The morning sun blinded me as we rode into it –
and then I blinked.
When I open my eyes again I’m staring at greasy tin ceilings and the smell of oil and gasoline weigh me down. I lay on a thin foam mattress surrounded by cogs & gears. Greasy metal things litter the cement floor around me. It’s the itching that wakes me. My arms, my legs, my thighs, my crotch. I scratch till I bleed. I scratch some more.
Through grimy windows and thick exhaust I make out the corner of Second Avenue & Houston Street in the failing sunlight. The back end of the motorcycle blocks the open front door.
That would make this Havasha’s motorcycle shop.
My body howls as I turn to look for him. Shoved in a corner atop a pile of dirty yellow cushions, he scratches in his sleep. Curled into a dark leather ball of grease, sweat, and hair, so close I can touch him if I reach out. I don’t.
Pulling myself up, despite my body’s loud objections, I take a step towards the open front door. My muscles scream as I fall. Or maybe it’s me that screamed this time. Havasha continues to sleep, one foot trembling like a dog when he dreams.
The heel on my right boot is completely gone. My foot is caked with dried blood, which I assume is mine. Even if I couldn’t feel my toes wiggling, which I can, I can see my toes wiggling through the holes of what’s left of my cowboy boot. The rust corduroys Doug’d bought didn’t even last the week. The right leg is torn and stained. Dirt, grease, pebbles, torn skin, urine, dark clotted blood. Same for my right arm, only not so badly. Scrapes and bruises that cover my back. I’d see them too, if I could turn my head. My left side seems intact, just dirty and itchy. I poke and prod, checking for serious damage, breaks or fractures.
Nothing.
Bites, bruises, blood, yes, but nothing broken. My lucky day.
I ache. All over.
Havasha rolls, scratching, a small pool of spittle glistens in the coarse dark hairs of his beard. He mumbles in his sleep. Outside, cars speed by, honking & yelling. Suits rushing home. Everyone everywhere has somewhere to hurry from and someone to hurry to. I pull myself up again, bracing on the wall and the desk for support. What happened? I wonder, How did I come to look and smell this bad, feel this bad, hurt this much?
Shit. This is what happens when I blink.
Slowly, I remember. Red Wolf. The police. The roaches. Shit, the roaches. I have nowhere to hurry to. I don’t really even have somewhere to casually saunter to.
Names & numbers of no one I know are written on the wall above a desk piled with more dark and oily mechanical things. An old black rotary phone hides under dirty napkins and empty Chinese food containers. I hold the receiver to my ear and dial slowly, afraid I’ll wake the sleeping troll.
“Michael,” my voice hoarse, “I want to come home. I didn’t know who else to call.”
I watch Havasha struggle and scratch while I whisper directions to my oldest friend over the phone. Michael got me my first hit of acid in high school, but what will he think when he sees me like this?
“Bring roach spray. Lots of it.” I place the receiver gently back in its cradle and slip out the door, leaving Havasha to fight his own demons there on the yellow cushions.
I leave a gouge in the wall where my name and number were.
Sitting on the curb not even a bum stops to ask me for change or a cigarette.
I’m still there, smoking my last few cigarettes
when Michael pulls up on his Harley.
I can tell how much of a mess I am
by the look on his face.
I point to Havasha’s bike.
It’s all I can manage and it’s enough for now.
Mangled gears.
Bright metal torn
and twisted.
Leather seats sprinkled with dried blood
and dirt.
Handlebars contorted
and compressed.
Just a big shiny scrap metal sculpture now.
I wrap my arms around Michael’s waist as he kicks the Harley to life. “Drive slow,” I whisper into the curls around his ear, “please, just drive slow.”
This entry was written by , posted on October 15, 2009 at 11:14 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, blink, dirty boys, East Village, roaches. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
artwork courtesty of A. Andrew Gonzalez
Movement at my left distracts me.
Havasha.
I’d forgotten about him. He removes his wet clothes, hangs the heavy leather jacket from a nail in the wall. His worn leather boots, caked with mud, stand alone in a corner. A torn thermal shirt hangs from another nail. He looks up, watching me watch him and I hear “To dry”, in my head, but no one’s spoken. We’ve gone beyond the need for speech.
I peel layer after wet layer of my own clothes, hanging them on nails, off shelves; laying them out in open areas on the dusty cement floor, until finally, we’re both naked.
Where is everyone else, I wonder at him. We’ve been waiting for hours.
Or minutes, he thinks back, I don’t know.
Minute or hours? I can’t tell.
Trapped in each others’ eyes, we ease down onto the blanket, floating now on the sky, now on the sea. Cross legged. Face to face, touching only knees & fingertips, heart & soul, past & future. The last two hits of mescaline melt on our tongues, sliding purple rivers down our throats, filling lungs with purple breath. The candles glitter like chandeliers through a violet haze that engulfs the three of us.
The tiny orange cat binds us further, soft apricot trails following her as she figure eights around, behind, between us. She settles in my lap, nuzzles into my pubic hair, cuddling safely into my nest of calves and thighs, my fortress of warm pink flesh. My chi, my soul, my brain, my heart, my fucking essence flows into Havasha, his into me, ours into her, this scrawny red cat. Giving her strength, giving her life, in exchange for the sanctuary she offered from rain and night.
Always I find myself looking for sanctuary and safety.
She closes her eyes and sleeps.
We leave our bodies there to keep her and then travel on to another level.
Physical boundaries dissolve.
Time and place liquefy.
We flow, caught in the eddies and whirlpools,
spinning & dancing into oblivion.
Into darkness.
Into light.
Music fills me, buoys me higher, then escapes through my pours. It carries me away and drops me, tumbling through soft smoky white skies. I breathe and a thousand little bells chime. My heart.drum.beat. keeps the rhythm. I float and tumble, finding another heartdrumbeat–Havasha. Our drums beat together, our bells ring in harmony and we spin into a silky bright whiteness, cascade down a waterfall of lavender, splash into the brilliant emerald, the pulsing lapis of the blanket where we started.
The kitten hasn’t moved, she sleeps in my lap.
Our clothes are dry. My skin is slick with sweat. The air thick with the stink of sweat, candlewax, blood & urine. A few candles sputter, barely alive at their final inch.
My eyes burn, my muscles ache, my mind searches for a soft dark place to sleep.
My hair hurts.
I wonder if Havasha is as tired and sore as I am. I ask, without speaking, but this time I get nothing back. Our moment has passed. We haven’t spoken a word aloud since the accident that we’ve both forgotten by now.
I wonder, again, what happened to everyone else.
The sun is up, again, as we mount the bike. I close my eyes and we ride into the blinding white.
