In June 1975 I briefly was with a woman I still think of as “the hippie girl.”

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 a feeling of nostalgia for a very recently departed era. It was for a period that had been hyped out of all proportion since before Walter Cronkite said he wished he had covered Woodstock.

I just wished I had been there at all, but I was only fourteen at the time. I knew no one else who was going, and my parents wouldn’t have given me permission to hitchhike, probably the only plausible method of getting to the site.

I knew little about the bands that performed there. Rather, for a while, I had fantasies of frolicking with skinny-dipping chicks in some pond. Later I figured out how little of that had actually occurred. I assumed that the vast majority of guys who went there had to depend on masturbation to cure their blue-balls, just like in the rest of reality. 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 that the twice per year student activity fee supported at the City College of New York. Its name was bestowed by returning veterans at its founding in 1947.

Over the next two decades, it become a conventional competitor to the semi-official Campus, which had endured since the early 20th Century. During the 1960s it mutated into the school’s “hippie/countercultural” 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 but no one there could define what that would be.

By that June I had been there nearly two years and had collected two girlfriends and one ex-girlfriend on the staff, all of whom had been invited there by me. I had the feeling of invulnerability and cockiness that comes with being young, and for a while, no soap operas resulted from my unwise handling of my romantic life.

One late afternoon I was alone in the 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 new 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. I didn’t ask who it was. When I opened it I saw a young woman standing there.

“Oh hi, how are you doing?” I said. Not, can I help you? I noticed a lilt in my voice that I wouldn’t have had with any unexpected male visitor.

“Yeah, this is the, ah, Sally-ent, right?” There was some ditzy tone to her voice that I thought might be a prank.

“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 this 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 came in 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 was constructed in 1888 as part of a now-departed Catholic women’s college.

I placed myself behind a desk at the far end of the room and she sat on a table facing me. Of course, I assessed her as she sat there. 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 short denim and her shoes were white sandals. The final touch was her pink hairband. I couldn’t help myself; I instantly wanted to be with her. Or be inside her, I should say for accuracy.

She said, “Would you like to smoke a getting-to-know-you joint?”

That sounded great. This chick brought her own drugs. I said, “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 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.” Then she went into her bag and took out some back issues of The Salient.

While she was doing this I tried to fill in some conversational space, “Well, yeah, as you might know, I’ve been here a couple of years already. I’ll be features editor next semester.”

“Right, 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. “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 guessed that she was one of our fans.

She found the correct issue and held it up. The help-wanted ad had been on the back cover and 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 decided to go into interviewer mode. This was a ruse because in recent years the number of students involved with activities, including the five newspapers, had dropped off considerably. This had been attributed to “apathy,” the need for after-school jobs, and various other reasons. For some reason, 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 get me laid.

“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 some of the stuff you’ve written.”

It was all rather lame, but pretty girls could get away with flattering statements like that. I also knew she was flirting with me; I was staring at her legs and short skirt again. For a moment I wished that Michelle or Judy, the two girls I was dating – or balling, to be more precise – were there to keep me grounded. I had invited both of them to join the paper.

She went on, “I was hoping you would make sure that my stuff gets published here.”

“I’ll certainly do my best to see that it happens.” That was something of a fib. Anybody who could string sentences together got their stuff in; rejections were rare. In the two years I had been there I’d seen that happen to only one fledgling applicant and he immediately quit. But maybe she can’t really write and she knows it. In any case, I was thinking more with my dick than my head at that point.

I qualified my previous promise, “But we won’t have the next issue coming out until September.”

“That’s okay; however, I wanted to see if we could work out something today.” I was getting a glimmering of what she was up to.

Her next statements seemed to confirm that. “I was wondering, Paul; do you happen to have a girlfriend right now? Maybe here on this paper?”

I knew enough to evade the question. “I’m doing all right.”

She smiled at me. Then she went on, “I think there is one. Pardon me for asking, but does she put out enough for you? Just curious, but you know what I mean?”

I certainly did know but I wanted to draw her out more, “What exactly do you mean by that?”

“You know, does she give you enough screwing and other things to your satisfaction?”

Then she gave me another look, a look that women have been giving men for millennia and which I instantly recognized. I had a lump in my throat and a bulge in my pants.

She said, “If you could help me, I could help you.”

Now I was sure about her. I was considering just brushing her off, but she did something that got really got my attention. She pulled her skirt up as she sat on the table and spread her legs. She wasn’t wearing panties. Her public bush was dark and springy.

“Do you like what you are seeing?”

My response was extremely weak, “You’re not wearing any panties.”

“But I do have a pair in my bag in case I need them.”

I wondered, need them for what? In case you have intercourse and the semen is running out of your cunt?”

She decided to explain herself. “I often don’t wear them in warm weather. I like that bare feeling, the feeling of the warm air coming up off the street and surrounding my crotch.” She giggled, “Of course, in cold weather, I do wear tights.”

I tried my best, which wasn’t very good. “Of course, that makes sense.”

Then she said, “All right, I know what young guys are like. Why don’t you come over here and stand in front of me?”