Airports, Hotels, and Grass

• One Friday night Jeff and I took an unplanned trip to Las Vegas. I took a dugout with some grass, leaving the pipe behind so I didn't have to worry about metal detectors. We would get some rolling papers in Las Vegas.
  
  In the event they were not difficult to locate and we were soon good to go. As mentioned earlier, I couldn't roll a joint to save my life, but Jeff could, so he carried and used the papers throughout the weekend.
  
  We had an enjoyable weekend, and Sunday afternoon, after getting stoned one last time, we headed for the airport. Just as we were about to enter the terminal, Jeff said "Oh, shit. Wait a minute." He walked over to a sidewalk trash container, reached into a pocket, and threw something away.
  
  "What was that?"
  
  "The papers."
  
  I guess we were supposed to be perfectly content to carry the illegal marijuana through security and back to Chicago, but were to take no chances with the legal rolling papers.
  
  
• In the mid-1970's I had to make a business trip from Boston to somewhere, Jacksonville, I think. Airport security in the US was a much more casual matter then, and it was my habit to carry a baggie with small amount of marijuana in my briefcase, along with a small stone pipe.
  
  Packing for this particular trip must have been done in a daydream. At the security checkpoint I put my briefcase on the conveyor belt, dumped my metallic objects into a small basket, and walked through. On the other side, a young woman approached me and asked if I would mind if she opened my briefcase. Some metallic object had caught her eye during the scan and she wanted to know what it was.
  
  I gave the go ahead, and right there on top of everything else was the bag of marijuana. She sifted through the briefcase's contents and found whatever she was looking for, looked up at me, and in a positively frigid voice said "Thank you."
  
  I just smiled in return and as I began to close the briefcase she dashed over to a middle aged, potbellied, gun carrying security guard. I couldn't hear what she said, but I saw him shake his head and say "No." Her voice rose and I heard her say "But I saw it." He shook his head more emphatically and walked away from her and I got my feet going too, heading for the gate before anyone changed his mind.
  
  At a guess, airports and airlines wanted no ill will between themselves and the casual user. Presumably, anyone stupid enough to put a bag of grass on top of his briefcase contents was understood not to be a veteran dealer.
  
  
• A planning associate, Ginny, and I sometimes had to make business trips together. It was our habit to fly out on Sunday afternoon and have dinner together that night.
  
  On one trip to Chicago, she informed me after we were airborne that she had just finished a huge meal cooked by her boyfriend's mother and really didn't have much desire to go out to dinner. *Eye*, on the other hand, had eaten very lightly in anticipation of the forthcoming dinner. Somewhat disingenuously, I told her not to worry about it.
  
  We checked in at the Ritz-Carlton (a major convention or two had booked all the rooms at other hotels. Life was tough.). I walked her to her door, entered with her, pulled out the grass, got her to roll a joint, and we got stoned. A few minutes later dinner seemed like a good idea to her.
  
  I went to my room and unpacked, went back and collected her, and off to dinner we went. When we got back to the hotel I walked her to her door and then headed for mine. I had just closed the door behind me when the phone rang.
  
  "Donnie, come quick. Come over here. You have to see this."
  
  I went back to her room and she led me over to the table with the ashtray. She had left the roach in the ashtray and while we were at dinner a maid had entered the room cleaned the ashtray, and put the roach right back into it.
  
  As with the airport incident, the Ritz-Carlton was not going to bust a customer for the unfinished half of a joint.

OK, everyone, This is the 128th post and I regret having to tell you that that's all there is for the moment. I'm sure that as time passes memories will pop into my head and I'll post them, but I'm out of material for Sunday and Wednesday posts.

I thank all of you who have followed the blog, and would like to remind anyone who might be interested that instead of having to check here for new entries you can use one of the "subscribe" links at the bottom of this page.

My Union Experiences

I have belonged to only one union, and that for less than four years, so am no expert regarding unions and union matters. Still, it would be not much of an exaggeration to say that the experiences I *did* have were uniformly bad, at least from my perspective.

