Freedom of the Press
When I was twenty years old I decided to use a newspaper to improve my romantic life. To be more precise, I wanted to create a romantic life where none had existed before. I had gone to the City College of New York expecting to meet girls - or even just one girl, perhaps - as well as get a degree to improve my chances for some as yet unspecified career.
By the summer of 1975 between my sophomore and junior years I had made no progress towards the first goal. I had become an editor at one of the five student newspapers that existed at that time. The ratio of guys to girls at this publication was probably about six to one, and most of the women who did join seemed to quickly pair off with someone else. One of them had gotten into a long term relationship with one of the tenured faculty members of the English department.
When I say I used a newspaper, I don’t mean the personal ads that existed in that pre-Internet era. The only New York paper that I knew that had them was the weekly Village Voice, where they were in the classifieds section along with job listings and ads for trade schools.
There was another item available in the city, an odd publication called The Zone. It had elements of The Voice, Screw, the defunct East Village Other, Rolling Stone, maybe Ramparts and various other supposedly countercultural periodicals. Calling itself a magazine, it was printed cheaply on broadsheet newsprint.
The writing in there ranged from the occasionally brilliant to the mostly mediocre. Sometime in the early ‘70s its managers decided to increase its flagging circulation by including erotic photo spreads starting on page two or three of each issue. These usually were depictions of everyday scenes that somehow degenerated into orgies. This is a standard trope in pornography perhaps, but this was an era long before one could punch up porn on a smart phone. For many readers, including me, this feature was quite a novelty.
There were some notable aspects of these photo shoots. For one thing The Zone used amateur volunteers as the models, apparently various college students and other young people they recruited from around the city. The sexuality depicted in the picture spreads was uninhibited, explicit. It seemed that little if anything was faked, and the photographers often got in close to show the action.
Part of the fun of this was reading the breathlessly inane captions appearing in this section. There seemed to be a characteristic unsubtle Zone style that appeared to be created by the same person each time.
All of this was not hard to obtain. The magazine was sold in porn stores, but some news shops also had it in the back along with the much tamer Playboy and Penthouse. There was usually a copy being passed around my college newspaper office so I never had to get up the nerve to buy my own.
These monthly issues were a useful educational resource for someone like me. This is where I could find out about the wide range of human heterosexual and homosexual behavior, including my first exposure to BDSM.
BDSM, among a lot of other things, was in the very first issue I saw myself. Jeff, one of my fellow student journalists, had picked up the September 1974 Zone which had a photo spread entitled “Back to College.” The setup was basic: a room had been fitted with some furniture and other props to make it look like a classroom at a fictional “Weequahic University”. The professor for this class was a woman who appeared to my young eyes to be in her late thirties. You could tell she was a professor because she was wearing mortar board headgear and an academic gown.
Like most erotica/porn, some kind of plot was needed to provide context. The premise was that the professor was going to paddle one the male students for failing to turn in a paper on time. During a sequence of about three photos, she indeed had him bent over her desk in front of the class. A caption read, in typical overheated Zone prose:
“Slothful Young Eric Receives the Wrath of Professor Roston’s Thick Yardstick on His Vulnerable Bared Buttocks.”
Two of the female “students” were then invited up front to take turns on him with the yardstick. When he was allowed to stand up, he surprisingly had a huge erection. I say surprising because it was a revelation to me that being physically punished like that would have a strong effect on the male libido. My upbringing had never exposed me to the word or even the very concept of a “dominatrix”.
Apparently this activity had an effect on the female libido too, because the next caption read:
“The Professor, Lucy and Simone Feel Pity for Poor Eric’s Plight and Comfort Him with Their Warm Mouths on His Erect Member.”
In my view Eric wasn’t doing so poorly; in fact, I was envious of the lucky bastard. Sure getting a stick across your ass hurt, but I intuitively understood that it was not quite like other kinds of pain. It was obviously different, say, from the awful grinding of a dentist’s drill.
