Tales of Times Square: Expanded Edition (13 page)

“I’m still not satisfied,” she said to the interviewers. “I want a hundred more.” But her tired eyes told a different story. Besides, there were no more participants left. Many had departed during the long wait. She claimed that she herself had experienced approximately twenty-four orgasms. What gave her so many was “the feeling of so many guys coming inside me. It was a powerful experience.”

Her longest blow and fuck was yet to come. It was almost as though they had rigged the whole thing for this moment, the only way they could get off on each other. For Tara’s husband, John, number eighty-three in succession, was slowly, solemnly removing his clothes. His wife lay on the mat alone, finally prepared for him; she had fulfilled the prerequisites of their lovemaking. He began by kissing her upturned nose, which turned her into a mass of girlish giggles. But then her eyes turned to fire and she descended on his cock with a hunger like never before. The hushed media at large watched on as though it were the culmination of a royal circumcision. Tarn was true to her man at last.

Pecker Full of Miracles

It was publisher Al Goldstein who wanted to see if Larry Levenson could shoot off his pecker the way he could his mouth.

“I can come eighteen times in one day, easily,” Levenson bragged to Al while visiting the
Screw
executive offices. Al declared this was impossible. “Look, why would I lie?” Levenson sputtered. “I’ve done it many times. Can’t you?”

Levenson would do an Edgar Kennedy slow burn whenever anyone doubted his claim. His time was wasted by merely stating such an obvious fact. When Goldstein finally bet $500 that he couldn’t do it—couldn’t even come
fifteen
times in one day—Levenson set aside a Friday night at his club, Plato’s Retreat, to prove his prowess. And on that night, the King of Swing could find not one woman amid the vast vaginal resources of Plato’s to participate. The bet was called off for a week; Goldstein laughed his way home.

Meanwhile, an odd series of events set the innocent little bet snowballing.

Candy Samples and her legendary jugs were booked on 42nd Street. The Roxy Burlesk, in a bid for respectability, had solicited her services from California. Candy’s drawing power was worth a $3,000-a-week salary, and a limo with bodyguards to usher her back and forth from the Plaza Hotel, where they’d put her up.

I arrived at Candy’s dressing room one night to make arrangements for a
Midnight Blue
shoot—we’d interview her in a champagne bubble bath. Candy graciously agreed to meet our video cameras in her hotel room the next day.

But, back at the
Screw
office, I got this call from a certain “Butch Katz.” Butch said he owned the Roxy as well as several other Times Square establishments, and would I be interested in doing the Candy Samples shoot at his posh new ultra-modern swing club in Jersey? They might not let video cameras into the Plaza, he said, and besides, the “super-sized, luxurious hot tub would be a knockout setting for Miss Samples.” I agreed that it would. Unfortunately, though, it was already the night of the interview, too late to switch plans.

“No problem,” said Butch. “It’s only ninety minutes by car, and the club is
beeyoodyful
. Even Larry Levenson would flip if he saw it.” In fact, Butch persisted, “Why don’t you plan on doing the interview there, and bring Levenson with you. Okay, pal?”

Levenson, I explained, was preparing for a bet against Al Goldstein, and wouldn’t be able to make it. I filled in the details.

“No man can come fifteen times,” Butch declared flatly. “Will Al be there?”

“Yeah.”

Butch asked me to hold, then came back. “I’m a gambler,” he said, “I bet horse races, football games. I can’t resist a good bet. My partner and I would like to bet $10,000 cash that Larry can’t do it. And if he does, I’d be honored to lose.”

I quickly relayed this information to Levenson by phone.

“Tell those fuckin’ greaseballs they’re on! Get the cash, bring it here for proof, and I’ll start coming on the spot—right in their fuckin’ face. I need the money bad.... Now I gotta go, I’m busy fuckin’.” [phone slam].

The principals of this bet finally connected, and a date was set for Friday 9
P.M.
The paydirt between Larry and Butch diminished to a neighborly $5,000, while Larry took an extra $1,600 in side bets. Butch said that he consulted with his livesex performers, all of whom assured him it was impossible to come fifteen times in one day. And Goldstein’s sex doctors from institutes—he has loads of them—cried no way. Maybe a freak sixteen-year-old with souped-up hormones could come close, but not a forty-five-year-old, potbellied bullshit artist who just got sentenced to eight years for tax evasion.

