Justify My Sins

by Felice Picano

Had Anthonys replied, “They don’t, I just like to hear myself talk,” or, “They don’t, I’m just interested in your agent’s tits,” or indeed any of a half dozen other possible responses, Vic would have settled into the chair and listened a bit longer.

  What Anthony’s said however was, “Well, something in your line may come along the pike some day for us.”

  Rather than torture himself parsing that sentence for either grammatical correctness or deeper meaning, Vic thought, Yes, I agree: something in my line may come along the pike some day for you—in the event of my death and your transfiguration, neither one of which I am ready for or at all intrigued by.

  Perhaps Victor put up with him so long because Anthonys appeared to be content with what he was: a thirty-and-some-year-old Westerner, probably from Wyoming or Idaho, based on the not too subtle cowboy accessorizing of his dress: authentic-looking brass belt buckle of a dramatically head-on longhorn steer, a speckle of braided thread on the cuffs and collar of his open-throated, light-checked cotton shirt, a “Rockies” twang distinguishable after his third Bourbon and water.

  And still he droned on, and still Vic tried to drown it out with just one more beer and yet another onion ring the size of a hubcap. Jim had made the Big Time and was determined that everyone not only know it but say they knew it.

  Wait, was that fair? Look at the guy! He’s in hog heaven. He’ll go home to Pocatello Falls and tell everyone how he’d dined with this unstoppably brilliant best-selling novelist. What else could he say? He wouldn’t stop talking long enough for Victor to be boring.

  Then too, look at Jim’s past, evident upon his visage. His upper neck and lower face were bumpy and hard-skinned, uneven and just sufficiently pitted for Vic to recognize what must have been stupendously amok teenage hormones and their banner: super-duper acne. That couldn’t have been pleasant to experience and must have been a bitch to deal with. Jim’s clear, pale gray eyes with their wedge of blue each, like a clouded lake with a patch of sunlit sky peeking through, were nice enough. His Anglo-Scots features were acceptable enough, though his mouth was a bit wide. But look at his ears! Why, they were perfectly sized and shaped. Let the guy drone on, he’s obviously had his bad times, and now he’s enjoying himself.

  Stop being such a critic, Victor!

  “So thanks for your time, and it’s been terrific, but I’ve got to take off,” Vic heard and so became aware that Anthonys was saying it and standing up. “Don’t worry about the dinner check. I took care of it last time you were in the washroom. That beer goes right through one, doesn’t it? I always say you only borrow suds. See ya around now!”

  A hurried handshake through the hoary adages and he was gone.

  Vic remained seated, and slowly nibbled on another vast, vaguely vegetable frisbee and nursed along his Miller High Life, figuring it might be another ten, fifteen minutes before Jim’s car was valeted out and he could take off.

  A half hour later, Vic was standing on the surprisingly long line to get into the 8709 Baths just across the street and down the block.

  He’d just gotten into the glass fronted entryway and was about number six in line when he managed to find his pass. He looked about himself and immediately felt something of a piker. He was in casual street clothes, holding a card. The other five ahead of him each carried little gym bags filled with who knew what amazing little sexy uniforms and erotic toys, and they were already dressed in “hot” outfits.

  In fact, they were all extremely good looking with great physiques, including the light-skinned African-American preppie (number three in line) in tan khakis, crimson and silver stadium jacket, and bone white Converse Hi-Tops with his light moustache, sketch of a beard, basketball defense biceps and pale blue eyes. Yum, Vic thought.

  Behind Vic, just wedging into what space there was off Third Street and into the wind-shielded portal, were two great looking guys, one of whom was already a member, the other his guest—at least from their conversation.

  “So I was telling you about this Max who is in my opinion sexy, although a bit sloppy in the abdomen area,” the bathhouse member was narrating. “Max was directly ahead of me and raring to get in here coupla weeks ago. Max’s secret weapon is his very large and, just from waiting on this line, already very hard boner. So the Twinkie at the counter starts giving him a hard time about coming inside. He might be overlooked and he might not feel comfortable, and all this bullshit. A not so subtle put down on his imperfect body. Max finally says ‘Don’t worry Sonny boy!’ He opens his fly and slaps his enormous salami onto the counter. ‘Wherever I go with my pal here, I’m usually welcome.’ Of course they let him in.”