Anyway, the naughtiness in the front, obviously sanctioned by the professor herself, set off a chain reaction through the rest of the room. This class of young scholars, about sixteen people divided equally between men and women, enacted their own scenes of spanking, sucking and screwing. And although The Zone had some clumsy writers, the quality of the black and white photography was excellent. Five pages of this stuff gave me a fine tutorial in human mating techniques.
Four weeks later another photo essay appeared, “What Really Happened to Patty.” This of course was Patty Hearst, although The Zone cautiously never used her last name. At this time, about eight months after the kidnapping, a lot about what really had happened were still unknown, but The Zone just made up the missing details. These were depicted in photos likely shot in somebody's apartment and involved bondage (another activity new to me), sex at gunpoint and the general cavorting of urban guerrillas in their safe house.
The Zone had some flair for satire in these matters, and it proposed that Patty was actually naked under her coat during the Hibernia Bank robbery. She then had sex with ringleader “Cinque” in the fleeing getaway car while some Symbionese Liberation Army flunky did the driving. They also poked fun at the recordings Hearst had released during her SLA days. One caption read:
“Depraved Heiress States in Communiqué from Insane Radicals, ‘Death to the Fascist Insects Who Sodomize the Anal Orifices of the Oppressed People.’ ” (Wasn’t that a bit redundant?)
I felt a twinge of sadness for Donald, Willie, Angela and other people identified by their real first names, people who had died in the Los Angeles shootout the previous May. I doubted they would feel honored to be depicted in this bizarre publication, but they were beyond caring now.
However, there was something I was starting to care about for myself; I was desiring an appearance before the lenses of The Zone photographer or photographers. My first choice for a beginning to a romantic/sexual life wasn’t necessarily a debut in an amateur porn shoot. I imagined a reliable girlfriend, drinks at the Cedar Tavern, trips to the Cloisters Museum in Fort Tryon Park. But mingling with the wild girls The Zone recruited would be a good way to get some much-needed experience. It was even possible that something longer term might result from it.
Busing to Byzantium
It turned out that my sophomore year was a continuing dry spell. I got an opportunity when the May, 1975 issue was going around the office. Of course there was some commentary about the fall of Saigon but since they didn't have foreign correspondents, or even correspondents in Washington for that matter, the article read like the ramblings of some embittered barfly.
Thus I soon was perusing the photo spread, which was somewhat less ambitious than their usual offerings. For this one they had a live recreation - and extension - of R. Crumb’s famous Joe Blow incest cartoon from 1969. Obviously they didn't have permission of any sort to use this material so they changed the main character to “Joe Schmo.” Many of the captions, however, were taken directly from Crumb's original.
I was reflecting on how they only needed four models for this live version of the cartoon when I noticed a small notice on the last page advertising for volunteer models for the September, 1975 issue. It was sparse in detail; the theme would be “Summer Fun: Woodstock 1975” and the shoot would be on a single day at a location in Sullivan County, New York. A phone number was included and that was the extent of the information provided.
Being young and foolish, I called that afternoon. Besides, I reasoned, they probably had more applicants than they could handle and I would never actually be in this scene. A woman answered and told me to come down the next day to an address in the Garment District in Manhattan.
I had the feeling riding down there that this was some sort of job interview, although undoubtedly a very strange one. At The Zone offices, a very plain set of rooms in a loft building, I met the woman who had answered the phone. Sandra, a short-haired blonde in her late thirties, identified herself as the managing editor of this publication I had been loyally reading for the entire semester.
Like any other interview, the tasks and duties involved were explained to me. They weren’t going to attempt to recreate anything close to the scale of the actual festival. Instead they were going to try for one of the sideshows, the skinny-dipping that had taken place in one of the ponds or lakes within the concert grounds. They had obtained permission from a landowner to use a lake in a town called Crockersville in Sullivan County, the same county containing the original site in Bethel.
Sandra told me, “Of course we expect that you all will be doing more than splashing around in the water. You’ve seen our photo spreads, haven’t you?”
“Oh yeah, I’ve been - well reading them since that Weequahic University thing last September.”
