Vivian Hannity was still in a Catholic high school in the three stories within the series “Vivian and Cathy.” Certain incidents from that time more than four years earlier are mentioned here. The narrator, Paul D’Amato, was in his first years at City College during the series “My Summer with Nora.” His affair with her only lasted four months.The immediate prequel to this story is “Vivian and Miranda,” in which Vivian moves into an apartment with her fellow Lehman College graduate Miranda (Mandy) Grossman. They start an affair together almost as soon as they are settled in.Miranda, being more than a bit impulsive, then picks up Paul about a month later at his temporary movie theater job. Vivian finds out about it because he is often visiting the apartment, but she seems to accept it. Paul, however, doesn’t know what is going on between the two women, although he has some suspicions. Not to be outdone, Vivian makes her own move on Paul as soon as her friend is out of town for a few days. That’s where this story starts.*****In early October, Miranda went out of town for a few days to visit some relatives in Massachusetts.Late in the afternoon of the day that Miranda had left, I got a phone call from her roommate, Vivian Hannity. That was a surprise because until then I had only the most perfunctory relationship with her. After a few moments of chat about Mandy’s trip, she said, “Hey Paul, let’s have a drink together this evening. Is there someplace you think would be good?”For a moment, I was unsure about what to do. This girl knew I was involved with her roommate, and yet she still had asked me for a date. However, I figured that if a lady had asked me to have a drink with her, I should go. Probably we were both being disingenuous about our true intentions, but I found her intriguing. I didn’t consider myself to be a “player,” so I initially didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. Besides, I couldn’t think of an acceptable way to refuse her request.Anyway, I was going to be a gentleman and get her at the apartment, but she said she’d meet me at a bar.Then I had to figure out a plausible place we could both reach by public transportation. I had a car, but I was a stickler about not driving after drinking. There was a bar called Lynch’s on Jerome Avenue near 210th Street. I had never been in it, but we both could get there by bus without any transfers.I got there early and, at a few minutes after seven, I saw Vivian walking from the bus stop down the street. She was shorter and thinner than Mandy, and her blonde hair was lighter. I was struck by how she had dressed up for this date. She was wearing a black skirt, a blazer, nylon stockings, and medium-heeled black shoes.Mandy had asked me, as sort of a joke, whether I have ever fantasized about Vivian. I denied it, but in fact, I had indeed done it a couple of times. I thought lovers should never ask that kind of question of each other so, rightly or wrongly, I felt justified in lying about it.That evening, on Jerome Avenue, Vivian looked more enticing than ever, and I instantly wanted her. Paul, you can’t think like that; she’s just being friendly, right? But if that was true, then why had she dressed up for me?As soon as we entered the bar, I felt like I had picked the wrong one. It was fairly small and quiet in there, and it was filled with the kind of morose, middle-aged and older Irish drinkers that were common in some New York bars. I looked at Vivian to see if she wanted to leave, but her expression and gestures said, no problem, it’s fine.We saw some tables in the back, so we headed that way. All of the other customers were male, and most of them looked at her as she passed. Vivian didn’t seem at all self-conscious, and she returned their gazes. She even smiled at them a bit.There was no waitress service, so we had to get our drinks from the bartender. I got a beer and Vivian had a gin and tonicAs soon as we sat down, the quiet in the place started to bother me. None of the other kocaeli escort patrons were even talking to each other. However, there was a jukebox nearby. Before I used it, I wanted to check with the bartender for permission. He didn’t seem to care one way or the other, and he nodded.I checked the playlist, and it was more interesting than I had expected. To start, I picked David Bowie’s “Young Americans.” It was a fast-paced, rousing kind of song, but only the last guy at the end of the bar seemed to notice it. As I sat down, he said to me, “What is this shit?”I figured I’d humor him with politeness, so I replied, “Well sir, it seems we could all enjoy our drinks more with some musical accompaniment.”“Ah, fuck that,” and he went back to his drink.At least with the music going, I could now talk to Vivian with some privacy. She said, “As you can see, the Irish are not always a happy-go-lucky kind of people.”“You’re Irish yourself, aren’t you?”“Yes, but I’m third generation.” She indicated our fellow barflies, “For a lot of these guys, drinking is something they do because they have to, not because they truly enjoy it.”