Ladies' Man

by Richard Price

  The walls were the same blond wood paneling as the waiting room. On the wall nearest to me were three brown plastic coat hooks and an oven timer.

  “You ever been here before?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Okay, take off all your clothes and I’ll be right back.” I stripped down to my shorts and sat on the bed. What if rival Mafia factions in a war over massage-parlor ownership blasted this place to shit? What if they stopped paying police protection and got raided? What if I couldn’t get it up? That was the question.

  She returned with a yellow plastic basin of water. “Take-them off too, honey.” She nodded toward my shorts. I draped them over my shirt, tensing my stomach for maximum ripple. She slipped off her nightie. She was a little on the chunky side with bruised thighs.

  She handed me the bowl, and I held it under my cock while she washed it with warm water and Phisohex. Her hands and the water felt soft and good. As she washed me I noticed a chrome-and-red-vinyl exercise bench against the wall.

  “Am I supposed to do sit-ups?” I nodded toward the bench.

  She laughed. “Nah, that’s for in case the guy doesn’t want to do anything in bed… then we can say we’re doing health things… I don’t understand a hundred percent myself.” She put down the basin. “So, what you have in mind?” hands on her hips.

  What did I have in mind? The question stumped and embarrassed me. “I don’t know. I didn’t think that much in advance.”

  “Well, how much you wanna spend?”

  “That twelve forty I already spent.” Don’t get burned.

  She shrugged and took the bowl from me.

  “Okay, I’ll give you a blowjob.” She paper-towel-dried my prick. I didn’t think I would come with a blowjob.

  “How much for a straight fuck?”

  “I can’t answer that, honey. That’s solicitation. Just tell me how much more you can go for…”

  “I’ll spring for another five.”

  “We can dp half and half without a rubber for an extra five… Okay?”

  “What’s that, sixty-nine?” I didn’t want to eat a whore’s pussy for free.

  “No, no. First I blow you a little, then we fuck.. Okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “Pay me first, then well get it on.”

  I paid her and hoisted myself up on the high bed.

  “You know, I know Leonard Nimoy,” I lied,

  “Who?” She frowned, sitting on the bed.

  “The guy who plays Doctor Spock. I heard you talking out there.”

  “Oh yeah?” She didn’t seem impressed. I didn’t know why I made up that bullshit. Sometimes I embarrassed myself.

  “I might have a little trouble getting hard. I’m nervous.”

  “Don’t worry, lotta guys do… once they’re in they’re okay though.”

  She dipped her mouth to my prick, sucking and flicking the underside. After a few seconds she stopped. “I can’t do great head today… I had root-canal work yesterday and my whole side is still sore.” She tenderly touched the left side of her jaw. “I’ll try though.” She went back to work. She stopped again; “Ah…” She grimaced and brought the plastic basin up to the bed and spit blood into the water. She blew me another thirty seconds, stopping to spit blood two more times. “Okay?” She nodded to me while absently pulling my dick. She went to hit the oven timer on the wall.

  “Aw, don’t do that.” I winced. “I’ll be done in ten minutes. I promise.”

  She shrugged, got on her back and I grabbed my prick to put myself in. “Shit!” she hissed. I froze. I didn’t know what I did. She clenched her teeth in anger for a second, then relaxed. “No, no, honey, don’t ever! put yourself in. Let me do it. Every guy grabs his prick and rams his fist right into me. Every goddamn time. I’m purple down mere.” She hissed again, gingerly touching herself. My guts were flip-flopping. I felt nauseated.

  “Sony, I didn’t know.”

  “That’s okay.” She put me in, and as we fucked she kept me in a sight vice with her thighs so I couldn’t go in real deep. I was aware of my promise to be ten minutes and felt as pressured as if the timer was ticking. Like a schmuck I tried to put the moves on. She had a lead-lined uterus and I was wiggling and juking, like “Here’s something you never got at home.” I was arched over her, afraid to lay down, skin on skin. A section of paper towel was clenched in her fist, held near the serrated edges, tensed and ready like the rip-cord of a parachute. I knew the minute I came she would tear it off the roll. Forget it. I couldn’t come and I asked her to shift to a handjob. I laid on my back again. She jerked me off with one hand while holding a Kleenex like a screen two inches from my prick to catch the drops. The Kleenex was blocking my view and I tried to watch in a small mirror on her night stand. Through the wall I beard some guy whining, “No, don’t do that! Then you get me all excited! No! That’s no good! I told you!” It sounded like the old guy from the waiting room. I could tell her arm was getting tired and by sheer will power and heavy fantasizing I forced myself to come.

