Fuschia

This is the very first water color painting that I ever did, while the rest of my high school class was painting apples. I can still see my teacher looking at it with his hand on his beard and saying "Sue, you've outdone yourself. But the task was to use the water color as a wash not as you have. So you will have to do another painting." So I painted lilacs.

What this technique is called is dry brush because the colors are applied and then the next is applied after the first dries. I love this technique because it appeals to the obsessive side of me. The wash is nice too, but far more unpredictable.

While others needed a model to go by, this came straight from my head and is titled Fuschia.

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Art Work - Deer, 1974

This was the first piece that I ever did in high school art. I just went overboard as far as obsessiveness on it, but I had lots of fun doing it. It was achieved by using a special paper that was made to be painted with an India ink wash and then the ink scratched away, leaving a drawing. I think my art teacher’s only comment was that the picture looked a bit flat. Quite a thing to remember given that it was said more than 35 years ago. But he was right.

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I loved that we had art class in high school and I think that all schools should. We were exposed to many media, like clay that was fired in ovens, crea stone (that was poured into square casts then carved), linoleum cuts, plaster casting from clay, wax statues, water colors, oil paints and more. We were taught to draw from life and ours was a good teacher.

My Mom has two of my sculptures, a clay one of a monk praying and a carved crea stone one of a musk ox. I have a water color too of lilacs. This is one of the few drawings I have from that time, and I will always treasure it.

Freshman Year - Part 6, Hard Life Lesson

The other thing that puzzled me is that there was no more affection from Troy. That one kiss was all there was. But, I still really liked hanging out with him and his friends, Colleen and Timothy. We were a little band of friends that went everywhere together. I found Troy intellectually interesting too. We would discuss politics and he had this uncanny ability to predict current political events. His wisdom was unfathomable. He was a junior and a political science major, but that did not explain all of it. He used to just wink at me after making a very inscrutable prediction. It used to drive me nuts. How could he have known what he did?

So this went on for some time. One day, when Troy and I were at lunch I was pressuring him for an explanation and he said, “You know Sue. I have told you that I was a Government Student like the EO kids. But that was not entirely true. I am not exactly like the EO kids. I am in a special program. I have been selected for a fast track preparation and so have access to some inside government information. That is how I know what is going on in the news.”

“Oh. I was wondering about that. Why were you selected?”

“Intelligence and superior skills.” He said without modesty.

“Fast track to what?”

“That is yet to be determined based on what I can achieve.”

“Why is all of this a secret?”

“Because I had to get clearance to obtain the information I have access to and so we don’t want it to be common knowledge that I have it.”

“Oh. Well I won’t tell anybody. Does Colleen know?”

“Yes, both she and Timothy do.”

“Oh, I see. So you told everybody first, just not me!” I said trying my best to sound angry.

He laughed it off.

I don’t’ remember precisely how it started, but one day, Troy mentioned that there were tensions between the People’s Republic of China and the United States of America that might lead to nuclear war. I didn’t know what to think. I had trusted everything that Troy had said up until then, so why not believe him now? Why did it have to be nuclear war? That was my one worst nightmare. Immediately I began to have the mushroom cloud dreams again along with the muscle cramps in my legs. I couldn’t sleep and my grades fell off. I was getting stomach cramps. Whether I believed him or not, it was effecting me physically. I took an incomplete in jazz dance and dropped out of that class. I went to the infirmary and told them my symptoms. When they asked what I was worried about, I told them it was finals. Thank god they believed me. I was diagnosed as starting an ulcer and given valium in 5 milligram tablets and told to see the campus shrink.

On my way back to my dorm from the infirmary, a tall black man stopped me and said, “Hey, I hear you have something to sell.”

“I do?”

“Yeah. You do. I’ll give $5 per pill.”

“Uh, no thanks.”

“Maybe some other time then.”

He just walked away. Thank goodness. Now that is what I call communication.

When I got back to my dorm the gals across the hall were playing Time in a Bottle by Jim Croce. There never seems to be enough time. Timely indeed.

Later that week, Troy told me that nuclear war was imminent and we should wait for the call to evacuate to Florida with him by military helicopter. I was petrified. I don’t know how I held it together through my finals, seeing the campus shrink and finally boarding the bus to go home.

But I decided to tell my friend Toby everything and cry on that muscular gymnast shoulder of his. Toby held me tight as I cried and it felt so good. He told me that he would be there for me, but that Troy was crazy as a loon and why did I believe all of his crap? I wanted so badly to believe Toby, but my mind was looking for an adult that I trusted to tell me that Troy was crazy, not a student. Nuclear war was my particular Achilles heel. Toby told me that it was all too weird for him and that once I was through this crisis, he didn’t think he could be my friend anymore. I told him that I understood and respected his decision.