This entry was written by , posted on October 12, 2009 at 9:52 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, blink, dirty boys, drugs, East Village. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
photo courtesy of Olafur Kr. Olafsson
It’s dark and quiet under the truck, out of the way of the pounding rains, restful. My fingers make designs in the drops of blood, playing on the smooth irregularities of the peach cobblestones. Tiny rivers form, swirl, then flood and carry away the dirt, washing away the little red droplets.
“You O.K.?”
The voice is very far away, inside the rain, inside the dark here under the truck, on the other side of the flood. I turn my head and see Havasha squatting beside me, silver dripping off the dark terrain of his face, filling my little rivers, cooling my skin. Wide muscular paws hook the crevices under my arms, pulling me out of the under truck dark and into the darker wet night. He leans me up against the panel truck that so rudely interrupted our flight and rummages around, grunting and growling he pulls, tugs and struggles to free the bike, stuck under the truck as well. Together, we manage to pull her free, pull her upright and mount her again. She coughs, sputters and then hums off, carrying us into the sparkling dampness.
There’s a new club opening tonight with live music and an open bar…somewhere on Bleecker Street. It’s part of the cure, he says. The good time part. No time to check for damages from the fall, there’s an open bar, a good time, live music.
All doors are grey in the dark. Big heavy doors with red painted numbers that fad and change with time, rain, life and mescaline.
The mescaline is in full bloom again. Did we take more just before the fall? Glittering sapphire breezes softly around us as we search for the right door, listen for music, look for crowds spilling into the street. Huge rats sporting their dressiest furs scamper across our feet and each other, rushing to a party of their own, chattering wildly with the excitement of it all. You’re too early, screaming, squeaky cartoon voices thrown over their shoulders as they scuttle down the block. Open the door. That one, there. Wait inside. Hurry, get off the street, hurry, hurry, hurry…they squeal and fade away, barely audible now as they find the door to their own party and stumble over each other, each trying to be the first one inside.
The night thickens imperceptibly, our movements slow in the viscous evening air. And the door looms in front of us, leans over us, eclipses everything. Havasha pops the old brass lock & handle and the rusted hinges and rotting wood just give way.
No one is here. We’re the first. We decide to wait inside.
Inside, a bony red cat waits patiently, the rats must’ve told her we were coming. The heavy door slams shut behind me, I take Havasha’s rough hand and we follow the cat. She turns, her sparkling yellow eyes meet mine and she leads us past unfinished walls, bags of nails, boxes of tools, discarded paper coffee cups and small piles of cigarette butts. Past a large green plastic can full of garbage – half eaten sandwiches, scraps of wood, crumpled papers and old copies of the Post & the News. She turns & catches my eye again before she rounds the corner and disappears through a narrow doorway.
Someone lights a match - was that me? Havasha? I don’t know. Two liquid gold eyes sparkle in the flame, and we move closer to them. She sits on a shelf, her tiny frame flanked by two thick white candles on one side and a gray cardboard box of plumber’s candles on the other. The first candle gets lit, then another and another and another until the box is empty and the room is bright & warm.
I look around for the raggedy cat. She’s curled into a tight red fur ball in the center of a coarse blanket of blue and green, apparently unimpressed as the colors ebb & flow around her, over her. The blanket covers a thick mattress on the cement floor.
The mattress begins to sag in the center–
–as the tiny cat grows heavier & denser.
This entry was written by , posted on October 8, 2009 at 3:00 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, dirty boys, drinking, drugs, East Village. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I really have no idea how I wound up on that motorcycle.
I was hiding under blankets on Lola’s couch, while she petted my head and murmured something that sounded vaguely like “nice kitty”. Things had veered off in a direction I didn’t know what to do with and Lola’s Chelsea couch was a safe distance from the East Village and miles away from Times Square. I sipped chamomile tea, mumbled quiet nonsense to myself and tried to find my way back.
And then, Havasha appeared. He’d been a brief bit of harmless crazy before I even moved into the East Village. He was a little…special. Every morning, he drank his own pee, something to do with his martial arts training and while I’ll drink just about anything no matter how foul if it gets me fucked up, I draw the line at pee. Even my own.
I took a sip of tea, looked up and he was there. Crouching on muscular haunches in front of me, his short thick body leaned on Chester the Dog for support. Chester & Havasha, tilting their furry heads this way and then that way, the two of them sniffing the air around me, they could have been brothers. Squatting there, jeans streaked with grease and street dirt, his chestnut hair matted into clumps, square yellowed teeth, big, like lemon flavored Chiclets you’d found at the bottom of your purse, giant horse teeth in a smile just this side of madness, he looked a little bit…troll-like, like maybe he knew the secrets of the universe
She needs a drink, he said.
Apparently he did know the secrets of the universe, or at least the secrets of mine.
I hadn’t had a drink since the Porkpie…only two days ago? I’d lost control of the days and nights and had to keep reminding myself what followed what. Too much of the big and scary. I was afraid even a deep breath would cause the walls to collapse, everything would come crashing down, crushing me, breaking windows and bones, cockroaches would fill my mouth
She needs a drink, he said. And a good time.
I was the couch, waiting for the return of my sanity.
And then I wasn’t.
How he found me there I have no idea. One minute I was on the couch in borrowed pajamas –I blinked–and I was on the back of his motorcycle, a behemoth 1100 with crash bars front and back. I traded toast and blackberry jam for mescaline, chamomile tea for vodka. Vodka & Kahlua. Vodka & Kahlua with Milk. Kahlua, Amaretto & Milk. And finally, when the bars ran out of milk, Kahlua, Amaretto and Vodka.
Havasha stuffed handfuls of quarters into jukeboxes in the back of each bar we stopped at, making sure I had everything I needed. Music loud enough to drown out the noise outside. Mescaline to drown out the noise inside. A motorcycle that could get me anywhere but here, and fast. Vodka, because a day without vodka is a day without sunshine. Cigarettes, because you can’t live on Vodka alone.
Life was beginning to feel normal again.
Minutes grew into hours and the white hot mescaline morning slid us into yet another bar. Another drink. Hours turn into seconds. Another hit of mescaline.
Time stops.
We watch, crouched in a dark bar at the end of a deep hallucinogenic tunnel, a million miles away, the air damp and cool as silver glitter floats slowly from a pussywillow grey sky, each silver piece shattering into a thousand deafening shards as it hits the quiet cement sidewalk outside.
Time for one more drink before it really starts raining, I think as my mind scrambles out of the tunnel, scratching and clawing, only to slip back down inside. One more drink before we need to get the bike off the streets. There’s always time for one more drink.
