The Fourth of July in New York Part 2 of 2

The Fourth of July in New York
Part 2 of 2

Here it was a different story, snuggling as much because we dug each other as to keep warm. We found ourselves on the edge of the crowd a few blocks away, hardly a front-row seat, though close enough to where we would see the ball when it dropped. The crowds back then were smaller, "only" about seven hundred thousand people as opposed to the million souls that would brave this scene in the years to come. Security was less tight then also. All those many barricades the city erected years later, especially after 9/11, did not exist then. The twin towers of the World Trade Center were still under construction. What happened a little over thirty years later was unthinkable at the dawn of 1970. We talked about innocence before the JFK assassination. Well, looking back, we were in another sort of innocence then, years before a few terrorist cells could wreak havoc on whole nations like the USA and France.

What remained the same, past, present, and future, was the revelry. People were having a blast, some no doubt intoxicated or close to it. Obviously, they had hit the bars before coming out of there.

Meanwhile, there was nothing much to do for the next few hours except keep our place and try to stay warm as best we could. Body heat was the name of the game, Miles', mine, our dates, and those hundreds of thousands of other bodies packed into a few square blocks, biomass seldom equaled except on New Year's Eve in Times Square. What a relief when the moment finally came, when the ball began its dramatic descent and the crowd screamed the ten-to-one countdown, shouted happy new year, and then smooched with their significant other. It felt great holding and kissing Lea with a passion that had been missing from my life for too long.

"Well, was it worth waiting for?" she said when we decoupled after close to a minute.

"Beyond my expectations," I said, still holding her. I meant it, too. Not only was my physical attraction to her there in spades, but emotionally I was beginning to feel something as well. We seemed to groove together, enjoyed the same movies, laughed at the same things, and shared a political bent.

It concerned me a little because I did not anticipate this going anywhere beyond our stay here.

"You guys ready?" Miles called out. He and Marie had just finished their own little kiss fest. They wanted to go bar hopping (the drinking age in New York was still eighteen). Frankly, by that point, I had had enough of the crowds and said so as we started to move out. Ideally, what I wanted was to share more time with Lea in a warm, cozy hotel room, theirs, or ours, it did not matter. As luck would have it, Lea had the same idea, said she even had champagne back in her room at the Americana. It all sounded perfect to me.

Marie waved her hand and said, "You guys have fun. Do your thing and we'll do ours."

Miles winked and gave me a thumbs-up. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do," he teased." Then he and
Marie walked off arm in arm.

"Well, that was easy enough," I said.

Lea stifled a laugh as if she was part of an inside joke. "Sometimes in life, things do fall into place, right where you want them."

I left it at that and began walking. It felt good to move again, to bring needed circulation back to my near-frozen feet. As we huddled together on the way back, we talked about what the next decade might bring. "Hopefully, we'll pull out of that little Asian country where we had no business being in the first place," she said. I agreed, as did much of the country by that time. Both of us planned to join campus protests against the war. Of course, neither of us could anticipate the carnage that would occur on the campus of Kent State in the coming spring.

The Vietnam War was far from my thoughts by the time I entered her room, went to the window, and checked out the view. "We asked for as high a floor as we could get," she said. "Isn't it magnificent?"

Nodding, I gazed at the scene below from over forty stories above the street, the thousands of lights twinkling from all those buildings in the wee hours of the new decade. Turning from the window, I noticed the bottle of Dom Perignon in an ice bucket on the dresser. "You weren't kidding about the champagne. Did you bring it from home?"

"Actually, I bought it after we left the ice rink. Now, why don't we slip off our coats and stay awhile." I thought, does it get any better than this, along with this babe from Woodstock high above Manhattan on New Year's?

We threw our coats on one of the twin beds. After kicking off her boots, Lea got two plastic glasses from the bathroom. Picking up the corkscrew, she said, "This hotel has great service. They even supply corkscrews if you need one."

I watched as she twisted the tool into the cork, laughing to myself that this could be a metaphor for something more intimate. "So, I guess this bottle was meant originally for you and Marie," I said.
She looked up and smiled mischievously. "Truth be told, Troy, it was meant for us."

"Are you kidding?"

She paused her twisting. "It would have been just Marie and I had things not gone so well with us at dinner. You can thank your friend Miles and Marie for being so understanding. They both knew I wanted to be alone with you. They went bar hopping so we could be alone up here."

Now I got the meaning of Lea's stifled laugh. "What about them? They do not plan to stay out all night, do they?"

She chuckled. "They might. I don't know about your friend, but Marie can really put it away when she wants to."

After pouring the champagne, Lea handed me a glass and proposed a toast. "To a healthy and happy 1970," she said. We touched glasses and then took our first sip. "Speaking of which," she said, reaching inside her suitcase, did you see this?"

She handed me a special double issue of Life Magazine, titled "The '60s, Decade of Tumult and Change." The cover was a collage of headshots of the decades' newsmakers—The Beatles, Mohammed Ali, Martin Luther King, JFK, Nixon, etc.

"A decade of tumult and change is right," I said, thumbing through it. "It's a little scary thinking about what the next ten years might bring."

"Or, on a more personal level, where WE might be in ten years. Ever think about that?"