All that follows occurred during the period June 1968 to February 1972, and at what was then the Record-American, a Hearst Corporation tabloid in Boston, the result of a merger beteen the Record and the American, two of what had once been seven daily newspapers in Boston. In 1968 there were still three: the Record-American, hereinafter the "Record," the Herald-Traveler, and the Globe.

Fresh from the Army and years of working in Army finance, I got a job as a payroll clerk at the Record, automatically becoming a member of the American Newspaper Guild. Dues were very small and for quite a while the Guild had no visible effect or influence on me or my situation.

In 1971 (I think) the Record acquired its first computer, an IBM System 360-20, a mainframe computer with 24k of memory and requiring its own room and environment - raised floor with the cables running beneath, air conditioning, and humidity control. Input was in the form of 80 column punched cards and output in the form of magnetic tapes and printouts. No CRT's, nothing interactive.

The Hearst Corporation sent a data processing manager and two programmers to oversee the installation and to write and put into production the first systems pertaining to the Record's business.

A few months later the company set about acquiring its own programming staff, with the intention of that staff replacing the Hearst programmers. All employees were given the opportunity to take an aptitude test and two would be selected for transfer and training.

The selections, of course, were not based on aptitude or merit, but simply on seniority within the list of those who had taken the test and not failed egregiously. I had scored highest among the applicants, but based on seniority there was little chance I would become a Record programmer in this lifetime.

But uneverno. One of the two selected, Gerry, disliked the work and did not do well at it. Eventually he requested and got a transfer back to the accounting work he had been doing. The company and the union went back to the list of applicants, their results, and their seniority.

By this time, the company had a pretty good investment in Gerry, what with off-site training courses, on the job training, and little in the way of results, and naturally they wanted to avoid a repeat of this experience. They negotiated some kind of deal with the union that allowed them to ignore seniority, and I was suddenly a programmer in training.

I don't know what deal they negotiated, but it couldn't have been much or the union would have gloated and all of us would have known about it. I wouldn't be surprised if the "deal" turned out to be nothing more than a statement along the lines of "We're not going through this again. Either you let us pick the highest applicant or we'll simply keep using the Hearst Corporation programmers as consultants and you'll have fewer union members."

After a one week course at the IBM center in Hartford, Connecticut, I was given responsibility for maintaining and enhancing some of the existing production programs. By any standard, the Record was not yet making much use of the computer. It was in use only from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM. My own shift was from nine to five. I learned how to IPL (start) the machine and how to operate it, and how to shut it down, but there was little opportunity to apply this knowledge. Moreover, testing time for any code I wrote was limited because production was run during the day and the computer could run only one program at a time.

Now - the union.

• Regarding the Hartford experience: I was put up in a nice hotel, and meals and transportation expenses were to be paid for. I returned to work on Monday morning and was immediately approached by a union representative who told me to be sure to include in my expense report any time outside the classroom during which I had worked on homework assignments. The union would see that I was paid overtime. This seemed excessive to me, but I did as I was told.
  
  That afternoon the Personnel Manager called me into his office, a little distressed by my expense report's claim for overtime. He said that the company simply would not train anyone else if this stood. I explained that it had never occurred to me to make that claim, that the union had instructed me to do so, and that I would not be the least bit distressed to receive only the lodging, food, and transportation expenses.
  
  Somehow it got worked out between the Record and the Guild, and neither payment nor further conversation about overtime occurred.
  
  
• I now knew how to operate the machine and was a little frustrated by the small number of opportunities for testing. I did a deal with the DP manager which allowed me to come in a couple of hours early and leave a couple of hours early, thus having the machine all to myself from seven o'clock to nine o'clock. For several weeks things went swimmingly. I was learning more every day and more of my programming was getting into production - good for me and good for the company.
  
