Chapter 13 -- The Apartment By the Park

I moved in with my new roommates just before school started, the only great decision I made. If I was still trying to deal with Lena’s nonsense, along with getting through that first disheartening year of teaching, I probably would have been certifiable.
Linda had the front bedroom, which was obviously built to be the master. It was the largest of the three bedrooms and she furnished it with some style from second hand furniture stores. Linda was from an eastern suburb (Smithvale was north of the city) known for its affluence and good schools. Her family, however, was not well off. They were a big Irish family with seven children and she was the oldest. She had long hair and a thin angular face and a little boy’s body, straight up and down, but she still managed to look confident, stylish, and arrogantly intelligent. She had heavy Modigliani style upper eyelids, which were her best feature. She was brisk and practical and wittily waspish, hard to warm up to. She had to wear thick-lensed glasses much of the time. She had an architect boyfriend who had the upstairs flat in the house next door. Most of these houses had been built within the same era and were almost identical except for the exterior color and landscaping.
The architect’s name was Peter. He was older than we were, in his thirties. He had long hair, which was just becoming the style at the time, and a stocky, very slightly overweight body. He was always brushing his hair off his face, but he had very kind eyes, and although he had the same dry wit as Linda he also had an air of languid ennui that seemed very mature. He was usually fatherly and friendly and stayed out of our roommate squabbles. He loved jazz, had a very expensive sound system. He used a bed for a sofa and covered it with a genuine cowhide throw and with many huge pillows. He loved to prop you comfortably among the pillows with some excellent headphones and select some John McLaughlin or Miles Davis for you to listen to. He was never called Pete. Some people are nickname people, some aren’t. Peter wasn’t.
I had the middle bedroom, which, like the first bedroom had two huge windows that started about 12” off the floor and went almost all the way to the ceiling. The windows were in the center of a wall with about 6” between them. On the opposite wall was a built-in dresser with bookcases built in on either side, all painted white. There were hardwood floors and the woodwork was stained dark. It was the most beautiful room I had ever possessed.
Annie had the third room, in the back, off the kitchen. Annie grew up in the back of beyond, way out past the northern suburbs, in farm country, although her parents were not farmers. Her grandparents were farmers, but her dad sold real estate and also bought real estate, which he subsequently sold or rented. Annie had ten kids in her family, of which she was the oldest. She was a natural beauty with high cheekbones and long, shiny, straight brown hair, and although she was short, she was perfectly proportioned. Linda liked to imply that Annie had no brains whatsoever, and since Annie had never had much opportunity to value her intelligence, she was an easy target. “ She’s inane,” Linda said. Linda sometimes referred to Annie as “Innie”, which,of course, made Annie very angry. Linda and Annie certainly needed a buffer. Although they worked for the same stockbroker, they had nothing else in common and did not get along very well. As Annie usually got the worst in any encounter, she avoided Linda’s company as much as possible, which was fairly easy given that Linda was usually with Peter.
In spite of the subtle hostility between these two I was happy with this new arrangement almost as soon as I moved in. Annie and I got along very well, and Linda, who should have gone to college, respected my degree and my job enough to prevent me from being a target for her sharp tongue.
Annie was a social girl; she still had a number of friends from high school who occasionally came into the city to go out to the bars with her. Annie wanted a husband, and not one from the sticks. She wanted a handsome husband from a good family. She combed the bars every weekend, especially the college bars hoping to meet one.
I was so busy with my first year of school, that at first, I was content to stay at home in the quiet flat to work on lesson plans and mark papers. Luke came to see me a few times, when he could catch a ride, but I was distracted, considering all the problems I was having in the classroom.
Eventually Annie lured me out of the house with her a few Friday and Saturday evenings. She was a 'hit and run' partier. We would go to a bar, park, walk in, get a drink, and walk around, scoping the place out. We would always walk through and around the whole bar. If no one looked interesting by the time our drink was gone we would immediately leave and go to the next bar on the list. If a bar looked promising to Annie, for some unfathomable reason, which I never did decipher, we would settle in. My favorite way to go to a bar is to go with friends, get a table, so I can chat to, and dance with, the friends I came with. Annie never sat down at a table in a bar, although once in a while she perched on a high barstool with her back to the bar. She liked to stand around and wait for a handsome stranger to ask her to dance. Sometimes we met two guy friends who would ask both of us to dance, but often I was left standing by myself. If I didn’t want to go, Annie shamed me into it by making me feel like a bad friend, and a social dud. We played out this whole scene weekend after weekend, except when someone had a house party we were invited to. Annie waited all week for the weekends. I tagged along because it was better than staying alone in an empty flat.