After finals, I took a valium on the bus, closed my eyes and next thing I knew I was home.

Once I got home, I told my mom about Troy and she just freaked out.

“Susie were you doing drugs? Did he rape you? He could have taken you to Florida and cut you!” On and on and on… She was out of control. So she called my dad to come over and sort things out.

So, my far more reasonable dad came over. Together they helped me come to my senses. Troy was paranoid schizophrenic with delusions. He was not a government student. He did not have inside government information. He was incredibly intelligent and that was how he is able to manipulate unsuspecting students. I really just needed someone to tell me that he was a crazy person and they did it for me. I’m not sure they ever believed that drugs were not involved or that we never had sex. Now, I’m kind of thinking that Troy was gay.

So the question became how to dump him? Mom said that I should just write him a letter. So I set about doing that. It was difficult because it had to explain why I would choose to stay in NY and die in a nuclear war rather than go with him to safety. Plus, I had to promise to keep his secret. Somehow I covered all of those bases and mailed the letter. Then I felt compelled to call Colleen and see if she had figured out that all of this was bull. Mom was hesitant, but let me.

So I called Colleen and she was really hesitant on the phone, but eventually it became clear that she had also made the same conclusion that I had. Then she told me that Timothy had too and he was going to call me. She was taking the next semester off to regroup. Timothy was going to transfer to another school.

Sure enough, Timothy’s call came later that day. He wanted to meet me at his house. My mom drove me there. He was waiting for me out on his driveway and I got out of the car to talk to him. He said some words, I don’t remember what, and then he hugged me and kissed me. I sure didn’t see that coming. Mom said that she did though. I never looked at him in a sexual way. Mom thought he was cute. Ew.

Mom and Dad made me promise to go a shrink that Dad knew that dealt with people like Troy all the time or they would make me transfer to the local community college and live at home (horror of horrors!!!). So I went. It was terrible. The shrink was way more interested in talking about Troy than me and was insulting. He told me that he felt that I was probably smart enough to be a scientist. Probably smart enough? How insulting! Anyway, I went and Mom and Dad agreed to send me back to school after the Christmas break.

Mom contacted the Dean of Students to report the problem with Troy. Apparently, Troy had received letters from Colleen, Timothy and me and freaked out and was found wandering aimlessly around campus not knowing his own name or where his dorm was. He was sent to a mental hospital near his home in New York City. That was the last I ever heard from him, though I worried continuously for years that he would find me and pop back into my life.

Mom decided that I needed to see what normal campus life was like. So she planned a trip for me to visit my sister Evie at Notre Dame University since her school started up before mine...

Freshman Year - Part 5, Jazz Dance

After Troy left, I turned on the lights. Janice came through the door crying and sobbing. Somehow she managed to sputter that her boyfriend that was captain of the Lacrosse team had dumped her. She came into my arms and I consoled her.

She said, “I’ll never meet someone that nice again!” More shaking sobs followed that statement.

I thought about how he slept with her and then cast her aside like garbage and how very mean that was and said, “I am sure you will Janice. You will meet lots of guys much nicer than him.”

She looked up at me with those blue eyes filled with hope and curled lashes and said, “You think so, really?”

“Yes.” I answered definitively. “I know so.” After some time she calmed down and went to sleep.

My Jazz Dance class began midway through the semester. I had no idea what to wear, so I came to it in shorts and my red canvas sneakers. I was a bit flummoxed to see the rest of the class in leotards and dance slippers. Egad, I thought, I am a bit out of place. But the course description said nothing about ballet, so, maybe not. Then the class started and the full first hour was a ballet warm up, half hour on the floor and half hour on the bar. I felt a bit like daffy duck in my sneakers; the total klutz in the brood of graceful swans. Plus, there was some overlap with ice skating and the muscles for ballet and ice skating are opposed and that meant my muscles hurt like a son of a bitch. But, I could go up on point in my canvas sneakers!

The second hour of the class was the jazz part. Here I learned the famous ‘jazz hands’. Always useful! But seriously folks, I learned to dance and lost some of my white man’s disease. The hustle was in at that time and we learned the basics of that which came in handy right away. Finally I had some moves and could feel comfortable on the dance floor.

There was another dance on campus and this time and I was prepared. Troy showed up with a towel hanging from his left jeans pocket. It looked really cool that way. We danced the hustle together and he was impressed with my new moves. He put a new twist on it by moving in so that our legs were entwined at the knee. Then he moved closer so that his leg was in-between mine and mine in between his. It was like we were humping each other’s legs. This was the closest I had been to him since we had kissed.

