Back in my college days I had a friend who was wheelchair-bound and sometimes I would push him to his next class. Now, this was some time ago, before electrically powered wheelchairs were commonplace and most people still struggled with the harsh, stiff, hard to move kind. Joe had one of those. One night we were coming out of the Administration Building, when I spotted a cute but unfriendly looking girl sweeping the floor with a dustmop. Thinking to break the ice and get her to smile, I said, "Hey, you. Why don't you make yourself useful and open this door for us?" I grinned stupidly. She dashed the dustmop to the floor with a clatter, marched over to the door and flung it open.
"My name is Cindy, not 'hey you'," she said between clenched teeth, "and I am very useful, and I don't get paid for opening this fucking door!" Thoroughly rebuffed, I pushed Joe through and she slammed the door at our backs.
"Well, Willy," said Joe with a grin, "looks like you made another friend." He laughed aloud. "I don't know how you do it, but..."
"Shut up, Joe."
I didn't see Cindy for some time. Which was natural, I guess. I was studying Biology and she was doubtless enrolled in Anger Management classes, or something. Pointedly and deliberately, I stayed away from the Administration Building. So for me, Cindy simply vanished.
As a nineteen-year-old college sophomore I naturally studied a little bit and partied a lot. Such a party occurred one late September evening, shortly after the resumption of classes. It was the onset of autumn, when the air was just getting crisp and edgy. You didn't yet need the furance, but the AC was shut off. Beth, a friend of mine, invited me to a party at the White House -- no, not that White House, but an old, comfortable three story edifice which housed a handful of penniless students, most of them youug like me. The huge building, as per its name, was painted a stark, unbroken shade of white.
I remember that this old structure had just those eccentric touches which qualified it a college house; for instance, in the living room, inexplicably, was a barber's chair. Guests would be invited to spin around in the chair while they smoked house reefer which, though "only" Mexican, would knock you on your ass. No telling what it had been doctored with. Perhaps it's best we never found out.
I attended the party, of course, for I had eyes for Beth -- blonde and curvy -- but also to get my share of free reefer and beer. I showed up with a couple six-packs of Billy Beer, eponymous with the then-president's brother, and I believe that I paid a buck apiece for them.
It wouldn't have made any difference what I'd brought. At one point in the evening, everything began to taste the same. You could be drinking Brut Champagne or Brut men's cologne, it would hardly have mattered. I remember that my brilliant friend Diana showed up with a case of Champale Extra Dry Malt Liquor, a potable with aspirations to be a wine. She had scored the alcohol for $3.99 or, again, one dollar per six pack. At college parties, it was always quantity over quality.
Throughout the night and early morning, people came and went, but there were always about fifty people in residence at any one time. It was a big house, with vast grounds, and so partygoers could cluster and disperse at will. Early in the evening, when the hosts were barbecuing and the air was pungest with the savory aroma of grilling pork steaks and burgers and chicken, I spied a friend of mine -- a man named Jan -- sprawled on a chaise lounge with Mary, another of the many "cute" girls in attendance. Oblivious to all else, Jan was struggling to disrobe Marry and effect a union. Mary put up only token resistence. Not prone to voyeurism, I moved on, Billy Beer in hand.
Further on, my friends Sean and Sharon were caught up in an amorous embrace upon the lawn; unaccountably I stood still and stared. Suddenly they looked at me, smiled and waved and, embarrassed, I waved back and shuffled on. As it grew later, I saw more and more of my friends pairing off and I felt somewhat left out, a little melancholy. I stepped inside the house, into the living room, took my turn orbiting in the barber's chair, got high and grabbed another beer.
Before you knew it, it was after midnight and, inasmuch as I had to work in the morning -- I would never have terminated the evening on such a pretext as making class -- I had given myself a curfew of one a.m. At loose ends, I found a flight of steps leading up. I had never been on the upper levels of the White House, so placing one boot before the other I scaled the heights. Arriving at the second floor I beheld yet another cute girl, this one willowy and lithe, sandy haired and clad in a sexy halter top and denim shorts. I was immediately taken with her. She was seated at a small table with two chairs. Unbidden, I eased into the second chair. Her head was turned slightly away from me, yet there was something familiar about her. What was it? I wondered.