  And then . . . I was approached by a union rep who asked about the specifics of the deal and how the deal came into existence (I had proposed it to the DP manager). In short order the union filed a complaint with the company, taking the position that by beginning at seven o'clock I was starting during "night shift" hours and would have to be paid the ten percent differential.
  
  Immediately on hearing this I went to our chapter head to try to talk him into withdrawing this claim. I explained that it was good for *me*, a union member, but it was like talking to a brick wall. Eventually the deal was cancelled and I was back to nine to five. Thanks, guys.
  
  
• Somehow I wound up on the Guild's negotiating team as our contract expiration approached. I don't know how this happened, exactly, but I am absolutely the wrong person to put in a situation like that, as it is my inclination to see both sides of a matter while everyone else is seeing only whatever interests they serve.
  
  In any case, the Herald had recently completed some union negotiations, making what were considered by newspaper people to be scandalous concessions, most particularly in wages.
  
  Our rep began trying to negotiate for those same rates for the Guild employees at the Record, and was told that those rates were "off the table." Our guy wanted to know why the Herald management had been so "reasonable" and the Record management was being so "unreasonable." He was told "If the Herald lives to pay those contracts then we will renegotiate."
  
  The Herald did not live to pay the contracts, and the Hearst Corporation bought the paper, did away with the Record, moved into the Herald's facilities, and began publishing the Herald-American. This all occurred shortly after I left the paper, and the surviving paper, which has changed hands a couple more times, is now called the Boston Herald.
  
  
• A thought, not directly related to union membership: During these negotiations I incurred the wrath of a Hearst Corporation jerk who was sent in to participate with the Record management in these negotiations and to meddle in other matters. I would gladly give you his name - so you would know who he was and how incompetent he was - but it has escaped me.¹
  
  In any case, a few months later I accepted an offer to take a position at Blue Cross. The offer was made by Drew, then an acquaintance from the Board Room (bar) and later both my superior and a friend. Perhaps a month after I started at Blue Cross, Drew and I were having a drink at the Board Room and he said "You know, we almost didn't get to hire you."
  
  I learned that it was Blue Cross policy to solicit a recommendation from the current employer of anyone proposing to join Blue Cross. Spitefully, the Hearst jerk had directed the Record's Personnel Manager to answer "No" to the question "Would you rehire this individual?"
  
  And so the Personnel Manager did, but he was wiser than that. He knew that I had been praised in writing for my performance and added a handwritten note: "It is company policy to answer 'no' to this question but I would rehire this man."
  
  But for that, the Record would have been wide open to a law suit.

¹ February 11, 2009: It just popped into my mind - Bill Klouda

A Bad Bumper Pool Player

One of the regulars at the Board Room was Jess, a very bad bumper pool player who constantly challenged me to five dollar games, never won a single game, and always raised the stakes.

Now there were perhaps eight or ten regulars that I would take two or three dollars from once in a while, or even ten or fifteen dollars, but Jess was a different case. I doubt that I ever won less than a hundred dollars from him in a session, and I didn't feel all that good about it. He didn't seem to have any money problems, but I was not a pool hustler - I had a job, I just enjoyed playing, and the money was a way to keep score.

Finally I reached the end of my rope. He came in one night, ordered a drink, turned to me, and said, "Ready, Donnie?"

"Jess, I don't want to play you any more."

"What? Why not?"

"I don't feel good about it. It's too much money, and you're a nice guy but a terrible bumper pool player."

"I'm not that bad!"

"Jess, no offense, but you're hopeless. You're never gonna win a game against me. I don't care how much money you have, I'm not happy taking it from you."

"Come on, Donnie, I'm really not that bad."

I thought for a couple of minutes. "Alright, Jess, I have a deal for you. We'll play one game for fifty dollars. I'll start with my first ball in the middle of the bumpers and I'll play one-handed. You'll play your normal game. If I win, you give up bumper pool."

"That's crazy, Donnie. You can't win that game."

"That's my offer."

