For a relatively short period in my sophomore and junior years at the City College of New York, I was “spinning plates” with several girls at the same time. I hadn’t planned for this to happen – in fact, until it did, I wouldn’t have believed that a guy like me would be able to pull off something like that. But circumstances were briefly in my favor and, being young and callow, I took advantage of them.
I met one of these women, Judy Weinberg, through one of my other girlfriends. By the winter of 1975, I had started an affair with her. The other two girls I was dating knew her but didn’t immediately figure out what was going on.
I was in one of the college newspaper offices late one afternoon when Judy stopped by to meet me. This was very early in our relationship – we only had been going with each for a couple of weeks at this point. In fact, those weeks were Judy’s first intimate experiences with any man. The mystique about virgins had never meant much to me. For one thing, I myself had had no experience whatsoever before the previous October. But that’s the way the breaks went and I accepted it.
My two other girlfriends at the time, Michelle and Charlotte, were able to present themselves in different ways. They could go from a girl-next-door, I’m going about my business persona to a femme fatale strut – at will, almost instantly. I had seen them do it to impress my male colleagues. They knew it amused me and they were amusing themselves too.
Judy would probably never be able to do that, nor would she ever want to. To the other guys in the office, she was nearly invisible. They seemed relieved that I had finally brought someone on board who offered no interest or challenge to them. If they noted her at all, she was just a short, slightly plump, frizzy-haired girl with a modest, low-key personality.
However, I didn’t care what they thought. I was starting to see her completely differently; that Joni Mitchell line about a woman of heart and mind sometimes came to me. I was beginning to know the passionate side of her that she herself may not have known about. Sexual relationships change the people in them if they are open to accepting that, and these changes can be drastic and rapid. I was no longer the person I was a few months earlier and Judy too was entering a big transition.
It was a cold day in March when she came in. She had joined the staff too so it was a convenient spot for us to meet. She hung up her coat; there were maybe four other people in the office but no one even said hello. She walked over to me; I saw her lift her glasses to the top of her head. I knew she did that so I could better see her face.
I was sitting at a desk; she was standing near me with her hands on the back of a chair. For a few moments, we didn’t say anything to each other. I used this time to look her over. Today, she looked more dressed-up than usual. It actually was a simple outfit: a white pullover blouse, probably wool, and a plaid wool skirt, pleated, which came down to just above her knees. She had white tights and dark shoes. And yet, I was intrigued; I examined the outline of her body and I knew what she looked like under those clothes. I think she knew what I was thinking.
She said, “Aren’t you going to say hello already?”
“Oh, sure.” I tried a compliment, “You really look great today,”
“Well, thank you!”
She sat down next to the desk and put one of her hands on mine. I glanced around but no one was looking at us. By then I understood that my colleagues had no interest in whether I was Judy’s lover, friend, or merely an acquaintance.
We talked for a few minutes about the articles we were writing. Afterwards, we planned to take the Convent Avenue or the Amsterdam Avenue bus to her West Side neighborhood and have dinner – there was a better than average diner on her corner. I was looking forward to having a couple of beers. At that age, I would drink beer in any season regardless of how cold it was.
At twilight, we were standing at the entrance to Wagner Hall, across from the Finley Student Center, leaning on a pillar and making out. I had unbuttoned her coat and I ran my hands along the back of her blouse and then along the back of her skirt.
I said, “Your clothes feel cold but I know your body is warm.”
Michelle might have teased me about a line like that but Judy said, “Oh yes, that is so true.” Then she said, “I wish there was someplace we could be together, I mean right now.”
I did know someplace. It was where I had gone with Michelle right here in Wagner about a month ago. But I was aware of Michelle’s wild side, especially after some of the role-playing games she had played with me. I didn’t know what Judy’s reaction to my proposal would be.
I decided to try it. Maybe she’d gag at the idea but if she did turn it down I knew she’d be polite about it.
I said, “Michelle and I were in this building about a month ago.” I was aware of how tentative I must have seemed. Fortunately, Judy knew about my other affairs and accepted the situation.
I continued, “It’s usually deserted at this time of day and there’s – there is a men’s room on the second floor. We went into one of the stalls.”
This didn’t seem at all romantic. Would Mr. Darcy ever mention such a thing to Elizabeth Bennett? Of course not, but maybe he entertained a few fantasies. Human nature couldn’t have changed that much since 1813.
Judy simply answered, “Let’s go have a look.”
On the second floor, I went in first to make sure the room was vacant. Then I gestured for her to come in. It was a large room at the back of the building, and it was fairly clean and well-maintained for a public restroom. There was a row of stalls along the inside wall that adjoined the hallway. The sinks were under the windows on the opposite side. I could see lights going on in the taller buildings of Harlem.
