Debasements of Brooklyn

by Ira Gold

  Ariel takes the coffee cup from my hand and places it on the floor. My obvious distraction does not deter Ariel’s passion, especially after my hand reaches down the top of her low-cut sundress and rubs against her nipples.

  The same automated response that animates my hands operates my dick. It hardens as soon as Ariel touches it. We fondle each other for a minute before Ariel jumps up. “Wait here.”

  Where the hell would I go?

  Because my mind is on other things, my penis deflates as soon as Ariel leaves. And my headache, which had lifted, descends once more. If I go home, I can provide some protection to Judith. But I could also bring trouble with me if they know I’m there.

  Ariel comes tripping down carrying a large box colorfully printed with white snowflakes and red stars. It’s the kind of box one gets from a loving but sappy relative at Christmas.

  She finds me in the same position that she left me, prone on the bed. Well, not exactly as she left me. After glancing at my crotch she says, “I got some stuff that will perk you up.”

  She plops the box between us and opens the top. “I brought this from my apartment in the city never thinking that I would need it in Brooklyn.”

  The first thing she takes from the box is a velvet-covered paddle. She whacks it softly against her hand. “It’s been awhile.” She looks at me. “You can use it on me if you’re gentle.”

  I glance into the box and see a selection of sex toys that includes a dildo with a dozen different vibration settings, a couple of feathers so long that they must have come from extinct birds, a traditional “magic wand” sturdy enough to stimulate a rhino, some satin-covered handcuffs, rope, a nasty wood paddle with holes drilled into it, candy-flavored lubricant, hot pepper lubricant, a butt plug, and four lamb-skin condoms.

  I dare not act surprised. “Where did you get all this shit?”

  “Here and there,” Ariel answers. “People give you stuff. As a joke.”

  “These ain’t no joke.”

  “No they ain’t,” Ariel agrees. “But you don’t know that until you try it.”

  Looking at her collection makes me think that one could make a quick buck compiling a Dictionary of Sexual Aids—everything from aardvarks to xylophones. But in another second I realize the scope of this undertaking would be impossible. Given people’s varied predilections, there need be more entries than in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

  Ariel unzips the back of her dress and lets it fall to her feet. She spins on her heels, giddy as a schoolgirl. “Tie me to the pillar,” she commands.

  I stare at her for a moment. Then it hits me again. She’s hammered. She never gets fall-down blasted but she’s buzzed, a little past buzzed, all the time.

  I debate. On the one hand, I have no philosophical objections to playing with Ariel. Though never super turned-on by bondage, it has never turned me off either. Men dominated with ropes and gags merely amuse me. A frisson, however, does occur when I view images of bound women. My most recurring sexual fantasies, of course, involve exposed vaginas. I fondly recall all the times I plunged my schlong into warm, moist flesh.

  In truth, I never explored the myriad forms of sexual titillation. Maybe this indicates a lack of emotional comfort with my partners. I might have let the macho shit get in the way, thinking that the only manly course is traditional bonking. I had anal sex maybe ten times in my life. Though an outlaw in some ways, rarely do I go beyond the culturally sanctioned positions.

  Should I have devoted more attention to paraphernalia and noninvasive procedures? Maybe. Another time and place, I would think Ariel brave and uninhibited, no matter how drunk. I would have dwelled on the cultural and philosophical aspects of violating power taboos and embracing fetish. I would have fucked her any which way she wanted.

  But today I have other things on my mind. People want me dead. My family is in danger. Being cooped up with Ariel and her equipment makes me think I am a sexual prisoner, that if I don’t comply with her wishes I’d be kicked into the street. No one likes to be coerced into a sexually dominant role. “I have to go home and get a few things,” I tell Ariel.

  “So? Tie me up. Think of me here, in my bra and panties. I can wait.”

  The girl is nuts. “How long?”

  “Not knowing when you’ll be back makes it even better.”

  Ariel’s eyes gleam. When I take the rope she seems dizzy with lust. She leans her back against a beam covered in small brown tiles. “Tie me around my waist. And use the cuffs to lock my wrists on that water pipe.”

