Self-Service
With the cops cracking down on prostitution – no good for family vacationers and business, preach the city leaders – things become difficult on the beach side. Now Debbie works Ridge wood Avenue. Glaring sunlight adds brightness to the scandalous and shabby storefronts of biker and tittie bars, and to the huge yellow, dirty movie theater. It is a subtropical colorfulness that masks the harshness of a life lived from day to day, from minute to minute, devoid of any plausible future, or expectant with such a sordid one that there is no point to think about it. She doesn' t think about hers.
Her eyes are half closed, in part due to the glare, in part to the downers she has taken. A sedated drowsiness has a hold on her body. Her gait is slow and at times staggering but she doesn' t know that. She stands by the corner, wrapped inside the Mandrax bubble she has created for herself. Outside the bubble things move at the speed of light, in a blur of intense light and motion; sounds are far distant and muffled, but she is happy inside her bubble where life exists at a more peaceful pace.
A beat up station wagon pulls in front of her and stops. Automatically, as if reacting to a surviving instinct, she approaches the passenger door window and leans her body through it. A small and dark young man smiles at her, his sharp teeth shining like ivory daggers.
"Hello. How arre you doing?" He drags his r' s with a powerful accent. He' s got to be one of them foreigners who goes to the school by the airport, she thinks, then she forgets she thought of that.
"Hi babe," she manages to open the door and get in. The wagon rolls over the hot asphalt, flanked by traffic on all sides.
"What' s your name, hon?" she asks from inside her bubble, her voice reverberating from invisible walls. He says a name but she doesn' t get it. Hon will do. She props her legs over the dashboard, lifts her dress and pulls her pink panties down, exposing her crotch to Hon whose jaws drop almost to his chest.
"This goddamned thing is giving me a fit," she tugs at her panties and pulls them off. Her legs stay over the dashboard; the mat of hair on her groin exposed to the world with a delightful indifference. A truck driver on her side, enticed by the erotic view, almost rams an old lady in front of him.
"Pleaase, coverr up. No good to show thing like that," says Hon with one eye on the road, the other on the thing. She giggles in pleasure and runs her fingers through her mat, rubbing hard the bulges around the slit.
"What' s the matter, Hon. Don’ t you like it?" Her body becomes heavy and sluggish. The bubble starts to close on her.
Somehow she succeeds at showing Hon the right motel. They enter her room. She takes his money, heads for the bed and lies on her back with the money clenched in one hand. Her dress rests high up her waist and her legs are spread. Then the bubble crashes on her, heavy and solid. Her senses sink into the crevasses of her tired body, weighing it down with such a burden that she sinks into the mattress like a heavy marble statue. Reality bursts like a bubble to be replaced by nothingness.
She wakes up with the money still in her hand. A flaky and sticky film of dried semen is stuck to her belly. Her judgment is still muddled, but she thinks of a new meaning for self-service. "Help your self, Hon," she says aloud to herself. The ceiling fan above spins with a blurred motion, and she gets dizzy.
Special Treatment
Tonight I' m getting the special treatment. I don' t know why, but Debbie is trying to be sexy and romantic, or romantic and sexy. Whatever. The many candle lights create soft dancing shades on the walls. A tawny light floods her room and keeps the outside world at bay.
"What' s going on?" I ask. "Is this going to cost me more?"
"No. It' s not going to cost you more," she says, and I can sense a very brief animosity in her voice, but it vanishes in a moment. "You' re a special customer."
"Me? I' m a cheap skate. What' s so special about me?
"You' re nice."
"So, what' s the big deal? Everybody is nice when they get what they want."
Her smile and her small dimples look beautiful by candlelight. The needle marks on her arms are not so noticeable under the soft light. "You' re nice and you know it." We embrace and her warm body makes me stronger and protective. I can feel her heartbeat on my chest; I feel femininity and flesh and desire under her dress. Her nimble waist nicely fits the crook of my arms. We make love, touching, sensing, pressing, baiting, smelling, tasting. We fill our senses and block life. Sensuality, as solid and real as the air we breathe, grows between us like the lights precariously dancing wrapped around the wick of the fast burning candles, destined to die and melt into a puddle of wax, ready to disappear at the slightest of breezes. But that will be the future. Now is ours, sensual and soft.
Rip Off
An unctuous sea spray film covers the windshields of the cars parked along the street. The moisture laden air irradiates heat, and Debbie walks through it, her skinny body displacing that humid air, absorbing its heat, sweat wrapping her as a pasty shroud. The humidity shows itself under the streetlights as a diaphanous and diffused glow where bugs leave traces of their dashing paths. A cigarette pack is in her hand, and she walks with a trained disdain that proclaims her free and guiltless spirit, and she unashamedly stares into passing cars with a direct and defiant gaze. She can see through those faces above the steering wheels: the lust, the desire, it' s all there; if they only had the guts to stop and pick her up.
A dark and rusted utility van cruises the street. It' s the third time it goes by, and the driver has been checking her out. Maybe it will stop the next time around. She lights a cigarette and waits. There it comes. Both the driver and Debbie look at each other, and then she moves between parked cars and waits at the edge of the open street. The van stops and the driver leans over to unlock the door with his tattooed arm, strong and vascular. In a dash she climbs into the van which speeds away.
"Hi hon. What’ s up?" Her greeting is casual as if she were in a familiar van with an old friend.
"Lookin' for some fun, if you know what I mean." His voice is also very casual.
"Fifty bucks, half-and-half, my place," a long plume of smoke comes out of her mouth and nostrils as she speaks, and she smiles, small, cute dimples forming over the corner of her lips.
"Fifty dollars!" exclaims the driver. "You ain' t the last fuck on Earth, you know."
"How much you got on you?" Another dirtbag she thinks, wants to get laid for nothing, like pussy grew on trees.
"Thirty bucks." His unsmiling face needs a shave, long and dirty hair cascades from underneath a Harley Davison cap.
"A blow job is all you gonna get for that much."
The man drives in silence, pondering the offer, or looking like he' s pondering over something," Alright, but we don' t go to your place." He arches his thumb over his shoulder. "Back there will be fine." There is a bench seat at the very back, and no windows. Rusted tool boxes, empty fast food bags and Styrofoam containers litter the floor. The van takes one of the ramps and lands on the beach. The rising tide and its effervescent surf lick the van' s bold tires. They park on an unlit and lonely spot facing the murky ocean where traces of white foam ride, barely discernible, atop the darkness of the waves. Both move to the bench seat and sit.
"I want my money first," Debbie requests with firmness, and throws her cigarette to the floor and steps on it, rubbing her sole over the squashed butt.