The Real Skinny: "Evie was the only girl I ever had out"

The real skinny (according to Boy): I am pretty certain that I had rented a separate room at the hotel. For one thing, my roommate was so nosey that had he plans to be out of town when my girlfriend came to visit, he would cancel them just to get a look. He was a great roommate. We never had an argument. But he was overly interested in my business. But that was okay—he wasn’t dirty, he didn’t smoke in the room, he wasn’t running girls in there all the time, and he was quite pleasant. He was just a little nosey. I am sure I rented a separate room. I do recall our spending an afternoon in my room together. I am not sure where my roommate was at that time.

The main reason I am so sure that I had reserved a separate room is that I am positive that I did it one time. Evie was the only girl I ever had out. I am sure that I would not do it twice, because the rooms at the hotel were not that great, and the charges were exorbitant. The hotel was perfectly situated for me at NYU, but not for the two of us to get around from. For other visits we opted for some of the better Midtown hotels.

 NYU enrollment was more than she estimated (I think it was closer to 45,000). Everything else she remembers is just as I recall it.

The Fifth Avenue Hotel According to Girl

The Fifth Avenue Hotel according to Girl: Students and wealthy seniors lived here. The place was impressive. It was my first visit to New York and I had told Mom that I was going to spend the weekend with a friend from college. I didn’t tell her it was Mike. And, I didn’t mention it was New York. I parked the little yellow Mustang at the airport, paid cash and jumped on the United Jet heading to LaGuardia. I didn’t have much to spend my paycheck on. My parents charged me twenty five dollars a month for rent and I paid my dad back with double payments for his signature on the car loan.


I was so excited to see Mike. I am afraid not much mattered about the accommodations. It was a beautiful older hotel; the University had purchased it, and made an arrangement to lease some of the floors to grad students.

Mike shared his room with another student, who was gone overnight. This allowed us to have the room to ourselves. The hotel was among many buildings in the area owned or leased by the University. With 12,500 residents, the school eventually took over the entire hotel, calling it Rubin Hall. It now houses 688 freshmen and is located at 35 Fifth Avenue.

Fifth Avenue is a one way street, going south through the city. It starts at 120th Street, north of Central Park, runs along the east side of the park, and ends at Washington Square Park. When I visited and we went sightseeing we could see it all on Mike’s Avenue, I saw the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, the Empire State building, Rockefeller Center, the New York Public Library, Tiffany & Co., Cartier, and Bergdorf Goodman. They were impressive; however my favorite site was the Fifth Avenue Hotel. It was home for my love, it was here where the mailman carried my letters, covered in perfume and art, hearts and flowers.

Best sight was seeing Mike at the airport waiting for me.

Best kiss was on the bus heading to the hotel.

Best memory is waking up in Mike’s blue dress shirt.

Best food was at the drugstore—a roast beef sandwich with tomato, lettuce and mayo.

Best accent in the world is "Manhattan English."

Worst memory was leaving to go back to Grand Rapids. But, I knew in my heart I would see Mike again. I knew that I would come back to the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Even the doorman knew I would be back (he, too, must have known love). He watched us and our magical moments, and graciously opened the door with a gleam in his eye.

I was making the transition; I was ready to drop my final "r."

The world was beautiful.

Chapter 9 - The Fifth Avenue Hotel

According to Boy: The Fifth Avenue Hotel no longer exists—at least, not under that name. At some point after Evie and I moved out of New York it was converted into very nice (read: "expensive") condominiums.
But, in 1968, the Fifth Avenue Hotel served New York University as a source of graduate housing. I suspect that the hotel was owned by the university, but I do not know that for a fact. I paid $300 per month to live there. Even by 1968 standards, that was a bargain.

The hotel was located on the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and Ninth Street, just a few short blocks north of Washington Square. I could not have hoped for a more convenient address. I could walk to my classes in about five minutes. The elevator ride from the third floor to the street took just about as long as the rest of the trek.

