Chapter 4 is here.
This is during the summer of 1974, and Paul is in the middle of his four-month affair with fellow student and former part-time hooker Nora Meara. She had agreed to join one of the student newspapers with him called
The Salient
in these stories.
TLC means Taxi and Limousine Commission. CCNY stands for City College of New York, which is on the border of Harlem and Hamilton Heights. The South Campus mentioned here was originally a Catholic women's college that was purchased by the city in the early 1950s. Maspeth is Nora's neighborhood in Queens.
*****
I didn't expect that Nora would have any further contact with
The Salient
staff after that brief exchange with Frank Webber in June. I thought it would be a surprise to everyone else when I brought her in as a new staff member in September. Maybe it wasn't the noblest thought but I was looking forward to showing her off at the first staff meeting.
Hey guys, you didn't expect I'd be able to land a girlfriend over the summer, but here's proof that I could do it. I'm not the sexual loser you thought I was during my freshman year.
Without any reasons to support my idea, I thought I deserved my good fortune.
Yet at the end of July,
The Salient
staff threw an off-season party. It was the kind of gathering that many undergraduates get involved with, often several times per year. Well, I had heard that at big "party" schools, some students would go to such events nearly every week. Of course, drinking and taking drugs played a big role in the festivities among people who otherwise didn't know each other that well.
CCNY had no sororities, and only two small fraternities; thus the five newspapers served as unisex social centers for us at the campus. Our school was also different in that being a commuter school, none of us lived in dorms or had to go home when a semester ended. Most of us were already at home, although two male staffers, Bruce and Harvey, had rented apartments in an old wooden two-family house in The Bronx. They were hosting the party.
I invited Nora to come with me to that house, and she readily agreed.
This is going to be great!
It seemed exciting to bring a girlfriend to such an event rather than going alone. I was still naive in that summer between my freshmen and sophomore years.
********
The location was only about a mile south of where I lived so I could take a bus there. Nora did her tactic of taking transit into Manhattan and then catching a cab on the Upper East Side. That way she could avoid any subway travel within The Bronx, which she wouldn't do unless I was with her.
It was just getting dark as I waited on Webster Avenue for her to show up. She was usually punctual, and her cab pulled up near my spot on the sidewalk.
I had only been going with her for about five weeks, and I still had that "new girlfriend" elation about her. It was more than that; maybe I should say "first girlfriend" ever. She let me look her over; she was wearing light gray culottes, a black top covered by an open short-sleeved shirt, and chunky brown sandals.
We spent a short time on small talk; she was much friendlier towards me than she had been when I was merely her classmate during the previous semester.
"You actually got a yellow cab to take you up here." Taxi drivers sometimes had trepidation about my home borough too.
"Yeah, I know how they sometimes refuse trips here, even for white girls like me. I asked him about it first before I got in."
"That kind of thing is illegal, but who's going to enforce it? I mean, how many people can bother filing with the TLC?"
She looked up and down the avenue. The pillars of the defunct Third Avenue el were still in place, but most of the cross-girders were gone. "So when are they going to replace this thing?"
"The MTA? I don't know, probably sometime in the twenty-first century."
She laughed at that. One of the reasons I liked her was that she observed details such as that one.
"So where is this place?"
"Just up the block across the street." We went up a short hill and stood in front of a wooden house that looked like it hadn't been painted in years.
She said, "Typical of what students can afford."
"I wonder if anybody here will recognize you."
I was referring to her ten months as an ad hoc hooker at CCNY. Recently, she had been talking quite readily with me about her experiences. It was if she needed to confess all of her misdeeds. I didn't mind listening because she had some good stories.
Nora said, "I don't care. If somebody does know me, they wouldn't dare say so, especially since I'm with you."
"Okay, let's go in and see what happens."
"I haven't been to a party since last summer." Her ad hoc career had been a lonely one, and she hoped to gain some friends, especially female ones, at the newspaper.
It was a tall but narrow building, with the front entrance on the street. Later we saw the large rear yard. We went up the stairs and into a kitchen on the second floor. She was holding my arm as we walked in. There were a lot of people I knew from City College, plus others who had probably been invited to crash by their friends.
There was that early party buzz in the room, yet those who knew me instantly noticed that I had a girlfriend. I could read their expressions.
Who is that woman he is with and where did he meet her?