Annie met a handsome Southern boy once at a bar. After Annie had been seeing Tad for a while, Tad set up a double date for Annie and him, his college roommate and me. We all met for a few drinks at a bar and ended up at the pool in the park near our apartment, after hours, playing chicken in the dark water with all our clothes on. We were having a very illegal good time until the police kicked us out. They did not give us tickets, just a warning. After changing clothes we went back to their apartment, supposedly to eat. They each went into their bedroom and turned off all the lights, leaving us in the living room with a bowl of popcorn. I guess we were supposed to follow them into their bedrooms and screw them silly, I was still a virgin, and I was with a guy I didn’t even know. I stole an umbrella, since it was raining by then, and Annie and I walked home. They did call to apologize the next day, but I never trusted that Southern boy. Annie thought he was great, and he was charming, but I felt he had a dark side. Even after he stole some jewelry from Linda and a book from me she defended him to the skies. He disappeared and we never saw him again, but Annie brought him up from time to time as her ideal and could never be dissuaded. She insisted that Linda chased him away.
Whenever Annie got a fairly serious boyfriend, Linda would flirt with him and exchange witty, sparkling repartee, until Annie would lose her happy nature and confront Linda. Sometimes Linda slept with the men that Annie liked and ruined the whole relationship. Linda and Peter had an “open” relationship, so she was free to do as she liked. She never met her own men though,, she had too much fun stealing Annie’s. It was amazing and disturbing to watch someone steal from a beauty by using her wits. And the men seemed quite surprised that in the end they lost both the beauty and the wit.
Of course, my unhappiness and frustration at school spilled over somewhat into my private life, but not as much as you would think. When I got home, I was in my haven and the cares of the day gradually fell away. I would think back over the day and try to analyze what I had done wrong and what I had done right and then I would square my shoulders, vow to do better the next day, and let it all go for a while. A kind of hope would bubble up as I planned lessons or graded papers that the next day would be better and sometimes it was. It took too much energy for my students to be terrible every day.
Then it would be the weekend and Annie would be ready to roll and that would take my mind off the classroom for a while. She was trying to turn me into a social animal. I was her project, along with the soul mate hunting thing. We also went to the park sometimes for a swim or a walk, or went shopping, something we both enjoyed. My first year of teaching I made $6,200 so I wasn’t exactly rich, but our whole flat only cost $120, ($40) plus utilities. I actually felt quite affluent.
Luke turned eighteen and I guess he decided that it was time to do the deed. It was winter and the flat was cozy and somehow we had it to ourselves. It was probably one of those days in winter break when teachers have a day off, but stockbrokers don’t. Of course, I could see the irony of losing my virginity to someone who was only one or two years older than some of my students, but we had been pussyfooting around this huge hunger for a long time. Luke decided that before we “did it”, we should get high. Marijuana had appeared in the flat from time to time, it was still somewhat unusual, but was getting to be more and more common everywhere around the university area. Students smoked joints right outside in the open at concerts.
Luke sat me down in the living room. I remember we had an old green leather couch, large and very comfortable. He set the joints on the coffee table and we lit one up. He took a hit and passed it to me. I shut one eye and took a puff and blew out the smoke.
“You have to inhale,” Luke said, my Marlboro man.
So in 1967, the same year the Surgeon General put the first warning on cigarette packs, Luke set out to teach me to inhale. He decided not to waste the marijuana until I got the hang of it.
“Go get your cigarettes,” he said. “I’ll show you how to inhale a cigarette first.”
Now I wanted Luke bad. We had been anticipating the deed since last June. We had the music. We had the incense, we had very little light on that snowy winter day. It looked pretty romantic with the soft brown light filtering through the curtains and the fireplace going. It was now or never.
