No Time to Get Cute

The narrator of this is the same or similar to the one in my other 1970s stories, but it's set on a different time line.

*****

McSorley's Old Ale House is one of the oldest taverns in New York City. Supposedly Abraham Lincoln stopped off there after making a 1860 campaign stop at the Cooper Union Institute just down the block. By October 1974 it had been in the same location in an East 7th Street building for 120 years.

For most of its existence it had been an all-male institution but changing times had forced the end of that in 1970. So it was that in '74 I was there with one female and two male classmates from the City College of New York uptown. My two male friends were sophomores like me and we had spent our first year at school as members of a quirky campus newspaper called The Salient. The female member of our party was a freshman named Jane Emory who had been on the staff for about a month.

On this mild evening the four of us had found some reason to hang out at McSorley's for a while. The bar had stubbornly hung on to certain traditions for many decades going back, perhaps, to its founding. One of these was that it only served beer, and that only came in two versions, light and dark. These were supposedly a kind of house brand, perhaps made by some brewery they had made a deal with. One could not ask for a Coors or Heineken or a St. Pauli Girl. One got a mug filled from the taps at the bar and that was the only choice available.

Yet McSorley's did have tables with waiter service for those who didn't want to stand at the bar. At one of these tables the four of us sat and looked at the undeniably authentic interior of the place. It must have been painted at some point after Lincoln's visit but that couldn't have been done recently

The two guys were Jeff, a friend of mine who went back to high school, and Karl, who had emigrated here from Germany a few years earlier with his father and brother. Janey was eighteen-years old and newly arrived from Seward Park High School down on Grand Street. She seemed impressed with college, the newspaper and, I was starting to realize, with me personally.

It didn't appear that I was going to have any competition for her. Janey was on the plump side, heavier than whatever my colleagues seemed to be looking for. However, if anything, that was a plus for me. She had dark, almost black hair, gray eyes and fair skin. I had the impression that she was confident for her age, and very smart. I was beginning to hope that she was what I had spent a long time looking for.

About ten days earlier I had gone into The Salient office and she was there with some other people. That was perhaps the third time I had seen her and I hadn't thought much about her before. On this occasion she referred to the haircut I had just gotten and somehow that clicked. She's noticed me. A few minutes later she had some reason to look out the window and bend over while doing it. I saw how nicely she filled out the back of her tight blue jeans. At that I felt lust, a desire to push the front of my pants against the rear of hers and dry hump her right there by the window sill.

That night I had a very specific sexual fantasy about her. I imagined being in an apartment of a friend of mine in Cambridge, MA. It was a very sparsely furnished place and I imagined taking Janey from the side while lying on a mattress on the floor. I must have perceived some kind of Bohemian charm in that shabby little one-bedroom on Massachusetts Avenue.

Over the next few days Janey often hung around The Salient office and we found we liked talking to each other. I got the feeling that arranging a date with her, something I hadn't managed with any girl previously, would be pretty easy.

At McSorley's I had been the last to arrive and I noted the neat way she was dressed with a dark blue skirt and chunky brown sandals. Her head came up and, right through her glasses I got - The Look. I was a virgin who had never seen that look before but I knew exactly what she was thinking. It was an invitation, among other things. As easy as falling off a log.

The four of us sat around talking about the Irish waiters and the sawdust on the floor, then we went on to topics regarding the paper and the school itself. I sat across from Janey rather than next to her. When I wasn't looking at her I was glancing out the front window at St. George's Church across the street.

After we had stretched two beers apiece over the course of an hour, Jeff and Karl wanted to hop to a more conventional bar that had a greater variety of drinks. Janey wanted to go home to her parent's apartment twelve blocks north on 19th Street. I offered to walk her home. On the way up there I had an urge to hold her hand but I thought that might be a bit premature. I was already considering a more formal date with her, a date with just the two of us, and I figured I'd have the opportunity to ask her this evening.

It was getting dark when we reached 19th. I felt we were at a decision point. To make things easier pulled out a doobie I had in my shirt pocket, one of two I had bought from a fellow student at CCNY, and I said to her, "I assume you smoke?"