Sharp, cold silver needles shower down on me, pierce my skin, cry down my face. The chrome monster between our legs roars to life and I hold tight at Havasha’s thick leather waist, burying myself in the matted fur at the back of his neck. We scream into the storm, racing down Second Avenue, rushing away from the wet, afraid of melting. The asphalt, slick with oil and water, shrinks back, exposing bits of Old New York and its cobblestone streets. I scream at the night, howl along with the roaring engine, sharp needles pierce my tongue and fill my throat.
I scream at the panel truck.
Parked directly in the path of our mescaline blind ride.
The truck appears not to notice me
and the motorcycle
seems to have no intention
of Evil Kneiveling anything at all this evening.
This entry was written by , posted on October 5, 2009 at 2:18 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, blink, dirty boys, drinking, drugs, East Village. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
3 naked ladies talk about their view from the stages and laps of the 70′s, 80′s, 90′s and today.
For as a long as there’s been music, women have danced for the entertainment and titillation of men. Scheherazade. Minsky’s Burlesque. Cage dancing go-go girls in the psychedelic 60′s. Times Square strippers, pole dancers and lap dancers. Women dance….Men watch.
Naked Ladies get around! Look for the 3 Naked Ladies and a new topic every Wednesday on laurishaw.com, $pread magazine online or thedirtygirldiaries.com
Jodi Sh. Doff: I was always either in the clubs or after hours. I never met regular people, I was always fishing in polluted waters. Everyone in my life was shady. My guys were loan-sharks, bookies, bikers, gangsters. Anyone I slept with for free was my “boyfriend.” But truthfully, I slept with a lot of men who didn’t think twice about me.
Lauri Shaw: I had a DJ thing for a while. They didn’t even need to be all that attractive, just charismatic. Bouncers were standoffish (and usually too burly. At the time, I liked my guys corpse-thin). The managers and owners treated us like property. If I was going to screw around with anyone in the business, a DJ seemed like the best choice.
Rachel Aimee: I’ve never dated customers or anyone in the business, not on any kind of principle but because I act like a different person at work and couldn’t imagine how I would relate to someone I met at work if I saw them outside the club. Also, I found that the only customers I liked enough to consider dating were too cool to think a stripper would want to date them so they never asked!
JshD: Occasionally, for someone special, my heart opened along with my legs. There were two guys who weren’t in the business. Gabe was a comic book artist, slightly shady, insane and kinky in ways I liked. Hank was a handsome troubled drunk—him I wanted to save. I was crazy about them both. I couldn’t imagine dating a real civilian. Civilians made assumptions about who I was that weren’t necessarily wrong, but I hated the presumption and condescension. That slick act just made me want to rip you off.
LS: I didn’t go near the slick guys unless I was working, but that’s not to say my head was screwed on straight. I had horrendous taste in men. Dancing did not help. I picked some phenomenal creeps and losers on my own time, simply because they didn’t behave like the average customer. It probably goes without saying that my self-esteem left a lot to be desired.
RA: So many strippers have problems dating because most people—not just men—who date strippers either want them to quit the business…
JshD: Oh God, save us from the Captain Save-A-Hos of the world!
RA: …or want to take their money, or both. I know it’s a stereotype but I’ve seen it again and again in the relationships of women I’ve worked with. Dancers hustle all night then go home to a guy or girl who makes them feel guilty about how they’re paying the bills but doesn’t have a problem with spending their money.
JshD: That was my husband! Abusive, even violent at times, over the work. But he didn’t get a job so I could stop and had no problem with me paying the bills. Obviously, that was a very short marriage. When I fell in love, L.U.V., it was a hustler named Bear who worked at O’Neals, a gay bar in Times Square. We thought we were Bonnie & Clyde, but we more Sid & Nancy. We were so in love, neither one wanted the other to work anymore. He’s what finally got me out of the business.
RA: I’ve seen lots of dancers quit the business for partners but, they usually come back when the relationship goes bad.
LS: I knew this girl who had a deal with her hubby and never went near those back rooms. She was the hardest working stripper I’ve ever seen—she did 25 lap dances a night while everyone else was taking their shoes off in the VIP. On any given night, two thirds of the girls were making twice as much as she did. Yet, she had a great attitude. She must have been married to an awesome guy.
JshD: I’m amazed when I hear about married dancers. You have to have your guard up when you’re working or they’ll eat you alive. How do you open your heart in your life and close it in the clubs? I can’t turn it on and off like a light switch.
RA: I know plenty of women who have been married for 10 or 20 years and dancing that whole time. It’s just how they support their families. I don’t know if hearts have much to do with it after a while.
JshD: 30 years later I still struggle with keeping an open heart.
LS: I felt that way too. I solved it by deciding intimacy was to be avoided at all costs. It took me ages to unwind from that mindset. And my libido was the first casualty. I was barely out of my teens, my hormones were climbing the walls 24-7. Stripping solved that problem. Within a year of becoming a stripper, my sex drive was in a coma.
JshD: Oh, I rarely had sex for pleasure. Except for those three guys, it was mostly a currency, a power struggle or a way to kill time.
RA: I’ve always put up really strict boundaries between work and “real life,” mostly for the sake of my sanity. I don’t even take customers’ numbers to ask them to come and see me at work because I can’t handle the emotional labor it takes to keep the hustle up outside of work. It’s a trade off though: the girls who really make money are the ones who throw themselves into the hustle.
Editors Note: Gabe, my crazy comic book artist is saving kittehs out in Indiana. If you can adopt one, great. If you can’t please donate a buck or two.
http://www.powerslamcollectibles.com/PowerslamPowerpussycats.html
This entry was written by , posted on September 23, 2009 at 9:00 am, filed under three naked ladies and tagged dirty boys, strippers, Times Square. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
It was still early when I finally got to Guys & Dolls, but I was still late. Once they understood I couldn’t go home with them, my parents tried to drive me to work, but sometimes I know better. I dragged them in for the crazy but they didn’t need to see all of the crazy, they didn’t need to see this place, not even the outside. It could in no way make them feel better about my life.
When I got there Rocco and Lightfoot were the only ones at the bar. Lightfoot came almost every night and every night he was there, we talked. I liked having someone to talk to. Wolf didn’t really talk to me, unless you counted when he spoke Spanish, which I didn’t count since I didn’t understand Spanish. Or when he was telling me how he could kill me, which was not technically a conversation. The dancers were busy with the suckers, the suckers were busy with the dancers and the floor managers are all hustle, hustle, sell, sell. I’m still not a good hustler, I’d rather drink and shoot the shit. I shoot the shit here, with Lightfoot.
Michael Douglas Lightfoot has a business card that says he owns a recording studio. Every pimp has some sort of business card and none of them say “PIMP”. Hookers are interior decorators and models, pimps like the recording industry cachet. It sounds legit if you don’t know better and explains the money, the drugs, the flash, and the lifestyle. I know better, I just don’t always know better.
