Queens County Revisited: The 1970's (68)

By the time the sun had set on that Fall day, I was beginning to feel the effects of the acid. Consequently, when I got to the Queens College student union building I was flying high as a result of the acid.

Although I was able to find the unmarked back entrance door to the student union building that Barry had mentioned, a Queens College women student with a walkie-talkie, whose work-study job was apparently to patrol the student union building's stairwells, coincidentally, was walking down the stairs in the hallway near the back entrance of the student union building at the exact moment when I made my entrance.

"Let me see your I.D.!," she called out to me immediately after she spotted me while, at the same time, walking towards me quickly in order to block me from going down the stairs to the basement cafe.

Surprised by being spotted so unluckily, despite Barry's promise earlier that day, that there was no unforeseen difficulty in getting into the student union building by the unmarked back entrance, and being so high that I wasn't as quick-thinking as I might otherwise have been, all I could think of doing was to smile sheepishly and whisper to the woman student patrol monitor, "I''m a friend of one of the security guards and he told me I could use this back door to come into the building."

"You say you're a friend of one of the security guards and he said you could use this entrance to sneak in?" the woman student patrol monitor asked in a suspicious voice.  "What's your friend's name?"

At that point, however, I suddenly realized that I'd better try to bring myself down quickly from the acid before I got Barry into trouble and possibly cost him the weekend job that he liked so much. And I somehow managed to start retracting my story about "my friend" telling "me I could use this back door to come into the building," by answering "I was just putting you on. So why don't I just leave now, since I don't have a student I.D.? And we can forget the whole thing."

The woman student stairwell patrol monitor, however, was apparently still suspicious and, blocking me from leaving the building through the same door through which I had entered, she said "Why don't you just wait a minute, while I call my supervisor?"

She then spoke a few words through her walkie-talkie and, a few minutes later, an African-American man in his late 20's, who was dressed in a mod way, appeared.

"Now why don't you tell him what you told me about how you got into the building without showing a student I.D.?" the woman student patrol monitor said.

Thinking quickly, I winked at the African-American man and said:  "Look, brother. I'm too high to recall how I stumbled into this building. You know what I mean. But now that I know you need a student I.D. to get into the building on Saturday night, I promise I'll never try sneaking in here again."

The African-American supervisor laughed and replied:  "Well, we'll let you go now, brother. But if we ever catch you inside here again without a student I.D., we might have to just call the police to take you away."

"Thanks a lot, brother," I said in a grateful tone as the student parole monitor and her supervisor led me to the exit door through which I left the building.

Once outside the Queens College Student Union building I breathed a sigh of relief that I was able to retreat from the building without apparently costing Barry his job. And by the time Barry returned from his security guard job around midnight to the Jamaica basement apartment, I was asleep.  The next day, however, Barry asked:  "What happened to you?  I though I'd be seeing you in the basement cafe last night?"

Laughing, I replied:  "I was on acid and it turned out I couldn't find the back entrance door. So I ended up just coming back here early and listening to music until I started to fall asleep.".

Queens County Revisited: The 1970's (67)

Since the weather was nice outside, however, I decided to spend that Saturday afternoon outside, enjoying the fresh Fall air and walking around Queens. And near the end of the afternoon, as I walked on the sidewalk along the Long Island Expressway service road, I was approached on the street by a white woman who looked like she was still just a junior or senior in high school.

"Wanna buy a tab of acid for 5 dollars?" she asked me, apparently because I was then long-haired, bearded and looked like a freak.

"Sure," I replied. Then, after I took my wallet out of my pocket and handed her a 5 dollar bill, the white high school woman student gave me a tab of acid in exchange; and then she quickly started to walk ahead in the direction opposite from the direction I was walking.

Apparently she was more interested in finding other freak customers on the streets of Queens to sell her tabs to than wasting anymore of her time finding out what I might be into, besides also being into dropping acid like she was. But, although I was somewhat attracted to her physically and might have been interested in getting to know her better, because she also seemed a little too young at that time for me to consider getting involved with romantically, I wasn't that disappointed when she walked away from me in search of other customers. So I just shrugged and also continued my own walk in the opposite direction for a block or two before swallowing the tab of acid.

