Chapter 1: Hamilton Heights

The story of how I landed my first girlfriend is pretty unconventional. At first glance, one would think we were completely unsuited for each other. Yet, although we irked each other at times, for a while we clicked.

Before her, I expected that I would meet a “nice” girl, however that was defined. I was looking for something long-term, not merely causal sex. Who I did wind up with was more than I had bargained for.

That girl was a fellow student, but she also did some amateur hooking around campus to make ends meet. She was brazen, profane, and she could turn nasty; she had an attitude that said she didn’t give a shit about anything.

Yet I found her to be very witty and smart too. In the right mood, she could quite affectionate towards me. And man, the sexual stuff she offered to me, including her kinky side, was beyond whatever I had ever hoped for.

She drew me into her web; then I turned it around and pulled her into mine. We’re weren’t particularly subtle about how we did it. She was too brash; I was too inexperienced to do anything but run on instinct. Love can be a wonderful but strange thing.

Throughout my freshman modern European history course in the spring of 1974, Nora Meara sat between me and the windows. I caught her name during some first-day introductory chat but then I quickly forgot what her last name was.

Out of habit, most students in college classes gravitated towards the same spot in the room every day. I always kept an empty seat between us. Had I been more experienced and more assertive, I might have simply dropped in right next to her and chatted with her at the beginning and end of each class.

For a while, I noticed her clothes more than anything else. During the winter months, she wore jeans and boots most of the time. As the weather warmed up, I saw more of her body. She went for pullover tops and short skirts. One of my favorites of the latter was a cute blue denim one. Once in a while, she had a mid-length skirt for variety.

If she did wear jeans during the spring months, she invariably had a midriff-baring top. She seemed to need to have a certain amount of herself on display. When I was bored in class I would try to glance over at her; she never seemed to notice. If her navel was exposed I tried to look at that.

On her more numerous skirt-wearing days, she had a habit of splaying her legs out carelessly. I tried to determine what kind of panties she had but I never could get the correct angle for a view. I amused myself by imagining she had no panties at all.

After being in schools of one sort or another for fourteen years, my mind wandered at times in class. As the weeks passed, I assessed her more carefully, comparing her to other girls I had seen but didn’t really know on campus. She was probably about five-foot-seven, but her legginess made her seem taller. I noted her lanky dark-blonde hair, fair skin, and steel-rimmed glasses.

I speculated about socializing with her somehow, even asking her for a date, but I never seemed to get an opening. She rarely – perhaps actually never – participated in class and she had little to say to me. In fact, she said very little to anybody else in the room.

Nora’s attention must have wandered too as she spent a fair amount of time looking out the window. Our building, City College’s Wagner Hall, was on a bluff called Hamilton Heights. Alexander Hamilton had indeed once lived in this neighborhood and his house still stood on Convent Avenue, just north of the campus.

Now, nearly 175 years later, the view from up here to the east showed long blocks of Harlem tenements and newer housing projects with the gray-green towers of the Triborough Bridge beyond. I wasn’t sure that was what Hamilton had intended for America, but that is what we now had.

When the midterm papers were returned to us, she did complain to me about her low grade. She said, “Oh man, I can’t believe it – he gave me a D. This really sucks.”

I wasn’t sure she was even addressing me, but there was no one else close enough. I looked over and she turned the paper so that I could see it. By chance, I could also read the info on the title page and I finally caught her last name again: Meara.

“So what did you get?” she asked me.

“Ah, it looks like an A.”

“It doesn’t merely look like an A, it is one.” I caught a tone of mean-spirited envy. She grimaced and turned away. By this point in the semester, I was getting the impression that she wasn’t merely quiet; there was something morose about her.

In June, after the end-term paper had been assigned, I heard her say, “Hey, Paul.” I glanced over at her. “Look, I’d like to talk to you about something, I mean something about this course.”

I replied, “Sure, what is?”

