Man Ray might have been a gay porno star as far as his knowledge extended. He didn’t know said lithograph was worth twenty-five pounds if it was worth a shot on the house. On the other hand, she had never heard Otis Rush’s original 78 rpm rendition of “Double Trouble” on the Cobra label, which he just happened to be the proud owner of. Clearly it was a match made in heaven, especially when he looked down and discovered himself delighted at the sight of one peremptory ripple of flab around her middle. That hula hoop of fat, he knew there was definitely no turning back now, so downward yet anon did slither his ogling orbs to grow themselves all wet at the sight of two more than amply supple legs in black fishnet stockings crossed under the hem o’ that minidress, the whole thrilling vista tapering in most sublime tribute to Jehovah’s very handiwork in two black patent leather shoes with stiletto heels could slice a porkbutt clean asunder. And amazingly enough, she wanted none other than that scrawny excuse for a failed fop HIM!
By now they’d practically consummated a week of orgiastic gymnopeds via eyes alone, so she paid up quick and out they scooted. Fairly ran down the block and up the stairs, through her door, where then she did after all think to stop and ask, “Like my Man Ray?”
“What’s that? Some billboard for a new poofter play?”
She charitably ignored this idiocy, choosing instead to trip and shove him backward onto her scummy rumpled bed, the sheets and blankets not washed in weeks because she was too busy at the wine to remember them so they stank like sick goats but little he cared being drunk and lust-racked, too, so they commenced to make what Shakespeare, who could get at least as down ‘n’ dirty as say Texas Alexander when so he chose, once called “the beast with two backs.” An apt description in this case, because the pair set to rutting like hogs been penned apart all winter, or dogs sprung from sexually segregated pounds (a pup-population control measure once actually tried in America, resulting in one lockup fulla Rovers crawling around the room all day leaving bowwow jizz all over the floors, and another wherein the bitches thus imprisoned and deprived set up such a tempest-trough of yipyap yelpings and piteous yowls not unreminiscent of chalk squeaking on blackboards that the whole idea was abandoned overnight and a platoon truckload of panting Fidos imported special to the Lady Bowzers for a full-scale K-9 orgy just to shut ’em the fuck up) (happened in Keokuk, Iowa, case you wondered where the locals’d be fool enough to concoct such a scheme in the first place), they were hungry, and nosh awhile they did, groinwise that is, grinding away in to-the-hilt gimme-glee sloshed swill-sploshes of Eau de Poozwax Straight Up & Mulching Mit More Spizz-Overflow than whole popovs with some o’ them Twiglets occasioned—it splashed across the grimy walls and soaked through the putrid coverlets, one rampant rivulet running down the bed cross the floor under the door down three flights of stairs and all the way out into the street where it conjugated unnoticed with TB sputum, not that the two lovers in question noticed any such minor details inasmuch as by that time they were too busy eating each other just toothpick-shy of outright cannibalism, after which they did it doggie-style and rocked so mighty they damn near broke the bedposts, the springs meanwhile playing at least five different Bartók string quartets and “From the Diary of a Fly” at once, causing an eighty-nine-year-old widowed pensioner in the next room past the wall which was about as thick as the cover off a copy of Uncle Scrooge ca. 1948 to seriously consider attempting to make his way down the stairs, a feat he had not accomplished in a decade and a half, so as to thereafter hit the street and see if he himself could purchase the last hit of whoopie he’d ever know except even allowing for the stairs he was still thinking WWII prices which’d mean he couldn’t afford much beyond a quick whackoff into an old handkerchief while peering through a peephole at some grainy loop or two of (sign on door claimed) Mexican lezzies havin’ at each other orally which mighta been still a heap better’n nothing (I tried it once on 42nd St. and it was great, but felt filthy afterward so never went back) except Pops here ain’t even really had it up since the Rosenbergs were burned so what the fuck….
When they were done dogfucking they sprawled back awhile to rest and pant and contemplate just exactly what they mighta forgot to try. Licking assholes? They talked about it but agreed it was finally neither’s style. Mild B&D/S&M? Well, both were tired. So they tried something really daring, truly avant, beyond the pales of known thrash: they snuggled up for warmth, and hugged and kissed, with full passion but also gently and tenderly, sometimes just barely grazing each other’s liptips (which really reactivated the lust-pustules in both bodies), for about twenty minutes. They kissed. Like kids, which was what he in fact was, and made her feel like all over again, which was the best feeling she’d had in years if not ever. When fully reprimed, they fucked once more, a long, slow, languorous workout in nothing but the Missionary Position, and when at last they came it seemed as if some timeless primal river was unleashed headwaters between the two as they writhed in one slow sliding tangle of YES from the core to YOU and no other … it was almost like some sort of, well, religious experience, mystical somehow, certainly elemental, the mindless melding of two principles always drawn together yet always warring everywhere, no confluently conjoined once-in-lifetime-memorable rapture among all manner of fucks high and low and every pit stop in between but this was one of the few ever that anybody’s lucky enough to get which really actually on some intangible certainly beyond verbalization level matters … what you keep on looking for every time you lie down, and suspicion or nerves or reminiscence of some past lover who warn’t so hot or drug-numbness or outright hatred or simple bone-weariness or god knows whatall else seems to come between you and it every time damn near … and True Love has nothing to do with it, on one level it’s nothing more than pure chemistry, though on a level a high degree or in-front mutual trust helps plenty, and finally maybe it’s just dumb luck: THIS TIME.