He had been kind of distant and I figured that he just didn’t want Colleen to be jealous. Around we went to the music, and then we broke apart, still dancing. Then he faced Colleen and she danced with him. Similar to the way I did, but she had that great hip grinding motion that I could never get due to my white man’s disease. Timothy watched. Troy wiped his face with the towel from his pants pocket when we finished dancing. Then we all bundled up to go back out into the cold and snow.

Colleen knew two of the EO students because they were from Sullivan County. One of them was tall, Dwayne, and one of them was shorter, Eddie, but really handsome and his skin was very light for an African American. His hair was loose and curly and his eyes were almost bluish-hazel. He was very pretty. Supposedly his high school sweetheart was a blond dish that did not go to college. They used to run track together and were inseparable. Talk was that they were engaged. We used to hang with them and Troy sometimes.

That was how I got involved with the only theft I have ever committed in my entire life. Everyone was drunk, except for me, and we were wandering around Cayuga up to no good. Troy was fixated on lawn balls. You know those big mirrored balls that folks put out as decoration on their lawns? I personally think they are ugly, but different strokes, you know. So, he took one and off we all ran. He put it in his room. I felt so guilty over that damn thing every time I saw it in his room.

But, other kids were stealing stuff from all over town. Kids in my dorm had stolen flashing yellow traffic warning lights and were trying to figure out how to get them to stop flashing without breaking them. Other kids stole stop signs, street signs, you name it, and kids stole it. I just couldn’t understand it. Who raised these kids?

Freshman Year - Part 4, Troy

Cayuga used to hire small name local bands to come to campus and give concerts. These were considered really big events by students and well attended. One of these was during a time I was really looking for a boyfriend (when wasn’t I?). I had no party clothes to speak of, just my everyday jeans and shirt. So that was what I put on for the concert. I didn’t feel special at all or that I would stand out in any way. I didn’t own any make up; so I wore none. Heck, I didn’t even have curly lashes like Janice. I did not own a blow drier for my shoulder length hair. What chance did I have to meet anybody? So, there I stood bathed in the deafening “music”, scanning the crowd for “men”. They were really far and few between at Cayuga. As I was standing there, someone came up behind me and asked me to dance. I turned and it was this really cute black guy. So I said, “Sure.”

I had not noticed him before on campus. But he was around five foot eight, with an afro and very attractive. He really knew how to dance. We were doing the bump and I was just trying to keep up with him, as my dancing skills are not that great (can you say major white man’s disease?). He must have noticed because we only danced one and then he turned to his other two friends, a girl and a boy, standing there waiting and motioned the girl to join him in the dance. Man, she could move for a white girl.

She had short black hair, but was plain and stocky. The young man had curly dirty blond hair and blue eyes and was okay looking. He was tall, but his face looked kind of boyish for my tastes. We all went down stairs together in the student union for refreshments and introduced ourselves.

The young black man said, “Hi. My name is Troy. These are my friends Colleen and Timothy.”

I replied, “Hi. I am Sue.” We got to talking and it turned out that Colleen was from Sullivan County in the Catskills and Timothy was from Long Island. Troy was from Spanish Harlem, born of Puerto Rican and African American parents. Just like that I had found a small click of friends to be with. Troy was magnetic and very bright and handsome and I hoped to date him. Certainly, Colleen was no threat to me there. Besides, Colleen just seemed to have a heart of gold. I really like that in a friend. She couldn’t possibly think that Troy was going to date her. He did seem to be focusing in on me.

At one point during our chit chats it came up that he was a government sponsored student. I said, “Oh, you mean like the Equal Opportunity Students here at Cayuga?”, and he indicated that yes, that was indeed the case. There were a whole bunch of EO students on campus. As a matter of fact, there was an entire floor of one of the dorms devoted to EO students.

Late one night, Troy walked me back to my dorm room. When we got there we were alone. He stepped in ahead of me and neither of us turned on the lights. He put his hands on my shoulders and drew me closer to him. Our mouths met and he kissed me. His tongue came out and rubbed quickly back and forth over my lips, but when I opened my mouth, he withdrew and smiled. Then he turned and left without a word. I was totally confused. He was my boyfriend, just really prudish? I just didn’t know what to think. But in general I was pleased, because he was really hot and he was mine.

Freshman Year - Part 3, The Gymnast

A usual day would be that I would come back from classes to my dorm room and find Hannah sitting on her bed, bored and Janice getting ready to go out on a date.

“So, Hannah, what’s the plan tonight?” I asked.

“I have to draw the numbers one through ten in different designs.”

Janice piped up, “I’m going out with the captain of the Lacrosse team! I met him at” pause… “You know the mud thing. But he’s really nice.”

“I was going to ask you next Janice. That’s really great news!”

She was so excited you could stick a pin in her and she would explode. Of course I was loaded with assignments; a book to read, calculus to do, chemistry problems to work out, French to study. I was jealous of my roomies’ easy assignments.

