City of Girls

by Elizabeth Gilbert

  “You are a lovely young girl,” he said. “And please don’t be concerned: there is still plenty of time for your breasts to fill out.”

  “Thank you, Harold,” I said.

  “If you drink eight ounces of buttermilk a day, it should help them to grow.”

  “Thank you, I will do that,” I said, with no intention whatsoever of drinking eight ounces of buttermilk a day.

  I was about to step out the door, but then I suddenly had to know.

  “Harold,” I said, “may I ask what kind of doctor you are?”

  It was my supposition that he was either a gynecologist or a pediatrician. I was leaning toward pediatrician. I just wanted to settle the bet in my own head.

  “I’m a veterinarian, my dear girl,” he said. “Now, please send my warmest regards to Gladys and Celia, and do not forget to observe the peonies next spring!”

  I flew down the street, absolutely howling with laughter.

  I ran back into the diner where the girls were all waiting for me, and before they could even speak, I shrieked, “A veterinarian? You sent me to a veterinarian?”

  “How was it?” asked Gladys. “Did it hurt?”

  “He’s a veterinarian? You said he was a doctor!”

  “Dr. Kellogg is a doctor!” said Jennie. “It says so right in his name.”

  “I feel as though you sent me to get spayed!”

  I dove into the booth next to Celia, crashing against her warm body with relief. My own body was in a storm of hilarity. I was all trembling now, from head to toe. I felt wild and unhinged. I felt that my life had just exploded. I was overcome with excitement and arousal and revulsion and embarrassment and pride, and it was all so disorienting, but also fantastic. The aftereffect was so much more striking than the act itself had been. I could not believe what I had just done. My boldness that morning—sex with a strange man!—seemed to have sprung from someone else, but I also felt more authentic to myself than ever.

  Moreover, looking around the table at the showgirls, I felt a sense of gratitude so rich that tears almost overtook me. It was so marvelous to have the girls there. My friends! My oldest friends in the world! My oldest friends in the world whom I’d met only two weeks ago—except for Jennie, whom I’d just met two days before! I loved them all so much! They had waited for me! They cared!

  “But how was it?” said Gladys.

  “It was fine. It was fine.”

  There was a stack of cold and half-eaten pancakes in front of me from earlier that morning, and now I tore into those pancakes with a hunger that was close to violence. My hands were shaking. Dear God, I had never been so famished. My hunger had no bottom to it. I drenched the pancakes in even more syrup and shoveled more of them into my mouth.

  “He never stops croaking on about his wife, though!” I said, between forkfuls.

  “And how!” said Jennie. “He’s the worst for that!”

  “He’s a drip,” said Gladys. “But he’s not a mean man, and that’s what matters.”

  “But did it hurt?” asked Celia.

  “You know something, it didn’t,” I said. “And I didn’t even need the towel!”

  “You’re lucky,” said Celia. “You’re so lucky.”

  “I can’t say it was fun,” I said. “But I can’t say it wasn’t fun, either. I’m just glad it’s over. I suppose there are worse ways to lose your virginity.”

  “All the other ways are worse,” Jennie said. “Believe me. I’ve tried them all.”

  “I’m so proud of you, Vivvie,” said Gladys. “Today you’re a woman.”

  She raised her coffee cup to me in a toast, and I clinked it with my water glass. Never did an initiation ceremony feel so complete and satisfying as that moment when I was toasted by Gladys the dance captain.

  “How much did he give you?” asked Jennie.

  “Oh!” I said. “I’d almost forgotten!”

  I reached into my purse and pulled out the envelope.

  “You open it,” I said, handing it with shaky hands to Celia, who tore it right open, thumbed through the cash expertly, and announced: “Fifty dollars!”

  “Fifty dollars!” shrieked Jennie. “He’s usually twenty!”

  “What should we spend it on?” Gladys asked.

  “We’ve got to do something special with it,” said Jennie—and I felt a rush of relief that the girls considered the money ours, not mine. It spread around the taint of misdoing, if that makes sense. It also added to the feeling of camaraderie.

