by Lunch Lydia
Most of the women only lasted a few days or a couple of weeks. I’d pop in for a few shifts when I was completely tapped. There were any number of better places a few blocks away. But they’d ID you. And I wasn’t yet eighteen. I had a few “regulars” who’d pay good money for two-minute handjobs under the sticky tables. Made it tolerable. I put up with the lewd comments and occasional slaps on the ass from the management out of pity laced with disgust.
I had a crush on the barmaid, Judy, a hardcore Irish butch. We’d turn the odd trick together, servicing obscenely obese men. We’d both sit on top, one mounting, the other shoving a juicy ass on the john’s face. We’d make out with each other, biting each other’s tongue to suppress the laughter.
It was a slow mid-week day. I always pulled the afternoon shifts. Although they weren’t as busy as the evenings, I needed my nights free. One of the dancers came in selling tabs of acid for three bucks a pop. I downed two hits. Waited for the rush. By 6 I still hadn’t come up. Thought I’d been duped.
I went into the bathroom to smoke a joint with Evie, a small Puerto Rican dancer riddled with stretch marks from shitting out two kids. She invited me over to her place for dinner and drinks. To smoke a couple of joints, good Jamaican shit. Still not tripping, I decided to accept.
We took a taxi up to Queens, feeling good after the joint. She told me the kids would be in bed, dinner in the oven, her husband had cooked up a Cuban feast of yucca, salt cod, beans, and rice. It was the first I had heard she had a husband. I just assumed that like most of the dancers she was either single, separated, or divorced. That put a new spin on things.
Her apartment was on the top floor of an old Victorian under reconstruction. You could smell the Latino aromas of pork fat and fried bananas before we left the taxi. The sexy strains of salsa music drifted down the stairs, a welcome relief after six hours of Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” and Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” … the stable irritants of the tittie bar.
Her husband, Castro’s third cousin, greeted us at the door with a warm smile and too-tight bear hug. Urging us in, telling us to sit down, take our shoes off, we must be exhausted. Go lay down if we wanted, dinner would be ready in twenty minutes. He handed us a bottle of cheap Spanish wine and a fat joint.
Evie led me by the hand on a guided tour littered with cheap red satin love seats, worn Mexican rugs, children’s toys scattered in corners, a Cuban flag draped proudly as a curtain across the huge four-poster bed, probably a family heirloom. She suggested we lay down, put our feet up. Allow the greasy edge of the Wild West to wear off. Hustling drinks in four-inch pumps for six hours straight can make you brain-dead. A little catnap to recuperate.
The soft bed, her soothing voice, and the pot began to kick in. I started to doze off almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. Bad dreams. Troubled nightmares. The acid was hitting me, in my sleep. Visions of mad butchers stringing up young girls on meat hooks. Filleting their labias with surgical instruments. Slicing off pieces of thin, bloody flesh. Female castration. Their agonizing screams shook me from my nightmare. I woke up to one of Evie’s kids crying, held in the huge Cuban’s hairy paw. Who stood at the foot of the bed. Watching Evie stuff her crotch in my face. I woke up tripping. Her cunt a swell before my eyes. The lips bleeding as she twisted them. Purple, pink, bloodred, wounded. A giant insect twitching its multiple folds inches from my face. I started to lose it. Freaked out. Began screaming at her husband, the mad butcher. Demanding to know what he had done … what he planned on doing to me. Why had he taken my clothes off … where were they? Threatening to tell the police if he didn’t immediately call me a cab. I had to get out of there. They began screaming at each other in Spanglish, he questioning why she had brought this psycho over, she screaming he shouldn’t have been watching. And both babies crying hysterically.
I grabbed my clothes and ran to the bathroom, slipped on a child’s toy, and cracked my head on the mirror. They thought I was in there destroying the place. I was so fucking high I couldn’t see straight. Walls bleeding into the floor, colors folding. Scrambled into my clothes. Stumbled out the door. Beeline to the exit.
Forgot the first floor was under construction. Scaffolds, ladders, drop cloths, a haunting maze difficult to navigate. I thought I’d never find the front door. I could hear the taxi honking and followed the sound. Shot into the backseat. “Manhattan, downtown, anywhere …” I could still hear the screaming babies. Kept repeating, “Calm down, you’re just high.”