The days went on pretty much like this and we three went to dinner together, but never really clicked as friends. As weekends rolled by, Janice would invariably go out with the Lacrosse team captain and Hannah and I would come back to the room. Sometimes Janice and I would study Calculus together. One weekend in particular, I came back to the room and opened the door and it was pitch dark inside. Janice sprang up and whispered to me, “Sue, look, I need the room tonight. Uh, I’m here with my boyfriend and we’re uh, look, could you stay with the gals across the hall? One of them went to visit her parents so they have a bed. Okay?” Then she began closing the door.

So I backed away kind of embarrassed for her. I wasn’t really tired and I could hear a party going on the adjacent coed wing so I dropped my books in the room where I was going to be staying the night, where the girls waved hi and were listening to Tiny Dancer. Then I headed over there. Hannah was at the party too and apparently had friends who had offered to take her in. It was the typical college bash. A keg was open and a bunch of drunken kids were running up and down the hall making noise. How childish, I thought. One young man in particular was being an asshole and really needed sobering up. He was blond, fit and handsome. His jeans were torn very near his crotch. He was terrorizing a girl by holding her down and making her drink beer while she protested and the beer spilled all over her. I took some ice from the garbage can holding the keg and put it into the rip near his crotch. The look on his face was priceless. I had about two seconds to run for it; then he was after me. I took off and made it all the way down the hallway before he tackled me on the stairs. So he was on top of me holding me down, breathing hard and suddenly not so sure what he was going to do with me.

I said, “You probably shouldn’t wear pants like that to a party.” Then I smiled.

He smiled and said, “I guess not. Boy you really got me.” The he let me up. We sat there side-by-side and introduced ourselves. His name was Toby. “I hope I didn’t hurt you with that tackle.”

“Not a bit.”

“So tell me, how do you stay in such great shape? I didn’t think I would even be able to catch you.”

“Oh, track, swimming, gymnastics…”

“I do gymnastics too!”

We continued to flirt and chat. I got excited because he was really cute and this seemed promising. Eventually, one of his buddies came by and he had to go and so I left. But the next day, I asked around about him and it turned out that he had an out of town girlfriend that he saw on some weekends and that they were just about engaged. That crossed him off of my list as a potential boyfriend, because my ethics don’t allow for me to be the other woman. I will flirt and be friends, but that is about it. But, I did continue to hang out with him since I hoped that he had cute friends and he was really fun to be with. He really seemed to like being with me too.

One day when we were together, he asked me to go with him into his room and so I did. We sat on his bed. He had a photo of his girlfriend there and I asked him who she was and he said quite plainly that she was his girlfriend but he only saw her on weekends. Then he took my hand in his and said that he wanted me to feel something really strange. I nodded. He rubbed my hand, massaged it thoroughly, opened it and blew on it and then asked me how it felt while looking imploringly into my eyes. I told him it felt great. I just didn’t know what he expected. Did he mean for me to lean into a kiss? That was so not going to happen. Then he asked if I would like to go for a walk downtown with him. I said, “Sure.”

Downtown was not far from Campus, only a couple of blocks. It didn’t take too long to get there. He went into the pharmacy and walked to the back to talk to the pharmacist. I stood right next to him. The pharmacist said, “Yes sir, how may I help you?”

Toby said, “I would like a pack of condoms.”

I couldn’t help it I blushed purple. Keep in mind, this was 1974 and I was virgin. I swiveled and walked down the nearest aisle. In spite of this embarrassment, Toby and I remained great friends.

Freshman Year - Part 2, Ice Skating

Intermediate Figure Skating was a blast. First of all, the whole Cayuga Ice Hockey team was in our class. They were there to learn how to skate faster and boy were they insulted. What could these prissy figure skaters teach real men hockey skaters about skating fast anyhow? Our teacher was a smallish woman that I really liked. To show them that they needed the class, we held races. We had to skate half the length of the rink and back. We were paired in twos and raced head-to-head. I turned out to be the fastest and in my final heat, I beat the captain of the hockey team. He was so mad that this little nothing of a girl could beat him. He insisted that he could do better with his stick. So I raced him with his stick, and still beat him. His friends joked that the only way he could have beat me was to trip me with the stick. But, at least he was convinced that he could learn something.

The other reason I liked it was it was so easy. I never had to learn anything I didn’t already know. We practiced three turns and tiny waltz jumps; stuff like that that I can do in my sleep. I got an A.

For me, ice skating always reminds me of my Dad. Back when mom and dad were married, we all used to go ice skating every winter weekend. After they divorced, dad used to take us kids skating on the weekends. Whenever I skate I think of him and his ice skating sweaters. He used to wear blue ones to match his eyes. I even had a dream about it.

