Time's Harlot: The Perils of Attraction, Seduction, and Desire

by Brenda Kuchinsky

  During her initial financial desperation, once the haze of helplessness had cleared like a dense fog lifting, she recalled a former patient, a bipolar woman, whose mania typically involved hypersexuality. She had alluded to an enterprise that catered to young men, Oedipal men, who yearned to fuck their mothers, and settled for a safe substitute.

  It was the brain storm of the woman’s unscrupulous boyfriend, a pimp really, who ran it as a side business, a splinter specialty, buried amidst a much more general whoring operation.

  Sophia remembered her patient, an extremely attractive older woman. Vivid. A lot of bipolar people appeared to be larger than life. Magnetic. The pimp boyfriend wanted her patient to work for him, satisfying these Oedipal boys. Things got rough when she refused. She sported shiners and walked gingerly until she eventually extricated herself from the troublesome relationship and met a local politician. Perhaps a pimp of a different sort. Sophia remembered a drinking problem, plaguing the new relationship. It was difficult to change familiar patterns.

  This woman had also talked about a secret fraternity called MBMB, Mamma’s Boys of Miami Beach, and the pimp’s source for clients. Sophia had found this organization, advertising discreetly in the back pages of the New Times, that naughty liberal rag.

  A lucrative business was born. She was transported back to her first client, his pitted complexion, sweaty hands, and furtive glances at her generous breasts. She guided his clammy hands, ignoring the miasma of fear he was exuding. His erect member between her breasts exploded almost immediately. She spread some of the semen on her face, taking advantage of that most restorative facial mask material.

  Her first client. What a feeling of power and control. She felt herself growing ten feet tall, sprouting a cape, and developing nerves of steel.

  Four

  The crystal clear verdant eyes were mesmerizing. She wanted to jump into their pools and swim away, deep inside, cool and cleansing.

  The red cat kept growing larger and larger, its enormous radioactive eyes continuing to beckon. Sophia wanted to talk to her.

  “You’re a cat. I can’t talk to you,” she protested.

  “In dreams all things are possible,” the expanding unperturbed cat pronounced in dulcet tones, philosophizing in a pleasant clipped British accent.

  “Are you Princess Diana? No, you can’t be. You died two years ago.” Dream logic dictated to Sophia.

  “I’m Mimi.”

  “I just want to hold you or drown in your eyes. Your carroty fur looks like velvet. Does it feel as good as it looks? Let me touch you,” Sophia pleaded, stretching out her arms.

  “No!”

  The monstrous cat, while shrinking at an alarming rate, jumped down from her perch with a fluid acrobatic pounce and streaked away like a speedy hare.

  “No. Don’t go.”

  Sweaty, naked Sophia awoke with a racing heart, struggling with a pillow. One lonely tear snaked down her sleep crumpled cheek.

  She decided she needed another shower. Shaking off the debilitating languor engendered by the dream, she threw back the covers, leapt to the French doors to expose the balcony, baking under another scorching August Miami sun. As if orchestrated for her, at that moment three brilliant green and red parrots hurtled across the sky, piercingly squawking a cacophony of protests against the summer sultriness. Or, maybe they were complaining about her dream. That cat was huge.

  Phone calls would wait. It was Monday. She was off today. Like a hairdresser’s schedule. No therapy and no clients. Her Monday obligation was a date with Kurt, who was constantly complaining about being restricted to once a week. Maybe she could squeeze him in on Saturdays in the afternoons. It all was work, not fun.

  The heavy breathing message from last night flickered across her brain, triggering a few left ear tugs, before disappearing from consciousness to be replaced by visual and emotional vestiges of the peculiar dream. That cat was gorgeous.

  “Maybe I should get a red cat for the bordello. One with a cute English accent and swimming pool eyes,” she chuckled aloud. “No more dreamy cats. Ada awaits. The other Monday obligation,” she said.

  Her phone began an insistent ringing, Ma showing up on the other end, as if Ada had heard her.

  “Hi, Ma. I was getting ready.”

  “Good morning, Zophitchka,” her mother said, strain in her voice. I was getting worried. You’re late.”

