This is a true story. Anybody who knows me and reads it will probably think, Well, that explains a lot. There are probably other people to whom similar things have happened. I hope not.
When I was 18, I still hadn't had sex, and it seemed like it would be forever before I would. Naturally, I was trying like mad. I was trying like mad to do other things, too, like shave, or have a need to. "You gotta just put the razor on there and shave it, man. It'll grow," said one friend.
"Nah, man, you gotta get yourself some pussy. That'll make it grow," said another.
"Can you help me out with that?" I asked this fellow, whose name was Phil. He was tall and black and handsome, a few years older than me, and apparently getting all the pussy he could handle. At least he said so.
"Well, I don't know, man. I'll see. You know, I know this chick in Queens, she might be able to do somethin' for you. I'll check it out."
The time was 1969. All around me a sexual revolution was taking place, and I felt like I was being held back from combat. In New York, which has always seemed to have a disproportionate share of the world's most beautiful women, the anxiety was heightened. I would walk the city's streets in the summertime and see golden girls with long, straight blond hair down to their waists, with skintight hiphuggers and dimpled backs and flowered shirts tied around their midriffs. There would be black girls with jet-black Afros and short, short minidresses, white go-go boots and skin the color of milk chocolate. Asian girls with almond eyes and golden skin. Spanish girls with ruby lips and dangerous curves and gorgeous asses. The talk about the Spanish girls was that they would let you fuck them in the ass, because they were all Catholic and didn't want to get pregnant, and somehow if they didn't have regular intercourse that meant it wasn't a sin. That was, if you could get in there in the first place.
I remember walking in Times Square on a warm Sunday evening, and stopping to cross the street. There were crowds of people everywhere, and suddenly a woman appeared across the street, waiting for the light to change. Even though she was in the midst of a crowd, she stood out. When she walked toward me, I almost stopped in my tracks. She was beautiful, no, stunning, with long, golden curls piled high atop her head, like a Roman empress, golden skin, a sassy, saucy smile, a thin, taut, muscular body, a low-cut blouse barely covering beautiful breasts, a bare midriff, long legs and a small behind that swayed mightily as she sashayed across the street. She was literally stopping traffic, and both men and women turned to look at her. She exuded confidence and pure sexuality, and it was as though the Red Sea parted to let her through. My gaze was so riveted on her and my head turned so far back to watch her that I almost walked into a car. I thought about her all the rest of that night, and the image of her is still clear in my mind. Because I was so young, I didn't realize until years later that she was a hooker. The realization shocked me at first, but I grew fascinated with it. I often saw women like that in the city, so beautiful and sexy that they took your breath away, but now it was winter, cold and damp, and everyone covered up and didn't show anything.
I was sitting in the park one day and Phil came over from his house across the street. "Hey, what's goin' on, man?" I said.
"Hey," he said, sat down and started rolling a joint.
"So," I said, trying my best to be nonchalant, "did you talk to that girl?"
"Huh? What girl?"
"You know, that one we talked about." Not good.
He paused, then said, "Oh, yeah, yeah, I remember. Nah, I didn't talk to her. But I'm gonna call her and try to hook up. In fact, lemme go do that right now." He got up and went back to his house. I was surprised that he was actually going to do this, and it momentarily displaced the disappointment about the unrolled joint he was taking with him.
A few minutes later he came back over and sat down. "OK, man, we all set. Friday night."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "Really? What's up?"
"Yeah, she said come on over and we'll party." He took out his weed and started rolling the joint again.
"All right! That's great," I said. I could barely contain my excitement. Not only was I going to get laid for the first time, I was also going to get high. We talked about a lot of things but not Friday night, because I wanted to be cool and not look too anxious. We smoked and laughed and finally I said, "So what's this chick like?"
"Oh, she's fine, man. Blonde. She's small, thin. Got long hair, and them small titties. But nice, you know. Yeah, you'll like her."
I was beside myself with joy. We laughed some more, from the weed and the joking and the cold and the nervousness. I could feel the wetness in my pants. I couldn't wait.
Friday night came and I was ready, showered up, splashed with English Leather, wearing an outfit I thought was cool but which today would be in the category of All-Time Doofuses From Your High School Yearbook. I went by Phil's and we headed to the subway. The cold made us dance and skip on the way, just to get inside faster. The nervousness made me giddy. Phil had already worked his way through part of a six-pack, and he handed me a can. "Here, man, this'll tighten you up," he said. What I really needed was to be loosened up, and this would get me started. But I knew what he meant. I was really amazed that he was going through all this for me, a skinny, nerdy little white boy who didn't mean a damn thing to him. It made me admire him and want to be like him. I wondered what, if anything, he'd be getting out of the deal. Maybe he was going to get some too? Wait - maybe he was going to go first and I'd have to ... I didn't even want to think about it. But I knew I had an image to project tonight, and I walked and joked like a guy who had done this a hundred times, instead of never.
