“But I’d rather suck your cock than ask him for two dollars. In fact I want to suck your cock.”
“Jesus Christ.”
He drove to the West Side warehouse district below the Village. All the way there I kept getting him hot with words. He parked the car between a couple of huge empty trucks. I got in the front seat and went down on him.
His penis was long and thick, the vein very prominent. He wasn’t circumcised. He had an odd generally unclean smell. I felt odd myself, and generally unclean.
He didn’t take long. Nor did he show tremendous enthusiasm. He sat there, behind the wheel, and he shuddered lightly as he popped, and then he sank back in his seat for a moment or two, getting his breath, and then he tucked himself in and zipped himself up. I would have done that for him if he’d asked.
He said, “You want to open the door so you can spit it out on the street.”
“Never mind.”
“Huh?”
“I swallowed it.”
“You’re some crazy broad.”
“Why, is it fattening?”
“You really got a husband?”
“Yes, and I’m late. Why don’t you drive me back to my place?”
“Oh, sure.” He started the motor. “Maybe you ought to get in back. Oh, the hell with it, I’m leaving the flag up anyway. The hell with it, they won’t stop me around here. The hell with them and you stay right where you are.”
“Thanks.”
And, as we neared the apartment, “You do that to your husband?”
“Do what?”
“You know. Like what you did to me?”
“You mean suck his cock?”
“Yeah, that’s what I mean all right.”
“Oh.”
“Well, do you?”
“No. He had it shot off in the war.”
“No shit.”
“It was a tragedy.”
“You’re just giving me a lot of crap.”
“Why would I do that?”
I think there was even more to this inane conversation, but I see no reason either to remember it or to record it. I got out of the cab and went into my apartment and kept bathing and gargling. Why? Because I was disgusting? Neither soap nor mouthwash would change this.
My first two experiences in prostitution, one for twenty dollars, one for two.
To tell you the truth, with the flipness held in abeyance, and with all the cool cooled down, I am, frankly, a little bit worried about me.
June 27
Three days in a row without balling anybody. I’ve even started to look for a job!
Not that I expect to find one. Or that I’m positive I want one. But it is good play therapy, looking at the employment listing in the Times and trying to decide what would be fun and what I might be qualified for.
June 30
I went to pick up my shoes from the Italian who was endeavoring to make them as good as new when a girl gave me a real up-and-down look followed by one of those soulful gazes, as if to say that she adored and respected me and wanted to put me on a pedestal and eat my box.
I resisted the temptation. Now I’m almost sorry.
I wish I could see David and Arnold again and have that kind of scene. That crazy lazy sex. Why does everything have to be all one way or all the other. I just don’t understand it.
July 3
Edgar Hillman, for the love of God!
I was standing on Forty-second Street between Sixth and Seventh, trying to get up the courage to climb a flight of stairs to one of the employment agencies, and Guess Who came out of one of the Dirty Books and Peep Shows places? None other than Edgar Hillman, the Lothario of Eastchester. Husband of Marcie, father of her children, and Dry Humper and occasional Finger Fucker of one Jan Giddings Kurland.
I didn’t notice him at first, being at the time lost in a reasonable facsimile of thought. A voice said, “Jan? Jan Kurland? Is that really you?”
I turned, and it was really me, just as it was really Edgar.
“Edgar,” I said, as if I were pleased to see him. Oh, stop the bitchiness — I was pleased to see him, the first familiar face since I had taken myself away from all those familiar faces.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “I was just thinking about you.”
“Now there’s a compliment. In there?” With a nod of my head for the peep show parlor.
He blushed interestingly, then saved it with a wink. “Oh, just like to keep an eye on what they’re publishing these days. But you look great, Jan! Though you do look about half-starved. Have lunch with me?”
“I just ate.” A stand-up hamburger and malt just after I got off the subway.
“A drink, then.”
“Well, sure.”
“Because it’s really good to see you. Marcie was saying—”
So he told me what Marcie was saying, and what was new with who, and this and that, none of it memorable. I’m afraid I didn’t pay quite as much attention as I might have. Not that I wasn’t interested. I wanted to hear about these people, this life I had for so long belonged to, but at the same time the specifics were not particularly interesting because these were not very interesting people, nor did they do very interesting things. So I kept finding myself tuning out great hunks of the conversation, listening to Edgar the way you will sometimes listen to a song on the radio, hearing the tune but not paying any attention to the lyrics.
“But tell me what you’re doing, Jan.”
“Oh, nothing very much.”
“Do you think — I mean, is there any chance you and Howie might get back together again?”
“No, I really don’t think so.”
“You know, that’s a shame. But I guess everybody at one time or another feels the need to kick over the traces. To get away, to have a shot at some new kind of life. I’ll tell you something, you were lucky that you didn’t have any kids at the time. If you had had children it might have been a great deal different.”
“Yes, it would have made a difference.”
“Of course it would. If it weren’t for my own kids—”
“Yes, Edgar?”
“Oh, what am I talking about? Marcie and I have a good thing going. We’re really very happy together.”
“I know you are.”
He ordered us another round of drinks, our third, I think it was. I was drinking Scotch sours, he was drinking vodka martinis. I think they were beginning to get to him. I think that was what he had in mind when he ordered them. Nobody drinks vodka martinis because he likes the taste. They don’t have any taste. They just do the job.
Vodka, the housewife’s friend.
How long ago was that?
“Jan.”
“Yes?”
“You know, I can see just looking at you that you’ve got your life pretty much under control. I can see that, and you know something? I’m damned glad.”
“Why, that’s nice of you, Edgar.”
“I never did believe the things I heard about you.”
“Oh?”
“Not for a minute.”
“Just what sort of things did you hear?”
“Oh, nothing important.”
“No, I’d like to know.”
“You wouldn’t be interested.”
“I’d be very interested.”
“Oh, the usual thing. Sex stories, to be quite blunt about it, that you were raising all kinds of hell here in New York, you know, sleeping around.”
“But you don’t believe that.”
“I believe that what everybody does is their own goddam business and nobody else’s goddam business.”
“Amen to that.”
“Damn right.”
“You know, the closest I came in Eastchester—”
“Yes?”
“Was with you.”