  They laughed and so did Vic. He was number three now.

  Seeing Vic’s pass in his hand, the member behind him said, “Now this guy is a V.I.P.”

  “How many inches do you have to have to be a V.I.P?” the guest asked.

  “If I showed you,” Vic said, “I’d have to blind you right afterward.”

  The guy at the counter was now giving the very hot black guy a hard time—busily “carding” him. Vic could already see the guy’s college I.D. and driver’s license on the counter, and he was being asked for more proof. What more did they need? Ancestral emancipation papers? A certificate of Good-Standing from the Daughters of the American Revolution?

  “Racist pig!” the member said in a low voice behind Vic.

  “I’d like that guy to be in here tonight,” his guest muttered.

  “Me too,” Vic said, and fueled by a half keg of beer and half a field of onion rings, he decided to do something about it.

  He bustled past the two guys between and up a few steps to the entry counter where he put his arms around the black guy, grabbed him by his amazed head and planted a fat kiss on his lips. At the same time Vic looked at the cards on the counter, saw his name was Darryl, and slapped his own big V.I.P. pass atop them all.

  “Darryl, honey! You said you were going to meet me at Joe Allen’s. Not here. Are you that horny?”

  Darryl and the guy at the counter both looked surprised.

  “He’s with me,” Vic said to the Counter-Twink, then grabbed all Darryl’s cards and his entrance fee money off the counter, shoved them deep in Darryl’s pants pocket, and began to pull him into the doorway. “My honey! And my guest tonight!”

  “Your rrrrroom kkkkey!” the baffled Twink stuttered.

  “Oh, and a locker room key, too. He’s got so much crap with him tonight because, well, just take a look at that body! We are going turn this place upside down! C’mon honey.” Vic pulled Darryl along and inside, enjoying the looks on all the onlooker’s faces.

  Once in, Vic let Darryl go and moved on ahead. But Darryl caught up to him and, still not having fully grasped what had just gone down, said, “I don’t . . . I mean, thanks . . . but I don’t . . . Did you want me or . . . ?” he tried.

  Vic gave him the room key and said, “Darryl, you are a doll, but the simple truth is I just really hate prejudice in all of its many, tacky forms. However! Should our paths cross later on . . .” He raised both eyebrows and Darryl let out a laugh.

  He did see Darryl later on, but that was somewhat after his not quite life-changing encounters with Extreme Annoyance and Great Astonishment.

  Extreme Annoyance arrived within a half hour in the guise of Joel, the insinuating waiter at Ed Trefethern’s favorite WeHo restaurant. Joel appeared on the scene just as Vic decided to take a shower and see what everyone else in the huge shower room was putting on display. Similarly unclad, Joel had a natural-looking tight little body indeed, probably a combo of criminal genes and growing up on some truck farm where he obtained great deltoids from shoveling manure and great glutes being bent over a rail by an elder brother. Even though Vic was practicing his I’m-an-Algonquin-in-the-Pennsylvania-woods silent walk, where he would see all and no one would focus on him, Joel did focus, and worse, Joel began following Vic, stopping him repeatedly and pleading for sex. This ended less than an hour later with Vic
cornered in the mirrored labyrinth between the two buildings that comprised the 8709 with Joel on his knees barring Vic’s way saying, “Please! Please. Tell you what? I’ll just hold it in my mouth and count to fifty.”

  Vic said okay just to get rid of him, but in less than a minute a scene developed right there when the two guys who’d been behind him on line happened upon them. Then another hottie joined them. Followed by Perfect Paul. Not too many days ago Victor wouldn’t have believed he would be the center of a group of men so astonishingly xxx and so astonighingly into him and each other. Paul was no longer a paragon here. He was one of the guys, as hungry and avid as anyone else. The end result was that Vic was so otherwise engaged and multiply pleased that Joel remained a great deal longer than the brief time he’d asked for, long enough to receive Vic’s climax before stealthily taking off while Vic was still being erotically manhandled.

  A short nap in the not inactive steam room was required before Vic was ready to move about again. And that was when, while cruising by a certain line of open-door roomettes, Great Astonishment reared its head, in the form of—of all people, let’s be frank—Jim Anthonys.

