Sex in the City - New York

by Maxim Jakubowski

  When she came, I had the illusion, behind my rapture-squeezed eyelids, that she actually filtered through my chest, to emerge on the other side. The reality of pumping her full of my hot come soon destroyed that image; but, oh God, how it was worth it.

  My hands came to rest inside her underpants, clutching her buttocks in a default position of contentment and security.

  And love.

  ‘You know,’ she said a week later, ‘I never completely understood what kept us apart.’

  It took me a minute to reply. ‘The way I see it, we were never really apart, Milly. We just spent two decades circling each other – sometimes in near orbits, sometimes far – intersecting occasionally at weird angles. Until now, when we’ve collided with a glorious and irreversible impact.’ I punctuated the pronouncement with a nice slap to her warm morning ass.

  ‘You’re very wise.’

  I ran a finger between her breasts. ‘You compliment me on my self-awareness … then, twenty years on, you compliment me for my wisdom … I warn you, Millicent: at this rate, I’m going to get a swelled head.’

  About the Story

  Spending a few long weekends in a city, year after year, is a great way for a fiction writer to witness and exploit its evolution. The visits become a foreshortened series of dots, ready to be connected by the muse.

  Much of what I’ve seen of New York has been through the eyes of people invested in the alternative-music world. Sometimes it seemed that the underground rockers were at odds with an inhospitable metropolis, where one paid even to rehearse. And yet sometimes New York appeared as a paradise for the cultural underdog, a place where even a quirky, low-profile pop group could fill a club. On the personal level, my own tiny taste of being part of a modest music scene soon melted away like cappuccino-coconut ice cream. But the ego-tingling flavour has a long tail.

  New York, for me, encompasses things one aspires to; things one has left behind; things one takes for granted; and things one is oblivious to until discovered. Like skyscrapers, some of these things are seen most effectively from a distance. Perhaps a reason why a story that’s set uptown is so much about downtown ... until people catch up with place, and the centre of gravity arrives at 86th on the express.

  Of course, I’m vividly aware of the sex that saturates the city. It titillates, thrills, and inspires me every time; and thus stories such as this one are populated with approximations of sexually self-actualized New York women, modelled on the real ones who bristle all around me with coolness (I opine) and sassiness (I observe) and sensitivity (I hope) and erotic drive (I presume – using the word advisedly). I try to capture what these women mean to me, to take composites home to the bedrooms of my imagination and do some kind of justice to them. I suppose I idealize them – or their situations – freeing them in my fictitious universe from any factors that could compromise their pleasure. This is my way of making love to the women of New York.

  The Same Fifty Taxis is, in a sense, one of my most autobiographical stories; though none of its events really happened to me or anyone I know, nor does the protagonist think or act as I would. I feel a personal connection to the piece that’s rooted in my decades-long development of a relationship with, and a nostalgia for, countless details of a place that’s never been my home. Call it emotional masturbation, but I felt moved as I completed the work: I felt as if I’d given back to a city that has hosted me and aroused me, flattered me and seduced me.

  Obit for Lynn

  by Tsaurah Litzky

  It’s four o’clock in the morning. I’m sitting in my kitchen, drinking tequila. My friend Lynn Busa died yesterday. I don’t have on any clothes or underwear, my pussy smells like sour milk, like I’ve pulled a two mile train, but I haven’t done anything. I’m rotting with despair. Lynn was the sister I always wanted, the trail buddy who would never leave me stranded with my panties down and a broken leg. Even though I am naked, I have shoes on, the red suede pumps I got that time long ago when Lynn and I went shoe shopping at Bendel’s. She got a pair of black patent-leather spikes, heels sharp enough to slice off a man’s ear.

  I met Lynn right after Ed Koch was elected mayor. He won with a big campaign about how he would clean up New York, get rid of the whores, pimps and thieves, get the hustlers off Forty-Second Street. I didn’t like him or his campaign. I always loved Times Square; I started to go up there at night with my first boyfriend Eddie Valentine. It was a Mecca of crazy, pulsing, throbbing lust; men kissing in doorways, enormous women who weren’t women, condoms taped to their foreheads, strutting up and down the street in sequin dresses, the marquees of the movie theatres advertising only triple XXX features: Girls In the Night, Women’s Prison, Nana – A French Coquette.

