My Adventures in Boston: 1982

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tale's beginning

1981

1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

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My Adventures in Boston: 1982

Boston, Early Summer

Brian Barrick (Ohio), Ed Greenberg (Florida), and Keith Brown (Texas), and I have gotten to know and like each other during marathon sessions in the dismal basement computing center. After our freshman year together we've decided to rent an apartment together just off campus.

A few days after school has let out I'm wandering about with the Boston Globe in hand. I've really had it with using the paper as a guide to apartments: by the time I get there it's either rented or condemned. I bumped into Juan Collas on the St. Mary's bridge and got his hand-written list of realtors. He just got a place and doesn't need the list any more. Some of the realtors aren't in, others specialize in either slums or palaces. One of the realtors, Ed Zelinski, shows me an apartment at 829 Beacon Street, a five-story white brick building separated from the Boston Red Sox's Fenway Park only by a parking lot. It looks good; I call my roommates-to-be at their homes. After getting their approval I forge their three signatures on the rental contract.

The apartment building right behind the B.U. campus, a minute away from Kenmore Square and three subway lines, by Fenway Park and the many bars that cluster around the arena. Hardwood floors, lots of shelves in the kitchen, and enough rooms for the four of us. Dad said he'd send the deposit cheque, and so I'm going to ROTC Officer's Advanced Training with a happy heart; it'll be great having a place to come back to in the fall.

Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Summer

The summer before my sophomore year I spend at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, at the ROTC Officer Candidate Advanced Camp. (Someday I'll collect my notes from those weeks....)

Boston, 7 September

Because I've returned to Boston first I get the dubious honor of finding an apartment for us. I'm looking at apartments again because Dad didn't send the deposit cheque as promised (presumably as a gesture of control). The apartment situation is rather more bleak now. Lots of the good stuff has been taken. I've tried Ed Zelinsky again; he thinks that he might have another apartment in the same building.

My "buzz" haircut - a legacy from a military stint of service - is beginning to grow out. It's almost a quarter-inch long!

8 September

Circumstances change; now only Keith can come up with the money. I pick a fourth-floor one-bedroom flat in the same building as our former apartment: 829 Beacon Street, Apt. 20. Our kitchen is small, with many cupboards. The bathroom has an eagle-claw tub, those wonderful huge bathtubs made of wrought iron. Infinitely superior to a ceramic tub.

I'll be using the living room; Keith, the bedroom. Our kitchen and bathroom have a nice view of Kenmore Square, my room overlooks Fenway Park and the Harvard Community Health Plan building. The "green line" of the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority subway, the "T", runs on both sides of the apartment: the Boston College 'C' Beacon Street line in front, the 'D' Riverside line behind.

Last night I dreamt that the Zelinsky Brothers tried to rent us a train boxcar with electrical outlets only on the outside. Keith and I had to lean out of the windows to plug our things in. I've mentioned this to Ed as he does our paperwork; he laughed and said that if he knew of such a place he'd be game to try to rent it. Confirms my impressions of realtors in general.

Keith'll be flying in tonight for tomorrow's start of classes. Sitting in an empty apartment still isn't a lot of fun for me. I picked Brian up from his dorm room on the way to the computing center, the "CC". No time like the present to get started on this year's hacking, find out who's there, and hear stories about everyone's summer. Even before noon it's crowded! I thought that nobody'd be there until after classes started, but I forgot how the engineering students are treated by their professors. They got assignments during the summer and they're completely clogging up our machine with legitimate work. The nerve!

We join up with Brian Gardner, already working at the central cluster of IBM 3278 "green screens." (There are three kinds of terminals in the CC: the new 3278s, a few old ADM-3a video terminals, and many of the even older typewriter-style DECwriter IIIs scrolling miles of paper onto the floors.) Tyros wait in line for half an hour for the obsolete terminals rather than try the state-of-the-art intimidating huge green monitors. Not that I'm complaining; I'd never get any work done if I had to share. It's like having reserved seating.

[The computer center and the social milleau is described by the Wall Street Journal in an article entitled Knowing a Computer Can Be Fastest Way To a Woman's Heart: The New Big Men on Campus Find Technical Wizardry Is Quicker Than Liquor.]

With a Brian on each side of me I begin to set up my accounts and see who's logged onto the system. In the corner of my eye I spy a shock of red hair. Barrick and I call out "Ellen" at the same time, but it's not Ellen Harris, our classmate. Instead, it's a stunning, petite girl, with shimmering shoulder-length hair, a nice smile, and a clear laugh.

Only clichés adequately describe my feelings: I couldn't take my eyes from her, love at first sight, my knees went weak, I felt giddy, never before. When she and her friend sit down at a terminal and log on I fire up fsmap, a program that Ed and I (mostly Ed) had hacked together last year for just such an occasion. A birds-eye schematic of the terminals in the CC appeared on my screen along with the account logged into each terminal.

I'm able to find out her all-important personal identifier code. It's "ahi." Mine's "eok." Can I get her to talk to me? What if she doesn't like me? I send her one-line messages, which pop up on her screen in the middle of her work. ("ek221ahi" means "student with the ID 'ahi' in class 'ek221' - engineering 221.)

/msg ek221ahi "Ho ho ho, your fingers are tickling my keyboard!"
/msg ek221ahi "Mmmmmmmmm.  That feels nice."
/msg ek221ahi "Do you know how to reply?"

Brian Gardner returns a favor and explainn to her what's going on and how to reply. The CC regulars do this for each other, or we'd never meet anybody. Her name is Patricia V., she lives in Myles Standish Hall, in nearby Kenmore Square. Her friend, MaryJo "MJ" Santiago, gave me Patty's phone number. I told MJ that I wanted to take photos of Patty. I didn't tell MJ that I wanted to take Patty away, off into the sunset.

