Ladies' Man Read online

  On the farthest court from me, three Puerto Rican teenagers played paddleball—two, short twitchy butted girls in hip-high pea-coats against a skinny kid in a . brimmed porkpie hat and a premature mustache. The kid was showing off, hitting the ball behind his back, between his legs, smacking one girl on the ass with his paddle, adjusting, readjusting his hat. The girls were laughing, stiff-arming their swings, innuendoing to each other with their eyes. He had a hard-on. Anytime the girls scored a point he groaned or slapped his forehead or said, “Ah must be gettin’ old!” Once in a while he slammed a killer just so they would know he was a lay-back but active volcano.

  Candy moved his weight well. They both had good coordination, but it had been a long time, and they played like shit.

  By the basketball courts, on our bench, three identically dressed Puerto Rican guys sat on the top slat, backs against the fence, hands in coat pockets, feet on the seat slats. Against the far mesh wall a kid also in a porkpie leaned into his girlfriend, whose back was curved into the fence. His hands were in his pockets and he supported himself by resting his long thigh in her crotch.

  That was us. All of it. All of it. Me and Sandy Talla against the fence. Me and Suzie and Dawn and Ronnie playing handball. Me and Donny and Brazil shooting hoops. Me and the boys bullshitting on the bench listening to WMCA, WABC, WINS.

  I felt a rush of panic. For a second I thought I had lost my sample case. Then I remembered it was in Candy’s car. Outside the playground two sixteen-year-old blond Irish girls walked by in pea coats and I got hit with a sweetness, a sweet horniness, and I remembered what it was like to thrill to a tongue in my mouth, a tit in my hand, perfume in my nose. The delicious gut-wrenching agony of the time in my life when titty was king and I never even knew girls had cunts. Another el train roared overhead, bringing back the millions of el trains that had roared past my window and I started crying.

  Nothing heavy. Just misty sadness. It was over. It had been the best and now it was over and nothing had ever felt as good. We had peaked back then, and all we’d been doing since was dying.

  I heard Candy groan as though he just got skewered with a sword. I glanced up in time to see the pink ball, soar over the factory roof. End of game. They slowly staggered over to me, breathing heavily. Donny looked miserable. Candy’s chest was heaving like a bellows and perspiration dripped steadily off his nose. I wasn’t sure if it showed that I had been crying. If any of us had had anything real going on in our lives we never would have come back.

  “Gentlemen? We are very lost people.”

  Donny caught my eye for a second, then looked away. Candy stared at me, still wheezing. Raising his hand above his head, he wiped the sweat off his face with his shoulder. “Speak for yourself, Kenny.”

  “Yeah, Candy? Whata you got?”

  “Kids. I got kids, Kenny, and they’re the best.” He lightly slapped Donny on the chest with the back of his hand while looking at me. “C’mon, I’ll blow you guys to Tabs.”

  After the drinks Candy wanted to tool around the Bronx, go over to the high-school, the park and maybe even drop in on Maynard at On the Road, but me and Donny just wanted to go home so he drove back to Manhattan.

  It was only two-thirty but I couldn’t psych myself for any more selling that day, so I talked Candy into dropping me off at the Seventy-ninth Street exit on the West Side Highway. As I was getting out of the car the three of us made big promises to get together, exchanging phone numbers and addresses, but all I could think about doing was getting the hell away from Candy. His car smelled like baby shit.

  The Post was rolled between the doorknob and the jamb and my first thought was that La Donna was out. Then I remembered how “out” she really was and I felt slammed again by that strange mixture of pain and relief.

  I hung up my suit, slipped on dungarees and did my hundred and fifty. Then I took the Post into the bedroom, turned on afternoon cartoons and lay down. It was three o’clock. Automatically I skipped from the movie section to comics to sports. I only liked two or three comic strips and had the most passing of passing interests in sports—mainly if the team was from New York it was nice if it won—but movies were my meat. I checked the four or five local movies on the Upper . West Side. Nothing registered and I wound up watching old Popeye and Mighty Mouse cartoons. Every time La Donna popped into my mind I raised the volume on the cartoons a little higher.

  Three books were stacked on my night table: Tropic of Capricorn, Franny and Zooey and Prize American Short Stories. I read a page in each. They all sucked, all were boring. Books were boring. I’d make some goddamn teacher. Maybe I could get a schedule that would let me teach only when I was in a good mood.

