Tales of Times Square: Expanded Edition (32 page)

Sammy began handing out his professional business card. He gave out hundreds a week to girls “in the field.”

“All my life,” he explained, “I’ve tried to get girls without success. Finally I figured out how.”

The card reads:

YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED as a potential model for OUI Magazine. To arrange for a test shooting and an interview, please call Monday to Friday, 10AM to 4PM.

About one in twenty might call, and maybe one in fifty would actually show for an appointment.

“The Palladium is too chic to tell men not to use the ladies room,” said Sammy, staking out the long line. “Sometimes I think of giving my passes to burly Negroes on the street, with the provision they all file in and take a dump. It would be interesting to see the ladies’ reactions.”

I finally tried tossing out a few pickup lines myself, Sammy Grubman-style. Sure enough, the girls kept walking. “He’s a millionaire!” Sammy shouted after one. She hesitated a moment, then her friend grabbed her arm to pull her along. A ringleader emerged from each clique to steer the prettiest or most amenable girl away from Sammy. “Sure, walk away. We’re casting a major movie!” Sammy reverberated, as two bolted away from him like frightened does. Then two chicks in a lounge chair accused Sammy of eavesdropping. He asked if he could buy them drinks.

“We have boyfriends upstairs.”

“Well, if they’re giving you any trouble, let us know.”

“They give us love,” said one girl cheerily, and both headed for the stairs.

“Your boyfriends are garbage men,” posited Sammy. He became more indignant over every fellow he saw accompanying a beauty. “There goes Mr. Bozo. I’d like to pull down that guy’s pants and humiliate him in front of his girlfriend,” said Sammy, voicing his own worst fear. “Oh, ugggh, there goes one, you might as well pass out.”

Thousands of single chumps paid twenty bucks to enter and six bucks per drink. And every one of them sounded like a schmuck, you couldn’t
not
sound like a schmuck. Even a Nobel Laureate like Jonas Salk or Isaac Singer or Senator Daniel Patrick Moynahan wouldn’t have a chance in hell, they’d be spat upon here. But Sammy was leading the League of Schmucks with the lowest batting average I’d ever seen.

Shark’s Office

The next morning Sammy and I visited Shark’s agency, Tops Models. The Stud was also there. Catalogs from the real top model agencies were splayed across his desk. Tear sheets of models whom Shark had never met were ripped from fashion magazines, affixed to walls and sticking out of files. The telephone was on the ring “from the coast.”

During business hours, Shark wore his coyote fur and cowboy hat with stained bell bottoms circa 1967. There was always the suspicious air of a colostomy bag about. Sammy believed Shark wore one, but never dared ask.

The other night, Shark and the Stud were rejected at Stringfellow’s entrance as
persona non grata.
Sammy suggested Shark call the crack hotline on the doorman. Shark turned stone sober: “I don’t drop a dime on anyone,” said Shark. “That’s no joke. I don’t even wanna associate with a man who jokes like that.”

But Shark did associate with Grubman and his shabby model agency steered dozens of girls Grubman’s way for “interviews.”

“All I do is sit at home,” said Sammy. “You’d never in a hundred years figure such an easy way to meet girls. I’ve got ‘em comin’ right to the door, don’t have to lift a finger... God takes care of men like me this way.”

“It ain’t God, buddy,” explained Shark. “Anyone good enough to give my girls work is good enough to fuck ‘em.”

Occasionally the more experienced models who came to Shark’s office would stand up and yell, “Fake! Fraud!” then bolt out the door. But most prospects stayed through their interviews. Shark would take on almost anybody. He delivered soulful, eye-to-eye pep talks to secretaries and A&P checkout girls as they left his office with a printout of modeling leads— usually pilfered from that week’s
BackStage
magazine.

The Stud, decked out in his cockpit jacket, was headed for a model’s convention at the New York Hilton. All the best cunt on the planet would be there, he said, licking his chops. He was aiming for Paulina Porizkova tonight.

“I don’t care how beautiful she is,” said Shark. “Someday her husband or someone is gonna get tired of fucking her. I think you got a shot, pal.”

And then Shark looked me over, as I was initiated into the club. “You wanna gamble with top models,” he said, “you get bigger payoffs, or bigger rejections. You gotta remember, as consolation, when these girls reach thirty they start to fall apart, they’re going to spend the next forty years looking terrible with nobody paying attention to them. Meanwhile, you’ll be on the rise, Jack.”