I don’t know if he fired me for hanging out with Doug (does everyone hate pimps?), for missing half my shift, or because he finally had an excuse. Either way, when I got to work, Rocco let me know that Lightfoot was the only thing waiting for me. Sitting at the bar, handsome as ever in his cowboy hat and alligator boots.
“Asshole.” I stared at Rocco. “You fuckers really get a kick outta firing me don’tcha?”
He swung the door to the street open.
“Okay. Just let me work tonight. I’m busted, Rock, broke. My old man flushed it all down the toilet last night.”
Rocco shook his head, and hand on hip, he leaned against the open door. “Tough life.” He wasn’t smiling. “Go. Take the pimp with you.”
Lightfoot’s Caddy was parked outside, I filled him in as we walked, leaving out anything about my parents. I don’t talk about them to anyone. It’s the only way I can think to keep them safe. I climbed in, taking the lit Newport Doug passed to me. I hate menthols. They all smoke menthols dammit, but I wasn’t in any position to be choosey.
Michael Douglas Lightfoot, wearing his big white Stetson hat and pointy toed alligator boots instead of the usual feathers and rainbow pimp wear. It didn’t make him look anymore like the Indian he claimed to be, or any less like a pimp. He was black to the bone, but it accentuated those Sidney Poitier good looks and he knew it.
“Next move, little girl? Want me to take you home?” He murmured softly as he slipped his key into the ignition.
“Yeah, okay. No. I don’t know. I don’t wanna go home. I don’t wanna be alone. I’m still freaked out. There’s like all these bad vibes bouncing around my house, in my head, like I’m going crazy, Doug. Can’t I just stay with you for a while?”
I flicked my cigarette out the window and looked up at him, giving him my best please take care of me I need someone to take care of me eyes. He was my handsome spade cowboy. I liked that. He had a big white Cadillac convertible to match his big white cowboy hat. He knew the original JJ, JJ Huntsberry, my JJ. I liked that too. It all felt safe.
“Okay, little girl,” he slipped his arm around me and pulled me close. I snuggled into his Ivory soap smell. “You don’t worry now. Lightfoot’ll take care of you tonight.”
“Little girl,” I pouted, fiddling around with the radio till I found an R&B station, more for him than for me, “I really hate that ‘little girl’ thing. You’re not my father.” I tried to sit up, to move back to my side. I felt him smile as he held me tighter, so I snuggled in closer, exhaled and watched the city speed past.
“No, baby girl, not your father,” he whispered into my ear, “but I’m your Daddy. Remember that, girl. Never forget who’s looking out for you.”
Good guys wear white hats. Everybody knows that.
It was all going to be okay. I’d find another job. Lightfoot would take care of everything.
This entry was written by , posted on September 7, 2009 at 10:27 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, dirty boys, family, Guys & Dolls, pimps, Times Square. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I don’t remember calling my mother, risking their lives by exposing my parents to this crazy man, but honestly, it wasn’t the first time I’d brought real live crazy into their lives.
She remembers being absolutely frantic, racing in from Long Island, running every red light in the hopes of getting stopped by the police, in the hopes the police could fix it all, make the crazy man stop beating her little girl. I picture my dad, knuckles white from gripping the steering wheel, silent, stone faced and focused; my mother, small fireworks of nervous energy exploding in the seat next to him, pressing her foot to the floor as if there were a second gas pedal on the passenger side and she could make the car go even faster.
It hadn’t occurred to me to call the police, but somehow by the time we all got back to the apartment on 7th Street, they were there.
He’s still asleep when I come back an hour later with my mother, father and two large uniformed police officers. That’s how I like my cops, bigger than me & on my side. I wait in the living room, prying a dead cockroach out of the blue shag rug with my toe, while they go into the bedroom to wake him. Their voices are muffled by the walls & the city noises that slip in through the cracked windows. His voice is muffled by the blue serge of their uniforms & the thickness of their bodies as they hustle him past me, past the holes he punched in the wall when he missed my face, past the bathroom where he flushed my money down the toilet. But his voice echoes off the cold tile & dirty marble of the hallway where the dump him confused, naked & very angry. The smaller of the two large blue men, huge in his own right, grabs a pair of jeans from the back of a chair.
“His?”
I nod & hand him Wolf’s black Chinese slippers as well. The cop tosses them into the hall, smiling as he watches Red Wolf climb into the jeans. Yelling, cursing in Spanish, then begging and threatening in English, Wolf leaves the building, bare-chested and broke. The cops stay while I gather the rest of his clothes & the offending Bible, everything he brought with him. Everything except the rug and the tv. I’m keeping those. Wolf stands across the street watching, shooting me the evil eye as they dump everything he owns on the stoop and start to leave.
“Hey, wait up,” catching up to them at the front door, “I’m going with you to file charges. I want the son-of a bitch locked up.” Two blank Irishy cop faces stare down at me. “What? I want him locked up. He tried to kill me.”
The smaller one is staring down at his shoe now. The other one focuses somewhere over my shoulder.
“You’re not bruised, not enough,” he says to his highly polished black lace up, “It’s a waste of time to do the paperwork.” He looks up, not directly at me, but sideways.
“A waste of fuckin’ time? Not enough bruises? Are you fucking kidding me? Do I hafta wait until he breaks my fucking arm? Or my neck? Would you find the time to do the paperwork if he had killed me? I mean, come on here…god-dammit.”
“She’s upset,” my mother apologizes to the short cop, to both of them. Touching my arm to calm me down, “He’s gone. You’ll stay at the house, in your old room. I’ll make stuffed cabbage.”
Stuffed Cabbage. Chicken Soup. Brisket. Chocolate Pudding. It’s the way she says ‘I love you’. But my old room is my father’s office now. Some parents keep their kids rooms like museum exhibits the last day they lived there. Mine got turned over the minute I left. She doesn’t like me cursing at the police, it’s not the way I was raised. But then my life isn’t going exactly the way she had planned, not even a little bit. I’d completely forgotten they were there.
“There’d have to be more bruises than you got,” the big cop one says. “Sorry, but it’d be thrown right out. No witnesses, nothing broken, no case. Sorry, but I’d get the locks changed if I was you.” He glances across the street, but Wolf is gone.
I watch them walk out of the building and think I know where not to go next time I need help.
“Come, we’ll pack a few things and…,” my mother steps up next to me, so close I can feel the warmth of her body and get a little whiff of Jean Nate. Her everyday summer scent. I smell her sweat too, a little bitter, tangy even. Nervous sweat.
The cops couldn’t look at me.
I can’t look at my father. I know she blames him for a lot of my mess, him and his wild stories.
