Sex in the City - New York

by Maxim Jakubowski

  My one-bedroom apartment is already filling with morning light and I can’t go back to sleep. I look at the face of the cell phone and see there is barely one bar of charge left. I push buttons and phone number after phone number pops up, each with a girl’s name next to it. Sammi gets around. Sammi likes to keep her names straight. Sammi better call soon or this cell phone is going into the trash.

  I’m in the shower stall, drying myself, when the phone rings again. I reach onto the counter of the sink. ‘Hope I’m not calling too early, didn’t remember how much charge was left.’

  ‘Sammi?’

  ‘You know my name?’

  ‘Loriel and your mother want you to call. Your mother needs help at the house.’

  ‘Kitchen faucet must be leaking again.’

  ‘You’re handy?’

  ‘A plumber. By trade.’

  ‘If you give me a minute I will get your address so I can send the phone back.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Zoë.’

  ‘Like Franny and Zoe?’

  ‘That’s Zooey. But I’m glad you are well read. It’s Zoë as in Chloe, the friend I was with. Just a friend, like I said. I don’t think you and I play on the same team.’

  ‘Always thought being on a team was rather limiting.’

  ‘Are you a good plumber?’ I slosh out of my shower stall, my feet slimy and wet, the greyish water at the base of the stall barely draining.

  ‘Very good.’

  ‘Do you work on Saturdays?’

  ‘You have a problem?’

  ‘My pipes are backed up.’

  ‘I’ll give you a special rate.’

  ‘I’ll give you back your phone.’

  It is less than an hour later when Sammi is on her knees in my bathroom, hunched over my shower stall. I stand behind her. She is wearing greased-stained khakis and a short, tight tee. There is a tattoo of an elegant spider web at the base of her spine. She leans into the stall with serious intent, working a long metal device she calls a snake into my clogged pipe. This is the first time I’ve seen plumber ass crack topped off by a V-shaped thong.

  Despite never having had sex with a woman, I can see why Sammi is so popular. She has a fantastic body, her crack as deep and dimply as any super model ass cleavage. Her khakis are hiked up a bit and I see her muscular calves, just above rolled up sweat socks wrapped in tight construction shoes; not manly, just sexy, curvy, tight woman’s calves. I like her confidence as well, the ease in which she approached me at the bar, the intense way she works the pipe.

  Done, Sammi takes care to scrub her hands clean in my bathroom faucet. She demonstrates, with a long hard spray from the shower spigot, that my pipes are as good as new. In the kitchen I dig out my checkbook from a basket of bills.

  ‘So what do you do?’ she asks.

  ‘Interior designer.’

  ‘Like a decorator?’

  ‘We prefer designer.’

  ‘Sounds boring.’

  I laugh, say lightly, ‘Well most of my friends, and my mom, think I have an absolutely fab career.’

  ‘Is that what you always wanted to do?’

  I finish writing the check. ‘Actually, I always wanted to be a singer. No one famous. Just someone with a sweet, bluesy voice who could hold the attention of a room full of people, at least for an evening.’

  ‘Sweet,’ she says, finally impressed. ‘There’s more light in your eyes when you talk about singing.’ I hand her the check. She seems ready to leave. I invite her to stay for lunch.

  It is before lunch is over, I am at a cabinet reaching for tea bags, when she turns me around and kisses me. It is an aggressive kiss, like a man’s, only her lips are terribly sweet and soft. Absent is even the hint of abrasion a man’s moustache or shadow can cause. Though aggressive, also absent is the wild entering of tongue those poor stupid boys are so prone to do after a night of drinking as they say goodbye at the doorway, hoping to be asked up. She is taller than me, something I did not realize at first.

  Expertly, she kisses and explores, guides me to the bed in complete context of what we are doing. As with her work, Sammi pays particular attention to detail. Though I could never imagine complete fulfilment with a woman, I always suspected that this might be something interesting: the exotic meal, the off-the-beaten-path vacation, the surprisingly moving moment at some alternative theatre.

