Merry and I took the large apartment on Gramercy Park. My job paid very little and I had to borrow from my father. But I began to come along, getting out of the mailroom in only four months, which they told me was close to the record. We had a good time in New York that first year. We made quite a few friends and we were a popular couple. Merry got a secretarial job and we left for work together in the morning and then met in the lobby of her building every evening so that we could go home together. We told each other everything that had happened to us during the day, although there wasn’t much to tell. On Sunday afternoons some friends would come over and we would stir up a huge creamy bowl of the drink-dessert we had concocted, the Spontaneous Abortion—gin, vodka, scotch, rye, brandy and a half gallon of cherry vanilla ice cream. Merry clipped recipes from the ladies’ magazines and we would cook together in the evening; when we ended up with something charred and inedible, which was fairly often, we would go laughing around the corner for a hamburger and chocolate shake. In some deep shaft in my being a black machine began to tick. Merry bought some striking clothes with the help of an allowance her father gave her. She had the right figure for the kind of condensed clothing everybody was wearing then. We were always very conscious of what we wore and there were no rules to worry about. One way or another, everything we wore looked great. We saw all the new movies and went to a lot of parties. We seemed to believe that everything we did was the most wonderful thing that had ever been done. We wore certain clothes to certain movies. Grays for black and white. Boots, leather, chino, flag shirts and the like (our pre-acid gear) for Technicolor. Dressing, we matched each unmatching item with great care and spent several minutes assuring each other that we were ready for the waiting line at Cinema I. Each movie we saw was the greatest. Merry would talk about it constantly for two days and then forget it forever. There was no time for remembering things because something else was always coming along—another great movie, a great new pub or restaurant, a great new men’s shop, boutique, ski area, beach house or rock group. I took an army physical and edged out a narrow escape thanks to my trick knee and a chronic cyst at the base of my spine. The action was really just beginning then and they were fairly selective about the young men they tapped for immortality.