I can’t look at my mother. I can’t handle her fear.
I can barely manage my own.
It’s not right, what I do, dragging them into the mess of my life.
“I gotta go to work, Ma.” I don’t tell them he took all my money. I don’t tell them we had sex last night. I don’t tell them I miss him even though I’m scared.
I tell them to go home.
This entry was written by , posted on September 3, 2009 at 6:37 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, dirty boys, East Village, family, Guys & Dolls, lonliness, love. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Loving me makes him weak.
I’m not stronger than Wolf, and Lord knows he’s got crazy on his side, but I don’t love him anymore, so I’m stronger than I was when I walked through the door, stronger than when he hit me the first time today. Stronger than when I let him convince me to throw Nada out of the house, when he first started with the washcloths and the crazy. I don’t love him anymore, so I’m stronger.
I believe he loves me and I believe that is my only weapon.
I throw myself into creating the Sarah Bernhardt of asthma attacks, hyperventilating huge loud wheezing noises.
The hitting stops.
Maybe he’s exhausted, or sobering up, or maybe we’ve just reached the end of today’s regularly scheduled programming, the Messianic Crazy Hour. Or just maybe a year of community college acting classes weren’t a total waste of time and he’s afraid I’m going to die.
I didn’t realize how much I want to live. I’ve been ready to die since I’m 15 years old and now, faced with an earlier than scheduled departure, I’ll be goddamned if I’m going anywhere.
He stops fighting & cradles me in his lap, rocking me as I wheeze, shake & tremble, whispering into my ear, “I could’ve killed you, I still can. I love you, but I can still kill you.” I can hardly hear him, the ringing in that ear is still loud, but his breath is damp & sour on my cheek, his arms, cold with sweat, stick to my skin.
I’m counting on that love. I stay curled in his arms, slowly letting my breathing appear normal, rocking & planning…
He pulls me into the loft bed, laying down behind me. Even now, our bodies fit perfectly. He strokes my hair, finger combing the curls, tucking a stray wisp behind my good ear, comforting me, he whispers, “I can kill you right now, but I love you. I can kill you in your sleep if I want to.”
He nudges my legs apart, entering me from behind, sliding in smoothly. I’m wet. I hate to say it, but I am. He croons softly “I love you, but I can kill you anytime” over and over as he makes love to me. Our bodies, utter perfection, my cunt made for this, for him, made for each other even in the insanity, until finally he comes inside me and falls asleep.
I stay awake in his arms all night. Staring at the back alley through the bars on the window. Motionless
I wonder about the baby I think I’m carrying, his baby. Our baby.
He’s still sleeping the next morning as I pad into the bathroom, shower & appraise the damage. I find a few new painful spots as I scrub myself. I want the smell of him off of me. The scalding water beats down on my scalp, tender from being dragged by the hair, running in streams off my nose, the tips of my breasts, down my stomach, between my legs, any place he’s been, any place he’s touched. I want to burn him off of me.
He’s sleeping still, as I let myself drip dry. Let the little bit of June that makes it through the air shaft caress me, tend my wounds, purify me. Extra makeup erases last night. Carefully, layering foundation, cover up, blush, eyeshadow, eyeliner, mascara, & finally lipstick–a recipe that starts our nightly battles. My eyes are red & puffy, but my head is clear & my hearing is back. I listen to the whoosh and hum of his breathing in the bed above me.
He did not die in his sleep.
I’ll pray harder next time.
Super Girl not Supergirl by Dominic Marco
I’m pulling work clothes out of the large wooden dresser, mine since I was too small to open the heavy draws by myself. My mother’d spent hours painting it with perfect strawberry red curlicues and trim. These aren’t the outfits she’d had in mind. This isn’t what she’d planned for me. This isn’t even what I had planned for me…fuck, I’m going to be late for work.
Fleshtoned tights first, then black fishnet pantyhose, followed by a shiny red Lycra halter body suit. Tight, it hugs my body and keeps my breasts skyward. Platform high heeled sandals. I look like Supergirl on the stroll. I wish I felt that powerful. I throw on a wraparound cotton skirt, grab my dance bag: makeup, there’s enough change from the bottom of my purse for subway fare, brushes, combs, date book, phone book, pens, a knife, keys, sunglasses, contact lens solution, toothbrush, deodorant, everything I need to leave the house for an indeterminate period of time.
I grab my stuff, close the door quietly after me & head uptown. On the way to the subway, I stop at a payphone. “Mom? Mommy? It’s me….”
This entry was written by , posted on August 30, 2009 at 10:54 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, dirty boys, East Village, Guys & Dolls, love. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Arms fly from every direction. Someone is screaming. Someone is growling, barking. A rabid animal. My brain shuts down, the floor drops away, time freezes.
There is only Wolf, who has lost his mind, running at me, throwing punches. There are only fists and anger. And me. Crouched in a corner on the metal cot that is was Nada’s bed. I don’t remember jumping up here. Where the fuck is Nada? He wouldn’t be like this if there were witnesses. He’d be sweet, he’d be singing if she was here.
I was an idiot to throw her out.
Nada Tokay, if you can hear me, I fucked up.
I fucked up.
I really fucked up.
He towers over me, one hand holding the Holy Bible, the other a fist. Frantic twists of red hair crawl out from beneath the beret, sweatpaste themselves to his face. In the eye I can see, the one without the patch? No one is there.
“The Devil’s got your soul. I will save you,” he proclaims. I can’t take my eyes off the Bible, sweet Jesus, here it comes, he swings it at me like a bat. Whack.
Direct hit. Right side. Cheekbone, eye, ear.
“What the fuck? Wolf? What the fuck are you doing?” Whack.
Direct hit. Same side.
Sirens scream in my right ear, so loud I can’t hear him on that side anymore. I watch his lips move, afraid to expose the other side, the other ear.
“I’ll save your soul,” he whispers close to my face. “Satan’s in you, you whore. I can cast him out. I can make you free.” Louder now, he stands erect again, it’s building, “I am your Savior, I am your Redemption.”
There’s a crash of cymbals.
He swings again.
This time I dodge.
He’s quicker most of the time, most of his punches will find their mark, but twice he misses & ends up punching the wall behind me. It’s brick, his knuckles are bruised, bleeding. He doesn’t feel it. We’re way past drunk, we’re in the neighborhood of insane now.
Think. Think dammit.
Whack.
I curl into a ball, protecting my soft and tenders.
Wolf hits me with the Bible, again. And again. And again.
He tells me he loves me, again. And again. And again.
He says he’ll free me from Satan even if he has to kill me to do it.
That’s how much he loves me is, he says.
If he doesn’t kill me, I’ll cut his throat while he sleeps, I think to myself.