  The ceiling is low and the thin pipe is not even a foot over her head.

  I check the handcuffs. Though wrapped in velvet, they’re real enough. She would not be able to move unless someone came to get her out of them.

  “You don’t understand. People are looking for me. To waste me.”

  “No one’s going to kill you, darling. You’re too sexy.”

  She is soooo nuts. She stands patiently. I wind the rope around her waist and make a loose knot in the back.

  “The handcuffs,” she orders.

  “If something happens to me . . . you want your mother to come down here to free you?”

  The mention of her mother snaps her out of her hyperaroused state. She reconsiders. Then, more adamantly, she insists, “The handcuffs. Do it. You’ll be back.”

  “It’s your mother,” I mutter. I click the handcuffs closed. Then I put the key into her hand. “You should have enough play to get yourself out if you have to.”

  Ariel says nothing but her fist closes over the key. She’s neither so drunk nor so crazy after all. She’s willing to risk a major embarrassment but not a minor death.

  Before going outside I gaze on her vulnerable position. Ariel has a juicy body, with round breasts and strong thighs. I see her pubic hair glowing through her sheer panties. She smiles and, saintlike, raises her face to the dropped ceiling. Her wavy brown hair falls onto her bare shoulders. She reminds me of Caravaggio’s Saint Sebastian minus the phallic arrows embedded in the flesh. She might even have that painting in mind posing like that. When she doesn’t ask me to uncuff her, I run up the steps. My fingers clutch the doorknob when she calls, “Stop!”

  No. She can’t be left like that. Even the most dedicated fetishist has to see the folly in this. I rush down the stairs and take the key from her.

  “What are you doing?” Ariel demands.

  “What do you think? I’m going to unlock—”

  “Don’t fucking unlock anything, you baboon. Blindfold me.”

  “What?”

  “In the box you’ll find a black silk cloth.”

  “Meshugana,” I mutter as I root around and find what she wants. I don’t think I’d enjoy being blindfolded and tied to a pole for an indefinite period, even if I could let myself out. The mortifying prospect of my mother finding me handcuffed to a pipe would weigh heavily, negating whatever sexual pleasure I may experience from being tied up.

  But maybe that’s what most turns Ariel on.

  “You have to come back now.” Her serenity is total.

  “Do you understand, lady? Shit.” Our intimacy recedes with each new request. I imagine Ariel a figure floating away from me and being swallowed by the distant horizon. “There are bad people cruising around trying to kill me.”

  “Don’t be paranoid. They’re looking to kill everyone.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “I liked it better when you didn’t talk. Touch me down there.”

  I grudgingly put my hand where she requests. Through the narrow strip of cloth I feel the crux of her is hot and damp.

  She hisses, “I want you so much it hurts.”

  “So—”

  “So nothing.” She’s breathing as in preparation for an orgasm. “Blindfold. Do you know the term sensory deprivation? I’ll concentrate only on what you will do to me when you get back. I won’t move. I’ll hardly breathe, but I will have dozens of small orgasms. Do you understand?”

  I
blindfold Ariel.

  “Go,” she orders as her pleasure mounts. “Get out of here, you son of a bitch.”

  23

  Packing Up Absurd

  My first few seconds on the outside feel like the time I got out of the joint. Anger and fear melt before the fire of freedom. I have spent little more than a night in Ariel’s basement, but I had been imprisoned as sure as I had been during that long weekend at Rikers.

  I carefully examine the quiet street. An old man drags a garbage can nearly as big as he down his driveway. A squirrel darts to the edge of a limb and leaps onto the adjoining tree. It clings tightly to a wispy twig that shakes as if trying to dislodge it. But the squirrel’s grip holds and it scampers to a thicker, safer part of the branch.

  The universe is unaware of the war between Vinnie Five-Five and Vlad the Impaler.

  Times like these make me wish that I were shorter. I’m not freakish, but in a neighborhood of old Jews and Italians, my bulk sticks out. I’m easily spotted, easily dead.

  I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across silent seas.