  It goes on for what seems like hours. I am hungry again and in need of another shower. But then Sammi surprises me once more. She goes into the bathroom and I hear her fumbling around in her tool bag. She returns, still naked, her breasts a perfect size, two sturdy coconuts that felt pleasant in my mouth, her hips curvy, but somewhat boyish, a cock, quite hard, strapped-on between her legs.

  She approaches the bed and tells me to suck her. I find it touching that she thinks I need this as well. Not sure what the goal would be, but as I’ve already proven I am quite game today, I begin a gentle sucking. The taste is startling, sweet; she literally has coated herself with honey. I close my eyes, go to work, hungry for her, soon lost in the sucking, aroused supremely again at the idea not of sucking a man’s cock, but of sucking Sammi’s cock.

  Then she pulls me up, leads me to the large windows overlooking the street twelve stories below. She pulls the shade up. She faces me against the window. She grasps a wrist in each hand and places my hands above me, against the left and right side of the pane.

  From behind she enters me slowly with her perfect, wet, sweet cock.

  ‘The stage is dark,’ she whispers. ‘You wear a beautiful, long sequined dress, thin straps at the shoulders. Your hair is done up perfectly. Just one tunnel of light appears, on you. The room is full of people sitting at tables. They can’t take their eyes off you, you are so beautiful. I am behind you, your dress hiked up so discreetly no one can tell. I am inside you, still, letting you feel, letting you get used to my hardness. Then you begin …’

  And she begins, going in and out with her hard honeyed cock, the lining of my vagina velvet with moist desire.

  ‘Your voice starts low and soft and you know you have everyone’s attention. You have my attention. All of it. You add energy and power and you attack your song and they are all mesmerized, men, women. You find the real you. You feel the beauty within you begin to grow, to rise up in your voice and reach out to the audience like a caressing hand.’ Her hands caress my breasts, my belly. Her cock goes in and out in the exact rhythm, with the exact strength of her words. ‘Your song arouses everyone in the room. The men are hard, the women wet. The power of your voice is so strong they cannot help touching themselves.’ Like a conductor, baton in hand, she makes me sing. It is not exactly words, but there is a sound, a melodic tone rising within me. Though my eyes are closed, seeing everything she asks me to imagine, I do sense the openness of the street below me – my erect nipples against the glass – that there may be people below, or in the buildings across the way, who are watching.

  She convinces me they are, that everyone is watching and that my voice is the prettiest they’ve heard. Deeper, deeper with her pressure, her penetration, as she quickens, as she tells me my song is near its climax, though I don’t need her to tell me as I feel it all, see it all so perfectly.

  She makes me come. She tells me that, at the same time, I am making every man and woman in the room come. We all come. We all sing together. She fucks me hard and furiously until the song is done, until everyone is spent, including Sammi, though her cock is far from flaccid.

  I have the urge to collapse to the floor, but she leads me back to the bed. In one swift motion she removes the cock and drops it to the floor. We both lie on our backs.

  This is a moment I have learned to fight. In my early twenties I let it swarm over me and carry me into a grateful rush during the times a boy got it right, or the chemistry seemed to be there, or my feeli
ngs were just too strong. But I’ve learned. After the fuck can be danger time. After the fuck is when you find out what really went on. So I’ve learned to check the feelings after I’ve left my guard down during the lovemaking, when the rare man has touched me the way Sammi has. I let the man take the lead, try to intuit as quickly as possible if I have a Harry Met Sally morning-after on my hands, if it even lasts to morning.

  She reaches for me. She holds me. She kisses me. She stays the rest of the day and all of Sunday: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. On Monday morning we both go to work and I feel changed, recharged, renewed … and sore. It seems so obvious I am sure everyone can tell.

  When I arrive home from work, I notice her silver cell phone on my kitchen counter next to the basket of bills. The battery is dead. I take it to an electronics store and buy the appropriate charger. I charge the phone up, wait for her call. I acknowledge that Sammi never did say she would call me, which I see as a positive, as that farewell cliché is usually an automatic indicator that an encounter is, indeed, a one night stand, or in this case two.

