Chapter 2 is here
. This is taking place at the beginning of July 1974. Maspeth is Nora's neighborhood in southwest Queens, New York.
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Two days later, a Thursday, I was scheduled to go out to Nora's house in Maspeth. Her uncle would be at work during the day, and neither of us would start new jobs until the following week.
It was around ten-thirty in the morning when I got off the elevated station at Queens Plaza where I would get a connecting bus. At that point, I started feeling out of sorts. There was something odd, I'd call it non-spontaneous about this meeting with her that bothered me. The fact that it was relatively early in the day clued me into that.
Some guys wouldn't care, but I did. Maybe it was because I had never done anything like that before, I mean meeting a woman at her home. I was also aware that many of her clients had made the same journey before me.
We had agreed to meet at a bus stop about two blocks from where she lived. I didn't want to have to ring the doorbell but she had agreed to my request.
Nora was at the stop when I got off. She was well dressed in a short-sleeved blouse, a skirt, and chunky brown sandals. Immediately I sensed that she was self-conscious too. For a moment we looked at each other without touching.
My thought was,
Who exactly is this person?
Then it was
Why am I here? Dummy, we are supposed to bang each other at her house.
That was the word that came to mind,
bang
, and it seemed rather crude.
Out there in Maspeth she suddenly seemed like a "nice" girl, one I should treat with respect and take on proper dates, not take advantage of her in her own house. It made no sense but that's what occurred to me. We had started our sexual relationship before going on any dates and she had never complained about it.
Now I was about to get more of what I had wanted, but I didn't feel right about it.
We tried to be sociable on the way over there, and she took my hand and we talked about -- something. It was mostly about the college newspaper which I knew a lot about but she didn't.
Her house -- her uncle's house, really -- was a fairly small but neat two-story structure. Like the others on the block, I guessed that it was about fifty years old.
As soon as we were in the living room, she got kind of fluttery and her own nervousness was apparent. But she wanted to be a good hostess and she said, "I'll get us some wine. What would you like, white or red?"
It was eleven o'clock, but as that expression goes,
it's always five PM somewhere.
I asked for white, and then she said, "Please, pick out a record -- anything you want -- and put it on."
I went over to the other side of the room as I heard her doing things in the kitchen. As I pondered what albums she had available, I thought,
You've got to pull yourself together. You have to act relaxed even if you don't feel that way.
I picked an album by Traffic at random, and I set the needle to the second track, "The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys."
Nora came back, not with wine glasses but water tumblers. I sat on the couch, but she sat on a chair at a right angle to mine. She seemed to be talking a little too fast. Yet we both drank almost half of our glasses in a few seconds. She said, "I like vodka and tonics, but it's a little early for that I'd say."
I had never had hard liquor in my life; that would be a few weeks later. Before I could respond, she noted the album choice. "This is a strange song to court a lady with."
Maybe she hadn't intended it to be a joke, but both laughed anyway.
Nora, we've gone way beyond courting in just ten days or so.
It seemed best to comment on the song, which was over eleven minutes long with more than half of it instrumentals. The first lyrics hadn't even started yet.
I said, "I like when the piano comes in here. It sort of reminds me of ragtime."
Well, it was going to come in soon, I knew that. Then one of the lyrics in the first verse reminded me of her.
The percentage you're paying is too high-priced; you're living beyond all your means.
That reminded me of all the other guys who had been in that house, which I didn't want to think about. At later dates, when she knew me better, she told me some amusing stories about all that.
Just as I was trying to formulate something to say, probably about the enigmatic meaning of the song, she blurted out, "Are you sure you want to be here right now?"
I played it as best I could. "Yeah, I'm fine." Then it seemed that I almost blew it. "What, do you want me to go now?" I think I would have left without protest if she had said, "yes."
"No, no, not at all; I do want you to be here today."
As calmly as I could, I said, "The come over here and sit next to me."
In a moment she was up and on my couch. She pressed against me and I put my arm around her waist. I wasn't used to calming jittery women when I was feeling that way too. Time to act stoic, if that was an accurate way to put it. "Nora, just take it easy. Everything's going to be fine."
Maybe it was the normality of the house that was getting to me. I could visualize her aunt or grandmother (did she even have such relatives?) coming out of the kitchen and offering me some cookies.
Our previous three intimate encounters had been at unusual places at the college: the newspaper office at night, then the "tank room" on the highest floor of the student center, and finally the restroom at the back of Stieglitz.
It had felt appropriate to have "dirty," abrupt sex in such places because they were the right, somewhat weird environments for it. I had never seen Nora outside of the school except for a couple of visits to restaurants or bars.
Both of us had been agitated that first evening at
The Salient.
When we had finished, I felt tempted to just walk out and leave her lying face-down on the couch. Her panties were on the floor and I had just put my virginity-busting cream pie (my virginity, of course) into her pussy.
I had been dismayed by the fact that I had started that evening as one of her customers, exchanging a term paper (custom-written for her!) for a blowjob.
I've had enough of this; I'm getting out of here.
But then she had jumped up and said,
Don't go, please don't leave me alone here.
That was even more important than the sex because I knew that we both wanted more than a one-night fling.
She had revealed a lot of her insecurities then. By the next day, she had gotten into a mood I had never seen in her before, one which was both sexy and playful.
As she sat by me at her Maspeth house, she added to the tension by saying, "I guess I don't know much about having a normal relationship."
Well, honey, I know even less.
"We'll figure it out." That sounded pretty lame, I knew.
But she was warming up, which was fine with me.
