Bronx Community College

Bronx Community College, unlike Stuyvesant High School, was a co-educational institution. In simple terms, this meant there were people of the female persuasion in my immediate proximity. I felt like a kid in a candy store (a feeling with which I was quite familiar).

Also, I found interests in extra-curricular activities, like the college newspaper and literary magazine. I soon became a reporter for the Spectator. The paper was put together in a room in the basement known as the Pub. This room, which was no wider than fifteen feet and certainly no longer than twenty, had five desks, seven file cabinets and a closet which was converted into a dark room. Within the walls of these close quarters was assembled the weirdest combination of intellectual misfits I think I ever met.

Neil Lichtman, whose father we were encouraged to believe worked for the CIA, was the managing editor. Neil, secretive but quite eloquent, had us convinced that the world revolved around concentric conspiracies. Byrne B, whose appearance resembled that of a Jewish Lee Harvey Oswald, was the news editor. The last I heard of Byrne, he had graduated and taken off for Flint, Michigan, where he had a job selling new Cadillacs and then working for MCI. Bob Mc, all three hundred pounds of him, was the photo chief. Also in the running for the obesity title were three or four others whose names escape me but without whom, the Pub office wouldn’t have had the same aura. Vivian Something (who is probably now glad that I could never remember her last name) was clearly in the lead as office slut. Skinny, she was not. Her legs were like highway pillars, and the roadway they supported was often traveled. Irene F was the warm innocent motherly type, whose every written sentence came out like a confession extracted under duress. There were a few normal types there, like Joan C and Ann D, but they were the exceptions. Me? I was probably the weirdest one of all but nobody realized this because I was great at hiding my true feelings.

The guys at school, regardless of their politics, intelligence level, type of weirdness or lack of same, all had one thing in common. They possessed the much sought after 2-S draft status. The conflict (it was, after all, a conflict, not a war) in Vietnam Of course, there were groups at school that absolutely supported the effort in Southeast Asia. Among these were the TMF Club. The TMF was purported to stand for Truth, Morality, and Freedom, but in one of my more aggressive moments, I told everyone who would listen that they were really the Tough Mother Fuckers. This pissed them off mightily. They managed to chase me for a few blocks but I escaped easily. They were very Tough Mother Fuckers, but not very Fast Mother Fuckers. I wasn’t very tough, but I wasn’t very slow either. was heating up in 1965 and not too many of us were anxious to join the fray.