“Devil money” he mumbles pulling out handfuls of tens & twenties from my bag. He marches to the bathroom with all the money I have, all we have in the world, and flushes four hundred dollars down the toilet. Two months rent.
I don’t feel anything.
That’s not true, I hate him. But I’m past pain and fear.
There are only his fists, that Bible and me.
There’s only me and my need to survive long enough to kill him.
“These belong to the Devil, too.” Wolf picks up my grandmother’s kitchen shears, the ones I use for cutting through chicken bones, & holds it up to my credit cards.
I can make more money.
My bruises will heal.
Keep your fucking hands off my plastic.
I throw myself at him, grabbing at the credit cards & the chicken shears.
He said he loved me enough to kill me.
He said he loved me.
This entry was written by , posted on August 27, 2009 at 12:00 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, dirty boys, dirty money, East Village, Guys & Dolls, love. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
He says I look like a whore when I work and he doesn’t want whores in his house. Sometimes, when I get home, he’s on the stoop with that wet wash rag, waiting. He grabs me by the hair & scrubs until all of the makeup is gone. Or until I start to cry.
So I don’t complain when he’s so drunk he forgets to come home. Those are the nights I secretly eat real hamburgers and brush my teeth, brush my teeth, brush my teeth so he won’t smell the meat on me. “We” don’t eat meat.
If he’s not drunk & I’m not wearing makeup, he still sings & tells me I’m beautiful. I’m not, but he says I am.
I hate the wash cloths. I hate tofu.
I hate being alone more.
It’s been almost two months since we exchanged rings–in the rain, under the arch, tripping–I should’ve known better. If life was a horror movie, that would’ve been the scene when the audience starts screaming at the stupid white girl “No! Don’t go in there!” and then laughs when she does, cause they know. They know, cause they can hear the scary/monster/slasher music that she can’t hear.
I come home from work, relieved not to see him on the stoop, I open the door.
He’s asleep on the blue shag rug in the living room, drunk. Dead drunk — out cold, in a long red monk’s robe & a blue beret — no pants, no underwear, no shoes, and a black eye patch. My head hurts trying to make it make sense.
My head hurts,
things don’t make sense.
I want to runaway, trip out, destroy something.
I have to be careful
not to destroy
myself.
I drop my work bag. It’s stuffed full with leotards, high heels, makeup, hairspray, money, tampons.Tampons…I can’t remember the last time I had my period. I think I’m pregnant, but I haven’t said a word to anyone.
I just want to be a good wife, to get him off the floor, put him to bed. I bend down, roll him over. He’s holding a Bible, like you see in hotel rooms. I didn’t know we had one. I didn’t know he could read.
I’m still looking at the Bible when Red Wolf explodes.
This entry was written by , posted on August 24, 2009 at 7:02 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, dirty boys, East Village, lonliness, love, whores. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Guys & Dolls isn’t at all like the old Mardi Gras, except for the naked girls, the champagne hustle and the wise-guy wannabe manager.
The Mardi Gras had Times Square written all over it. It was three stages of glitter, mirrors, lights & glamour. It was Ringling Bros & Barnum and Bailey – a three ring circus complete with costumes, stars and trained animal acts.
Guys & Dolls is more like the Beatty Cole circus. One small tent, a lot of in-breeding and just the one fly in the buttermilk. There’s only Lightfoot.
Like the old school Chinese restaurants, G&D has a small front bar, but all the action is in the back. I work the front bar. Behind me there’s an oversized round dining table type stage surrounded by chairs. Dinner. Family style.
When the girls do floor work (and now, watching it daily & having it occasionally, I know what Ralphie had wanted of me…) you’re close enough to know who shaves & who needs to. A thick red carpet covers the floor, the stairs, & the stage and despite the non-stop pounding dance music, it gives the club a soft menstrual quietness. In a style known as Early Guido, everything is flecked with gold–the flocked wallpaper, the marbling through mirrors, the banister of the spiral staircase…
The stairs get you to the “VIP lounge”. Well, the stairs & an $80 bottle.
The lounge is just a large room divided by thick velvet curtains and even more mirrors. Each section has a small couch (velour), a potted fern (fake) & a platform (small) meant to be a private stage. There’s an odd garage dampness and the odor of mildew & Jovan Musk.
There’s another scent, it’s subtle. The johns don’t notice it, but I do. Sweat layered over the Kiwi paste wax the Port Authority shine boys use. It’s the smell of the floor managers. I can smell Rocco’s spotters between the curtains & behind the two way mirrors. They make sure nothing really happens in the lounge, that nothing more than the champagne cork gets popped. Occasionally, a girl manages a quick handjob, if the money’s right, but mostly it’s all smoke & mirrors on premises until the time runs out – off premises, that’s another story.
But here, a guy goes upstairs with girl & a hard on, he returns fifteen minutes later with the same erection and he tries again. Sometimes with the same girl, sometimes with someone new. They act like it’s some kind of lottery or slot machine and they’re hoping to hit three cherries. Suckers buy lottery tickets and play the numbers. Suckers buy bottles of champagne, they live in an yin yang of hope & denial.
Leave ‘em wanting more, sell up or move on…
Wolf hates my job, but, really, I’m having a pretty good time. I make money off bottles bought for me (Okay, I don’t get a LOT of bottles– there are other much more naked, pretty girls around, girls like Toni Rose. Toni is a cross between My Little Pony and Twiggy, with her big eyes, long legs, little boy haircut and phenomenal tits. Another chick dances with a boa constrictor, putting its whole head in her mouth. I can’t compete with that kind of action. But it does happen.) & what’s in my cash register, tips, salary & whatever extra I can “find”. I kinda enjoy the endless stream of porno especially when the porn star’s in the house. Then it’s like being at a pep rally with all the hooting and cheering and go, go, go, ’til he gets to the money shot. It feel like home movies.
It feels like family.
I’m getting better at “finding” money. Generally anyone here who’s not a dancer, manager or pimp is money. Boyfriends, you never can tell. Some are on to the game, some are in a cash flow based “relationship”. Those guys are someone’s personal bank account. They’re also off limits.
General sitting at the bar dopey, lonely suckers are a free for all. Anyone can take a stab at what’s in their pockets : hustling drinks, taking tips, getting bottles or just reach out and take what you want. When a guy is drinking booze, watching titty, booty & poontang & trying to figure out how to get his hands on any of it, he’s pretty focused. If his mind’s on someone else’s panties, getting into his pockets is usually pretty easy. If he does notice, I slide over to his crotch as if that was where I was headed anyway, smile sweetly and what I hope is seductively.
I’m just giving him permission to believe what he already wants to believe.