When it was over, they lay in silence for upward of an hour, lost in commingled dreams, drained beyond movement, finally he sat up and said: “What’s your name?”
She looked at him in silence for a full minute before answering. “Thanks a lot, SHITHEAD. That’ll do for you as far as I’m concerned. As far as mine goes, just for that you’ll never know. Now get dressed and get the fuck out of here.”
So he did, a little sheepishly to be sure. He wanted to apologize, but felt so, well, dazed and confused right then, that he had no idea how to even begin to try. He knew he had done something stupid, ugly, and thoughtless, but he hadn’t really meant anything by it, it was simply a product of his inexperience, which of course mortified him even more, till he felt he’d better get dressed and go or he was gonna wind up sitting there paralyzed. He’d never in his life felt more like a little boy, just as she had never felt more used, fucked, and then slapped down, put in what any cur of a male would be sure to think of as her rightful place, if for no other reason than that she was poor and single. She hated him, and all men, at that moment, and there was nothing in the world that could have changed that at the time.
When he was fully dressed, he stumbled across the bed, nearly breaking a leg and spilling across the floor, but no, he made it to his feet, though he still felt too wretched and ashamed to stand straight up all the way, so he kind of hunched across the room, hesitating by the door. He turned a bit, but was afraid even to look at her.
“Get out.” It was the voice of a sidewalk as it hits a drunk in the face. Except he was no longer drunk. He felt it, every dollop of loathing, contempt, finality. Sick in the pit of his gut, moving with the spindly gait of somebody staggering away from an automobile accident, he turned the knob on the door and let himself out. She turned her face to the wall, which was oily and stained in places and where she faced it almost black with the accumulated dirt and lives of so many people, most of them down-and-outers, over so many years, and she cried hard, bitter convulsive tears that seemed to come tearing out in great chunks like the face of some cliff smashed away by … what? One too many assholes?
Solitary middle age with no real prospects in sight? The sudden sensation that it just might be the sum total of her life, for this was all she had managed to piece together in over four decades, and what in god’s name did she have to look forward to? Who wants a fifty-year-old hooker who’s particular about her services (no S&M, no showers, no really kinky stuff of any sort) in the first place? Or get in on the ground floor of some new, “straight” business … yeah, sure. Even waitresses had to show some list of past employments. All she had to show, really, was a succession of men: two failed marriages, countless lovers, most of them as callous as this one had turned out to be or worse, various marginal forms of employment (go-go dancer, topless waitress, hooker, massage parlor, call girl … it all boiled down to the same thing), no family contacted in decades, no kids, not even a pet, no library or record collection amassed over the years that could now be presented to herself as some kind of evidence proving she knew not what … nothing. Alcoholism. A lifetime of self-con, pretending she was some schoolgirl on a spree when everybody else her age was married, employed, or both. She was so ill equipped for real life, she reflected, that she wouldn’t even know how to commit suicide properly. Fuck it up no doubt. She laid her face in the black place where the two walls met, while more sobs heaved up from her very guts like boulders. In the next room, somebody turned up a radio playing some awful, maudlin song; they didn’t want to have to hear her.
He staggered on down the street, still in shock, found his way home, sat down, and tried to piece it all together. On one level it was all so simple, on another it was just too abrupt a jolt from too great a height to too miserable a sink. That plus the knowledge that he’d hurt someone, and he did have some though hardly a complete idea just how badly, and it was the person that on that day of his life he wanted most in the world to avoid hurting. Again he felt himself overwhelmed by feelings of helplessness and self-hatred. He sat like this for hours, barely moving a finger joint, almost in a trance, as the darkness fell over the city and filled the room. Finally, around 10 p.m., he got up and turned on the lamp. Then he sat down again. He knew that punishing himself this way, to such masochistic extremes, he was only reconfirming, again and again, the very conviction of immaturity which had, aside from the pain he’d inflicted, made him feel that way in the first place. But he was young and male and selfish enough to be more concerned with whipping himself and turning it into a grand melodrama than with what she must be going through. Well, he thought ruefully a couple of hours after turning out the light, at least here’s another song for you. Which of course made him feel even more ashamed. He fell into a fitful sleep, sitting up in his chair. He dreamed that he was a dog pawing the legs of passing women, all of them classy, fashionable, gorgeous, and looking up he saw the sneers on their faces. “Stupid mongrel mutt, go piss on somebody else’s leg.” One kicked him, and he went limping away. No one in the streets would even look at him, not even the beggar children: he was a mange-ridden stray.