“Tell you what, meet me over in the Finley cafeteria...” She looked at her watch, a delicate gold one. “In say, twenty-minutes. We can have some coffee.” That was in the building across the way from ours.

I nodded, “I’ll be there.” I tried to sound casual, but if she had asked me to meet her in the Mojave Desert I might have checked the Amtrak schedule to Barstow. In actuality, all I had to do was walk across the driveway to the student center.

“Great. I’ll see you there.” She grabbed her bag and walked out. I watched the back of her skirt, her long white legs moving as they carried her out of the room.

An anomaly that I couldn’t figure out was why she just didn’t walk over to Finley with me. But I accepted that as a minor detail. In fact, I felt upbeat. I had joined one of the student newspapers the previous fall but hadn’t managed the land a date with any of the girls on the staff. For one thing, the number of female members was considerably lower than the male ones.

Now, in a surprising development, this Nora girl had suddenly chosen me – for something, I wasn’t quite sure what yet. When I got there I purchased my coffee and then went to look for her. She saw me and waved me over to her table

Her first few sentences seemed inconsequential, but I let her talk. I sat there thinking, hey I’m on a date, just a coffee date, but it’s a start. This Nora girl was a bit on the sullen side from what I had seen of her so far; there was some kind of unhappiness in her.

I had the habits and thoughts of a nineteen-year-old virgin. I remembered the masturbation fantasies I had had about Nora: lifting up her little skirts, finding pretty panties or no panties at all. That was followed by coupling with her while standing up in a Wagner Hall restroom or taking her on the grungy sofa in a student newspaper office.

There really had been no Nora with me in that stall or office, but now she was here at the table – steel-rimmed glasses, dark-blonde hair, short skirt, the whole package. For the first time, I was close to notice a few freckles on her face. It was just the two of us there with our lousy cafeteria coffee.

She spent about a minute complaining about that coffee. Then she said, “So, Paul, I’ve got a deal that I want to discuss with you.”

I had expected some sociable student chat and I didn’t know what she was talking about.

“Okay, what do you mean?”

She needed to set the scene first, “As I mentioned, I haven’t been doing that well in this course. In fact, I’m sort of in trouble with it. I told you, I got a D on the mid-term paper. You remember that?”

“Sure, I remember it.”

“Well, since you seem to be doing so well with it – I mean the course – I could use some help with all this. I mean from you.”

A fantasy came to me, sudden but almost complete. Maybe we could have study dates, I could help her with her work and then, well, romance would bloom.

I said, “I could do that.” I thought I would do more than that if she asked me, like throw my coat into the mud so she could cross a puddle. Of course, it was June and I didn’t have a coat, but the point was: this is great, something very interesting is shaping up.

She leaned forward and continued in a lower voice, “I have a very specific request. So here’s the thing: I’d like you to write a final paper for me, I mean another paper in effect just for me. If you do that, I’ll give you a blowjob in return.”

Did she really just say that? I know I heard it, but I couldn’t believe it. Her voice had been so calm and unaffected. I think she saw the complete confusion in my expression. In any case, she continued her pitch, “I’ll sweeten it for you. During this, you can feel me up too, as much as you want.”

Something made me simplify the issue to its essence, “Exactly what does that mean?”

“Come on dummy, you know. It goes like this: I’ll lift my clothes up and you can rub my tits, my pussy, my ass.” She put on a goofy smile which somehow suggested that I wasn’t that sharp. Does she think I’m book smart but socially inept? I was projecting one of my own fears onto her.

“Then you’ll take out your stiff cock – and it will be stiff – and I will kiss, lick and suck said cock until you bust a nut.” She made a pouting expression with her lips.

I knew what she meant but I still said, “Bust a nut?”

“Shoot your load, come, ejaculate, have an orgasm. Whatever you want to call it.” She leaned a bit closer to me, “One thing though; in all seriousness, I’m not going to swallow. In other words, don’t come in my mouth.”

