This story was published several years ago but this is a new version. The original was written as a role play in which the two people are just pretending that they didn't know each other already. Here, it is presented as a "real" event that is happening between two people who have just met.
*******
In June 1975 I briefly -- for a single afternoon -- was with a woman I still think of as "the hippie girl." And no, it was not a conventional one-day-stand.
She didn't refer to herself by that term. I doubt there had ever been a large number of young people who truly were "hippies" or in the New Left as a dedicated way of life. What there had been was a wide dissemination of those ideas to people who dropped in and out or who just flirted with the concepts. There was an even larger group who just picked up certain styles and attitudes as needed.
I and most of my fellow students were "late-Boomers;" we were already developing nostalgia for a very recently departed era. It was a period that had been hyped out of all proportion since before Walter Cronkite said he wished he had covered Woodstock.
At one time, I wished I had been there too, but I was only fourteen in 1969. I knew no one else who was going, and my parents wouldn't have given me permission to hitchhike. That was probably the only plausible method for me to get to the site.
I knew little about the bands that performed there. After the event was over, I saw various photographs that appeared in the press. Thus, I had fantasies of frolicking with skinny-dipping chicks in some pond. Even later I figured out how little of that had actually occurred. I assumed that the vast majority of guys who were there went with existing girlfriends or had to depend on masturbation to satisfy their desires.
I was already beating off imagining every plausible female I knew, so what would the point of it all have been?
*****
The Salient
was one of five newspapers the student activity fee supported at the City College of New York. Its name was created by returning veterans at its founding in 1947. Over the next two decades, it become a conventional competitor to the semi-official
The Campus,
which had existed since the early 20th Century.
During the 1960's
The Salient
mutated into the school's "hippie/counter-cultural" paper. By 1975, as the churn of students in and out was always a fact of university life, it was struggling to become something else yet again. Yet no one there could define what that would be.
By that June I had been there nearly two years and had collected one girlfriend and one ex-girlfriend on the staff, both of whom had been invited there by me.
The ex was my first lover ever. It was quite exciting in September 1974 when I surprised everybody on the paper. That's when I had her come in for the first staff meeting of the new semester. They were all amazed that, as a former professional virgin at the place, I had landed that quite good-looking, well-dressed (she put on a suit for the occasion without me requesting it) young woman.
Then a couple of months later, I was shocked when she suddenly dumped me for an older guy with a good job and a Triumph convertible. He picked her up right off Convent Avenue while he was driving by in his car. That felt like a betrayal to me, but I was learning some harsh truths that I could put to good use. A short time later, I found another girl just downstairs in the snack bar.
Again I surprised everybody when I brought
her
in, including my ex who of course was still on the staff. I believe she had some grudging admiration for my initiative and how quickly I had recovered from a setback.
By June I had the confidence that comes with being young and having a very pleasing girlfriend. I wasn't one of those guys who had to keep scoring with multiple partners. I wasn't a jock or even particularly tall, so I felt that I was doing quite well for myself.
And I had just turned twenty. My teen years, and whatever had happened in them, were gone for good.
******
One late afternoon I was alone in the newspaper office in Finley Hall, mostly just hanging out and wasting time. It was a warm but overcast day and I sat around near the windows. I was pondering the large number of high-rise buildings that had been built in upper Manhattan recently.
Around five o'clock there was a knock on the door and I went over to answer it. When I asked who it was, a female voice responded. I opened it and saw a young woman standing there.
"Oh hi, how are you doing?" I said. Not,
can I help you?
I had a lilt in my voice that I wouldn't have had with any unexpected male visitor.
"This is the, ah, Sally-ent, right?" There was a ditzy tone to her voice that I thought might be a put-on.
"Right, it says so right here." I pointed to the name painted on the door. "Although it's usually pronounced Sail-yent." A lot of people had trouble with the name and what it even meant.
"Yes, Room 336, I see that too. I'm Clarissa, although my friends usually call me Clary."