We played, he lost, and in fact he still had three balls on the table when I sunk my final ball.

He gave me the fifty, shook his head, and said, "I never would have believed it. You're right. I am that bad."

He kept his word and never played bumper pool again - or at least he never played again in the Board Room.

Vignettes from the Board Room

The Board Room, as you may recall, was (is?) a Boston bar.

• Donnie: "Why so pensive?"
  
  20-Something Girl Who Had Been Staring into Space: "Oh, I'm not really. I was just thinking."
  
  No you weren't.
  
  
• One night a friend, Rob, was at the bar and said, "Come on Donnie. Let's cut the cards once for twenty dollars." Rob loved to gamble, particularly at games requiring little or no skill.
  
  "No, no thanks, Rob."
  
  "Come on, just once."
  
  When Rob shows the first sign of persistence, he's showing you your future, which in this case was that I was going to be hearing "Come on, just once" until I agreed or one of us died.
  
  I caved immediately, rather than submit to his version of the Chinese water torture.¹
  
  "OK, Rob."
  
  Rob got a deck of cards from the bartender (one of the features of the Board Room was bench tables with cribbage boards drilled into them, and the bartender always had decks of cards).
  
  We cut and I won.
  
  Rob: "Double or nothing."
  
  No surprise there. I never dreamed we'd cut just once if I won. Well, this turned out to be a lucky night, and I beat Rob four times at twenty dollars a cut.
  
  Another regular, James, a guy who thought he had all the angles but who actually believed in the maturity of chance, then challenged me, also for twenty dollars. I won, he chose to try again (double or nothing), I won again, he doubled up, making this cut for forty dollars, and I won again. He gave up.
  
  I had won seven times in a row, a 127-1 shot, and was ahead $160. All seven times the other person had shuffled the deck. It was late, the bartender closed the bar, and I walked across the street with my two victims to another bar and bought them two dollar drinks.
  
  ¹ The "Chinese water torture" is not Chinese in origin.
  
  
• For a couple of years, 1969 and 1970, I made bets on college football in the form of what was called a "three game tease." One regular customer was a bookie's runner, and he would give me a card with the lines on the college and professional football games - that is, the card contained the games along with identification of each favorite and a point spread, the number of points they were favored by. You could take either team, giving or getting that number of points.
  
  You could bet from one to eight games, receiving odds on multi-game picks. I got five to one on my three team bets. Of course I had to be right about all three games. One loss meant I lost my bet. Now normally, this would be a sucker bet. If you assume that the point spreads were realistic and you had a fifty-fifty chance of picking the correct team in each game, then the correct odds are seven to one. However, whoever was quoting the odds that were printed on the card usually blew it on several games, and I don't mean blew it in hindsight, but that the lines on those games were predictably and egregiously wrong.
  
  I waited until the college football season was four or five weeks underway, giving me a chance to evaluate the teams based on recent experience, then began my betting. I usually bet ten dollars, but some weeks bet more if I felt strongly about my picks. The most I ever bet was fifty dollars, and I remember sweating out the third game's result. I had bet on Georgia, but I no longer remember who they were playing. They beat the spread and I won two hundred fifty dollars, more than two weeks' pay at the time.
  
  I think that in those two years I only lost once, and toward the end of the second season, the bookie's runner approached me on a Monday and gave me five hundred dollars.
  
  Donnie: "What's this?"
  
  BR: "For two years I've been watching you win, and this weekend I made flat bets on the three teams you picked."
  
  Donnie: "Well, great, but you don't owe me anything."
  
  BR: "Donnie, I'm not going to tell you how much I bet, but that five hundred doesn't make a dent."
  
  I still wonder how much he bet.
  
  A word of caution: You can't do that today, or at least I can't. Someone finally wised up, and the lines don't come from one source anymore. They are set by people who are experts on each conference, and the cards no longer quote lines varying wildly from reasonable expectations.
  
