“City College Days and Nights”

Ronnie DeNota, NYC artist, Boats at City Island

Saturday, 8:26 am, 12/15/07

“City College Days and Nights”

Well it is cold as a witch's teat but our beauty is back. The sun returned and brought all the color with it. Our sky is so blue, our leaves are so green, the sunlight is so yellow. I am thrilled and overjoyed to have our beauty back.

“Cold as a witch's teat” is an expression I only heard one time, by a girl at City College, when the expression really fit. I mean it was one of those sub-freezing days, probably in single digits, and we were all high up at City College, high up above the river, where it is even much more colder. It may have been my second year at City College, which was my third year at college, because I had transferred from Antioch. And I had somehow wound up in this crowd, and the girl who said it was the center of the crowd.

I belonged to a lot of crowds at City College, either simultaneously or one after the other. And I never fit into any of the crowds. In cafeteria I sat with the kids who had been at Jamaica High School with me, and that was the closest I came to being with familiar people. They hadn’t been my own friends there, but they were either the sister or friend of my own friends, they were familiar. But everyone else I was friends with lived in Manhattan, near City College. And this crowd I was in, were living in Manhattan, near City College. We went to each other’s houses for parties, to dance, and since I didn’t know any of the new dances then, I would sit there and watch them all dance.

My first year at City College I became friends with Lisa Goldsmith, who lived on Broadway, maybe in the high 80s. She was a warm wonderful girl and I enjoyed my friendship with her. But she got a job at the Figaro in Greenwich Village, that is a coffee house, working in the evenings. Plus she suddenly switched over to wanting to do very well in school, she had been lackadaisical student before that. And between her job, where she made a lot of money, and studying all the time, she never had time for our friendship. I had to let her go. And it seems to me in my last year I became friends with a girl named Nadia, who had auburn hair, and had a job too. I forgot what it was called where you put in computer cards, before everything was on disk. She had time to be friends with me, and it was a lovely friendship.

And some time in the middle I became best friends with Diana Shay. I met her because a boy I had been to camp with, who wound up at City College, was in love with her. She didn’t stay with him, but in the course of it, I met her. And we became best friends, and that was a glorious friendship for me. I went to her house all the time after school, she lived on West End Avenue with her parents. And we had lunch in restaurants together. Eggplant parmesan in the Italian restaurant, and chicken paprika in the Hungarian restaurant. We both loved to eat, and we ate out all the time together. She was tremendous fun. And that friendship ended when she went off to Paris for her junior year. I would read her letters in science class. She loved Paris and was having a great time. Before Diana I had a brief friendship with Lydia, who I think came from Colombia, I knew she spoke Spanish. I liked her a lot, but somehow the friendship didn’t take off.

During the time I didn’t have a best friend to be friends with I hung out with a crowd. We would go back to someone’s house after school, and they would all dance and I would watch. Diana did finally teach me all the new dances, the frug and the shimmy, and something else, but by that time the era of dancing at everyone’s house had ended.

I don’t know who was in that crowd that I spent so much time with. Except I remember the girl who said “it is cold as witch's teat” seemed to be the center of it. Everyone in it was very Manhattan and seemed sophisticated to me. By sophisticated I mean spoke a whole lingo I didn’t know. I never knew where they were at, they never knew where I was at, but they were who I hung with. I don’t even know how I met them and got to join the crowd.

I must have been with them at a party at someone’s house at night when Tony and Louise and Eddie showed up. Someone there must have known them. Louise and Eddie must have gone to City College themselves at one time and knew everyone in that crowd, and Tony worked in the music department and was their friend too. I went home that night with Tony. And for a few months he was my boyfriend. He was the only boyfriend I had during that whole era, the era of sharing an apt near City College, and going to CCNY and being in that crowd. And it’s possible, looking back on it now, that the whole purpose of me winding up in that crowd was so I could meet Tony. We had nothing in common. He was an avante garde dancer with Judson Dancers down in Greenwich Village. And he lived in a tenement apartment way in the back behind Macy’s, and had a whole life in the Village. And was macrobiotic, and learning Akido, and sold some pot. He belonged to a world I got to know much much later when I lived in the East Village myself, where everyone is macrobiotic and taking Akido and selling some pot and went to avante garde events at the Judson Church regularly. But it was a world very very far away from me when I was 19 years old and just an earnest college student. Tony’s language was also peppered with the hip slang everyone used later, but he was the first person I ever heard to use any of those expressions and I would try to figure out what they meant. I had a huge crush on Tony and took it very hard when he ditched me for my roommate. In fact that precipitated me moving back home to Flushing.

