I live the New York life people outside of New York never think of. The Outer Borough Life. People elsewhere think of New York as a bunch of huge, imposing buildings where people live in skyscrapers and no one knows each other. Outside of Manhattan, that's rarely the case.
My apartment is on the ground floor of a brownstone in Brooklyn. The neighborhood is just outside of trendy: full of immigrants and artists that can't afford the rent of a more brand name neighborhood. I know my neighbors well- the drummer that lives upstairs, the couple in the next building with an herb garden in their adjoining yard and two cats, and my next door neighbor Joy.
I didn't always know them well and at times that could cause problems. The guy upstairs had to find out that his kick drum was right over my bed before we made peace. The couple next door's cats had to get used to my tomcat prowling their yard which led to some tense moments and me shelling out for a few vet bills before we became pals. My issues with Joy were slightly different.
Joy has a massive tattoo of twin dragons on her back that extends all the way down until it just barely reaches into the crack of her ass. Her breasts, while amazing, are possibly fake, have nipples almost permanently erect and a very livid shade of maroon, one of which is pierced. Her grooming habits include waxing although I'm not sure how thoroughly. I know all this due to Joy's wardrobe. She favors pants, shorts and skirts that rise low enough to display her tattoo to its completion. On her upper body she's usually wearing a bikini top or a tee shirt so threadbare as to not really exist, and on many occasions has come out of her apartment to tend to some minor outdoor chore or sunbathe in a small and sheer enough bikini leave few questions as to her hygiene.
My problems with Joy were limited to my constant fantasizing. Her outfits left just enough to the imagination to drive yours to the brink of mania. Having difficulty sleeping because it's been a while since I've gotten laid? Wondering what my cock would look like between her tits would usually be enough to make quick work of my insomnia. Occasionally a date would end well enough to wind up in bed but not well enough for that to be enjoyable. The tattoo on Joy's back always wound up mentally transferred onto the back of whomever I happened to be kneeling behind.
It got a lot easier for me a few months after she moved in. Summer was advancing and we were both spending more time outside on our respective patios. Pleasantries exchanged over the chest-height wrought iron fence between our apartments turned into neighborly conversations. In one such conversation I learned she loved hot food and home cooking. That led me to bring her a care package of chicken wings when I made a bunch for some friends coming over to watch the Yankee game, which in turn led to her coming over and watching the game with us.
We wound up becoming pals. I found out where she tended bar so I got to drink for next to nothing and she found out I was a carpenter and all around handy guy so she got her new light fixtures installed. We always wound up at each other's bar-be-ques.
Late one Saturday afternoon I woke up to brutally oppressive heat. A heat wave had kicked in a few days before but until now it had been possible to breathe without scuba gear. One thing about New York heat is it's humid. I pulled on some boxers and headed out to the patio hoping that, being just earlier than noon, the outside air would be less stagnant than my studio.
Joy was already outside. She was wearing a sheer camouflage micro bikini with a pair of high cut, low-rise denim sorts over the bottoms. The triangle back of the bottoms peeked out over the back waistband of her shorts. Typical Joy-wear. Being friends now I thought it would be weird to flat out ogle her but at moments like this it was simply impossible not to be hyper aware of the peripheral image of her body. From head to toe she was destructively attractive and they way she was leaning over the railing peering off into the neighbors yard just accentuated it. Her hair was jet black and worn in a diagonal slash from the back of her head to her face, being cut to the base of her skull in back and lengthening out to a shoulder length frame for her face in front. She was leaning against the rail on the elbows of very slender arms with her long, slim hands dangling from near non-existent wrists. Beneath delicate shoulders, her incongruously large breasts seemed to levitate from what must have been a boob-job that set her back about $15,000. From there she tapered down to a trim waist and absolutely flat belly that she sometimes corseted when she went to work in the counter-culture Mecca of the Lower East Side. Her waist flared back out into hips that haunted me at night with an ass that resembled a peach that wasn't just ripe yet. And to ignore her legs you had to be blind. They were the vast majority of her height and were the epitome of lithe strength, long and lean. This morning the calves and feet she normally covered in knee high platform boots were bare and her toes revealed painted the same shape of almost black maroon as her fingernails.
"God DAMN it's fucking hot today," was her way of saying hello.