“OK, here’s the cigarettes,” I said as I arrived back at the couch from the bedroom. “Now what?”
Luke took out a cigarette for me, lit it, took a drag, and handed it over. I puffed.
“No, you’re not inhaling,” he said. “There’s a little catch in the back of your throat. You have to relax your throat muscles and just let the smoke go down.”
I tried that a few times. Nothing.
“Turn around,” said Luke. He started to massage my shoulders. As he continues the massage he said, “Now try it.”
I tried again and the catch dissolved. The smoke went through and I started to cough. I tried again, no cough. I sat back on the couch and inhaled pensively until I felt a little light-headed.
“Now you’re ready,” he said.
He lit up the joint once again and sucked the marijuana far down into his lungs and held his breath, his lips in a straight line. After a few minutes he exhaled.
I copied him exactly and after several more coughing fits started to feel what I knew must be a buzz. I felt sort of floaty and light and silly. My brain cells were firing ideas, which spun out and then just disappeared. We started kissing, each kiss deep, seeming to last a long, long time.
“Give me your hand,” Luke said, and he pulled me after him into my dark bedroom. He took his time, he undressed me slowly, kissing my neck and mouth. I was opening the snap on his jeans, touching softly whatever was available. After a while there were no more clothes to take off and we moved to the bed. We lay down on tops of the cover.
Luke said with some urgency, “get a towel.”
I went naked through the empty apartment and got one of my old towels from the linen closed. It sort of broke the mood though. I spread the towel and dutifully laid myself upon it. We kissed some more. I was warming back up quickly. I was enjoying the wonderful silkiness and completeness of bare skin on bare skin for the first time, something I would never lose a taste for.
Luke moved my hand downwards and gave me his penis. It massaged it and it grew bigger and harder and our breathing grew faster and louder. Then he was on top of me. I liked his weight. He was pausing at the door of me. My body did not seem to want him to gain entrance, but my chemicals did. I pushed towards him and felt the pain and, vaguely, underneath it, the pleasure. I did not experience any heights of ecstasy, but when Luke was finished, he held me close for a while and we slept a bit. Then it was time for him to leave, he had to return the car he borrowed. My roommates would be home soon. He didn’t want to see them.
“It’ll be better next time,” he promised.
I put on a robe and walked him to the door, gave him a kiss and he was gone.
I was finished cleaning my mess and myself before anyone came home. When Linda came in, I was sitting in the corner of the green leather couch with my feet underneath me, tight against my tender privates, inhaling a cigarette and crying. I couldn’t stop. The tears just kept coming. Linda came in and sat in the easy chair across from me and asked me if I wanted to talk. I spilled my guts, of course, and she was actually very sympathetic and understanding. She said it was like that for her the first time.
“He didn’t hurt you did he?, she asked.
“No more than he had to,” I said, “I don’t know why I’m crying,” I said.
“It’s just that after he left I felt so sad.”
“Let me change my clothes,” Linda said, “You go wash your face and put on some makeup. We’ll go out and celebrate your first time.”
“Where’s Annie,” I asked.
“She had to work overtime,” Linda answered.
We went to the best Chinese restaurant and soon the table was covered with footed stainless steel dishes with silvery covers. Linda told me all about her first sexual encounter, which happened to her at a much younger age than mine had. She had fallen for a painter, much older than her, who lived an unconventional life in an old church in her hometown. After that first experience they had quite a long affair, which ended badly. She was so nice to me that my heart started to warm to her a bit, without forgetting some of her transgressions against Annie. By the time we left (we also had a couple of drinks) I felt much more festive and ready to get back to planning for Christmas with my family and at the apartment, and to planning lessons for the new semester. I decided I would not think about the reality of school, just the logistics. I didn’t want to begin to dread going back until I absolutely had to.
So I lost two maidenheads in one day, one in my throat, and one, you know where. From that day on I have never stopped inhaling tobacco smoke. It became a terrible addiction for me. I lost my psychological equanimity without my nicotine. And some of you will think I became a sex addict too, although I don’t really know about that. Fortunately, although marijuana became a fixture in my life for a while, I was never addicted to it. This combination of sex and cigarettes was enough to bring about my ultimate downfall though., and addicted or not the drugs played a part too.