Sex in the City - New York Page 2

  ‘I don’t have any condoms,’ Joel said with a sigh.

  ‘Just fuck me for a little bit and then I’ll suck you again. I’m good at that, aren’t I?’ My voice sounded so small, so desperate for approval.

  His lips stretched into a tight smile. ‘Yeah, you’re good.’

  So I rolled onto my back and he took me with no further preliminaries. I gasped at the girth of him when he entered me, but he was well beyond tender solicitude. Each pounding stroke nudged me further up the bed until my skull knocked against the headboard. But I didn’t complain. I’d gotten everything I wanted. I was embracing the night side of the city, all arrogance and selfish desire, desire that could turn on you, but take you places you’d never been before.

  His thrusting grew faster, more desperate.

  Lose control. Come inside me.

  Foolish as it was, I craved that final conquest. But this time he didn’t listen. Instead he pulled out and knelt over me, pushing his cock deep down my throat. Choking down a whimper, I sucked and sucked as if I’d be graded on it. The other men had always warned me when they were about to come, but Joel only grabbed my hair and pushed deeper, shooting his load down my throat with a groan.

  It was the first time I swallowed cum.

  Ever after the taste of semen reminded me of that night in the city, as bracingly bitter as a dream come true.

  The Girl in the Bed

  By Christmas my sister was living in a loft on the Bowery with a gay friend from college and his equally colourful band of friends. The place had all of the downtown ‘amenities’: a makeshift kitchen area lit by a single bare bulb, a creaky tin shower stall, and a weird W.C., perched on a stepped platform like a throne. My sister had the only salaried job as an assistant buyer at Bloomingdale’s, so she scored the lone bedroom with walls tucked in the back of the loft beside the toilet. There she entertained her lovers: a string of touring punk rockers, a middle-aged artist whose work I still see in museum calendars, a journalist who wrote for a popular music magazine.

  The other roommates camped out in territories along the cavernous main room. The first den on the left, draped in silk scarves, belonged to Anne, a beautiful petite Parisian who worked for a high-end escort agency and dated a heroin dealer. My sister’s friend, Jerry, built a nook where I often found him snuggling on a salvaged mattress with his lover of the moment, wearing pearls and a beehive wig and watching reruns of Father Knows Best. Golden-haired Wolfgang would have been gorgeous if he hadn’t been so dangerously thin. He’d once been the boy toy of rich men in Vienna, gifted with mink coats and villa vacations, but New York called to his spirit. Now he tended bar and earned sporadic extra income from giving blowjobs in the men’s room at a Soho club.

  The flamboyant loft gang broke every rule and more than a few laws, but whenever I took the train up from college, I felt like the oddball, the criminal of the spirit, strangling the magic out of life with my slavish addiction to regular meals and ‘A’s in Chaucer. Yet I couldn’t stay away. And I’d always bring back my own secret I heart NY memento – a studded leather cock ring I wore as a bracelet, a biker’s jacket that stank of my sister’s latest keyboardist – to remind myself I nurtured a darker, freer self.

  Of course, I couldn’t miss the loft-warming party in January, even though I was in the middle of finals and suffering from a cold. As befitted the Bowery, refreshments were simple: grain alcohol punch and cheap beer on ice. Far more energy was spent on dressing up. The boys monopolized the kitchen table with their ‘make-up for men’ kits, carefully drawing on eyeliner and lipstick. Anne and my sister both had their eyes on new men that night, so they chose fuck-me outfits: Fiorucci dresses, candy-coloured stockings and suede boots with punishing stiletto heels. In spite of my protests that I was just an observer, Anne insisted on dressing me up, too, in a mini-skirt, tight sweater and slinky leather jacket with a sheepskin collar.

  ‘You never know whom you might get into bed tonight,’ she purred.

  By ten the guests began to arrive. One of the first was a true south-of-14th-Street celebrity and founder of the Mudd Club, Steve Mass. The loft gang were regulars there, and my sister once sat next to Jerry Hall who, she reported, had “thick ankles”. Middle-aged with long grey curls and a muddy complexion, Mass looked even more uncomfortable than I felt as he stood by the punch bowl.

