A sincere thank you to all those who took the time to read my first story, "Summer 1970". The favorable response was both unexpected and greatly appreciated. Special thanks to those who were kind enough to comment both publicly and privately.
Encouraged by the response, the story continues...
Part one of two
Fall 1970. Freshman year of college is underway and everything is going along as expected. My academic performance is as mediocre as ever, my love life unfortunately even worse. My best friend Kenny is in college out west, and from all reports is doing fantastic in both of those areas.
This comes as no surprise to me, as I was certain Kenny would continue scoring well both in and out of the classroom. Good for him. I was happy for him and not jealous in the least. Well, I was happy for him, that much is true, and I looked forward to seeing him again when he would be coming back home for Christmas break. Until then, I had to try to get my act together.
As a reintroduction, I'm David, an eighteen year old virgin, and with no likely victims on the horizon that would change that situation either. I had no car so my prospects were dim indeed. Occassionally I would tag along with some other friends and hit the bars desperately trolling for companionship, but without success.
I lacked confidence as it was, and if I had managed to persuade some unwitting female to be with me, what would I do then? Have them ride to my house in the back seat of a car full of drunks to my house? Sneak up the stairs of my house without waking my family? Not a likely scenario. My only prayer would be to find a girl with their own place and their own car.
Well, if they had that they sure as hell didn't need me, because frankly I was not that great a catch. I had very average and completely boring looks, someone so nondescript that I easily bacame wallpaper. A little over six foot tall and around 200 pounds, brown hair that I was growing longer in an attempt to get a little character into my boring look. Since everyone in 1970 was growing their hair long, that certainly did nothing to make me stand out. I should have shaved my head, in retrospect.
Anyway, one weekend in the fall I had nothing much to do, which was not a rare, but I also wasn't scheduled to work that weekend, which would certainly do little for my future finances. I suppose I could have stayed home and studied, but why would I do that and risk succeeding? I thought it would be a better idea to go down to New York City for the day on Saturday, figuring it would be much better to be bored down there than upstate.
I hopped on a bus that Saturday morning with little money, low expectations and no plans. I had gotten a New York paper at the bus terminal so I could get some ideas on what to do when I got down there, and settled in for the long ride.
I arrived at Port Authority just before noon and went out to the street. It was a brisk autumn day and it was just staring to drizzle ever so slightly. The drizzle soon turned to rain and even though I had no concrete plans, this would severely curtail my options.
I walked around in the rain for a time, long enough to realize that getting drenched and walking around in soggy clothes was not going to improve the enjoyment of the day. Passing several theatres, I decided that I should duck in for a flick until the rain let up.
I was the Times Square area, circa 1970, which bears no resemblance to the Times Square of today. During that era there were a lot of theatres, and virtually all of them XXX. So really, I didn't have much of a choice. Yeah, I was forced into it! Seriously, I would have made the same decision even if there were other options, but this allowed me to take a higher moral ground, if indeed there is any higher moral ground to be found in a 42nd Street grindhouse.
Adult theatres were a rarity back home in upstate New York. There were a couple of them around, but you didn't want to get caught frequenting them, as that sort of news traveled fast in small neighborhoods. I had gone to one of them right after turning eighteen as sort of a rite of passage, but only under cover of darkness, slithering around and waiting until the coast was clear before sneaking up to the door like a criminal.
Being in NYC was a different thing altogether. I was as invisible as could be down there, lost in the vast sea of humanity. I picked a theatre with the most interesting titles for the lowest admission price and slunk on in.
For a couple of bucks, this wasn't a bad deal. You got three movies for one admission price. The theatre itself must have been really something back in its day. Today was clearly not its day however, as its Art Deco look had decayed and faded badly with the passing years.
The aroma of the theatre reminded me of a locker room and a particularly foul one at that. They had a concession stand which defied description. The only sight possibly scarier than the discolored popcorn nestled inside the grungy machine was the droopy-eyed, slack-jawed cretin drooling behind the counter. Yikes!
Inside, you had a wide variety of seats to choose from, giving you the option of deciding precisely which part of your ass you wanted impaled by a loose spring. I picked the least painful seat and sat down, planning to watch maybe one movie if it was any good, and then go check on the weather.
Four hours later, I staggered back out onto the street. The rain must have stopped long ago, as the streets were barely damp. It wasn't dark yet, but the day was pretty much shot.
Great! I had just wasted the day watching three porn flicks of varying quality. Some old geezer tried to sit on my lap, accidently I'm sure (it was very dark in there) and some other guy plopped next to me and started jerking off, not accidently I feared. It was probably a good thing that he did too, or else I might have never left there. As it was, it took a considerable effort to pry my sneakers off the floor when I did try to flee. I'd become almost sealed to the floor (soda I had hoped)while being mesmorized by the seedy delights on screen.
That was just what I needed in my state of mind, sitting through an afternoon of watching other people fuck. Hell, I could have done that at home, and had. While eating a slice of pizza, I tried to figure out what to do with the rest of the day. The buses left every hour until midnight, so my options were wide open. Problem was, I didn't have many ideas.
On the wall of a construction site there were a bunch of posters advertising things going on in the city. Not many of them seemed like anything I wanted to do, or if they sounded good had already come and gone. One poster did catch my eye. There was a concert at Hunter College that night, featuring the James Gang.
