"I've got to go now. I have this friend I have to meet."
"Take care."
All I know how to do in a strange city is read the local newspapers. Late at night, I'm good at that in bed. I'm good at eating candy bars in bed too. I get the feeling when I'm alone in strange American cities that I have no inner resources and no cock. She was just under thirty. She said she was a mixture of French, Chinese, and Mexican parentage and could therefore do sweet things to me in bed no one had ever done before. She said it only half seriously in a husky southern drawl. I knew she was Black. I haven't been with Black girls much in this country, only twice before, but I knew that much. I've been afraid of them, first for my dignity, now for my life.
"I don't dig," I said, "French, Chinese, and Mexican girls." I was kidding back with her in the bar. "I want someone Black."
"I'm a little of that too," she chuckled heartily. She was simple, good-natured, guileless, and I felt myself in charge. She asked for fifty dollars, grinning. I got her to agree to twenty. Then I threw in ten dollars more to inspire her by my generosity and make her like me and really do sweet things to me no one had ever done before.
"I can show you a good time," she vowed.
By the time I returned to my hotel room I no longer wanted her and hoped she wouldn't follow. I had all the evening newspapers for New Orleans and Baton Rouge and was raring to take my clothes off and get to work on them. I have this clinging fear of catching a venereal disease somewhere and bringing it home to my wife. How would I get out of that one when she found out she was infected? Easily. Lie and deny. She did. She paid off the desk clerk, she said. She rapped softly on the door and came in smiling, and I had to stare at her as she undressed in order to get interested again. She wasn't pretty.
"Do it slowly," I requested. "Take them off slow. And shimmy a little."
"Sure."
I don't like girls who get out of their clothes too quickly. I get the feeling they've been getting out of those same few clothes all day long for other men before they came to me. "Okay."
"Sure. Some men —»
"Not now."
"Huh?"
"Come here. Shhhh."
"Sure."
She was still grinning. She had nothing different to offer. In San Francisco not long ago a stunning, willowy blonde who looked like royalty whispered the same alluring promise and turned out to be lying also. She made me give her a hundred dollars. Whores in Naples, Rome, and Nice after the war had uttered the same exotic guarantees and had been no more successful in filling them. I guess there's really not that much variety around for normal degenerates like me. It was flat, and over quickly.
"Where's all those sweet new tricks of yours?" I taunted, and was pleased I was justified in doing so.
She was hurt and looked a little frightened, and that was gratifying to me also. "I did what you asked, hon," she apologized hesitantly. "Didn't I?"
"You're supposed to do things I don't ask. It's okay."
"Didn't I?"
"You were fine."
"Did I show you a good time?"
"Really. You can go now if you want."
"I thought you wanted me the whole night."
"So did I." I forced a laugh. "But I can't go that distance anymore. I must be getting old. I thought I could when I was looking you over in that bar. Those are some knockers you have. Mmmm. And some big ass."
"You like it?"
"And how. I like them big on a short girl."
"I'm short, all right." She was pleased as punch with my compliments. "You want some more?"
"But I can't. I guess my eyes are bigger than my dick."
She was relieved I wasn't angry.
"You're all right down there too," she complimented me.
"I know. You can keep the money. I enjoyed it."
"Did I show you a good time? Was I really good?"
"As good as the best. And I've been to Paris."
"Really?"
"I've even been to Bologna."
"I don't know about that."
"That's where they really know how to slice it."
"You sure you don't want me to stay till morning, mister? You're nice. I got no place I have to go."
"I've got an early plane."
"I could stay in the other bed until you want me. I don't even snore. I'll bet you'll want some in the morning." She giggled. "I'll do what you want. I do everything."
"You should put your legs up higher."
"It hurts. I get cramps here."
"And you really don't do anything new."
"I did what you wanted. You got to ask, hon."
"I am not bizarre."
"I don't know about that."