“I take great pleasure in realizing that,” said Sammy.

The Stud himself had a hard time last night at the Palladium. He denied botching it with Ford model Meg Calendar.

“You struck out,” came Shark, “you hit the mud with her, buddy.”

“I talked to her for ten minutes.”

“That’s right, buddy, all you did was
talk.”

“What?! I’ll eat her brains out. I’ll fuck the shit outta her! When
I
want to!” yelled the Stud, jabbing his finger.

“She’ll spit you out like dirt!” came Shark. Disgusted, the Stud downed his beer and headed out for the convention, slamming the door.

“There goes the consummate professional,” said Shark of his protégé, shaking his head, bemused. “Don’t ever underestimate him. He’s a 15th round knockout artist. Bastard’ll probably fuck Paulina, Vendela
and
Helena. Doze chicks’ll be all over him like a cheap suit. He’s lethal. Michael can get any girl he wants, girls who’ve turned down hundreds of guys. The later it gets in the night, the more the killer instinct comes out. This is like Leonardo da Vinci designing a ship. This is like Michelangelo painting a chapel.”

Then he chuckled knowingly. “Except Meg Calendar... I dunno.”

Meg Calendar was the crown jewel in Shark’s stable. “Boner City,” said Sammy, leafing through her portfolio, wincing in pain. An absolute 10, she made the rest of Shark’s stable resemble, in Sammy’s estimation, “a pig sty.” She was a Ford model who maintained some mysterious allegiance to Shark from her early days. Meg still sought Shark’s career advice, perhaps out of pity. Somehow, Shark procured Meg a small part in a
Miami Vice
episode, along with bikini walk-ons in a few Hollywood movies. He kept her Ford Agency portfolio front and center on his desk.

I skimmed through it. Every pose was haughty, superior, sophisticated. Height 5’8”, size 8, bust 34D, waist 24, hips 34. She had a blonde mane teased around her forehead like a lion. But apparently Meg Calendar was too cold for anybody to
like.
Too fabulous for her own good. The only thing people viewed her as was a goddess. Shark showed a clipping of her from last week’s
Post,
posing with Fabio, her male counterpart, at the Palladium. If a cartoon thinking balloon were to accompany the photo, it would say, “Don’t even
think
about it, Fab.”

“Diz chick don’t need Fabio,” said Shark. “All she’s gotta do is stand in front of a mirror and masturbate.”

“When I first saw her I turned my head away,” Grubman confessed, “’cause I knew I’d feel deprived the rest of my life. Why go on living? When I see her pictures, I know I’ll feel sick for years for not being able to get her.”

“I walked up to Menahem Golan [of Golan-Globus Productions] at a party with her,” recalled Shark. “He cleared people away and treated me like royalty. ‘Mr. Golan,’ I says, ‘I’d like to send you her pictures and résumé.’ He takes out a pen and writes down my number and everything, says to make sure I send ‘em pronto.

“Lemme tell ya about diz chick, okay,” continued Shark. “She’s the most ruthlessly ambitious model l’ve ever known. She’s a stormtrooper of ambition. She eats up guys and spits them out. Lesbians try for her, just like construction workers. As a matter of fact, there’s only one guy who might have a shot at her.” “Who’s that?” I asked.

“You, my friend.”

“Me?”

“You could have her. Meg Calendar can be in your bed. But only if you follow my instructions. I know diz chick like the back of my hand. She don’t need sex with nobody, she just looks in the mirror and comes. She’s a narcissist.”

Shark did seem to have some sort of odd past with the model, who long since left his humble agency for Ford. She was a glacial tower all right, and wouldn’t look twice at another human being unless they were an A-list movie director. Yet she still called him, the lowest modeling agent in New York, even had lunch with him between $10,000 assignments.

“Lemme tell ya ‘bout diz chick. She pisses ice water. I know guys with a little money who hang around model agencies, lookin’ to take ‘em out. They don’t even try. Meg is high-stakes poker, pal. You’re playin’ cards with Amarillo Slim. You’ll never be the one to fuck her. She’ll fuck you.”

“Literally or figuratively?”

“Both... Okay, lemme tell ya how ya gotta deal with diz chick,” said Shark. His voice lowered, as if imparting the most classified military instructions. “Ya gotta bullshit a little the first time, it’s the only way one of dese models will see ya. Do you have any movie contacts we could start with?”

