This story takes place years ago. I was a sophomore in college(art student). I had always been shy, and was never very comfortable talking to women. Lucky for me, my senior year of high school, a very insistent girl asked to my girl friend and we dated until shortly before this story begins. I was newly single at that time, so on top of being shy, I had no recent practice flirting with women.
To make up for my lack of social comfort, I got a little weird. I had embraced thrift stores(velvet sport coats, torn jeans, etc.), and had shoulder length dread locks(I’m white). At odds with my fashion, I was also pretty athletic. I road a vintage road bike (which wasn’t really hip at the time) everywhere, instead of driving, I rode 40+miles per day. That and I climbed a lot at a pretty high level.
So I’m trying to say, I looked like a hippy art kid, but I was a pretty ripped little guy, and I had fairly low self esteem.
One of the art clubs I was in organized a trip to NYC for 3 days so we could visit galleries. The story begins as about 10 of us art kids jet off to the big city.