She chuckled at that, “Weequahic, that’s the name of my old neighborhood in Newark. So, what you will be doing, there will be some improvising up there at the lake. The more explicit it is, the more down and dirty you get, the better it is for our circulation.”
She then explained the personnel logistics involved. First there would be ten “existing” couples picked for this, thus twenty people to start. Then there would be twenty unattached people, ten guys and ten girls.
Sandra said, “One of those guys could be you. The twenty in that group will make their own picks as to who they want to be cast with. ” I was trying to imagine how that would work when she continued, “We already have more applicants than we can use. I’ll have to get back to you if we want to have you.”
I had expected that, but I still felt deflated; how many others had already responded? Dozens? Hundreds? The whole thing suddenly seemed like a shuck and I was losing interest in it, although I didn't tell that to Sandra.
The last thing she did was take a few photos of me with an Instamatic camera. Then I went home, reading a newspaper to distract myself as I rode on the subway.
I had told no one about my interview and I was starting to forget about it a week later when Sandra called me back. I had been chosen for the project; could I come down soon to sign a release and handle other details? As soon as I got to the West 35th Street office I received a piece of surprisingly good news. Because of the distance out of the city all of us would receive $30 for travel and other expenses, about $140 in today's money.
She said, “That should at least cover the cost of gas up there and back and probably lunch too.”
“That's great, but I don’t have access to a car.”
She looked perplexed for a moment and then rummaged through some papers on her desk. “There’s a Short Lines bus route up Route 17, it stops at this village called Byzantium. I think it’s only about a mile and half walk to the site.”
She gave me the schedule to keep, and something about that brought up doubts that I had been repressing about this venture. I asked her, “What’s the deal with the twenty individuals, the ones who pick each other?”
“Oh that. Our thinking is that in addition to established couples, we’ll have some people who are strangers to each other - like it may have been at the real Woodstock. It will bring some spontaneity to the event, we hope.”
“Were you at the real Woodstock?”
“Definitely not. I was thirty then, I just had my first kid. Even so, the idea of spending several days in an open field - that wasn’t for me, no matter what bands showed up.”
It was somewhat disillusioning to find that this weirdly offbeat magazine was being managed by a sensible, organized young mommy, but someone had to be responsible for keeping it going and she seemed to be doing a good job. I tried bantering with her about how a portion of American youth would have been called the Bethel Generation if that town, the actual location, had been the original chosen for the festival.
Sandra didn’t seem to share my idea of humor and instead she quickly wrapped up the specifics of the deal, which weren’t many. The date was set for a Saturday in mid-August, nearly two months from now. I would keep in touch with The Zone periodically to confirm that it was still on, and they would call me if there was going to be some kind of bad weather postponement. Other than that, all I had to do was show up and - act like a hippie? Probably fuck like one too, whatever that meant. The previous cohorts of recruits for these photo shoots had just done what came naturally, I suspected, so this couldn’t be that complex.
Sandra cut me my $30 check. Just before I left I had to ask, “Why exactly was I picked?”
She was a bit vague about it, “I don’t know, you just seemed plausible I suppose. We didn’t attempt to deal with everyone who applied. We chose our forty people and then said, ‘good enough.’ ”
On that Saturday morning I was at the Port Authority bus station in Midtown Manhattan. It was a pleasant ride on a nice summer day. I enjoyed sitting by the window as most of my mind remained blank. I noted the passage through the junction of the New York Thruway and Route 17, that one that famously was closed because of the traffic jam during Woodstock 1969.
A Cog in Something Turning
Byzantium had no resemblance to its imperial namesake; it was a crossroads on 17 with two gas stations and not much else. I was supposed to be at the site in Crockersville by noon and I had plenty of time to walk there along a two-lane rural road. It was a clear day, forecast to be in the mid-eighties, and I was accustomed to taking long walks. I was reminded of hiking trips at the Ten Mile River Scout camp at the other side of Sullivan County.
It was when I reached the lakeside that I started to think again about why I was there and what I was supposed to do. I began to get the first real doubts about what I had gotten into. The Zone minions had set up minimal facilities for their one-afternoon operation. I first walked past several dozen cars parked haphazardly in an open field.
