My Year with Michelle Ch. 01

This series is about some events in Paul D'Amato's life that take place between My Summer with Nora Ch. 09, which takes place in October 1974, and his first meeting with Donna Azzato in Donna in the Senior Year Ch. 01, which is in September 1976. During that time he was on a newspaper called The Salient at the City College of New York (CCNY).

I had intended to write about more of his relationship with Michelle in that period, but I decided to present a shorter version of it in this series. Michelle and Nora also appear in Clarissa's Revenge (September 1975) although that is on a slightly different timeline.

His beginning with Nora, who had spent ten months as a part-time, ad hoc hooker, is described in My Summer with Nora Ch. 01. Other events include when she joins his paper in Chapter 05 and when she reveals her dominant side to him in Chapter 07. There are other stories about her on this site, including some told by her in the first person.

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Within a short while of being suddenly dumped by my first-ever girlfriend, Nora, I was tired of being morose and moping around. I remembered that old saying, "Get back on the horse that threw you." It was still early in my sophomore year, and I had nothing to lose by approaching women and then seeing what happened.

I didn't know what I was doing, but I also didn't care what happened with any particular girl I met. Or at least, that's what I told myself.

There were four thousand women on the City College campus, and it seemed to be a game of numbers. I was just trying to see if I could get a date to start with, and I figured somebody would eventually say yes. If one of them said no, then it was just time to move on to the next prospect. Oddly enough, I had accidentally hit upon a pretty good strategy with that devil-may-care kind of attitude.

Probably my four-month affair with Nora -- although I had actually known her for ten -- had given me some confidence despite its abrupt ending. She had been difficult at times, but I had figured, I must be pretty cool if can handle someone like her.

She also was intense, passionate, and somewhat kinky, and thus she was a far more satisfying lover than what I had expected for my first time out. We had said that we loved each other, and I believe we both meant it.

In late October 1974, she was still on The Salient with me, but she had just obtained a new, older boyfriend. That guy was in his late twenties with much better financial chances than a young liberal arts student like me. Plus, he had a nice Triumph convertible while I had no car at all. Thus it didn't appear that a reconciliation with Nora was ever going to happen.

Also, I had met Nora under rather unusual circumstances which couldn't be replicated. I would need a different kind of technique on the second time around. Just randomly cold approaching women on the campus was possible but I thought that would take a long time to gain any results.

One option was to try the fellow students in my various classes. That offered the possibility of some common ground to talk about. In fact, I had met Nora the previous January when she had walked into my history class in Wagner Hall.

Then, assuming that one or maybe more conversations were going well, I could invite a girl for a simple date. Possibly that would be in one of the food service facilities in the student center building for the entire school, Finley Hall.

Finley itself was a huge, old stone 19th-Century building originally built as the main structure for a now departed Catholic women's college called Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart. In the early 1950's, the City University acquired it and the other buildings to create the South Campus. That southern end became the center for the liberal arts and social science departments, while the more technical subjects were headquartered up on the North Campus.

It happened that my pick-up plan worked on the very first try. Yet the event had nothing to do with any of my classes. Rather, it occurred at that same mediocre Finley snack bar which had already been such an eventful place during my relationship with Nora.

One afternoon in October, I was sitting at a table having a soda. I noticed a girl standing on the opposite side, looking around. She was holding a cup of coffee and she seemed unsure about where to seat herself.

I made a quick assessment of her. She was fairly tall and she had steel-rimmed glasses and dark brown hair held in place by a plastic headband. Her clothes looked a bit uncoordinated, but then I didn't know anything about women's fashions. Her heavy white sweater seemed out of place with her short tan skirt, as if she was transitioning with the seasons from summer to autumn.

From what I could see of her legs, she had white stockings which I guessed were actually tights. There was both a gawkiness and gracefulness about her posture as if a younger version of myself was maturing into someone different.

The final touch was a big book bag slung over her shoulder; it was made of some kind of woven material.

And she was right in front of me on the far side of my table, and there was on open seat available there. She's not flashy looking, but maybe she's a good prospect?. It took some focus on my part, but I reminded myself that I had nothing to lose. Go ahead, say something to her; ask her to sit down at your table.

My intuition was that I shouldn't make it into a question but rather that I should I should just tell her what I wanted. My words came out as, "Hey, you can sit right here and have your coffee with me."

For the first time, she noticed me, and I had to be careful not to flinch. We had never met before, and a negative thought came to me. I thought of the possibility that she'd say something like, Who are you and why should I sit there?

Instead, she gestured towards herself, me? I nodded, yes, you. Then I needed some kind of follow-up. "Somebody told me that the coffee in here tastes like transmission fluid." That had been Nora's joke from a few weeks earlier.

The dark-haired girl found that amusing. "I would have said brake fluid, but I wouldn't know the difference." If she had wanted to, she could have broken off the conversation right there, as if it had been among one of those off-hand remarks that strangers make to each other.

Instead, she sat down in the opposite chair and started speaking in a friendly manner. "Hi, I'm Michelle, Michelle Hanley."

"I'm Paul D'Amato." Pleased to meet you?