  Wait up. Hang in there, Kenny. You’re just out of shape. The thought struck me that now that she was gone I could get back into reading. Now that she was gone. It sounded to me like, “Now that I’m unemployed.” It might take some time to learn how to relax again, that’s all.

  At four o’clock I fell out When I woke up it was five twenty-three on the digital. My mouth felt dehydrated. I was having a nightmare about two Japanese lovers. A Japanese lady took her lover down to a spot on a beach in Japan where years before her husband, a sea captain, had gone down with his ship. The two Japs fuck and then fall asleep in the sand. A skeleton rises from the sea, floats up the beach, sticks out his tailbone over the sleepers and pantomimes spreading his asscheeks. They start strangling in some disgusting odor emanating from his nonexistent asshole. The skeleton is grinning like a bitch.

  I jumped out of bed in a panic. I realized I’d left my sample case in Candy’s car. Relax. Big (teal; I’ll get it tomorrow. I slumped down on the side of the bed. And what if I never saw that case again? What would I do? I got up and rifted through the Yellow Pages in the living room.

  There must be fifty colleges listed in New York City. I started writing down some of the names when suddenly I felt I had to get out of the house fast I was itchy and antsy.

  The phone rang, cutting off my escape.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello, does Kenny Becker still live at this number?”

  A big down. I didn’t need this. “Hi, Pop.”

  “Kenny? Is that you? Jeez, I forgot what your voice sounded like.”

  “Funny.”

  “How come you don’t call, yah big stiff?”

  “I called you last month!”

  “Last month! What are we, third cousins?”

  “C’mon, don’t break my back.” I wanted to say, “What do you want?” but I was afraid to be that short with him.

  “Listen buddy, can, uh, can you do me a favor?” Call your mother.

  “What kind of favor?”

  “Your old lady hasn’t heard from you in a while, and, ah, she’s kind of hurt. She’s in the other room. She don’t know I’m on the phone. Lemme hang up, and you give her a call now.”

  “I’ll call her later, okay?” Like next February.

  “Call her now.” That came out slightly like a no-nonsense order and my gut jerked. “I’ll call her later, Pop.” A defeated, disgusted hiss. “Thanks a lot.”

  “C’mon, Pop, I’ll call her later.”

  “Thank you very much.” He hung up. I knew there was no way I could call her later. I felt that whatever time existed between my old man’s directive and the phone call was limbo death time.

  I held out for ten minutes before I dialed. The line was busy. Ten minutes later, still busy. A half-hour later, still busy, I became obsessed. I couldn’t concentrate on anything but getting through. I tried reading again. I tried TV. After an hour I wigged and called the operator, checked with verification. They were talking. Another half-hour and I had the operator break in with a life-and-death interruption. “Ma!”

  “Kenny, are you okay?”

  “Jesus Christ! You tell me to call, then the goddamn phone’s busy for an hour and a half!” I was sweating. “Kenny, what are you talking about, who told you to call? I didn’t tell you to call.”
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br />   “Christ.” I felt like an asshole—a child.

  “So how are you?”

  “Fine,” I muttered.

  Silence. “And happy Valentine’s Day to you, too, my son.”

  Twenty minutes later I managed to get off the phone feeling like I had just been handed the receipt for the Brooklyn Bridge.

  I turned on some old Motown albums to wash my face by and lost myself in heavy fantasies about being a dancing, tuxedoed Temptation. Once again La Donna was front row center chewing her fingernails down to the wrist with frustration and regret.

  I went out food shopping on Broadway. Juice, Swiss cheese, chicken, chuck steak, eggs, vegetables. No candy, no cookies, no potatoes, no Pringles, no crap. In line I checked everybody else’s shopping carts with a feeling of superiority. It was amazing how ignorant and lazy women were about what poisons they shoved down their families’ throats. Their goddamn shopping carts should be rammed down their gullets. I caught myself grinding my teeth. When I got home it was almost six and I was starving. I threw the chuck steak on the broiler, boiled canned spinach, made a nice lettuce, tomato and cucumber salad, poured a big, frosty Tab, put the whole thing on a stack table and carried it into the bedroom. I loved to watch TV while I ate. The only thing on other than the news, which I never watched, was I Dream of Jeannie. I’d forgotten the silverware and the salt and brought them in. I forgot a napkin and I had to pee. It was okay; the longer I delayed eating, the better the food would taste when I finally got it down.