9 September

By accident I met Patty and MJ in Kenmore Square today, outside of Agean Fare, a Greek restaurant. In the bright sunlight her hair is overwhelming, the red takes my breath away. I can't get Patty out of my mind, and I don't know her at all. Lying in bed last night I thought of her: I can't visualize the face but I know that the top of her head doesn't quite reach to my collarbone (she's about five feet tall). When I close my eyes I can conjure up the color of her hair. I think of her all the time, which is strange because we've only met twice, for a total of ten minutes. We've spoken, but I can't remember what we said. I think we agreed to meet. She smiled at me.

30 September

I watch a new TV show about life in a Boston Bar named Cheers. It's really the Bull & Finch, at the north-west corner of the Public Gardens, sort of between the Esplanade and Charles Street. The real place is nothing like the polished upscale TV bar, save the most rough layout.

Early October

Patty came over to my apartment for dinner tonight. The breeze was blowing through the open windows; the fourth floor isn't a bad place to be. The walk from Patty's dorm to my apartment takes less than five minutes. Patty was looking out of the window at Fenway Park while I stood above and behind her, my body enveloping hers, the smell of her hair captivating me.

She's got the nicest smell, like nothing I've smelled before, but it makes my knees weak. Since Ed Shamsi (our landlord) is remodeling our kitchen and putting in a sink, Keith and I have been washing dishes in the bathtub. Try to find that in any classy magazine. While I was washing the dinner plates in the tub Patty fell asleep on my bed. I sat next to her, stroking her hair. I'm very confused by my feelings of protectiveness for this person, who I barely know. I feel silly writing this, but I feel very differently about Patty than any of the girls I dated last year; could this be serious? How will I know?

November

I finally see where Patty and her roommates live. High above Kenmore Square they share three bedrooms and a common bathroom. Patty and MJ share the largest bedroom. Janice, an upperclasswoman, is about to get three degrees concurrently: physics, computer engineering, and electrical engineering. Their fourth roommate left, leaving an empty room for Patty and I to grow closer in. (Apologies to Heinlein.) For some reason it's called the "schnake room," and necking is therefore called "schnaking."

When I kiss Patty two things happen: (1) the delightful smell of her fills my senses and obscures the outside world, all I think of is her and our kissing, and (2) she says that her "toes curl." Could this be a good sign? We're spending a lot of time in the "schnake room."

Even though we're both swamped with classes we see a lot of each other. Almost every day, I think. She's busy with her engineering homework and I spend most of each day at the CC. Patty is tutoring me in calculus, something that stupefies me. Patty is working at the student union pizza and hamburger shop, the Turtle Express. Every evening I walk the two blocks to watch Patty and MJ clean up shop and drop the awning onto the counter-top. Then I walk Patty home.

Early on, Keith and I made an arrangement to alternate cooking each day. Who doesn't cook cleans. I've been subjected to a lot of Tex-Mex cooking, all of which I love except the jalepeño peppers that Keith eats from a jar. I'm still a gringo.

Patty and I spend most of our alone time walking through Boston, along the Charles River, and through the Boston Commons and Public Gardens. As it gets colder outside we spend more time in the schnake room, where we have more privacy than in my apartment. Our time together invariably has lots of curling toes. I'm often reminded of moths, who are said to be able to detect their mate's smell a mile away: the smell of Patty's hair puts me into a very pleasant fog. I'm completely drawn into the experience-at the expense of the outside world. It's scary.

Late December

It's close to my nineteenth birthday, I just held my first collegiate party. Our kitchen sink has finally been installed, so we're able to fill the bathtub with ice and cases of St. Pauli Girl, Heineken, and Porter Anchor beer. (This party will set me back a bit.) I've invited friends from the CC. Gil Nardo has been working all afternoon on the punch bowl brewing a particularly nasty screwdriver. He's been rooting through my liquor cabinet for anything he could throw into it.

The party was sedate until Patty and her roommates showed up wearing terribly little clothing; the appropriate costume for their beach-in-December dorm party, which, of course, was scheduled for the same day as my party. The party was revived and bubbled on until early morning. Gil predictably returned all the alcohol he's consumed (but he did clean up after himself). Adding a twist to the evening, Brian Barrick disappeared for several days. He says he doesn't remember what happened or where he went, only that he remembers something about huddling in an underpass. His blue down jacket is all dirty and tattered; we can only wonder.

Christmas Day

I'm in the Canary Islands. It's like a dream, the weather's been wonderful. Each day the hot tropical sun burns down and the salt-and-pepper sand (from volcanic activity). The palms sway in the gentle breeze day and night. I spent some time yesterday in the orchards, walking among banana and lemon trees; the smell permeates the entire fields. I had some freshly-picked pineapples and coconut milk; the coconut meat is saved for later.

I've been checking my watch repeatedly to get the time just right: I'm five hours ahead of Patty, who's in Canton, Massachusetts. B.U. throws all the students out of the dorms for the duration of winter break. At 5:00 pm this afternoon I picked up the telephone in the lobby of Atlantis Uno, the condominium where my grandmother lives in the winter, and called the Madrid operator to place a call to Los Estados Unidos. It's noon on a white Christmas when Patty answered a phone call from a little island a quarter of the way around the world, less than seventy miles from Africa. I spoke to Patty as her family was in the midst of the commotion common to all large family get-togethers. Christmas dinner was soon to be on the table. Her voice was soothing, enticing, and tinny, across a primitive telephone connection. I miss her very much, and I wish she was here with me.

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