"Glad to meet you, Clary, I'm Paul." I was sure I had never known anybody named Clarissa or Clary.
"So, the reason I'm here is because I'd like to join your paper. Are you the right person to talk to?"
If it had been some guy I would have told him to come back the next day to deal with anybody but me. "Sure, you can talk to me. Come on in."
After she entered, I closed the door and on some impulse, I locked it.
Clary sort of glided in. She glanced around with skepticism at the shabby state of the room. I didn't know what she had expected since the entire campus, except for the new Science Building, was about equally shabby. The building we were in had been constructed in 1889 as part of a now-departed Catholic women's college.
I placed myself behind a desk at the far end of the room next to the windows and she sat on a table facing me. Of course, I assessed her immediately. She was a very pretty girl -- fairly tall with straight brown hair and steel-rimmed glasses.
Her outfit was a kind of "college girl hot-weather" style. She had a top with spaghetti straps; it had many narrow stripes going across it but the dominant color was pink. Her skirt was a short denim one and her shoes were white sandals. The final touch was the pink cloth band around her head, holding her hair in place. It must have been that item that brought the word
hippie
to my mind.
I couldn't help myself; I wanted to be with her. Or be inside her, I should say for accuracy. I didn't think I was a cad, but I had instantly forgotten about my girlfriend. I wasn't even sure where she was at that time.
Clary said, "Would you like to smoke a getting-to-know-you joint?"
That sounded great.
This chick has brought her own drugs.
"A little bit, yeah."
I got up to share it with her. While taking a few puffs I had the pleasant vibe that comes from being alone with a cute female. When I sat down behind the desk again, I was aware of her legs pressed tightly together. I imagined prying them apart and seeing what kind of underwear she had on, if any.
She started explaining herself, "I've spent my freshman year here and -- I don't know, I feel like I should do something more, like proactive, I'd call it. Like joining this paper, for example."
I said, "So you are a freshman now?"
"Yes, that's right." Being at the end of my sophomore year, I imagined myself as the experienced older guy.
Then she went into her bag and took out some back issues of
The Salient.
While she was doing that I tried to fill in some conversational space.
"As you might know, I've been here a couple of years already. I'll be features editor next semester."
"Paul, you said. I've seen that you're the assistant now, I mean I saw the staff listings." She tapped the bunch of issues in her hand. The staff names and positions were usually at the top of page two.
She went on. "I think I've got most of this semester here. Back in January, I saw that help-wanted ad, I guess you'd call it that." I supposed that she was one of our fans.
She found the correct issue and held it up. The help-wanted ad was on the back cover and it contained a photo of Monty Hall, the host of
Let's Make a Deal.
The headline said:
Why is This Man Smiling?
After that there was some text that we hoped would bring in applicants.
"It's very clever," she said. "And I also read the essay you have in here." It was near the front and she quickly found it. I had written an article about finding an old Lionel model train catalog in my closet and I went on about my childhood memories of owning a train set.
"That was fun to read," she said.
"Well, it was fun to write."
I went into interviewer mode. That was a ruse because in recent years the number of students involved with activities, including the five newspapers, had dropped off considerably. That had been attributed to "apathy," the need for after-school jobs, and various other reasons.
I didn't want Clary to know how desperate we were for new staff, talented or otherwise. Maybe it was because she believed I was someone with power there. And I figured that would help me get laid with her. As I said, I had completely discounted my girlfriend by then.
"So, anyway, Clary, what would you like to write? I mean, in addition, have you written anything yet I could see now?"
"No, not yet, but writing sure seems cool, and this paper seems cool too. I mean, for example, as I said, I like the stuff you've written."
It was all rather lame, but pretty girls could get away with flattering statements like that. It was clear that she was flirting with me; I was staring at her legs and short skirt again. For a moment I wished that my girlfriend was indeed there just to keep me grounded.
Clary said, "I was hoping you would make sure that my articles get published here."
"I'll certainly do my best to see that it happens."