I dreamt that my whole family was in a war and we were captured and being questioned. Our captors had pulled dad aside and were going to shoot him and he said, “One minute.” He stripped off his skating sweater and tossed it to me. “Susie. With this sweater you can save the whole family.” So I held it up to my face and cried, “How daddy?” And that was when I woke up crying into my blankets.

It is a stupid dream.

But if you think I skated fast, don’t. He skated really fast. I would be skating along at my usual pace and then dad would come swooping along and put his arm around me and we would begin to fly at his pace. He could cut through the traffic at a rink like no ones’ business. With him, my pathetic waltz jump would turn into something magnificent, so long as he held me on the landing (or surely I would land on my ass).

I had one trick that was truly mine. I could do a shoot the duck. Here is a photo of me and my dad performing one. Dad was 70 in this photo which was taken in 1995. I could also do this trick by myself. If I had a partner now, I would like to try this trick again.

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Freshman at Cayuga - Part 1

There was a special Greyhound bus from the town next to ours on Long Island going to Cayuga College and mom dropped me off in the parking lot of the mall. She gave me a hug and off I went with my green duffle bag in the belly of the bus.

Free at last and out of the nest. I enjoyed the scenic ride from Long Island to Upstate New York. First via the Long Island Expressway to the Cross Island Expressway, to the Throgs Neck Bridge,

up Route 95 to Route 287 and over the Tappan Zee Bridge,

through the Catskill Mountains, and into the Finger Lakes region of New York State to Cayuga College. The Finger Lakes region was home to dairy cows and apple orchards; beautiful rolling country it was. It was a ride I would become very familiar with over the years to come.

The bus stopped right on Campus and dropped me at my dorm. My bag was off loaded and I carried it to the door. There I was met by a student who I gave my name to and got my room assignment. I had planned to be in an all girls wing this semester. I could have gone coed, but wasn’t up to seeing boys in the bathroom first thing in the morning yet. I had also heard that it was a loud non-stop party in those parts of the dorm and I was a lame ass nerd who treasured her sleep. So, all girls it was. I was tripled. The door was open and I was the last one into the room. There was one bed on the right, and that was taken and a bunk bed on the left, and the bottom one was taken. I took the top bunk. The girl who had the bed on the right was very pretty, or at least she thought and acted like she was and her name was Janice, from Fayetteville near Syracuse. I remember she used to curl her lashes every morning and I had never seen anyone use a lash curler before. The girl who slept on the bunk beneath mine was tall, reedy thin and very blond and her name was Hannah. She was from Riverhead, Long Island. Janice was an education major and Hannah was an art major. Janice had also taken the entire closet on the right. Hannah and I had to share the one on the left. That was okay with me since I didn’t own too many things. It took me no time at all to unpack and the final touch, to hang my Lord of the Rings poster over my bed.

Suddenly, there was all kinds of noise in the hallway as a rowdy group of non-freshmen boys rushed by. Some of them barged into our room. They grabbed up Janice and carried her out. Hannah and I just looked at each other. We looked out the window and could see the courtyard was all muddy and the upperclassmen were throwing the freshman girls into the mud. Everyone was laughing and having a grand old time. Some time later, Janice returned to the room all muddy complaining that she would never get the mud out of her white cotton blouse. But I could see the glint in her eyes. She had met somebody. One of the boys had caught her eye. She kept complaining about how rough they were with her. But, she protested a bit too much, if you know what I mean.

We all decided to go to the cafeteria for dinner together. But, we never really did get along well as friends during the time we lived together in the dorm.

I worked out my schedule. I exempted freshman biology (botany and zoology) by getting a 4 in AP bio so took cell biology at 8 am (yawn). I showed up to the first class, the professor opened the text and started reading. I never attended class again but got a B+ in the course. I had to take freshman English because I only got a 3 in AP English. I chose to take an essay exam to attempt to get an exemption from that. The question was to write an essay about someone you admire. I wrote about my mother and how I admire her because she does what she says she will. Needless to say, I exempted with ease and the professor put his arm on my shoulder and called me a gem. So I took English in from the Canterbury tales to Shakespearian times, which I just love. I also had to take Calculus A and freshman Chemistry. I also took French. Three credits of physical education were required at Cayuga, so I took intermediate ice skating for half the semester, since I have ice skated since I could walk, and jazz dance for the other half. Laboratories were required with cell bio and chemistry and those were 3 hours each on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. My schedule was loaded with academic stuff.