  Eddie and I were seniors in high school living at home with our families. We took the subway in from Canarsie to Times Square. We paid two dollars each to get into one of the movie houses and then we would climb to the balcony to make out. We stood up in the back among other couples embracing. Frantic for each other, we pressed our bodies together, his hot mouth sucking mine. He’d slide his hands under my clothes, pinch and twist my nipples with so much skill I would come. He taught me how to get him off, how to slip my hand inside his jeans and pull his prick. I was so in love with him. I pretended we were Adam and Eve in the garden. There was always a sticky sweet smell floating in the air. I thought it was some kind of air freshener. Later I realized it was come.

  By the time I met Lynn I knew that smell very well. I was working at Dolls of All Nations, a massage parlour on Thirty-Eighth Street a few blocks from the U.N. Because I was the only Jewish woman who worked there I was Miss Israel. According to the Daily News there were over two hundred massage parlours licensed by the city, turning New York into Sodom and Gomorrah. Editorials urged our crusading mayor to shut them down.

  I worked Sunday, Monday and Tuesday nights. Wednesday mornings I liked to go to the Russian-Turkish Baths on Tenth Street. Wednesdays was Women Only day and the ladies could get naked and lounge around like odalisques. My Aunt Mildred, who was a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall, took me there when I was eighteen.

  ‘It’s great for the complexion, honey,’ she said ‘and you need to steam your privates clean. It keeps them young.’

  I was in the white-tiled Turkish sauna room. Fronds of fragrant eucalyptus hung from the light fixtures. I found myself staring between the legs of the woman sitting on the bench across from me; the black hair on her crotch was shaped into a perfect diamond.

  She noticed me looking and opened her thighs wider, exposing her labia; loose, crimson, frilled like lace. She started to play with the silver ring that pierced one of them, tugging it with slender fingers. I wondered if she was trying to shock me but after four months at Dolls of All Nations, not much could shock me. Maybe she was trying to pick me up; girly-girly love was not my thing, but I couldn’t blame her for trying. Perhaps she was just mischievous, she looked like an elf with her delicate little tits, tiny frame, pixie haircut and huge dark eyes. She grinned. She was adorable. ‘What are you looking at?’ she asked, as if she didn’t know.

  To my surprise, my clit started to twitch.

  ‘It’s your diamond,’ I answered, ‘I want one.’

  ‘Bruno, my beautician, Bruno waxed it,’ she said, ‘He does great work. He’s a good friend of mine. I’ll give you his number. It’s in my bag upstairs in the locker room.

  We went to the showers and then up to the locker room. She wrote Bruno’s number on the inside of a matchbook from Miss Mystique, a massage parlour on Twenty-Third Street. She worked there. We were in the same business. I told her where I worked and introduced myself. ‘Far out,’ she said, ‘my name is Lynn. Let’s go have coffee.’

  We walked down to Valelska’s on Second Avenue. ‘I can’t stand Sweet and Low,’ said Lynn, putting five sugars in her coffee. ‘Me neither,’ I said, putting four sugars in mine. ‘And,’ I went on, �
�I don’t like diet soda or ice in my drinks either, nothing adulterated.’

  ‘Same for me,’ said Lynn; maybe I had found a friend.

  ‘How do they treat you at La Mystique?’ I wanted to know. ‘My boss, Wolfie, has started dropping me on my percentage. He pushes me to do volume. At the end of the night my hand is one giant blister, but when I get home and count, my money, it falls short.’

  On the job I had to ask my client to take off his shirt and give him a perfunctory baby oil massage of his upper torso. I was then to ask him if he wanted a happy ending. No one ever said no. Then I was supposed to put a condom on him and finish him off with my hand. Blowjobs were strictly against the law, but plenty of the women gave them; it could quadruple your tip. Lynn nodded, sipping her coffee as she listened.

  ‘That’s men,’ she said. ‘At least a lot of them. You work like a slave for them and they rip you off. My boss, Elsie, used to work in a massage parlour. She knows how it is.

