Summer Of 64

The small group of teenagers sat in the
corner of the near empty offices of Ryan, Smith
and Dodge. It was lunch hour and most of the
workers had taken advantage of the warm Friday
afternoon to take a walk on the streets of New
York.
Jimmy Ross, the youngest of the four,
fiddled with the dial of his new transistor radio,
changing the news station they had been listening
to get the baseball scores to one that played top
40 tunes. To their annoyance, instead of how the
local teams had done, the radio commentator had
been going on and on about some incident with
two American warships in some place called the
Gulf of Tonkin.
“Where the hell is the Gulf of Tonka?”
Joe Wilson asked, just before Jimmy changed the
station.
“That’s the Gulf of Tonkin, dummy,”
Peter Butler corrected Joe. “It’s a body of water
between Vietnam and China. Tonka are the
trucks you probably still play with.”
“Well thank you Mr. Geography,” Joe
laughed back. “Leave it to you to know the name
of every unimportant piss-ant little country in the
world.”
“Well if you paid any attention in Miss
Murray’s class, you’d have known it too,” Peter,
who had gone to school with Joe, added.
“Yeah, like that little piece of information
is ever going to come up again in my lifetime,”
Joe retorted.

The friendly barbs faded as the sounds of
“Pretty Woman” replaced that of the wooden
announcer. The discussion moved onto more
important subjects, at least those more important
to eighteen-year-olds working summer jobs before
going off to college in a month. They went from
the Yankees’ chances of making it to the World
Series again to the new James Bond film,
Goldfinger.
“Hey did you see this about the new
program that’s coming on CBS next month?”
Steve Walton asked as he flipped through a TV
magazine as he ate. “It’s about a bunch of people
who take a mini-cruise and get shipwrecked on a
deserted island.”
“Now that sounds like a stupid idea for a
show,” Peter said as he finished off his own soda.
“What’s it called?”
“Gillian’s, no wait a sec… Gilligan’s
Island,” Steve read.
“That sounds as stupid as the idea,” Joe
joined in as he leaned over and looked at the large
picture of the show’s cast that accompanied the
article. “But I’ll tell you what; I wouldn’t mind
getting stranded with those two,” he grinned,
pointing out the two younger women in the
photograph.
“Yeah, like you’d know what to do with
them once you were on the island,” Peter
interrupted.
“You’d better believe it,” Joe shot back.
“Trust me, a week alone with me on an island and
I’d have both of them giving me blowjobs.”
“More likely committing suicide,” Peter
corrected him. “As if you ever really got a
blowjob in your life.”
“Hey, all I can say to that is Donna
Petrachinni, what more needs to be said.”
Peter reserved comment on his friend’s
reply. Ever since the night of their senior prom,
Joe had claimed to have gotten Donna Petrachinni
to have gone down on him. The only guy in class
to have the nerve to make a claim like that. Now
Donna wasn’t exactly the hardest girl in town to
talk out of her bra, and sometimes even her
panties, although it was only to let you rub her
pussy with your hand. Getting her to take your
cock in her mouth was something else all
together.
Blowjobs or oral sex if you wanted to get
technical, were the Holy Grail of sexual
accomplishments among all the guys they knew.
Few were those who had actually experienced
one. Not even Peter’s older brother, Mark, who
had been married a year now, had ever gotten one.
The subject had come up in a discussion between
the two brothers and the elder admitted that his
new bride wouldn’t even discuss the idea.
“Hey, I’ll tell you who I’d really like to be
stranded on a deserted island with,” Steve said,
saving Peter the trouble of having to once again
express skepticism over Joe’s reoccurring claim.
Three sets of eyes turned in Steve’s
direction for the answer. The blond haired teen
waited a long heartbeat and then answered,
“Kathy Chakiris.”

A chorus of “Oh Yeah” came from Joe
and Jimmy in response to the answer. Peter,
strangely enough, tried hard not to react to the
suggestion. It wasn’t that he didn’t agree with his
three co-workers’ assessment. Far from it in fact.
He was just afraid that if he replied at all, it would
be so enthusiastically that it would be
embarrassing.

The second youngest of the summer help,
although that really didn’t matter that much when
you were only talking about months if not weeks
difference, Peter Butler had been totally smitten
by Kathy Chakiris since the day he’d been hired.
In that regard, he was far from alone.
Kathy Chakiris was a tall, dark haired
woman of thirty who was the back office’s chief
clerk. A sort of assistant to the office manager,
she had a lot of responsibility but little real
authority. Of Greek background, Kathy was
without doubt, the sexiest woman in the company.
Aside from her deep olive skin and dark red lips,
she had a striking figure that included a bust to
rival Jane Mansfield’s.
Divorced two years ago after an eight-year
marriage, it had become a point of certainty
among most of the men in the office that she was
hot to trot. This was a belief that none of them
had ever been able to back up with personal
experience, but a strongly held conviction never
the less.

