by Mark Harris
DATA RECITER. Lge cmpny needs yng man to recite all info prtning to massage parlors or studios. Hi pay for rite man. No minors. Must be exprncd at orgasms. Medal of Honor winners desirable but not essential.
Well, he was no minor. Don’t worry about that. For shame, masturbating on Liberty Street, but that was long ago, when he was a boy, and he had no need to do such things any more, now that he had discovered the art of massage. Silk for sale. Across the street people were voting in a garage. James’s car was plastered with stickers urging McGinley. Draft Congressmen, said the bumper sticker on the car parked behind his own. Things go better with Christ, said another. He could give as well as take, you know, start up his own massage parlor, and take this Lala Ferne as a suitable partner, too; she was eager to get out of the house into a job of her own. He could raise the money, you know. He needed only to . . . No, he wouldn’t do it. “Forget it,” he said aloud — he wouldn’t do the thing required, though she’d back him if he did, she was rich, but he’d resist her — entering his green BMW 1600 and starting up the motor, determined to return to his desk at the Chronicle, from which he had now been absent overlong. Lala’s husband Harold bowled tonight. Very good.
But he began to consider, backing up, swinging out, that this Lala, so seemingly willing and open at noon, might very well, in another nine hours, with her children in bed at last, and her husband out bowling, have lost her nerve — “come to her senses,” as some might say. It happened often. Given time to think, ladies thought their way back to safety, they backed out, backed off, backed down, backed everywhere but onto their own backs — less and less so, it must be admitted, since his smell had improved. She had complimented him on his smell. Fragments of their conversation were coming back. Yes, in the kitchen. Ladies with children were super-dependable, stabler, they had a fixed schedule, you knew where they were: some children came home for lunch and some didn’t. Thank God for the Federal Hot Lunch Program. Keep an eye on the calendar, beware Christmas and Easter vacations, beware sick children lurking in back bedrooms. Such ladies had more at stake. “I’ve got to think of the children,” ladies often said when pondering infidelity. He’d phone her and hear her voice again as soon as he reached the office. To the telephones! To the barriers! There ought to be a revolution. He felt so. Yes. A change was needed. Life was unfair. What real harm could come of masturbating in the street? Who was hurt, actually? Why couldn’t streets be set aside for masturbating — traffic blocked off — as streets in snowy climes were set aside for children’s sledding? James felt himself to be a victim of discrimination, of oppression, of a form of censorship. Why did her husband Harold possess her? Why couldn’t James possess her? Why couldn’t both possess her? He’d be willing to share her with Harold. Why couldn’t everybody possess everybody? Upon the lapel of his coat he sometimes wore a campaign button more to his taste than his present McGinley button, and he’d wear it again as soon as this phony election was over.
LOVE
THY NEIGHBOR
Sexual Freedom League
Most people smiled at it. It set up good vibrations most of the time. Some people frowned. Oh well, smiles and frowns, that was life. In his BMW he roared down Eighteenth Street, past Eureka Street (he was born at Eureka & Twenty-Second and lived there yet, three blocks from Officer Phelps), past Station G at Eighteenth & Diamond where he’d once kept a postal box to accommodate subscriptions to pornographic magazines, and where Officer Phelps and Junie Krannick (Brown’s “son”) spent their final moments together, past Cala Foods, past Edna’s & Jerry’s Toys.
Now where? The roaring of his machine was fine, and he loved the sound and the feel of it, but where was he going? Let the car itself decide. He often did so, abandoning intention as he drove, driving by habit or feel, hoping he’d sail past those intersections of temptation so numerous in this fine city, and so diverting to his best intentions, too, so dangerous to his duties, to his obligations, and a threat even to his pleasures themselves, for if he were to permit himself too many diversions from duty he would one day lose his most desirable position at the Chronicle. Would it be worth it? Hardly. A man must have a job. Work now, play later. Yet why not combine work and play by owning your own massage parlor, do what she wants, raise the money, he needed only to . . . Yes, he’d do it. Play for pay. Get rich prick. Wait! Wait! Wait until evening, as other men do! Look around, everyone is waiting! It Takes Leather Balls to Play Rugby, said a bumper sticker on Castro Street. Past the Family Store, past the Castro Theater, Pinto’s Barber Shop, the Bank of America. James, behind the rugby car, turned onto Market Street — right; downtown; toward the Chronicle. In his struggle toward work it seemed for the moment a victorious turn.