  “I want to go to Coney Island,” said Celia.

  “We don’t have time,” said Gladys. “We need to be back at the Lily by four.”

  “We’ve got time,” Celia said. “We’ll be quick. We’ll get hot dogs and look at the beach and come straight home. We’ll hire a taxi. We have money now, don’t we?”

  So we drove out to Coney Island with the windows down, smoking and laughing and gossiping. It was the warmest day of summer so far. The sky was thrillingly bright. I was wedged in the backseat between Celia and Gladys, while Jennie chatted away with the driver up front—a driver who could not believe his luck at the assemblage of beauty that had just tumbled into his cab.

  “What a bunch of figures on you gals!” he said, and Jennie said, “Now, don’t you get fresh, mister,” but I could tell that she liked it.

  “Do you ever feel bad about Mrs. Kellogg?” I asked Gladys, feeling a small pang of concern about my deed that day. “I mean, for sleeping with her husband? Should I feel bad about it?”

  “Well, you can’t have too much conscience about things!” said Gladys. “Or else you’ll never stop worrying!”

  And that, I’m afraid, was the extent of our moral agonies. Subject closed.

  “Next time I want it to be with someone else,” I said. “Do you think I could find somebody else?”

  “Piece of cake,” said Celia.

  Coney Island was all shiny and gaudy and fun. The boardwalk was overrun with loud families, and young couples, and sticky children who acted just as delirious as I felt. We looked at the signs for the freak shows. We ran down to the shore and put our feet in the water. We ate candied apples and lemon ices. We got our picture taken with a strongman. We bought stuffed animals and picture postcards and souvenir cosmetic mirrors. I bought Celia a cute little rattan handbag with seashells sewn on it, and I got sunglasses for the other girls, and I paid for a taxi ride all the way back to midtown—and there was still nine dollars left of Dr. Kellogg’s money.

  “You got enough left over to buy yourself a steak dinner!” said Jennie.

  We got back to the Lily Playhouse with barely enough time to make the early show. Olive was frantic with concern that the showgirls would miss the curtain, and she clucked about in circles, scolding everyone for their lack of promptitude. But the girls dove into their dressing rooms and came out only moments later, it seemed, simply secreting sequins and ostrich plumes and glamour.

  My Aunt Peg was there, too, of course, and she asked me, somewhat distractedly, if I’d had a fun day.

  “I sure did!” I said.

  “Good,” she said. “You should have fun, you’re young.”

  Celia gave my hand a squeeze just as she was about to go onstage. I grabbed her by the arm and leaned in closer toward her beauty.

  “Celia!” I whispered, “I still can’t believe I lost my virginity today!”

  “You’ll never miss it,” she said.

  And do you know something?

  She was absolutely right.

  SEVEN

  And so it began.

  Now that I’d been initiated, I wanted to be around sex constantly—and everything about New York felt like sex to me. I had a lot of time to make up for, was how I saw it. I’d wasted all those years being bored and boring, and now I refused to be bored or boring ever again, not even for an hour!

  And I had so much to learn! I wanted Celia to teach me everything she knew—about men, about sex, about New York, about life—and she happily ob
liged. From that point forward, I was no longer the handmaiden of Celia (or at least not merely her handmaiden); I was her accomplice. It was no longer Celia coming home drunk in the middle of the night after a wild spree on the town; it was both of us coming home drunk in the middle of the night after a wild spree on the town.

  The two of us went digging for trouble with a shovel and a pickax that summer, and we never had the slightest trouble finding it. If you are a pretty young woman looking for trouble in a big city, it’s not difficult to find. But if you are two pretty young women looking for trouble, then trouble will tackle you on every corner—which is just how we wanted it. Celia and I cultivated an almost hysterical commitment to having a good time. Our appetites were gluttonous—not only for boys and men, but also for food, and cocktails, and anarchic dancing, and the kind of live music that makes you want to smoke too many cigarettes and laugh with your head thrown back.

