“Of course,” Ray said. There was an awkward pause. Ray looked directly at Carrie, who wanted to throw her napkin over her head. Please, she thought, please don’t ask my name.
“Well, maybe I’ll give her a call,” Ray said.
“Why don’t you do that?” Amalita asked. “The phone’s right over there.”
Ray departed, momentarily anyway. “She’s fucked everybody,” Carrie said. “Including Mr. Big.”
“Oh please, sweetpea. I don’t care about that,” Amalita said. “If a woman wants to sleep with a man, makes the choice, it’s her business. But she’s not a good person. I heard that she wanted to be one of Madame Alex’s girls, but even Alex thought she was too crazy.”
“So how does she survive?”
Amalita raised her right eyebrow. She was silent for a moment—in the end, she was a lady through and through, having been raised on Fifth Avenue with a coming-out ball, the whole works. But Carrie really wanted to know. “She takes gifts. A Bulgari watch. A Harry Winston necklace. Clothing, cars, a bungalow on someone’s property, someone who wants to help her. And cash. She has a child. There are lots of rich men out there who take pity. These actors with their millions. They’ll write a check for fifty thousand dollars. Sometimes just to go away.
“Oh, please,” she said, looking at Carrie. “Don’t be so shocked. You always were such an innocent, sweetpea. But then, you’ve always had a career. Even if you were starving, you’ve had a career. Women like Ray and I, we don’t want to work. I’ve always just wanted to live.
“But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.” Amalita had quit smoking, but she picked up one of Carrie’s cigarettes and waited for the waiter to light it. “How many times have I called you, crying, no money, wondering what I was going to do, where I was going to go next. Men promise things and don’t deliver. If I could have been a call girl, it would have been so much easier. It’s not the sex that’s the problem—if I like a man, I’m going to do it anyway—but the fact that you’ll never be on their level. You’re an employee. But at least you might walk away with some cash.”
She raised her eyebrows and shrugged. “My way, well, is there any future? And you’ve got to keep up. With the clothes and the body. The exercise classes. The massages, facials. Plastic surgery. It’s expensive. Look at Ray. She’s had her breasts done, lips, buttocks; she’s not young, darling, over forty. What you see is all she’s got.”
She mashed her cigarette in the ashtray. “Why am I smoking? It’s so bad for the skin. I wish you’d stop, sweetpea. But you remember? When I was pregnant with my daughter? I was sick. Flat broke. Sharing a bedroom with a student, for Christ’s sake, in a lousy flat because that was all I could afford. $150 a month. I had to go on welfare so I could get medical care to have the baby. I had to take the bus to the county hospital. And when I really needed help, sweetpea, there were no men around. I was alone. Except for a few of my good girlfriends.”
At that moment, Ray reappeared at the table, biting her lower lip. “D’y’all mind?” she said. “This girl’s gonna show up momentarily, but in the meantime, I need a cocktail. Waiter, bring me a vodka martini. Straight up.” She sat down. She didn’t look at Carrie.
“Hey, I want to talk to you about Snake,” Ray said to Amalita. “He told me he was with you.”
“Did he?” Amalita asked. “Well, you know, Snake and I, we have an intellectual relationship.”
“Do you now? And I just thought he was a pretty good fuck who was good with my kid,” Ray said. “I ain’t worried about that. I just don’t think I can trust the guy.”
“I thought he was engaged to somebody,” Amalita said. “Some dark-haired woman who’s having his baby.”
“Oh shit. Carmelita or something like that. She’s like an auto mechanic from nowhere’sville. Yew-tah. Snake was going skiing and his car broke down and he took it to a garage, and there she was with her wrench. And her needy slit. Naw. He’s trying to get rid of her.”
“It’s very simple then,” Amalita said. “You just get some spies. I have my masseuse and my maid. Send him your masseuse or chauffeur and then have them report back to you.”
“Goddammit!” Ray screamed. She opened her large, red-lipsticked mouth and leaned back precariously in her chair, laughing hysterically. Her blond hair was nearly white, perfectly straight; she was a freak all right but amazingly sexy.