Of course, when he was a Master Masseur he’d be required to take the ugly ones, too, the fatties and the smellies and the weirdies desiring all sorts of strange things, he supposed. He’d need to set some limits there. Certain things he just wouldn’t do, no ma’am. “Madam, I am a legitimate masseur,” he said aloud with indignation, driving on Market Street upon the very trolley tracks driven for thirty-five years by Motorman Brown, father of Brown. “Straight from France,” he’d tell those babes, putting on a French accent. He’d keep his money in buckets. He knew a French-speaking masseuse in Saigon who buried her money in cold cream. She was a rich gal, too, with hundreds and hundreds of dollars in her cold cream, and she hadn’t minded a bit showing it to him, she’d trusted him completely, though he could have bopped her over the head and stolen it all. He’d learned a lot in Saigon. Everything began for him there, everything happened, it was the beginning. The darker people are, the more advanced they are sexually. Africa must be a blast, he thought. Smuck fog, said a bumper sticker. Stop the killing, said another.
His eye caught Manasek’s sign, to his left, and he turned a U-turn on Market Street without the least precaution. His saints preserved him, no doubt, but he knew, too, that he hadn’t turned for Manasek’s, to have his letter framed, not at all, not at all, but turned because he desired to lead himself astray, not to work but to play, not downtown but outbound, elsewhere, fool that he was. “Watch him now return straight to his desk!” One more confident prophecy gone wrong! To Lala’s now! Back to Lala’s house! No, to a massage now! Where? At Lala’s he’d lie on the living room floor and have her stroke him as she stroked Paprika. She’d say, “Oh, you silly,” but she’d do it. She’d do anything for him. He could tell. He knew he’d found a gem there, and not just by sheer luck, either. He knew how to tell the signs now. He’d become an enormously exprncd fellow, hadn’t he? He’d known on the telephone this morning that she was trying to keep him from hanging up because his voice was doing something for her, and then when he arrived at her house his smell started doing things for her. But which smell? His colognes or his sweatstink? He could produce either one. If it was his sweatstink that so enchanted her he could work it up for her, close his car windows, blast himself with his heater, and broil awhile. He’d produce stink for a lady that cared for stink, anything she wanted he’d give her, anything she cared to do he’d do, he was obliging.
Or so at least he promised himself at a moment such as this, when he was boiling blood, tumescent. His problem was, as he well recognized, that vows and resolutions taken now were only indifferently honored afterward: he was never the honorable man he’d always meant to be. He had performed no good deeds for society, for mankind. A military priest in Saigon tried to ease his mind by telling him that God favored the bloody work he’d done, but James knew better; God couldn’t possibly love such shit as that. If she so loved his voice they could talk on the telephone. She undoubtedly had an extension upstairs. People liked to simulate unavailability. But can you talk to a party on your own extension? He didn’t know. He’d ask a telephone man. Sometimes James wished he were a telephone repair man; he’d climb a pole and listen in on all the dirty conversations. Outdoor work, indoor connections.
By now, however, he had driven up M
arket Street beyond Douglass. He supposed he might yet turn off at Clayton, but even while dawdling above the supposition he and his saints roared past Clayton, and he was persuaded that his BMW 1600 had decided against returning to Lala Ferne’s house, intending to proceed, instead, somewhere else — for a massage, no doubt. Her fat mother would only be there anyhow, and Mr. Brown, too, sitting around eating sandwiches. Massage was quicker than seduction. Basically true, he preferred cunts to hands, but a young man in an awful hurry on an already overextended lunch hour hadn’t as many options as he’d have had at an hour more wisely chosen. There he flew now, up Market like a cannonball, over the top at Portola, and down the other side. Oh these damn red lights!