Once we were in there, we talked in low voices, close to whispers. For one thing, we didn’t want anyone passing in the hallway to hear us.
I said, “When I was here with Michelle – in a stall – some guy did come in to take a leak. We had to be cool for a couple of minutes.”
Judy seemed to take this information with aplomb. She picked a stall and pulled me in. I thought again of Elizabeth Bennett and the fact that she was twenty years old, which was close to my age now and also the ages of Judy and Michelle. Jane Austen would think that our actions here were only appropriate for social classes much lower than her own. Probably, for example, she was aware that men of her class sometimes relied on prostitutes but as far as I knew she never wrote about it. Anyway, I was glad I wasn’t living in 1813.
Once we closed the door, Judy took her coat off and hung it on a hook; then she unzipped my coat. She pushed me against the door and started kissing me. This seemed to be starting better than I had expected for this setting.
She said, “Give me a second.”
She took off her shoes, then her tights. The tights went into her bag, the shoes back on her feet. She explained why, “This floor is too cold for bare feet.”
I knew that Judy was thinking this through without any directions from me. There were only a few options for us in this stall. We could do it standing up or, as happened with Michelle in the second half of our sojourn, I could sit on the seat and have her sit on me. It any case, it was worth getting the tights out of the way first.
Then she whispered, “We have to get you to come first.”
I suspect she had heard about this from some other girl, maybe even her friend Michelle. It was a strategy to deal with “trigger-happy” young guys like me.
I said, “How should we?” I assumed she’d wank me or blow me, her choice.
“I’ll show you.”
She turned around to face one of the side panels, then she lifted her skirt and lowered her panties. She had a nice round ass, a friendly ass to welcome a man. I was quickly next to her, grinding my front against her.
She tried to reach behind and then she said, “Lower your pants.”
The circular movements she was making with her hips were perfect. Did she instinctually know them or was she inspired by something she had heard or read? As for me, a Bob and Earl song came to mind, “The Harlem Shuffle,” the one the Rolling Stones later covered and made famous. The only reason I knew about the original was because Charlotte had a copy of it. “Shake, shake, shake, shake a tail, feather baby.” I could have had this shaking go on for a long time, but it wasn’t to be that way. It was more like five minutes or so.
She must have noticed a change in the pace of my rubbing because she looked back at me with a lascivious smile on her face. My cock was pointing upwards, the shaft pressed into her ass crack. When I came on her I tried to be as quiet as possible but there were limits to my self-control. I had to wheeze or whine or whatever you’d call those noises.
When I was done and could talk I looked down and said, “Sorry, I got some on your blouse.”
“Don’t worry, that’s what Woolite is for.”
I had to laugh at that. Then I reached down to get a handkerchief but she had already turned around and she was pulling me next to her.
After kissing me, she said, “I want – put your hand under my skirt,”
I positioned her in the same way I had done with Michelle. Her left foot was on the floor and her right one was up on the porcelain rim of the seat. She had her arms around my neck; I had one hand to hold her skirt up and the other was fondling her between her legs.
I was saying or whispering things without really thinking, “Judy you are the hottest, sweetest girl any guy could ever want.” Then I said, “What am I rambling on about?”
She replied, “It’s fine, just fine.”
When she was ready she wasn’t shy about telling me. “Put it in me, now.” She was shorter than Michelle so I had to stoop down a bit. She lifted one of her legs and I held her around the waist to steady her.
The fit of our bodies, then our movements together were just fine as she had promised. Then it seemed that only a couple minutes had gone by when we heard the dreadful sound of the hallway doorway opening. As had happened a month ago, somebody had to do his business. This had a very unpleasant sense of – well déjà vu was usually an illusion but this definitely was not.
Michelle had moved fast that time. She perched on the back of the toilet base and crouched down. I sat on the seat; thus only a pair of male feet was visible. Now Judy and I just froze. This would leave a pair of female feet to see too, plus there were the panties on the floor. Dr. Watson, what do you make of this?
I was sure that whoever had come in had no authority over us. However, there was a chance it was some asshole who would decide to say something. Or maybe he’d have to use a stall. There would be a rustle as a newspaper was unfolded. I hoped, in that case, it would be the New York Post and not the Times.
But whoever it was washed up and out in under two minutes. Judy starting giggling. One of the advantages of being with such an even-tempered woman was that she would forgive most of my lapses in judgment. I had admitted to her that I had gotten surprised in this room once before.
She said, “Watch this.” She bent over the seat and lifted her skirt, presenting her round little bottom to me. “Go ahead, take me.”
I looked down at myself and said, “In all the excitement, I seem to have lost, ah…”
“I can fix it, you know that.” She gripped the stainless steel plumbing behind the seat to steady herself. “Rub against me again.”