At the lake there was a tent covering a table with some sodas and bottled water in ice chests, and that seemed to be the extent of the catering services. The staffing was minimal too - it appeared to be just Sandra and two men with cameras around their necks. After I reintroduced myself to Sandra I tried a joke about the lack of infrastructure, “Did you guys think of renting some port-a-potties?”
“You’ve got the woods over there if you need them.”
I thought about the instructions in my old Boy Scout handbook about how to dig a field latrine but I didn't think Sandra would want to hear about that right now. She directed me to join the rest of the cast sitting around on the grass overlooking the lake.
I was one of the last arrivals among the ten couples and twenty individuals enlisted for this scene. As I seated myself on the ground I noticed that there didn’t seem too much social interaction going on here. No one greeted me and I said nothing myself. I had a few minutes to ponder my own growing uneasiness.
I had never met anyone who had been at the real Woodstock so everything I knew about it came from the voluminous press coverage at the time. I assumed that with a half-million people around for the better part of four days some sexual activities had gone on but these were not of the public, out-in-the-open variety. Even the famous nudity in the lake photos showed people just splashing around. I guessed those who wanted to get it on went into the bushes for a bit of privacy and protection from the prying lenses of the photographers.
Based on The Zone's photographic history I knew this reenactment would be different. Before I could get further into these thoughts Sandra came up to us and started issuing instructions. The first order of business was matching up the twenty loose individuals. Sandra told us to get up and make our own choices, figure out the pairings for ourselves.
In the few minutes I had been there I hadn’t dared glance over at the ten female options available to me. Before I could do that there was a flurry of activity and in less than a minute everyone was paired up except me. Well, unless Sandra was still waiting for a late arrival there had to be another wallflower here. In a moment she stepped in front of me.
“I guess this is Sadie Hawkin’s Day,” she said.
That sounded familiar but I couldn’t place it. “What does that mean?”
“You know the L’il Abner comic strips? That’s the day when the girls in town can chase after the guys for a husband."
I did remember it now. “Oh yeah, it was in The Daily News, my dad used to buy that.”
She must have looked me over when I had been sitting there because now she gave me a few moments to check her out.
She was looking me level in the eyes, so she must have been about five-eight. I focused on this girl with a round face, dark frizzy hair and dark eyes. She was wearing glasses. I glanced down at her sturdy body - she was definitely not petite or delicate. Her clothes were simple: a sleeveless blouse, a short cotton skirt and sandals.
I hadn't prepared myself for this moment - maybe I had deliberately avoided thinking about it - and my first thought was not, what do I think of her? but rather, does she think I’m acceptable for her? After all, I had been the last one left to pick. But then again, so was she.
I looked back up and saw a bemused but perhaps skeptical expression on her face. She said, “You look a little flummoxed.”
I should have finessed a better answer, but all I could say was, “That’s because I am.” I could have followed that up with, in this situation, how about you? But I couldn’t think that fast.
She said, “If you don't want do this with me, then we might as well both go home now.”
“No, you’re fine. . .” Jesus, don't put it that way. My lack of experience was getting me even more flustered. “Sure, it's okay.”
Fortunately she seemed amused by my fumbling response. Then Sandra said to her assembled group, “Okay, guys, relax for a while and get used to each other. Say thirty minutes or so.” So we had a half-hour before we all stripped and jumped into the lake.
When we sat down my new partner took a couple of things out of her purse, two brownies in fact. She gave one to me and I thanked her.
She said, “They’re pot brownies, you do know that?”
“Should we be getting stoned here?”
“Take a look around.”
Almost to a man/woman the forty-member cast was getting into mind-altering substances; most of them were smoking joints or pulling out wine bottles or both. Even after a couple of decades of Sexual Revolution it took some fortification for a group of young people to get in the mood for an outdoor porn shoot. Then again, if we were doing Woodstock ‘75, we might as well make it into a big party.
