Shelley's Revenge

I had long known how a sexually generous Donna had been with me. So why had I fooled around with this demented slut Shelley?

*****

My graduation day -- my commencement ceremony -- took place on a hot day in June. Everybody sat facing north looking towards Finley Hall. All of us were given gowns and mortarboard hats that we had to return to the school within a few days. I suppose some company kept them around most of the year for events such as this.

Somewhere in this crowd were my four ex-college paramours -- Nora Meara, Michelle Hanley, Andrea Cartselos, and Judy Weinberg -- who were also marking their end of collegiate life. During the time after our break-ups, I had remained on speaking terms with all of them. They had all been encouraged by me to join The Salient newspaper -- even if the sexual part of our relationships had long since ended.

Anyway, at this particular ceremony, I had no desire to seek them out for good-byes, and they didn't seem to be looking for me either. I was mostly interested in Donna, who had come down to the college to see me on my last day at City College.

Just before she arrived, I noted the windows of The Salient office on the third floor of Finley. It was in that room one night that I had lost my virginity to Nora almost exactly three years earlier.

That had been a very strange event, one that had started as a fight, not the conventional wooing of a young couple attracted to each other. In any case, my entire affair with her had only lasted a little over four months. By she was still my first chick and you never forget the first one who bangs you.

Donna looked great that day, with her light blue summer-weight suit, white stockings, and a straw hat. She sat near my family towards the back of the crowd. I remember the main speaker was the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Joseph A. Califano. He had come up from Washington to deliver a particularly boring and inane speech.

Afterwards, Donna and I chatted with each other under a tree near Eisner Hall, the headquarters of the Art Department.Man, she looks beautiful today. Her dark hair was pinned up under her hat. It was perhaps a bit premature, but I was toying the idea that I would marry her within the next year. She'd be a great catch, much better than what seemed possible for me during my virginal freshman year.

A few minutes later I glanced over to my right and I was dismayed but not that surprised to see Shelley coming towards us. On this hot day, she was wearing a sleeveless blouse, cut-off blue jean shorts, and sandals. I wanted to get away from, her but she was quickly upon us. What the fuck is she doing here? Then it struck me that she had come looking for me. I understood that something nasty was about to happen.

"Hey Paul, is this your girlfriend, the one from Manhattan College?" She seemed unexpectedly upbeat.

Donna glanced over and I'm sure she thought, and who exactly is this little tart? For a second I thought I could make formal introductions as if this was some normal meeting and everything would be fine. The best I could come up with was, "She's on the newspaper."

Shelley laughed, "Yeah, and he's always on me too!" Donna to her credit kept calm and just waited for that scene to play out. I was eager to keep Shelley from talking but I couldn't figure out how to do that.

She looked Donna up and down and said to me, "Nice, you snagged a good one." Then she addressed Donna directly, "Unfortunately, honey, he likes some side action too."

"Shelley, what exactly are you going here?" That didn't sound like the statement of an innocent man but I was getting desperate.

"What am I doing here?" Again she spoke to Donna, "Your sweetheart, this fine gentleman, he can't keep his hands off of me. He's always pulling my panties off if he can reach them." She often didn't wear panties, but that wouldn't help me now.

She continued, "He fucked me once in the office, right there." She indicated the third-floor windows in the facade overlooking the field. "Later he took me from behind in one of the Wagner restrooms. I bet he'd like to screw me right now in the grass behind some building."

I managed to say, "That's a lie."

"Okay, that last one was, let's say, hypothetical. You know that the other things are true."

My embarrassment was intense and I was trying not to look at either of them. Shelley said to Donna, "Don't believe me? I've seen his two-tone cock. It's darker at the base than on the outer half. Too bad he doesn't know for shit how to use it properly."

That clinched it; I saw Donna's face fall. A half-comforting thought came to me: I've lost girlfriends before, life goes on. Yet I was galled by the mean-spirited, wasteful way this present relationship was being destroyed. Shelley was still talking, "He's a cheap little prick too. He's never bought me a drink, not once, not even a soda in the snack bar."

I wanted to end the agony, "Shelley, you've said enough already. Please leave us alone."

"Yeah, I guess I've said what I wanted to say." She lowered her voice, "You lying, cheating little piece of shit." With that, she walked off in a huff. I looked at her swaying little butt and wanted the paddle of God to come down on her ass so hard that she would fall to the ground.

I admired how Donna had kept her cool during this provocation. "Look," she said, "I get that she's crazy; her eyes, those alone give me the creeps." Was I going to be forgiven? No, I knew I wasn't.

Donna went on, "I know what happened. She flaunted her pussy in your face and you . . ." She stopped to think. Then, "Yes, the temptation was tremendous. Ninety percent of guys would have jumped into her little Jezebel cunt. But . . ." Here it comes. "You were not ninety percent of men, you were my guy."