Queens County Revisited: The 1970's (66)

Barry seemed to enjoy his weekend job as a security guard in the basement cafe in the Queens College student union building. One reason might have been that he felt it was like being at a party with people only a few years younger than him, on the college campus where he had previously graduated from, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday night; and, in addition, it seemed to provide him with more of a possibility that he could pick-up  and "score" eventually with more younger "chicks" than did his Monday through Friday day job during the week as a delivery truck driver.

And after about a month working as a basement cafe security guard at the Queens College student union building, Barry invited me to check out the scene on one Saturday night.

"Why don't you check out the scene tonight?" Barry suggested.

"How can I check out the scene if I don't have a student I.D.?" I replied. "Without a student I.D., you're not allowed to even enter the Queens College student union building by the security guard in the lobby."

Barry laughed. "Just walk around to the backside of the student union building. There's an unmarked exit door leading into the sub-basement level of a stairwell there, that most people don't know about, which is always left unlocked. Just walk around to the back of the building, open the unlocked door and up  the stairwell a half-flight of stairs and you'll be just down the hall from the basement cafe entrance--where I'll pretend to check your wallet and then let you walk by me." 

"Well, if it's that easy for me to get into the student union building, I'll check it out sometime tonight," I said.

Queens County Revisited: The 1970's (65)

After a few days back in the Jamaica basement apartment in the Fall, Barry said to me one evening after he came home from his day job:

"I spoke to the landlord today about fixing up this apartment. You know, repainting it, making it more modern."

"Won't he then raise the rent?" I replied.

"Not if we pay for itself ourselves,he said. So it's O.K. for him if we fix this apartment up and repaint it," Barry said.

"I don't think I really have the money to spend on paying to fix it up," I said.

"That's O.K.. I'll fix up the apartment, repaint the kitchen and my bedroom and pay for it all myself. I just got hired for a second job to work on the weekends. So I'll now have some extra money to pay for fixing up the apartment," said Barry.

I was surprised to hear that Barry, in addition to working again at his old day job as a delivery truck driver during the week, was now willing to give up his weekends off to work at a second job.

"You're actually willing to give up your free time on the weekend in order to work at a second job?" I asked.

"I don't mind. It's a cool job at Queens College on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. All I have to do is make sure that the people who enter the basement cafe to hear the band play in the student union building have Queens College student ID's," Barry answered.

"So you're like a security guard."

"Right, a security guard job."

I, myself, didn't think it was that "cool" a job to get paid for blocking and excluding non-students who didn't have Queens College student ID's from entering the basement cafe of a Queens College student union building that had been constructed with public funds provided by taxpaying parents of non-students, as well as current Queens College students. But the fact that Barry would now not be in the Jamaica basement apartment watching the loud television set programs every Friday, Saturday and Sunday evening, now that he had to be working during those hours as a security guard, meant that I could now enjoy the apartment space alone for more hours on the weekend than previously, during the next few months.

Queens County Revisited: The 1970's (64)

While still living alone in the basement apartment in Jamaica, Queens during the 1970's, I was surprised one evening in the Fall to hear a knock on the basement apartment door. And when I opened the door, the former roommate of mine, who had moved from Jamaica, Queens to live in Israel near the end of the previous Spring--Barry--was standing in front of me.

'I'm back from Israel. And I'd like to move back in with you. Unless you've found a new roommate," Barry quickly said, as I motioned for him to sit down on the chair in the kitchen-dinette.

Although I enjoyed living in the basement apartment without a roommate more than I had enjoyed living with a roommate like Barry, who did not share my 1970's political and philosophical views, since the basement apartment had first been rented by Barry, before he later agreed to have me as his roommate the previous winter, I felt morally obligated to agree to let Barry move back into the basement apartment as my roommate--if that's what he now wanted to do. And besides, since I--at that time--expected to be living for the next six months on a weekly unemployment benefit check that paid less than what I had been earning from either my Bulova Parts Department clerk-typist job or my temporary student-travel agency clerk-typist jobs during the previous 9 months, getting a roommate--even one who was as sexist, male chauvinist, non-feminist and pro-Zionist as Barry was in the 1970's--who would be paying half the monthly rent and utilities expenses, now made sense from an economic standpoint for me.