Don’t look at me like that. It’s not just me, the dancers at my bar are doing the same thing. If I catch them, we split it in exchange for me not ratting them out management. Management would take it all. You know that they would.
Everything about this is chilly except Red Wolf’s attitude.
I could quit if he’d get a job. I tell him that.
I wouldn‘t quit though.
I don’t tell him that.
This entry was written by , posted on August 19, 2009 at 10:55 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, dirty boys, dirty money, Guys & Dolls, pimps. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
There are some decisions I’ve made, actions that’ve changed the arc of my life entirely. At the time they seem like just so much nothing. I threw Nada out of the apartment in the middle of the night. It wasn’t even a blip on my radar.
We fit like puzzle pieces when we make love. I feel loved, finally, when we make love. Afterwards, when he’s fallen asleep, I sneak out of the loft bed and go sleep on the couch.
I can’t sleep in the same bed with my husband.
My husband. Red Wolf. We exchanged rings a month ago. Turquoise, coral & nickle, a American Indian design, of course. They were two for five dollars. I paid for them, also of course.
He doesn’t have a job, my husband, Red Wolf. American Indian, by way of Puerto Rico, by way of Williamsburg, via Washington Square Park. There might’ve been one once or maybe we’d just talked about money before he moved in, I could’ve sworn someone mentioned it, but even though there isn’t one now, he does his best to help furnish my our little apartment on East 7th Street. It needs all the help it can get. He hung the bamboo shades we I bought at Azuma. He’s brought home a blue shag area rug for the living room, stereo speakers, a shelving unit and a small TV. I’m not sure where any of it came from. I mean, none of it is new…
I do have a job. The summer’s over, film school was, well, just more school and so I’m working again. Guys & Dolls is no where near the glamfest that Robbie’s Mardi Gras was. Instead of glitter & sequins, everything is red. The rug, the circular stage, the walls. It’s like being inside a giant menstruating vagina, if that vagina had a bar & non-stop porn on screens everywhere you look. The manager, Rocco, is a slicker, meaner carbon copy of Ralph.
Wolf hates me working in topless bars, he just doesn’t hate it enough to get an actual job himself. He hates that I wear so much makeup to work. He scrubs my face with a washcloth when I get home. I don’t need gilding, he says to me in Spanish. He knows I don’t speak Spanish.
Dame una cerveza. ¿Tienes menudo?
Gimme a beer. Spare change?
That’s the extent of my Spanish.
He talks to me a lot in Spanish. I mostly nod and smile.
If he catches me in public wearing makeup, at the park, he dunks my head in the fountain and smears it all off with his hands. I don’t meet him in the park anymore after work.
He was probably lying when he told me about him and Nada, that she fucked him while I was at work. Fucking Polack bitch.
Nada hooked up with Red’s brother, Brown Wolf, so he moved in with us too. And the kids from the park, every night, a different mass of runaway bodies sleeping on the living room floor. It was just too many people for one apartment.
I know she didn’t fuck him. Now, that a few days have passed, I know it. I feel bad I threw them all out in the middle of the night, bad about all the screaming too. Nada, Brown Wolf, all those kids. But it was too much. Too many people…and I was so tired. Working at the bar, trying to earn money and take care of a home. Trying to be someone’s wife. I don’t know anything about being a wife. With all those people in the apartment, I was stuck in the same bed with him after we had sex.
I can’t sleep with someone in the bed. Not even Wolf.
I’m just so damned tired.
And now, it’s just the two of us.
Me. And my crazy husband.
That’s what he wanted all along.
We fit like puzzle pieces.
Afterwards, I sleep alone on the couch.
Hindsight may be 20/20, but it’s not very useful.
Nada Tokay, if you can hear me, I fucked up. I really fucked up.
This entry was written by , posted on August 16, 2009 at 10:10 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, dirty boys, East Village, Guys & Dolls, lonliness, love. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
He sings to me, has been singing, in public, since we met two weeks ago. Some days, I catch him watching me from a distance, motionless.
This is something new to me, this….wooing.
Something new has pale white skin & wild red hair. It’s Howdy Doody red, Opie Cunningham red, Brenda Starr red. I’m finding it hard to ignore him.
He hangs over my head from low tree branches and sings to me, about me. Red Wolf lifts my skirt, wraps himself around my ankles like some sweet snake content to stay at my feet, and he sings to me.
My skirt is long enough to hide quarts of Budweiser underneath when cops roll past. They cruise the outside circle where we drink and hang –the Indians, Sleazy John & Rat, Jack & Carmine, Johnny One Eye, the Starriders motorcycle club, Haney & all the little runaways. Cops roll past and a dozen hands slide a dozen beers under my skirt.
I look all hippie in this skirt, no matter that that peace & love shit was ten years ago. Long skirts hide how my thighs touch. I have my deerskin full of wine I don’t share with anyone. I hate beer. I only drink beer when I’m run out of wine, when there is no acid to be had.
Sitting in Washington Square Park, drinking wine in my long skirt, I’m supposed to be writing a script for my directorial “debut” at NYU film school–they never should’ve put the school so close to the park–but I can’t think of a single thing anyone would give a shit about. I can’t think at all what with all that singing going on.
So I just hang out in the park, waiting for inspiration, for something that will blow everyone the fuck away when they see it. Anything. Some days all there is is hallucinogenics. Some days all there is is watching the cops roll up, roll past, roll away.
Whether I stand or sit, inspired or not, as long as there’s a cop in sight, there’s beer between my legs.
The cops roll away and one by one, hands reach under my skirt, between my feet and re-claim their beers. And Red Wolf wraps himself around my ankles singing some nonsense he’s made up about me. About the curls in my hair, the whiteness of my skin, my zodiac sign for chrissakes.
He lives here, in the park. He’s out of his mind.
and I think I love him.
I can never let him find out about Floyd.
he wouldn’t love me if he knew.
I’m careful not to run into Shortun.
or anyone else who knows what happened the night the Bon Soir closed...
he couldn’t love me if he knew.
dirtygirl wonders : How do you know the difference between romance, passion, obsession? C’mon, talk dirty to me
This entry was written by , posted on August 12, 2009 at 11:32 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, dirty boys, drugs, Greenwich Village, love. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I found a place, a home of my almost own. I’m sharing it with Nada–she’s willing to sleep in the living room, which is great, cause I’m not. I paid $500 under the table for the rent stabilized lease–we’ll split the rent, $175 a month. It’s a dump, but it’s my dump. It’ll do for now.
I’d found a beautiful place on Avenue D with wood floors & skylights. Hamid wanted to split it with me, but seriously, how the hell do you get to Avenue D? 
No cabbie’ll go past First Avenue. Except for that one block, everything east of Avenue A is a fucking war zone.
