Chapter 6: Vivian

In early October, Miranda went out of town for four days to visit some relatives in Massachusetts.

Late in the afternoon of the day that Miranda had left, I got a phone call from her roommate, Vivian Hannity. That was a surprise because until then I had only the most perfunctory relationship with her. After a few lines of chat about Mandy’s trip, she said, “Hey Paul, let’s have a drink together this evening. Is there someplace you think would be good?”

I almost said, are you serious? However, I figured that if a lady had asked me to have a drink with her, I should go. I was going to be a gentleman and get her at her apartment, but she said she’d meet me at the bar.

Then I had to figure out a plausible place we could both reach by public transportation. I had a car, but I was a stickler about not driving after drinking. There was a bar called Lynch’s on Jerome Avenue near 210th Street. I had never been in it, but we both could get there by bus without any transfers.

I got there early and, at a few minutes after seven, I saw Vivian walking up from the bus stop down the street. She was shorter and thinner than Mandy, and her blonde hair was lighter. I was struck by how she had dressed up for this date. She was wearing a black skirt, a blazer, nylon stockings, and medium-heeled black shoes.

Once Mandy had asked me, as sort of a joke, whether I have ever masturbated while thinking of Vivian. I denied it, but in fact I had done it a couple of times. Lovers should never ask that kind of question of each other, so I felt justified in lying about it. That night, on Jerome Avenue, Vivian looked more enticing than ever, and I instantly wanted her. Paul, you can’t think like that; she’s just being friendly. But if that was true, then why had she dressed up for me?

As soon as we entered the bar, I felt like I had picked the wrong one. It was fairly small and quiet in there, and it was filled with the kind of morose, middle-aged and older Irish drunks that were common in some New York bars. I looked at Vivian to see if she wanted to leave, but her expression and gestures said, no problem, it’s fine.

We saw were some tables in the back, so we headed that way. All of the other customers were male, and most of them looked at her as she passed. Vivian didn’t seem at all self-conscious, and she returned their gazes. She even smiled a bit.

There was no waitress service, so we had to get our drinks from the bartender. I got a beer and Vivian had a gin and tonic

As soon as we sat down, the quiet in the place started to bother me. None of the other patrons were talking to each other. However, there was a jukebox nearby. Before I used it, I wanted to check with the bartender for permission. He didn’t seem to care one way or the other, and he nodded.

I checked the playlist, and it was more interesting than I had expected. To start, I picked David Bowie’s “Young Americans.” It was a fast-paced, rousing kind of song, but only the last guy at the end of the bar seemed to notice it. As I sat down, he said to me, “What is this shit?”

I figured I’d humor him with politeness, so I replied, “Well sir, it seems we could all enjoy our drinks more with some musical accompaniment.”

“Ah, fuck that,” and he went back to his drink.

At least I could now talk to Vivian with some privacy. She said, “As you can see, the Irish are not always a happy-go-lucky kind of people.”

“You’re Irish yourself, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but I’m third generation.” She indicated our fellow barflies, “For a lot of these guys, drinking is something they do because they have to, not because they truly enjoy it. That’s why they’re not talking to each other.”

“It’s a Tuesday night, but we’re here too.”

She smiled, “Well, we’re not like these guys, not yet anyway!”

Vivian was easy to talk to, and I felt relaxed as we discussed our lives. At one point I got up to pick more songs. I found the original 1965 version of “Gloria” by Van Morrison and the later cover by Patti Smith, so I did both of them. Smith went second.

Patti’s version started slowly, with lyrics beyond what Morrison had written. The grumpy guy at the end of the bar commented again, “Now what in the hell are you playing?”

“Sir, if you listen carefully, you’ll hear that this is a cover of what went before, which was the original by Van Morrison.” I decided to add, “He’s actually Irish.” Morrison was also a Protestant from Northern Ireland, but I assumed the old dude didn’t know that.