I could feel my pupils painfully expanding. Turning my vision fish-eye. The taxi now a warm womb bathed in pale molasses, flooded with ochre, amber, burnt sienna, gold. The streetlights loomed like melting moons. Stoplights burned new planets. I was relieved to watch the Cuban nightmare fade in the distance.
Pleasantly whacked, I no longer wanted to go home. Got dropped off at 12th Street and Third Avenue. Called James, a friend who had just moved into the city from Brooklyn, subletting a beautiful apartment. Empty other than a couch and two chairs. A loft bed in the back. He greeted me with a slippery grin, one side of his face melting in upon itself. Wearing a classic ’50s smoking jacket, open to the waist, black Levi’s, and leather moccasins. Himself high on acid.
At 6’7” he towered over me, his deep baritone suddenly turning soprano laugh. We’d been fucking each other every couple of weeks for a few months. Usually while tripping. Between other fucks. His bisexual tendencies fascinated me, and he’d often share hilarious details insisting on a confidentiality that was difficult to maintain. It was hard not to divulge juicy tidbits like him having to visit the emergency room to have inanimate objects removed from his rectum. Deodorant bottles, shampoo caps, plastic toys.
James asked if I’d care to join him for a drink. Invited me to get comfortable on the couch, he’d be right in to serve me. He floated into the kitchen, returning with a five-pound jar of honey. Giggling as he bent over me, pouring forth enough of the liquid coagulant to almost drown me. It boiled out over my lips, a living, breathing organism which engulfed my throat, my hair. I felt as if my entire body would be coated in a sticky mummification ritual performed by this snickering Lurch.
Scolding me as if I were a naughty child who had soiled her party dress, he insisted upon cleaning me up immediately. He gently pried open my sticky lips, scooping up fingerfuls of gooey sugar water mingled with spit. He sucked his index finger seductively, darting his tongue between his hand’s fleshy web. Kneeling beside me, his flat, fat tongue and womanly lips lapped at my neck, his intoxicating mouth painting strange hieroglyphs toward my breasts. He would glue his lips to small pieces of my flesh, dissolving the thick honey into our skins. Drawing arcane symbols with tongue and teeth. Suckling then chewing on my tight little nipples until I thought I’d left my body. A large, slow animal feasting on fresh meat.
It was close to midnight when the third rush hit. Twelve hours after I had ingested the shit. Still flying. We had showered together like a lopsided brother and sister, conspiring on the mischief to follow. We decided to stage an orgy. Playing the centerpieces. Dressed in towels as saris and turbans, we began phoning everyone we knew. Whether we had sexed them already or not. Inviting them to come over and fuck us. After the first initial rejections, we became even bolder, randomly dialing numbers like a lottery. Our hysteria and manic tone ensured that the invitations would remain unheeded.
Slightly disappointed, we decided to fuck each other, until a bicycle left in an empty closet caught our attention. It struck us as the most ridiculous instrument we’d ever seen. Armed with dull butter knives, we began to dismantle it. Removing the tires, rims, spokes from the rims, the seat, the handlebars. Giggling like idiots, howling with laughter, we began to throw pieces out the window into the concrete courtyard three stories below. The hideous clamor chimed to us like church bells at a family picnic. We’d spasm with laughter every time another useless piece was launched overboard, shouting out punch lines from juvenile poetry.
We passed out at 4, after a
couple hours of light diddling. High, exhausted, spent from laughing so much, we finally collapsed. I woke a few hours later greeted by three cops in riot gear. Chatting over steaming cups of coffee, admiring my nudity. I had no idea how long they had been standing there. Was surprised they hadn’t taken liberties with my inebriate form. Or maybe they had and I was too fucked up to notice. I asked them if they had a coffee for me. They laughed, insisting they had more than coffee … I bantered that if they were looking for recruits, they had landed on the wrong planet. I was terminally unemployable. And what the hell were they doing here anyway? They claimed they were sent to investigate a “disturbance.” They got the call six hours before.
Typical.
I had no idea where my host had gone. Maybe work. He was publishing fraudulent biographies and selling them to Europe. He’d pick on someone he truly hated, like Michael Douglas or Motley Crüe, and pen two-hundred-page bio’s based on the worst bullshit he could make up. As if anything could be possibly worse than how truly awful they really were. Anyway, I needed to get dressed, needed fresh air to stave off the migraine licking at my frontal lobes. I informed the officers if there was nothing more I could do for them, to please leave. The fat bald Italian whispered, “Ohh … there’s plenty you could do …” squeezing his nightstick in both hands. The fat tip of a coffee-stained tongue darting obscenely across his blistered lower lip. A gruesome vision which I struggled to shake off.