Larry indeed grew cockier next time he phoned me: “Tell those assholes to come down at four o’clock and watch me start fucking. Baseball players need batting practice, right? Well, I’ll be warming up all day, hours before the event. Oughta come six times before nine o’clock, and I want those assholes to come and watch me spurt. I’ll even shoot some in their face for ‘em.”

I delicately reworded Larry’s request to the 42nd Street boys.

“What, is he, nuts?” asked Butch. “He’s gonna fuck all day
before
the contest? I know a good bet when I see one.”

It’s the night before the contest, and I’m now in this bet up to my neck. Butch calls me to insist that the rules state Lev will have to produce each of his orgasms with a woman. Lev is not allowed to palm it; if he runs out of women, he loses by default.

“I wanna see him come with girls, either fuckin’ or blowin’. I don’t care if he fucks ‘em in the ass, between the tits, so long as he pulls out before coming. But no jerkin’ off.”

Butch confides that in a few weeks he has to “go away for a year.” He isn’t sure which prison they’re sending him to, but shit, he wants “more than just the memory of Larry Levenson jerking off to take along.”

Friday, 9
P.M.
: A screeching cab deposits me at Plato’s Retreat. Sitting at the liquorless Plato’s bar is Mark Lee Smith, Illinois blues musician and Master of Barbecue, who once actually did some time in medical school. Butch has requested an “official judge” in case of jismic disagreements—someone not connected with him, the newspaper, or Levenson. I’d spotted Mark on the street that morning and asked if he’d like the $200 gig—officiating Levenson’s orgasms.

“I got this great new girlfriend who I’d hate to miss a Friday night with,” he said. “But I could buy her a new dress and a coupla bottles of Roderer Cristal with the two bills.”

Mark always has a great girlfriend by his side, but tonight he sits alone on a stool, long and lanky, black hair bending into a perfect duck’s ass behind his neck—a Conrad Birdie of sorts.

“I don’t wanna fuck no one up with a bad call,” he worries. “You sure these mobsters won’t bash my brains in?”

I reassure Mark, then stroll with him past a
DO NOT ENTER
sign, through two closed doors, into a hard-boiled lair that looks like it was decorated by a bookie. A few cluttered desks with all sorts of telephones, bare walls and floor, harsh lightbulb, a refrig here, an ashtray there—Levenson’s inner sanctum is as cozy as an underground parking lot’s office. This must be where the King of Swing conducts business, takes phone calls, dresses, does the books, clips his toenails, and, no doubt, finds time to fuck. There are a half-dozen unhappy people frozen in place. Something is not right.

A short, fat man with puffy eyes and cheeks stands up from reading tonight’s rule sheet, extending a hand.

“Hi, I’m Butch. It’s good to meet at last.” Several teeth are missing up front, and I sense a hushed strain in his voice, like that of a child holding back tears. “This is Dave,” Butch continues, “the best stud on 42nd Street. He worked my sex show all day, but I brought him down to watch a shift. He knows orgasms.”

A skinny, long-haired kid with tattoos covering his arms, snaps out of a bored daze to shake my hand. Each of his tattoos is an indistinct illustration, as though they were all botched. Somewhere near his shoulder is the inscription
Born to Raise Hell
. He is too marred for porn films, and thus has opted for a 42nd Street career.

I announce Mark Lee Smith as tonight’s official judge of jizz. Mark shrinks off onto a corner stool, playing it cool, low-profile. A close brunette companion of Larry’s is propped up on a chair with a headache, and an attendant secures the door shut. Butch and Larry are in a tizzy, it seems, and the air feels thick with disagreement.

Butch directs me to #7 on the rule sheet, which states that “Larry may utilize flutters, watermelons, strokebooks, or harems of women to summon forth the gop. If no women show, however, his palm must suffice.”

“I crossed out everything but
women
,” says Butch. “I told him no masturbation, no tricks—just women, that’s all I care about.”

This had been a shady criterion all along, and I have spent the day fearing the whole event will be called off over it. Just two weeks ago, the King of Swing had pathetically canceled his $500 Goldstein bet because he couldn’t find a female soul to ball. Butch looks at me like a timid puppy, a well of doubt in his eyes.

“I told him I got fuckin’ broads all over the place who’ll get me off!” snaps Levenson, storming toward me. “But the rule sheet says I can use watermelons!” He fumbles his finger across the page, breathing heavily, sinuses swollen. “Right here, watermelons, it says, that means I can use anything.”