I said, “I wonder if anybody here is dropping acid?” I had no experience with that; it was simply a conversational gambit.
“I won’t try it for this particular stunt.” Maybe she knew what she was talking about. Introductions were now in order. My new friend was Denise Hollander and she told me she was of Jewish-Greek ancestry.
“Did you mean Jews from Greece?”
“No, my mother is Eastern Orthodox.” So I had flubbed that a bit, but my intuition told me to ignore it and keep going. I told her about my own background, which was Italian, German and Irish.
“So we’re both Ellis Island melting pots,” she said.
“That and Castle Clinton too.”
“That’s right, Ellis Island didn’t open until 1892.”
She had nailed this historical detail, which moved my history major heart a little. Then as students we talked about, of course, school. She was a business major at Fordham University, which was just two miles from my home.
“I drive down from Yonkers,” she said. I was getting way ahead of myself, but I was pleased that we were practically neighbors. If something developed from this, I wouldn’t have to worry about the geographic incompatibility of dating someone, say, from New Jersey. And she seemed to be talking to me in a natural way, something I wasn’t used to with girls.
I put out some sexual radar and came back with a reading. Yes, I did find her attractive; the fact that she was solid rather than willowy was a plus. I let myself imagine her arms and legs gripping me which was a pleasant thought indeed.
In fact, I started speculating about us just bailing on this whole Zone scene and finding some diner on Route 17 where we could have lunch.
Rest of the crowd were getting more convivial as their substances were having their effect. Denise however, didn’t seem interested in small talk with the other people, I mean with anybody but me. Eventually she asked me the inevitable question.
“Why did you want to do this?”
I blurted out an honest answer, “To meet girls.” I didn’t add the phrase that had occurred during my reading previous issues: girls who seemed ready to do anything.
“Well, you have met a girl.”
“So why are you here?”
“A number of reasons, I guess. . .”
Before she could finish, Sandra walked up and announced, “Ok, class, I’m glad everyone is so chatty now, but it’s time to get down to business.” As we quieted down, she introduced her two colleagues, Mel and Martin, the guys with the cameras.
Mel was about forty perhaps, with bushy hair going prematurely gray. He was already in swim trunks so it was obvious he was going into the water to get the close-ups. The other lensman was Martin, a quiet-looking man of about sixty with a bristly mustache and a full head of short gray hair. He was fully dressed so I assumed he had shore duty to get the medium-distance shots.
Sandra and Mel did all of the talking explaining the project, which we already knew was pretty basic. As Mel put it, “Just take off all or most of your clothes, get in the water, and do your best hippie free love act.”
There was a short Q and A in which some guy asked, “How far do you want us to take this?” Mel answered, “As far as you want to, but remember, the more sex with get on film, the more successful this whole deal will be.”
Some other guy asked, “Is this going to be some sort of orgy?”
Sandra told us, “If some of you wind up in a threesome or more-some, then go ahead, that’s all for the better. But you don't necessarily have to.” She continued, “If you want to come out the water at some point and do whatever on the grass, feel free. And oh, we're going to play some music to.” She pointed out a stereo system that had been set up near the picnic table. “Since we’re outdoors we’ve going to crank up the speakers pretty high, but not top volume.”
So The Zone was going to provide the rock and roll, while we volunteers supplied the drugs and sex.
I looked around this pastoral scene at my fellow festival-goers. I guessed that all forty of them were between the ages of eighteen and maybe twenty-five so only the older ones had any chance of being among the 1969 attendees. There were two black couples and one Latino couple among the preexisting couples group. That wasn’t representative of the New York metro area, but it probably did reflect the reality of the 1969 event. Sandra and the rest of staff could have updated their picks for a more inclusive cast but none of us commented on it. Had The Zone lasted long enough to do a Woodstock 1985 they probably would have been more sensitive to diversity issues but they were long out of business by then.