  “The-e-ere you go,” she said in a drawn-out steadying tone, like a doctor giving a shot to a scared kid,

  “You know, I could never come with a bag on,” I mused as I buttoned my shirt. I was nervous and casual at the same time. All my sentences came out with slight blurting inflections.

  “You don’t ever have to use a bag in this place if you don’t want.” She slipped on her nightgown.

  “If a girl says you do, you go to the desk, she’ll change her mind real fast.” She brushed her frizzy hair with a nylon brush.

  “Yeah; but don’t you ever get worried about the clap?” I tried to sound like a Friend of Whores.

  “Nah. I’ve been working this thing four years. I never had nothing. We’re supposed to get checked by doctors every week anyhow… Okay, honey… see ya ” She left the room. As I finished dressing I thought about what a real person she was. When we were balling she made little gasps. I didn’t know if she was faking or not, but I wasn’t the worst screw in the world either.

  I started tripping, thinking about asking her out for dinner. That would be wild. I would take her and her kid Doctor Spock. Maybe we would all go down to Miami if things worked out. I sat on the bed thinking of how I could get her alone for a few minutes out there and ask her for dinner. Maybe I could pass her a note.

  No. I could motion to her at the entrance to the waiting room to come to me at the door. That made more sense. I left the room and headed down the striped corridor to the desk. She was walking toward me with a big goon in tow. He had a shaved head and dirty plaid pants. The type that always sat with spread-out knees on crowded subways. She winked bye-bye and walked past me.

  Out in the street three minutes later it seemed like nothing had happened; it was just some movie I saw in a peep show.

  I passed a deli and bought a big chocolate chip cookie. A half-hour had passed. I felt like I was waiting for somebody, like I was early for some appointment. I began getting horny again. Near me, a bearded black dude in a skull cap drew a crowd around a hand-painted, six-foot-high chart of the twelve tribes of Israel—each tribe corresponding to a different African or Latin country. He rifled about how the Jews in Israel weren’t the real Jews, that Puerto Ricans and Africans were; how Moses was a spade and why it was cool to rip off television sets and Mixmasters from Jewish-owned stores. I was the only white guy, let alone the only Jew, in the crowd. I stood there listening to this guy’s graffiti for twenty minutes. I wasn’t heavy into being Jewish, but when it came to this type of shit I could see myself manning the barricades in a second.

  Jews weren’t finished getting fucked over in this world by a long shot. Spades either, for that matter. I flashed on Leonard Wooley, the big, dumb yom from Fantasia, Jackie di Paris, the singles scene. Everybody was getting fucked over. this world was a royal screw.

  I noticed a movie marquee with an orange-tinted blowup of a nude woman on her back, her neck arched, eyes closed in ecstasy, knees spread a
nd drawn up almost to her shoulders. Her position, the fuck-me look on her face, stopped me cold. Suddenly I realized I was fondling myself. I was standing in the middle of Times Square and fondling myself as if I were home straddling the toilet. I jerked my hand away as if it had grazed something red-hot. What if Kristin saw me? La Donna? The lady from Pinnacle who would then recognize me on Monday? What if… What if… I felt tailed in my shit, my ugliness, my loneliness. Less than human. Not me. Different from every living, breathing person on the street. “Not me” meant “not human,” meant so wrapped up in yourself that the rest of the world is reduced to white sound, background buzz. I reeled down the street burning with horror and embarrassment. I was so wrapped up in my own head, so gone, I was acting like a street schizo. I was a street schizo. That was the act of a street schizo. Two hundred people must have passed me while I touched myself. Two hundred people must have registered “degenerate” in their brains. I leaned against a parked car, my hand to my mouth—blown away. I still had a big hard-on. I remembered a cartoon I saw once: a horned satyr lying on a shrink’s couch: “Doc, I can’t get it down.”