  Halfway through the steak I felt full but I kept eating. Jeannie’s gushy diction made me nauseated. The show, like everything else on TV, was geared for mental defectives. At one point near the end of the show, Jeannie grabbed Tony’s arm and said, “Oh, master, I’m so glad you liked it!” and started crying with joy. That gave me a lump in my throat and my eyes teared as if I were ready to cry along with her. My reaction felt totally out of my control and it alarmed me as much as if I had peed in bed.

  I turned off the set. Later for that. Screw TV. And screw me. I was thirty years old, and I might be dying, but I was still mobile. The playground didn’t do it anymore, but there had to be other things, other passions— the death I was feeling that afternoon was reversible and optional. Romance wasn’t the answer and television wasn’t the answer and talking to myself wasn’t the answer. I needed new scenes and new people. Not new girlfriends, just new friends. I thought of that dynamite feeling I’d had at the shoe store. Friends to bring me out. Help me out. Try with a little help from my friends. Go back to college and make new friends.

  I had to make me a new world. A new life. Call somebody up. Find a new friend. Who did I know? Maurice? Fat Al? Candy? Donny? The old merchant marine? No, new meat for the new me. Who… Jackie di Paris. No. Yes. No. Yes, and why not?

  Information had no Jackie di Paris. Then I recalled that that wasn’t his real name. John di Something. Di Mans. Marco. John di Marco.

  “John?”

  “Who’s this?”

  This is your new goddamn friend. “This is Kenny Becker. I was in line with you at Fantasia Monday. The Bluecastle Housewares guy.”

  “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, the guy from Burke Avenue.”

  “Right.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Nothing, I was just wondering how that turned out there.”

  “You didn’t see it?”

  “Nah, I was in the bar area the whole time.”

  “It went good, it went good. I made the finals, but ah, I ah, I don’t think I’m gonna go back. I didn’t like the house. How’d you get my number?”

  “Information. Listen, ah, my old lady went home to see her people for a few days and I was thinking about going to a movie or something. I dunno, you feel, you doing anything? I’m talking to the fucking walls here.” That was real hard.

  “Whata you mean?” He sounded suspicious.

  “I don’t mean nothin’. I mean you feel like hangin’ out.”

  “A movie?”

  No, I wanna suck your cock, you paranoid asshole. “Yeah, you know.”

  “Ah, I got something goin’ here about midnight.”

  “Well, you know, something about eight, nine, something fast.”

  “Yeah, I guess so, awright.” No enthusiasm whatsoever. I could almost sense him shrugging over the phone.

  “You wanna meet at eight o’clock? Forty-second and Broadway? There’s about a million movies down there.”

  “I gotta be back by midnight.”

  “No problem. Eight o’clock?”

  “Yeah.”

  The minute I hung up I felt like a jerk. He was the craziest angriest bastard I ever met. I could sure pick ‘em. Movies seemed a good idea, but not with him.

  I washed my dishes and scanned the Post. The Carnegie Cinema had Beach Red and The Loves of Isadora. I remembered Beach Red from college. It was a bitch of a war movie, and it was playing at eight-forty. If he didn’t want to see it, fuck him.

  I grabbed a cab in front of my house at a quarter to eight. As we rocketed down West End Avenue, a guy stood in the middle of the street straddling the double yellow line. He was hesitating, contemplating dashing out before the cab and beating it to the other side. I hated his guts. “Stay fucking there!” I hissed.

  The cab dropped me off at five to eight I stood waiting in the cold until the electronic time monitor on the Allied Chemical building registered eight-o-eight. I wasn’t going to goddamn freeze all night, so I split, walking uptown on Broadway.

  The night wasn’t much colder than the day and the streets were hopping. I hadn’t been to Times Square in a while and the place looked like a nighttime Mardi Gras in a Caribbean city. Mainly spades and Puerto Ricans. A lot of couples. Street magicians. I had never seen street magicians before. Guys hawked bright lime green phosphorescent chokers, dozens of them glowing up their arms. Every ten feet or so stood wasted-looking dudes, both young and old, handing out flyers and discount cards for massage parlors. Lots of traffic— mainly taxis—and everything was illuminated by that lunatic neon, rifling and bubbling like a heart right before cardiac arrest. There were crowds in front of most of the movie houses bunched around TV-sized preview screens.