The subway ride would be short, but as usual, we had to wait for the train. All the while we made small talk, but not about the evening's plan. The ride took about 20 minutes and we arrived at a stop somewhere in Queens near the water, Rockaway or somewhere. I wasn't familiar with the area. When we got on the street it was even colder because of the ocean nearby. "We gotta walk a while," Phil said. We walked for blocks and blocks, through a part of New York I'd never seen. It was bleak and desolate, surprising especially for a Friday night. Probably too cold for anyone to come out, except two horny idiots.
Finally we turned a corner onto a long, deserted street. Seemingly out of nowhere, down at the end, loomed two rows of houses, one on each side, and what looked like the water. Was it a pier? I couldn't make it out. As we walked it came into focus. The end of the street was indeed the end of a pier. The houses, which looked more like trailers or bungalows, were set on the water. They didn't look habitable, but there were people in them, laughing, arguing, playing music. Whatever else they were doing, they weren't doing it neatly. It looked like a trailer park on skis, or a water park for white trash.
"Here it is," Phil said. We were at a shack made of corrugated metal, right on the water. The sidewalk leading up to it seemed like it should have been swaying with the waves like a dock, but it was solid. Phil knocked and we waited as the bitter wind howled. The door opened and we stepped in. I expected the shack to give when we stepped in, like a boat, but it stood firm. It was dark inside, the only light coming from another room, and warm, much warmer than I expected, but with a stale smell, like a window hadn't been opened in a few years. We were in a living room, and a man was standing in front of us. Who the hell is this guy, I thought. Not good.
"This is Bill," Phil said to me. "He's Jen's uncle." I shook hands with the man. He was maybe forty, with a brown pompadour, a thick moustache and ruddy skin, which at first I thought he got from constantly being in this cold, wet climate. Then I got a whiff of him, the smell of the permanently soused.
"Come on in, fellas," he said, walking inside.
The darkness of the living room gave way to the harsh fluorescent light of the kitchen, its sink full of dirty dishes. The sink dripped and the stove was laden with pots and pans with leftover meals encrusted on them. The walls had water stains, the blinds were grimy and broken and the linoleum was cracked and missing tiles. The aluminum and Formica table and chair set, so common then, looked like it had been in place for 20 years. It was about as wretched a kitchen as you could imagine.
The garish light allowed me to examine Bill close up. He was graying around the temples, his skin was pockmarked and his nose was full of broken blood vessels, a sure giveaway. His hands were rough, like a laborer's, and they shook, like a drunk's. He was burly and beer-bellied and had a "Mother" tattoo on his bicep. Very original. I half expected to see "Fucker" on the other.
"Can I get youse a beer?" he asked. We accepted, but when he offered a glass, I said, "That's OK, I like to drink it out of the bottle."
"That's a man's way," he said and laughed, a rheumy cough that turned into a full-fledged attack of phlegm. He got us each a Pabst Blue Ribbon, the dishwater of bottled beer. "Here's to you guys," he said, and we clinked our bottles together. I made sure I kept the lip far back and hit the bottom.
"So where's Jenny?" Phil asked.
"Oh, she ain't home," said Bill. Ah, shit, I thought. "She'll be here in a little while." OK, better.
"Yeah, it's cold out tonight," he said. "Cold as a witch's titty." He coughed that disgusting wet laugh again and we laughed too.
"Must get real cold out here on the water," Phil said.
"Yeah, but ya know it ain't too bad," Bill said. "We keep the heat turned up, keep it nice and warm in here. That's why we get sick a lot, goin' in and out o' the cold, then the heat, then the cold." He coughed again. I began to feel like I was going to come down with typhoid fever any minute. "Ya know, you got a nice little chickie ta keep ya warm, ya don't mind it too much." More laughter. We had no choice but to join in.
I couldn't see the rest of the apartment from the glare and where we sat, and I was glad. I shuddered to think what might be in there, what forms of urban wildlife might be scurrying around in the dark. I hated being in this place, but sitting at this table, warm after being out in the freezing dark, didn't seem too bad, compared to what the rest of the night might hold.