Almost as if on cue, people began to
return to the office at that moment, and in the
forefront of the group was Kathy. Dressed in a
form fitting dark blue dress that hugged her figure
like a second skin, she was also wearing the dark
sunglasses that she wore even inside the office.
Peter couldn’t recall ever seeing her without those
glasses, an element that just added to her allure.
“Good afternoon boys,” Kathy smiled and
said as she walked past the small group.
None of them really answered, feeling her
gaze even through her dark glasses. It was almost
as if she knew what they’d been discussing. At
least that was the way Peter felt. He was also
sure he wasn’t the only one of his friends who
thought of Kathy when they were alone and took
matters in hand.
It wasn’t until two more groups passed
that the four young men tossed the remnants of
lunch into a pail and went back to their work
spots. Peter happened to be assigned to Kathy’s
department this week and had only settled at his
desk when Mr. Davis, the department manager
walked into the center of the room and called for
everyone’s attention.
“I’m afraid that I have some bad news,
Ladies and Gentlemen,” the balding fifty-year-old
announced. “I just got a call from a friend at the
home office and it seems that we’re going to find
ourselves the recipients of a surprise audit come
Monday morning.”
A flurry of low groans greeted the
announcement. People who had been there for
any time knew what was coming next.
“Now while I’m sure that they’ll find
everything as it should be, small errors have been
known to happen from time to time,” Mr. Davis
continued. “So as we’ve done in the past, I’d like
you all to come in tomorrow morning and we’ll
run a practice audit. Just to make sure that
everything balances.”
A second round of groans, which Davis
just seemed to ignore, followed the first. With
only three more weekends left in the summer,
each was precious. Mr. Davis assured them all
that if they got in by seven, he was sure they could
finish by noon and still have plenty of time to
spend the day with their families.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Chakiris,” Peter asked
as he stepped up to her desk. “Does that include
us, coming in tomorrow I mean?”
“I’m afraid so, Peter,” she replied with a
friendly smile. “Even though you really don’t
have anything to do with the audit, Mr. Davis
likes everyone to come in as a show of support.
I`m sorry.”
“That’s okay,” Peter smiled back. “I
don’t really mind, I just wanted to be sure that I
was supposed to come in, that’s all.”
“I wish everyone were so co-operative,”
the tall woman replied. “It’s all I can do to get
some people in here kicking and screaming.”
“Well I guess I better get back to work,”
Peter said as he walked away.
He glanced back over his shoulder to see
Kathy already once more engrossed in a report
that had been sitting on her desk. When he got
back to his own desk, Peter was immediately
aware of two things. One, that he could still smell
her perfume, and that two, he had a first class hard
on because of it. Looking downward so no one
could see him blush, the dark haired young man
hoped that the former would stay with him for
some time, and that no one had noticed the latter.

Peter had to rise extra early Saturday
morning to catch the train and get into the office
by seven. He hoped that Mr. Davis had been right
about their being out of there by noon. His father
had won tickets at the local bar to the game
between the Mets and the Colt 45’s out at Shea
that afternoon and had given them to his two sons.
A Yankee fan to the core, Ben Butler had no
interest in wasting his Saturday afternoon
watching Casey Stengel’s Amazing’s make fools
out of themselves once again. Not that the new
Houston team was that much better.
Now if they had been Yankee tickets, he
would’ve been more than happy to truck out to
the Bronx and watch Yogi Berra’s Bombers on
their way to yet another World Series. The days
of the great Titans of Yesteryear might have been
fading, but an afternoon watching the likes of
Mantle, Ford and Maris was still not to be missed.
“One of these days,” Peter had told his
Dad, the Mets are going to really be contenders.
They might even be World Champions.”
“Sure they will,” his father had laughingly
replied. “That’ll happen right after they really
walk on the Moon.”
Not really one to speak ill of the dead, but
Ben Butler had an even lower opinion of President
Kennedy’s promise to send men to the Moon
before 1970 than he did of the National League’s
new team . Another colossal waste of time and
money, he’d said at the time. Even if it was
somehow possible, which he doubted.
Before he left home, Peter had left a
message with his brother’s wife that if he couldn’t
make the game, he’d call and let him know. It
would be real easy for him to find someone to go
in Peter’s place.