Hamid had in his head if we lived together we’d actually be living together and wind up married. Uh, no. Tech is mostly foreign men, all claiming to be exiled princes. Hamid is a Persian prince–I’m not sure Persia even exists anymore, but for sure it’s not a place for chubby Jewish girls to call home.
So I took the place on 7th & 2nd, with the radiator sunk half in the floor, the bars on the windows, the holes in the walls, the cockroaches inside and lots of small shriveled babushka wearing Ukrainian women outside, sweeping the stoops. There’s a small bookstore to the right and a little market to the left. The West Village is all touristy, but there’s no reason to be in the East Village unless you live here. Ukranians. Junkies. And me. It’s quiet, cheap, and walking distance from NYU.
I made it through NCC by the skin of my teeth, transferred to New York Tech, and now, NYU. I had to get off Long Island. I lasted one semester at NYT, what with all the princes running around, knocking on my door, demanding that I cook them dinner. Hullo? Are you out of your royal fucking mind? Cook? I’ve eaten the same meal every single day for an entire semester. Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. Two slices of Kraft processed American cheese evenly divided onto three Stoned Wheat Thin crackers and a glass of iced tea for a total of nine crackers & six slices of cheese a day. No more. No less. Seriously. I fortify myself with Kahlua & Vodka, sure, but as far as food goes, it’s all you’ll find in my little refrigerator in my little room at the Henry Hudson Hotel. The Henry Hudson (353 W. 57th Street) passes as a dorm for Tech. It’s really just a cheap residential hotel whose current claims to fame are Channel 13 and Nipsey Russell wandering the hallways bothering girls so young they giggle hysterically when he hits on them.
I’d really spread myself too thin there, it was time to go, man, go. Like a pressure cooker with the top nailed down, it was ready to explode. I’d put too much into the mix: My boyfriend, Rey from the Bronx. My other boyfriend, Hamid, the Persian prince. Bobby Lee, someone else’s boyfriend entirely. Maurice, who won’t come when we fuck–he doesn’t want to waste his seed on me & his brother Michael who has no problem with that at all. Milan, a Romanian gardener & Charles Bronson’s body double, barely speaks any English. George the Greek, another “prince”. Duke, (prince-lite) the box boy from the shoe store. My professor, Abe–I got an A, ’nuff said. Hamlet, and finally, his cousin Tulio who likes to sleep in my bathtub.
It’s a wonder I got to any classes.
dirtygirl wonders...
If anyone has ever really manged to outrun themselves. Is it always “where-ever I go, there I am”…? Post your thoughts below. C’mon, talk dirty to me.
This entry was written by , posted on August 11, 2009 at 12:02 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, dirty boys, East Village. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
The head of Ace’s cock peeks out from the white towel he’d wrapped around his waist. Peeks really doesn’t apply when you’re talking about Ace’s dick, it’s such a delicate word and his dick is such a monster. The Continental Baths offer an extensive display of the penis, in all its variety and glory, but even here, Ace is unique.
I know Ace from before Speedy, before Frankie even.
He was dangerous and angry. And so good looking in that way that teenage boys are, their almost man-ness just about bursting them at the seams. Olive skin, rippling belly, thick mauve lips, soft dark hair falling into his eyes. Those eyes were on me that first time we touched. He walked up to where I was sitting — always by the cigarette machine at the foot of the stairs, so I could see the door and the floor– Ace looked me dead in the eyes and leaned in like he was going to kiss me. He slide his hand down my thigh, my calf, all the way down to my foot, never breaking eye contact. I never go anywhere without at least one knife in my bag or my boot, somewhere. You never know. Like that night. There was some action on the street, outside the bar, and he needed my knife — needed what I had, that’s all I cared about. I let him take it, and then, instead of kissing me, he cut me and smiled.
He cut me. On his way out the bar he sliced my belly with my own knife, stopped, looked at me and smiled. It was deep enough to bleed, but not for scars or stitches.
There was no way I wasn’t giving that a test drive.
Later, that night, or some other, they get mixed up, but one of those nights after the Chalice, the three of us were alone. Me. Ace. His giant penis. I knew men & women who’d had sex with him. But Jesus, now looking at it, out in the open like it was, I couldn’t figure how. All my holes, could they be laid end to end, were not long enough to accommodate the glory that was Ace.
If you have a baseball bat between your legs, you need to know gentle and Ace only knew angry. I backed out of the penetration part of the sex. He was willing to settle for head. I had a better chance of swallowing an apple, whole.
And here he was again, standing next to the waterfall, in his towel, with his beautiful cruel mouth. His dick hanging out of his towel, my ass eeking out of the back of mine. On a good day, I don’t know what to do when I run into someone I’ve had sex with — a good day being one where I’m wearing some clothes. I don’t even know if what we did counts as sex. There wasn’t much more than nakedness and intention. Does that count?
Ace is still looking directly at me. What was I doing here he must be wondering. No girls allowed in the Continental Baths. I shoulda been wondering the same thing, but I don’t think about those kinds of things.
I do an about face & head back to the small room I’m sharing with Speedy. Small, but the same as everyone else’s, the size of a twin mattress with ”walls” that don’t reach the ceiling. I can hear the slurp and gag of someone getting head two rooms down, the thud thud of an ass pounding down the hall. If I can hear them… but me & Speedy, we get so fucked from smoking dust our noise is mostly from falling against the walls, trying to fit in the tiny room.
I’ma stick with Speedy for now. Compact, but complete. Every once in a while, in the middle of sex, one of us reaches down just to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be. He thinks I’m too loose, I say the dust relaxes me. I think he’s too small, that he has an ass-fucking sized dick, not a pussy sized one, but I don’t say that out loud.
I have get my ass in gear, catch my train. I have an afternoon class. Tap Dancing? Acting? Something. I think it’s today, I lose track of the days.
Speedy thinks fucking me means he’s not a maricon.
I think fucking him means I have a boyfriend.
He’s still sleeping. I pull my clothes out from underneath him, shake out the wrinkles the best I can, head up the stairs, praying I don’t bump into Ace on the way out and then I’m out. 73rd Street. Sunlight. I scrounge around in my bag hoping I still have my sunglasses. I can’t handle people looking at me when I’ve been out all night and it’s been days. I can’t stand the light.
I make my train, make my class.
Tuesday. Tap-dancing.
Shuffle. Ball change….
dirtygirl wonders...
What have you put up with just to have a boyfriend, a girlfriend? What will you let slide, just so you’re not alone…? Post your thoughts below. C’mon, talk dirty to me.
This entry was written by , posted on August 6, 2009 at 1:52 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1976, dirty boys, hustlers, The Chalice, Uptown. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
