cousin, a kindred spirit, and my occasional dance partner whom I didn’t meet until after the great adventures. If I knew him back then, Skip would definitely have been part of the fun. We might even have shared a jail cell.
Ralph “The Navigator” Romaniello spent some long nights strapped into in the right seat of my 1974 Fiat during sports car rallies. Ralph kept us heading in the right direction—most of the time.
Christy Pinheiro is an online buddy and fellow writer. We critique each other’s books. She made some excellent suggestions for this one. Christy said that something I wrote was so funny that she burned her breakfast while laughing. That’s a lot better than puking because of something I wrote.
The beginning of the Baby Boom and the fabulous Hillhouse High School Class of 1964, “the last great class.” The guys: best buddies Howie Shrobe and Marty Kravitt, fellow Foofum Kevin McKeown, fellow Finster Barry Tenin, unindicted co-conspirator Alan Disler, honorary Jew Billy Priestly, world-class wit Harry Whitney, Grand Fenwicker Alan Melnick, dead fish depositor Howie Krosnick, neighbor from across the swamp Ed Cohen, ultra-creative writer Mike Baldinger, favorite phantoms Steve Schmuck and John Quimby. Girl friends (but not girlfriends): Janet Braverman, Phyllis Caplow, Carol Cherkis, Linda Howard, Annie Iwanciwsky, Cynthia Lynes, Marilyn Grant, Patty Miller, Rocky Myers, Illeine Saslafsky, Carrie Setlow, Marilyn Winokur. They made the bad times feel better, even decades later.
Chapter 1
Runaway
They all started out fine, of course, with young women who were beautiful, smart, sexy, funny and good cooks; and—much to my amazement—they somehow perceived me as handsome, smart, sexy, funny and a good cook.
Invariably, the women turned out to be less than perfect.
Two were heavily into drugs. One of them was a drug dealer who was contemplating suicide.
One was a thief. She even stole a concert poster from the wall of my apartment.
One decided she wanted to try being a lesbian for a year. I was scheduled to be her last man. That was a big burden. Would it be my fault if she didn’t come back?
Another thought she could finance college through prostitution and wanted me to be her pimp.
And another wanted me to help her make bombs.
Although the sex, food and conversations were good, there was clearly something missing in the stability department, and I wondered if it was my fault.
Did I make them this way?
Do I attract nutty women, or do I drive women nuts?
These days, I don’t remember which alternative I thought was better.
And I’m not even sure that one is better.
Back then, though, I wanted to find out.
It was time for an experiment.
I abruptly ended the relationship I was in, and decided that for 30 days I would become socially passive. If Sophia Loren was standing naked next to me in the supermarket checkout line, I resolved to not look or speak, unless spoken to first.
I planned to just go through life, minding my own business for a month. I’d keep my mouth shut, and see who’d show up.
The first few weeks were boring but tempting. I never saw naked Sophia at Stop & Shop or Ursula Andress in a wet white bikini at the Post Office, but there were a few hot babes I would have at least spoken to under normal circumstances.
Late one night I was on a bus operated by Public Service Coordinated Transport, somewhere in the middle of New Jersey. The bus stopped at a rural convenience store. I was sleepy and there wasn’t much light, but I saw two people get off the bus, and then an absolutely gorgeous red-haired woman got on, carrying a small suitcase.
The bus was nearly empty. The redhead could have had two seats for herself, or sat behind the driver or next to a jock or a priest, but somehow she decided to sit next to me. I was flattered, curious, horny and hopeful.
Even if I didn’t complete my research project, maybe I’d get lucky.
We immediately started talking and laughing and touching. It was wonderful. We were soul mates. This was the match made in heaven. After ten minutes, I thought we’d known each other for years. I was ready to spend the rest of my life with her.
We had some long kisses in the moonlit bus, and eventually got around to learning each other’s names, biographies and travel plans.
She told me her name was Cheryl, she was 24, born in Hackensack, and had graduated from Montclair State University with a BA in anthropology.
She also told me she had killed her husband, was running away from the Greystone Park State Psychiatric Hospital in Parsippany and would perform oral on me if I gave her enough money to get to Pittsburgh.
How did she know to sit next to me?
Chapter 2
Love can kill
Our Core teacher was Winnifred, an elderly spinster with a name and personality that belonged in the 1600s. She was a prude to the extreme and equally stern. If she was Catholic and not Protestant, she would probably have been a knuckle-whacking nun in a parochial school.
Her sole concession to levity in our classroom was a life-sized, cardboard, stand-up Santa Claus that advertised Coca-Cola.
When Fidel Castro was in the U.S. to visit the United Nations, “Winnie” wore a black armband to protest his presence. Politically, she was slightly to the right of Attila the Hun. Sexually, she had probably never seen a penis except in a picture, and the horror of potential penetration undoubtedly traumatized her.
Much of our class time was spent diagramming sentences and copying what Winnie wrote on the blackboard.
She explained that her words would make a stronger impression on our young minds if we had to write them down than if we merely heard them or read them on a mimeographed handout sheet. The real reason was probably that if we were busy copying from the blackboard, she wouldn’t have to teach.
In one blackboard lecture, Winnie warned us that “any writer who uses writing as a source of income is unworthy of being read.” Better cross Shakespeare, Dickens, Melville, Fitzgerald and Hemingway off our reading list. The list of potentially worthy writers was made smaller still, because Winnie declared that any writer who mentioned sex or love was off-limits to young teenagers. There went Aristophanes, King Solomon, Charlotte Brontë and yours truly.
When
