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An Authentic Life 1.1 for pdf - Universalist Radha-Krishnaism

An Authentic Life 1.1 for pdf - Universalist Radha-Krishnaism

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other engineering students. I made the rounds of fraternity<br />

parties and started classes. After two weeks, I<br />

knew I did not want to be an engineer. I tried transferring<br />

to the Pratt Art School, but because my scholarship<br />

was in engineering, I couldn’t. I put minimal<br />

ef<strong>for</strong>t into engineering classes, studied English composition,<br />

sociology, and existential literature electives,<br />

hung out with the art students, and sat in on life<br />

drawing classes.<br />

Joe’s Bar on Clinton Street became a favorite<br />

hangout <strong>for</strong> me and many of my classmates. They had<br />

good food and drink as well as a congenial atmosphere.<br />

I also made regular trips to Greenwich Village<br />

and the Lower East Side, where beat culture was in<br />

full bloom. Sometimes, I walked there across the<br />

Brooklyn bridge.<br />

My friend Joel, a student from Brighton Beach,<br />

introduced me to his friends, and I dated a Lebanese<br />

Jewish girl. We told her parents that my name was<br />

Steve Levi, since they only let her date Jews.<br />

Toward the end of the school year as finals<br />

neared, my student loan money was running out. I<br />

got a job selling magazine subscriptions on the streets<br />

and door to door in Brooklyn and the Bronx with a<br />

multiracial crew of young people. After work, we<br />

went to a pool hall in Harlem, scored some pot and<br />

hung out together.<br />

When school ended, I dropped out and moved<br />

into a garret in Bed<strong>for</strong>d Stuyvesant. I shared a large<br />

room divided in half by stacked milk case shelves<br />

with a black, jazz bass player. I got a job doing layout<br />

15

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