  Anthonys was clad in a Palomino-hued ten-gallon hat, split open sheepskin chaps, and mid-calf cowboy boots with ruby-tipped spurs. Otherwise he was naked with various hurtful-looking instruments close at hand: braided whips, branding irons, etc. He was so busily being serviced front, aft, and on each nipple that although Vic watched for a good five minutes, Anthonys never once recognized him.

  Vic didn’t need a sign from heaven: it was clearly Time To Go.

  The cabbie that the Twinkette at the door called for him was another absolute number, this one a recent Persian émigré named Dariush with huge dark eyes and a voice like silk being rubbed over bare flesh.

  Victor shut his eyes the minute he sat in the back and didn’t open them until he had to pay the fare.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “So, it’s a comedy and a drama, both?” Brandon asked.

  “That’s right,” Victor answered with a completely straight face, into which he inserted a succulent, perfectly french-fried zucchini stick.

  Mmmm! This was as good as the Mozzarella in Carozza earlier. Just finding that particular appetizer on any menu outside of real paisan neighborhoods like Sheepshead’s Bay, Brooklyn, or Federal Hill, Providence was amazing, never mind one so perfectly cooked. Maybe there was something after all to these Hollywood restaurants!

  “And the stories are all to be based on your years as a caseworker for the New York Welfare Department?” Brandon needed to know.

  “Every one of them! You see, Brandon, there were three units of five social workers along with their unit supervisors. Three units, each housed in largish former high school classrooms. So that’s a potential seventeen minor characters beside our main character.”

  “But you would focus on the other four people in our heroine’s unit and her supervisor?” Brandon asked, concerned. “So as to give it a tighter feel?”

  “Absolutely, and based on the make-up of my own unit of several years, the breakdown will be totally New York City melting pot. One guy, we’ll call him Ganesh, is a middle aged, elegant, perfectly groomed Indian national with that perfect diction and British accent, but slightly off, because he’s from Dehli, right? And he won’t admit it but he’s a racist. Not so cool in Spanish Harlem.”

  “Go on,” Brandon was enjoying this.

  “Another case worker is Shannon, a tall, very pretty Afro-American. She becomes our heroine’s best pal and buddy. The thing about Shannon is that while black, she’s a Princess who grew up in a gated all-Negro community in Eastern Queens called Cambria Heights, where celebrities like Rochester from The Jack Benny Show, Jackie Robinson, and Nat King Cole all live. She’s got no clue at all about ghetto life and is constantly horrified.”

  “Good. Different.”

  “The third person in the unit is Mrs. Sterling, a petite white woman, close to sixty, not quite incompetent, but this close. Very good-hearted and concerned, but ineffectual. Picture her as once beautiful, now over-cosmetized, wearing old satin bolero jackets over a skirt, utterly out of her element in 1967 Upper Manhattan. She’s been married and divorced for decades, living on gin and olives until she ran out of suckers to pay her way.”

  “Our tragicomic nostalgia gal.” Brandon said. “For the older set. Terrif.”

  “Number four is a tall, slender, fair haired guy from Tennessee who’s come to the city to become a film artiste. He’s William Ashley Brent and everyone calls him Ash. He’s far more interested in his arty little sixteen-millimeter movies which he looks at continually by the daylight of the men’s room airshaft. By night he hangs out with the Warhol crowd at the Union Square Factory. So he comes in late, hung over, sometimes not at all, and can be a real screw up. The rest of the unit covers for him, takes over his cases, and protects him.”

  “He’s for the young, male, hipster set. Don’t stop! The supervisor?”

  “She’s a little busy-body of a Puerto-Rican named Conchita-Anita Sensale. Once a hot tamale who men fought over with knives and machetes beneath the 110th Street on-ramp to the Triboro Bridge, she’s now a wise, somewhat controlling great grandmama. But she hasn’t lost one bit of her fire or her fun.”

  “Wonderful! And our heroine? The one who’ll interact with these great characters and with another problem case week after week?”

  “She’s unusual to look at. Not your garden variety attractive,” Vic said, toying around the edge of his mouth with an especially fat zucchini stick. “But there’s something about her looks that draws you in. A certain lust for living and indifference to life’s worst blows. She’s utterly compassionate one minute,” Vic said, “but then harder than Barbara Stanwyck the next minute. Hard to like. But impossible not to be fascinated by. Down to earth but intensely . . . Zen!”

