I’d show them. I committed to a writing life in my north Sacramento crackerbox renting for a hundred twenty bucks without air conditioning or TV. Sometimes I got enough correspondent gigs to earn about five hundred late-seventies dollars a month. When I needed a little more I either had to load trucks and deliver construction materials or find something else. This Christmas season I was hired to temporarily sell sporting goods in a large department store.

Perhaps I should’ve made it a career. One young woman stopped by from ladies’ clothes and yanked my necktie the first time we talked. Another breezed in from home furnishings, reached into her purse, and handed me her phone number. Despite having a low social IQ, I discerned I better choose just one, the latter, and asked out Amy, a short and voluptuous redhead. On our first date we went to see the original Superman movie. Seated in a crowded theater she linked her arm with mine, eased her head onto my shoulder, and said, “I’d sure love to be with Christopher Reeve.”

Though her lust for the handsome leading man was understandable, I felt bad and didn’t respond but could’ve countered, “I’d like to hit the sack with Margot Kidder, the hot lady playing Lois Lane.”

After Superman vanquished evil people, Amy and I went to a restaurant near Cal Expo. Our waiter welcomed us and passed out the menus. When he walked away, Amy said, “Oohh, that guy looks good.”

He did. So did many women in the place. I tried to discuss her goals at Sacramento State, where she was taking a full load.

“There are so many gorgeous guys at school,” she said. “They ask me out all the time.”

“Sure… You’re pretty and popular, but let’s talk about something besides guys you dig.”

“That’s me,” she said, holding upturned hands in front of her breasts as if squeezing apples.

I finished eating and got her back to my place as rapidly as possible and, engorged with testosterone, tried to be a beast.

“I usually don’t sleep with guys on the first date,” she said.

“I want you now.”

“Settle down or take me home.”

Amy made me work hard several dates during which, unasked, she disclosed her most intimate details.

“It sounds like you’ve been out with quite a few guys,” I said.

“Not that many. I could probably count them on these two hands.”

On our next date she told me, “I figured it out and I’ve been to bed with eleven guys.”

That’s more than most ladies of nineteen but perhaps not excessive by the standards of the swinging seventies.

“I’d like to be number twelve,” I said.

“Not yet.”

A date or two later Amy decided I’d suffered sufficiently, and she disrobed. More than forty years later I remember the intense pleasure. We only went out a few more times. Despite her allure, I wanted no more of her incessant commentaries, and she needed a guy who enjoyed her tales.

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