Finding a Reason to Say Nolo Contendere

When I met the boy who would be my husband,for a second or two, I didn’t want to date him, or run in his pack, or whatever hippie kids did in 1968. It was my first day of college, and once he told me he wasn’t a student, he was Out Baby Out.

My boyfriend the year before was a 28-year-old Mack truck driving hippie who rolled my sleeve, tied something on my forearm and got ready to shoot me up with heroin. I ran out of his apartment on St Marks in The East Village horrified by what I had almost done. He didn’t understand. We saw each other for eight more months. I guess because I didn’t have to boyfriend shop.

The boy, I’ll call him Noah because that’s so not his name, was tall, skinny and Byronic looking. His cords were ironed. The two tee shirts he wore under a flannel shirt were neat, and very sexy I thought. As was his long dark curly hair. His was the perfect hippie look, I thought. Not dangerous, but he looked like the boy next door if the boy next door been adorable.

But I hung with JohnnyB who couldn’t decide if he was Gay or Straight, was the best dancer in school, and though I told him I couldn’t dance to save my life insisted on going to The End Of The World dance with me. The group that played that night was called God.

My first college dance. Who am I kidding, it was practically my first dance since Junior High.

I talked to Noah a few times before the dance. A few people told me that the school kicked him out for associating with known drug dealers. That sounded so Joe McCarthy to me. Still I had my standards.

The day of the dance he told me a story. We had both gone to the 1967 Moratorium in Washington, DC to protest the war in Viet Nam. I was still shocked that my parents had let me go——and waited for the bus back until four AM.

But Noah was arrested. I don’t remember the details, just that Dr. Spock was one of the people he had been arrested with, and pleaded nolo contendre, a term I had never heard before, but began to use whenever I could, which was practically never. 

Our school decided to kick Noah out for this arrest. As it was a bogus reason to kick a student out they said that he associated with known drug users. As I said that was a totally stupid reason.

His parents believed the school. Like most parents then they thought that one toke did put you over the line. When they found out the real reason that Noah was kicked out they treated him as if he were a hero.

Where we come from the war in Viet Nam was a bad thing. I will never apologize for protesting the war in Viet Nam. Once Kent State happened the next year, every parent thought: “it could have been my kid,” and everything began changing.