  Sophia no longer noticed the Polish accent, the foreign nickname. She did register the worry. Incessant worry was her mother’s trademark. Anxiety kept her on the verge of hysteria. At a moment’s notice she was primed to explode with uncontrollable angst, ejaculating her unbearable fears into the atmosphere. Sophia thought of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, that Almovodar film.

  “I’m on my way. Give me an hour at the most. I just woke up. I’ll be walking over as fast as I can.”

  Intermittent epileptic seizures after long periods without symptoms had convinced her to give up driving. She was dependent on walking, her colleague Amanda occasionally giving her rides to and from the office they shared. She was thinking of striking out on her own and building a home office with its own entrance. She lived in one of the few areas in Miami where walking was an option. If she didn’t live here, she would have had to move here. Although there hadn’t been a seizure in a long time, she had to be careful.

  “Get going. Get going. Get going,” she scolded herself.

  She dressed in black despite the oppressive summer humidity. Black jeans and a black vee-neck shirt. The vee-necks broke up the vast expanse of bosom in the best visual way. Sophia disliked her body. Her curves, attractive to so many, repulsed her. She exercised and exercised and exercised, but she couldn’t change her body type.

  She rushed out the front door, deciding to forego homemade coffee for Starbuck’s. Carrying her black sandals in one hand, she stepped out barefoot and gasped with pain, when she felt a razor-like object cut into the underside of her big toe. She raised her right sole to survey the damage, which didn’t look too bad but hurt like hell, and spied a thorny single stem ebony rose, blood sprouting on a thorn, lying square in the middle of her welcome mat.

  Five

  Ada, majestic and mountainous, overpowered the small shabby living room with her presence. Dressed in a massive cerulean blue kimono, adorned with two red dragons locked in combat, her girth swelled in rhythm to the aria she was practicing in the center of the room. Her wild ebony hair, dyed to perfection, the curls bouncing with a charged life of their own, complemented her gold flecked brown eyes, flashing with operatic emotion, and her alabaster skin, firm and smooth even at seventy-four. Her aquiline nose sprouted beads of sweat, attesting to the strenuous labor of singing opera.

  She was projecting tremendously, mouth and throat stretched wide open, a luscious flexible soprano like Rene Fleming, lost in the Act One aria from La Boheme. Ada was singing Yes, My Name is Mimi.

  Rudy, her number one fan and fag, for Ada was a consummate fag hag or fruit fly, if one wanted to be a bit politically correct, was perched on the edge of a tattered red velvet love seat, adoring and resenting Ada at the same time.

  Having lost patience with losing the hot spotlight to her, shivering like an abandoned child, he shouted over her vibrating lyrics, powerful enough to rearrange the dust.

  “You’re going to have to look a lot sicklier for that final act if you want anyone to even remotely buy that you’re dying of consumption. Too plump and pretty,” he sneered, his meager lower lip, painted red, quivering with argumentative excitement. He didn’t dare say fat or he would suffer the full extent of her wrath.

  Ada’s indignant straining breasts, trembling with outrage at the interruption, threatened to bounce out of her robe and attack Rudy with a full frontal, nipple to nipple assault. Or, so Rudy fantasized, transfixed by her Jayne Mansfield knockers, not in a sexual way, but more in an envious way. He thought about them all the time. He even dreamt about them. Once they chased him down the Via Veneto.


  A murderous pounding on the flimsy adjoining wall, followed by shouts in Yiddish to stop the noise, interrupted their incipient battle.

  “Be a bubbala, Rudy and go tell off that alter cocker. He won’t let me breathe,” she entreated, redirecting all her anger to the complaining neighbor.

  Rudy, thin and tall, his Southern Italian dark good looks marred by an underhanded nature that shone through in the slant of the eyes and the tilt of the chin, slunk off to do her bidding.

  She heard a few shouts and curses while she was mopping her face and cleavage with an oversized handkerchief.

  “I scared the shit out of that old fart.” Rudy grinned. When he saw me in this full clown regalia, he went bananas. I think he thought he’d died and gone to hell.” He chortled.