Also, I had been accepted as part of a work-study program, since I didn’t have any money to pay for room and board and had taken out New York State Higher Education personal loans to pay for these. So to earn money the school had found me a job working for the Cayuga’s chemistry department. I reported to a Mr. Dayly, who was very nice and had strawberry blond hair which he wore slicked back. He looked very Irish. He explained that I could unpack chemistry supplies, set up experiments for lab classes, and stack the shelves with glassware and chemicals and that sort of thing. Later on, he showed me how to make up unknowns, which made me very popular in class. (To test the students’ ability to identify chemicals, unknowns would be presented to them and they would be asked to determine what they were. I knew the answers since I had made them.) All this work really prepared me for the lab work place, though at the time, I didn’t realize it. I was pretty much busy from 8 am to 5 pm.

Most important though, was that the school had a well known synchronized swim team that I wanted to try out for. That would be my dream come true to swim with them competitively. The indoor pool at Cayuga was six lanes wide and 50 meters long and had underwater viewing and music capabilities. It was perfect for synchronized swimming. In our old high school pool we had to count to stay with our music. The day of the tryouts they had the underwater music on! I was so excited! They let us warm up and there were about 30 girls there for the tryout. What a mob scene. The coaches wanted us to scull to the center, perform a ballet leg, go to a bent leg and perform a bent leg dolphin coming back to the surface. They then wanted us to move to a forward position and perform a catalarc, which is a move I was familiar with but rarely practiced. A catalarc is when you swim forward, prone and dip the top half of your body perpendicular to the surface of the water bending at the waist, the lift a leg out of the water and raise the other one while twisting 90˚ and bringing both legs together only as you enter the water. Then your entire body drops straight into the water and the finish is coming up normally with a big smile. Show off that I was, I performed the scull out perfectly, did the ballet leg as high as possible, did a perfect bent leg dolphin, and then from that position, I sculled in place and let my feet drop and the power sculled them up behind me, while keeping my body straight, which is very difficult to do. Try it sometime and you will see. Then I had my prone position from which took a stroke or two and then I luckily nailed the catalarc.

These women are performing ballet legs.

This woman is begining a dolphin. She will continue to pull her body in a circle under water, keeping her legs straight, arching her back and using only her arms.

It was up to the coaches now. I had done the best I could and I felt great about my tryout. Sometime later the results were in and I ran down to the pool to see if I had made the team. I MADE THE TEAM. I was one of two girls out of the entire 30 that made the team. What an honor! I ran down to talk to the coaches. They told me that work outs were daily from 3-5 pm. I was stunned. I had assumed that workouts would be in the evening. They said that no, those times were taken by the competitive swim teams and open swims for student and the public. I told them that I had science labs and had to work for the chemistry department during the workout times. They just shook their heads. I felt it all slipping away. My dreams. I just let it go. Guess I had to focus on work. What a bummer.

The Gospel of Luke - Part 3

The final time I was with Luke in my room was in late summer. He was on my bed with his pants off and his erection was pointing at the ceiling. It was daytime. His erection was long enough that it reached his bellybutton. I remember thinking that sticking up like that, surrounded by his soft brown pubic hair, it looked like a throne waiting for the princess to sit upon. But sex with him was out of the question, because I didn’t love him. I wanted my first sexual encounter to be with someone I loved. Nonetheless, I wanted to do something memorable to him. I had heard that when he was with Tammy she had blown him and gagged on his penis because it was so big. I felt under pressure to compete and was leaving for college soon.

I didn’t know a thing about how to give a blow job. I did now that the penis had to go into your mouth, but that was it. So, as Luke lay back on the bed, I kissed his nipples and then worked my way down his stomach to his navel. There was a bit of moaning and toe curling. Good. Then, I put my mouth on the side of his penis. He sat up right away looking alarmed and I stopped. “What are you doing? Do you know how many germs are in your mouth?” He excused himself so that he could go home a shower right away.

I guess I was wrong about Tammy.

Sometime after that, Luke invited me to come with him to his new church. He explained that he had never in all his days experienced anything like it and would really like to know what I thought about it. What was unusual about it was that people were speaking in tongues and it seemed really real to him. My thoughts, which I did not share, were something along the lines of what the fuck bullshit is this? But I went with him anyhow. Leastways it would be entertaining.

Boy was it. The church was small, but ordinary looking. It was an all white congregation and the service began normally. Then we all joined hands, ugh, I hate that, and it got freaky. People here and there were speaking in tongues. It is really weird if you have never seen it. It sounded like lots of gobbledy gook to me. But then, I got the biggest surprise as Luke began speaking in tongues. I did a quick double take. Yup. Luke was speaking in tongues. I was tempted to do a quick, gee, look at the time and skip out of there but I had no transportation home. So I waited patiently until the service was over. The Luke looked at me and asked what I thought. I did my best to hide my feeling that he had taken leave of his senses and I hope that I succeeded in sparing his feelings. Luke was a really gentle soul and I owed him a lot for teaching me the art of love and being my companion. Who knew, I might even catch up with him over the summer.