She thought for a second, "I know that name. You write for The Salient, right? I've seen your byline."

"Yes, that's me." For a second I considered mentioning an article, any article, I had written for them.

"So you joined because you like to write?" At least she was making an effort to get a conversation going.

On some impulse, I threw away my usual diffidence and took a chance. "That was one reason, and another was to meet some girls too."

She smiled and said, "Well, did you meet any there?"

That was a tricky situation I had never faced before. I grasped that, in the eyes of this Michelle person, it would be a good thing if I had been successful in that goal. Call it, pre-selection, perhaps. Getting involved with one girl made me more attractive in the opinions of other ones -- I hoped. Fortunately, I had something to work with.

"Yeah, there was one I invited to join after I did." That had only been in the previous June.

"So, are you still with her?"

That was the back-end question that I wasn't prepared for either. Michelle had obviously assumed I might still be going with that other, as yet unnamed fellow staff member. Yet I didn't want to admit how short the whole Nora experience had been and how unceremoniously I had been dumped.

By another fortunate accident, I hit upon a good response, which was based on evasiveness. I tried for the most nonchalance I could muster. "It's sort of up in the air with her right now."

Had I been through that kind of meeting before, I would have expected Michelle's polite but insistent probing of my personal life. Maybe it's a good sign that she is taking me seriously enough to put me through these tests?

And she was clever about it too. "Is she in that group photo that was in the first issue in September?"

Nora wasn't in it, because she joined during the first staff meeting about four days later. Four of the five existing female staffers were indeed pictured there. I straight up lied about it. "Actually, she was what they called 'camera shy' in those old class photos. She missed being there on that day."

I was sure Michelle was going to ask for Nora's name, but she went in another direction. " 'Camera shy?' I get it, that whole thing was supposed to look like those school class photos. That's why the guys, at least most of them, are wearing white shirts and ties."

That was pretty perceptive on her part, and I was also glad to get a reprieve from a more sensitive line of questioning. It was too early for me to have any expectations that Michelle would ever join the paper herself and thus meet Nora.

Instead, I mentioned a bit of trivia. "Yeah, that's why that guy in the front is holding that black piece of cardboard. We were supposed to print the class number and date over that like they used to do in those old pictures." The Salient could be a bit disorganized when it came to production details like that.

Michelle said, "We used to have this place called Savoy Studios from Flushing that sent out a photographer every spring. That kind of thing ended with eighth grade, the end of junior high school."

Her geographic reference gave me a topic for a further diversion. "We had a company called Chester Studios in The Bronx who would come in. So, Flushing? Where did you go to high school?" More than ninety percent of CCNY students were city residents taking advantage of the free tuition offered.

"It was Bayside." That was a semi-suburban area way out in northeast Queens. "But I have my own apartment now. It's on the first floor of an old wooden house in Long Island City."

For the next twenty minutes or so, we sat there conversing casually. Michelle was only the second girl in my life I had spent any significant time with, and I couldn't help but compare her to Nora.

While my ex could be very interesting and funny, she also at times had an imperious demeanor, I'd call it. Sometimes I thought of her as Queen Nora. Through necessity, perhaps, I had learned to counter the caustic attitude she used against people when she was in a bad mood. I think she respected the fact that I had quickly learned to push back against her when she got ornery.

In contrast, Michelle seemed, at that early stage, rather mellow. She struck me as a "nice," normal girl while Nora had projected an air of both assertiveness and, sometimes, moodiness.

We talked about the usual student topics, mainly our majors and the classes that we attended. We discovered that we were both sophomores, and she was an English major while I was majoring in history.

That was a time when liberal arts majors at a public university were discovering that the higher education system was producing too many of us. Michelle made a deprecating remark about her course of study.

"This school is crawling with English majors. We're all going to wind up on the unemployment lines."

"It will be that way with us history majors too." It seemed okay to make a joke about my line of study.

A few minutes later, she looked at her watch and said, "I've got a class soon in Mott." Mott Hall was the location of the school's English department. For a moment I thought, she's leaving; now what do I do? I need some kind of follow-up before she just disappears.

But then she dropped what I took to be a big hint. "It's too bad this cafeteria is so bad; I wish I had gotten something for a late lunch."

I had to decide: Do I want to continue this encounter later somewhere else? I must have had positive thoughts about Michelle because I said, "After your class, I'll take you out for something to eat. Let's have some Chinese."

"Okay, but not at one of those places on the Upper West Side. I was in one of those and there was a roach floating in the soy sauce."

That was so disgusting that she must have seen me wince. She said, "Sorry, that was a bit much, but it happened to me once."

It struck me: She's not really talking about the quality of restaurants; she indirectly agreed to go on a dinner date with me. That would qualify as a real date, wouldn't it?

I improvised a response. "I know a good Chinese place in Chelsea; it's at 24th and 8th." Then I tried to clinch it. "I'll meet you after class. You said it was at Mott Hall."

"Let's meet down there. Which corner is it on?"