Larry and Butch don’t appear to be on speaking terms. For the moment, at least, they don’t face each other while talking.

“It’s gotta be women only,” states Butch, gazing at me for clarification with a stubborn, koala bear expression.

“You don’t really plan to use watermelons?” I ask Larry.

“No, of course not. But I don’t see what difference it makes what the hell I use—an orgasm’s an orgasm.... Sure, I’ll use women only, if he wants. I got lots of ‘em here tonight. But I don’t know what you need a rule sheet for, I’m just gonna come fifteen times, period, over and out.”

Butch takes me aside and further confides his fear that Lev may have some cunning tricks—perhaps the girls have “sperm capsules”—something along the lines of what John Wayne’s opponent would have bit and spit out for a bloody jaw, after a punch. Or maybe he was crazy enough to have some sort of sperm bank implanted?

“I don’t care how many broads he uses at once,” states Butch to the room at large, “or how he fucks ‘em, as long as he pulls outta their mouth or cunt before he shoots, so we can see it.”

Levenson’s black hair is slicked back, his bared teeth look like the work of a mediocre dentist, and his bushy eyebrows become cross. “Don’t worry,” he says, “I pull out before coming and move my hands clear away, all right?” He throws up his hands, thrusts out his pelvis, and gyrates like Ralph Kramden, irritably mocking his future orgasms. “All right?”

Which brings us to the second order of uncertainty—the consistency of orgasm; the visibility of a “
certifiable, milky-white, spunky, funky orgasm, capable of impregnating a woman. No dry spasms, piss or clear drops of ‘dog water,’
” according to the glib rule sheet, concocted several days before at the
Screw
offices.

Lev’s response: “I don’t know what the fuck color it comes out, so don’t give me this dog-water bullshit. Of course the consistency changes after a few times, becomes clearer. When I come, you’ll know it, you’ll see it shoot out. I don’t know how far it’ll shoot. Gimme a break; when you come, you come.”

Furthermore, Levenson balks over having more than one judge in the room, even though at least two are necessary for impartiality and protection of interests. “Let’s let Al decide,” threatens one party to the other as they continue disagreeing over rules.

Thankfully, Goldstein chooses this very moment to arrive with a small group. His golden presence relieves me, and drains out a pressure cooker of tension in the room. Finally at ease with the rules, Levenson dons his King of Swing robe. Butch lounges against a wall, a gambler, gentleman, and self-proclaimed “good loser.”

“I just hope Levenson is too. That’s the only thing I worry about,” he tells me.

And so, at nine-fifteen, our sporting little entourage spills out of Larry’s back office and treks through 23,000 square feet of Plato’s Retreat—past the “Famous Hot & Cold Buffet,” the “Arabian Tent Fit for a Sheik,” the thickening crowd on the disco floor, and the locker room area, where mountains of fresh towels await their pick to absorb the glandular discharges of a thousand swingers strong. I follow in procession as we walk through mazelike corridors of lounge rooms. I can’t resist yanking up curtains, many of which reveal a boff scene in progress—a long landscape of naked swingers, as oblivious as museum exhibits in a Pentagon of poon. Levenson confidently leads the way through his kingdom, pausing to settle a question here, instruct an attendant there, and pick up his women.

In the very back corner of Plato’s, last in the line of curtained cubicles, sits Levenson’s private swing area—the “King-of-Swing room.” Its black wooden door is presumably kept shut when the King bangs through a nightly procession of dames who come to test his mettle. The swing room is elevated by several concrete steps and a rail. Tonight, a guard is stationed outside.

The entire Goldstein-Levenson entourage squeezes in to christen the event. The floor is entirely cushioned, with huge pillows along the sides. A stained-glass mirror lines the back wall, and a master phone bank emits muffled beeps, like some exotic bird. It is an economy-size, middle-class, bastardization of an Arabian sultan’s orgy room—perfect for Larry Levenson. The unusual adornment to this quarters, however, is a monstro six-foot airbrushed blowup of Al Goldstein’s face—retouched and prettified like a
Playboy
centerfold—which stares over the whole room from its perch, angled so that its reflection fills the mirror across from it.

The Boss of
Screw
beams at his portrait, more confident that Lev will not win—after all, Al’s image curses the room like some god of impotence, and will stare Larry down before each orgasm, unless he closes his eyes.