He should telephone, really. She might be busy. She always said, “No, Jimmy, never too busy for you,” but then when he arrived he was often forced to wait. She was a busy woman.
Sometimes he hated her, too. She had trapped him. She’d given him one massage free to start with, and he’d been trapped henceforth forever. She was no better than a dope peddler. Once, not long ago, a masseuse named Irene at Mauvanne’s Oriental Nordic Massage on Bush Street had forgotten him on the table and locked him in for the night. He let himself out, writing her a humorous note, and she’d been grateful, and treated him especially well ever since (he could have stolen all she owned), but he didn’t want her today. She wasn’t right. Someone else was right, but not Irene. There lay the ocean ahead. The ocean was west and Irene was east. But when a man needs a telephone what good is an ocean, though it was serene today, flowing up and meeting the sky, and he’d have been smart to steer straight to the ocean and sit upon the beach and contemplate its serenity. He was not, however, smart enough, cornering on screaming wheels at high speed off Portola onto Claremont, dipping down to West Portal in pursuit of a telephone, his sweat rolling down into his eyes now.
It was a good business if you ran it right. These ladies made a lot of money. No wonder the pigs were down on them all the time — they paid off and paid off and paid off, but never enough for the pigs. “More, more, more,” cried the pigs, and they closed you down if they thought you were holding back on them. Bastards.
He needed, he thought, a good drug, a spray preparation of some sort to freeze his penis, to benumb him, at least during working hours, or get ahold of some of that cyproterone acetate mentioned on page 152 which the British were cooking up to subdue the sexual forces. Support Your Local Planet, said a bumper sticker on a student van backing out of a diagonal space on West Portal. Behind it, in a moment of surprising tranquility, James Berberick waited. From his glove compartment he fetched a tin receptacle once containing Johnson & Johnson Band-Aids, now containing dimes to telephone masseuses with in instants of emergency like this, parking now, and recalling, as the wheel touched the curb, that his right front tire was soft, crossing the street on foot to the beautiful telephone in the Portalwood Pharmacy and plunging in his dime and dialing a beautiful telephone number, dialing, dialing, as fast as he could. How slow these dials were! They never came back, they crept, they were sluggish — it took years to dial a number. Why didn’t the Telephone Company install super-spring power dials? When oh when would they come out with universal push-button telephones? Somebody in there didn’t really want you to get your number. And the pigs tapped the wires, too, you know, the bastards, and they raided without a warrant, too, they came posing as “patients” with forged doctors’ certificates and got themselves a good old hand job or whatever their scurvy hearts desired and then put the pinch on the poor masseuse after a thousand guarantees that they weren’t pigs. Oh no, not them. Kill the pigs, James felt. Spray them with machine guns, bomb their headquarters. He’d done that, too, you know — sprayed folks with machine guns. Why was the war legal but certain kinds of massage illegal? James himself had been permitted to go to war and kill people but was prohibited by law from beseeching a masseuse for a friendly orgasm. Make Love, Not War. It was fun for the “patient” and profit for the masseuse, and she had a bit of fun, too, when her mood was right. Your mood couldn’t be right every hour of the day. Even James himself sometimes fell from the mood. Well, when he had his license as masseur massaging ladies all day long for fun and profit he’d probably rise some mornings saying to himself, “Oh, damn, another day of nothing but naked ladies.” It was exactly like the medical profession; bodies bored doctors after a while. It must be so.