Sandra said, “Okay, this is pretty simple, let’s get going.” I glanced at Denise and she shrugged. I could feel the pot affecting my system. In a year's worth of experience I knew that the effects could vary a lot. Right now I was feeling mellow instead of paranoid, a good start. I knew my ability to hold a coherent conversation was dropping but that wouldn’t be much of a liability today. My level of horniness was inevitably going to go up, I figured, once I got into the mood of this thing.
About half the crowd moved quickly towards the water’s edge, dropping articles of clothing, a few whooping as they went. The other half didn’t exactly hold back but definitely were more tentative in their approach. Denise and I were among the latter group. I hoped that she would take my hand and lead me but she didn’t.
At the water's edge I took off everything except my underpants, carefully stowing my watch in my jeans pocket. Denise got down to her bra and panties and dropped her glasses into her bag. She had basic white underwear so I was reminded of a model in a Sears’s catalogue. We moved slowly into the cold lake and then we had Mel splashing in to encourage us. “Hey, it’s 86 degrees today. Just get wet already.”
I took some manly initiative now, diving forward into the deeper water. When I emerged a moment later I saw Denise getting up too. I was reminded of similar lakes at Ten Mile River but none of those had girls wading in them. The New York Scout council would have frowned on that.
Mel was still ragging on me, “What are you, one of the hippies for Hanes?” He meant I should remove my underpants, which I promptly did. Then he spoke to Denise, “Honey, hippie girls don’t wear underwear.”
“I'm not a hippie girl.”
“You are for the purposes of this shoot.”
So off came her undergarments. She thoughtfully collected my underpants too and walked back a few feet to deposit our things on dry land. I didn’t get to watch her carefully because Mel had a question for me. “Hey buddy, what name do you want to use?”
“I’m Paul.”
“No, what stage name do you want? So we can write the captions.”
“Make me Mike, I always wanted that name.”
Denise was back now so he asked her too. She said, “I want to be Chloe.”
He waved Sandra over. “These two are Mike and Chloe.” Sandra made some jottings on her clipboard, “I hope I can keep track of all this; they all seem to look the same.” Naked people often do, I thought. “Of well, I guess it really doesn’t matter,” Sandra concluded.
Mel said, “Kids, good luck and have a good time. I got to get over there; I’m going to be busier than a one-armed paper hanger today.”
Now as we stood in water up to our mid-thighs I could finally examine my fully nude Denise. Her body was pleasantly round and she had tan lines indicating a two-piece but not a bikini. She wasn’t a bikini-type of girl, but her curvy shape, her substantial hips and prominent breasts and nipples were appealing to me.
The first thing this girl said to me when she was naked was, “Did you see that other couple with the Boone’s Farm apple wine?”
This question confused my increasingly floaty mind, “Excuse me?” I had to be polite even with unclothed chicks. Later I figured out that she was probably trying to cope with this odd situation by making conversation.
“I not a wine snob, but if you're going to drink it you might as well get something halfway decent.”
“Yeah, sure," my equivalent of whatever. I had a more personal concern as I looked down and noticed, to my puzzlement, that I didn't have an erection. All the ingredients when there but nothing was cooking. I looked up and said something like “Well?” She crooked her finger indicating that I should close the small gap between us.
We were in water up to our mid-thighs as we pushed against each other. In that moment I forgot all about the Zone staffers and their thirty-eight other volunteer hippies. Denise and I hugged and kissed as if we had known each other - well, for whatever period is a long time for people our age. I took advantage of what I had available and I ran my hands all over her body, fondling her breasts and ass. There was plenty of female flesh for me to handle.
She looked down and said, “Problem solved?” What words should I use to describe my hard-on? Achingly huge? A good dose of cannabis in my bloodstream helped but perhaps that was just an extra. This wonderfully bare Denise was now more than sufficient motivation. She answered her own question, “I would certainly say so.”
Then I heard a voice from the shore, “Would you please turn sideways?” It was the old guy Martin with his camera. What the hell does he want?
He was just doing his job, I supposed, so I did pull Denise around. He said, “The other way.” Denise understood, “He wants to get a shot of your cock.” It was pressed up against her right hip. She was very amused by this photographic issue, which put me into a more cooperative mood.