As a matter of fact I had, sort of. For starters, a couple of old friends up at
Saturday Night Live.
I occasionally attended rehearsals. In a few weeks the guest host was going to be Francis Ford Coppola.

“Francis?” said Shark. “That’s perfect! She’d kill to be in one of his movies. I’ll call her right away.”

Shark called Meg on the spot, told her he’s got this good friend he’d like to fix her up with who’s tight with
SNL.
He said who the guest host was going to be and that the friend could bring her up to rehearsals in a few weeks, introduce her to Francis, then maybe attend the cast party after the show airs.

“You’re rollin’, buddy,” said Shark, hanging up the phone. “When you meet her, just tell her
Francis”
he instructed. “Don’t even say his last name. She’ll know Francis. If you say his last name, you’ll blow the whole deal. You let her meet Francis, get a few drinks into diz bitch, don’t take much to get ‘er drunk, and buddy, she’ll fuck you so long and hard you’ll have to fight your way up for air. I won’t even hear back from you for weeks, you’ll be so busy. She’s got Beatty, Nicholson, Michael Douglas callin’ her every day, desperate to get in her pants. None of ‘em scored. But they ain’t no match for you, Josh, so long as you follow what I say.”

Sammy had been speechless but now felt compelled to offer his own expertise. “Ya gotta pretend you do this every day at
Saturday Night Live’’
he coached. “Like it’s nothing, you’re a big shot.”

“Remember,” said Shark, “all she wants is to become a movie star.”

“And if she gets it, then what’s she gonna do?”

“That’s a philosophical question,” replied the wizened model agent.

Sammy’s Office

In Sammy’s universe, he faced opposition on three fronts: Women Against Pornography; lawsuits from enraged parents of wayward girls who’d come to New York to do porn; and Stephanie Mason, his stiffest competition, who edited a handful of fetish publications. At this moment, they were both working for the same company.

“I hate her,” said Sammy of the tall female editor down the hall. They competed for girls. They sent jailbait prospects each other’s way. They were both out to sink each other’s ships. Stephanie was a master pornographer, also considered a goddess by many admirers. A witch at getting girls
nekkid.
A female Svengali at the seduction game necessary to keep the pipeline of puss happening. (Which paid most gals, incidentally, a measly few hundred bucks per photo shoot.) She had a greater grasp of the male sexual point of view than any man in the business and could hold her own with any misogynist.

“Check out this cover shot,” said Stephanie, behind her desk. She displayed one of her ass magazines featuring the derrière of an aging porn starlet. She opened the photo spread. “Look how her asshole remains perfectly clefted, which is amazing considering the multitudes who’ve fucked her up the butt,” observed Stephanie, with scientific detachment. “And she never needed lubricant. I asked how she did this and she said it was just natural excitement. She gets wet there.”

Half Amazon, half intellectual, Mason oversaw five titles a month, each a masturbatory bible for a different fetish. Current mags she edited catered to asshole obsessions, fake jailbait and feet.

“I won’t run photos like these,” she said, scrupling at a box of color slides on the desk. “I showed them to a proctologist friend of mine. He explained the girl, who’s a crack addict, had a prolapsed anus. A very bad trend in the industry.”

Stephanie Mason’s girlie copy resounded with psychodrama. The fantasy personalities she bestowed upon photos of unwitting nude models were sweet, sticky, psychodramatic and charged with girlie frustrations. (“Hi, my name is Linda, and I love going around sucking out used scumbags.”) It’s speculated that several young lovelies committed suicide as a result of reading their own girlie copy.

Stephanie presented a vibrating plastic tongue. She sent out dozens of them as Christmas favors to older fans, whose own tongues had perhaps lost steam. She loved awkward proletarian porn, amateur Kodak moments from heartland Americans who fell for the porn hack con. She received hundreds of letters. She opened every one, her favorite part of the job.

“Look at this one,” she said, unfolding a letter from one of her regular readers—a Queens janitor who signed his correspondence as the Monistat 7 Man. “He worships at the altar of yeast infections.”

She unveiled a set of photos from her latest brainstorm, introduced in her newest title,
Untouchable.
“Locker Room Dare,” in which college girls are challenged to snap one another naked for publication. The first contacts are hot indeed—two nifty chicks surreptitiously posing at their basketball team lockers. Stephanie receives the film rolls fresh from the girls’ cameras for her own smut laboratory to develop.