“I knew I liked you,” she said. The chair thumped to the floor and Ray nearly crashed into the table. Everyone in the restaurant was looking. Amalita was laughing, almost hiccupping. “How come we’re not better friends?” Ray asked. “That’s what I want to know.”
“Gee, Ray, I have no idea,” Amalita said. She was just smiling now. “Maybe it has something to do with Brewster.”
“That goddamned little shit actor,” Ray said. “You mean, those lies that I told him about you because I wanted to get him for myself? Well, shit, honey, can you blame me? He had the biggest willy in L.A. When I saw the thing—we were out to dinner at a restaurant and he puts my hand on it under the table, and I got so excited I took it out of his pants and started rubbing it, and one of the waitresses saw it and started screaming ’cause it was so big and then we got thrown out—I said, that thing is mine. I ain’t sharing it with anyone.”
“He was pretty big,” Amalita said.
“Pretty big? Honey, he was like a horse,” Ray said. “You know, I’m an expert in bed, I’m the best any man ever had. But when you get to be my level, something happens. The average-sized cock just doesn’t do anything for you anymore. Oh yeah, I’ll sleep with those guys, but I tell ’em all, I’ve got to be able to go out and get my little bit of fun. My satisfaction.”
Ray had only had three-quarters of her martini, but something seemed to be happening to her. It was like the high beams were on, but no one was driving. “Oh yeah,” she said. “I just love that filled-up feeling. Give it to me baby. Do me.” She started rocking her pelvis against the chair. She half raised her right arm, closed her eyes. “Oh yeah, baby, oh yeah baby. Oh!” She ended with a squeal and opened her eyes. She was staring straight at Carrie as if she’d suddenly noticed her for the first time. “What’s your name, honey?” she asked. And Carrie suddenly recalled a story about how Capote Duncan had had sex with Ray on a couch in the middle of a party in front of everyone.
“Carrie,” she said.
“Carrie . . . ?” Ray asked. “Have I met you?”
“No,” Amalita said. “She’s a great girl. One of us. But an intellectual. A writer.”
“You gotta write my story,” Ray said. “I’m telling you, my life would be a best-seller. So much stuff has happened to me. I’m a survivor.” She looked to Amalita for affirmation. “Look at us. We’re both survivors. The other girls like us . . . Sandra . . .”
“She’s in A.A. and works all the time and never goes out,” Amalita said.
“Gabriella . . .”
“Call girl.”
“Marit . . .”
“Went crazy. Detox, then Silver Hill.”
“Tell me about it,” Ray said. “I heard she freaked out on your couch and you had to take her to the bughouse.”
“She’s out now. Has a job. PR.”
“Poor Relations, I call it,” Ray said. “They want to use her for her social connections, but her eyes are so glazed over you can’t hardly talk to her. She just sits there like a bug while they paw through her Rolodex.”
Carrie couldn’t help it. She laughed.
Ray glared at her. “Well, it ain’t funny. You know?”
8
Manhattan Ménage! Seven Men
Pop the Inevitable Question
I’m at dinner with a man. We’re into a second bottle of 1982 Château Latour. Maybe it’s our third date, maybe our tenth. It doesn’t matter. Because, eventually, it always comes up. The Inevitable.
“Errrrrr,” he begins.
“Yes?” I ask, leaning forward. He rests his hand on my thigh. Perhaps he’s going to
“pop the question.” It’s not likely, but then again, what is?
He begins again. “Have you ever . . .”
“Yes?”
“Have you ever . . . wanted to . . .”
“What?”
“Have you ever wanted to . . . have sex with another woman?” he asks, triumphant.
I’m still smiling. But there it is, sitting on the table like a puddle of vomit. I already know what’s coming next.
“With me, of course,” he says. “You know, a threesome.” Then comes the kicker: “We could maybe get one of your friends.”
“Why would I want to do that?” I ask. I don’t even bother inquiring why he thinks one of my friends might be interested.
