Mandy Outside Paradise

This is the immediate sequel to Mandy Inside Paradise. In the afternoon after their first kinky sex in the movie theater where he works, Paul and Miranda have their first date in the luncheonette across the street. This chapter contains their conversations; sex is described but not depicted. This is taking place in August 1977.

CUNY is the City University of New York.

*******

Just after four o'clock, I walked out the front door of the Paradise Theater and onto the Grand Concourse. I was agitated because I didn't think I'd see her, but there was the girl with the orange shirt, leaning against a lamppost. She had her arms folded, and she looked at me with a slight smile. Her shirt was buttoned again and I assumed that her halter top had been re-tied.

Although I was both surprised and happy to see her, I knew enough to be cautious about expressing that to her. She's obviously been coming to you; let that continue. It was an overcast but warm day, and I looked around to give myself time to think.

She solved the issue for me by speaking first, "So, how has your day been going?"

By that point in my life, I knew how to improvise comebacks to girls. "The same old same old. Like today, I had an unruly female patron in there, and I had to spank her and then fuck her. Just part of my job."

She laughed at that, "Another day, another dollar. I bet you think I'm some kind of bimbo."

"Baby, I don't think you're a bimbo; I know it!"

She also laughed at that, but she put on a show of mock outrage too. "Hey, I've never done anything like that before, I swear."

"I bet you tell that to all the guys you meet."

She gave me a little poke in the chest and said with phony annoyance, "Oh, you're so mean!"

"I was wondering about something else. What was it you took before you came to the theater?" I was getting the feeling that she had come down somewhat from whatever drug she had taken before I had met her.

She looked a bit suspicious. I continued, "Don't worry, I don't have any relatives who are narcs."

"All right, I did have a couple of lines of coke. So you noticed that."

"You were pretty manic, so I couldn't help but notice. That's kind of expensive, isn't it?"

"This is only the second time I've ever had it." I wasn't sure I should believe that either. "I still have some left if you want to try it."

I had never experimented with that substance. I admit I was tempted, but I held off on the decision. Cocaine had been around New York for a long time, but in that period in the 1970's it was making a comeback among a younger generation who were oblivious to its dangers. All I said was, "I'll think about it."

She had a question for me, one that women almost always asked. "So, do you have a girlfriend out there somewhere?"

I knew enough to be evasive about that, "Yeah, but I've sort of gone sideways with her." There was also a true but unrelated situation I threw in to impress my theater cutie standing in front of me. "Plus, until last month, I had snagged a female professor at my school." Actually, she had snagged me when I went to her office to ask for an incomplete.

"Oh, I call bullshit on that."

"No, her name is Marilyn Janssen, and she's in the history department."

"I'm sure she exists but, whatever. Now, this other girl, supposedly the sideways one as you described her; that must be the Amoreena that you went running through the grass for hours with." She is, as I thought before, just guessing about Donna. "What I think is, well, you should be going out with me now instead."

I pretended to glance at the southbound traffic in the adjacent lanes so I could have another moment to think, but she interrupted me to sweeten the deal. "Come on, you already know that I'm a sure thing, and you haven't even had coffee with me yet."

That was a problem; she had a number of what are now called red flags, one of which was that she had just banged a complete stranger, namely me. And she had admitted to using hard drugs, and I could only guess the true number of times she had done that.

But she looked even better outdoors with her short dark-blonde hair, her orange shirt, black skirt, and white sneakers. Go ahead, keep going, try her out, she wants more from you for some unfathomable reason. And she's so funny, in a weird sort of way, and let's face it, she's so juicy too.

I said, "So you have a name, I assume?"

"Right, I haven't said it yet. It's Miranda, as in the warning." I caught her reference. "Miranda Grossman, but most people call me Mandy."

"Well, please to meet you, Mandy. I'm Paul D'Amato."

"I bet you are pleased to meet me. Anyway, before our first date, we should have our first kiss."

"I thought we've already had our first date in there."

"Oh, that? That was just a little getting-to-know-you kind of chat."

Before I could respond to that, she stepped forward and put her hands on top of my shoulders. Then she kissed me warmly. When she stepped back a bit, I looked into her intense eyes, and I had to drop my glance for a moment. At that point, she was holding both of my hands.

Mandy already had her follow-up ready. "I'm kind of hungry; I haven't had lunch yet. Be a gentleman and invite me someplace."

That would give me another hour or so to figure her out, so I agreed to it. "There's Krum's over there, right across the street." It was a combination luncheonette and ice cream parlor.

"Oh, a big spender."

"This is The Bronx, you know."

"Of course, I was just busting your chops." There was a good-natured note in that. Then she immediately took my arm and said, "Let's go."

As we waited to cross the busy boulevard to the restaurant, I tried a little test of my own on her. As casually as I could, I said, "The Miranda case, I suppose you know the full name of it?"

She was casual too as she replied, "I sure do. It was Miranda v. Arizona." She smiled at me. "Hah, you thought you had me with that one, but you didn't!"

