How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Like everyone else, we went to Alice O'Connor's coming-out party to forget about the Lisbon girls. The black bartenders in red vests served us alcohol without asking for I.D., and in turn, around 3 A.M., we said nothing when we saw them loading leftover cases of whiskey into the trunk of a sagging Cadillac. (5.22)
A coming-out party is, for those of you who don't know, an event in which a usually affluent teenage girl is presented to society as an eligible young adult. Alice O'Connor isn't the only one being treated like a grown-up for the first time; the boys, too, are served alcohol. It's a sad irony that while Alice is coming out, Mary is going out for good. The novel's juxtaposition of these two events is pretty genius. You have to wonder: Did Mary know about the party? Was she invited? Could she see all the girls in their party dresses going to Alice's house while she was thinking about being dead?
Quote #8
Inside, we got to know girls who had never considered taking their own lives. We fed them drinks, danced with them until they became unsteady, and led them out to the screened-in veranda. They lost their high heels on the way, kissed us in the humid darkness, and then slipped away to throw up demurely in the outside bushes. Some of us held their heads as they vomited, then let them rinse their mouths with beer, after which we got back to kissing again. (5.22)
More aspects of coming of age: getting so drunk you puke. The girls and boys lose their inhibitions (and their lunches), which lets them act like adults on a sexual level. They're "unsteady" because they're new at this, but they get the hang of it pretty quick.
Quote #9
The girls were monstrous in their formal dresses, each built around a wire cage. Pounds of hair were secured atop their heads. Drunk, and kissing us, or passing out in chairs, they were bound for college, husbands, child-rearing, unhappiness only dimly perceived—bound, in other words, for life. (5.22)
The coming-out party is the tipping point between adolescence and adulthood. Coming-of-age is presented as a less than desirable process: the girls are "monstrous" as teenagers, but their future as adult women sounds pretty awful, too. The stereotyped path to adulthood for these girls will lead to unhappiness, even if they don't realize it.