Nancy Cantor

GALLERY FLOWERS Layla Edwards

Thursday, Thanksgiving, November 23, 2006

I dreamt about Nancy Cantor all night. She was my first friend after college. I graduated college in August. I had to spend that extra summer studying for the finals I had not taken during finals week in June and doing term papers. It was a wild summer, the “Summer of Love”. And I had sublet an apartment for the summer on the corner of St Marks Place. My friend from college, Francine, roomed with me. I was stoned the whole summer and do not know how I managed to take those finals and write those papers. But by end of summer I did, and I got my degree. And then immediately found a job at The Riverdale Children’s Agency.

I had gone down for that job because the year before Wendy had worked there. Sometimes I would meet her in Central Park during her lunch hour, right by the Agency, it was at 79th and Madison Avenue. Because Wendy worked there I thought it would be a nice place to work. So I interviewed and they hired me. The woman in charge, Mrs. Streeter, liked me in the interview and hired me. Olive Streeter, the name comes back to me now.

The weekend before I was going to start work, a friend I had been a camp counselor with 3 summers before, invited me to go swimming in Rye, New York, where his parents had their home and where he was staying for the summer. He picked me up in his car at St Marks Place and First Avenue, and I must have worn my bikini under my sundress, because I remember taking off my dress in the car to show him my new bikini (it was my first bikini) and he said “will it stay up?”

Ken-- his name was Ken-- Ken Adler. I always felt very close to him because one of the times when he had invited me to his parents’ house in Rye so I could swim in the bay there, we had been swimming and he said “Anne I have a cramp in my leg, I can’t make it back to shore.” And I said “put your hands on my shoulders, I’ll swim under you and swim you back to shore,” which I did. At dinner that night he told his parents, “Anne saved me, she rescued me in the water.” And they said “O really” and the conversation moved on. For all the huge drama which goes on in learning how to be a junior life saver when I was 11 years old, all the huge dramatic rescues I did when we took turns playing the victim, the one actual rescue I did was the quietest simplest thing which ever happened. I swam him to shore, he said “thank you,” he told his parents at dinner, and it was clear nobody believed us, and that was that.

On my previous visits I had stayed in his big sister’s room and it was a beautiful room. Their whole house was a mansion, which made visiting there so much fun for me. I loved swimming in the bay, I liked Ken Adler a lot, and I found it a lot of fun to stay in a mansion, and in the bedroom of this princess sister, it was a bedroom for a princess.

This was the last time I visited there. And on my last day the Princess herself arrived. I finally got to meet her, Margie Adler. And when Ken drove me back to the city, Margie was in the car with us. And when I mentioned I start work the next day at Riverdale Children’s Agency, Margie turned to her brother and said “Isn’t that where Nancy Cantor works?” Apparently a friend of Margie’s named Nancy Cantor worked there and I got so excited.

I was thrilled with the fairy tale princess Margie. I barely knew her, just that car ride back to the city, but I had stayed in her princess bedroom 3 times. In my mind she was Princess Charming. So naturally I saw Nancy Cantor as an extension of her, it was the next best thing to being friends with Margie.

When I arrived the first morning I asked the girl at reception where you check in, “is Nancy Cantor here?” And she said “Nancy is on vacation, she will be back in a week.” And I waited the whole week, and then sat by reception when the week was over, to wait for Nancy. Each woman who arrived, I thought “is that Nancy?” Finally one woman arrived and the woman at reception said “that is Nancy Cantor.” So I followed her up the steps, and said, “I am a friend of Margie Adler's, she told me you work here.” Nancy said “I just got back from Nantucket, I rode my bicycle everywhere, I am lost without my bicycle.” That was our first conversation.

Nancy says now she tried to give me the brush-off because I had said I was friend of Margie Adler’s and she couldn’t stand Margie Adler. But I had waited a whole week to meet Nancy, I wanted to be friends with her, I did not notice her attempts at brush-off. Yes she seemed a little aloof, but I didn’t know her then, whatever aloof things she did I assumed was part of how she was. It never crossed my mind I was being brushed off. I said “let’s have lunch together.”

Nancy took me to the Madison Avenue Pub which I loved. I had never eaten in a place like that before, I felt so sophisticated. The cheeseburger was scrumptious. And Nancy told me she lived a block away. She had a small apartment in a brownstone around the corner from Madison Avenue. Over lunch we totally hit it off. And Nancy and I remain best friends to this day.

Sometimes I had lunch with all the other girls who worked there, which was a lot of fun. I liked the place we all had lunch in, I would order a chocolate egg cream or vanilla egg cream with my lunch, and I loved all the girls, they were great. One of them even turned out to be the big sister of a girl who had been in the clique way back at camp. She was a very pretty girl and very popular girl. Even tho a beautiful Polynesian princess looking girl was the head of the clique, the boys actually chose Phyllis. They were all in love with Phyllis. And Ellen turned out to be Phyllis’ big sister. Altho Phyllis was tall and Ellen was short. Ellen was also very pretty.

Ellen and I must have gone somewhere together at night, and we must have been stoned. Because I remember being in a car with her on 14th Street and I said to her “are you stoned?” And she said “why, am I driving badly?” and I thought, ‘How do I know how someone is driving,’ it never occurred to me to pay attention. I felt close to Ellen because if her sister had been in socialist camp with me it meant her parents were like my parents. Also I felt close to Ellen because she told me her boyfriend used to be Melvyn Margolies. Melvyn Margolies was such a complete and total wild man, that even tho Ellen seemed so lovely so pretty, so elegant, so classy, how could she not be a fun natural girl with a boyfriend like that. It was impossible for me to picture them together. I could not see how any girl would go for Melvyn, he was way too wild.

