Drew Cushing · Literary Fiction · Forthcoming

Vassar
Boy

A novel · Vassar College, 1985–86

A fictional account of youth, glamour, and the particular freedom of being openly, defiantly oneself — in a world before cell phones, before the internet, before everything that comes next.

Read an Excerpt About the book →
1985 – 1986
Vassar
Boy
Drew Cushing
About the Novel

Fall 1985

Vassar Boy is a fictional account of life at Vassar College in the academic year of 1985–86. Written in the New Narrative tradition of gossipy verve, the novel imagines a Vassar Group à la Mary McCarthy for a wilder, funnier and queerer era.

At the center is Drew, an openly gay wild child, whose witness to the Group’s and his own misadventures, follies and foibles in the perpetual pursuit of happiness — or at least a good time — form the heart of the novel. From the tall, fabulously thin and perfectly attired Ford to a boy dressed as a girl in Laura Ashley who dates a West Point cadet and the array of would-be artists, club kids and über rich kids alternatively studying, dating and dancing nights away at Palladium, the Limelight, and BoyBar — Vassar Boy delights in the promise and privilege of youth in the days before cell phones, internet and all the things to come.

Beneath all the mad frolicking, Drew and his friends want more than just a good time and in the end, a bright future begins to feel possible.

Genre
Literary Fiction
Setting
Vassar College, 1985–86
Length
62,282 Words
Tradition
New Narrative
Status
Forthcoming
Publisher
Seeking representation
An Excerpt

The Story

Much to the shock of the Group, the start of the semester moved to before Labor Day! Something to do with the number of days before Christmas or some such nonsense. The Group was quite certain the Gregorian calendar had not been secretly revised (even the most conspiratorial of them didn’t believe the Masons or Knights of Templar would be so obvious) and yet here it was — Fall semester move in day in the last throes of summer. When the news first broke sometime in the Spring the Group insisted they would arrive after Labor Day. But as the Summer progressed most everyone realized the consequences of moving in late, missing the start of classes etc. were just not worth the few extra days of sun and fun. And there would be no requirements to help close up the cottages…

Despite the disastrous schedule, most of the Group managed to arrive on time with one or more parents and their stuff piled high in the family Ford LTD station wagon. Affectionately known as Woody Wagons (after their faux wood panel sides) these were the last of the Great Station Wagons. Eight cylinders, seats for six (eight if you count the little jump seats in the way back), these were family cars taken to the mountains to ski, to the beach to swim and the mall to shop. Some of the Group claim to have not seen their mothers anywhere else during their early teen years. Of course, leather seats, power windows, AC, and afternoon cocktails were the consolations mother got for spending most of her waking hours in the Woody.

Ford wasn’t going to come back from Cairo until after the first day of classes. The Group had suspected that he wouldn’t make it back much before Columbus Day — full of excuses, having really just stayed over in London for the end of summer sales at Harrods. But Mummy made him change his flight at the last minute. She read the schedule and would not permit Ford to be late for the start of classes! And so lo and behold he drove himself to campus — no white glove movers as threatened — in his mother’s spare station wagon, an LTD II (the old body type!). He heard more than a few funny-looking-camel jokes.

Ford had had a very sporty Jetta but last Spring coming back from New York with Drew he’d managed to come round a curve on the Taconic too fast while lighting a cigarette and went off road and down the embankment rolling the car three times nose over heel. The windows were all gone, the car was full of mud and slightly askew.

“Theh. Are you alright?” asks Ford.

Drew, more annoyed by the mud ruining his all white outfit, pauses long enough for Ford to start panicking. “Yes, I guess I’ll skip my mud mask.”

Unharmed and the car still running, they managed to get the car out of the mud and back on the road. A little wobbly and quite breezy without windows, the car does remarkably well. Ford insists they drive back to campus before someone sends the police. He really can’t get another ticket. Arriving a muddied tattered mess back on campus they get past main gate (no guard) and at nearly 4am, everyone else safely in bed, no one witnessed that spectacle of their return to campus.

By morning the Jetta had been towed with a citation from campus police. Despite his plea that it still drove just fine, Ford was unable to convince Main Street Automotive to undertake a rescue. And so that was the end of the Jetta.

Labor Day still being Labor Day, the Group threw the sort of party they would throw if they were still at their respective cottages — End-of-Summer/Beginning-of-Fall-Celebration. Festivities began as soon as the first members of the Group arrived and unpacked the basics of entertaining.

