New Girl And N.Y.C. Foibles '70
The next day Jim and I went sight seeing with Vicky, the chick from
Houghton Lake. She had been in the city for only a couple of days
and already had become acquainted with some N.Y.C. foibles. As soon
as she arrived, somebody threw a rock through the window of her
subway train, scattering glass all over her. The next day, while in
a theater, some guy sitting next to her jacked off and stained her
new coat with his semen. Maybe in another city these events would
raise an eyebrow, but in N.Y.C. these kinds of "odd events" are
dealt with on a daily basis.
Chicks got molested in the subway all the time. Sandy had many
stories, but the one that stood out was the one where a guy pressed
up against her on a train and got his hand through her buttoned down
Maxi coat, into her pants and inside her vagina. Even under protest
the pervert wouldn't stop. Sandy received no help from the other
passengers. They kept their backs turned to the altercation; in
N.Y.C. its not "no harm, no foul," rather its "no sight, no foul."
He stopped doing what he was doing only after Sandy threatened to
hit him over the head with her umbrella.
On another occasion, a stalker followed Sandy home from an uptown
train and if Mike and I hadn't been there to meet her at the exit,
there's no telling what would have happened. The two of us chased
the stalker away. Only a week had lapsed since a young girl was
stabbed to death at Sandy's subway stop. In N.Y.C. nobody was safe
from these kinds of threats. Yesterday, while waiting for a train,
some guy ran past Jimmy and I shouting for us to stop following him.
He ran up the stairs and from the top hollered down at us, "If you
don't stop following me, I'll kill both of you." Welcome to life in
N.Y.C.!
When Jimmy ran out of money we did a lot of nothing, we couldn't
even afford a subway token. Towards the end, everybody lived off
Sandy. Just before it got that bad there was one bright spot though.
The Moody Blues were playing at the Fillmore and everybody wanted to
go to the concert. Jimmy and I found out about Manpower, a temporary
employment agency, so we went to look for work. After sitting from 6
a.m. to 9 a.m. in cold, metal chairs, the guy behind the desk gave
us an address. We were put to work cleaning old, greasy, printing
presses. We worked all day at the warehouse, scraping and washing
grease off the presses for $1.65 per hour. It wouldn't have been so
bad except we had to use strong solvents to remove the grease; but
along with the grease, it felt like the skin on my hands was also
being removed. When we finished, the guy must have liked our work
because he told us to come back the next day. I wanted to tell the
dude to shove it, but when it was all over we had enough money to go
to the concert and then some.
When we went to buy our tickets there weren't any left. That didn't
stop us; we hoped to buy tickets from people who had extra tickets
outside the concert. On concert night, it was cold and windy and we
couldn't find any tickets for sale. We were leaving when this cat
offered us stage passes. Apparently, the Fillmore ticket taker had a
couple backstage passes and he charged $5.00 every time someone used
one to get in. As we walked through the door he took the passes and
his buddy recycled them back among the people standing in the crowd.
The passes didn't get us a seat, but from the back of the Fillmore
we could still see and hear the Moody Blues. They were great, well,
they were great until someone called in a bomb threat and the
Fillmore had to be evacuated. The people with tickets got back
inside, but the rest of us (I stopped counting at thirty) were left
out in the cold.
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