  “Yes!” Brandon said.

  Vic let the zucchini stick enter his mouth and swizzled it around, making little buccal noises while Brandon went on. “And each week, she’ll face one more difficult and improbable problem of The Human Condition after another!” He took a sip of his until now untouched Kir and declared, “A name! It needs a name!”

  Vic bit into the zucchni stick and swallowed the tip, then put the rest of it athwart his plate. “Well, I was thinking of calling the show after the name of the actress.”

  “And so,” Brandon wavered, “It would be . . . ?”

  “I thought of calling the program, It’s Divine!”

  “People won’t think it’s religious?”

  “What if they do, at the beginning? After the first few episodes, they definitely won’t make that mistake.”

  Brandon had already ordered them both the same dessert, a hazelnut flavored crème Inglese. It now arrived and like everything that preceded it, it was scrumptious.

  “Good. Good,” Brandon was pleased.

  Fifteen minutes later, as the valets ran for his Corniche and Meade idled the limo’s engine for Vic, Brandon said, “See? And you thought this lunch would be awful. Come on. Admit it. You were totally pessimistic!”

  “I admit it,” Vic said, huge-heartedly.

  “And I should have no trouble locating this Underground star? What was her name? Divine?”

  “She’s in a long-running Off-Broadway hit as we speak. Women Behind Bars.”

  Handshakes and slaps on Vic’s shoulder. Brandon took off.

  Victor got into the car, holding a little doggie bag packet of zucchini sticks, but the driver didn’t take off immediately and instead stared in the rear vew mirror.

  “Are we going any time today?” Vic asked.

  Meade revved the engine but didn’t move. “In a sec. I just wanted to see that look a little longer.”

  “What look?”

  “The look that says I just screwed someone something fierce and he doesn’t have a clue it even happened.”

  “Who? Me?” Vic asked all innocence.

  He burs
t into laughter as the Caddy shot forward and he fell back against the seat.

  When they got to the hotel, Victor asked, “By the way, is Silver Screen Films paying you well for this job?”

  “Very well. But you know what, even if they weren’t, this job has been fun. Totally different than what I expected, and different than any driving I’ve ever done before. In fact, you took me to places I didn’t even know existed in my own city. So don’t even think of tipping me.”

  The two bigger bags were packed and at the door. Vic’s and the newly purchased hotel-insignia duffelbag containing a case of juice oranges for Marcie. Vic was just stepping out of the shower, wrapped in a towel, when the door bell rang.

  He briefly thought of trying to get dressed before answering, but someone knocked and yelled, “Room Service,” so instead he lowered the towel to sit jauntily on his hips and opened the door.

  And the Goddess Venus, who had shone with unwavering attention throughout all of this journey, outdid Herself. Before Vic stood the blonde, bearded, stellar young room service waiter he’d lusted after the most. Today he was dressed in white shorts, a pale yellow Izod shirt, and tennis shoes, and he said:

  “I was done for the day, but when I saw this package was for you . . .”

  Thinking, Now Victor, don’t panic, he asked, “Can you come in?”

  “Sure, thanks.” Noticing the bags, “You’re leaving soon?”

  “The car’s coming in about an hour and a half.”

  “Maybe I should go?”

  “Absolutely not. I’ve been hoping you’d drop by. A drink?”

  “Coke is fine. By the way I’m Rainer.”

  “Deutsche?” Vic asked.

  “My Dad was. It’s a family name.”

  Rainer sat. He sipped some of Vic’s soft drink. He told Vic how he was trying to become the tennis instructor for the hotel, subbing for the official one on his days off and vacation weeks, really working one-and-a-half jobs. Explaining the cute outfit.

  When Rainer was done talking about himself, Vic thought, It’s now or never. He’d already moved over to the little sofa where the young man had settled. Rainer had legs like tree trunks and fuzzed blonde hair all over. He was the most desirable person Victor had been this close to in a week. Vic was suddenly aware that he was physically trembling, and he realized with surprise that it was something he’d read about often enough in novels but had never himself experienced. At the same time, he recognized it must be a purely physiological result of a combination of anxiety, tension, and lust—pure lust.