The rooms were small, but nicely furnished. There was a sleeping area containing twin beds, and two small desks; a small bathroom, and an even smaller kitchen. The closet was just large enough to hang a few clothes, and to store a couple suitcases. I had a roommate—Fred (not his real name), who was a graduate of Georgetown.

One of my favorite memories of all time occurred at the Fifth Avenue Hotel—that’s where I was living when Evie visited for the first time. I got her a room on one of the upper levels. We had just made love. I had never imagined anything blowing my mind like that. She knew it.

She had known for some time that I was in love with her. But after making love that day, she knew that she owned me totally—heart, mind and body.

I was sitting on the edge of the bed, still trying to get my mind wrapped around what had just happened. Evie walked out of the bathroom, and stood in front of me. She placed her right hand on my shoulder, and lifted my head up so our eyes met. "Do you love me as much as I love you?" She asked.

Evie was always a wise person. She knew the answer before she asked.

You could enter the hotel from two directions—off Ninth Street, and off Fifth Avenue. If you entered off Ninth Street, you would turn left immediately. This would take you to the elevator. There you would find one of a few ladies who served as operators. When not transferring people up or down, the operator would often be talking to the man who sold newspapers.

If you wished to use the elevator, you would simply get on, and the operator would join you (if she were not already on the elevator) and ask, "Floor please?"

"Three, please," I would respond.

She would then crank a lever, which would close the large outside door, then she would close the brass gate that was supposed to keep your fingers from getting caught in the apparatus. She would nudge another lever, which would cause the elevator to begin its journey upward.

As the elevator approached the third floor, she would slow it down, and stop it when the floor of the elevator lined up with the brass threshold at the third floor. She would then open the protective gate, and crank open the door to the third floor.

The elevator ladies at the Fifth Avenue were all very friendly and helpful. And, even when they were having a bad day, I still never opted to take the stairs.

The entry off Fifth Avenue led directly into a little bar. You could come

in that way, but to do so required walking through the bar, and out into the main hall by the front desk. Not often did I venture into the bar; but on rare occasions, I would go in and order scotch on the rocks. I didn’t really like the drink, but I had remembered seeing someone in the movies order scotch on the rocks—I thought it sounded cool.

In the evening, there would sometimes be a piano player in the bar. I might have hung out there more, if I had more money, and more time. As a student, I seldom wasted time.

One of the more vivid memories I have of the Fifth Avenue related to the little old ladies who lived on its upper floors. At the time, I thought of them as snobs. But today, I think they were just behaving in a prudent fashion. These ladies had probably lived at the hotel for twenty or more years. They lived in the very expensive suites on the upper floors. There they enjoyed the luxury of multiple rooms, balconies, and, in some cases, actual gardens. These ladies were wealthy. They had little in common with the punks and hippies who lived below them. Even though most of us were serious students, we all had a wild hair that made us "bad neighbors" in their eyes. Their aversion to us was understandable. I am ashamed of myself for doing it, but I utterly proved the correctness of that "bad neighbor" epithet before I moved out.

Toward the end of the school year my roommate and I were informed by the university that we were going to have to relocate to another residence hall—55 East Tenth Street. Neither Fred nor I were excited about doing this. We both liked the Fifth Avenue, especially compared to the Tenth Street Residence. So, we decided to engage in a rebellious act.

During our final few days, we would take the stairs to the upper levels, and steal the lamps and other furnishings in the halls. We would then bring the products of our crime back down to our room, and pack them up for the move. I think we probably stole a total of two nice lamps, and a couple fancy vases. I am sure that the statute of limitation for this crime has expired; but my conscience has not. I do regret having committed that crime.

I think we might have used the lamps at our Glendale apartment, but discarded them when we moved to East Sixth Street.