The strangeness of this conversation paradoxically allowed me to think rather clearly. I asked, “Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to, that’s why. When the big moment comes, pull out and aim somewhere else. Don’t get cute and shoot it into my face. Guys often try to pull that stunt.”

I wondered if she had blown those guys for fun or profit, but I wasn’t going to ask. Anyway, she seemed to have the logistics worked out. “I think a good place for this would be that newspaper office of yours.” That would be The Salient’s office on the third floor of the Finley Hall we were in now. “On the evening that you have the paper ready, we’ll meet up there.”

She could see that I was mulling over this proposal. A pleading tone came into her voice, “Oh please, I really need to pull my grades together, I mean finish this semester doing better. This course has just been a big sore point for me.”

I was excited by the blatant sexuality of her proposition, but yet I was also upset. My sweet little fantasy evaporated. This was a bald business deal; she was prostituting herself. Has she done this kind of thing before with other guys? I guessed that she had planned this sometime before she invited me over there for coffee.

Then she pulled a real Jezebel act on me. She smiled, warmly; maybe she faked it. I was too inexperienced to truly judge that. She said, “You have everything to gain from this. I know Paul...” I should have been wary that she dropped my name in at that point. “I know you’ve had fantasies about me, I know you’ve wanted to lift my skirt up and pull off my panties.”

I was foolish; I blurted out, “How do you know that?”

She was still smiling, “Silly, I know how guys are. You think I haven’t banged my share of them before?”

I had an erection. If I had stood up it would have been visibly pushing the front of my pants out. Much later, I knew that she had figured that out without actually having seen it. I tried to salvage some manly pride, to show some – well, if not dominance, at least backbone. I wanted to sound aloof but I failed, “So why not bang me too?” I knew immediately that turning it into a question was a misstep.

She laughed, “Oh, you mean actually fuck you? I’d need a lot more than a term paper for that. I doubt you could afford it.”

I almost asked her what her price would be. Would I actually take out money, money my grandfather had put into an account, to pay for this chick? How pathetic have I become?

She wanted to close. She put a hand over one of mine as I rested it on the table. It was the first time a girl had ever so much as touched me.

“So sweetheart, how about it? Curious to know what kind of panties I wear? Sometimes I don’t wear any.” She leaned back and put on – faked I am now sure – a look of wantonness. “I love the feeling of the warm spring air around my bare hips and crotch. It makes me feel like a femme fatale. My cunt gets wet when I walk around like that.”

I agreed to have the paper for her in ten days.

She said, “Another thing, I’m going to need cab fare. I’m not riding the subway back at that hour.”

I tried some chivalry, “I can take you home.”

She looked annoyed now, “To Maspeth, Queens? And there’s a bus ride too. Just give me twenty dollars; that should cover it.”

I shouldn’t have asked this, but I did, “So you said you’ve done this kind of thing before?”

I was surprised at how defensive she got, “What I have to do to get by, to survive, is not your business. If it offends your delicate sensibilities then don’t do it.”

I think she knew that was a rhetorical statement; she already had me. I got apologetic, “No, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have...”

She was giving me a self-righteous look that might have been appropriate on teetotaling Carrie Nation. Then that changed to a smirk, “That’s okay, I knew you’d come through.” What she really meant was, I know what your weaknesses are and how to exploit them.

On the designated evening I was sitting in The Salient office waiting for her. The old building was beautiful on the outside but the interior spaces were grimy rooms lit by harsh fluorescents.

Then I heard a knock on the door and I went to open it. Nora was there, much like she had been in one of my fantasies. She was wearing a black blouse with spaghetti straps, a flowered short skirt, and white sandals. The blouse had various circular items on it, circles within circles, and other designs that might have been stars but seemed more like big asterisks. Although her breasts weren’t that large, it was obvious she didn’t have a bra. I wondered about her panties but I’d find out soon enough.

I tried to appear cheerful although I was very nervous, “Hi, Nora.”

She got right to the point, “Let me see the paper.”