We sat on the edge of one of the beds, holding our drinks. I kicked off my shoes and unbuttoned the top button of my striped wool polo shirt. Lea then slipped off her sweater. "It IS toasty in here," she said.
She kept her blue eyes on me, waiting for my response.

I then told her I hoped my future included practicing medicine somewhere. What kind, I was not sure.

When I reversed the question, she said she hoped to be teaching, at the high school level and married with kids. "Man, I'll be thirty," she said with a trace of trepidation. "That still seems old to me. I mean, Ringo Starr, the oldest Beatle, isn't yet thirty."

After sipping more champagne, I said, "My parents told me that time seems to speed by faster as we age."

She started rubbing my foot with hers. "Yeah, I've heard that too." After staring out the window for a few seconds, she faced me again and then took my hand. "Years from now, whatever I'll be doing or whoever I'm with, I'll always remember this night. I'll tell people I entered a new decade with a future doctor who ran into me, literally, on New Year's Eve at Rockefeller Center."

I squeezed her hand and touched her face, a tactile delight owing to her baby-soft skin and clear blond complexion. "And I'll tell people I met this beautiful chick from Woodstock, New York who bought us a bottle of champagne and persuaded her girlfriend and my buddy to barhop just so she could be alone with me."

She hugged me, then got up and cut the light. It was far from pitch black—the glow of Manhattan cast a subdued light throughout the room, all shadows, and the eerie presence of something happening by chance but somehow also meant to be. She nestled up to me and started to unbuckle my belt. "I really like you, Troy, liked you the moment you ran into me." She chuckled. "You could have fired back at me for scolding you. Instead, like a true gentleman, you not only apologized but footed the bill for our drinks. I thought that was so cool. It did not hurt that my attraction to you was instant, that I dug guys with broad shoulders and deep brown eyes, and thick wavy hair. It does not hurt either that we laugh at the same absurd things, or that you can keep me warm in freezing weather, or that you seem to care about people. You wouldn't be going into medicine if you didn't."

"Lea, if you're not careful," I said, wrapping my thick arms around her, "you're going to make me fall in love with you before the night's out. Not that that would be such a bad thing."

"Not a bad thing at all, because I'm in the same place."

There was more action than words after that. Telling me she was on the pill was about the only thing she said between the time we disrobed and climbed into bed. From then on, we talked in whispers and endearing phrases. Soon, those phrases morphed into moans and sighs of pleasure. She had a fine body, was well-proportioned, firm, and responsive. To describe her comely, feminine form, body part by body part, would cheapen the experience. I will say she smelled great—that Arpeggio she wore enhanced her fresh-as-the-outdoors-after-a-spring-rain natural scent. She loved it when I took topside, grabbed her firm, round butt, and pressed it tight against my crotch. She was not shy about changing positions or giving and receiving oral or telling me what pleased her the most and then asking me the same thing. We freely accommodated one another. Our overall compatibility factor, at least for the short term, was off the charts.

After making love for the second time, we stood naked by the window. I stood from behind, my arms wrapped around her, fondling her breasts, and kissing her neck and shoulders. "You know, Troy," she said, "I couldn't have dreamed this even if I wanted to."

"Nor could I," I said. "There are eight million stories in this naked city, and tonight we're one of them."

"Naked in the naked city," she said, still facing the window. "Does it get any better than that?"

"Yes. Naked in the naked city with someone you're crazy about, with someone you groove with, with someone you hate to say goodbye to because you might never see them again." Tearing up, I struggled not to break down altogether.

She turned around and said, "That doesn't have to be the case with us, Troy. New York is not that far from Maryland. And if the bond between us is strong enough, if what we found here is genuine, we'll endure beyond New Year's."

I kept that in mind before dozing off to sleep and snuggled close to Lea. Come late morning, Miles rang our room from Edison. He and Marie had stayed out until around three, then returned to the room and crashed. They did not get intimate, he later told me, as much because of fatigue as loyalty to their mates. After checkout, we all ate brunch at the famous Lindy's Restaurant, carrying on like old friends rather than the near strangers we still were. Miles and Marie knew they would not be seeing each other again. Lea and I, on the other hand, had something special, potentially enduring, and they knew it. They watched as we said goodbye on the corner of 7th Avenue and 53rd Street.

When Lea began to cry, I held her so tight, I was afraid I would crack her ribs. Then she pulled away and reached inside her travel bag. "Look, I want you to keep this," she said, wiping her tears. It was the bottle of Dom Perignon. "Notice the bottle...it's half full."

Little wonder that I left New York on an optimistic note, excited to see Lea again, over spring break. We returned to our respective colleges and stayed connected by mail and an occasional phone call. I would like to report we married and lived happily after. However, the stuff of fairy tales is just that; real life is something else.

We did see each other over spring break and then in June when school let out, both times trying to recapture what we felt in New York. That is the downside of the kind of explosive, supernova-type romance that we shared. Young people, especially, are vulnerable to harboring unrealistic expectations after an experience like that. It sets them up for disappointment every time. So, it was with us.

The letters and phone calls stopped coming after July. By fall, Lea had become a fond memory, one that could make me smile, not tear up like what happened in New York.

Even so, I still get wistful thinking back forty-seven years to that incredible New Year's. The intensity of those feelings might be lost to time, but what I felt then remains vivid as ever. I still cannot bring myself to throw away that champagne bottle. It remains half full. Of course, the liquid has long since lost its sparkle.