  “This isn’t even a scary clown costume. I think I look pretty tasteful. It’s like the black and white Pagliacci, which, by the way, I sang years ago to perfection. I just have the big red nose and the red wig under the pointy dunce cap. Very tasteful for a clown. But I thought he shit his pants, the way he looked at me. Like the Gestapo were at the door. Maybe he won’t bother you again,” he mused.

  “Are you crazy? If he can get over the Nazis, he can get over you in a clown costume,” Ada shot back. “And stop bragging about your opera career. We know where that went.” She gave him a knowing glare.

  “Get changed and let’s get some champagne. I found a new gay bar. There’s a noon tea dance. I’m parched and restless,” he said.

  “Don’t you have a party with the kiddies?”

  “Not for two hours. It’s only noon. Besides it’s not like I’m singing any more. If I were still performing, then no booze.”

  “I’m waiting for Zophitchka. You go. Anyway, you want to breathe your hot fumy monkey breath on those kids?”

  “They don’t care. They either love me or they’re afraid of me. If they love me, I can do no wrong. If I get that one kid once in a while who’s afraid of me, nothing helps. I’m a monster to him. I could have the milkiest, most innocent breath. The breath of the Virgin Mary or Mother Theresa or the Passover Lamb and the little stinker takes one look at the red nose, the painted clown eyes, and the red wig, and his worst nightmare comes to life. Sophia should study that. Clown fear. That’s right up her alley.”

  “Ach. Zophitchka is too busy making ends meet. That rat of a husband left her not only penniless, but in debt. A fercockte shegetz. Always chasing women. She has to work all the time,” Ada moaned, emphasizing Sophia’s plight by clasping her incongruously long delicate fingers to her sweaty cheeks.

  “I always warned her not to marry a goy. The first fight and he’ll call you a kike. But she only had eyes for blond, blue-eyed bums. The creative ones, who want to get inside any ponchka to keep their juices flowing,” she lamented.

  “Is she doing something on the side? A second job?” he asked, his eyes slanting inquisitively.

  “What should she be doing? She only knows one thing. It took a lifetime of learning to get there.” She looked askance at him.

  “Now be a good boychik and let me get ready for Zophitchka,” she said, slapping him on his lumpy ass.

  She turned to him when she reached the bedroom door. With a playful gesture she beckoned to him.

  “If you’re a really good boychik, I’ll let you look at them.” She winked, grabbing his hand and yanking him into the boudoir.

  Six

  Sophia, finding it hard to walk briskly, dragged her left foot, the bandaged pierced toe throbbing. She had heard her mother singing half a block away when she settled on a bench facing the ocean.

  The salty air, perfumed with the moldering vegetal scent of seaweed felt welcoming, despite the humidity, pressing down with a heavy hand, whipping her hair into a frenzied mass of unruly corkscrews. She breathed deeply, her aquiline nose an exact replica of her mother’s. She decided to indulge in some yoga breathing, closed mouth breathing, which calmed and cleansed her.

  Her mother’s singing had stopped. Sophia wondered what it would have been like if her mother had truly become an opera singer rather than a part-time cantor, who occasionally was the understudy at the Lyric Opera.

  Maybe she would have been happier and not divorced Ta. No, they were mismatched from the start. I’m surprised they had me. Even one kid. So many of these refugees wanted to repopulate the world after Hitler’s mass slaughter, she thought.

  Cheerful, cheerful thoughts, she scoffed at herself.

  She remembered their unhappy marriage. Fighting or stone cold silence. Disagreements on just about anything and everything. No wonder she snatched that death book they left lying around with insouciant carelessness. Images of yellow Star of David-bearing hanging Jews, piles of cadaverous dead Jews, crowds of skeletal living Jews, barely distinguishable from the dead Jews, and mounds of gold teeth, glasses, clothes, jewelry, suitcases, the remains of the dead, stripped of everything. She took it, hid it in her shoe box, and still goes to it for some kind of lopsided solace, facing down death. Nobody breathed a word about the missing book.

  Now they lived in unwedded bliss. Ironically, they had ended up in the same apartment building, separated by two floors, living their disparate, vastly different lives. But, she hoped, there was still love between them.