The Gospel of Luke - Part 2

I was also a real jock at school. Well, as much as one can be at 5 feet 3 inches and 95 pounds. I was captain of the synchronized swimming team (please don’t laugh), on the gymnastics team, ran track, and played intramural volleyball. I was invited by the coaches to play soccer and field hockey, but my mom wouldn’t give me permission because I had braces on my teeth and she didn’t want to ruin her investment.

I took advanced placement biology and English and got good grades in everything but French. I won a Regents Scholarship that would pay for my tuition if I attended college in New York State. That was important because there would be 4 of us in college at the same time, me, my sister, my brother and my mom, who was going for her doctorate in English Literature at Stony Brook. Her only income was as a high school English teacher. I wanted to major in art, and showed great talent and promise throughout my education and especially in senior year, but mom said that she would not pay for me to study anything but science. My brother, Verne had already been at a state school at Cornell studying plant biology for two years and my twin sister Evie was accepted at Notre Dame to study chemical engineering.

I applied to three schools and Cayuga was the only one that I was accepted at. I applied to Nassau Community College, but they were overwhelmed with applications and had a lottery and guess who didn’t win. I also applied to Binghamton, but was not accepted there either. So, Cayuga it was where I was planning to major in biology.

Luke and I continued to fool around with our pants on (dry humping – pathetic I know) until late one summer night we were out laying down on the lawn in my pitch dark backyard. We could hear the cicadas in the sycamore trees above us whirring loudly. We had progressed to the point where he was putting his hand into my pants for the first time, which I really liked because he had these big long fingers that were really strong and dexterous from playing all that organ music. Let’s just say that he was really good at manual masturbation. I was also putting my hand into his pants. Actually he just pulled his erection out of his pants for the first time and it was huge. He showed me how to stroke it and I did my level best. As I did it, his breathing got faster, his head rolled back and his mouth slacked open. His legs began to flex uncontrollably. I became a little frightened. What was happening to him? This couldn’t be good. So I stopped and rolled over away from him. He said, “Why did you stop?” I only whimpered in response. “Did you get bored?” He said angrily in a mocking tone as if it had happened before.

“No, I was scared of what was happening.” I replied meekly.

“Oh, no Susie. There is nothing to be scared of. I was enjoying it. Everything is going to be okay.” He said sympathetically. He cuddled me closely and I felt comforted and I understood that that is how men react when they are turned on and it is a good thing. So I turned back to him and continued stroking. He had lost some of his erection, but it came back quickly. Not that much later, I watched in awe as he came for the first time with me and his semen spurted onto his mostly hairless stomach and chest. Then he lay back quietly, sated. He had his thoughts and I had mine.

I was jealous that he had such an obvious marker of his orgasm while I did not. I wasn’t even sure if I had had an orgasm yet. What he did felt good, sure. But an orgasm, who could tell? I certainly couldn’t. This is what I thought as I lay beside him in the green summer grass; he being sated and I who knew not.

At some point during the week, my mom told me that Luke had another girl friend at her high school. She was a pretty Jewish girl named Valerie and Luke walked around the school with his arm around her. I even knew the girl. My response was, “So what?” I was pretty sure that Valerie wouldn’t let Luke get too far with her sexually since she was Jewish anyhow. Besides, I would rather have been dating Luke than no one at all.

The Gospel of Luke - Part 1

Luke used to sing madrigals in the choir at school and play the organ at his church. No kidding. I think we made every organ joke on the planet and he suffered them all with a straight face. He had been accepted to a religious college that specialized in these and I think they had one of the biggest organs in at a college in Northeast America. (I couldn’t help but giggle.) I think he wanted to teach music.

His college's organ

A group of madrigal singers

The next time we were in my room alone together and I was cold. I had inherited this room from my brother Verne, when he went off to college two years earlier. We sat on the bed and Luke kissed me. I told him that my feet were cold and he took off my shoes and began rubbing my feet. All I could think was that I hope they didn’t smell too bad. Luke was such a gentleman really. He was tender and slow with me. He showed me how to kiss and then moved on to kissing my ears, which I loved, my neck, and then he opened my shirt and undid my bra and kissed my breasts and that was wonderful. He put his hand on my jean clad knee and stroked it up towards my crotch and I couldn’t help but rise up a bit to meet the pressure, it felt so good. Then he stopped and said that his erogenous zones were the same and it was my turn to try on him. So I kissed his mouth, ear, and neck, pulled up his polo shirt and kissed his nipple, then I looked down at his jeans and I could see the head of his erect penis emerging from the waist band of his jeans. It looked all cooped up in there, maybe even painful, and I wanted to free it so I unbuttoned the top of his jeans and unzipped the fly. Right there he grabbed my wrist and stopped me and said, “Don’t start anything you can’t finish.”