  ‘Would you like something to drink, Steve?’ my sister asked with the perfect blend of cool and deference.

  ‘I’m getting over a bladder infection,’ the famous man announced in a gravelly voice. ‘Do you have cranberry juice?’

  Miraculously, someone found a big bottle in the ancient refrigerator, as if they were expecting plenty of partygoers with urinary tract problems. Steve sipped his virgin drink and scanned the room, obviously unimpressed by gyrating dancers, the Andy Warhol look-alikes, the squad of lesbians dressed as nurses from the 1950s.

  Suddenly my own belly clenched in a painful, burning cramp. Was the great Bohemian socialite starting a fad in this, too?

  The next stab of pain was so intense, it took all I had not to double over. I’d hoped at least to have some good stories to take back to my roommates, but the show would have to go on without me. I limped through the crowd to my sister’s bedroom, stripped off my costume and collapsed on my sister’s futon in my underwear. The party faded into a dull roar of chatter and pulsing music, dancing at the edge of my dreams.

  I must have drifted off, for I was startled awake by a deep voice drifting down from heaven.

  ‘Hey, this my kind of party. They have a girl already in bed waiting for you in the coat room.’

  I slit one eye to see an angelically handsome man smiling down at me.

  ‘Are you the kid sister from Princeton?’

  I grunted.

  ‘I’m Winston.’

  I was about to tell him I’d heard a lot about him, but another spasm twisted my gut into a pretzel. Still, I had enough of my senses about me to feel a small thrill at this unexpected gift from the heavens. Winston was one of the legends of my sister’s inner circle, a saxophone player who sported piercings on tender parts of his body before such things were as common as dirt. Sure enough, I glimpsed a glittering nipple ring through his unbuttoned shirt.

  ‘Would you mind if I join you?’ He wiggled his eyebrows.

  ‘I have a really bad headache,’ I managed to whisper. I didn’t mention I thought I was about to vomit, too.

  ‘Damn, they always say that,’ he grinned.

  Except I knew Anne still mooned over him after a fling involving lots of public sex, and that he occasionally allowed the equally smitten Wolfgang to suck his cock when he was feeling broad-minded. Everyone who was anyone leaped at the chance to fuck Winston.

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s true,’ I croaked.

  ‘Best get some sleep then,’ he replied, his voice surprisingly gentle. ‘But if your headache gets better, you know where to find me.’ Winking mischievously, he closed the door behind him.

  Even in the midst of my misery, I had to smile. Winston wouldn’t have given me a second look if I hadn’t been curled up on a bed at his feet like a girl in a porn magazine. I’d already gotten more attention just by lying bed than I ever would have managed cruising the party in call-girl clothes. Even Anne would be jealous. I had my good story, now I could just lie back and relax for the rest of the night.

  Or so I thought.

  ‘We can’t, someone’s in the bed.’ An unfamiliar male voice roused me from another feverish dream.

  The door clicked closed. But I was no longer alone.

  ‘No problem. She’s asleep,’ said his partner. Anne.

  I heard more whispers, a zipper, the rustling of cloth. The futon dipped as a weight settled onto it beside me. It sighed again as another body joined the first.

  There was a feminine gasp, immediately followed by a familiar rhythmic
rocking of the mattress. Was I hallucinating? No one would be rude enough to have sex in a bed right next to a stranger, asleep or not. And what kind of man would stick it in without even a kiss?

  I opened my eyes a crack, my view modestly veiled by my eyelashes.

  I wasn’t hallucinating.

  Anne was indeed stretched out beside me on the futon. An apparently fully dressed, blue-haired man was on top of her, arms extended so their bodies barely touched. Anne rested her hands on his shoulders in an odd gesture, as if she were pushing him away. Yet they were obviously connected where it mattered, if his bucking hips and her moans were any indication.

  There was no denying it: a man and a woman were indeed fucking right before my eyes.

  My belly contracted with a new sensation. I’d witnessed other kids making out, even dared to attend one of the film society’s fundraiser showings of Debbie Does Dallas in McCosh Hall. But this was the real thing. Clinical as it was, I felt more worldly, more perverted, more New York for having seen it.

