Eunuchs and Nymphomaniacs

by AnonYMous

  At one point I risked a sidelong glance only to be greeted with an empty patch of sidewalk. He’d had such a good day he had knocked off early. Usually he waved good-bye to everyone but I was so intent on not looking his way he had slipped away unnoticed.

  People constantly asked if I had T-shirts. I could have sold hundreds of them with my various headlines on them but I wasn’t out there to sell T-shirts, I was out there to sell books and to slow-drip their titles into mainstream culture. And to get Marian back. Yes that was it. Selling the book would get Marian back. And her ass. Wouldn’t it? The money, the real money would come later. But in the meantime there was no harm in charging a little more. It was a question of self-esteem. In fact I quickly began to see that you weren’t taken seriously if you asked for too little. If they balked at the price it was easy to come down and make them feel like they were being cheap.

  “That’s a lot for a paperback,” one guy said.

  But when I offered him a reduction he shook his head.

  “No, I want to support you.”

  He was making it clear he didn’t care about my bullshit book, he was just giving me a handout. A donation. I was merely a charity he could bear to give to. My role was to advertise his wealth while he demonstrated he could afford to throw away $20 on a book he had no interest in. He purchased self-respect at the expense of mine. The book was just the receipt.

  But he would spend the rest of his afternoon in his fashionable clothes strolling around the Lower East Side and Nolita visually condoning my nonsense. He had just paid me $20 for the privilege of wearing a micro-sandwich-board.

  “Thank you, sir, I appreciate it, I can use all the support I can get.”

  I was his bitch but he was my ambassador.

  WEARING ENOUGH IRONY TO ALERT AIRPORT SECURITY

  #TheOxygenThiefDiaries

  While traffic wardens competed for cars and the homeless fought over trash cans, photographers pounced on the fashionably dressed. The success of apps like streetwawker and strut_street meant that any magazine worthy of mention now had to have its own street-style section. Long lenses protruding from midriffs made it difficult for street photographers to mingle with pedestrians. Striking-looking girls dressed in faultless outfits would stroll past two or three times hoping to be noticed.

  I had begun to photograph my customers posing with their new purchase. As far as I was concerned they were photo-bombing pictures of my books but it was a good way to get the cover art into circulation. I started out by photographing only those who bought the book but when it became clear that the more attractive people got more likes I began asking strangers.

  Beautiful female strangers.

  It was surprising how malleable they were. I only asked the prettiest, most stylish girls because I realized I could harness their hope that a real photographer might notice if someone else was already shooting them. I was encouraged by the sight of dowdy, sometimes middle-aged photographers approaching granite-faced beauties who immediately cracked up laughing at the enormity of the compliment.

  They fucking loved it.

  Ordinarily these girls had to be subtle about how beautiful they were. Play it down. Pretend they didn’t actually get a better deal than the rest of us. Unleashing the full force of your good fortune only invited retaliation. It was the equivalent of having a rent-controlled two-bedroom apartment in the East Village: you had to tell people it had cockroaches and loud neighbors.

  But for a photo the gloves came off.

  Now they could pout shamelessly at the camera and the attention it promised.

  Pulling their hair forward or pushing it back, teasing it up or letting it down, it was obvious each girl knew exactly what her best look was. The shape of the face changed, the mouth grew smaller, the breasts stuck out, the eyes grew wide. One girl licked her lips to make her mouth into an obscenely wet O. Another shook her hair so that it fell over her apparently just-fucked face. Another laughed spontaneously again and again and again until eventually she nodded grimly at what she considered acceptable.

  The more beautiful they were the more they insisted on seeing the photo. They deleted what didn’t work for them. One girl simply handed me her phone so that there was no chance of an image existing that wasn’t under her control. Once they were happy, they wanted it sent to them immediately, which meant I was given their details. It also meant there was a pretty good chance they’d post the image on their Instagram. I didn’t write captions saying these beautiful girls bought my book but anyone looking at the images would be forgiven for thinking they had. I began to notice a phenomenon in passersby. Already three yards past my table their feet received the order to stop. The cover was starting to be recognized.