I caught her use of the past tense. I was beyond lying now because I no credibility left. I threw myself on Donna's mercy, "So what was I supposed to do?"

She seemed briefly amused, "Paul, I don't know. You have free will, you don't have to stick your dick in every little strumpet who bends over in front of you." Something else occurred to her, "She must have had a lot of other guys around here."

"Oh yeah, she's been going through the South Campus like a tornado. Gang-bangs too. But how would you know that?"

"Just a guess, it seemed plausible." As my ex-girlfriend Michelle had once confirmed for me, women figure out everything eventually. Donna continued, "But don't think that gets you off the hook."

"It was only twice." Like that was relevant.

She replied, "That's twice too many. And if you weren't graduating, I bet it would be several more next semester."

I had that uncomfortable sensation that came when a woman saw through me. I said, "I don't even like her."

" 'Like' has nothing to do with it. She offered her hole to you and you took it." Her bluntly harsh language nevertheless struck me as accurate.

Rather stupidly perhaps I asked another question, "So what are we going to do about all this?"

"What are we going to do? Well, I don't know about you, but I know what I'm doing." She lifted her hand and waved at me. "I'm saying, bye-bye!" Something about her voice and maybe her hat reminded me of Carol Channing although she didn't look at all like her.

I had one more shot and I said something irrelevant, "She mentioned once that she'd like to kill me. I mean, I'd like to strangle her myself right now."

Donna had a response, "Well, crime is not your forte. You'd wind up on page four of The Post and then on Riker's Island and then maybe Green Haven. Don't touch her, don't even threaten her -- she'll press charges. Smarten up for once."'

Then she commented, "You'll feel hurt for a while and I'll feel hurt too, I mean right now. It will pass." She seemed to ponder something for a moment.

"Look," she said, "It's your graduation day, I know it's not a good time for this. Call me in a couple of days and we'll go over it in a calm setting."

A reprieve: was I getting one? Then she turned and walked away. I couldn't help but notice how nicely her hips swiveled as I watched her go.

I knew from reading the papers that a coup had recently failed in Angola and that the losers in that were, at this very moment, being arrested and executed. It's great being an intellectual, you can rationalize away almost anything. Here in dingy but relatively peaceful upper Manhattan, I didn't care about defeated rebels but I was feeling very sorry for myself. You jerk, Shelley opened the elevator doors and you saw the cab wasn't there. You walked into the empty shaft anyway.

*****

About four days later I met Donna outside a coffee shop on Pelham Parkway. It was only about five blocks from her place and about a mile from my home. When she approached me on the sidewalk she didn't smile or say much; she just indicated that we should go inside.

When we had our coffees on the table she said, "Why don't you go first?"

I surprised myself by replying, "Why did you think she had a grudge against me?" It was a strange thing to ask but I really was curious.

"I don't know, I wasn't there. I suspect you have some thoughts on the matter."

I didn't know the term "Dead Man Walking" yet but I grasped that this conversation was a post-mortem and probably the last we would ever have. I didn't want to dissemble so I said, "The other guys who were with her seemed indifferent, which was fine with her. She accused me of being a phony."

I thought Donna would ask me for more detail but she seemed to deduce a lot from that, "You were probably thinking back to your open-relationship heyday two years ago with Michelle and Judy and that other one of your South Campus cuties."

"There was only Andrea besides them." (Nora Meara had already left me by then.)

"Yeah, I remember her now, and but it was before I met you and it was your business at the time."

"They were all happy with it back then"

"Until they moved on to more 'exclusive relationships,' as you told me." I had told Donna far more about my past than was wise, perhaps, but she always seemed interested in hearing about it. That was another thing I'd be much more careful about in the future.

I remembered that for a brief while in 1975 I considered that I might marry Michelle eventually, probably after we had graduated. I don't know how I squared that with having affairs with two other women, one of whom was Michelle's best friend. I was young enough to entertain some delusions.

I said, "I don't get what this has to do with Shelley." Actually, I was starting to understand it perfectly but I wanted to hear it from Donna.

She said, "Look, I get that Shelley is, in layman's terms, some kind of psycho. She's obviously a very angry person and that makes her dangerous Somehow she wanted to be a loose-cannon nymphomaniac mowing down men to satisfy her own issues. And she guessed -- and for some reason resented -- that you wanted to create a new co-ed harem with her as girl number two." She paused and said, almost off the cuff it seemed, "Sort of like the now-departed Judy Weinberg."

Her reference to Judy bothered me and I tried to parry her, "I never thought that, I never said that to her, and I never mentioned Judy."

"I don't think it was completely conscious on your part, and maybe not on hers either." Then she said, "So Paul, how well am I doing with my analysis here?"

She was doing very well indeed, but I couldn't come up with a response.