  
• However, my happiest moment regarding football betting came in 1970 when another regular overheard me lamenting the fact that the LSU-Notre Dame game was "off the card." Whenever a team was favored by more than 21 points, that game was not in the card's list.
  
  Notre Dame was favored by 25 points and I wasn't at all sure that they would even win. LSU had what I considered the best defense in college football. The other customer felt that Notre Dame should be favored by more than 25 points, and not being the retiring type I told him I thought that was a joke.
  
  He wasn't shy either and neither of us would move an inch, so we wound up making a peculiar bet. I took LSU and 25 points, and we bet five dollars a point. That is, the loser would pay the winner five dollars for every point the bookies' spread was off. If Notre Dame won by 28, I would owe $15, having come out three points behind the spread. If they won by 20, he would owe $25, having fallen five points behind the spread. If LSU won, well boy oh boy oh boy. If they won by seven, for example, I'd win by 32 points, pocketing $160.
  
  In the event it was a defensive battle. Notre Dame kicked a fourth quarter field goal and won the game 3-0, 22 points less than the spread. *Eye* won $110.00.
  
  Incidentally, this was in principle a bad bet for him to make: his potential winnings were fairly limited but his losses could have been out of sight. Suppose LSU were to win by 10 points. Then he would be 35 points short of the spread and would lose $175. However, for him to win $175, Notre Dame would have to win by 60 points, 35 points more than the spread, and that wasn't going to happen in this world.
  
  In general, avoid bets in which your potential winnings are more limited than your potential losses.

A Broken Window

When I was in the eighth grade, the two junior high schools in the city hosted the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades. One day (or night) someone broke a window at the school I attended.

For some reason, the Principal - a real jerk in a number of respects, by the way, the type who, if you asked him if he knew the time, would look at his watch, say "Yes," and keep walking - decided either that someone in the eighth grade did it or that someone in the eighth grade knew who did it. A class trip to the Museum of Science in Boston was scheduled for the near future, and it was announced that there would be no trip unless someone from the eighth grade either confessed or told him who broke the window.

Well, among the eighth graders there was much indignation over that. As far as we knew, none of us had done it and none of us knew who had done it. That was the position we all took, and to this day I don't know who did it or even whether the Principal ever learned who did it. It is of course possible that it was an eighth grader, just as it is possible that it wasn't even one of the school's students.

Three of us, a girl, another boy, and I, decided to do something about this unreasonable approach by the Principal - punishing an entire class for something done by one individual, an unidentified individual, and one who might not even be in that class. We decided to see the city's Mayor. We waited a week or so to see if the window-breaker would be identified or if the punishment would be rescinded, but nothing changed.

Memory says that school ended at 2:00 or 2:30 PM, and one afternoon the three of us gathered at that time and walked the five or six blocks to City Hall. We found the office of the Mayor, approached his secretary, and informed her that we wished to see the Mayor. She asked who we were and the nature of our intended discussion, seated us, and went into the Mayor's office. A moment later she invited us into his office.

He offered us seats and asked what he could do for us. We explained the situation and expressed our opinion that the whole thing was unfair and unreasonable, and he promised to look into it. We thanked him and made our exit. Although he and his secretary were probably privately amused, my recollection is that they were both kind without being condescending.

On the next school day, the three of us were called to the Principal's office during the first hour. We walked there together, and although we knew what the subject would be I don't think any of us were particularly worried about it. We were kept waiting outside his office for perhaps ten minutes, a flaunting of authority that I found transparent and amusing. My colleagues must have found it so as well, as neither showed any signs of worry or nervousness. Righteousness is a great bulwark, even against the bullying of thirteen- or fourteen-year-olds by school principals.

He called us into his office, informed us of his displeasure in the matter of our seeing the Mayor, and we were dismissed. I no longer remember any of the words at all, not any reasons given for his displeasure, nor any positions taken about what we "should have" done, nor any other aspects of his monologue. But I do remember that it was a monologue: he spoke and we were dismissed.