"The southeast one." Then she gave me a time to meet, which would allow enough time for her class and then for her to ride down there. I grasped why she was doing it that way. She didn't want to spend an awkward hour with me on the noisy subway. At the restaurant, we could relax and talk to each other.

Our parting at first was undramatic. All she said was, "Fine. I'll see you down there." Then as she got up to leave, she turned around and walked a couple of steps before stopping to rummage through her bag for something.

That gave me time to examine her from the rear, and I had my first sexually explicit thoughts about her. Her legs within her white tights looked strong and well-formed, like the legs of a tennis player or ice skater perhaps.

If she's got pink panties on, I bet they are showing through the cloth of her stockings. Or maybe she's not wearing panties at all. That would certainly have an interesting effect. Then she suddenly looked back at me. I had to force myself to continue looking unapologetically at her.

Michelle probably guessed what I was thinking, because she got quite flirty about the situation. She smiled and wagged a finger at me. "I caught you looking! You obviously like what you are seeing, am I correct?"

I came up with a plausible response. "There's nothing wrong with that, is there?"

She laughed, "No, nothing at all." Then she continued to walk away, and she had to know that I was still watching her. Maybe I imagined it, but it seemed that she subtly shook her ass at me.

It's just that I so like your little tan skirt and those white tights you have on. In fact, so far I like everything about you.

When she was gone, I raised my soda cup to my mouth but I was so distracted that I had forgotten that I had emptied it a while before. Even the ice cubes had melted away.

Rather than get a refill, I sat back and pondered what had just happened. I noticed how aroused I was. It had only been a short time since Nora had dumped me, but I was nineteen years old and that period seemed like a long dry spell.

Before Nora, I had just accepted that there was no woman in my life and I dealt with it. That had gone on until the previous June. Then all through the summer and early fall, she was suddenly there and ready to go, almost all of the time. I had plenty of hot sessions with my sexy if somewhat unstable girlfriend.

Nora, you never knew what you really wanted, but in the end, it didn't include me.

I knew very little about Michelle, but I was suddenly craving some sexual action with her. I was already worried that I'd mess up my chance with her, which I intuitively knew was the wrong attitude to take.

That brought up another issue: what, if anything, did Michelle see in me? I grasped that I didn't need to know that. And maybe I was making too much of what had happened. She had been friendly and polite, and she had agreed to have dinner with me. Was there any real importance in that?

Maybe it was important to me because I had been more successful than I had expected on my first try. Michelle had just been randomly standing there, and I hadn't been shot down -- rejected -- when I had spoken to her.

Then there was that provocative moment at the end. Do you like what you are seeing? Yes, Michelle, I loved what I was seeing, and you didn't mind that I had admitted it.

I was aware that I had an erection that was bulging my pants out. I wasn't sure when that had happened, but I assumed it was during that brief, slightly risqué banter with Michelle before she had left. Being nineteen, it only took the mere thought of a new sexual relationship to start a physical reaction in my body.

Fortunately, I didn't have to stand up when Michelle departed. I'll walk you over to Mott. That could have been a bit embarrassing. Instead, I tried to relax and just consider where I'd be going in an hour or so.

It's just an hour for dinner. And you've had a lot of experience with Nora, who wasn't always the easiest person to get along with.

Instead, I was able to concentrate on what I'd probably order at the restaurant. The chicken subgum in that place was very good. Somehow thinking of food got my mind off sex for a little while.

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I arrived at 24th Street later that afternoon, and I was about five minutes early. Michelle was even earlier, and she was already outside the restaurant when I got there. So what is she going to think of me now that she's had close to two hours to reconsider the matter?

And I had the same amount of time to consider her, and I still thought that the possibilities were promising.

At least I hadn't been stood up. That had occurred to me on the trip down there. She didn't have the kind of sexuality that Nora had (almost unconsciously) projected, but she still looked good out there on the street.

She smiled as she greeted me, which was a good sign. Once we were seated, she ordered a vodka cocktail, and I decided to get one too. Maybe that was another piece of good luck because I had forgotten that the place had a liquor license.

I should have anticipated it, but the first thing we talked about was The Salient, specifically the three issues when the paper had given space to two male staffers. They claimed to be a writer and an artist but at heart they were, well, pornographers.

That was an era when sexually "transgressive" -- call it explicit -- material could still be associated with counter-cultural politics. Or at least the two guys who had created the "Weird" section thought so.

Michelle asked me, "So what happened to the Weird Section last spring? I think it only appeared about three times."

I was caught a bit off-guard about that, although I shouldn't have been because it was so obvious as a topic. "Yeah, you couldn't have missed that I'd say."

She answered, "It's hard to miss when a college paper prints a drawing of a masturbating nun. And twice, no less." The second time, the artist responded to the furor he had created by placing a "censored" sign over the holy lady's vagina and her thrusting crucifix dildo. Her speech bubble saying "Oh my God!" had remained intact.

Michelle said, "I wasn't even a particularly well-done drawing. It was like something an eighth-grader would scribble.

"That guy admired R. Crumb, but he couldn't draw nearly as well or even come up with a good story line. He would reprint Crumb's cartoons without permission, like one of the Joe Blow series."