During this brief distraction of twisting and turning I glanced at the rest of the aquatic action. Almost all the other couples seemed to be in the hugging and groping part that Denise and I were in. Mel was moving among them getting the shots he needed.
I heard him say, “None of you people better get any water on my camera.”
A guy taunted him, “Hey Mel, take your shorts off too and show us what you’ve got there.”
Somebody else said, “Yeah, does the hair in your ass match that bush on your head?”
I was just getting back to Denise when somebody - it had to be Sandra - decided to put a record on the stereo system. As promised, it was loud enough to be heard by all of us in the lake. I got what the song was - the harmonica and the piano were unmistakable clues - but I didn't quite accept my own memory until the lyrics started. It was “Roadhouse Blues,” by The Doors.
Denise and I had to laugh at this. I felt the need to attempt a witty comment, which came out as, “The Doors weren’t at Woodstock, were they?”
“No, in fact this album didn’t come out until the next year.”
That was the second time she got a historical date right. I seemed to have a girl here with a sharp mind, a sense of humor and a juicy body. A great combination; I just hoped she saw some good qualities in me too. Meanwhile, I wanted to move things along. I dropped a hand down and said, “Could I touch you there?” It seemed chivalrous to ask before rubbing a lady's genitals for the first time.
“Of course, that’s what we’re here for.”
I had never done this before so I operated on a combination of guesses and instinct. She put her own hand on mine and guided me along. She murmured to me, “Go ahead, put a finger in, I want that.”
At this point Jim Morrison was singing a later verse. I never knew what he was talking about regarding the ashen lady saving a city. But I didn't care either as Denise put her other hand on my cock and started pushing it against her hip. I knew now how Act I of this was going to play out.
Denise had closed her eyes and tilted her head back. I figured she was liking whatever I was doing. Then she said, “Hey baby, my nipples - come on, touch and kiss them. I think you know how.”
The next song, “Waiting for the Sun,” was not one of my favorites, so I was able to ignore it completely and just live in the moment. And what a fine moment it was. As we hung on to and handled each other I had an image of us as a couple slow dancing at a prom. But this was better than any prom I’d ever heard of, with a cold lake, warm sun and uninhibited mutual masturbation to kindle our romance. I was aware briefly of Mel splashing along my left side to get a couple of quick shots and then he was gone.
Much later, days later, I was able to count the lengths of the tracks on Morrison Hotel to approximate how long this situation lasted. In reality I lost track of time but at some point Denise's hand and hip movements prepped me for one of those amazing marijuana-fueled orgasms. Of course having a real girl instead of a pillow to rub against helped too. Denise must have also felt the buildup because she said, “You’re right there, I know it.”
I babbled something like, “Oh I am, I am right there. You’re making me come.”
I don't remember saying anything coherent while I was coming, but I did hear her laugh and say, “A nice shot, a very nice one.” When I opened my eyes I saw Denise looking down and giving me an appraising look. I understood she had witnessed this before with some other guy or guys - but that was okay, it was my cock in her hands now. I thought, hey jerk, kiss her again, this girl is great, she’s saving you from your own painful past.
As we embraced, I was aware of the stereo again. It was “Peace Frog” with its vivid imagery of blood in the streets of New Haven and Los Angeles. In any case, it was turning out - I hoped - to be a great summer. According to my later perusal of the track listings something over eleven minutes had passed between my first intimate touch of Denise and ultimately firing my load into the waters of the lake.
In a few moments my curiosity got to me and I looked left to see what my colleagues were up to. Several couples were engaging in intercourse, there was no doubt about that. They were in deeper water so that the girls could have some buoyancy as they were penetrated.
Mel was saying, “This is just great, keep it up. I need a few volunteers to get up the grass and do it there too. I need some unobstructed shots.” One pair did start wading towards the shoreline.
Denise was gaping at this scene too. I couldn’t think of the proper social protocols for this. What does one say to a naked girl who has just wanked you while others around you are copulating?
