New morality laws had been passed, and they were printed in the papers every Sunday, in case anyone might forget them. Onganía’s prudishness seemed sincere, a rare thing for the military men. He forbade kissing in public, dim lighting in bars, miniskirts. In each of these new statutes, I saw the shadow of the vice-squad raids back home, although homosexuality was mentioned nowhere. I caught myself checking mirrors before I left the apartment, putting on more lipstick, as if carefully reviewing a disguise.
I saw a group of young women getting official warnings for their skirts one unseasonably warm evening. They all had black hair teased up into beautiful bouffants and eyes lined thickly with kohl, like Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra, and they stood with their arms crossed while a very young and pink-faced cadet lectured them. They made me think of my days at eighteen, the first summer after the Barrington School, walking back to the boardinghouse arm-in-arm with a friend who later stole ten dollars from my purse and bought me lunch with half of it. There were so many young men and women around me then whom I wouldn’t leave alone with my wallet. And yet I took those betrayals so lightly. How inconsequential they seemed compared to the force and energy of our interest in each other, because we had read some of the same books and grown tired of the same schools and we had all run away from our parents. What was ten dollars when you had the same blood in your veins? I wished for the girls in miniskirts to have the same chances in their lives to injure each other and be injured.
There was a club on the corner of James’s street where we went a few times to dance when we were beginning to go stir-crazy in the apartment. They had a house band: a girl singer in blue sequins and a blonde wig that glittered like tinsel, a quartet of young men behind her in black jackets. Whenever one of the boys took the microphone, they would sing covers of the Stones.
The clientele was young, many of them barely out of high school. In the corners, girls in outrageous makeup gathered, too shy to talk to boys. The boys smoked constantly, their backs to the room. James and I would sit by the door, drinking pale beer in tall glasses. Many of the younger patrons of the bar ordered nothing but Coca-Cola all night, and I was touched by it. The caffeine and sugar gave them energy to dance, and they had no money for anything stronger. If the place got too loud, the owner—a small, fat man with sideburns razored to points—would become apoplectic, waving his short arms and demanding quiet from a jostling throng that couldn’t hear him.
The law said that the lights in bars had to be bright enough to read the labels on the bottles. One Friday night in the club, as James and I were dancing to a cover of a Zombies song, the lights at the back of the house switched on. There was an immediate impression of dust and concrete in the yellow light; we were in a basement, which we easily forgot when it was dark. The band stopped playing. The girl in the blonde wig bit her lip and muttered “Hijo de—” into the microphone, then set it down on top of the amplifier and stared down at her feet. Police filed in through the narrow street door.
“Out, out, out,” they called, shining flashlights around the room. Two officers led a group of boys and girls outside. The girls were stone-faced, the boys sullen. There was a scuffle near the bar. James put his arm around me and we moved through the uncertain crowd, trying not to draw too much attention to ourselves.
We had to push through the group of police to get out, which made my heart pound, but they parted before us. Their attention was occupied by the fight at the bar, which was drawing in more young men. We slipped out onto the quiet street, and I stopped to take a deep breath. The night air was humid and cool, smelling of the river. Halfway up the block, waiting and smoking a cigarette, was the man in the gray raincoat.
We saw each other. James didn’t notice. I stared at the man and then turned quickly away. James was saying that he hoped the kids were okay. He was softhearted. I rubbed my face, pulled my jacket on. My head hurt and I was afraid. It was over. I was out of time.