  I carry the fully charged phone around in my bag all week, charging it up in the evening, but leaving it on through the night. I chastise myself for not offering to call her before she left on Monday, but I’ve learned what a turn-off that can be for guys. I push buttons on the face of the phone in an effort to find the number she called me from last Saturday morning, but it is a blocked number. I toy with the idea of calling some of the numbers in the directory to see if I can get a number for Sammi, but don’t want to sound like another desperate Loriel. I would even welcome an early morning call from Mom.

  I can’t help but be depressed as next Friday comes around and I still haven’t heard. Against my better judgment, I tell Chloe we should try Au Bar or Au Club or Au Pair, again. We sit on the same couch. Chloe says I am unusually quiet. About a half hour after we arrive Sammi does come in with a date. I hunker down so she doesn’t see me. I remember her hands, her mouth, her tongue, her breasts, her deep inside me. Later, Sammi’s date gets up to go to the bathroom. To my utter horror, Sammi goes over to talk to a woman who is with a guy who just left her to go to the bar for drinks. The girl laughs awkwardly and shakes her head. I don’t know why I am surprised, but I am. Just before both their companions return, Sammi slips the woman a cell phone, which she awkwardly puts away.

  Now let’s see; I have been with a married guy who presented himself as divorced. I briefly lived with a man who stole money from me. There are the standards, the ones who try to come off as film producers, surgeons, investors, when at best they are paper pushers for some low level investment firm. I have met ones who use flowers, jewellery, even one who sent me a new dress for our first date to get what they wanted, but even they never wanted to keep me.

  I know this is stupid, but I really was moved by Sammi, so I couldn’t help going over. I shouldn’t even have come back to the bar. I was content to give Sammi the benefit of the doubt when she didn’t call. But now I am so blind with anger I put her in the category of the men who get great pleasure out of leaving the bar with a pick-up, their buddies left behind smiling with envy, who, once out of the bar, don’t even want to have sex, but go through it anyway because they’ve gone this far and feel obligated and want to make sure they have something to tell their buddies during the next day’s recap. But Sammi seems to have her own particular fetish: seducing straight girls. Once again, I should’ve known better.

  I approach Sammi at the couch, ignoring everyone and everything, even the date at her side. I say, ‘Were the phone calls from Loriel and your mom even real, or was that staged, too, to help show what a sexy, well-rounded person you are?’

  ‘Hi, Zoë, this is my friend, Nina.’

  ‘I don’t need to meet your friend.’

  ‘Hey, calm down. Look, we had an awesome time, can’t you just leave it at that. I never made any promises.’ I half-expected some more of the classics: ‘Let’s be friends,’ or ‘It’s me who is fucked up, not you,’ but she came up with one I hadn’t heard before: ‘Look, you got topped. Enjoy it. Get over it. I’ll never settle down.’ Then, delivered with a bluntness only the largest of assholes have used, she added, ‘Just basically someone who likes to get her dick sucked.’

  There is a line I’ve often thought of delivering to some of the men when they turned a cold shoulder or gave me the old heave-ho. It seems especially appropriate at this moment and I deliver it with the panache of someone who feels free, speaking to someone so locked into a lifestyle she may never grow up. ‘You may have a dick, but you have no balls …’

  With that, I go back to the couch, grab my purse, tell Chloe I’m leaving, and hail a cab uptown.

  It’s while sitting alone in a cab with cracked leather seats, moving quietly through traffic, when I realize the freedom I allowed to creep into my voice had been false. And that perhaps she didn’t deserve the anger I keep buried, caused by so many other men. She had been better than most. She had stayed. She took the time to touch me, to pay attention to the light in my eyes. I sink lower into the seat, causing an ancient spring to moan. Perhaps it is me who is locked in, jailed, perhaps more so than Sammi. She, at the very least, knows her strengths and limitations. There are plenty of men out there besides the phonies, wannabees, momma’s boys, players, and lawyers. Decent men. Kind men. To my great self-disgust I have never been attracted to one unless he had the look, the cockiness, the arrogance, the muscular body, the near-perfect features. The times I have gone out with the easy-going, shy, less confident, less than perfectly fit, plain man (ones in their own way mirror images of me) I haven’t felt even a spark. ‘We’re doomed to love the bad boys,’ Chloe once said as we vented over another frustration.