That day, without the formal announcements that had advised us that the class trip was in jeopardy, word was spread that the trip was on again. Of course the whole school knew why. I don't know how the word got around, but it certainly did.

I can only speculate about events after our meeting with the Mayor. I imagine that he called the Superintendent of Schools and that the latter called the Principal.

Looking back, I think that we were a peculiar trio in that I have no idea why we were the ones who took this on ourselves. We were not leaders in what passed for the social pecking order of the class, and we were not particularly close to each other: we were friendly but not actually friends. We moved in different social circles (due more to geographical reasons than any other, but still, we were not close). However, we did band together for that moment and I'll always remember them.

Will You Take Me To . . .

As part of a job in Boston I had to travel frequently. One several-time destination (including one visit for a month) was Denver. On one such trip I was accompanied by a junior member of the staff, Ginny. We were there for several days and nights, during which time she decided to clear a couple of items from her lifetime agenda.

The first was to see the move, Carrie, based on a novel by Stephen King. We found that it was playing at a theater not too far from our hotel, a theater which soon became my favorite theater in Denver. It's the only theater in Denver that I've been to, but still . . . .

The place was a dive. You could buy beer at the concession stand and you could smoke during the movie. Many took advantage of this option, and not just tobacco smokers. This place had character.

Well, enough of that.

There is much carnage in the movie, mostly toward the end, mostly caused by Carrie White (Sissy Spacek), although to be fair to her she was provoked. Before she dies she absolutely terrorizes her whole community, and after the destruction, as the movie nears its end, there is a scene showing a "For Sale" sign, marginally resembling a cross, on which has been painted

CARRIE WHITE BURNS IN HELL
Now a movie has to be more intense than this one to get me really involved. I enjoyed the movie but was never for a moment frightened by it. Until . . . walking down the sidewalk, wearing virginal white, carrying flowers with which to make a small gesture of atonement for the things done to Carrie, comes Sue (Amy Irving). She reaches the cross, bends down to put the flowers at its base, and OUT OF THE DIRT SHOOTS CARRIE WHITE'S HAND, which grabs Sue's forearm.

Even this would not have bothered me but for the fact that Ginny had been a nervous wreck watching the last third of the movie, and the instant that Carrie grabbed Sue's arm, Ginny grabbed mine

My forearm.

In exactly the same place that Carrie grabbed Sue's.

For a split second Carrie White had me and I was gonna be dragged down to Hell.

The second item on Ginny's agenda was "to see a stripper." I don't know what it is about this with young women. I know *eye* don't have the slightest desire to see, say, the Chippendales. But I've had several requests to take young women to see strippers and have always accommodated them. Incidentally, they never have anything to say about it afterwards except that it was "interesting."

Knowing nothing about the seamier side of Denver, I checked the Yellow Pages (Well, what would you have done?) and found a club that advertised strippers. We cabbed it to what might (or might not) have been Denver's equivalent of a "red light district," or at least a mini-equivalent, found the club, and entered. If you've been to one of these you've been to all of them. It was dingy, deliberately under-illuminated, mostly empty, and absolutely voracious regarding the price of a drink.

We grabbed a small table (we had our choice of the entire array) about ten feet from the stage, ordered drinks, and waited. We sat through numbers by two different strippers, the second of whom had a scar running from her unowhat to her sternum. Nice. (Caesarean? I dunno.)

Ginny was satisfied after two strippers and three drinks, and we left.

Donnie: "So, what did you think?"

Ginny: "Interesting."

A different but related incident occurred with my then girlfriend, Dee Dee, in Boston. Her request was that I take her to a porn movie. She had never seen one, some of her girlfriends had, and she felt compelled to close the gap.

I knew that we wouldn't last a minute in something akin to Deep Throat or Behind the Green Door, so I settled for softer porn in the form of Emmanuelle. Or perhaps Emmanuelle 2. (As if there were a difference. Like dives with strippers, if you've seen one . . . .)