  I passed a porno shop with a neon sign that caught my eye: LIVE NUDE GIRLS • 25c. As a rule I never went into porno stores because that shit would do nothing for you except tease you about what you didn’t have—if you did have, you wouldn’t be in there to begin with, but that sign was intriguing and in I went.

  The store was big and bright, and the smell that hit my nose the second I entered was a combination of come and Lysol. I walked through a magazine section to a long well-lit corridor lined with what looked like tall toilet stalls. About twenty guys cruised and strolled up and down the lane, examining the color photos framed on the side of each movie booth. There were red light bulbs over the stalls and the stalls that were locked had lit bulbs. When the bulb would go out, either the door would swing open and some eyes-down slob would emerge or the clink of a coin would be heard and the light would go on again. A middle-aged PR in a stocking cap and floral shirt swabbed the corridor with a mop and bucket When he came to an empty Stall, he swiped a few times at come on the floor.

  I walked up two steps to a change booth. In front of me was a darkened area that had more booths! arranged in a long U shape. From somewhere in the middle of the booths I heard a girl’s voice over a microphone: “Oh dat feel so goooot, dodd-dy,” followed by a lot of droning moaning. I gave the guy at the change stall two singles. He tapped the bottom of what looked like a microscope and four quarters dropped into his palm. He tapped it again and handed me eight quarters. I slipped into a booth and locked it behind me. I felt around in the darkness for a coin slot and dropped in my two bits. I put the rest of the quarters in my mouth. For five seconds nothing happened and I figured I was supposed to beat off in the dark. Then I heard a whining hum and a glass window a foot wide revealed itself, as a metal plate slid open in front of my
face. At first all I could see was a red glow, but as my eyes adjusted my dick almost burst through the wall. The window looked onto a-red-carpeted, red-tinted, small, U-shaped room. In the middle, about five feet from my nose, a totally nude girl lay spread-eagled on her back on a slowly rotating pedestal. With one hand she was diddling her clit and with the other she held a microphone to her mouth. Her head hung backward off the edge of the platform; the look on her face, glassy disinterest, as if she was on downers. Her eyes traveled around the room as she slowly revolved, staring upside-down into the faces in the booths surrounding her. Every few seconds without changing her expression she moaned into the mike. My prick was in my hand. Like faces in the car of a com-muter train, there were fifteen heads in my line of vision around the U. Fifteen guys in booths like mine with facial expressions ranging from “Marry me” to “Oh God, I’m coming” to “Hey, I’m just waiting for a friend.” Some guys were obviously jerking off. Either that or they were so cold they were shaking. Others smoked cigarettes. Some waved at her like they were movie fans at a celebrity premiere and she was one of the stars.

  My booth hummed again, the metal plate slid shut and a bright light came on. I freaked, stood motionless waiting for the cops to kick in the door of my stall, the pop and flash of photographers only doing their job. Nothing. I spit a quarter into my hand, dropped it into the slot and the booth darkened again. I welcomed the darkness. It felt as comforting as ten minutes’ extra sleep. The glass grew as the metal receded and I proceeded to jerk off. The keys in my coat pocket jangled loudly with every motion of my arm. I put them on the floor and continued in silence. A second chick entered the room. She was Latin and naked except for an Indian headdress. “Fellas, welcome White Sparrow!” a male voice announced over a PA system, and abruptly disco music was piped into the place. The girl on the pedestal sat up, then rolled off her stage. White Sparrow climbed on top of the pedestal and started dancing. Watching all this, I was totally absorbed and spaced at the same time. As White Sparrow danced, the other chick unwound, about twenty feet of wire and moved from booth to booth with the mike, talking to the guys like Art Linkletter cruising his audience on House Party. She stood on tiptoes and peered down inside. “C’mon, Daddy, lemme see wha’ choo got. Yeah, aw, aw das tiny.” The next booth. “C’mon. C’mon, ooo, das a nice one. There there, ah ah. Ah, there you go. Oh my God, all over! Yeah!. C’mon, dat all you gonna show me?” She moved on down the line coaxing guys into jerking off over the mike. I started jacking off in earnest while staring at her ass and White Sparrow’s muff. I wanted to finish fast and slip it back inside before she stopped at my booth. “You don’ wanna show me?” She hassled an old guy with rimless glasses. “You don’ wanna show me, huh?” The guy smiled, embarrassed, and mouthed something through the glass. The metal plate began covering his screen, and .she ducked her head inside his shrinking . view. “Put another quarter in! Put another quarter in!”