For the whole ride, Carol was in a frenzy of excitement. She couldn't stop talking. Though it was warm in the cab, her whole body shivered.
"I never knew bars could be so much fun. But then, I haven't gone to many. Do you still have my ID?"
"I do have it." I told her. " You were great. You were
perfect.
"
"Did you see me up there? I was like a go-go dancer. That must be the best invention of Western Civilization. Maybe even Middle-Eastern Civilization too -- and
they
made Algebra!" She laughed. "I was so hot, I almost felt sorry for all the guys. Shit, they
wanted
me!" She rapped on the window separating us from the cabby. "You hear that, driver? A whole
buncha
guys made me naked! They were gonna fuck me but you showed up!"
Okay, so she was a little bit drunk.
She turned back to me, "We should do that every Friday, don't you think? Go out and torture men? Make me a legend? Do you think they'll think about me tonight?"
"They will
never
forget you." I said. "I think you ruined their night. No other girl will be as good for them."
"I ruined women for them! The women in that bar turned out to be my bitches!" she crowed. "Fuck my work-study job. I really should just be a stripper, huh? A go-go dancer in a club? I should just work for tips, giving body shots. Naw, I like the stripper thing. I wanna
grind
on guys all night. My personal mission will be to have them shoot off accidentally on my leg as I
grind
them."
She looked at me. "
Grind
, I tell you. Will you look into stripper jobs for me?"
"You're more than a little bit drunk," I declared.
"Oh, T," She sighed. "Look at me, I'm shaking! Remember 'stripper jobs' for later, willya?"
There was ten minutes of this, and I was running out of ways to agree with her. She was high from all the attention -- she said she didn't really remember anybody touching her, only the faces, the guys trying to get her name, and asking for her number.
* * * * *
The glory hole
We stopped in (what once was) a sleazy part of 42nd Street. The facades of the adult bookshops and clubs were all papered over, and had signs like 'Books' and 'Adult Video Inside.' I paid the cabby as Carol slid out of my grasp.
She stood on the crowded sidewalk, ignoring the people gawking at her as they walked by. Her eyes were on the facades. I knew which shop I wanted, and I took her hand and led her through the doors.
Inside, it was like any other store. The same cold racks of merchandise, the same fluorescent lights. It smelled different, however, and the patrons seemed distant from each other, if not outright furtive. The man behind the counter -- my age -- watched Carol like a hawk as I exchanged some cash for tokens.
Carol growing subdued as I led her through the aisles. Men of every description turned to watch her pass. Old and scruffy, young and t-shirted, business suits -- the whole range of manhood. Carol met their gazes without guile, eyes going from one face to the next as we went past them. She smiled experimentally every now and then.
We entered one of the middle booths at the back of the store, and I flicked the handle to read "occupied." The video screen had no volume controls, so when I dropped some tokens in the small room filled with the wet slapping sounds and groans of sex. Some woman was getting double-penetrated on the video screen, which was behind a scuffed-up acrylic cover.
"What a weird, weird world," said Carol, as she took the room in. She nodded at the video, "When am
I
going to try that?"
I was thrumming with anxiety. This was as new to me as it was to Carol, and I was operating off secondhand lore and not experience. The tokens, the video player, the very booths -- all stuff I'd only read about. But I had to seem sure, for Carol's sake. I had to seem comfortable, so she wouldn't pull out of our 'scene' and realize -- well, what a weird, weird place we were in.
Wordlessly, I pointed to the hole in the wall. It was about the size of a softball, and rimmed with duct tape. There was graffiti all around the hole: "Sssuck here," and "Cock-suckers only," and "Whore hole." It opened into the next booth over.
Carol bent at the waist and peered through. She turned back to me with a distant look in her eyes. Her voice was small as she said, "Empty." The other booth was still empty.
"That's okay. It won't be for long," I said, trying to make my voice normal. Beyond and above all my nervousness, I was starting to get turned on. Turned on in a serious way. Even the fact that Carol was in the booth felt dirty and exciting. Imagining what might happen next was almost too crazy: visions, smells and sounds flooded through my mind like a brick wall of fantasy, I couldn't get past it, I couldn't get any details.
I could sense that I was starting to lose my grip on what was sane and healthy. Maybe I already had. But the night had a
script
, dammit, and we were going to check-mark each adventure, or go home feeling like we wimped out.
I pulled a permanent marker from my shoulder bag, and uncapped it. Carol watched as I found a spot on the wall. I wrote: "Carol was here." And then I added the date.
We stood in silence as the marker ink dried. Its scent was peculiarly clean, in the stuffy, odd-smelling booth.
Then we heard the door open. Light flickered in the hole, and then it went dark again. Tokens chunked into the video player. I met Carol's eyes. Like me, she was listening intently.
I took her hand, and guided it to the hole. She didn't resist, or help, as I tapped her fingers on the rim.
Before long, a masculine hand appeared at the hole, and took her fingers. I let go of her hand, and she let the anonymous stranger on the other side play with her fingers. His fingers drifted over hers gently and slowly. The stranger would know she was a young woman, based on the smoothness of her hand. His hand was wrinkled and callused, above forty.
I stood beside Carol, watching as closely as she did. And then I tapped her knee. Her eyes flickered to me, and she nodded silently.
She stepped in front of the hole, and kicked off her clogs. She sank slowly to one knee, and then the other, so her face was level with the hole in the wall.
The man on the other side said, "Wow, you're pretty."