I didn’t understand quite what he meant. But then suddenly, we heard the front door of the house open and Lance’s voice say, “Are they upstairs?” We didn’t have long to get presentable and we could hear him charging up the stairs and then he burst in the room and said, “Caught ya!” But we were pretty much dressed. Luke’s pants were up and zipped and his polo shirt was hanging un-tucked hiding his erection. My shirt was buttoned but my bra was not hooked and my shoes were off. I was angry as a wet hen. How dare he burst into my room; he didn’t even knock. I was at a loss for words and left just brushing past him and heading for the bathroom. Once there, I fixed my bra. When I came out everyone was in the living room downstairs and Lance said, “Everything back in place?”

First Kiss

I really was a lame ass nerd in high school. I thought I was cool, wearing my worn jeans and picturing myself a hippie, but somewhere deep inside I knew I wasn’t. So when this guy from the other high school in town took an interest in me I was really excited about it. His name was Luke. He was six feet tall with brown hair and eyes with a muscular swimmer’s build. He was very smart and used to hang out with all of us teens in front of the local movie theater. Since my mom was a teacher at his high school, the other one in our town, her current and former students used to hang out at our house also. He was one of those too. So, I saw a lot of him. We used to play chess, and pathetic chess player that I am, he used to beat the crap out of me regularly. But, I was accustomed to that, since I was outclassed by everyone in my family and regularly got slammed. But, he did buy me a book on strategies of playing chess which I read. That was after the time of the great 1972 Boris Spassky vs. Bobby Fisher chess match and I remember babysitting with that match on the television and forcing a little baby to watch it by tying him into this baby seat contraption. He never cried; actually he seemed to glaze over at the black and white pieces on the screen. I pictured that someday he would grow up to be a great chess master and everyone would wonder where he got his skills. Anyway, at that time chess was really big.

Ah, the magic time of someone taking an interest in you; you feel so special. I felt terrified and unworthy. But I glowed anyhow. He was taking an interest in me. Why? I had no idea. Why would this attractive young man be interested in me? Oh well, I just went with it. I was smart and cute, maybe that was enough. Then I thought about all of the jerks in my high school; yeah, they didn’t know what they were missing out on. Assholes! Losers! Come to think of it though, I had driven a couple of potential suitors away. There was the really cute guy in Mathletes that asked me to join up with him in a competition, but I steered him to another cute, smart girl and now they were dating. Then there was the really popular guard on the basketball team that intercepted me on my bike outside the high school on the weekend. God, he was a dreamy hunk. I could never imagine he would be interested in me. He got my front wheel between his legs, held my handlebars and asked me where I was going and could we just talk a while. Of course I was terrified and couldn’t wait to get away. But, maybe I misinterpreted that and he just really wanted to get to know me.

Anyhow, there were a whole bunch of us teens that used to hang out. In our usual crew was my twin Evie, Luke and his friends from his school, the other high school in our district, Tammy and Lance. Lance was what we would call a twink today with curly blond hair and an angelic face and followed Luke around like a puppy. Tammy always seemed older looking to me, like she was in her early twenties, and was beautiful and exotic with long black hair. Rumor had it that she and Luke had already dated. But, I had my doubts because she was Jewish and he was Protestant. Where I grew up on Long Island you were either Jewish or Gentile. Jewish people would socialize with us, but we were not good enough to date. But, it was the Jewish person’s call as to whether to date or not. I learned this the hard way. One day in my English class the handsome classmate at the desk in right front of me turned and was chatting to me about an upcoming dance, when the student at the desk to his left whispered to him, “You know, she’s not Jewish.” Well, that ended that conversation lickity split. He just turned right to his front as if nothing had ever happened. I, of course, was heartbroken. Tammy’s mother was also a teacher at her high school. Our little bunch would routinely go to each other’s houses all of which were within walking distance of each other.

Occasionally our group would get split up and one night Luke offered to walk me home from his house. It was a cool and misting early spring night and as we crossed a barren weedy lot, he held my hand to stop me and began kissing the top of my head. I wasn’t really sure what was going on up there, so I just stood still. Then he took his right hand and lifted my chin up so that I was looking at him and he lowered his mouth to mine. Our lips met and it began as an innocent closed kiss at first, but then he opened his mouth and so did I. His tongue entered my mouth and gently explored it. He held me closer. I gave him just a bit of suction and he seemed to like that. He pressed his body against mine and I could feel his erection through his jeans. Then he moved away and asked me if I was okay. I replied that I was and he walked me the rest of the way home his hand around mine. I was really excited because I now had a boyfriend.