  I was sprawled out on my bed again scouring the Post. On the one hand, I was trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life, on the other I was trying to handle seven-thirty. Six o’clock there would be a decent movie on the box. Tarzan’s New York Adventure; rumors abound in the jungle that Tarzan takes it in the seat from Cheetah, and he has to leave Africa fast. But I had nothing to do between the movie and two P.M. Monday. I tried to psych myself up for Monday and make the time pass with minimum consciousness. I thumbed through the Post, read an interview with a European ballet star performing at Lincoln Center. The guy sounded like a yawn, but in his photo he had stomach muscle definition that made me look like Candy. That was okay. I didn’t even care.

  The Drifters were playing at a disco club up in the Bronx. I was exhausted.

  The phone rang.

  “Yeah.”

  “Hey!”

  “Donny?” I perked up.

  “Yeah. Listen, Kenny, I wanna apologize for the other night.”

  “For what?” I felt awake and grateful. “It was me, man . I wigged first.”

  “Well, we both wigged.”

  “Yeah, and we knew, man, we were just talking about how we flip out on grass. We both knew man.” I started speed-rapping.

  “Yeah, it was fucked,” he muttered.

  There was a silence.

  “So what you doin’ tonight, Donny?”

  “Nothing planned.”

  “You wanna hook up for dinner?” I knew he did. I did.

  “Do you?”

  “If you do.”

  “Sure, man.”

  “Shit yeah, Mr. Donny. We just won’t do dope.”

  “Awright.”

  “Hey, the Drifters are playing up in the Bronx.”

  “Fuck the Bronx, man,” he said kindly. “Why don’t you come down to me tonight?”

  “Carmine Street? You’re on.”

  “Good enough. About seven?”

  “Yeah. And, Donny, thanks for calling.”

  “I’m hip.”

  Rejuvenation again. I lay down to snag a half-hour’s sleep, but I felt as though my life had just been saved, and I was somewhat hyper.

  “Very tasty, very tasty.” I nodded my head in approval at Donny’s dump, a one-room kitchenette with a loft bed built about six feet high into an alcove. The walls were painted an atrocious burnt orange. The only part of his studio I dug was a wall-length workbench littered with New York City Housing Department inspection forms. Mirrors surrounded his bed; a poster of James Dean hung over his workbench along with a black-and-white blowup of two rhinos humping. An overhead light made the room seem cold and cluttered. The walls in no way looked as if they had just been painted a few days ago, but I didn’t mention it.

  “We gonna eat out?” His kitchenette consisted of a three-foot-high portable refrigerator under a stainless steel sink and a two-burner stove.

  “Yeah. I figured we’ll walk around the Village for a while, go in some place.” He pulled on a white table sweater over his wiry frame, then brushed back his relatively short hair with his hands. He grabbed an old brown bomber jacket and we were out.

  We headed down Christopher Street, the main drag of the Village west of Seventh Avenue. The narrow commercial street was popping, jammed with an army of lanky dudes in crew cuts, Levi’s, tapered T-shirts under leather jackets. All faggots and all over the place, in couples and groups, sitting on stoops, car hoods, lounging in front of bars, restaurants, boutiques, antique shops. It was like being in a ghetto of all-male Broadway musical dance extras. The mood and the pace of the street were those of a leisurely stalk, like a seduction in an Impressionist painting. Everybody seemed to be strolling, staring, checking out everybody else. Heavy, heavy eye contact.

  “Donny, I never seen so many faggots in one place in my life.”

  “I know.” Donny bounced along at my shoulder, his big nose red with cold.

  “I’ve been around here during the day, you know, selling? It’s nothing compared to what comes crawlin’ out of the woodwork at night here.”

  “No, it’s fuckin’ heavy around here at night,” he said.

  “Hey, you see that? You see those keychains everybody got?” Almost every guy passing us wore a key-chain hanging from his belt either on his right side or his left. “See that? That’s a code. If they wear the key on the left, they like to take it in the seat, on the right they like to give it.”