“Well, I would like it,” he says. “And besides, you might like it, too.”
I don’t think so.
“A SEXUAL VARIANT”
New York is a place where people come to fulfill their fantasies. Money. Power. A spot on the David Letterman show. And while you’re at it, why not two women? (And why not ask?) Maybe everyone should try it at least once.
“Of all the fantasies, it’s the only one that exceeds expectations,” said a photographer I know. “Mostly, life is a series of mild disappointments. But two women? No matter what happens, you can’t lose.”
That isn’t exactly true, as I discovered later. But the three-some is one fantasy at which New Yorkers seem to excel. As one male friend of mine said, “It’s a sexual variant as opposed to sexually deviant.” Another option in a city of options. Or is there a darker side to threesomes: Are they a symptom of all that’s wrong with New York, a product of that combination of desperation and desire particular to Manhattan?
Either way, everyone has a story. They’ve done it, know someone who did, or saw three people about to do it—like those two “top models” who recently pulled a male model into the men’s room at Tunnel, forced him to consume all his drugs, and then took him home.
A ménage à trois involves that trickiest of all relationship numbers: three. No matter how sophisticated you think you are, can you really handle it? Who gets hurt? Are three really better than two?
Lured perhaps by the promise of free drinks, free joints, and free honey-roasted peanuts, seven men joined me on a recent Monday evening in the basement of a SoHo art gallery to talk about threesomes. There we found the photographer and 1980 ladies’ man Peter Beard on his hands and knees. He was “collaging”: painting shapes on some of his black-and-white animal photographs. Some of the photos had rust-colored footprints on them, and I remembered I had heard Peter was using his own blood. He was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt.
Peter is a sort of “wild man,” about whom one hears stories. Like: He was married to 1970s superbabe Cheryl Tiegs (true); that once, in Africa, he was hogtied and nearly fed to some animals (probably not true). He said he would work while we talked. “I’m just doing work all the time,” Peter said. “Just to ward off boredom.”
Everyone made cocktails, and then we lit the first joint. Except for Peter, the men asked me to change their names for this article. “Using our real names wouldn’t be good for our client base,” said one.
We launched into the topic of discussion.
“It’s an avalanche right now,” Peter said. “I know some girls, one of whom I’m meeting tonight, who says that over 90 percent of her girlfriends have propositioned her. This is definitely a new phenomenon.”
Peter dipped his brush in the red paint. The modeling industry, he said, seemed to be grooming women for three-somes. “Agents and bookers are pushing favors from the girls to get them bookings.” Then he added, “All the models are getting stroked in the loo.”
Tad, forty-one, a golden-boy architect, remained skeptical. “I think the numbers are being kept by the government census bureau.” But he went on. “Women physically represent more sensuality and more beauty,” he said. “So it’s easier for a man to fantasize about two women together. Two men together is kind of a dry fantasy.”
Peter looked up from his spot on the floor. “Women can sleep in the same bed, and no one thinks anything about it,” he said.
“We applaud it,” said Simon, forty-eight, the owner of a software company.
“It’s very unlikely any of us would sleep in the same bed with each other. I just wouldn’t do it,” said Jonesie, forty-eight, an East Coast–based record executive. He looked around.
“The reason men don’t do it is because most other men snore,” said Peter. “Plus, it’s not good for the nervous system.”
“It brings up all kinds of deep-rooted fears,” said Simon. There was a moment of silence while we looked around the room.
Peter broke the tension. “The underground reality of this is the biological rat studies,” he said. “Density, stress, and the overcrowding of the niche structures. The first phenomenon of overcrowded rats is the separation of the sexes. And in this city, with all the lawyers and all the overcrowded niche structures, you have incredible pressure. Pressure fucks up the hormones; when the hormones are screwed up, there are more homosexuals; and homosexuality is nature’s way of cutting down on population. All of these unnatural things we’re talking about exponentially expand.”
“That sums it all up,” Tad said dryly.