The Real Skinny: "Every generation does its own thing"

The real skinny (according to Boy): Evie must have read my chapter—she and I are on the same page on this one. The major difference between her account and mine would be her allusion to our granddaughter. That was clever and insightful. Every generation does its own thing. What seemed really cool to us in Greenwich Village, probably sounds dumb to our children, perhaps much more to our grandchildren. Change is good, for the most part. Those unwilling to embrace it become irrelevant.

Evie did take issue with my comment about my wearing Brooks Brothers suits to my job in the Diamond District. She recalled my having worn holey clothes. We are both correct.

Initially my job was working in the office, counting and weighing diamonds. Later, when I became a courier, I dressed down.

Identity Crisis According to Girl

Identity crisis according to Girl: "Hippies, beatniks, flower power children–what the heck are we?" That’s the question Mike and I repeatedly asked ourselves.
Okay, it’s true—we were totally in love with each other, with the style, the language, the new freedoms, and with the flowers. We shared the times with

VW buses, tie-dyed shirts, beads, drugs, long hair and loud music. The one part of the culture we did avoid was drugs—we never even experimented with them.

From nine to five we were normal clean cut kids. However, when the clock struck closing time, we would put on our leather sandals, holey jeans, headbands and flowers.

This past weekend, I looked closely at my granddaughter, Kendal. She just turned one, and was given her first haircut. She is beautiful. She has big brown eyes and the most adorable smile with a huge dimple in her left cheek. Her two top baby teeth are fully developed, and when she smiles, they show up with their baby wide gap. Her chubby little hands and feet just positively scream out saying "pick me up." Her new haircut is totally "Posh" (Victoria Beckham is married to one of the most famous soccer players in the world. Her nickname is Posh, meaning elegant or fashionable).

There are over twenty-three million references to the word Posh in Google. When you hear the word, you immediately think of Victoria. Well, Kendal is a baby Victoria, or a baby Posh. She has her own style, with her bobbed haircut, her beautiful smile and her crazy yummy baby ways.

She will someday be eighteen, she will find her own flowers, she will discover the world for the first time as a freshman in college, she will meet a guy, she will fall in love, and she will find her own sandy beach, spread her blanket and look for the constellations on a cloudless night.

Her little tied dyed shirt and pants, her flowered hair clip and leather sandals, so 60s, so hippie, so Posh.

I think that in eighteen more years, she may have her own special word, she may have twenty-three million results, and she may have her own jewelry line, handbags and designer jeans. Kendal might have a shop on Fifth Avenue, she might live in New York. She might find happiness in a studio on East Sixth Street.

Perhaps, after my double espresso is done, after I pack up my aircard and wifi, after I jump into our Red Camaro, I will close my eyes and remember our innocent years.

Shopping in the lofts.

Lighting incense.

Hearing the Hare Krisna’s songs in the neighborhood.

Blasting Allison Steel and her "Woodstock" rock music.

Backpacking.

Chapter 8 - Identity Crisis: Were we hippies, beatniks, flower children, or just Lenny Bruce wannabes?

According to Boy: In 1966, anticipating my move to Greenwich Village, I subscribed to The Village Voice, the avant-garde literary organ of the day. It was in the pages of The Voice that I formulated my first views of what I could look forward to. I loved every page of the tabloid.
The Voice was first published in 1955 by an unholy threesome consisting of Ed Fancher, Dan Wolf, and Norman Mailer. Not only did The Voice win three Pulitzer Prizes, it published articles by some of the day’s most prominent writers. These included Ezra Pound, Henry Miller, Barbara Garson, Katherine Anne Porter, M.S. Cone, staff writer and author James Baldwin, E.E. Cummings, Nat Hentoff, Ted Hoagland, Tom Stoppard, Lorraine Hansberry, Ron Rosenbaum, Paul Levinson, Jerry Tallmer, Allen Ginsberg, Lester Bangs, Murray Kempton, I.F. Stone, Pete Hamill, Roger Wilkins and Joshua Clover, among others.

