If you're seeing a deer-caught-in-the-headlights expression below, you're right. After life as a pretty big fish in the tiny pond of Andress High School, I landed at Columbia University in 1971, just in time to catch the tail end of the student protest movement. Most of the following photos were taken in my junior and senior years, after my parents gave me my first single reflex camera, a Yashica.
Sam, a real New York character, tried to sell his distinctive art work to students come rain or shine.
Ken and Mary had driven me cross country. "For a nickel I'd take him right back home," Mary cried on West 114th Street. They'd just gotten me settled in Carman, a freshman dorm where I shared a room with a Jewish radical from Virginia Beach who lit up a joint and offered me a toke as soon as my parents drove away. "Uh, that's okay," I demurred. "My father is in law enforcement."
That reluctance disappeared almost as soon as he did; Tom, a fencer from Passaic, moved into the space he vacated and a lifelong friendship began, smoking weed for the first time together and listening to records, mostly Bowie.
Junior year, I developed a crush on Audrey in our American Lit class and introduced Tom to his future wife.
A win-win: they and their children became my chosen family.
Tom and I held our class banner when Magda, his daughter graduated from Columbia in 2008, 33 years after we first shared a room.
Of course Audrey, a Barnard alumnus, was there too. Columbia hadn't yet gone coed when we met.
It's amazing how something as random as proximity determines so many of your friendships. Fortunately, 9 Carmen, where I lived for two years was populated with smarter and more ambitious people than my buddies on 9912 Collette, even if a few of my fellow Lions walked around with their SAT scores tattooed on their foreheads. Academically, I felt out of my depth and attributed my admission to declining enrollment after the 1968 student riots, a geographical quota fulfilled by a very sheltered kid from Texas and the fact that New York City's reputation scared the shit out of most parents.
Jeff, who wore a yarmulke, became my roommate sophomore year when Tom scored a single in John Jay. Pre-med (and a slob!) he had spent his freshman year commuting from an enormous rent-controlled apartment on Riverside Drive at West 92nd Street. His German parents had fled the Nazis. Jeff took me home for shabbas dinner and introduced me to gefilte fish, Jewish culture and a spoiled beagle named Kimmy. Joyce, his Barnard girlfriend, and I tried to see Bruce Springsteen at the Bottom Line the summer after I graduated.
John, a freshman from New Rochelle, and Marian, who barely attended Marymount, set up house in the dorm.
Like almost everyone pictured here, they frequently congregated in my room when I played DJ. I still have that Marantz receiver.
John also had a car. He and Marian, more than anyone, introduced me to New York beyond Morningside Heights, including Jones Beach and the Winged Foot Golf Club (where they married), and its lore ("E.J. Korvettes stands for eight Jewish Korean war vets."). I lost touch with John after he pursued a medical degree in Guadalajara but we re-connected decades later when Columbia College Today, our alumni magazine, ran a note about my life-long friendship with Tom and Audrey, and our continuing passion for Bowie. It turns out John, now a cardiologist who lives in Princeton, completed his residency at St. Vincent's Hospital during the early days of the AIDS epidemic in New York City.
Paul, a hockey player and a rabid sports fan like Jeff, always marched to his own drummer which meant he didn't worship Bowie like the rest of us or smoke weed. He did, however, have a barking laugh and occasionally banged his head against cinderblock wall just because he could. We took a wilderness vacation in Maine with a couple of other guys the summer before our senior year.
In this photo, Paul's holding another friend of ours, Henry, whose face is obscured by a mask that Tom, Audrey and I picked up when we went to see the original Broadway production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Despite Tim Curry's amazing charisma, it ran for only 45 performances!
Henry became part of our circle when we all moved to 9 Jay, where he was the resident Rolling Stones fanboy. He now runs Maison Maurice, a jewelry store established by his father on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach. I paid him a surprise visit there shortly before the pandemic.
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| Jeff, right, with Stormin' Norman |
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| Jeff, Crashing after Cramming |
Bob, who grew up in Queens and played basketball, sported an Jewfro. He actually had a career in publishing, a dream I gave up within in a few years of graduation after publicizing one too many awful books. Disaster Illustrated, anyone? It's probably a good thing he didn't run for public office. Note the Diamond Dogs album cover behind him. I'm pretty sure most of the gang saw that tour at Madison Square Garden.
According to a hand scrawled note on the back of this photo, I drove to Texas with Gavin in a 1971 Thunderbird. We dropped Henry in Atlanta. I have absolutely no recollection of this trip. Weird!
When I wasn't studying or listening to music, I worked at the Butler Library with an impressively diverse group, perhaps because we had to earn our keep. I've forgotten all but a couple of their names but I remember how thrilled we were when the library's chief introduced us to Dustin Hoffman, his son-in-law. That was a BIG deal just a few years after The Graduate.
Jim, a black gay man who hated having his picture taken, supervised us directly. He also gently "brought me out", introducing me to disco and the Ramble without ever behaving inappropriately, although in retrospect I suspect he may have had a crush on me. We drifted apart after I met David and Jim moved back to Alabama to get sober.
Senior year proved turbulent. The summer before I stayed in New York and hooked up with a library employee who invited me to his apartment, ostensibly to read an interview with William Burroughs in the Gay Sunshine Press. Mary died shortly after I met Stuart, a 37-year-old child psychologist on the subway when I was returning home with the gang from The Harder They Come, the midnight movie at the Elgin Theater. He discreetly showed me his business card and I looked him up in the phone book the next morning. "I thought you'd call last night," he teased. Stuart was more into Bette Midler than Jimmy Cliff. He took me to see Clams on the Half Shell. I wanted so badly to tell Mary about it. None of my friends ever met Stuart even though we lived together for a few months.
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| Philadelphia 1975 |
Graduation Day couldn't come too soon for me. Ken drove up from El Paso to capture this "face in the crowd."
Jeff and Joyce got married a couple of years later at the Plaza Hotel.
Paul and I were two-toned groomsmen.
The newlyweds moved to Philadelphia where Jeff established a gastroenterology practice. Jeff and Joyce have three daughters. All their names begin with "J" and they're all married. Jeff continues to teach me about Jewish culture, too. After his oldest daughter and her wife gave birth to his first grandchild in 2019, I attended Leo's bris.
Paul went to law school in San Franciso where he met his wife. They had two sons before divorcing, but Paul beat Jeff in the grandpa sweepstakes. Ben and his wife have two daughters. Bella is the eldest. Paul, now semi-retired, and I go to the theater occasionally. We see each other in Florida, too.
Bob lives in Green Acres (really!), not far from the Folly. I had dinner with him and his wife not long after buying the Folly, and met two of his children when I saw his daughter play Sophie Scholl in a production of We Will Not Be Silent at Florida Atlantic University. Last time I heard, he still worked in publishing.
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| Heidi & Bob (2016) |
Jeff and Paul kept in closest touch through the years. Once they began to have families, I grew increasingly distant as a semi-closeted gay man with other fish to fry. Our lives diverged pretty significantly, especially after I established a new circle of friends through the Pines. College kids today are lucky now that society has become more accepting of differing sexual identities. They're able to lead much more integrated lives even if it's harder to remember your pronouns!
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| Jeff & Paul, Yankees Fans |
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