  But outside I need only deal with assassins and mass murderers. Inside, Ariel freaks me out. No one thing is a problem. The sex, the sex toys, the premature trust coupled with unusual demands, each one by itself means little. Everything added together, however, makes for too many layers of weirdness. I have no idea what Ariel is capable of. Maybe not homicide but certainly of making me uncomfortable.

  Then I call Judith to tell her that I’m coming. But something is wrong. She chokes out, “Howie. Hide,” she breathes.

  “I need to get some shit. It’s important. Judith, what’s going on?”

  “Come in the back way. You know . . .”

  “Through the alley? Sure. Judith. If something happened to the girls . . .”

  “No. Make sure no one is following you.”

  Sure enough, as soon as she hangs up, I see a yellow taxi roll slowly down the street.

  Normally, a taxi on a city street does not inspire terror. But in this part of Brooklyn, the ass end, the sphincter, miles from the big money, yellow taxis stay away. There’s no point in cruising this out-of-the-way neighborhood. Drivers hate bringing passengers here because they never get a fare for the hour journey back to Manhattan. All this comes to me in an instant, and in the next second I slither up an alley and force open a garage door. Inside, the smell of oil overpowers. I freeze in the darkness as if the circling killers could see through walls.

  After a minute, two minutes, my heart pounding over the danger that lurks in that cab, I reenter daylight. In the garage I have found a foot-long piece of pipe. Its weight feels right in my hand but it will serve no purpose when confronted with the bazookas the Russians carry.

  Have I just saved my life or have I acted like an idiot? Only if the occupants of the cab gun down someone else would I ever know the answer. Meanwhile, I continue walking as if in a minefield.

  It’s cool, and muddy clouds float between the earth and the sun. Still, sweat drenches my shirt. Nothing else raises my suspicion and I get home, to Judith’s home, in five minutes via the alleys just as I said I would. If anyone is waiting in a car for me in the front they would never see me enter the storm door in the backyard. In the basement, I stop just to get the Glock and the rest of my money hidden in the ceiling. Then I tiptoe up the stairs.

  Judith is standing in the living room holding a towel, gaping in fear as if her executioner has arrived. The towel conceals not a weapon but a dish she had been drying. She cries, “Howard!” and rushes forward to wrap her arms, towel, and plate around me.

  I’m not an emotional man, but . . . “Judith, Judith. Everything’s okay.”

  “I’m so worried. When I heard that your friend Julius was found—”

  “What?”

  Judith releases me. “Didn’t you hear? They shot him behind the Waldbaum’s on Coney Island Avenue and threw his body in the dumpster like a piece of rotten fruit.” Her voice catches and she starts to cry.

  The few times Julius met Judith he had been a gentleman. Judith would not think him a thug. And what the hell had he been doing at Waldbaum’s in the middle of a war? Getting milk?

  Then again, what the hell am I doing wandering the streets when I have the perfect hideout? This leads me to think of Ariel and reconsider the “perfect” part of the sentence.

  “Sit down, Howie. Can I get you something? Did you eat lunch?”

  The hit on Julius shakes me. Vinnie Five-Five will now fight to the death. Julius, the lesser of the two lunkhead sons, had been his heir apparent, his favorite. Vin will have nothing to lose now, and I expect him to go down in a blaze of nihilistic glory. Now if I run, Vinnie will not hesitate to have me whacked for being a deserter, an asshole, and a potential rat.

  Judith brings coffee. I am going to lose my life in this idiotic war. I’m as certain of this as I am of the love of Judith.

  She adds details. The hit happened at dusk, about the time I met Ariel in the café soon after our own assault on Vlad’s whorehouse.

  Judith joins me on the sofa. “What did you get yourself into, Howard?”

  “Nothingness.”

  “It’s Dad’s fault. Because of his stupid gambling.”

  “It’s all right, Judith. Don’t think bad of Dad.”