  She’s fat now. Behind her back we call her the cow. But she treats us right. We get a five minute break between each client. Time to smoke a cigarette or whatever. I never caught her making a mistake with my pay.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll go see her,’ I told Lynn.

  ‘Maybe you should,’ she said.

  She leaned forward; I noticed that one of her eyes was blue and the other one brown.

  ‘Did you think I was coming on to you in the baths?’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ I told her.

  ‘Well, I was only teasing,’ she said. ‘I’m a merry prankster. I was pulling your chain. I don’t go that way.’

  I didn’t quite believe her, but I said ‘OK’ and changed the subject.

  ‘I love your boots,’ I said. They were green and black cowboy boots with very high-stacked heels; stomping heels.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, ‘I love fancy shoes and high heels.’

  ‘Me too,’ I answered. Then we paid the check and exchanged phone numbers and addresses. We discovered we lived a few blocks away from each other in Brooklyn Heights.

  When I got home, I made an appointment for the next day at Bruno’s Beehive: A Beauty Boutique.

  Bruno was a six-foot tall bleach blond with a ponytail down to his ass crack. He had a body like a linebacker and a face like Grace Kelly. He took me into the Hot Wax room which was painted a vaginal pink. He sat me down on the waxing table.

  ‘You have a face like a movie star,’ he said, ‘fantastic cheekbones. What is your sign?’

  I liked him immediately. ‘I’m a Virgo,’ I told him.

  ‘I knew it,’ he said. ‘An earth sign. Did you know Greta Garbo was a Virgo? How about a snake, an earth creature, the symbol of temptation?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I answered. ‘I’ve met too many men who were afraid of snakes. How about a star?’

  ‘Too common for you,’ he said.

  We decided on an arrow. The waxing didn’t hurt at all, maybe because he rubbed cocaine paste liberally over my vulva before he put on the wax. The arrow looked fabulous. He gave me a ten per cent discount because I was Lynn’s friend.

  I called Lynn to thank her and tell how much I liked Bruno. We decided to go to Danceteria to celebrate my waxing on Saturday night, as we were both off.

  At Danceteria we picked up a couple of cute young soccer players from Italy: Lynn’s was named Bebe, mine was named Adriano. I was charmed when he told me he was the love child of Federico Fellini. We went to their room at the Martha Washington Hotel on Twenty-Eighth Street; a dark green room with Audubon bird prints on the walls. We smoked opiated hashish that Bebe had smuggled into the States in his socks. Lynn took off all her clothes, and then she showed the boys her diamond. I took off my things to display my brand new arrow. Adriano asked if all American girls were like us.

  ‘How should I know?’ I answered.

  Lynn suggested they take off their clothes too so we could cavort around like dancers on Etruscan vases. Lynn grabbed Bebe’s long snaky cock and used it to twirl him around. Adriano put his arms around me and we pranced around the twin beds like angels or fools. Soon Lynn and Bebe were doing sixty-nine on one bed while I straddled Adriano on the other. My pendulous breasts slapped against his hairy chest; my hands grabbing his ass, raising it up, pulling him deeper into my cunt. I felt like I was mating with the great god Pan in some primeval glade. At the moment of truth, Adriano cried out, ‘Graciella, Graciella mio.’ I didn’t mind, I thought it was cute that I reminded him of his sweetheart. Years later I read in the New York Times that Adriano L., a former soccer player, had become a politician in Sicily.

  Lynn and I considered ourselves modern women, emancipated. The pill had set us free. We took full responsibility for our actions; even though we were on the pill we always carried our own condoms; extra sensitive, extra thin, to protect us from venereal disease. We believed love, all kinds of love, was the answer. We adored John Lennon. I was always hoping I’d see him and Yoko somewhere. Then he was murdered; shot down by a deranged fan who believed himself to be channelling Holden Caulfield. Every night thousands gathered in front of the Dakota chanting Give Peace A Chance and Let It Be until Yoko asked them to stop. She couldn’t sleep. For weeks after his death people were weeping, staggering through the streets. This great tragedy was just the beginning.

  We started to hear about cases of Aids. There was much confusing information about this new disease. There were rumours you got it from an infected mattress or from wearing someone else’s underwear. The Daily News said you could get it by kissing; it was spread by saliva. This was all the mayor needed to go after the massage parlours.