  I closed my eyes, afraid to breath. If they discovered I was awake they might—what? Stop? Enjoy it more? Make me join in? I realized holding my breath would surely give me away, so I exhaled softly with Anne’s next grunt. Soon we were breathing in unison, in-out, in-out, like a perverse yoga class. I felt my cheeks flush, my pulse begin to throb deliciously in my secret places.

  The shaking of the mattress quickened. Behind my eyelids I could see Joe’s Andy Warhol face twist in a grimace of orgasm. Anne’s body stiffened. She let out a long sigh.

  ‘Did you come?’ he breathed.

  ‘But of course,’ she said with Gallic ennui.

  To be witness to her timeless female lie thrilled me, too.

  They both laughed as they dressed, like kids who’d gotten away with shoplifting candy. The door opened and closed. The cooler, thinner feel to the air told me I was alone again.

  But changed, yet again, by the doings of this strange city.

  When the door opened a few minutes later, I was ready for anything.

  This time only one body flopped into bed with me without a word. It smelled male; denim and cigarette smoke and cuminy sweat. Was it Winston? Sick as I was, I was practically honour bound to maintain the tradition of this spot – Fucking Central Station – by saying yes.

  The man slithered under the blanket and groaned. My body tensed, but he made no move to touch me. The next time I floated back to consciousness, the man’s arm was draped over my side like a lover’s. I pushed it way and turned toward the wall. He turned with me and spooned around my back. I almost shimmied away again, but the warmth of his body was strangely soothing.

  By morning the loft was dead quiet and bathed in skim-milk light. The pain was gone. Stumbling to the toilet, I saw a few unfamiliar bodies scattered here and there on the floor draped in blankets. When I returned to my sister’s room, I realized my bedmate was Jerry’s old lover who’d come in from Long Island for the party.

  ‘I’m sick, too,’ he offered in greeting. ‘I hope you don’t mind I crashed here.’

  I told him no – did I have a choice? – and we both fell back to sleep again.

  By noon the bleary-eyed hosts were gathered around the kitchen table drinking strong Italian coffee and taking stock of the party. Jerry and Wolfgang gave it a fair rating and assured me their past parties were much wilder than I could imagine.

  Coolly avoiding my gaze, Anne confessed that her intended conquest hadn’t even bothered to come to the party so she settled for the guy who lived downstairs. My sister said ruefully that she’d made good progress with her new guy, but my presence in her bed put a damper on things. They made out on the fire escape, but then he said he felt weird about doing it there and went home.

  Jerry’s Long Island friend tapped me on the arm. ‘It was fun sleeping with you,’ he smirked.

  Everyone turned to me expectantly. No doubt they were hoping to see the sheltered college girl blush.

  Instead I replied in my most sultry voice, ‘Yeah, it was amazing. I’ll remember last night for the rest of my life.’

  He turned beet red, and the others laughed, with new respect, unaware it really wasn’t a joke after all.

  Fifteen-Second Whore

  By my senior year, my sister had moved to her own place, a five-room apartment in the East Village. Her spacious dwelling was the result of connections, as is every desirable apartment in the city. Her new job at a building management company got her into the co-op at a rock bottom price. A judicious six-month fling with a carpenter meant new dry walls, refinished woodwork and custom cabinets for storage space.

  Our visits were more civilized now. We’d sip wine to the melancholy sounds of Miles Davis as we gazed out the living room window at her view of midtown, crowned by the Empire State Building. On one such afternoon, my sister gestured toward an apartment across the street with her wine glass.

  ‘Jerry was sitting right here last week, and he saw this amazing thing. The tenant over there was lying on his bed naked, with the curtains wide open, and some woman was giving him a blowjob. We figured she was a prostitute.’

  I leaned closer to the window and squinted down at the apartment, but the curtains were closed. Still, the image took form as clear as a movie: the man’s supine body, legs slightly parted, arms behind his head as he watched the woman’s head bobbing up and down over his spit-polished dick.

  I made it a habit to check the window on later visits, but never managed to see the real show.