I figured that as the more experienced member of our pair she should take the initiative, and indeed she did. She took me by the hand and led with up on the grassy slope. Once there she grabbed her beach bag and said, “We’ll go over there.” For exactly what, I didn’t know yet. She did say, “I know that a guy your age, you’ve got plenty more where that came from.” Then we were headed towards a grove of trees at the edge of the lawn.
Mel was up on land now too. “Hey, you two, where do you think you’re going?”
Denise, “Mel, can’t you give us even a little break?”
“No, not really, I need to get everything possible. I’m going to be over in a few minutes, just a couple of quick shots.”
“Ok, ok, do whatever you gotta do.”
She found a semi-shaded spot and took out two towels out of her bag, big beach towels. I noticed a can in the bag.
“What is that?”
“Insect repellent. In case we need it.”
That Scout slogan, Be Prepared. Maybe she had been in the Girl Scouts. She certainly was too well organized to be like any hippie girl I had ever imagined.
We lay briefly on the towels, getting our bearings I suppose. She was on her side facing me, an arm propping up her head. I guessed from her expression that she was weighing some decision.
“Now Paul," she said. “You do know what sixty-nine is?”
“I get the general idea.”
“You see . . .” I did get a hint of coyness, maybe even of shyness from her. Even with her experience I doubted she had ever been in a situation this abrupt before. She smiled, "Well, I haven’t come yet myself, and I want to, and this way we can both be happy.”
That made sense. She got up on her hunches and her hands worked to get my cock erect again. Then she got on top of me, facing away. I heard her say, “Relax, I think this will work fine.”
I could hear music from the lakefront. Sandra hadn’t chosen side two of Morrison Hotel, but that was probably a wise move. Something else was playing that I didn’t recognize.
Denise planted her bare lake-washed cunt on my face. Her bush was thick; few girls shaved back then and her hair tickled my face. I did what came naturally, instinctively, holding her ass and licking, kissing and sucking her underside. The flavor was something new but I liked it immediately. That advertising phrase about Star-Kist tuna occurred to me and I laughed.
“What’s so funny back there?”
“Nothing really, ah, hey, I’m I doing this okay?”
“Lick the sides, then my clitoris and back again. You can find that I suppose?”
I got a hand up and put a finger on it, “Right here, I assume.”
“Oh yeah, you’ve got it sweetheart.”
Somehow her calling me sweetheart pleased me almost as much as stripping naked for me.
“You’ve got a really nice pussy.”
Now she laughed, “Of course, any pussy that is bare and in your face is going to be your favorite.”
I didn't mind being teased because up front she was sucking on my cock. However she quickly started to get distracted. I could tell that perfect coordination was going to be difficult and one of us would have to take priority. It looked like Denise would get to go first.
She moved her hips rhythmically over my tongue and lips. As she got nearer to her climax her body rose up and she stuck her arms out, her hands rotating in the air. She looked like a big bird about to take off. Her thighs clamped my head but I could still hear something like, “Oh, oh, please, my pussy, oh, lick that cunt, lick it more.” Then she grunted and moaned and collapsed on me.
That was the end of Act II and I hoped there would be yet one more. She was still facing away, looking towards the lake. After about a minute she said, “You did great honey, I really loved it.” I wondered if she guessed that I was a complete neophyte at this.
“The pleasure was all mine.” Saying that was pretty silly, but I had the feeling everything was still trending in the right direction.
I was surprised to hear myself say, “What is going on over there?”
She laughed, “For what I can see, some fucking, a lot of fucking, what did you think? And Mel and Martin are going crazy trying to shoot it all.”
Then she said, “Ok, stud, do you want to get off once more? If you do, I’m willing and able.”
Yeah, I thought, I'm twenty-years old. Of course, I want more. A darker thought came to me: I did not know what would happen after this afternoon ended. I should get it while the getting was still good.
“Sure, let’s do it,” I said, “I can handle whatever you throw at me.” That was not the most romantic statement I could imagine but this wasn’t an ordinary romantic situation.
She said, “Stand up. I'll get a better angle on you that way.” Now I knew what she was going to do.