All he said was, “Ah, fuck him too.”

A little later Vivian told me had gone to the Mount St. Ursula Academy, an all-girls Catholic high school only about a mile from where we were sitting.

She said, “We had those Catholic schoolgirl outfits. I especially liked the warm-weather versions with those little blue skirts and the white knee socks. I bet you look at those chicks when they’re walking around the streets, don’t you?”

I knew she’d find it tongue-in-cheek, but I replied, “Me? Naw, I’d never do that.”

“The idea seemed to be to dress us like little girls even though we were actually very nubile women.

“I do like knee-socks.”

“I’ve got some; I’ll wear them for you. They’re not just white; they have different colors and designs. I also have some thigh-highs, which can be fun too.”

She said she’d wear them just for me?

She went on, “What you don’t know is that we’d try to get away with wearing the most outrageously sexy kind of panties underneath our uniforms, Sometimes the nuns would have a panty-check and if they didn’t like what they found – well, they’d take us into a room and paddle us, first on the seat of our underpants and then on our bare behinds.”

That was heady stuff to hear about. “That was a bit harsh, wasn’t it?”

Vivian giggled, “Yes, but the thing was – even though it hurt, I discovered that I enjoyed it too.

Vivian didn’t seem so quiet and modest then, as my previous impressions of her had been. I thought, she’s going to try to seduce me. It’s only a matter of time. In fact, she’s already started.

She wasn’t done with her topic. “You see, with the gender segregation and that Catholic repression of our desires, it was a sexual hothouse in there. All of us we’re boy-crazy, or to be more blunt, horny as hell. You could practically smell the estrogen in the air.”

Just to have something to say, I asked, “And who exactly was St. Ursula?”

“Oh, you’re going to be amazed by this. The story goes that, in the Fourth Century, near Cologne, she and 11,000 other virgins were massacred by The Huns. Supposedly they were all beheaded.”

“Eleven-thousand? That’s appalling. Why didn’t they, ah, screw all those chicks instead of killing them?”

“Who even knows if any of that is even true? The Church loves her, however. The Ursulines, the Order of St. Ursula, are nuns dedicating to educating girls. I guess they think it’s better to lose your head than lose your hymen.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at that. Vivian was disturbed by something, however. She said, “I hate the Church’s obsession with these martyrs. Like St. Agatha. The story is that her breasts were cut off because she refused to marry a pagan.”

“I’ve heard about her somewhere.”

“And now she’s the patron saint of breast cancer!” Vivian shook her head. “It’s just gross. Underneath their piousness and chastity, there’s sadism, sexual sadism. And lesbianism too – not that there is anything wrong with lesbians. But those nuns didn’t know that half the girls liked being spanked by them.”

Fortunately, I had fed more coins into the jukebox, so our presumably Catholic fellow patrons couldn’t hear her. Roxy Music’s “Love Is the Drug” was playing then.

I said, “And spanking isn’t sadistic?”

“Come on, you know must know this, if it’s not too extreme, spanking can be a lot of fun.” Yeah, and Mandy was proof of that. She went on, “When I graduated, I was so done with the Church. I went to Lehman, which seemed normal by comparison. I could date guys and even bang them if I wanted to. I met Mandy there, of course, the first Jewish girl I ever really knew.”

“She’s pretty wild at times.”

“Isn’t she? I learned a lot from her.”

I suddenly speculated that the two roommates had sexual encounters with each other. In fact, I was almost sure of it. Vivian was leaning forward and I looked into her light brown eyes. She’s lively, she’s smart, and she’s certainly intense.

A little later, she said, quite casually, “Paul, come over to my apartment and we can share a joint.”

Maybe I wasn’t that surprised, but I also understood that she was pulling me into her web. With women, bounty brings more bounty. If a guy has no one, then he may have trouble landing a girl. But if he already has one, then her friends will want a piece of the action too. And I knew that Vivian wasn’t dating anyone at the moment.