  Over the next year I did witness plenty of streetwalkers plying their trade on the sidewalk in front of my sister’s building. These women were not French fashion dolls like Anne, but clichés of another sort. Their bodies were dumpy and worn-looking under polyester halter tops and miniskirts. Most appeared to be in their thirties, bored-looking Puerto Ricans or chain-smoking peroxide blondes. There were exceptions. One day I spied two laughing men in their early twenties emerging from behind some cars in the parking lot at the corner. A woman about my age with kohl-rimmed eyes followed a few steps behind, tugging down her skirt.

  She returned my gaze with an icy stare of contempt.

  I looked away and hurried on as if I were the guilty one.

  After a few months I was savvy enough to identify the regular customers, too. Cars cruised the block regularly: fat Cadillacs or big old Buicks with beefy, grey-haired drivers.

  Sometimes, when I was feeling disgusted with my Ivy League classmates’ Wall Street ambitions, I wondered if a career in streetwalking might be a more honest way to make a living.

  The August after graduation, I finally got my chance to try it.

  I was strolling back from lunch with friends in the West Village, wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt I picked up for a dollar in a thrift store. I walked very slowly, studying my sandaled feet. The symbolism of it struck me even at the time. Up to then I’d known exactly what my next step should be. Now my future was wide open, but too frightening to examine, like a deep, messy wound.

  That’s when I sensed the big car shadowing me, its engine purring just a few feet away. My body seemed to know what was happening before my mind did, for my cheeks began to burn as if I’d gulped down a puckery old Manhattan cocktail.

  Oh, God, he thinks I’m a streetwalker.

  I bit back a giggle. But was it a joke? At that moment I was a desperate woman with no direction in her life.

  Here was opportunity at last. Obscene possibilities flashed into my head. I could see my own body leaning on the passenger’s window to haggle (how much should I ask for anyway?) The hurried ride to a secluded spot (wherever would that be in this all-too-public metropolis?) Me clutching the car upholstery with sweaty fingers, wondering if I could actually go through with it. Bending over to take his wrinkled, grandpa’s cock between my lips, but doing my best, because I always tried my best for older men.

 
; With a shiver, I instinctively looked up and straight into the eyes of my suitor. I remember purplish, fleshy ears, a shock of white hair. Our gaze locked for a good three seconds. It seemed much longer, however, as I watched the eager curiosity in his stare turn to shame as ink stains clean water in a glass. Jerking his head around, he floored the gas pedal and tore away down the street, engine roaring.

  I glanced around quickly, but no one had witnessed my conceptual fall from respectability.

  I’d actually been an East Village streetwalker in his eyes, if only for fifteen seconds. Yet the moment I returned his gaze, he knew I wasn’t. And he knew I saw what he was.

  Maybe I did have a future after all?

  I laughed out loud, giddy with relief and sauntered the rest of the way to my sister’s apartment with my chin held high.

  Shades of History

  After she became the second wife of a successful psychiatrist, my sister moved into her husband’s carriage house in the West Village. Now she lives a few blocks from where Carrie Bradshaw mused over her sex columns in unlikely rent-controlled splendour and where Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick actually do own a grand townhouse. The famous cupcakes of Magnolia Bakery are a short stroll away, as is The Pleasure Chest, where busloads of Sex and the City tourists buy rabbit-shaped vibrators for their friends back home so they can masturbate just like Charlotte.

  The players in my own story are only shadows of memory. Jerry and Anne were HIV positive last time my sister heard news of them. Wolfgang’s body was found floating in the mid-1980s in the East River near the pier where aficionados went for a fist fuck. Joel married his girlfriend, got divorced and then remarried, but my sister only learned all of this through mutual friends. And the old guy who thought I was a whore? Off to different hunting grounds once the new NYU dorm on 11th Street displaced hookers in favour of co-eds.

  I still visit the city, but now, as a professor of mid-twentieth century English literature, I’m on the lookout for inspiration for my most popular course, ‘Sirens of the Village: Female Writers Explore Form, Fame and the Erotic Spirit.’ Wandering the twisting Greenwich Village streets, I think of ethereal Edna St Vincent Millay who not only burned her candle at both ends, she took both Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop into her bed one night. She divided her body between the two great literary men; romantic Bishop got the top half, earthy Wilson the bottom. Somehow I find it easy to picture the threesome sprawled on a neon-lit West Village bed in all their tormented ecstasy.