  In the back seat of the cab, I do what I do too often. Nevertheless it does provide some comfort. I cry.

  About the Story

  I have been working on my short story collection, Sex and Love, for a number of years. These erotic stories deal with characters ranging from their early twenties to late fifties; men, women, some single, some married, some gay, some straight. Everyone is missing something from their lives and all of their conflicts derive from their search for sex, love, or both. One of the stories I had already written, Lonely Man, was also set in New York City and showed how even in a city of millions one can feel isolated and lonely, especially if a pattern of poor choices doesn’t change. I was looking to do a companion to the story from a woman’s point of view.

  My sister, who is single and lives in Manhattan, told me the story of a man on a date who tried to pick up a friend of hers in a bar while his girl friend went to the bathroom. With no time to get her phone number, he slipped her a cell phone and said he would call. I had also read an article about the boi lesbian culture in New York; lesbians who took pride in loving and leaving women in the same aloof fashion typically associated with men. I had these story elements in my head for about a year, but was still searching for the story. One day the first line popped into my head – I’m the type of girl boys don’t keep – and it fell into place. How big a dose of reality is it for Zoë (a straight girl) to fall for a girl (boi) who is exactly like all the boys she ends up getting burned by?

  The last piece of the puzzle was the narrator’s voice. My second novel, Whipped, is written from a woman’s point of view, but in the third person. I had never written anything in the first person from a woman’s point of view. However, the confessional tone of Cell, along with the dramatic dose of reality that hits Zoë as she sits in a New York City taxi cab, alone among millions, seemed much more powerful in the first person. Man or woman, you know what she is feeling.

  Author Biographies

  Donna George Storey can’t seem to write anything that doesn’t have a lot of sex in it. Most of her adults-only tales are set in the world’s great cities, but New York definitely takes first place as the scene of her edgiest erotic exploits. Her short fiction has appeared
in numerous journals and anthologies including The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica, Best Women’s Erotica, Best American Erotica, Penthouse, Scarlet Magazine, Ultimate Burlesque, and Ultimate Decadence, along with broad-minded literary journals like Prairie Schooner and The Gettysburg Review. Her first novel, Amorous Woman (Neon/Orion 2007), the story of an American woman’s steamy love affair with Japan, was also based on her own experiences teaching English in Kyoto. She currently writes a column for the Erotica Readers and Writers Association called Cooking up a Storey, that focuses on all of her favourite topics: delicious sex, well-crafted food, and mind-blowing writing. She also loves to read – or rather, purr – her stories aloud and is producing a series of erotic podcasts. Read more of her work at www.DonnaGeorgeStorey.com

  Maxim Jakubowski is a twice award-winning British writer, editor, critic, lecturer, ex-publisher and ex-bookshop owner. He shares his time between the wonderfully dubious shores of erotica and the perilous beaches of crime and mystery fiction. He is responsible for the Mammoth Book of Erotica series and the Mammoth Book of Best British Crime series, is editor of over 75 anthologies and counting, as well as being the author of two handfuls of novels and short story collections. He was crime reviewer for Time Out London and then the Guardian for nearly twenty years, and also makes regular appearances on radio and television. He also co-directs Crime Scene, London’s annual crime and mystery film and literature festival, and runs the MaXcrime imprint. I Was Waiting For You is his latest novel.

  Though based in London, he has been known to travel and frequent hotel rooms with depressing regularity, which no doubt inspired his London Noir, Paris Noir and Rome Noir collections, as well as the Sex in the City series. He has lived in, or regularly visited, every city featured in the Sex in the City titles published so far. When not writing, he collects books, CDs and DVDs with alarming haste.

  Polly Frost is an author, journalist and playwright known for both humour and erotica. Deep Inside, her collection of satirical erotic horror and sci-fi stories, was published by Tor in 2007. Deep Inside has been written about and reviewed over fifty times, including praise from porn legend Ron Jeremy and Rachel Kramer Bussel, who listed it as one of the ten best erotica books in Time Out New York. Stories from Sex Scenes and Deep Inside have been included in Maxim Jakubowski’s Mammoth Books of Best Erotica.