"Oh yeah, sure."

I looked across the street at a playground that was deserted and not well-lit, "How about we go over there?"

"Actually, I'm cat-sitting this week. It's right there at 320."

I had already heard about the deals she had worked out with some of her neighbors. Her dad was a superintendent for a number of the buildings on the block. Some of the tenants had Janey do pet-sitting and plant watering for them. In lieu of cash, they sometimes gave her rights to stay overnight if they weren't home. If they didn't explicitly allow that, she would still sometimes hang out in a unit during the day for several hours.

When I heard about this a few days earlier I started to wonder if she would eventually invite me into one of these apartments with her. She's dropping a very large hint, I had thought. I assumed she wasn't merely making conversation by revealing these gigs to me.

Now it was happening. I wanted to know if is this one of the places where she had overnight privileges. However, I decided against asking that. We didn't need the entire night to do whatever options were open to us.

"Sure, that's great," I said. She led me past her own building, a five-story brick tenement at 310. The one we went to was a plain three-story building painted white. I guessed it was from some period in the mid-19th Century when the area was first developed. Janey told me that it had been a boarding house for a while until about 1970 and then it had been rehabbed as apartments.

We went up a stoop to the second floor and she let me into a unit in the back. I walked in and all I could say was, "Wow."

The place was a duplex, one of the nicest apartments I had even been in. We were on the top level which was a living room with an attached kitchen area. Janey led me through a door at the back onto a patio. It overlooked a small yard which she told me was for the exclusive use of the tenant. Back inside I noticed a staircase on the right which led to the lower level on the first floor. I assumed that was where the bedroom or bedrooms were.

"We've got wine if you want some," she said. "And of course there's a stereo. I've already got some of my own records here." There was a stack of about ten on a side table

This seemed like the most amazing deal that could drop into my nineteen-year-old lap. I thought, yeah, its party time, and what a fine place we have for it. I had brought the drugs, and Janey had supplied everything else, the booze, the music and her own juicy self.

The last item made me think of something else: sex. If she asked me in here, I bet she's interested in further activities. I was totally inexperienced, but I imagined the intense things her hands and mouth could do for me. And it seemed obvious that we could be here again for even more during future visits.

Thinking of the future brought up a different emotion: envy against whoever rented this place. It struck me that this would be an impressive apartment to bring girls to. Don't even tell them what it looks like, just show up with them. For a moment I forgot about my budding relationship with Janey.

I knew undergraduates never had places like this. How about after graduation? Well, with my history major in the works, what was even possible? I think some of my leftist/countercultural beliefs wavered in that moment. Hey, there's got to be some way to help the world and live well too, isn't there?

Janey looked through her pile of records and found The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle; she put the second side on to play. We sat on the couch that backed up to the stairway railing.

My curiosity got to me, "Who rents this place? Or is it a condo?"

"It's a rental, about $1,500 a month." That was about $7,600 in today's money. "There's a woman named Anne Baldwin who has it."

"Baldwin as in the locomotive company?" Janey didn't seem to know about it and it was defunct anyway.

"I don't think there's any connection. She's about thirty-five and works some kind of marketing job for Sears." I looked around the room; the ceiling was a good twelve feet up I guessed. Janey continued, "She often has female roommates who take the second bedroom downstairs. They don't seem to last long, however."

"Really, how come?"

"I suspect Anne is a little prickly to live with."

"A bitch in other words." Janey frowned at me and I knew I had overplayed that. To recover, I took out a joint from my shirt and a lighter from my pants pocket, "Anyway, let's get mellow with this. I hear they call this Jamaican Cream Puffs."

"You don't actually believe that, do you?"

Well, I didn't really have any idea what I had purchased in the Finley Hall lounge. "We'll find out soon enough, I guess."

There was already an ashtray handy on the coffee table so I lit up my doobie and took the first puff. Then I handed it to her for her turn. It soon became apparent that this was very strong stuff, stronger than anything I had experience with before. Not that I was a connoisseur of cannabis, but probably a first-timer would have been impressed with its potency. I knew enough to moderate my intake of it.