Two dozen lines were laid out on the musty dresser. A pocket-sized transistor radio belted out classic R&B through the static. I was pulling a trick with Judy, the barmaid from the shithole I occasionally worked at. She had set up the gig at a lousy midtown low-rent hotel within walking distance from the bar she still tended. She was on a lunch break. Servicing two black dealers from the Midwest, who’d head into town every few months to pick up a shipment, check the shit out, blow off a couple of grams, a grand or two, and head back to Detroit.
She was well into blowing the ringleader by the time I’d arrived. My “date” greeted me at the door immaculately dressed in deep purple polyester pant suit complete with wide-brimmed hat, pinkie rings, and gold canine tooth. He bowed at the waist and ushered me in. Leading me over to the dresser, he supplied me with a short glass straw. Inviting me to indulge. Loosen up. Get comfortable. Checking out my round ass as I bent over to sup. Judy’s mouth full of cock, took it all in, letting out a small chortle. Tricking with her was playtime. She had a great attitude about sex, only fucking men for money. Had to support her seven-year-old son. Put her girlfriend through law school. Fast sex for hard cash helped.
I sniff up two or three lines under my “date” Leon’s urging, who’s by now himself so high he’s sprawled out on the bed, rubbing a huge prick through rough polyester. The shit kicks into my skull like a wayward rocket ricocheting around inside my head. “Come suck on your big daddy, you sweet white ho …”
I do what I’m told, slipping a Trojan over his rainbow-colored cock. I position myself over him, off to one side affording him the faint waft of hot pussy. He slips his thumb inside succulent wet walls of flesh, pulls it out, sucking on it like a toddler. Mumbling a nonstop flurry of “oohhh baby’s” and “that’s it, mama’s.” I roll my eyes and continue to blow him. Locking eyes with Judy, who’s adopted the same position, ass in the air toward the john’s face, who like my trick is busy babbling while anointing his fat black lips with her sluice. She begins to mimic my every movement. We roll our eyes in unison. Stick out our tongues. Make obscene hand gestures. Reminiscent of a Harpo Marx/Lucille Ball mirror trick from an I Love Lucy rerun on late-night TV. We both crack up, laughing hysterically, simultaneously tumbling off the queen-size bed, almost knocking each other out. The johns think we’ve lost our minds.
Erections flag. Time to suck up a few more lines. Take this shit to another level. Judy and I always ready to milk it out. We’d charge by half-hour increments. Spend most of the time goofing off, playing with each other, talking the tricks in circles, giving them massages, anything to keep the actual time spent fucking and sucking to a quick burst. That was all most of the johns needed. More than what most of them deserved. Generous bitches, weren’t we?
But these two brothers knew what they wanted. Paid to get it. As soon as a dozen more lines were sucked up, they were hard again. Hungry for pussy. White pussy. Pink pussy. Good pussy. Pussy that would bang up and down, pounding long lean pricks in a monotonous hammering, an endless battering. Pussy that knew how to work for that dollar. Would work for that dollar until both cock and cunt were too raw to touch, too raw to fuck, too fucking raw to even look at anymore. And so we pounded. We sat on top of them, banging into them like battering rams. We spun around on their pricks, our backs to them, so we could watch each other. Judy pumped like a cheetah, her short red hair, pale skin sprinkled with freckles, iridescent green eyes, long legs, rode that bastard like a caged animal returned to the wild, slaughtering her first kill. She was yelling at her trick to come. To “shoot that fucking come inside that tight white pussy …” That was it. He came inside her howling like a wounded puppy. I was still grinding away, just about ready to lose my high, when Judy, soaked in musky perfume, came over to squeeze my tits with wet fingers trailing the intoxicating aroma of her hot sex. Pulling on my nipples, squeezing and twisting. Spanking my swollen little clit. Whispering in my ear, “You like this too much, you horny little slut.” I came all over her fingers, spraying hot juice all over the trick’s cock, balls, down the crack of his ass. Judy spit on her middle finger and stuck it straight up his black asshole. A few quick pokes and he was ready to squirt. I banged myself against him, bruising my pelvic bone with every thrust. The shit finally came, screaming a string of ridiculous obscenities which caused us both to giggle. We politely excused ourselves, collected the cash from the dresser, took a quick shower, and split. French-kissing as we hailed two cabs.