  Sometimes the other dancers or showgirls started off the night with us, but they could rarely keep up with me and Celia. If one of us lagged, the other would pick up the pace. Sometimes I got the feeling we were watching each other to see what we would do next, because we usually had no idea what we were going to do next, except that we always wanted another thrill. More than anything, I believe, we were motivated by our mutual fear of boredom. Every day had a hundred hours in it, and we needed to fill them all, or we would perish of tedium.

  Essentially, our chosen line of work that summer was romping and rampaging—and we did it with a tirelessness that staggers my imagination even to this day.

  When I think about the summer of 1940, Angela, I picture Celia Ray and I as two inky, dark points of lust sailing through the neon and shadows of New York City, in a nonstop search for action. And when I try to recall it in detail now, it all seems to run into one long, hot, sweaty night.

  The moment the show was over, Celia and I would change into the thinnest little stalks of evening gowns, and we would absolutely fling ourselves at the city—running full tilt into the impatient streets, already certain that we were missing something vital and lively: How could they start without us?

  We’d always begin our evening at Toots Shor’s, or El Morocco, or the Stork Club—but there was no telling where we would end up by the wee hours. If midtown got too dull and familiar, Celia and I might head up to Harlem on the A train to hear Count Basie play, or to drink at the Red Rooster. Or we could just as easily find ourselves clowning around with a bunch of Yale boys at the Ritz, or dancing with some socialists downtown at Webster Hall. The rule seemed to be: dance until you collapse, and then keep dancing for a little bit longer after that.

  We moved with such speed! Sometimes it felt like I was being dragged behind the city itself—sucked into this wild urban river of music and lights and revelry. Other times, it felt like we were the ones dragging the city behind us—because everywhere we went, we were followed. In the course of these heady evenings, we would either meet up with some men whom Celia already knew, or we would pick up some new men along the way. Or both. I would either kiss three handsome men in a row, or the same handsome man three times—sometimes it was hard to keep track.

  Never was it difficult to find men.

  It helped that Celia Ray could walk into a joint like nobody I’ve ever seen. She would throw her resplendence into a room ahead of her, the way a soldier might toss a grenade into a machine gunner’s nest, and then she’d follow her beauty right on in and assess the carnage. All she had to do was show up, and every bit of sexual energy in the place would magnetize around her. Then she’d stroll around looking bored as can be—sopping up everyone’s boyfriends and husbands in the process—without exerting the slightest bit of effort in her conquests.

  Men looked at Celia Ray like she was a box of Cracker Jack and they couldn’t wait to start digging for the toy.

  In return, she looked at them like they were the wooden paneling on the wall.

  Which only made them crazier for her.

  “Show me you can smile, baby,” a brave man once called out to her across the dance floor.

  “Show me you got a yacht,” Celia said under her breath, and turned away to be bored in another direction.

  Since I was by her side, and since I looked enough like her now (in low light, anyhow—since I was not only the same height and coloring as Celia, but now wore tight dresses like hers, and styled my hair like hers, and modeled my walk after hers, and padded my bosom to slightly resemble hers), it only doubled the effect.

  I don’t like to boast, Angela, but we were a pretty unstoppable duo.

  Actually, I do like to boast, so let an old woman have her glory: we were stunning. We could give whole tables of men a pretty decent case of whiplash, just by walking past.

  “Fetch us a refresher,” Celia would say at the bar, to nobody in particular, and in the next moment, five men would be handing us cocktails—three for her, and two for me. And in the next ten minutes, those drinks would be gone.

  Where did we get all that energy from?

  Oh, yes, I remember: we got it from youth itself. We were turbines of energy. Mornings were always difficult, of course. The hangovers could be quite unsparingly cruel. But if I needed a nap later in the day, I could always do it in the back of the theater, during a rehearsal or a show, collapsed on a pile of old curtains. A ten-minute doze, and I’d be restored, ready to take on the city once more, as soon as the applause died down.

  You can live this way when you’re nineteen (or pretending to be nineteen, in Celia’s case).