  Donny cocked an eyebrow. “How do you know?”

  “I read about it in the Voice.”

  “Sure you did, Kenny.” He winked.

  “I did.”

  I wouldn’t get into heavy, embarrassing protest. “And those handkerchiefs hanging out of everybody’s pockets? All those different colors mean different trips.” I pointed to a straw blond Gestapo queen beanpole, who, despite the cold, wore leather, lederhosen and construction boots. A red handkerchief hung from his pocket, a keychain on his right. “That guy’s into getting fist-fucked. Red is fist-fucking. You know from fist-fucking?” I thrust out a fist. “Right up the ass. Up to the elbow. Can you believe that? And if the keys were on the other side, he’d be the fist-fucker instead of the fist-fuckee, you dig?”

  “Huh.” Donny dug his hands into his pockets. He was chewing gum and every chaw emitted a puff of cold air.

  “Christ, man, you wouldn’t believe what these dementos can get into, pissing on each other, shitting on each other, whips, torture. It’s incredible. I think pissing is a yellow handkerchief. I forget the others.” I scratched my nose. I was really proud of how much I knew about different New York scenes. I wasn’t Broadway Joe, but I possessed a modicum of hipness nonetheless.

  “You sure you read all this in the Voice?” Donny smirked.

  “No, actually, in my secret life I’m the Dragon Lady of Christopher Street. I got more handkerchiefs at home than a haberdasher and more keys than the guy in charge of the Tower of London.”

  “I dunno, Kenny, sounds like you know a lot.”

  “Are you serious? What was it, Wednesday? I accidentally walked into a gay bar down here for a drink, I almost died. As a matter of fact I don’t even want to eat down here. I’m getting a nervous stomach just walking around.”

  We took a cab uptown to a steak house on Forty-ninth Street.

  “So how’s Mr. Bluecastle doing with his house-wares?”

  We sat down at our table, our plates heaped high with pale lettuce and croutons from a trip to the salad bar.

  “You should ask him directly. I’m out.”

  “Out what?”

  “Out a job.”

  Donny didn’t look too shook. “You get fired?”

  “You can’t fire me. I quit. You know, good-bye, good riddance, et cetera.”

  “You don’t seem too freaked.”

  “It was a suck job, and guess what I’m doing now? I’m going back to
school, man.”

  “Good! Maybe I should do that, too.”

  “Well, listen, maybe I’ll become a social worker or something. So when the city lays you off after all the buildings burn down in the next riot and there’s nothing for you to inspect and you go on welfare, I’ll be the guy the welfare department will send around to count your toothbrushes to make sure you ain’t getting secretly supported by some garbageman.”

  “If they would lay me off, I’d celebrate. What kind of school deal?”

  “It’s this tiling called Pinnacle. Sort of an adult ed program at Fordham for people who never finished college or only got a high school diploma. I don’t know that much about it. I got an interview at Fordham on Monday.” I wanted to play it down. I suddenly felt fearful that Donny was going to do it, too. That he was going to interfere with my new life, cramp my style, pick up my coeds.

  “Didn’t Vince Lombardi go to Fordham?” I gave a wild look at the ceiling. “Who cares?”

  “What are you gonna do for bread, Kenny?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll get school loans, but I’ll need to work anyway. I don’t give a shit what I do. I’ll wash dishes—as long as I know what I’m shooting for here, as long as I know that whatever I’m doing is temporary and it’s over when school is over—I can do it and even feel noble about it. I’m working my way through school.” I started feeling excited for the first time since the conversation with Roberta Lacey. “It’s a great program, man. They give you credits for what you did al-ready, they give you credits for your work. Shit, man, why don’t you do it with me?” There, I said it. “You hate your fucking job as much as I hated mine, right?”

  Donny shrugged and rubbed his mouth. His eyes said, “I can’t.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Yeah, well, think about it.”

  We picked at our salads. I felt so good about school I lost my appetite.

  “You really gonna wash dishes, Kenny?” He gave a weak laugh that made me think the whole conversation was making him anxious.

  “Who knows, maybe I’ll manage a peep show joint part time.”