Chapter 10 - New York Accommodations When Evie Came to Visit

According to Boy: I was never able to understand why hotels such as the Statler Hilton and the Waldorf-Astoria gave me a discount when I rented a room. To me that did not make any sense. The way I figured, it was a lot like a bar discounting the price of sandwiches for non-drinkers. Why? A hotel should cater to a clientele that has money to spend in its restaurants, gift shops and bars—that would not be students. Also, I suspect that students (in 1968) bounced a higher percentage of checks than business travelers. And if anyone was going to steal a robe or a towel, or tear up the place, I’d bet it would more likely be the student, than the family man. So why give lowly students a discount? Beats me. I guess I will have to defer to Hilary Bradt on that one. Nevertheless, I asked for a student discount, and they gave me one.


I am not exactly sure what it cost to spend a night at the Waldorf, but sixty-five dollars per night sounds right. While coming up with that amount was not an insurmountable task, it did require me to save up. I did not have a credit card, so I would have to pay cash up front. Who knows what would have happened had I run up a lot of additional expenses? I think that there might not have been a charge for local calls, and the only way to place a long distance one was "collect." So there really wasn’t much of a way to run up charges.

Evie’s contact lenses always presented a challenge. We literally spent almost the whole time in bed. What an adventure that was. She was so incredibly fun to make love with. How very crazy it is to be so very much in love, and not have to get out of bed to go to work—at least for a few days. We usually bought the use of the room for three nights. That’s about all we could afford, and about all the time we could take off. So, what’s the deal about Evie’s contacts?

Within the first fifteen minutes after arriving at the hotel, Evie would take out her contacts, and place them in a hotel glass, on the back of the bathroom sink, with about two ounces of water. We would then make love the rest of the night, and wake up about noon the next day.

Of course, the first thing I did, upon waking up, was always to brush my teeth, or get a drink of water.

Not yet familiar with Evie’s habit of leaving her contact lenses submerged in a glass of water on the back of the sink, on this one occasion I grabbed a glass from the back of the sink. Noticing that it had a little stale water in it, I dumped it out, and ran fresh water in it.

Later, when Evie got up, she asked me if I had seen a partial glass of water with her contacts on the bottom of it.

"I think I know where they might be," I told her.

Using only my hands, with a damp washcloth to provide a better grip, I disassembled the plumbing. I engaged the stopper in the sink, and dumped the horrible-smelling dregs from the trap into the sink. Carefully I examined every tiny piece of debris until I found the first contact. I had locked the bathroom door so Evie would not have to suffer the odor, nor view the mess I was making. I placed the filthy contact back in the glass, and went after the other one. Eventually I found the second one, and put it with its buddy in the glass. I ran a little water on them to keep them moist. I was pretty proud of myself, but I still was not ready to return them to Evie.

I then put the sink back together, and washed the stinking black mess down the drain. I scrubbed my hands well with bar soap, and then

cleaned the contacts as best I could.

Eventually I unlocked the door and invited Evie in to see what I had found. "How did you find them?" She asked me, visibly shocked to discover that I had located her contacts.

"You really don’t want to learn the details," I told her. "Just be sure to clean them well before you put them in."

This same thing happed a few months later at another hotel. This time, however, I was unable to find the contacts. In fact, I remembered drinking the water in the glass, and probably ingesting those miniature Frisbees.

It seemed so amazing to me that I could totally mess up her vision like that, and she never spoke a cross word to me. I recall thinking that this girl must be an angel, or else she really loved me. As it turned out, both were true.