“It’s a Wednesday night, but we’re here too.”She smiled, “Well, we’re not like these guys, not yet anyway!”Vivian was easy to talk to, and I felt relaxed as we discussed our lives. At one point I got up to pick more songs. I found the original 1965 version of “Gloria” by Van Morrison and the later cover by Patti Smith, so I did both of them. Smith went second.Patti’s version started slowly, with lyrics beyond what Morrison had written. The grumpy guy at the end of the bar commented again, “Now what in the hell are you playing?”“Sir, if you listen carefully, you’ll hear that this is a cover of what went before, which was the original by Van Morrison.” I decided to add, “He’s actually Irish.” Morrison was also a Protestant from Northern Ireland, but I assumed the old dude didn’t know that.All he said was, “Ah, fuck him too.”A little later Vivian told me she had gone to the Mount St. Ursula Academy, an all-girls Catholic high school only about a mile from where we were sitting.She said, “We had those Catholic schoolgirl outfits. I especially liked the warm-weather versions with those little blue skirts and the white knee socks. I bet you look at those chicks now when they’re walking around the streets, don’t you?”I knew she was being tongue-in-cheek with me, so I replied, “Me? Naw, I’d never do that.”“The idea seemed to be to dress us like little girls even though we were actually nubile young women. I think the Church wanted to pretend that we were still innocent and asexual.“I do like those knee-socks.”“I’ve still got them; I’ll wear them for you if you like. They’re not just white; I have different colors and designs. I also have some thigh-highs, which can be fun too.”It struck me that she was offering to wear certain clothes simply because I found them appealing. She was already going beyond where I thought she might go that evening.She went on with a story about her school. “What you don’t know is that we girls tried to get away with wearing the most outrageously sexy kind of panties underneath our uniforms. Sometimes the nuns would have a panty-check and if they didn’t like what they found – well, they’d take us into a room and paddle us, first on the seat of our underpants and then on our bare behinds.”That was heady stuff to hear about, and it didn’t seem like something a woman would reveal in a normal conversation. It was a very sexualized topic. I tried to remain as casual as I could, “That was a bit harsh, wasn’t it?”Vivian giggled, “Yes, but the thing was – even though it hurt, I discovered that I enjoyed it too. I found out later that is not uncommon for both genders.”With that revelation, Vivian didn’t seem so quiet and modest as my previous impressions of her had been. I thought, she’s going to try to seduce me. It’s only a matter of time. In fact, she’s already started.Since she had brought up the subject, kocaeli escort bayan I asked her, “So what kind of underwear got you into trouble?”“Sheer see-through ones were popular; the most common colors were white, blue, and black. Also, anything lacy was good, especially if it was pink. Sometimes it could merely be white cotton ones with red hearts or roses on them.” I had never imagined what those schoolgirls, including my Vivian here, were really doing and thinking while wearing their modest uniforms. Well, they were thinking about wearing provocative underwear and getting spanked for it. And some of them had liked it. Man, I wished I had known how naughty they all had been back then. But it wasn’t like I was doing anything at that age to approach girls, even the ones at my own school.She pretty much confirmed what I had been thinking and she was very direct about it. “You see, with the gender segregation and all that Catholic repression of our desires, it was a sexual hothouse in that school. All of us we’re boy-crazy, or to be more blunt, horny as hell. You could practically smell the estrogen in the air.”Yeah, and if I had been there, the testosterone too. I vividly remembered the aching frustration and loneliness of my teen years. Oh wow, all those cuties in their knee-socks and bad-girl panties, and I hadn’t approached a single one.At my public high school, the girls had their tight jeans and, in the warm weather, some of them had halter-tops. If I got the right angle, I could see the sides of their breasts. That was all bad enough, in the sense of being a trial by schoolgirl for me to endure.I made up for lost time in college, although the various women I met kept dumping me although I had been very happy with them myself. Now, that summer, I had Miranda, who was a very pleasing girlfriend indeed. So what was I doing flirting – well, much more than flirting – with her best friend?Just to have something to say to distract myself, I asked, “Who exactly was St. Ursula?”“Oh, you’re going to be amazed by this. The story goes that, in the Fourth Century, near Cologne, she and 11,000 other virgins were massacred by The Huns. Supposedly they were all beheaded.”“Eleven-thousand? That’s appalling. Why didn’t they, ah, screw all those chicks instead of killing them?”“Who even knows if any of that is even true? The Church loves her, however. The Ursulines, the Order of St. Ursula, are nuns dedicated to educating girls. I guess they think it’s better to lose your head than to lose your hymen.” I laughed at that. However, Vivian was disturbed by more than that. She said, “I hate the Church’s obsession with these martyrs, especially the female ones like St. Barbara, another woman who supposedly died to save her precious virginity.”I could see that Vivian was extremely bothered by that whole aspect of her now lapsed religion. I said, “I’ve never heard of her.”