We fluffed as long as needed, which wasn’t long at all. When I was erect again and I went into her the second time, she grunted. Now we weren’t as quiet as before although we still had to be more restrained than we would have been in a house. But we both were pleased anyway; she timed herself to push her hips back to meet my forward thrusts. At one point, she lifted her feet up and tried to hook her ankles around my calves. We couldn’t quite manage that so she put her feet back on the floor.
During all this, I forgot about that damned outside door and I let myself say things like, “You fuck great, you little minx.” What the deal was with minxes I didn’t know then.
“You fuck great too.”
“But you, baby, where’d you learn this?”
“I just know, Paul, it’s just instinct to do this.”
When I came I held her hips and kept her in the position I wanted. After that, I kept banging at her and she reached her own climax. It was impossible to miss. She pushed me back so hard that I collided with the stall door. Then she moved around on me as needed while the noises she said instead of words made me laugh.
When we were spent, I sagged back against the door. She moved forward enough to uncouple us. She dropped to her knees; then she kept going, slumping off the right and half lying on the floor. She looked up at me; I think her expression meant, well, that’s what happens sometimes.
She lifted a hand and I helped her get up. I was about to adjust my pants when she grabbed me and pushed me against the door again. I heard her say things in my ear like, “You fucked me to a fare-thee-well.” I’d had never heard it put that way before. I also heard her using the word “love” and saying my name. She had said she loved me before, starting with our first time together, but I certainly liked to hear it again.
Both of us would have chosen now to sit around listening to music and having a few drinks. I could imagine being in a bed and staying all night with her. But there was no sofa or bed in the stall. That was the downside of improvised encounters like this; there was no buffer against everyday life. When we had our clothes in order, I opened the stall door and blinked at the fluorescent lights; these we the first things to break my mood. She held my hand, which helped a bit, but it was disconcerting to have to walk through the empty hallway and then along the cold driveway outside.
We went into the Finley Hall basement cafe which was still open. I felt a bit better in there and I lounged on one of the benches against the wall. My mind was wandering, I suppose, as I had no specific thoughts.
Judy got my attention, “Hey, sit a little closer, would you?’
I leaned on the table; she was sitting on a chair catty-corner to me. We both had hot chocolates. She put her hand on mine. I imagined an older person – a faculty member or an administrator – looking at us and thinking that we were a cute young couple. They would see Judy and imagine her as a nice, studious and chaste girl, unlike the wild women appearing on campuses in the last decade. There was no clue that a short time ago she was bumping and grinding around a restroom stall with this boyfriend of hers. I wouldn’t have believed it either if I hadn’t been in the middle of it.
She said, “I have to get my tights on before I go out there again.”
“Your legs get cold?”
“Oh yeah, definitely.”
Then she had her second big surprise of the evening for me.
She said, “I know what we can do, I mean where we can go in the future.”
This was definitely a woman with some, maybe a lot, of initiative about sex. I was struck by her calm, matter of fact approach. “I know,” she had said. It reminded me of her comment in the stall, “Paul, I just know.”
I let her offer her plan. She said, “I can borrow Michelle’s car and we can use that.”
“Do you even have a driver’s license?”
“Sure, for a couple of years now. My dad has a car he keeps in a garage, and I use that maybe once a month.”
“So why not borrow that?”
“I just don’t think that’s a good idea. Besides, I couldn’t get it as often as we’ll need it.”
How often was that? I wondered. I said, “Have you ever borrowed Michelle’s car?”
“No, but she would do it for me.”
“And where will you say you’re going with it?”
“I’m not sure yet. Maybe it doesn’t matter.”
“All right, give it a try.”
I thought about the green Dodge Coronet. That car had been the scene of vivid moments with some of Michelle’s role play characters. It was pretty spacious inside; I pitied people trying to have love lives inside Volkswagen Beetles. Yet cars, although more comfortable than restroom stalls, were not ideal. I also knew that from the times with another girl, Andie, in her big Oldsmobile. For one thing, it wasn’t practical to spend the entire night in a car. I certainly wouldn’t feel safe sleeping in an automobile parked on a New York street.
Judy said, “I know it’s getting late but I’d still like to have dinner with you.”
“Of course, sure – Judy I need to…” I was trying not to sound too eager but I decided to just say it. “I mean I want to be with you, I don’t want to go home now.”
That imagined faculty member: I could see him or her looking at Judy’s smile and thinking, “What is that sweet girl talking to him about?” Well, mostly she had been talking about borrowing her friend’s car and having sex with him in it.
She said, “You obviously know where to park when we do get the car.”
I did, but I had to ask, “What makes you think I know that?”
“Because you’ve been out there with Andie and Michelle.”
I had to shake my head, but it was with a sense of amazed admiration, “Judy, you are the coolest girl in the whole school.”
[The locations in this story were real and are described as they were in 1975.]