"If it's O.K. with the landlord for you to move back in with me, it's O.K. with me," I quickly replied. And after getting the landlord's approval the next day, Barry handed me the $75 in cash, which represented his half of that month's rent, and moved into the apartment again as my roommate.

Despite being raised by a right-wing Zionist New York City cop, who moved to Israel following his retirement from the NYPD, Barry had apparently decided after, himself, living in Israel for a second extended period in the late Spring and Summer during the 1970's, that, despite his pro-Zionist upbringing and political sympathies, he was too Americanized, himself, to want to spend the rest of his life living in Israel rather than living in New York City.

And once the Israeli government apparently notified Barry that, if he was going to live in Israel and become an Israeli citizen, he would have to then serve some time in the Israeli military, Barry quickly purchased an airline ticket back to the U.S.A.. After all, in Barry's view, one reason he had left the U.S.A. was that, like most of the people he had grown up with in Queens, he was anti-war and opposed to serving in a U.S. military that waged endless war in countries like Vietnam. So it made no sense, he felt, to--despite his pro-Zionist politics--to now suddenly risk his own life, by being compelled to serve in the Israeli military, after having been previously successful in personally avoiding serving in the U.S. military of the country of his birth.

Queens College Revisited: The 1970's (63)

When I was hired by the Council on International Educational Exchange [C.I.E.E.]--while living in the Jamaica, Queens basement apartment--to work as a clerk-typist there during the summer travel season, the hip-seeming, non-authoritarian, white department head in his late 20's, Steve, told me that the seasonal full-time job would only last until the end of August. But during the last week of August, Steve--who had by then recovered from the hepatitis he had contracted earlier in the summer and was now back at work in the C.I.E.E. building office--asked me to come into his private office to speak with him.

After I sat down across from where Steve sat behind his desk, Steve smiled and asked in a friendly tone: "You know I've been pleased with your work. And I was wondering whether you would be interested in continuing to work here for an extra month--or whether you've already made other plans for September?  I realize that it was originally agreed that the job would only last until the end of August. But we're still busy now and we could still use you until October, you you haven't already made other plans."

By the end of August, of course, I couldn't wait to make my escape from being bullied by the culturally-straight, authoritarian, white women, who seemed to be in her 30's, that was my immediate supervisor, for whom I typed up the charter flight passenger manifest lists each morning. And once the woman co-worker in her early 20's whom I was attracted to, Connie, was no longer working in the same C.I.E.E. office and conversing across the desk with me during the workday by late August, there was also no longer any potential romantic incentive for me to want to work an extra month on my temporary travel season job at C.I.E.E..

So I quickly replied to Steve:  "I did already make other plans for September. So it wouldn't be possible for me to work an extra month here. But I thought you were a good department head to work for, Steve."

Because the original official agreement with Steve was that the job would end at the end of August, I also felt confident, as I left the office on my last day of work, that Steve would not contest my eventual claim for unemployment insurance that I was going to file in late September; following my plan to take a Greyhound bus out from NYC to California in early September, stay a week in Berkeley, take a bus down to LA to visit Disneyland (which I had never visited, despite having longed to visit it when I was a child), and then hitchhike across the continent back home to New York City and Jamaica, Queens in the 1970's.

Queens County Revisited: The 1970's (62)

I no longer remember much of what I did during the weekday evening hours after working at the Council on International Educational Exchange [C.I.E.E.] by day, once I finished writing the "Generation In Chains" novella in the summer that I lived alone in the basement apartment in Jamaica, Queens. The only two things I can now recall doing that stand out in my memory are meeting a woman friend  from the Midwest in Central Park, alone for a few hours, when she was in Manhattan with her family to attend some kind of extended family wedding; and also exchanging letters with a woman who was a member of an academic left group of radical economists.

Neither the visiting womanfriend I met in Central Park nor the academic left woman economist, however, seemed interested in visiting me in my basement apartment in Jamaica. The womanfriend I met in Central Park had to go back to the Manhattan hotel later that evening where she and her parents were staying; and, in addition, had begun to identify herself more as a lesbian than as a bisexual at that period of her life. And the academic left woman economist seemed more interested in preparing herself for some kind of college professorship job teaching Marxist economics to undergraduate students than into developing a closer friendship or relationship with a non-academic left, working-class writer-musician-left activist like me.