  Why blame Dad? He didn’t gamble me into the mob. He warned me, in fact, that the life was dying. In the mideighties, federal prosecutions destroyed all the family bosses and the organization’s structure. So many people flipped that no one trusted anyone. The rackets fragmented and guys freelanced, with all the lack of security that implies. Emerging market competition, mostly by Russian and Chinese, wiped out half the made guys in the city. By the turn of the century, only idiots became wise guys. On top of that, there were by this time so many legal ways of ripping off people, ways that the government protected you, bailed you out if things went kablooey. Yes, I was a fool to choose the Cosa Nostra even if it regrouped after 9/11, when we got lucky with the emergence of a new foreign-policy hysteria.

  “Dad always made his nut,” I say.

  “Sure, he paid the rent, child support,” Judith responds. “But he should have made you finish school. You respected him. Loved him. You would have listened.”

  I shrug.

  Distraught, Judith whimpers, “I hate it when you clam up like this. What are you thinking? What are you going to do now?”

  I think of the cozy basement where Ariel hangs from the water pipe. “I got things to do, untie loose ends.”

  “Untie loose ends? What are you talking about? Howard, where have you been staying?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “These people are crazy. You got to run. What are you even doing here?”

  “I left some things that I need.”

  Judith sinks into the couch’s cushions and weeps into her hands.

  It only occurs to me now, big dope that I am, that something already happened.

  Judith’s body heaves a few more times but then she lifts her tear-stained face. “Three men. They came yesterday. They barged in and looked everywhere.”

  “Was one of them my height with a crew cut?”

  “I don’t remember. I was alone. I was so scared. I have no idea what any of them look like. Crazy. Thank God, John had just taken the girls to Baskin-Robbins.”

  This news makes me dizzy. I should have been here to protect Judith. I should have been here with my beautiful Glock and blown those motherfuckers away. “Did they touch you?”

  Judith scrutinizes me intensely. In a strong voice uninflected with despair she says, “Don’t do anything stupid, Howard.”

  “Did they touch you, Judith?” I leap off the couch. “I need to know.”

  “No,” Judith answers softly. “Sit down, Howard. Please. One of them just waited with me in the kitchen. The others went through the house. I told them that I hadn’t seen you in weeks.”

  Could I believe her? She would not tell me if they hurt
her because she would be worried that I’d go looking for the cocksuckers.

  “I need to go downstairs and pack more stuff. You need that apartment.”

  “You need to get out of here.” Judith barely contains a scream. “I’ll pack. You hide.”

  “Judith, I’ll be fine. It’s you who doesn’t seem fine. I don’t want to leave you in this state.”

  “Leave!” she let loose, out of her head with terror. “You get to another state!”

  Ivan, that fucking bastard. We had been friends. I thought that our love of literature would protect us from the worst aspects of our society. Instead, it just targets one as weak and stupid. How ignorant and mindless we have become.

  Judith clamps her mouth shut and breathes through her nose like an angry bull. She is both furious and frantic. I should stay. I should show her my gun and assure her that the next Russian to walk through that door will get his head blown off, no questions asked. That might calm her down. No, I should help her get the apartment ready to rent. War or peace, she needs money. I also must get back to Ariel. If she hasn’t completely lost circulation in her limbs, she’d be in such a state of heightened arousal that it would take all night to satisfy her. I’m tired.

  Having to deal with both the tragic and the absurd drains the energy from one’s limbs. I sit next to Judith so lost in confusion that I can only babble, “Judith, believe me when I tell you everything will be okay.”

  She searches my face and shudders.

  “I just need a couple of minutes to pack. I have a safe place to stay. Don’t panic. Could you get me a bag?”

  She disappears into the foyer’s closet. After a minute she returns with a suitcase the size of Cleveland.

  I can’t carry this giant thing through the streets, but I could put most of the things I want to keep, which includes the world’s masterworks and the last of my erotica collection. I have owned these magazines since I was eleven, but because of the wonderful cornucopia of online smut I haven’t looked at them in years. Yet they have sentimental value. Holding these Screws and Penthouses allows me to enter a bygone age as dead as the Paleolithic. I know these women’s private places as well as I know any of my girlfriends’. And if the text accompanying their spreads is to be believed, they are as open with their thoughts and desires as they are with their thighs and buttocks. Today, a boy enters a sexual frontier where images come and go with a click. You can never develop that imagistic porn intimacy that functions as one’s first significant sexual relationship.