“We’re leading sensory-saturated lives,” Peter said. “High density. Intensity. Millions of appointments. Millions of lawyer appointments. A simple thing is no longer fun. Now you have to have two or three girls, or exotic strippers at Pure Platinum.”
“On the other hand, the reason to have multiple sex partners could just be curiosity,” said Tad. “Without being overly analytical.”
But Peter was on a roll. “How about insincerity?” he demanded. “There’s less sincerity and less honesty. If you’re really attracted to a girl, you don’t want another girl. But nowadays, there is less sincerity.”
“That might be,” Jonesie said cautiously.
“When you meet people in New York, all you get is their bullshit,” said Peter, not noticing that his paintbrushes were drying out. “You get all their stuff they tell you at parties. You get the same damn thing at these dinner parties until you just stop going.”
“You cut down,” Jonesie agreed.
“And you go into the bathroom, and you get a blow job from someone in the fashion industry,” Peter said. There was a brief and, if I’m not mistaken, awed silence. Then more Peter: “It’s not reality. It’s not communicating. It’s not sincere. It’s just a moment in their stress-ridden lives.”
“And I thought I just wanted to get laid,” Tad said.
E-LOVE IN VAIN
That was exactly Tad’s state of mind three years ago, when he experienced the most basic level of troilism—what he called an “E-love gropefest.”
He had recently broken up with his girlfriend of five years. He found himself at a party and saw an attractive twenty year old. He followed her and watched her get into a cab. He got into his Mercedes. When the cab stopped at a light, he pulled up. They made a date to meet the following night at a club.
She showed up with a girlfriend named Andie. “Fortunately,” said Tad, “Andie turned out to be out of her mind.” She’d just gotten off a plane from Italy and was swanning around in a fox fur coat. After consuming E-tabs, the three went back to Tad’s loft, drank champagne, smashed the glasses on the floor, groped. The twenty year old fell asleep, and Tad and Andie went at it, with the twenty year old next to them on the bed.
Peter jumped back in. “It’s more experiences, every day, therefore you have to do more and constantly faster! And more!” he said. “It’s going beyond carrying capacity, pushing our luck, inventing new niches, expanding . . .”
“It’s like someone walking by with a tray of cookies and you take a couple off the tray,” said Garrick, thirty, a guitarist with a downtown band.
Tad started to agree with Peter. “It’s the whole idea of more,” said Tad. “It’s four breasts, not two.”
Thankful
ly, Sam, an investment banker, arrived. Sam, forty-one, was the type of guy who was always saying he wanted to get married but often “forgot” to call back the women he was dating. So he was still single. Sam said he had had three-somes.
“Why did you do it?” we asked.
Sam shrugged. “It’s variety. You get tired of being around anyone after a while.”
Sam said there are three basic situations that lead to three-somes. One: The guy has been secretly lobbying for a long time to get his girlfriend into bed with another woman. The reason could be that he’s bored, or he secretly wants to sleep with her friend.
Two: The girlfriend secretly wants to sleep with another woman, and gets her boyfriend to go along to make it easier for her to deal with it.
Three: Two women are into each other and plot to get the guy into bed.
Sam said he’d had a girlfriend, Libby, for about six months, and he talked himself into believing that she really wanted to have sex with her best friend, Amanda. Of course, the truth, which he now admits, is that he wanted to have sex with Amanda.
Under pressure, Libby finally agreed to engineer the evening. Amanda came over. They had wine. They sat on the couch. Sam told the two women to take their clothes off. And then? “I was a complete failure,” said Sam. While Libby remained on the couch, drinking wine, Sam took Amanda to bed. “I was totally into her. The problem is, you usually end up preferring one woman over the other, and then the other one gets left out,” he said. Finally, Libby came over to the bed. “I guess they wanted me to tell them what to do, to take control of the situation. But I was so into Amanda, I couldn’t do it,” Sam said. Libby never got over it. Two months later, Sam and Libby broke up. Libby and Amanda didn’t talk for a while.
Sam admitted that he knew there could be “consequences” from the threesome, but “you go ahead, anyway, because you’re a guy.”
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