsel from the lady at his side, who stood in the dark as the floodlights zagged around her, hiding her features but casting the eerie shadow of her Afro-puffs against the wall. His muse, the temper of our night. By the stage, techies hunched over the monitors like disco Igors, unwinding the cables coiled around their arms, jabbering into walkie-talkies. Check one, check two. Mix Master Ice's turntables waited at the back of the stage, cross-faders set to zero, black styluses poised like the grim heads of gargoyles.

Rainbow lights strafed our bodies. My head bobbed, with a little extra on the downbeat. Thinking about U.T.F.O. now, it's hard to remember why I was so excited. The beat is immortal, sure, but the lyrics of “Roxanne, Roxanne” are so fucking corny, man. It's a classic because of when it came out, those early days of hip-hop when anything with a bit of novelty was mesmerizing, but it's goofy as hell. Nowadays I read about them doing nostalgia gigs, reunion shows with people like Whodini and Kool Moe Dee and Dana Dane, break dancing on their aching sacroiliacs, busting out their hits for the aging fans. Bringing it all back. For Bobby and NP and Devon and Erica, hearing the song probably calls up memories of their double-dating days, sneaking around after curfew, parking at Haven's Beach in the dark. For me, I'm reminded of a caper that didn't go wrong for once, looking back fondly on a day without injury.

The DJ dropped “Raspberry Beret,” to seismic effect. Most of them weren't there to see the concert. It's a safe bet the older white people, the middle-aged East End denizens, were not die-hard U.T.F.O. fans. They showed up because they'd heard that Bayside was the place to be that night. Refugees from the known and humdrum, the smothering day-to-day I coulda bought a beer, but I didn't want to push my luck, picturing the music cutting off and Klaxons sounding as the bartender discovered I'd made it past security. Everything coming to a stop as they all looked at me, the utter opposite of what was going on now. No one looked at me. I was one of them on the dance floor and they were one of me. I jostled, was jostled in turn, collision as communication: I am here, we're here together. The bass bounced my shirt on my chest. My elbow mashed the rib cage of this forty-something white lady in a green metallic jumpsuit and when I turned to apologize, she simply smiled and continued swaying to the music. At some point I'd started dancing. I was a pretty crappy dancer, but how could I muster shame with that music rewiring my every system? We can rebuild him . A plane of blue light sifted through the crowd, dead in my eyes for an instant. NP was off somewhere, getting up to something. I didn't know anyone. And it was okay. Something good was about to happen. I just had to wait. Weird trendoids surrounded me, fearsome geezers, drugged-out wackos, but now we were comrades. We were all there for the same thing. The DJ hovered above us, throwing down his thunderbolts. He mixed in a segment of Debbie Harry singing “Rapture” and they screamed. Actually, I decided, I'm not dancing that badly at all. I thought, This is Good. No qualifier, chaotic or otherwise. Simply: Good.

I knew what Evil looked like.

THE NIGHT BEFORE, after Uncle Nelson bought beer for us, we had to carry out our part of the bargain and take him around the Hills. “I just want to see if some people are out,” he told us from the backseat. “A look-see. I'll be quick.”

“How come you don't come out anymore?” I asked. I had the six-pack between my feet. If my conversation rankled him, he'd have to fight me for it.

“You know, I want to,” he said, “but I have too much stuff to do, I got a lot of stuff I'm trying to get off the ground. Little this, little that. Can't be drinking beer on the beach all day with all these people.”

We turned onto Beach Avenue. “Still here,” he said.

“Left or right?”

“Right. Up there …” he trailed off. The white house was dark, the lawn bushy and monstrous. One of the shutters tilted down forty-five degrees on its remaining hinge, exposing shattered panes and the darkness within. “Guess they aren't around,” Uncle Nelson said. “That's Lionel's house. That's where we always hung out. Day and night.”

I'd never seen anyone in there. It was one of our haunted houses, with a drooling man-child chained up in the basement nibbling animal crackers or a batty old lady stirring up a pot of Kid Soup. What would our houses look like thirty years from now? We'd still be here, right? Or would we be out in the world like Uncle Nelson, our homes shadowed, the gutters sprouting flora, the driveways buckled and ripped? Haunted by us. And one of the other houses up the block or around the corner the new hangout spot for the next generation. Those future kids tossing pebbles at our windows and running away screaming, or daring each other to knock on the door. Double-dare you — crazy people used to live there and they'll get you.

He resumed the tour of his developments, superimposing his houses over the houses we knew, leading us beachward. When he saw the lights outside the Nicholses', he asked us to slow down. My mother always said, “Looks like someone's having a party,” when she saw a line of cars like that, bunched up on the curb. Figures moved in the bay windows and beyond the screen door.

“Here?” Bobby asked.

“I'll catch up with them later,” Uncle Nelson said. “There's one more place I want to see.”

Bobby scowled and kept driving. We reached the last street in Sag Harbor Hills, the dead end on the water. “Pull up there on the left,” my uncle told us. We parked in front of the Lee's, where Abby, one of my sister's friends, used to stay. Maybe he knew her parents from the old days. I turned around to ask him what he wanted to do. He was staring out the window, across the street at the Yellow House, his parents' place. I'd forgotten that's where it was.

The Yellow House was a cozy bungalow, perpetually musty and overstuffed with sailing memorabilia. Rudders and shiny brass cleats owned prime decorating real estate, the remains of beloved vessels long gone. Uncle Nelson's father was one of that seafaring generation, like my grandfather and Bobby's grandfather, hitching his motorboat to the station wagon at the start of the season, chugging out into the deep water to fish, tooling around the Caribbean in the winter. Uncle Nelson had inherited some of that. His old Sunfish spent its final, neglected summers lodged in the beach grass in front of our house, its mildewing white-and-yellow sail collecting dirty lakes during rainstorms. When I was little, our parents hauled us to the Yellow House to reunion barbecues or birthday parties for some Southern cousin my age whom I'd never met before and would never see again. The kids running on the grass, the parents on the patio, sipping their drinks. So many years ago.

“You getting out?” Bobby asked.

“No.”

He sat there looking at his old house, not saying anything. I didn't see anyone inside, but all the lights were on. The bug zapper sparked. “Is your father out?” I asked.