The picture painted of the Village at that time was of a bohemian sub-culture in transition. Of course, the theater was the theater—it was what it was. But the Village was changing from the beatnik era to the hippie era; from Lenny Bruce to Bob Dylan. My problem was I did not know where I was going to fit in.

Before I even arrived in the Village, Lenny Bruce died. I had looked forward to seeing him perform, but heroin took him down before I had the opportunity.

Early on, upon first subscribing to The Voice, I thought that the whole Village was beat. That was the logical conclusion to reach, as every aspect of The Voice smacked of that mindset. Most of the articles were beat. Norman Mailer was, in my view, the consummate beatnik. Almost all of the photography and art in The Voice was highly contrasted black and white. If there was a picture of an artist, most often half of the face would be solid black, and the rest solid white.

When I finally arrived in the Village in 1968, I found it to be quite different from what I expected. There were, of course, numerous beatnik artists and musicians. But there was also another group. The members of the new one wore bright clothes—mostly tie-dyed. Like the beatniks, they sported long hair; but they liked beads and bells, and often wore flowers. Beatniks never wore flowers—I think it violated their code.

The shops in the Village often were run by beatniks, or pseudo-beatniks. They (the latter) took the look for marketing reasons. It was, however, common to find a beat artist selling his wares in some of the little shops. They were pretty easy to spot—they looked like they had just walked off a page of a 1966 Village Voice, and they always had an attitude. Also, they generally looked older than their years. I guess a constant frown (and too much heroin) ages a person.

The question I had to ask myself: "With which group was I to identify?"

I had moved to the Village wanting to be beat. But it quickly became apparent to me that the beat culture was dying out. It did not seem like a promising prospect to join that group.

So I took a long hard look at the hippies. I felt like I might fit in there. All the good little clubs, such as "The Bitter End," "The Back Fence," and "The Village Gate," were not beat. They still featured folk music, but not beat folk music. Allen Ginsberg was a bit of a transitional figure, but Bob Dylan did not in any way fit the mold of the beat generation. In no stretch of the imagination had Bob Dylan resigned himself to passivity. He was a mover and shaker. It was, after all, the era of the Vietnam War, and Martin Luther King Jr. It was an era of activism, not resignation.

"So, was I to become hippie?" I asked myself.

I liked the clothes, and the music, but I was not really interested in protest, or drugs.

Soon, the San Francisco influence began to kick in. That was the notion that love, peace and flowers would rule the day. I also liked their clothes, and started wearing the tie-dyes and ruffles. But not everything, in my eyes, was "groovy." Besides, that whole movement was heavily influenced by men such as Timothy Leary, and his drug of choice—acid.

Neither Evie nor I engaged in drug usage. True, we drank too much cheap wine. But we did not smoke Mary Jane, or drop acid. The highest we ever got was from smelling the fumes of the cheap paint our landlady gave us to paint apartments.

We were definitely challenged, tugged from all directions. There were attractive aspects associated with all the countercultures. However, none pulled hard enough on us to entirely win us over.

By 1970 we had made up our mind to simply do our own thing. We would dress up on a Friday night and go out to one of the best restaurants in New York. On Saturday, we would become hippies and wander the streets of the Village. On Saturday night we would burn incense and make love all night long on our water bed.

Then, on Monday morning, I would put on my Brooks Brothers suit, and trot off to work in the Diamond District; while Evie would dress up in her "conservative" mini-skirt, and report for work at the bank.

While we did assume several different personas in New York, we were not suffering an identity crisis. We knew all the time exactly who we were, and were each comfortable in our skin.

The Real Skinny: "Gone forever (maybe not)"

The real skinny (according to Girl): The Box Tops was one of our favorite groups, and their recording ("The Letter") was their best song. Mike is right that our letters are apparently lost. That’s a shame—all those pink-scented letters, with puffy painted flowers. Gone forever (maybe not).