  In this seedy part of town old European Jews and poor gays mixed out of financial necessity. A neighborhood on the beach, South Beach, in a part of town, which would be in flux soon, reversing itself for the rich. Miami was slow to change. Some called it a banana republic, a third world country. Inefficient and corrupt.

  Her crystal ball told her they’d be knocking down these low rises and erecting multi-million dollar high rises, squeezing out the riff-raff in favor of the beautiful people.

  She rose slowly. Limping a little, she proceeded to her mother’s apartment. The entrance was behind the building, sand right up to the door, abundant sea grape proliferating with their vertical clustered fruit, resembling bunches of grapes, green and purple, dripping down amidst the sturdy leaves.

  Gasping and grunting greeted her ears. Glancing to the right of the door, where the sea grape was exceptionally thick and pretty, she spied two young eager buff men, drenched in sweat, locked in a love clench, having the time of their lives in those bushes.

  “I almost fell over you two,” she addressed the writhing beast with two backs. “Don’t you want some privacy?”

  They were too busy to respond.

  While she was opening the flimsy, peeling unlocked front door, she heard her mother bellow from above, “Rudy, stay and talk to Zophitchka. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  She almost collided with the clown as she opened her mother’s unlocked door.

  “Rudy what’s up? I haven’t seen you in ages. Going on a clown gig?” Sophia asked, repressing a sneer. She loathed Rudy. She couldn’t stand the sight of him.

  “Yes. At two. Rich kiddies on the beach. Nearby,” he telegraphed.

  They both sat uneasily on the love seat.

  Ada made her grand entrance in a lemon yellow suit, oddly flattering, considering it made her look enormous. A golden goddess. The outfit, cinched at the waist and highlighting her boundless cleavage, accentuated a figure ludicrously voluptuous at her ripe old age. She looked twenty years younger.

  She sashayed across the room, hugging Sophia so tightly, she gasped. Then she kissed Rudy on the lips, smearing his red clown lipstick all over her lips.

  Sophia grimaced. Why the hell is she kissing that clown? He’s probably been here for hours fawning all over her. I wish I were channeling Diane Arbus. I’d take evocative photos of these two. What a sight, she continued to think to herself.

  “Zophitchka darling. I’ve been singing one of Mimi’s arias.”

  “I just had a dream about a red talking cat named Mimi.”

  “Ach. Funny,” Ada said, smiling at Sophia, waiting for more.

  Sophia had no inclination to say anything. Nothing came to mind. She drew a complete blank.


  The kitchen clock ticked. The silence spread, oozing onto all the surfaces, locking them into slimy stillness.

  Tick. Tick. Tick.

  Time telescoped out.

  “Some knockers, Ada,” Rudy broke the silence, shattering the invisible glass wall.

  Sophia cringed.

  Ada beamed.

  Rudy licked his smarmy lips.

  Seven

  “Let me make tea,” Ada said as soon as Rudy shut the door behind him.” He had stayed long enough to repair his clown lips and then scurried away.

  “Okay. But why are you all dressed up to make tea?”

  “Rudy and I are having dinner and I didn’t want to make another change. We’re going to Joe’s Stone Crab. His treat. He’s come into some money. Don’t ask.” She beamed.

  “You and Rudy should get married. You’d probably spend less time together than you do now.”

  “He’s a faygeleh and almost thirty years younger.”

  “A match made in heaven. What does Ta think of him?”

  “What should he think? I can do what I want. He has his crazy lady friend. The tight rope walker,” Ada rolled her eyes heavenward, her lips twisting into a condescending snarl.

  “Tight rope walker, my ass. That was a million years ago and probably greatly exaggerated,” Sophia protested.

  “The blue eye shadow. She puts it on with a shovel.” Ada was stuck in a groove.

  “Anyway,” she shook her heavy shoulders dismissively. “I do what I want and he does what he wants.”

  While the kettle was coming to a boil, Ada was piling food onto the table as usual. Marble cake, pound cake, rugalach. Pickles, herring in sour cream, salami, liverwurst. Rye bread, crackers, and raisin pumpernickel. Sardines, hard boiled eggs, and raw onions in sardine oil. Tomatoes, cucumbers, and carrots. Blueberries, melon, and apples. The ubiquitous green grapes. Food was the answer to everything.