She glanced perfunctorily at me and growled,"Who the hell said you could sit there?" That voice, that attitude: it was Cindy! I was a little drunk, so I took no offense at her overt hostility; after all, she was cute.
"Hi, Cindy," I began, and noting that she wasn't imbibing anything, I asked her, "Can I get you a drink?"
She arched her brows, then snarled, "What do you want to do, get me drunk?" She nearly slipped from her chair.
"I think that ship has sailed," I told her with a winsome smile. She frowned, but said nothing. "Do you want me to leave?" I asked her.
"You can sit," she decreed at last. So I stayed put. I took a swig of beer.
Raising her brow again, she asked peevishly, "Are you trying to get drunk?"
I lifted my own brow and came back with, "What are you, the Alcohol Police?" She snorted charmingly and softly chuckled. "How have you been, Cindy?" I asked. "By the way," I said, "my name is Willy."
"I've been very well," she said sharply. I didn't realize it at the time, but we had edged closer and were soon practically in one another's lap.
"You pissed me off at the Admin Building that night," she told me.
"I know," I said contritely. After a moment, I added, "Would you like to punch me in the kidney?" She actually smiled. Yay! "C'mon," I urged, "really get it out of your system." She actually laughed. I was on a roll. Meanwhile we had moved a little closer still. Suddenly she raised her head, leaned in and kissed me ever so softly on the lips. I had been kissed before, but never like this. It was tentative yet determined, searching and vulnerable and so, so sweet. It fairly took my breath away. I must have smiled, for she instantly misinterpreted my experession and recoiled.
"You son of a bitch," she seethed. "There's a half dozen guys here who would kick you ass if I told them to!" Not given to violence myself, I was yet curiously unconcerned. I already had a foot in the door, and I wanted another kiss.
"Uh huh," I said agreeably. "You could." She continued to look stern.
"Damn right I could," she asserted. She started to say something else, but I moved in again and kissed her full on the lips, prolonging the kiss for good measure. We both made small, vulnerable, satisfied noises, and we drew into a full embrace, kissing one anothers lips, faces, necks, and so on. Pulling back a moment for air, I chided her playfully,
"You gonna have your friends beat me up now?" The light was dim, but she must have blushed.
"Maybe not," she conceded. We kissed some more. With studied nonchalance i placed my hand upon her bare knee.
"Hey," she protested half heartedly. I left my hnd where it was. We kissed some more and I nuzzled her neck, traced a kiss along the sculpted line of her jaw. The table at which we sat was located in a foyer, off which several other rooms branched.
Bearing in mind the natural progression of things, I asked Cindy, "Do you want to check out one of the other rooms? More privacy," I said persuasively. Now I really didn't want to have sex that night, to be completely honest. My sexual experience at that point was limited and I was three sheets to the wind and having a perfectly good time as I was. In light of the tortured morality of the times, I secretly hoped that Cindy would be a "good girl" and turn me down. So I was relieved when she did.
Suddenly we were interrupted by the arrival of two other young women, whose shadows fell over us. They had overheard our discussion and they turned out to be Cindy's roommates. "Ready to go, Cindy?" asked the taller and skinnier of the two. She stared at me reprovingly. I removed my hand from Cindy's knee.
"We're leaving now," barked the shorter and heavier of the pair. "C'mon, we'll give you a ride." It was not a request.
"Barb, Shawna," said Cindy blithely, addressing her friends, "this is Willy. Willy, Barb, Shawna."
I nodded in their direction but they cast withering looks my way.
"Where's your jacket?" asked Barb, then plucked it from the seat on which Cindy sat, and wrapped it around her friend.
Cindy stumbled to her feet, but before leaving with her roomies, leaned down and gave me a deep, serious kiss on the lips, which held the promise of many tomorrows. "See ya' round campus, Willy," she murmured, and then, like a ghost, she was gone.
I don't know what became of my Cindy of 1973, but I never saw her again. I have only a chaste memory of our brief romance at the White House.
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