******

Inside Krum's, we couldn't get a booth, so we had a table in the middle of the floor. I felt a bit exposed sitting there, and I could imagine what people who noticed us were thinking, That nice young couple, they're having a lunch date. What they couldn't see were the marks on Mandy's behind where I had spanked her, and what I assumed were the remains of my semen in her cunt. If they only knew.

When we sat down, she briefly rubbed her ass and quietly said, "Man, you really whacked my butt."

"Well Mandy, you so richly deserved it. I did tell you to be quiet."

"And I bet you're glad I didn't get quiet."

I was perusing the menu instead of looking at her, although I already knew what I wanted. "It did make my job more complicated."

"Hah, make your job more complicated. You probably wish this happened more often."

I shrugged, "Maybe there'll be another bad girl in there tomorrow."

"Well, you better not get involved with her, that's for sure." She tested me again, "So, you're probably wondering what I'm doing with a skinny-ass guy like you."

At that point in my life, I understood that it was not necessary to know exactly why a girl was with me. She was there right now, at the table, even though she had done things backwards by coupling with me before going on a date. That's all I needed to know for the moment.

I threw her statement back at her, "And you're probably wondering what I'm doing with a chunky-ass girl like you."

That wasn't quite true about her behind, but women were sometimes sensitive about the size and shape of their rear ends. She frowned for a moment, "So you're thinking then that this skirt makes my ass look too big?"

I had heard so many versions of that before, but I only needed a single comeback for all of them. "You say that like it's a bad thing."

They were always surprised, but she had a new take on it, "Really? Then I must be the girl for you."

As we had our late lunch, she found out that I had just graduated from City College and I found out that she had just graduated from another branch of CUNY, Lehman College.

She said, "So we're exactly the same age and we went to the same university system. How did we find each other?"

"You found me by singing back there."

"And you found me by coming back and telling me to shut up."

"That was my job, remember?"

"So, anyway, this is the standard student question: what was your major?"

"Pre-med." She couldn't help but look impressed. I didn't want to keep that lie going. "I was just messing with you. It was history."

"Oh, you poor guy."

"And what kind of scholarly work did you do at Lehman?"

"English. So we're both going to be on the unemployment lines. Ah, what neighborhood are you from?"

"Williamsbridge, in the North Bronx." I added a detail to impress her. "The restaurant where they filmed The Godfather, you know, the shooting scene -- that used to be a couple of blocks from me."

"Which shooting scene?"

"The one where Michael kills Sollozzo and McCluskey."

She seemed to quote something I didn't recognize immediately, " 'You think too much of me, kid. I'm not that clever. All I want is a truce.' "

Then I got it, she was doing some of Sollozzo's lines. I had already met women who seemed to be fascinated with the The Godfather movies. And Mandy had demonstrated her good memory with her song lyrics.

"Yeah, that was pretty cold-blooded. So, where are you from?"

"You've heard of Riverdale?" Of course, everybody knew it. It was by Bronx standards the toniest neighborhood in the borough. People from there never said they lived in The Bronx. "I bet you think Jewish girls from Riverdale are really stuck up."

"Actually, I used to go with a Jewish girl from the Upper West Side."

"Oh, they're the worst."

"No, she was actually very sweet. Anyway, I definitely knew you weren't from Belmont." That was a mostly Italian area just down the hill from where we were sitting. It certainly had a tougher reputation than Riverdale.

Mandy said, "So you imagined me with a bullet-bra, hanging out with Dion and the Fordham Baldies?" She was making references to now-gone aspects of the early 1960's. The Baldies were a mostly Italian-American gang and Dion Di Mucci had been a member during his teen years.

"Speaking of bras, what's with the shirt over your halter-top?"

She was quite honest about it, "All right, I like wearing it, but if that's all I have on, I get way too much attention from guys on the street. You get that, right?" She then opened her blouse a bit more and pushed her breasts forward. "I mean, you do like this, I assume?"

I didn't want to overpraise her, "Yeah, it's sort of interesting."

"Just 'interesting?' "

"Okay, fetching then. Are you happy now?"

"I know that guys on dates have to measure everything they say, but you've already scored, so you can relax." She was mostly wrong. I had learned from harsh experiences with previous girlfriends that guys can never truly take a woman for granted. I thought about Donna again and how I had carelessly wrecked that relationship.

As we were finishing up, she said, "Meanwhile, are you doing anything in particular this evening?"

"No, I'm not." She had obviously attached herself to me.

As the male, I was supposed to come up with dating ideas, but I had also met girls that weren't shy about presenting their own. I knew for sure that I didn't want Mandy to leave me just yet. "Well, going to the movies again is out of the question."

She laughed at that. "But I never saw the end of that one."

"It's just a bunch of skits. It doesn't have a plot or an ending per se." I didn't mention the explicit sex scene at the end. "I say we go downtown and just see what's up. Let's not take that D train." The subways were at a real low point then. "There's an express bus right here on the Concourse. And it just so happens that I have a schedule on me."