This was at a theater in what was definitely Boston's red light district.¹ We entered, got popcorn or something, and went to find seats. As soon as the movie started, Dee Dee started fidgeting. She was manifestly uncomfortable with this movie, but I figured that if it was going to last her a lifetime she needed to see a few more minutes of it. I gave it perhaps twenty or thirty minutes and then asked her, "Do you want to leave?"

Instantly, "Yeah."

Now it turned out that she had informed all her girlfriends that I was going to take her to a porn film (closing the gap, remember?), and a while later I learned that the next day her girlfriends asked her how she liked the movie. Her response? "Oh, Donnie wanted to leave so we didn't see it all."

¹ Boston's red light district was not far from the center of town, and occasionally a couple of us would spend lunch there, checking out the titles of the movies that were playing. They were funnier than anything you could make up:

• I Wish I Was in Dixie
• Hot Cross Buns
• A Hard Man Is Good to Find
• If You Don't Stop It . . . You'll Go Blind, and its sequel,
• Can I Do It 'Till I Need Glasses?

Marylou - Part I: The Scoop

It was the early 1970s, perhaps 1971. I was unattached, about thirty, and had pork chop sideburns and hair long enough to pull it from opposite sides and touch it under my chin, not long enough for a pony tail, just combed straight back.

On a Friday night at the Board Room (the third floor of a "99" restaurant in Boston), I was approached by Brad, a Board Room acquaintance of about my age. "Donnie, I have two girls here who need directions to the White Rhino. I know one of them from work. Whaddaya think?"

"I'm in."

We walked over to where the   young women  girls, perhaps in their mid-twenties, were sitting and Brad introduced me to Marylou and to the one he knew from work, whose name I have long since forgotten, this being the only time I ever met her. We're going to need a name for her if we're to get through this story, so let's call her Sandy. Believe me, if that was actually her name we have a major coincidence on our hands. (As for "girls" vis-à-vis "women," well, that's what younger women were called at the time in all but the most cutting edge feminist circles, and that's what they'll be called here when referring to this period. When referring to later periods we'll use "women.")

I learned that they were planning to meet two other guys at the Rhino - dates, but not boyfriends, and in fact a blind date in Marylou's case. They were on foot, and Brad solemnly pledged to drive them to their rendezvous after a round of drinks. Things went well, there was some laughter, and then it was that time.

As we prepared to leave, they invited us to join them and their intended dates at the Rhino. (WTF? Are women really oblivious about this sort of thing? How pleased would their dates have been if we said yes?) Brad disingenuously accepted for both of us, looked at me and said, "You follow me, OK?" Well, why not? We split up, Marylou riding with me. In no time at all I could see that we were going in a direction not remotely in accordance with the girls' plans. To this day I don't know whether Brad talked it out with Sandy or we just "kidnapped" them. In any event, they'd been scooped.

Before long we were at Brad's apartment - in Cambridge, I think - and no one raised any objections as he led us in. The apartment was a 1970s style passion pit with sunken living room, hidden speakers, lush and comfortable furniture, a full bar, and a vast selection of mood music.

He disappeared briefly and the rest of us checked things out: books, records, etc. Brad returned, heading for the bar with a bottle of chilled champagne. POP! Ice bucket, four glasses, done deal. Brad dimmed the lights a little and led Sandy to a sofa, so I led Marylou to another. Each couple sat sort of sideways, perhaps two feet apart, half facing each other and half facing the other couple.

Well, you know how it is when people meet each other for the first time and really get along. It was comfortable and it was fun. The four of us talked about any number of things, all interesting to all of us. Lots of smiles, more laughter, more champagne.

After a while Brad got up and really dimmed the lights, leaving us with about one candlepower, according to my memory. He turned the volume down but left the music audible, walked back and sat down inches away from Sandy. I reached out a hand for Marylou, who took it, smiled, and moved to me.

CONTINUED IN THE NEXT POST