Having just turned eighteen at the height of hippiedom, I so much wanted to be part of that scene! But I was still a high school kid from the Bronx, college-bound and straighter than I wanted to admit. Sure, I smoked dope, but who did I know that didn't?
On weekends, I would take the subway downtown to the East Village and hang around St. Mark's Place. I loved the button and poster shop, Underground Uplift Unlimited. I would buy sandalwood incense at the Intergalactic Trading Post to burn in my candlelit room at home while listening to The Mothers of Invention. At the Gem Spa, I would have an egg cream, a classic drink from every New York boy's childhood, and pick up the latest issue of The East Village Other, the local alternative weekly.
The Other had a weekly feature called Slum Goddess, a photo of a real live East Village resident. No airbrushed bunnies, these were the girls I fantasized about. I imagined myself living with one of them in a tenement on Avenue B.
One Saturday I was browsing St. Mark's Books, the kind of store that stocked "The Anarchist Cookbook" and "Revolution for the Hell of It". I saw a woman walking the aisles who looked familiar. She was a prototypical hippie chick: long black hair parted in the middle, peasant blouse, well-worn jeans patched with embroidered ribbon from the Ukrainian store on Seventh Street, and leather sandals. I suddenly realized why I recognized her.
Although it seems impossible now, I was extremely shy at that age, which accounted for my limited dating experience. I had been out with a few girls, and even made out a couple of times, but had passed up many opportunities for fear of rejection. Yet something motivated me to step up and address her.
"Hey, I liked your picture in The Other."
She looked at me coldly. "Oh yeah?" she replied, "What did you like about it?"
I said she looked exactly like the kind of girl I dreamt about. This seemed to soften her, and she said, "That's sweet. So what kind of girls do you go out with?" With nothing to be gained by talking big, I told her the truth, that I had only been on a few dates, and with girls who were nothing like her. You could drive a truck between the lines and it would have had "virgin" painted on the side panels.
She looked me up and down, took my hand and said, "Let's go for a walk." I was incredulous, and if I hadn't been so nervous I would have sprouted wood right then.