  “There was an interview about this on NPR.”

  I knew for a fact it had never been on NPR but who was I, a mere street vendor, to argue with a well-dressed, gainfully employed resident of Nolita? One guy insisted he’d met the author. He confided that the misogynistic author was in fact a woman, a lesbian no less. Suffice it to say the cover was recognized, the writer was not. One girl, having stopped abruptly, composed herself and approached me reverently.

  “My friend bought this book.”

  “Oh really?”

  “Yeah, he bought it because he wanted to meet the French girl you created.”

  I was careful not to nod.

  She held me in her gaze, enjoying my discomfort.

  “It’s okay,” she said at last, “he’s cool with it and so am I. In fact I think what you did was bloody brilliant.” When Americans used Britishisms you knew you were safe. She wasn’t trying to investigate me, she was merely trying to introduce herself. It turned out her fiancé was an actor and her childhood friend was a well-known theater producer and she felt sure a stage adaptation of the book would be a smash hit on Broadway.

  “Confessions are all the rage right now, Mike Tyson just raped Broadway.”

  She watched me again, savoring the controversy in her delivery. I felt better about what I was hearing but I was still unwilling to confirm or deny.

  “I’m having a little get-together next week and you’re invited.”

  She proffered her card. Mackenzie Tote, Dramaturg.

  “See you around eightish.”

  Dramaturg sounded to me like one of those American mashup words, like staycation or humblebrag. I looked it up; a dramaturg was someone who generally assisted in the writing and producing of a theatrical production. It was the kind of vague, ill-defined title that was perfect for the daughter of rich thespian parents, which is what I imagined her to be. Correctly as it turned out. My definition? A gossipy little cunt who routinely got credits as cowriter and producer on quality plays just for being the type of chick who is willing to fuck the contents of her parents’ Rolodex.

  But I imagined Marian and me at the premiere, ducking camera flashes, deflecting compliments. Of course I would attend.

  Marian … I think it’s great that we were able to re-find our affection for each other even after all the weird confusion/pain/anger that led to our breakup last May … but it’s also been a source of confusion because I must confess I’ve been nurturing hopes of us getting back together … the question now seems to be, can I continue to enjoy our time together in the knowledge that we will never be intimate again? … this is where I am right now …

  XOXO

  * * *

  Mackenzie’s mother owned an apartment on West Seventy-Fifth Street. It was one of those places you only ever saw in Woody Allen films, where the elevator opens directly onto wooden-walled interiors. Before the doors had fully opened, her boyfriend, Carlton, greeted me like an old friend. In this sense he wasn’t a bad actor at all. Or perhaps since I wanted it all to go well, I was a gentle audience. He was all grace and charm as he regarded me with clear blue eyes and I remember thinking I’d be happy to have him play me. After all, this was why I’d been invited. To ascertain whether they were worthy of collaborating on a stage adaptation o
f my book. And as they began to talk about it I got the distinct impression that he and Mackenzie were of the opinion that I should play myself.

  He would direct and she would produce.

  Rich, rich, rich.

  Bookshelves rising from parquet floors to corniced ceilings held so many books it was intimidating. I ran unworthy hands over expensive-looking volumes of Kafka and Steinbeck, first editions of Heart of Darkness and Tender Is the Night. This was obviously a literary family.

  Or at least one that wanted to be perceived as such.

  I felt flattered she thought me worthy of being introduced to these rare editions but tricked too because being a writer, I had no choice but to show interest in them. If I didn’t, then surely I was a sham. And there was an unspoken hope that I’d somehow bestow a blessing on her gathering. Plucked as I was from the gritty realism of the street, I represented purity.

