Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

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Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

Mom and Dad: look away. I mean it, you guys.

When I left suburban upstate New York for college in Philadelphia in 1984, I was confronted with a species I had never before encountered: City Boys. These were boys who liked art house movies, had more than just sneakers in their footwear wardrobe, and spritzed with colognes unknown to me but definitely not Brut (by Faberge) favored by every male in my high school.

I was, to be blunt, infatuated by City Boys. Three of them in particular, two from Philly and one from LA: Michael, Robbie, and Steven.

While all three of them were foxy, my interest wasn’t romantic. It was sheer lust for their urban sophistication. I was straight outta the suburbs and admired how they traveled in a chic, worldly trio, cracked sarcastic jokes, dropped music references I didn’t understand. One of them knew Kevin Bacon – I’m talking about THAT level of sophisticated, ok? During the first months of freshman year, I followed around in their wake, along with a few of my friends who seemed much less undone by them than I was.

I knew what a corn pone I was, but that didn’t matter as long as Michael, Steven, and Robbie didn’t figure it out. So in the first weeks of college I jettisoned my Rochester accent, got a new haircut, begged my parents like a brat to send me money for some boots that I thought would up my fashion plate status. I fronted so hard at being City Cool whenever I was around those guys, it was a cardio activity. They were always kind to me, so I figured I was putting it past them.

And then one gorgeous spring day during second semester, there was a knock on my dorm room door. Michael, Steven, and Robbie, fresh from being cool somewhere, had come to invite me to join them for the afternoon. “We’re going sunbathing on the roof!” they said. “Want to come?”

The roof was the roof of the Quadrangle, freshman housing at Penn that is designed to look like the quad at Cambridge. It is an absolutely beautiful Gothic complex, my favorite building at Penn. It is also three or four stories high, depending on where you are standing. And there exists no staircase to its roof.

Unsubstantiated rumors of this mysterious rooftop sunbathing spot had begun circulating once the mercury hit 70 degrees – I knew the women’s crew team used it, and the City Boy Trio had a personal interest in being up there when those gorgeous smart sporty crew girls stripped down to their sports bras. Of course they knew how to get there.

A reasonable person – a mature person – a person convinced of her own self-worth and not trying to be someone she wasn’t – would have said, “That’s nuts. I’m not climbing up onto a roof. I have neither the strength or the balance of those crew girls.”

I said, “Let me get my sunglasses!” Because to a 19-year-old college student with City Boy fever, that’s what seems like a good idea at the time.

I can’t really type what happened next because 31 years later, my palms still get so sweaty when I think about this escapade, they keep sliding off my keyboard. Suffice it to say, there was a point when I had slithered out a fourth floor window and was balanced on a parapet, reaching up for a City Boy Hand, looking at the ground four stories below me and thinking, My parents are gonna kill me when I die.

I didn’t die. I made it to the rooftop, where I pretended to sunbathe while actually focusing super hard on not having my heart beat straight out of my chest, which would have ruined the line of sight between the City Boys and the girls’ crew team. Honest to god, I have zero memory of getting back to terra firma. My mind just refused to hold onto the experience. But here I am, a survivor.

And I think the reason I survived is so that I can say to my City Girl as she heads off to college next fall: Suburban Boys are just like the rest of them. They’re not worth climbing out onto a ledge for.

And that cologne? It’s just Axe.

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