Now it rang. She kept the lines clear. She didn’t tie things up. Usually it rang two or three times, depending upon who was on the table and the stage of massage he was in. She couldn’t just run off from a fellow about to . . . the French had a word for it. Barrage, was it? Perhaps. The masseuse in Saigon said so, and she seemed to know. How the French got that uvula into it! It was fantastic, you cleared your throat that way, you dragged it out real long, and it sounded like an actual barrage, whereas the barrage itself took you clear out of this world or any other, it was the height of life, it was forgetfulness, he’d rather go into the massage business with Mrs. Lala Ferne than go to the moon, no question about it. He saw their neon sign:
James & Lala
Bath & Barrage
Who’d know? You’d only know if you were French, and once you were French you didn’t care. It was no wonder the French had such well-developed uvulas, considering their perversions. But he had no prejudices, truly. Nothing was true about anybody once you got down to particular cases. James had by now a sufficient experience of life to observe that many of the things people told him were simply untrue, as, for example, that girls whose cheeks jiggled as they walked were hot, ripe, ready, gazing out the door of the Portalwood Pharmacy at the girls walking along West Portal, at their mouths, at their cheeks. No, it couldn’t be true in spite of his having heard it from various profound intellectuals in the Classified Advertising Department.
Now it rang a second time. He hoped she wouldn’t answer. He had avoided her for weeks. Even now he could hang up, leave, roar back downtown, step into the office. “Better late than never,” he’d say, or devise a clever excuse, “I had a flat tire — my right front tire . . . I had a stomachache from too much Camembert cheese at my mother’s . . . I stopped to assist at an accident — a moron tried a U-turn on Market up there near Castro . . . a fine policeman commandeered my car . . . I was sitting serenely on the beach lost in thought, contemplating new approaches to classified advertising.”
Yes, she was no better than a dope peddler. She had lured him with a free massage. He’d dropped into her studio that first time and been staggered by the prices on her wall, and he’d been on the verge of walking out, and she said, “Well then, remove all your clothing, Jimmy, and I’ll give you your first massage free.” She’d hooked him that way, and sang him a song while she worked. He’d been very young. What was the song? Dadada dah . . . but that of course was when they hooked you, when you were very young, and hooked him for the war then, too, young as he was. It hadn’t been like the advertisements. They’d advertised preparation for trades, skills, education, see the world, insurance benefits, retirement benefits, free dental care, free family care, but then once they hooked you they had you hooked: you forgot to read the small print, you were too young to know you should have read it, promises were forgotten, you were deserted, you were abandoned, you were insulted, you were brutalized, and if you dared to desert all those indignities they stood you up and shot you.
As for James, sensing how it was, he’d shot his way out of it, but shot too much, he supposed, shot too free and easy, too aimlessly, too willy-nilly, and lost the Medal of Honor because of the stink there’d have been if people found out that a Medal of Honor winner was hardly more than a mad killer. He’d saved his own skin first. Then, too, it turned out he was unemployed, so they didn’t choose him. President Johnson sent the Secret Service out to see what sort of fellow this James Berberick was, and the Secret Service found out that he was not only unemployed but habituated massage parlors, too, and they weren’t
going to fork over a Medal of Honor to any such fellow. “No way,” said President Johnson, “it wouldn’t look good for me to be handing out Medals of Honor to young fellers spend their time getting theirselves whacked off.”
Now it rang a third time, and she answered, and James said, “Luella.”
“Speaking,” she said.
“This is Jim,” he said. “Are you busy at the moment?”
“No, Jimmy, never too busy for you,” she said. She added: “I was hoping you’d call.” She’d never said that before, and he feared it.
“What’s up?” he asked, although of course he knew, and he replied to himself. My cock, pointing to Heaven, for he’d lie upon her table gazing at the mirrored ceiling tinted blue, the illusion of angels floating across a blue sky. She’d seen it first at Mordecai’s Toys. In the midst of those angels, if a fellow searched that sky with sufficient vision, lay or floated one James Berberick naked upon his back.
“Nothing’s up,” she said. “Let’s not talk on the phone.” She was a beauty. She really was. At first you might not think so. She was in many ways a mother to him, and he was in many ways a son to her. Their mutual trust was deep. Hadn’t she shown him things for his delight? Her mirrored ceiling could be seen from other rooms, and there he waited and watched these men with their crazy perversions. How disgusting! She pretended not to know that he was watching, but he was. “Come along, Jimmy,” she said.