“I don’t believe most of the things that have been said about her, but there are these paintings from the late medieval period that show her being tortured and killed, and her tits are hanging out! The artists got away with it because they were depicting something with a religious theme. But, you see, underneath the Church’s piousness and chastity, there’s sadism, sexual sadism in fact.” Then she stopped and thought about what she had just said. “I guess this is a bit much to talk about.”Yet I was impressed with the intensity in her, a side of her I hadn’t imagined existed. I was trying to think of a way to convey that to her when she changed the topic slightly. “And there’s lesbianism too – not that there is anything wrong with lesbians. But those nuns probably didn’t know that half the girls liked being spanked by them.”Fortunately, I had fed more coins into the jukebox, so our presumably Catholic fellow patrons couldn’t hear her opinions about their religion. Roxy Music’s “Love Is the Drug” was playing then.I said, “And isn’t spanking a bit sadistic?”“Come on, you know izmit escort must know this, if it’s not too extreme, spanking can be a lot of fun.” Yeah, and Mandy was proof of that; she could be quite kinky at times. I found that out on the day I had met her.Vivian went on, “When I graduated from high school, I was so done with the Church. I went to Lehman, which seemed normal by comparison. I could date guys and even bang them if I wanted to. I met Mandy there, of course, the first Jewish girl I ever really knew.”“She’s pretty wild at times.”“Isn’t she? I learned a lot from her.”I speculated again that the two roommates had sexual encounters with each other. In fact, I was almost sure of it. Vivian was leaning forward and I looked into her light brown eyes. She’s lively, she’s smart, and she’s certainly intense. And I’m getting into a lot of trouble here with her right now.She had set up everything perfectly for her next line. “Paul, come over to my apartment and we can share a joint.” It was Miranda’s apartment too, but she was up in New England.Maybe I wasn’t that surprised, but I understood that she was pulling me into her web. With women, bounty sometimes brings more bounty. If a guy has no one, then he may have trouble landing a girl. But if he already has a girl, then her friends might want a piece of the action too. And I knew that Vivian wasn’t dating anyone at the moment. However, even though she knew I was going with Miranda, that didn’t seem to slow her down a bit.A boundary was about to be crossed and I stepped right over it. I replied, “Sure, that sounds great.” Oh, that is really not such a great idea at all. I rationalized it by thinking that I couldn’t back out of it gracefully.But of course, that wasn’t the truth. One didn’t go over to a woman’s apartment to get stoned and then just leave. She hadn’t specified it yet, but I was pretty sure that I’d be spending the entire night there with her. I had to admit to myself that I wanted this sweet Vivian for myself as well as having Miranda too.She had apparently planned it all out and she was ready to go, “We’ll catch a livery cab to get over there, okay?”On the way out, the barflies turned again to look at her. This time, Vivian smiled and gestured at them. “Bye guys, it was a pleasure meeting you all.” Not one of them said anything in reply. At the door, she stuck her ass out and waved the seat of her black skirt at them. I wondered if any of them ever still thought about sex at that point in their lives.Outside, I said, “That certainly was a cheerful place, wasn’t it?”“It’s that Catholic sense of guilt, of sin that I was talking about. They all feel they are sinners for drinking too much, so they have to make themselves extra miserable about it – as in refusing to talk to each other.”“I’m a lapsed Catholic myself.”“I know. I guess the Italians have their own version, but maybe the Irish are more fervent about it. By the way, St. Barbara was supposedly tortured and killed on orders from her own father, who was a pagan.”She was back to one of her least favorite martyrs, and I tried to make a mild joke about it. “Not exactly Father of the Year, was he?”“Its all so creepy, the only way I can handle it is by thinking it never really happened.”I said, “I almost forgot about St. Sebastian and his arrows.”“How does the Church come up with these horrible, sadistic tortures?”“I don’t know, but they certainly have plenty of martyrs to go around.”********Back at her place on Sedgwick Avenue, she removed her jacket and left it on the end of the sofa. Then she lit up a doobie and we passed it back and forth. I said, “This is really strong stuff.”“Yes, we should probably go easy with it.”“Then let’s not puff anymore, at least not right now.” I was right on the line where I could feel its effects yet I could still talk lucidly. And think lucidly, or so I imagined.I put it in an ashtray on a table and said, “Could you put on some music?”She got up and put a record on the stereo system. It was Bruce Springsteen’s “The Wild, the Innocent & The E Street Shuffle.” I remembered how Mandy was high on cocaine when I had met her in the back of the Paradise Theater and how she had been singing a Judy Collins song.