"I'm never sure what I want." I felt positively regal using a word like bizarre with her. "You're supposed to help me find out what I want. I'm not saying that because I'm unhappy. It will help you with other men."
"Some men beat me up."
And I have no compelling fetishes, although certain silken undergarments get me hot and are more attractive to me than the parts they cover. Big tits in bras and jersey can get me hot. Small ones make me romantic. Small asses on slim girls are starting to draw appreciating gazes from me. Many of these are on very young girls, and this is something new. The only woman I've ever wanted to beat up was my wife, and that — to my shame — was over money. She insinuates I give too little but won't take more. I felt most content as I watched her dress to leave, lofty. She looked comical and naпve stuffed into flowered bikini underpants. I thought a moment of flipping her over my knees and paddling her smooth muscular bottom but remembered she'd be heavy. That's the trouble with so many of our damned picturesque sex fantasies: they hurt. I've pampered myself before with the temptation of spanking a nice ass someday but never got one beautiful enough. Maybe there are no beautiful ones outside of magazines. I'm in love with a four-color magazine page. She still smiled; I was sorry for her, in a patronizing, uncommitted way. I wonder what happens to squat, homely Black and Puerto Rican whores with one missing molar when they grow too old — who takes care of them — and ugly to attract handsome, pinstriped libertines like me. I know what happens. They attract me anyway if I'm alone in New Orleans where everyone else seems to be having a good time. I ought to know by now that hardly anyone over the age of four ever has a good time anymore. Women do, at weddings and movies. It was a waste. The hundred-dollar beauty in San Francisco was a waste. She didn't look like an aristocrat once I had her. She looked like a skinny girl in need of sunshine or more red corpuscles. I'm glad I never had to see either of them again. I wonder what happens to homely white whores when they grow older and lose their figures and lose their teeth. They become public drunkards with gravelly, masculine voices who quarrel with each other loudly on sidewalks in warm weather. I still had all my newspapers after my little Black beauty left — thank God — and I ate three sticky candy bars and drank two cans of soda from a vending machine in the hall as I read them. I would have felt self-conscious going down into the lobby again that night. I went to sleep with caramel and nut crumbs in my mouth. I had what might have been the start of a homosexual dream, stopped it in time, and switched reels into the middle of a different dream I barely remembered in which I was a failing history student at the University of Bologna striving to find my way out of the yellow rock tangle of school buildings in time to catch a plane back home to my wife. There was a hatchet-faced, bleached-blond, scrawny actress I was trying to flee who kept sliding along the opposite sides of the stone walls in stealthy pursuit. She carried an icon of some kind cradled in her hands that was smaller than herself and could have been a human figure carved out of a penis — feces? — or a stick of African sculpture. I seemed able to identify all and wanted none, and that's why I was running from her. Her face was Horace White's. The next day I worried intermittently on the plane going back about carrying syphilis, gonorrhea, or crabs home to my wife from New Orleans. In the dream, I was failing in Bologna because I had been unable to find my way to any of the classrooms all year, although I had tried repeatedly. I itched. I scratched. I always itch afterward. Guilefully, I would deny to my wife I'd even had it and accuse her of having given it to me. Both statements could not be true, of course, but she would be intimidated by my yelling and unable to grasp that, and I would yell in sanctimonious outrage and convince her. There are no convenient army prophylactic stations around anymore dispensing soapy absolution by the pint for our sins of the flesh. They're gone too. So is sin. Most of my favorite restaurants are closing. There is only crime. I often don't enjoy it. My climaxes often aren't. Other times there's this gigantic, spurting leap. The difference is me. It's got nothing to do with them. They all do pretty much the same things by now. So do we. Sometimes it really dances. Other times it only stirs as much as necessary to get the ridiculous ritual over with. In Italy after the war, girls from Bologna stated they were the best in all Europe and wheedled for premium fees; they were no different from lower-class girls in Naples and Rome. They did the same things. They were interchangeable. They still are.