  “Those girls are on the road to trouble,” I heard an older woman say about us one night, as we were staggering down the street drunk—and that woman was absolutely right. What she didn’t understand, though, is that trouble is what we wanted.

  Oh, our youthful needs!

  Oh, the deliciously blinding yearnings of the young—which inevitably take us right to the edges of cliffs, or trap us in cul-de-sacs of our design.

  I can’t say that I got good at sex during the summer of 1940, although I will say that I grew awfully familiar with it.

  But, no, I didn’t get good at it.

  To get “good” at sex—which, for a woman, means learning how to enjoy and even orchestrate the act, to the point of her own climax—one needs time, patience, and an attentive lover. It would be awhile before I had access to anything as sophisticated as all that. For now, it was just a game of wild numbers, executed with a considerable amount of speed. (Celia and I didn’t like to hover too long in one location, or with one man, in case we were missing something better that might be happening on the other side of town.)

  My longing for excitement and my curiosity about sex made me not only insatiable that summer, but also susceptible. That’s how I see myself, when I look back on it now. I was susceptible to everything that had even the vaguest suggestion of the erotic or the illicit. I was susceptible to neon lights in the darkness of a midtown side street. I was susceptible to drinking cocktails out of coconut shells in the Hawaiian Room of the Hotel Lexington. I was susceptible to being offered ringside tickets, or backstage entrances to nightclubs that did not have names. I was susceptible to anybody who could play a musical instrument, or dance with a fair amount of panache. I was susceptible to getting into cars with just about anyone who owned a car. I was susceptible to men who would approach me at the bar with two highballs, saying, “I seem to have found myself with an extra drink. Perhaps you could help me out with this, miss?”

  Why, yes, I would be delighted to help you out with that, sir.

  I was so good at being helpful in that regard!

  In our defense, Celia and I didn’t have sex with all the men we met that summer.

  But we did have sex with most of them.

  The question with me and Celia was never so much “Who should we have sex with?”—it didn’t really seem to matter—but only “Where shall we have sex?”

  The answer was: Wherever we could find a spot.

  We ha
d sex in fancy hotel suites, paid for by out-of-town businessmen. But also in the kitchen (closed for the evening) of a small East Side nightclub. Or on a ferry boat where we’d somehow ended up late at night—the lights on the water all runny and blurry around us. In the backs of taxicabs. (I know it sounds uncomfortable, and believe me it was uncomfortable, but it could be accomplished.) In a movie theater. In a dressing room in the basement of the Lily Playhouse. In a dressing room in the basement of the Diamond Horseshoe. In a dressing room in the basement of Madison Square Garden. In Bryant Park, with the threat of rats at our feet. In dark and sweltering alleyways just off the taxi-haunted corners of midtown. On the rooftop of the Puck Building. In an office suite on Wall Street, where only the nighttime janitors might hear us.

  Drunk, pinwheel-eyed, briny-blooded, brainless, weightless—Celia and I spun through New York City that summer on currents of pure electricity. Instead of walking, we rocketed. There was no focus; there was just a constant search for the vivid. We missed nothing, but we also missed everything. We watched Joe Louis train with his sparring partner, for instance, and we heard Billie Holiday sing—but I can’t remember the details of either occasion. We were too distracted by our own story to pay much attention to all the wonders that were laid before us. (For instance: the night that I saw Billie Holiday sing, I had my period and I was in a sulky mood because a boy I liked had just left with another girl. There’s my review of Billie Holiday’s performance.)

  Celia and I would have too much to drink, and then we would run into crowds of young men who’d also had too much to drink—and the whole lot of us would crash together and behave exactly the way you might expect us to behave. We would go into bars with boys whom we’d met in other bars, but then flirt with the boys we discovered in the new bar. We caused fights to break out, and somebody would take a wicked shellacking, but then Celia would choose among the survivors for who would take us to the next bar, where the uproar would begin all over again. We would bounce from one stag party to the next—from one man’s arms to another man’s arms. We even traded dates once, right in the middle of dinner.