“I’ve got it over here.”

We went to the far end of the office by the windows. For about a minute she stood, leaning back on a table, flipping through the pages. I stood facing her. After glancing at the notes/bibliography at the end she said, “It looks okay. So let’s go to the couch and get this done already.”

“Ah, I was going to feel you up, remember?”

She put on the expression of somebody trying to recall a fact, then she yanked her top up and pushed her breasts forward. “Here, sport, feel these.”

I stepped forward and did start fondling them, but something seemed wrong; somehow this so far wasn’t that compelling. Some initiative on my part seemed necessary, so I dropped my hands to her waist. For a second she seemed to resist but then she said, “Okay, I get it, petting below the waist, as they said at the malt shop.”

She quickly lifted her skirt; I saw her underpants: basic white bikini drawers. She dropped those down to her ankles and stepped out of them.

As she leaned back a bit she held her skirt up, “Ever see a pussy before?”

“Ah, of course.”

“Yeah I’m sure, maybe in Penthouse or something, and even there it isn’t true spread beaver.”

I had seen a few Playboys and Penthouses and I made a comparison. Her exposure of herself had been so sudden that I still had the clarity of mind for objective assessments. Her pubic hair was thicker, more springy than that of the magazine models. I had the odd insight that the models probably trimmed their bushes.

She said, “How about some ass?” She turned around and bent over the table. Her buttocks were trim and pale.

I tried for a joke, “Hah, no tan lines.”

“Baby, I just burn at the beach. Besides, it’s only June. You know, I bet you’d like to give me a good spanking.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because I’m a bad girl and all guys like spanking girls, bad or not. Even so-called nice guys like you are sadists. But, obviously, you’d need to come up with another term paper or some cash before I’d let you do that.”

When she turned back, I had more insight into what was bothering me. I had expected some act of affection from her – that she would take my hand, kiss me, give me a gesture of fondness. I tried to rectify that by moving my face towards hers. She shook her head so quickly that her hair whipped across my cheeks.

“Hey, no lovey-dovey.” She continued, “It’s so fucking obvious that you don’t have the slightest idea of what you’re doing.”

I was unable to say anything more coherent than, “What?”

“Look, I’ve been around the block with my share of guys and I can just see your utterly unbusted cherry. You just exude virginity.”

In my confusion, for a moment I pictured the little red fruit in a bowl. Later I understood that she really didn’t know anything about me, but she was holding control over the situation. Her insults were tests; she wanted to how much she could get away with and how much ground I’d concede. I think she also enjoyed getting under my skin and being rude for its own sake.

I was still smarting from her statements when she reached out and squeezed my crotch. “Okay stud, at least you’ve got your boner going.”

While my mind was dealing with Nora’s attitude, my body had responded automatically to the sight and presence of her unclothed form. I almost hadn’t noticed that I had an erection now

She ordered, “It’s time – come over to the couch and stand in front of me.” She sat on the cushion; I knew she’d be more comfortable that way rather than kneeling on the wooden floor. I considered complaining that I had hardly copped enough feels yet, but I thought better of it. Even looking at her crotch was impossible now; she clamped her knees together as if she was sitting on the subway.

She had put her glasses on the table. I asked her about that and she looked at me like the question was not worth an answer.

She said, “Well, take it out already.” I unzipped myself and let my cock pop out. She issued more directions, “You’ll find it easier if you just unbuckle your pants and pull it all down, like to your knees.”

I tried for a bit of erotic banter, “Do you like my cock?”

She scoffed, “Basically, if you’ve one seen one you’ve seen them all.”

I said, “Maybe I should be a little stiffer for this.”

I must have looked puzzled because she replied, “You must have done this bit often enough. Take your own useful little hands and stroke yourself.”

There had to be some sexiness in all this, “I was hoping that you would lend one of your own hands for this too.”

I expected that to sound playful. Instead, she made a raspberry/Bronx cheer noise and said, “Well, you hoped wrong.”