Back home with my family in Flushing, life got more normal. I commuted to City College on the subways. After college I went to the Columbia library to study. And somewhere along the line I became the girlfriend of George. I had met him first at City College when Linda Webber was dating him. I met him again at protest rally at Madison Square Garden, Linda had broken up with him and he was there with his friend. Since he lived in Jamaica and I lived in Flushing, we all took the subway home together. I wonder if this was during the summer, when I was a camp counselor and had come in for my day off. I remember he came up to visit at the camp on one of my days off. And then when I returned to the city we were boyfriend and girlfriend for a lot of that year.

He was going to the high school downtown for evening classes to get his high school diploma. I think he worked in the fur district during the day. George made a big secret about everything, so I don’t remember when he worked in the fur district or when he changed jobs to be counterman at Greek restaurant. He would work during the day, go to Washington Irving High School in the evening, and then pick me up at the Columbia library and we would take the subway back home to Queens together. He would get out at my stop and wait with me for my bus to come.

He was living with his parents in Jamaica and I was living with my family in Flushing. It was a very calm time in my life and I needed it, there had been so much chaos during my Manhattan sojourn. I wasn’t in love with George but I liked him, we got along very well. He was warm and friendly and outgoing and affectionate, and a little crazy, he could get so emotional. Which is a type I like. I know I always fell for “sensitive but misunderstood,” but if they turn out to be like Tony, who always seemed so cold and foreign and different from me, it never works. I am just tongue tied. If they turn out to be warm and friendly and emotional, it works. I’m willing to put up with emotions. George was a little bit too much the other extreme from Tony. I was too intellectual to stay with George. But what a happy time I had the whole time we were boyfriend and girlfriend! He gave me just what I needed then, a warm happy life.

But I dropped him without a moment’s thought when Kenny got back from Italy and called me up at my parent’s house and said “let’s share an apartment in the East Village together.”

There must be some way to take away guilt. Why should it be such a crime that Tony, who didn’t particularly like me, went for my roommate Muffin in a huge big way. In fact they wound up living together in Soho the same time I was living with Kenny. Maybe I was the interlude in Tony’s life which brought him to Muffin, he wouldn’t have met Muffin without me. And Muffin was the right girl for him, not me. And to be honest, how could Tony have been the right guy for me, I was always tongue-tied with him. He brought into my life some wonderful new experiences (he taught me to waltz and I loved that) and I am grateful for those experiences.


Maybe the secret to letting go of Tony, not holding it against him that he jilted me, would be to believe in my heart of hearts, that despite my intense desire for him, it was a relationship which wasn’t working, it was just bringing me frustration. And maybe the wise part of my soul ended it this way, to set me free for new experiences. I would have to admit I wanted it to end, which is something I have never been willing to admit. But of course looking back on it, seeing the whole picture from a distance, seeing it in retrospect, it goes without saying of course the relationship had to end, and to end at that time. It wasn’t going anywhere, it was consuming my life. And by ending it, new life adventure and opportunities and experiences opened up for me. So strictly speaking Tony did me the favor by breaking up with me and going for my roommate instead, since I never would have done it on my own and it had to be done.

Jilting George for Kenny. George didn’t accept it. But of course I had a right to have new experiences and adventures in life. And George is a wonderful guy, with a lot to offer any girl. I am sure he found a new girl that he made very happy. And it’s possible this girl found George a more fulfilling boyfriend than I did. Linda Webber, the girlfriend who had preceded me, had been very serious about George. He told me she was always looking in the newspaper to find an apt to rent for them to live together. Whereas I was perfectly content with the relationship just the way it was. He’d pick me up at the Columbia library, carry my books. We’d get off the subway at Forest Hills. Cross that huge boulevard to Greek diner. I would get coffee and blueberry muffin. And then George would wait with me for the bus.

And George was content with it too. When I broke up with him he said “you mean I won’t be able to carry your books any longer…”