Ziadie and Burke families were. Certainly, those who did not prostrate themselves before the altar of religion had fine track records in the horizontal stakes, but it had never occurred to me that my blood would be as hot as theirs, or that that hot blood would lead me to commit passionate acts that I now look back upon as mere silliness.
At the start of the 1969–70 football season, Bill was traded to the Detroit Lions. This was good news and bad news, for, though I missed him, it forced me to face the fact that my love was hopeless, and that I would be better off replacing him. When I returned to New York from the summer training camp at Bloomfield Hills, Detroit, where I went to administer my own brand of encouragement, I promptly got in touch with Tucker, who asked me to a party he was having. In the interests of banishing Bill from my mind, I was far more flirtatious with Tucker that night than I had ever been.
Although I did not succeed in plucking Bill out of my affections, I did end up in bed with Tucker. Beautiful as Tucker was when his clothes were off and the lights were dimmed, with his blond hair and smooth, firm, rugged muscles, I still only liked him. So I transferred my attentions to Ernie Koy, another member of the team. Sadly, the electricity wasn’t there either, although it was with Marlin McIver, who played for the Dallas Cowboys, I think. He was a powerhouse of pure, unadulterated passion. The pity was, he didn’t live in New York. If he had done, he might have accomplished the trick and weaned me off Bill. The next thing I knew, another Giant, Fred Dryer, who, with his room-mate Ray Hickle, was a platonic friend of mine, was warning me to be careful. Apparently, just about every member of the Giants team was exchanging stories about their amorous adventures with me. That astonished me – even guys I hadn’t met were saying what a great ‘lay’ I was. If only they’d known the full story. ‘You don’t want Bill to hear,’ Fred said, but I wasn’t so sure; maybe it would make him jealous. ‘And maybe not,’ Fred concluded, neatly encapsulating my options.
So I took my attentions elsewhere, to the scions of Fifth and Park Avenue, none of whom would ever know Bill (or so I thought, until I turned up at a party at Dr Scholl’s heir Don Scholle’s East Seventy-Second Street penthouse and saw the object of my love leaning against the wall drinking Scotch). But despite my best efforts, I had been spoiled by those athletic paragons of masculinity. Money did not buy a beautiful body, at least not in those days, and on more than one occasion I committed the unpardonable faux pas of backing out when the guy’s clothes were off. One man even accused me of being a ball-breaking bitch, which I regarded as perfectly understandable, considering the appalling way I had behaved.
By now the Vietnam War was at its height, and every now and then colleagues of mine at FIT would invite me to join protestmarches. To be truthful, I had no inclination for any form of protest. My own life was bogged down in quite enough involuntary protest as it was. Even so, it was just one of the many effects of my upbringing which kept me apart from my peers. I also had a strong antipathy towards drugs at a time when you could not visit friends or attend parties without being offered ‘stuff’. This was partly an after-effect of the period I had spent in hospital in a drug-induced state, but another factor was the strong influence of my Lebanese heritage: the culture does not lend itself to substance use, much less abuse.
Teenagers, however, like to fit in, and I was no exception. I therefore tried pot (and so hated feeling out of command of all my faculties that I swore never to touch it again); amyl nitrate, the climax-enhancer which many a jock wanted to push up your nose when he was coming (I got such a ripping headache, I would have preferred being hit on the head by a baseball bat); cocaine (which was wasted on me,
At the start of the 1969–70 football season, Bill was traded to the Detroit Lions. This was good news and bad news, for, though I missed him, it forced me to face the fact that my love was hopeless, and that I would be better off replacing him. When I returned to New York from the summer training camp at Bloomfield Hills, Detroit, where I went to administer my own brand of encouragement, I promptly got in touch with Tucker, who asked me to a party he was having. In the interests of banishing Bill from my mind, I was far more flirtatious with Tucker that night than I had ever been.
Although I did not succeed in plucking Bill out of my affections, I did end up in bed with Tucker. Beautiful as Tucker was when his clothes were off and the lights were dimmed, with his blond hair and smooth, firm, rugged muscles, I still only liked him. So I transferred my attentions to Ernie Koy, another member of the team. Sadly, the electricity wasn’t there either, although it was with Marlin McIver, who played for the Dallas Cowboys, I think. He was a powerhouse of pure, unadulterated passion. The pity was, he didn’t live in New York. If he had done, he might have accomplished the trick and weaned me off Bill. The next thing I knew, another Giant, Fred Dryer, who, with his room-mate Ray Hickle, was a platonic friend of mine, was warning me to be careful. Apparently, just about every member of the Giants team was exchanging stories about their amorous adventures with me. That astonished me – even guys I hadn’t met were saying what a great ‘lay’ I was. If only they’d known the full story. ‘You don’t want Bill to hear,’ Fred said, but I wasn’t so sure; maybe it would make him jealous. ‘And maybe not,’ Fred concluded, neatly encapsulating my options.
So I took my attentions elsewhere, to the scions of Fifth and Park Avenue, none of whom would ever know Bill (or so I thought, until I turned up at a party at Dr Scholl’s heir Don Scholle’s East Seventy-Second Street penthouse and saw the object of my love leaning against the wall drinking Scotch). But despite my best efforts, I had been spoiled by those athletic paragons of masculinity. Money did not buy a beautiful body, at least not in those days, and on more than one occasion I committed the unpardonable faux pas of backing out when the guy’s clothes were off. One man even accused me of being a ball-breaking bitch, which I regarded as perfectly understandable, considering the appalling way I had behaved.
By now the Vietnam War was at its height, and every now and then colleagues of mine at FIT would invite me to join protestmarches. To be truthful, I had no inclination for any form of protest. My own life was bogged down in quite enough involuntary protest as it was. Even so, it was just one of the many effects of my upbringing which kept me apart from my peers. I also had a strong antipathy towards drugs at a time when you could not visit friends or attend parties without being offered ‘stuff’. This was partly an after-effect of the period I had spent in hospital in a drug-induced state, but another factor was the strong influence of my Lebanese heritage: the culture does not lend itself to substance use, much less abuse.
Teenagers, however, like to fit in, and I was no exception. I therefore tried pot (and so hated feeling out of command of all my faculties that I swore never to touch it again); amyl nitrate, the climax-enhancer which many a jock wanted to push up your nose when he was coming (I got such a ripping headache, I would have preferred being hit on the head by a baseball bat); cocaine (which was wasted on me,
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