“That’s my cooler, asshole,” he said, pointing to the open igloo at my feet.

“Cool,” I said, bending to retrieve another beer from it and handing it to him. “Have a cold one.”

Drunk as he was, his face already was red, but it grew redder still as he swiped the beverage from my hand.

I waited, watching him. He was a couple inches taller than me and probably sixty or seventy pounds heavier, but he was fleshy and soft. Probably he was an offensive lineman, second string if the team was any good, or a starter if he happened to play for one of the sorry private school, rich-kid teams in the city.

He threw his beer down and took a step toward me, not realizing the mistake he was making. In those days I weighed probably a hundred and eighty pounds but could bench-press nearly twice my body weight and run fast and forever. I crouched, dropping my own drink and edging backward as he came on unsteadily.

“Pussy,” he said in a low, slurred voice.

Then he lunged at me, or lurched rather, and began pummeling me clumsily with his fleshy fists. My raised right forearm took the ill-begotten blows readily enough, and I noted between them how he was breathing hard already.

He was a fool. I knew all it would take was a slight shift in my footing and then the uncoiling upward.

Voices around us hooted. “Fight!”

“Hit him!” a part of my mind implored me seductively. “Destroy his face!”

But another part spoke too. “He’s winded and played out,” it murmured reassuringly. “He can’t hurt you anyway.”

Bad as I wanted to, I didn’t hit him. Something in my head wouldn’t let me. Perhaps it was the fact that he was a fool: a fat, drunken, fagged-out fool possessing no inkling of the nature of his opponent or even where he was. All he knew in that dim-minded moment was his beer stash had dwindled by two and that it was worth fighting over.

But just then our own ungraceful drama gave way to another in the form of cries of alarm and the sounds of confused motion in other parts of the house.

“Cops! Cops!” someone yelled shrilly, and suddenly all was a tumult—previously coveted coolers kicked over; drinks hurled down; illegal stashes hastily swallowed, shoved beneath cushions, or cast through open windows; stylish coats and pocket books stomped on—as indecision took hold of the partygoers and each contemplated somewhere in their minds whether to flee, affect innocence, or embrace the presence of the law and tearfully confess all their crimes and those of their friends.

My assailant having vanished—or rather lumbered away, pressing his own path through the confusion—I retreated slowly until my back brushed up against a wall next to one of the windows which had been flung open. I took a quick peek through it, noting the manageable distance to the barely discernible lawn, feeling the frigid refreshing December night air wash over my face. I could have jumped then, but I didn’t. My curiosity held me in check. I knew I was clean and enough in control of myself to pass any drunk test, save a Breathalyzer, and I wasn’t driving. I wanted to see what the cops would do.

So I waited and soon there came the sound of authoritative adult male voices and the filing into the room—which, it so happened, was the largest in the house—of glum apprehended revelers, heads and shoulders drooped in dejection, fatigue, or perhaps the prospect of some indeterminate punishment.