New Year's Eve 1968: Jake, Scene 1 "1969 Began with a Kiss"

1969 began with a kiss.

For Jake DiAngelis, it was a bittersweet kiss, one that seemed to promise a great deal, but which he sensed would deliver far less. Why he felt this he couldn't exactly say. After all, he was kissing Joanie, whom he always referred to as "the love of his life." Yet, there was something amiss, something he couldn't quite pin down, but which he knew, clearly, was wrong.


Soundtrack: Mr. Tambourine Man----Bob Dylan


It was New Years' Eve, 1968, a party at the house of his faculty advisor, Bill Samuels. Everyone was there from the hip crowd at the U, plus a pack of sweet young Samuels-groupies. Besides ushering in the last year of this grotesquely violent decade, they were celebrating Jake's graduation… at last. Around him were many of the people he'd known over the six and a half years since he'd first arrived at the U on a football scholarship, “fresh off the farm,” like his coaches used to say. They’d all come to toast his graduation and to send him off, not to the pros — no, he’d abandoned football long ago — but into the art world, where his friends and admirers all expected him to make a big splash. Yeah, he’d traded in his rep as a farm-bred linebacker for one as an idiot-savant artist, but he wasn’t really sure he liked his new persona any better than his old one.

When he’d first arrived at the party with his roommate and best buddy, Stephen Price, Jake had been in a good mood. Before coming over, they’d knocked down a coupla' shots of whiskey while watching bowl games with some of Jake’s townie friends at the Dew-Drop-Inn, a working man’s bar where Jake liked to hang out, about as far from the ivory towers he’d come to despise as you could get and still be within the “city limits” of U-Town.

Entering the main room of the party, all Jake could make out at first was a blur of youthful bodies, dancing drunkenly.



Jake scanned the periphery of the room and was relieved to spot some of his favorite people at the U: Pat Richardson, the Law School Queen; Luis Gonzales, el Jefé of the Latino students; Donna Bouleware, the southern belle with a black soul; and, of course, Joanie, his old-time-used-to-be. If he was going to have a send-off, these were the people he’d want sending him off. But, where to? Jake wasn’t any clearer about that than he’d been all those times he’d dropped out of school over the past six plus years.

Ordinarily Jake didn’t much care for parties, especially not big ones. And, he’d made it a special point to avoid Bill’s parties; he was nauseated by the sycophants and groupies who populated them. Sure enough, on the other side of the room, he spotted Bill, talking with a gaggle of young chicks Jake didn’t know, probably freshmen. Bill and his dollies! Jake couldn’t understand why or how Bill continued year after year, attracting and seducing undergrad co-eds. Everyone knew about it, yet he’d been re-appointed and now seemed a sure thing to get tenure. You’d have thought that between his womanizing, really “girlizing”, and his radical politics he would have been long gone. Not for the first time, Jake wondered about the secret of Bill’s survival at the U. Shit! What did it matter? Jake was outtahere after tonight and he had no desire to meet any of Bill’s chickies on his last night in U-Ville.


Too late. Bill was signaling for him to come over. “Jake! Jake! Here he is, girls, the man of honor. Jake, come here. I want you to meet some lovely young ladies!”

Bill sounded and looked drunk — or maybe stoned — as he continued to beckon to Jake from across the room. Shit! Jake thought. He just wasn’t up for this, not for meeting Bill’s groupies and not for the Polonius-like send-off he knew Bill would impose on him.

His thoughts were interrupted by Stephen, who had been following close behind him. “Hey man, I’m gonna’ find me some eats. See you after you check out the chicks?”

“Uh. Sure man. Catch you later,” Jake replied absentmindedly. His thoughts were elsewhere… or rather, nowhere. He found himself drifting purposelessly over toward Bill and the waiting girls. No way to avoid them really. May as well get it over with.

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The 1960's, a "grotesquely violent decade"
Bob Dylan   

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