Tales of Times Square: Expanded Edition (28 page)

Eighth & 42nd subway entrance, above penny arcade, on an innocent Saturday afternoon. Wait until dark.

Following photos from the collection of the author, except where otherwise noted.

CHINA VAGINA: The Stud on a roll at the China Club, 1986.

IDENTITY VICES: Playland, Broadway near 42nd, where countless bobbysoxers came of age.

OBSCENE ACRES: Fresh air! Times Square! Josh on Forty Doo-Wop.

DOWN IN THE ALLEY: Josh, right, on dumpster detail for
Screw,
with Annie Sprinkle and Marc Stevens.

PRIDE OF THE YANKERS: The Great One, Al Goldstein, marshals instructions during twilight years of
Screw
and
Midnight Blue.

SQUARE GUY: I always got the sense that Don Normal, right, considered
me
the oddball.

A WORKING ACT: Former Hubert’s attraction Harold Smith dispensing quarters at Playland, 1986.

BOSOM BUDDIES: “Mr. Burlesque,” Bob Anthony, left, and B’way boxer Manny Rosen at the Melody B. in the late ’70s.

WHEN
SEX
WAS
DIRTY

GOD’S GIFT TO WOMEN

I had just suffered a month hanging out with New York’s reigning “strikeout king”—an otherwise cunning men’s magazine editor named Sammy Grubman. Poor Grubman spent his summer dreaming up endless ruses to score women—bogus rock video auditions, swimsuit contests, photo “test shoots” for his mag. Dumbstruck, I joined him in his nightly rounds at the Palladium and Studio 54 as he hit upon ballrooms of females. In his rumpled suit, skinny black tie, thick glasses, with nasal whine and Sen-Sen breath, I watched him viciously strike out under the rotating disco ball. I even got into the rhythm of failure with him, tossing out some dumb pickup lines myself. Losing wind after a hundred No’s, he repositioned to the girls’ powder room. The most common retort from spandexed chicks exiting, as Grubman propositioned each for a drink, was simply, “Fuck you.” By 4
A.M.
, reeling from the dread of such monumental rejection, Grubman would bomb himself to sleep with codeine pills.

I too began wondering whether all women in New York were paranoid men-haters, terrified to smile at a stranger. Or was it just Grubman, rubbing off on me?

During this time, a fringe show-biz agent pal of ours named Shark began relating tales of the greatest barroom pickup artist alive. Shark reflected upon his own glory years in the 1960s. His organs malfunctioning from middle-aged alcoholism, Shark grew moist in reminiscence over the only activity that really mattered—sliding his pecker into trainloads of girls. He called this perpetual state of scoring a “roll.”

“It’s a beautiful thing, being on a
roll”
Shark recalled, his voice hoarse from substance abuse. “Catching the rhythm and keeping it up night after night. While you’re fucking one broad, you’re planning tomorrow’s menu. You establish your turf, your nightclubs, your clique of celebs, then the broads flock to
you
each night. But once you’re out of the rhythm, Jack, it’s
very
hard to get back in.”

Shark definitely seemed to have lost his chops as a pickup artist, along with his best clients and his dough. He ran a skid-row agency, Tops Models, for mostly unemployable bush-leaguers—A&P checkout girls and bar hostesses with big dreams and bigger tits. Real lookers some were, but cursed by being an inch too short for Ford, a pound too heavy for Elite. They were unschooled and gawky in their runway gait. Some had white-trash bruises that healed slowly.