"Tell me about it. My apartment's already a sauna." She came to the railing and we exchanged a kiss on the cheek.
"Mine too. I turned on the A/C and came outside until the joint had a chance to cool down.:
"That was smart. I didn't even put mine in yet."
"No? What the fuck is wrong with you? It's broken 90 all week! How the hell did you get any sleep?"
The honest answer would have been Astroglide, tissues and Joy's wardrobe. Instead I said "Not easily."
"Damn dude, you need to cool off. Why don't you come over and chill. I've got some beers in the fridge."
"Sounds like a plan. Let me put some pants on and I'll be there in a second."
"Fuck that, man, just hop the fence now. It's too hot to get dressed."
Nothing beats sound logic. I swung my legs over the railing and pretended I didn't have a semi as I followed her through the screen door into her apartment.
I sprawled out on the leatherette couch in her rapidly cooling living room while she went into the kitchen to grab a couple beers. "You know what I never asked you?" her voice rang over the click and hiss of bottle caps releasing, "Where are you from?"
Seemed like an odd question at this point, but truth be told we knew very little of the basics about each other. "I'm a Bronx kid, born and raised. Mom gave birth to me ten blocks from the house I grew up in."
"No shit? You're the first actual New York person I've met," was her response as she returned from the kitchen. In each hand was a bottle of beer with honest-to-God ice rolling down the sides. "I keep them in a cooler full of ice in the fridge. Nothing like a tooth-cracking cold beer on a disgusting day like this. I'm from Detroit. Mom's Filipina, dad's German. F.O.B. both. I got the hell out as soon as I could."
"So what brought you to the Big Apple?"
"Art school. It was either here or Chicago and Chicago was way to close to home. Now that I've got my MFA, I've followed it into the lucrative field of bartending."
We clinked bottles by way of salute and she flopped into the armchair across from the couch, flipping her leg over the armrest and sprawling out herself in a chair she could've done the backstroke in. I was just realizing exactly how tiny she was. I could probably span the entire small of the back across the outstretched right hand. I was starting to regret not at least putting on a proper pair of shorts before I came over, the fly on my boxers was gaping, as boxers do, and if I thought about her body any more I'd get a hard-on that popped right out of it. It was time to try to concentrate on the conversation.
"What did you go to art school for?" I asked.
"Unfortunately nothing useful like carpentry," she said with a nod in my direction. "Photography. Specifically fashion photography. I wanted to be the next Annie Liebowitz."
"What stopped you?"
"Models. Those cunts are SO catty. I was working as an assistant for a legitimate fashion photographer and we'd go to shoot these models. These chicks are used to slinging their bodies around and getting whatever they want, so another girl in the room was competition. They'd see Aaron and I talking about light readings or whatever and they'd go apeshit. It was hysterical, at the time I had no tits and I dressed like a total tomboy, I wasn't the kind of girl guys would look at twice with my backwards caps and my bull dyke boots, but they treated me like shit anyway.
"So after a while I just got really combative. I developed this whole fucked up psyche and decided to mock these chicks as much as possible. I started showing up to shoots dressed all slutty and shit. I cultivated this whole 'body as statement' thing. That's when the tits happened."
"What do you mean?"
"Are you serious? These." She gave her breasts a squeeze and a shake. "I got these huge fake tits installed. I also got some piercings and all the ink. I eventually grew out of it, not that I regret any of it, I just appreciate it at a different level now."
"Really? How so? I mean I know what level I appreciate big tits on, what's it like on your end?"
"Honestly? Not much different. I have amazing tits and I think they're hot. But for me I get an added kick in that I know people look at them and want. They want to see my shirt off, they want to grab them. That's so fucking hot it's unbelievable. I got into a whole new level of the body-art thing, I really dig the 'accidental nudity' bit now." 'Accidental' came complete with air-quotes.
"Define accidental nudity," I asked.
"Well basically it's showing off your body without showing it and making it look like it was an accident. Like if it's going to rain I'll wear the thinnest white tee shirt I can find and 'forget' my umbrella." More air-quotes around 'forget.' "On the train I'm soaking wet, every stitch of clothing I'm wearing is glued to me and I might as well be topless. Every pair of eyes are on me and I know exactly what half the guys in that train car are going to be thinking about when they beat off in the bathroom later that night."