I tried not to look too pleased with myself as I introduced her around. I mentioned that she has a fellow student at our school. Our business manager, Frank Webber, had briefly met her the previous month but he wasn't there that night. My old high school friend Ralph lived a few blocks away and he had said that he would attend.
When I had a chance, I quietly asked her, "Do you see anybody familiar?"
"No, but maybe I forgot one." That was possible since it was a large, impersonal college with nearly 10,000 students.
"As you said, they wouldn't mention it anyway."
There was a lot of alcohol available in the kitchen, including beer bottles set in tubs of ice. I picked up a bottle of Southern Comfort because I had never seen one before. We moved a bit away from the crowded part of the room.
Nora said, "Do you have any experience with hard liquor?"
I hadn't, and I must have told her that sometime recently.
"Then I'll give you a bit of advice. Just sip it, don't drink it like it was iced tea."
"How do you know about this?"
"Believe me, I've seen people who weren't careful get completely plastered -- I especially like the term 'shit-faced' -- in a very short time. There's a slight lag before it's in your bloodstream, and if you keep pouring in more on top of it -- well, you know the results."
I was impressed with her explanations. She smiled and said, "I'm telling you this as your friend, not as your Auntie Nora ordering you not to do something."
I kidded her. "So now you're just a friend?"
"Don't worry, I'm still a special friend."
She winked at me, which was enough to remind me of every sexual thing I had been doing with her. That was quite a bit in a short time frame, and I felt like I had been doing well for a nineteen-year-old guy with absolutely no previous experience with women.
I looked at the bottle of Southern Comfort. "What is this stuff anyway?"
Nora wrinkled her nose with disdain. "It's this weird, sweet-tasting -- what is it technically called? A whiskey liqueur, if you can imagine that. It's flavored with spices and fruits too." She laughed, "A perfect concoction for immature college students like these."
"Like us too, you should say."
Nora had such a different experience from most freshmen that she had a difficult time relating in a normal way to her fellow classmates. In her mind, she hadn't merely been a hooker, but an independent business person making and handling a lot of money under difficult conditions.
I said, "This one is 80 proof according to the label."
"Yeah, just the stuff to blow you out of your socks. Have some wine instead."
As in most parties of this sort, the priorities were: 1) listening to loud music on a stereo system; 2) ingesting various substances; 3) attempting conversations with people about subjects one didn't know much about. In other words, having fun!
All of that was still a novelty for me, so it didn't seem as silly as it would later become. Nora and I would up talking mostly talking to each other. Our newspaper wouldn't be publishing anything until next September so that removed a main topic of interest with other staff members.
I guess it is a good sign that the two of us find each other interesting.
There was no air-conditioning, but the kitchen window was open to a kind of deck. It really was the roof of an extension of the first floor. One of our hosts, Harvey, who rented the second-floor apartment, was out there. He would be a senior the following year, but his short freshman girlfriend Martha was also there too.
After two glasses of wine, I still wasn't contributing much to the conversations around me. Nora sat to my right, and Martha on my left. I noticed that the latter was mostly talking not to her boyfriend, but to his roommate, Gary, another former freshman.
It seemed like the following hours were more of the same. The next significant event occurred when some of us were sitting on the floor in a rather dark room off the kitchen. Somebody had produced some pot, and I had smoked some of it although Nora had warned me that alcohol and marijuana don't mix that well.
My old friend from high school, Jeff Kimmel, was going to be the assistant news editor in September, and I suspect Nora wanted to schmooze with somebody of future importance. She had taken her shirt off to reveal the sleeveless black top she had on underneath.
I was sure Jeff had about the same amount of sexual experience that I had the previous spring, which was none at all. He was a fast talker, and he appeared both pleased and anxious that my Nora was paying attention to him.
Too bad Jeff, we may have joined
The Salient
on the same day last year, but she's with me tonight.
I also could tell that Nora knew what she was doing. She had a lot of experience manipulating men, and she had a mixture of flirtiness and seriousness when talking to Jeff. I was so inexperienced and love-struck that it didn't occur to me that she had been manipulating me too during that summer.
She and Jeff were in the middle of a chat about what she hoped to do as a staff member. A tall guy our age named Jason was also sitting on the floor, not saying much but he was obviously checking out Nora's lithe body.