The first few years spent in New York were a blur of alcohol, sex, and drugs. I had moved from crash pad to squat to storefront to a series of cheap apartments in tenements. Chelsea, Tribeca, East 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Streets, Delancey, East 12th in three different apartments in the same building, Spanish Harlem, Murray Hill, Brooklyn. Running up overdue bills. Disappearing in the middle of the night, usually on a whim, invited to sleep on somebody’s couch, take over their spare room, or share their bed. It was easy to bum around. Occupancy rates were down, rent control was still in effect, people were more generous. Less suspicious.
There were any number of ways to avoid having to actually hold down a job. I knew every single one of them. When I was truly desperate, I’d put a few days in at tittie bars, go-go clubs, strip joints. I enjoyed hustling for drinks, the false promises, leading men on, taunting, weaseling money off of lonely degenerates. I hated the long hours, sleazy management, and trips to Jersey when the gigs ran out in Manhattan. Loved the power pussy had. The way men were drawn to its mysteries, as if prospecting for gold in foreign territory. Sweet evil flower, instrument of torture and ecstasy. Delicate blossom, root of deception. Buried deep in its fleshy folds, so very many ancient secrets, a magic which has confounded men since it was banished from the Garden, full of voodoo whose spell turns men into monsters.
Decided it was time to cut to the chase, eliminate the middleman. Cultivated a few “regulars” from the bars who could afford to pay me by the hour what I’d usually pull in a day or two. My overhead was incredibly low, since I rarely paid rent, but I still needed cash. Tricking could accumulate the most money while exerting the least effort. I thought it was an invaluable service, filling a small pocket of a lonely man’s life with momentary joy. Flooding the dark night of their psyche with my light, my youth. My pussy a place where they came to worship, which offered up relief from a petty existence frustrated by work, wife, kids, responsibility.
Tricking, to me, was the ultimate freedom. A blank screen onto which you could project any image you want. A relapse from reality. A place where I could excommunicate my self from
myself. I would dissolve into a thinly veiled disguise replete with alias, game plan, M.O., fake ID. I took a strange pity on the men I serviced. Had more respect for them than most of my other relationships. Everything was on the level: You sell them a fantasy for thirty minutes or an hour. They get what they pay for. You get what you need. Money. And then they leave. No bullshitting. No babysitting. No hand-holding. Most men were too needy. Desperate. Dependent. Little boys, never able to murder that little girl inside of them. Always begging for love, compassion. Constant attention. Confirmation of their manhood. Sexual recognition. Phallic worship. Just like a john, only they resented paying for it. But they still get milked. One way or another.
Through some twisted miracle I was able to avoid syphilis, gonorrhea, herpes simplex I and II, genital warts, and AIDS. I was either blessed, or I belonged to the minuscule percentage of the genetic population which is truly immune to such unfortunate viral infections.
Of course, I suffered monthly. Excruciating blasts of dull pain as inner organs swelled and ebbed blood. Plagued by an all-consuming throb that rendered me useless, impotent, confined to the menstrual hut, where I was overcome by blood visions of the devil dancing on my ovaries.
Every twenty-one days—yes, since every aspect of my life was accelerated, the monthly monster came every three weeks—I was plunged gut-first into a fevered dervish, where hormonal fluctuation conspired to spin me into hallucinatory torpitude. Confined to bed, I would drift in and out of consciousness. Fantastical dreamscapes only a body flushed with pain could produce. Leftover religious delusions wormed into the spaces between nod and R.E.M. A parade of tortured saints, their horrifying lives of torment and rapture played out in a terrifying technicolor. Ruby, maroon, burgundy, emerald, viridian, magenta, violet … every shade of blue. Their glowing robes tattered, shredded, stained by seeping sores. Wounds inflicted, tolerated, embraced as testaments to their faith, their love, their agony. Moments of their lives rolled into a mini-drama in my dreams. Chased, mocked, hounded, surrounded by the evil grins and grimaces of ghoulish apparitions, the sainted ghosts of my vision were the willing victims of a sordid morality play. Punch-line prayers never decreed a winner in the age-old Saint vs. Sinner controversy. And hell … I’m no angel. I’ve always sided with the bad guys.