  “I know how to make poor-people food,” she said, holding a tray of sausage-rolls wrapped in bacon. Why was I being welcomed into this enclave? Meanwhile she was already teetering from the impact of what I supposed were too many cocktails.

  “Spoken word is all the rage now,” she informed the room.

  Confessional one-man shows were playing to packed theaters and they wanted to approach the same producers who had turned Mike Tyson into a Broadway sensation. Mackenzie, who had gone to school with one of them, showed me his number on her phone.

  I was being sold to.

  Anonymous starring in his own story written by Anonymous and delivered on stage by a nameless man who was supposedly the guy who had written the book.

  “Hi, I’m the actor who’ll be playing Anonymous tonight.”

  It had never been done before. Or were they just playing with me? It did sound like they were talking about it in the right way. But then a nineteen-year-old girl in a combat jacket and jeans stepped out of the elevator and stood nervously in front of us like a mouse among anacondas.

  “Oh look everyone, it’s Celeste.”

  Did she get off on the wrong floor? Her tits were huge for her age and her skin was pale as milk. I could see her eyes dilate and her paper-white cheeks stain with color as those impossible breasts heaved inside her tight open-buttoned army shirt. I wanted to push her up against the Viennese yellow walls and pump my seed into her so that we might beget a child.

  “Celeste … this is Anonymous.”

  And then to me.

  “She’s been dying to meet you, she loves your book, read it three times, isn’t that right Celeste?”

  Celeste nodded once and blushed.

  What was happening inside me at this point was beyond lust, it was menopausal.

  The fact that she was so young and therefore fertile seemed to summon my seed from its dustier nooks. Her flushed, interested face forgave sins I hadn’t even committed yet. No longer the miserable, cynical little shit I supposed myself to be, through her eyes I saw an interesting, nuanced bon vivant, a human culmination of experiences gleaned from a world she had yet to visit. It was obvious she was up for adventure. And that sex with an anonymous writer could be something she’d need to strike off her list, somewhere between bungee jumping and her first tattoo. Oh to fill that slot. Mackenzie toppled back into the room as if someone had pushed her from the kitchen and teetered backward for a second before somehow popping up out of the floor beside me.

  “Carlton has the hots for her,” she whispered, “just go along with it.”

  She’d met “the poor thing” at one of his performances. Seated together in the audience they’d begun to chat. Mackenzie sounded like a drunken Marilyn Monroe for a second until I realized she was imitating Celeste.

  “Ah’ve been foraging in Central Pawrk all day.” And then in her normal voice: “She took out all these leaves and pine cones from her adorable little backpack. I’m giving her to Carlton as a wedding present.”

  She and Carlton were engaged but she was unperturbed by his lust? While I secretly reveled in all this delicious decadence the elevator doors let a bearded heavyset man with chiseled features into the room and the conversation. This, it turned out, was Everett, the guy who’d fallen for my online impersonation of Françoise. He and Mackenzie had dated some time previously and he was now being introduced to me as someone I’d already met.

  “And this, as you know, is Françoise,” said Mackenzie, nodding delightedly at me.

  She was in her element. Carlton smiled knowingly.

  “You got me fair and square sir,” said Everett, offering me his hand to shake.

  I managed to get past a moment of high-octane paranoia fueled by the notion that they had concocted this entire evening to avenge Everett’s bruised dignity. But no. He was already half-drunk or stoned before he even turned up. This was what convinced me they were for real. These people got drunk before meeting for a drink. Meanwhile a seriously right-wing-looking fucker sitting in an antique armchair with a crystal whiskey glass began to look like he was moments away from becoming deeply unpleasant. He had the gait and bone structure of a well-bred WASP and when Everett and I were slagging off the CIA and the NSA he began to speak, to no one in particular.

  “Yes, well, I have family in some of those institutions … I can’t say which ones … but …”

  I wanted to suggest that he couldn’t say which ones, not because of national security but because he was too shit-faced to risk the pronunciation involved.