  At Dolls Of All Nations, Miss Nigeria, Rasheeda, who had grown up in the Hunts Point Projects in the Bronx, was busted giving a blowjob to an undercover cop. They shut us down. Two days later Miss Mystique was closed because of a similar incident.

  Lynn and I were out of work. I got a waitress gig at Remington’s on Waverly Street in Greenwich Village. Lynn went to work in the jewellery store her mother owned on Seventh Avenue. Together, we went to get tested; the line outside the public health station on Ninth Avenue snaked around the block. We were both lucky. We got the white papers that said we were disease free.

  I’ve only downed my second shot, but already my head is aching. Maybe if I had some blow my pain would float away to Machu Pichu. It’s been so long since I’ve tasted blow, so long since I’ve done a lot of things. I have become respectable, sort of; I write dirty stories I sell to magazines. Lynn settled down too, she got married. Her husband Matt knew all about her past. He didn’t mind; he said it got him excited.

  It was Matt who called to tell me. Lynn had a cerebral haemorrhage when she was in the bathtub. The funeral is today at 2 p.m. He found her when he came in to piss. She was slouched down, knees up and spread wide open. Her head was arched back, in the let’s-do-it position; her Mickey Mouse washcloth between her legs.

  I poured myself another tequila; time was fracturing inside my head. Not all our adventures were as delightful as with the soccer players. One night Lynn and I picked up a guy at the Mudd Club. When we went back to his apartment he pulled a knife on us. Another guy suddenly appeared; he jumped out the bathroom door naked and socked me in the face. The door had been left unlocked. We somehow escaped. I was lucky he didn’t break my nose.

  Then Bruno killed himself; he jumped out the window of his fifth floor apartment. His body was covered with welts from the sarcoma. Lynn came over to my place to tell me. As soon as I let her in the door, I knew it was bad. She didn’t have high heels on, she was wearing house slippers and her face was covered with tears.

  She put the brown paper bag she was carrying on the coffee table in front of the couch. She sank down and pulled a bottle of Tequila out of the bag.

  ‘I didn’t even know he had it,’ she wailed. ‘Why didn’t he tell me? Did you know?’ She opened the bottle and t
ook a big swig. I sank down beside her. I took a swig too.

  ‘He didn’t say anything to me,’ I told her. ‘Besides, he was much closer to you. Maybe he was ashamed.’

  We passed the bottle back and forth. Lynn’s tears were big as raindrops and I started crying too until my throat, my ears, filled with tears. We were both trembling, shaking and then I was holding her. Our mouths came together like parts of a puzzle. Lynn unbuttoned my blouse and pulled out a breast, she started kissing my nipples and then she put her mouth there, nursing at my big tit, my baby, my beautiful baby. What soft lips. We took off each other’s clothes. I had never been so close to Lynn; I could see the little freckles on her chest. We shifted position. I sucked her nipples; there were so tiny and so hard like little tacks but they did not scratch my lips. She started kissing her way down the middle of my chest. Her tongue followed my arrow home. When she went inside and started sucking there, it was paradise. I had read scary stories about how women did it to each other using big grotesque rubber dildos with two heads. This was so different. I wanted to taste her like she was tasting me. Her body was rank and sweaty and her labia smelled of piss, but inside her cunt when she came I smelled violets. We fell asleep on the couch but in the morning we woke up on the floor clutching each other.

  Bruno’s parents who lived in outer Queens, in Rego Park, did not come to his funeral. Maybe they were afraid that on the long subway ride into Manhattan they would get their jewellery snatched. Chain snatching and petty crimes on the subway were up eighty per cent because of the new terrifying plague: crack cocaine. It was so addictive and so cheap, you could buy a rock on the street for the price of a large coffee and a bagel with cream cheese. Lynn and I tried it once and the high was so ecstatic we knew we should never try it again. First Lady Nancy Reagan unveiled her Just Say No To Drugs program. On McGinnis Boulevard in Bushwick, where fourteen-year-old girls were selling themselves for a hit, no one could have cared less if Nancy unveiled her sagging tits.