"Now I do know that in our present enlightened age there are girls throwing quiff around like it was Lay's Potato Chips." I smiled at that, and she went on, "If you and other guys want to indulge, then go ahead. Just understand that it doesn't fly with me."

I made a final plea for pity, "It's just not fair that she could do this to us."

She squinted at me, "You were the one who didn't see the booby-traps."

"I thought of an elevator opening and the cab wasn't there."

"That's a good one too."

I saw a last opening to bargain, "Donna, the first time she approached me in The Salient office . . .:

She interrupted me, "I can imagine it. Probably not wearing underwear I bet."

"You're amazing, I mean how you figure out these things." I was in awe of her powers of perception and she could sense that.

She shrugged and smiled, "Hey, I make it look easy. Anyway, there is a difference between the average undergraduate jerk who just falls into the pussies of these nutty sluts and the kind of man I want."

That was quite a rebuke and she knew it. She tried to soften it a bit, "I know, I'm only twenty-two myself and I need more maturity too." Actually, that sounded like her biggest mistake was choosing me in the first place but it seemed pointless to mention that.

There were a few moments of silence and then she said, "So, as Andrea Cartselos told you once, let's end it now and end it cleanly." Andrea had told me about that almost three years earlier; nothing is gained by prolonging a break-up. I realized again that I had told Donna far more about those girls than I should have. It didn't make much difference at that point one way or the other.

I don't think either one of us had touched our coffees, but I took out some bills and left them. Then we went outside. She said to me, "I'll collect the stuff you left at my place and I'll send it back to you. Don't worry, I'll be diligent about it."

The last thing I ever said to her was, "Thanks." I had nothing else to offer.

She pointed a finger at me and said, almost playfully, "Remember, keep your dick in your pants and a level head on your shoulders." Then she turned and walked away along the north side of the Parkway.

Donna proved, perhaps, what I already knew, that she has some strength of character. Her end with me was decisive and mercifully quick. She hadn't lost her temper, she hadn't yelled or cried in front of me. I did suspect that she might cry when she got back to her apartment a few minutes from now. I felt like crying myself.

I decided to walk back home. Overhead, elevated trains passed by, carrying people with their own problems and desires. In Angola, the round-up of dissidents was continuing, and ultimately several thousand people -- the exact number was never known -- would be killed.

******

My relationship with Professor Marilyn Janssen did not have any official ending per se. We assumed that my graduation would conclude it, and we had a sort of farewell dinner in early June followed by a farewell screw in her Manhattan apartment. Now in late June, I called her and she seemed surprised to hear from me.

After a minute or so of chitchat, mostly about my career plans, she said, "Anyway, so how's Donna?"

"Oh, her. Well, we broke up a few days ago."

There was a pause and then I heard, "I suppose you want to tell me about it." I could tell from her tone that she didn't want the details so I condensed it.

"Okay, I wound up screwing this slutty girl Shelley a couple of times." I realized then that the word slut wouldn't go over well with Marilyn; she would think I was using a double-standard which, in effect, was true. But it was too late to take it back.

I went on as briefly as I could, "Then Shelley got upset and she told Donna about it and, well . . ." I left out the dramatic climax at my own graduation.

Marilyn paused and then said, "I'm sorry Paul, that is regrettable, but frankly, it does sound like a comedy of errors."

I faked a laugh, "Yeah, it definitely was. Anyway, I was thinking, why don't the two of us meet downtown this weekend?"

"Oh, I get it. You're at loose ends now and you want to have something to do this summer." She sounded like she was chiding me for a late paper, which was how our involvement had started in the first place.

I tried to be a touch flippant, "Well yeah, but younger guys are fun, right?"

She went deeper into lecture mode, "You know and I know that it's time for us to move on. I have to think that way for my own sake. I mean, I've got eighteen years on you. You still live with your parents."

The year she had been born was 1937. As a young girl, she remembered V-E day; she was in high school during the Korean War.

We said a few more inconsequential things and then we hung up.

*******

I never saw Donna again. About two weeks later she had indeed collected my possessions from her apartment and sent them back to me via UPS. I was impressed that she had taken the time to find everything I remembered leaving there.

As I had graduated and had little further to do with CCNY, I never saw Shelley again either. For a few months, I was paranoid that she would somehow follow me and appear right there on some street or subway. After a bit longer I was able to relax.

When an issue of The Salient came out in September 1977 it was the first not to have my name in the staff box since December 1973. Shelley's name wasn't in it either and she didn't appear in subsequent issues. There was a new generation of staff members there and I had no incentive to ask them about her. It's likely they didn't know anything either about where she had gone.

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Recently I started writing a series about what happens during the summer of 1977. For the moment it's not on this site but I think it will be eventually. Paul does meet another girl at a job; she's also a CUNY graduate of his age. Well, then he starts an affair with her roommate. It seems like he still has some trouble keeping his dick in his pants.