She did not sleep. All night and all the next morning she sat on the bed, after the last tear had choked out, and stared at absolutely nothing. In the early afternoon she moved one limb. Then another. A bit at a time, she physically collected herself. For what she was about to do she hardly needed a mind. Finally she looked in her purse: £6. She snapped it shut, stood up with it in her hand, and walked out the door, which she did not bother to lock. Down the stairs, down the street, into another bar. It was a bar where lots of low-rent johns hung out, and she was going to be broke again soon. She took a stool and ordered a drink. And another. And another.
When he awoke, he felt stiff and sunbaked, sitting up like some mummy in a chair. He remembered everything, and the self-loathing had not abated, but at least now he was capable of planning and executing some course of action. For some reason he trusted himself just a hair more than last night. He left his apartment and headed straight for the bar where they’d met. When he didn’t find her there, he walked out and headed down the street, looking in every bar along the way until he came to the corner. Then he walked back, checking every bar on the other side. He didn’t drink.
Three hours later he walked into a dim, small bar on a side street, he saw her, hesitated, then clumsily approached. Her back was to him; she was looking down into her glass of wine. Standing behind her, he said, “I’m … so very … very sorry … I didn’t mean it … I mean … I just didn’t know …” The more he talked, the worse he was. With all the dignity of the longtime alcoholic who knows she’s drunk and couldn’t care less because unlike in the movies there are worse things in the world, namely, almost everything else in the world, she turned to face him. In the deadest voice possible she intoned: “You-have-got-some-fucking-nerve.” She looked at him; he couldn’t meet her gaze. She grew almost waspish: “Wasn’t yesterday enough? I’m not gonna give you the rest of your kicks by beating you. Although I will say you are a miserable whelp and one of the poorest excuses for a man I’ve ever met. But you know what? You’re not even the worst. Don’t kid yourself. You’re just another creep on the street. Now go wallow in somebody else’s miseries. I’m sure there’s a candidate just down the bar.” She paid for her drink, making sure to leave a tip, picked up her purse, and walked out.
He didn’t see her for two weeks. She felt better after the confrontation, but surprised herself with the realization that she also felt sorry for him, he really didn’t know what he was doing. He really was just a kid. She was taking a lifetime of sons-of-bitches out on him. Not that he didn’t give every indication of quite likely growing up to be one fully as practiced at true brutality as the rest. It was just that, somehow, even as she sensed his selfishness, she couldn’t help being touched at least a little by his confusion, his genuinely repentant albeit masochistic manner, and her own inclination to give him the benefit of the doubt. Why? she kept asking herself. And finally concluding: Maybe just because you have at this point absolutely nothing else to do with your life. Which, once she’d articulated it, was obviously as pathetic a reason for doing absolutely anything as any of his. Fuck it, she thought, tricked her landlord and a couple of others she forced out of memory as soon as the episodes were done, and started drinking again, moving slowly from bar to bar at her own unset pace.
He hadn’t been able to look a woman, any woman, in the eye since she’d told him off in the bar when he’d gone to find her. For several days he sat in his room; finally he called a friend and told him the whole story. “C’mon,” laughed the friend, “she’s just a whore. Don’t be a sucker.” “Fuck you,” he said.
Crass as his friend had been, he’d come away knowing one thing: she was no more perfect than he, and he’d been putting her on a pedestal purely in the interests of his masochism. Whether or not she might actually be a prostitute was a matter of no moral judgment to him one way or the other. If he had suspected she was one, it had been a secret excuse to romanticize her. Slowly, somehow, without further contact, he began to perceive her as a human being. As all that fell into place, his anger at himself assumed a more fitting perspective. Finally, he saw that even his groveling apologies—perhaps in a way especially them—were at bottom selfish. She’d been right. For some time now, he’d been in the habit of treating women with casual unconcern—like shit. It was an act that worked more often than not, but it also ensured that he’d always end up with the same kind of woman, and ultimately alone. Now that he had encountered somebody he was capable of caring about, he’d exploited her in a way that was probably even worse—to expunge his guilt over all the others he’d mistreated, to put himself in their place, to know how it felt to be treated just that shabbily. He also felt that, if they could ever clear all this up, there might be some possibility for … what? Something more than what he’d been accustomed to. On the other hand, it might just be that all it had amounted to was an incidence of random lust, proof of which lay in the very fact that the instant they’d tried to verbally communicate, all hell had broken loose. He wondered at times if he should
n’t just forget the whole thing, or take it as a lesson learned and go on with his life. But gradually he came to realize that one way or another she was almost all he ever thought about. Which might mean that this was just a particularly twisted teenage crush, but he had to find, see, and at least try to talk to her again. For better or worse.
Lit Riffs Page 2