  Instead I prepared to leave.

  The lovely nineteen-year-old had already left and had been replaced by a drunken hag who was desperate to get fucked by anyone. As I heard her refer to God as The Universal Orgasm I politely made my apologies and smoothed over any possible crevices caused by my departure before being shown out of the building by a surprisingly intelligent-looking doorman in a silly green uniform. He had obviously been warned of my departure while I descended in the walnut-walled elevator because he referred to me without irony by name.

  “Good night, Mr. Anonymous.”

  I decided I’d write a great play for these members of the American moneyarchy.

  You can read it here—02thief.com.

  * * *

  Marian pleaded with me to meet.

  My email had freaked her out. I was elated that she couldn’t bear the idea of not seeing me ever again. And yet she was offering nothing new. She went as far as to suggest that she had never given me the impression that we might get back together. The enormity of this statement seemed so untrue to me that I wanted to smack her. There was no way I would have continued seeing her for what turned out to be an entire year if I’d known we’d never get back together. But there is no logic when the emotions are involved. Love is not only blind, it’s hard of hearing and has no short-term memory.

  Of course I’d meet her.

  My email had been an attempt to get some sort of declaration out of her and in a way it had worked; after all, she was now the one asking to meet me.

  It was raining pretty hard and she texted that she’d ducked into a drugstore on Eighteenth Street and so maybe I could meet her there. When I saw her in the aisles looking like a tastefully dressed, very sad stranger, my heart leapt and then sank. Here was everything I’d ever wanted in a girl. She knew exactly what to wear and how to wear it. The artsy-looking bangs collaborating with the upturned collar of a raincoat framed her sad, pale, pretty, pouting face. The raincoat stopped just short of a pair of thigh-highs that continued dizzyingly downward into gun-gray Wellingtons. All of this arranged so that two rectangles of maddeningly smooth, milky-white thigh could commandeer what was left of my reason. Again she had stage-managed the meeting perfectly. I was so affected by the way she looked I couldn’t speak until we sat at a little table in a shitty little pizza place where I bought a bottle of overpriced water just so we’d have a reason to sit there. I couldn’t resist producing a sheet of paper that listed all the areas where I felt I had improved in the time we’d been hanging out together as friends.

  I pay my way i
n restaurants

  I don’t use the word cunt

  I don’t interrupt you as much

  I listen when you’re speaking

  I don’t look bored because I’m not

  I brush my teeth more

  I text you back within ten minutes

  I pay my share of the gas for our road trips

  “Cute,” she said. “That is so cute.”

  In response she took out a large hardbacked notebook and opened it in such a way as to prevent me from seeing into it.

  “I have a list too,” she said, unleashing the smile. With her thighs under the table she needed to hypnotize me by other means. I was overjoyed to hear this because it seemed to mean we were both, in our loveably geeky ways, doing our best to repair the relationship.

  Half-standing, I peered over the top of her opened notebook almost perpendicular now to the table and I could just make out a pen being maneuvered across the pages as if she was adding a new entry. I caught a glimpse of parallel squiggled lines before sitting back down again. Was she hoping I’d mistake those scratchings for actual notes? Surely she wasn’t that naive? I looked at her, incredulous. If this was the level of self-deception involved there was no hope for me, or more worryingly, us.

  She was losing my attention.

  Time for another smile.

  I felt my pupils dilate. So much so I hardly noticed her slip the notepad back into her bag or that she was saying something.

  “I thought about us … maybe, you know … just dating from time to time, and wondered how that would be.”

  Surely she was just trying to change the subject. The subject being: Marian is a lying cunt.

  But on hearing this my cock took over.

  “That … could work,” he ventriloquized.

  Dating from time to time would mean sex with Marian without the need to feign commitment. I’d be able to do whatever I liked and still get my hands on that ass. And those tits. It might have been her last-ditch effort to keep me around but I didn’t care. I’d earned it.