It was in my back pocket. She said, "You're kind of anal-retentive if you keep bus schedules on you."

"Just be glad that one of us was prepared." I looked at the timetable. "We can catch one right here at Fordham Road in twenty minutes."

*****

The bus was more expensive than the subway, but it was far more comfortable. It also wasn't that crowded because it was going in the opposite direction from the upcoming rush hour out of Manhattan.

When we were on the bus, Mandy said, "These padded seats feel better on my poor ass than those plastic ones on the subway would." She and I cuddled up near the back and we talked more about ourselves.

I still lived at home, which wasn't a big deal yet but I'd have to think more about that soon. She said, "For the last few weeks I've been sharing an apartment in Kingsbridge Heights with another girl. I even have my own bedroom."

"So you must have a job now."

"On and off. My parents are helping me pay for it." I thought, I wish my parents would help me with an apartment. I guessed that I would soon be invited over to her place.

Mandy asked me, "Do you have a car yet?"

"I'm looking for one, a used one obviously." I wanted to see if she knew anything about cars, one of my interests. "I've been checking out these little things, like a Chevette or even a Fiat 128, but I think I'm going for some more serious Detroit iron. There's a guy who offered me a 1972 Oldsmobile Cutlass sedan."

"So it has a decent-sized back seat?"

I knew what she was getting at. "You said you have your own place."

"Yes, but fooling around in cars can be fun too. It's like being two horny teenagers again." At twenty-two, I didn't feel like a teenager any longer. Also, I thought, great, now I'll have to find some relatively secure place to park with this chick. After dark would be best for that. Daytime car sex in New York required some planning and a bit of luck.

She then said, "But don't get a Fiat. You know what that stands for: Fix It Again Tony." That joke had probably been going around ever since Fiats had first been sold in this country. Her next question was, "We haven't talked about something else. Where did you go to high school?"

"Stuyvesant, downtown." That was a specialized high school in Manhattan. One needed to pass a test, among other things, to get in.

"Hey, I went to Bronx Science." That was another specialized school. So Mandy was smart as well as sexy, but I already knew that from what she had said in the previous two hours. "That's the third thing we have in common, that we got into selective high schools."

"What was the second one with have in common again?"

"Silly, that's obvious -- we both live in the same borough, pretty close to each other in fact. Anyway, I bet you didn't get laid at Stuyvesant. I know most of the girls at my school were indeed pretty stuck up."

I decided to be honest, "Okay, it wasn't until I got to City College that I met girls willing to drop their panties for me."

She found that funny although she pretended to chide me. "Drop their panties! Oh, that's so crude. Well, you know first-hand -- CUNY girls are not necessarily easy, but we are very fast!"

"That's right, and you're obviously one of them."

"Hey, I'm really a very nice girl, one that you can take home to Mom."

I thought but didn't say, you're was also a coke-sniffing, theater usher-fucking kind of girl, and also one who likes a good, hard spanking. But I'm not going to tell Mom about any of that.

Then I remembered that Mandy had suggested that she would eventually have me over her knees, and then she'd probably whack me but good..That's fine with me, as long as she gets me off afterwards.

My first girlfriend, Nora, had worked as an amateur dominatrix, and she knew who to swing a paddle. She also knew how to flash her panties and garter belt at me during such sessions. However, instead of giving me a sexual release, she had once thrown me out of her house -- just to see the look on my face, I suspected. Three days later she warmly invited me back for a satisfying conclusion.

However, I was not going to mention that story to Mandy. Yet, it was often okay to tell old girlfriends about new ones, and Nora later enjoyed whatever gossip I had to discuss.

By that point, we were passing through the streets of the southwest Bronx. Ten years earlier I was still living near there, and it had been one of the major Jewish neighborhoods of New York. My Italian-German-Irish background had been an anomaly in my schools. Now it was a mostly Black and Puerto Rican area.

Mandy asked something that I should have expected. "I assume you're a lapsed Catholic?"

"Yeah, I haven't been to church in four years. At the end, I was only going to placate my parents anyway."

"I guess I enjoy leading good Catholic boys like you astray."

"Mandy, I went astray a long time ago. In fact, I haven't been to Confession since, maybe, 1968."

"I'd like to see you in Confession now."

"Oh, I'd have something to tell him, that's for sure. 'Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. It's been about ten years since my last confession. Let's see, the first item is that I had sexual relations with a girl I had just met. She was a customer in the movie theater where I work. Oh, yeah, we did it right there in the building.' "

Mandy said, "I wonder how many Hail Marys' he would have given you to recite?"

"I'd guess at least ten-thousand."

Well, I was going to spend the evening with this person, and I was feeling more relaxed about being with her. It struck me that I had landed a new girlfriend, and I had already banged her. Life didn't seem so bad after all.

Mandy sang again, " 'And when it rains, the rain falls down, washing out the Stuyvestant Town...' "

"So you want to be my Amoreena?"

"Honey, I already am!"

########

The story of him being dominated by Nora is in My Summer with Nora, Ch. 07. Krum's was a real restaurant that is now gone.