There was another girl who worked there that I liked a lot. She was a blond. She also lived in the area. And during her lunch hour she would go home to walk and feed and pet her huge German shepherd and I went with her. She was devoted to her dog. She was such a nice girl.

I had a great time when we all went out to lunch together, but as soon as I became best friends with Nancy she and I went to Madison Pub together for cheeseburgers and talked. She liked me very much and invited me to her house around the corner, and soon we had sleepovers. I invited her to my apartment in the East Village and I took her to everything I went to. I took her to an early women’s liberation meeting but that didn’t work for Nancy. But I took her to The Pageant Players loft to watch them perform, and also to go to their workshops on Wednesday evenings. And she loved The Pageant Players.

We’d go back to my apartment after work. I’d take her to B&H, she loved the food. Then I would put on an outfit and get stoned, Nancy didn’t smoke pot. And we’d take the bus to the Pageant Players loft on East Broadway. I remember once getting stoned with Nancy and seeing her with new eyes. “You pretend to be a Jewish social worker” I told her “but really you are Sophia Loren, an Italian actress.” Which was astute of me, Nancy was a beautiful actress, and she is the most dramatic girl I ever met, she is thrilling.

Nancy loved the Pageant Players, and once she brought along her friend from Boston College or from Berkeley, Nancy had gone to both colleges. Her friend critiqued The Pageant Players, “the girls are not good but the boys are great.” I was surprised at the critique because in my mind the Pageant Players were above criticism, they were a glorious amazing experience. Nancy’s friend was like Nancy, and not a little hippie chick like me. She was even more stolid than Nancy. Nancy’s stolidness was just a façade, underneath the girl was wild, just as wild as me, but her friend was not.

The first time I took Nancy to Pageant Players she had not known about the 7 flights you have to climb up to get to the loft, and they are long flights. But the next time she remembered. We stood at the bottom of the steps and she said “I’m not climbing up all those steps.” She refused to budge. I did not know what to do. However I was very stoned. I said “Nancy, they moved down to the loft one flight below, it is not such a long climb.” So she said “OK.” And when we reached the loft she said, “it’s amazing, that one flight makes a big difference.” And I said “they did not move, I made it up.”

Getting Nancy to leave for the Pageant Players wasn’t that easy either. She had her supper at B&H and for dessert she ordered noodle pudding. When it was time to go to East Broadway, Nancy would say “I cannot move! O that noodle pudding!” I was high as a kite and said “that’s OK Nancy, I’ll just ring for the elevator.” Which got her up in a flash, since I lived in a tiny walk-up and there was no elevator.

After we had been friends for a year Nancy said “I have discovered liberation, I stopped wearing my girdle.” And I giggled to myself, because of course by this time I had stopped wearing a bra, I couldn’t imagine Nancy had been wearing a girdle all this time. Who wears a girdle!

I loved sleeping over at Nancy’s house. She would get out negligees for us to sleep in. It was my first negligee, it was so much fun to wear a negligee. And she would make Rice Crispies with milk and sliced bananas for breakfast which I loved. And one time her old boyfriend from college visited and she cooked us roast lamb. I always had delicious food with Nancy. She took me to the Jewish Institute which was a few blocks from where we worked, and we would have delicious lunches there too. And it was Nancy who introduced me to Ideal Coffee Shop, which was a German restaurant on York Avenue, not far from where she lived. I never had German food before, it was so delicious.

The great thing about Nancy is she was always game, and we had great times together. When women’s liberation was invited to a fancy banquet in the art museum in Philadelphia, I went with Jeannie and Ti-Grace Atkinson, and I took Nancy. We met at Grand Central Station and we were late for the train. I charged down the steps and when I turned around to look for Nancy, I was appalled to see her slowly sailing down on the escalator. When she finally reached bottom she said “O Annie you flew! You should have seen your face when you saw me on the escalator.” Nancy had zero interest in women’s liberation but she loved adventure. Jeannie and Ti-Grace talked women’s liberation politics the whole train ride, but Nancy’s comment was about Ti-Grace. “She wears tiger-striped print dress, very low cut, over left breast she wears button ‘Feminism’ and her name is Ti-Grace which sounds like tigress. It is extremely provocative and seductive.”

Eventually Nancy and I switched places. Bill and I got together and we settled down in an East Village apartment, and had a fairly straight life. I was working part-time as Wall Street secretary, he was working as Wall Street messenger and going to school. And Nancy took off for California. Where she joined the “Yea God” group and was on the Yea God love bus. She met Jim Fine on the Yea God love bus. They became boyfriend and girlfriend, and when they got to NYC, they came over to our apartment. And Bill got to meet Nancy and I got to meet Jim Fine.

After that Nancy was rolling stone. She joined another type of Yea God group, which would sit on the pavement on corner of 86th Street and Central Park West with a guru in the middle. And she followed the guru to Ithaca and lived with that group. When she got back to New York City she had a boyfriend from that group, Alan Zeigler, who was also an extremely nice guy. Her boyfriends were all such nice people, I remain friends with Jim Fine and Alan Zeigler to this day.

Then she moved to Puerto Rico and lived with a fisherman there named Edison for a few years. Came back to NYC, went up to Ithaca again to be with that group. That must have been when she returned with Alan. They both dropped out of that group at the same time, and they got an apartment in Brooklyn together. Then Alan moved out and Nancy joined straight life again. She became an artist, she went back to work as a social worker, she adopted her lovely daughter.

I guess Nancy and I just had our ‘60s experiences at different times. Altho she went much further out than I did. All I ever really did was smoke pot, and go to the Pageant Players workshops. I never played volleyball with the Moonies in Berkeley like Nancy did.