"Let's go slow with this," I said.

"Oh, definitely."

"I wonder - is this actually hash?" I was just guessing based on rumors I had heard.

I stubbed it into the ashtray and then I lived in the moment. I listened briefly to the music which seemed to be rushing around me rather than merely emanating from the speakers. By now the second song, "Rosalita," was playing loud and fast. I thought, you've got a girl here, look at her, talk to her.

I caught Janey's eye and did try a conversation but I couldn't understand what we were talking about. It seemed to have something to do with the stories we were writing for the paper but I couldn't follow the syntax.

I finally said, "Hey, I have no idea what you're saying."

She was smiling at me and I saw the amusement in her gray eyes. She was to my left on the couch, close enough to touch. So touch her then.

I dropped my arm across her shoulders. "You have such nice hair," I said as I started to stroke it.

"What do you like about it?"

I pushed my face into it and said, "It smells nice."

"I just washed it this morning."

From that it was a short step to nuzzling her ear, which tickled her and made her giggle. She pushed up her glasses and I kissed her face, starting with her eyelids and moving down to her mouth.

So this is why movies make such a big deal out of kissing. I could do this all night. But then I stopped and said, "How about a few more puffs?"

"If you're game for it then I am."

After we had our fill I said, "I want to kiss you some more."

"Please, go ahead."

As I did I was aware of something else that could go on all night; I was sexually aroused, I had an erection. It seemed beyond my control so I just accepted it as part of this whole scene. But then I was aware of my hands, and her body, and I wanted to connect them somehow. I got my right hand in under her blouse and pushed it upwards towards her breasts.

"Here, let me," I heard her say. She reached behind herself and then her bra pulled away as she unhooked the strap in the back. One of her tits fell into my hand.

I just had to see, so I lifted her blouse. Her breasts were large and rather low-slung compared to the magazine photos I had seen. As I fondled her nipples they enlarged and stiffened. God, this girl is already letting me play with her boobs.

I said, "Do you like this?"

"Oh yes, very much so."

I looked into her face, at her half-opened mouth and half-closed eyes. This chick is really stoned. But then so was I.

An instinctual level of my mind was thinking, I'm really horny now and she obviously is too. If she opened her bra for me, what would she do with her panties? Rather then merely speculate I tried an experiment. I put my hand down on her bare knees and tried to pull them apart.

Her legs opened. I said, "Oh that's good; Janey, you're a real find, a real sweetie." If I had been of a clearer mind, I might have taken more time, but I let my hand go up her thighs to her crotch. My fingers moved her panties aside and I felt her springy hair.

"You're pretty fast," she said.

"So are you, baby." She laughed at that. Then I said, "I want to see it."

She was mild, amenable, "Okay, have a look." She slid her underpants off and dropped them on the floor.

Janey's dark hair down there was bushier and more extensive than that of the models I had seen in magazines. Perhaps those Playboy and Penthouse girls trim that hair, like any other hair can be trimmed? It seemed amusing that part of my brain could still make these deductions.

"Have you ever see a pussy before?"

"Ah, sure . . ."

"Oh yeah, in magazines I bet."

It didn't want to look like a complete neophyte so I shrugged and didn't comment.

"Do you like it, I mean my pussy?"

It was a bare pussy, right in front of me, "Of course I do." Tentatively I put my right hand into her slit and rubbed it. It was moist in there, so I pushed a finger further in. She took my hand in hers and guided me, "Here, move it this way." Judging by the expression on her face I was getting it right. She put both feet up on the cushions and spread herself even more. I put my mouth close to her ear and said, "I'm so turned on right now."

She giggled, "I know, I can see the bulge in your pants." Then she made another escalation; she reached out and started to rub me through the cloth. I was aware that I had a lot of - call it juices - inside myself that were pressing to come out.

There had been a couple of times when I had been able to ejaculate inside my pants with the right stimulation. Once I had been reading a book - an obscure novel, I had forgotten the title - and an explicit scene had made me rub the hardcover spine against my crotch. That time only a few minutes were needed before I had gone off without ever undoing my trousers.