Drew threw a “blush wine” party. Blush wine was the latest invention of the wine industry in an effort to bridge the gap between wine cooler drinkers and wine drinkers. Made with red grapes like white wine it came in various shades of pink and tastes between sweet and sweeter. With palates in full denial, the Group instantly declared this new innovation the perfect wine for wine-and-cheese. Drew proffered a variety of blushes to complement the various cheeses. Color coordinated of course.

While everyone drank rather enthusiastically — Drew had to dash out for more wine twice — his party marked the beginning of the end of this trend for the Group. Sweet wine hangovers all around united the Group in its scorn of this new horror. Blush wine? An abomination!

— from Vassar Boy, Drew Cushing
Dramatis Personae

A Select List of Characters

Ford

Tall, fabulously thin with a wasp waist and perfectly proportioned features. Thick brown curly hair in need of regular visits to Sassoon for a taming cut. Rich enough with his own money from an aunt and even richer from his family’s successes in various genteel industries. A poor Southern farm boy when it helped, Ford had been thrown out of several prep schools and been forced to graduate from a Boston area last-chance school. He came to Vassar because Mummy had and Da hated the idea. By the time Ford came to Vassar, Da — who had transformed his father’s small delivery service into a nationwide fleet of trucks, then added air and ocean transit and real estate leverage across the country — had untold riches and power.

Mary Ann Kravitz
A.K.A. Makra

A good old fashioned Connecticut girl. A blonde when she was a little girl, she was now a blonde with a little help from a bottle. Makra and Drew had known each other for years — she’d actually gone to prep with Drew. At prep, Makra had seemed to Drew to be exotic and artistic. But Drew had mistaken Makra’s daring wardrobe (no Talbots in sight) for a kind of exotica. In fact Makra was just committing a basic form of rebellion aided by her hometown proximity to Manhattan. At Vassar, Makra kept the same look, which was not nearly as exotic amidst the various student style choices. Makra was extremely committed to her art and her vodka (Stoli, of course).

Jason

Cute in that tall plain preppy sort of way. Drew’s roommate freshman year — Drew was initially intrigued and then bored by Jason. Jason came from solid Connecticut stock, or at least had been adopted by solid Connecticut stock. He’s a committed preppy, insisting on plaids, plaids and more plaids. Drew swears he even coordinates his boxers with his sheets so as not to sleep in Blackwatch on Campbell or vice versa. Jason was perpetually polite and kind to a fault.

Nancy Jane Pruit
A.K.A. Prissy

An upstate New York girl. Way upstate. Prissy insisted she loved upstate and missed it terribly. Otherwise Prissy was a normal if excessively prudish girl.

Drew

A Connecticut boy with an impeccable lineage (Mayflower on one side and Charlemagne on the other), an unstoppable libido, a penchant for big old American cars and a talent for chameleon-like transformation.

Todd

A sexy Chicago boy whose hair changes colors at whim.

Sally

A South American heiress, Sally wants for nothing but the perfect body and eternal social success. She has no material wants. Her father Raul comes from a long line of Brazilian cacao growers — for her sweet sixteenth, Raul gave her one of the largest cacao plantations in Ilhéus, the cacao capital of Brazil. Ursula, Sally’s mother, a Swiss banking heiress, funnels funds to so many secret accounts she has stacks of red leather ledgers to keep track of them all.

Drew Cushing
About the Author

Drew Cushing

The bastard son of New Narrative and Language Poetry, Drew Cushing is a novelist, playwright and publisher based in San Francisco, CA and Norfolk, CT. His writing has a delicious way of disturbing others.

His writing has appeared in The Fabulist, ZYZZYVA, Cathay, Laundry Pen, Dodie Bellamy’s Nars Orgasm Zine: A Covidian Cohort Writing from Dodie Bellamy’s 2020 Workshops, The Marjorie Wood Gallery, Second Floor Projects, 580 Split and other publications. His plays have been produced in New York, San Francisco, and Providence.

At San Francisco State University he studied with Aaron Shurin, Robert Gluck, Dodie Bellamy, Camille Roy, and Brigid Mullen. Drew holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State and an AB in Dramatic Literature from Vassar College. He is a graduate of Trinity Repertory Company and Conservatory, where he learned Viewpoints from Anne Bogart.

He publishes under the imprint Bent Boy Books.

drewcushing.com bentboybooks.com
Get in Touch

Contact Drew

For literary inquiries, press, agent queries, or general correspondence about Vassar Boy.