I said quietly, "Unzip me and have a look."

She agreed to that, "Okay, sure." When my pants were open and my bare cock was out she did more than look; without prompting from me she started stroking it.

"Janey, that's perfect; keep going."

She said, "I wonder if that would fit in me?" Later I remembered that as hypothetical; she didn't say, is that going to fit into me?

I said, "So, have you ever seen a cock before?"

"I saw pictures once, it's kind of a long story."

"What do you think of it?"

"It's just so hard."

That was what any stoned female virgin would say, I guess. I said what a stoned male virgin would say, "I've jerked off thinking about you."

That rather unromantic statement went over quite well, "Oh really, how was I?"

"You were just great!"

With her caressing my cock I thought it likely she'd bring me to a climax right there on Anne's sofa. Splendor in the Grass, I remembered; that seemed funny but too complicated to explain. If Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood had done this the movie would have ended after the first ten minutes.

If we hadn't been brimming with cannabis, I suspect that handjobs for both of us were exactly what would have happened. It would have been petting blow the waist and under the clothes, to use quaint 1950s terminology, leading to mutual masturbation and satisfying orgasms (I hoped) for the two of us.

I probably didn't think in exactly those terms if I was thinking at all. Instead a kind of cleverness aided by a drug-induced boldness came over me. If she likes my fingers rubbing down there, what would the tip of my penis do for her?

To find out I pushed her back and down on the couch and I positioning myself between her legs. I undid my belt and lowered my Gap blue jeans and Hanes underpants to my knees. Then I grasped myself and guided my cock so that the glans moved up and down against her cunt. Janey moaned and held my torso, saying, "You have such a nice compact body."

"And you have such a nice sweet cunt."

She said, "Have you ever done this before?"

"No never; have you?"

"Me? No, I haven't."

"No time like the present then," I said.

That was the final step, I guess. I pressed my hips forward and entered her. I suppose both our cherries popped at that moment by one definition of the term. She said only, "Hey," but she spread and lifted her legs further so I let instinct take over. As Desmond Morris wrote in his dry yet faintly humorous British academic style: "the male begins a series of rhythmic pelvic thrusts . . . in an inhibited situation these are usually rather rapid and deeply penetrating."

I had read the book once but I didn't recall it now, being in the middle of one of those inhibited situations he was referring to. So this is how it feels inside a girl's open pussy. I know I moaned in time to my own movements. If Janey was vocalizing anything I didn't hear it. I was looking over the top of her head, my eyes not really focusing on anything, but I certainly didn't look at her face to see how see was doing.

There was definitely a pot-induced time distortion going on and this coupling probably didn't go on as long as it seemed back then. Later I estimated that it was probably not much more than five minutes, but that couldn't be more than a guess.

As I felt the familiar pressure build up I became more frantic in my movements. My shoes slid along the carpet as I tried to get my some traction with my feet. Just before I came I circled my crotch against hers and then pushed in harder. I knew from previous solo experiences that the pot would intensify my orgasm and that was certainly true now. As I reached my climax I babbled about how she had taken her panties off for me and how I was putting my hot sperm into her. These silly comments were not that different from what I said to imaginary girls when I masturbated. Now, however, Janey was my partner to hear them; however, she didn't respond to anything I was saying

Then it was quiet; the record had stopped. (In later days I looked up the track listings to calculate that we had been in the apartment for about twenty-five minutes.) As I relaxed I felt a set of contradictory emotions: delight, surprise, confusion. There was some guilt too; there was another person involved with this and I had lost track of her. It's this drug, of course. I don't think she came herself; as inexperienced as I am I think I would have noticed that.

My hands were on her shoulders to brace myself. Just as I looked down she used her own hands to push against me. We uncoupled; I just went back and sideways and sat on the sofa cushion. The first thing I noticed was that my cock was still erect and slick with our fluids. I glanced over to look between her legs but she was sitting upright now with her knees slammed shut.