Tales of Times Square: Expanded Edition (38 page)

“Looks safe,” I shrugged, handing it back. “But can’t we go to my hotel room? You’ll love it, cost ten bucks, twice as much as yours.”

“I don’t go to nobody’s room... Where’d you say it was?”

The hooker requested that Rosa, her partner, wait outside the door, and I agreed. Her name was Sherri and she was twenty-one—four whole years older than me, which made a hell of a difference. She was a woman, not a girl, like my schoolmates. As a matter of fact, she reminded me of Liz Taylor in
Suddenly Last Summer,
and I couldn’t believe she was so casually walking with me into a sexual encounter. I snuck a look at her ‘hind end, which jiggled right into my solar plexus. The two hookers and I strolled up 8th Avenue, all lighting up Marlboros. Then Sherri put her arm around my waist.

We all entered the Sherman Hotel, where my safe room awaited. As we reached the narrow staircase, a crude gate came crashing down, activated by the old man in the booth.

“What gives?” I asked.

“We don’t allow no prostitutes in here. We respect the law.”

“What?” I stammered, incredulously, while Sherri rolled her eyes. “You know, I travelled all the way in from Pittsburgh on business for a company meeting at your hotel. And you’re saying we can’t conduct the meeting here?”

“Chief, you cannot bring
any
women up to the rooms.”

“My God, I’ll lose the account.” My voice jumped an octave.

“What type of account is that?” came the old man.

“Monsanto burlap and sorghum products.” Pure nervous energy was running my show. I tugged at the anti-hooker gate, solid as a jail. I prayed the man would believe me. I didn’t even know what burlap and sorghum were—just remembered them as national products of Third World nations in social studies reports. Now my virginity was on the line.

Sherri and her sidekick were giggling. She put in her two cents: “Look, we got a burlap buyers’ conference in the morning. We need to go over the books ta-night!”

“You wanna go upstairs alone, fine, but no whores or pips,” the man said straight to me.

Sherri turned to leave. “Why don’t you come down the street to my hotel. It’s okay, really.” I was terrified of those fleabag joints, didn’t know who would pop out of the closet. But I followed after Sherri, before my prize hooker disappeared into the sea after I’d spent three hours picking her out. I even felt romantic.

“You sure it’s cool in there?” I asked.

“Christ, yeah, I’m there all the time... Listen, honey, I’ve spent a whole half-hour trying to settle down with you. I can’t waste another minute.” The honeymoon was over, her voice strictly business. “Follow me.”

Five minutes later, we stepped up a flight of stairs where a long line of impatient hookers and dazed johns awaited the Fulton Hotel registration desk. The johns had to sign in as “Mrs. & Mrs.,” Sherri explained, due to some quirk of the law. They were then issued five-dollar “honeymoon suites,” where the clerk wished them a pleasant thirty-minute stay. My adrenaline activated, I began congratulating all the old gents ahead of me for getting married. The man in front accepted my handshake with a nod and thanks. I complimented the fellow behind for choosing one helluva bride.

When I reached the desk, I pulled out a wad of bills, which Sherri studied carefully. I had started with a hundred bucks, minus the ten for the Sherman room. Now I plucked out a five, then signed the register “Mr. & Mrs. Quickfuck.” The register was thick, thousands of marriages puffing up the pages with ink.

Once this business was complete, I became withdrawn, following Sherri to room 27. Rosa stayed in the lobby. My next function—sticking it in for the first time in this 8th Avenue fleabag—now seemed like an unpleasant ritual I had to perform. I wasn’t sure if I would have preferred to just talk.

The honeymoon suite was a stale-smelling cubicle. The window peered upon an enclosed, graying, brick-wall shaft. I locked the door with a tiny hook. The floor wasn’t level, and the queen-size bed sagged with a terrible loneliness. Not one genuinely married couple had ever slept on it. Sherri pulled the bedspread down, something she did a dozen times a night.

“Wha’d you say yer name was?”

“George. George Disoto.” Once, in high school, a kid named George Disoto had blurted out my name to the cops when he got busted for dealing hash. I decided I would thereafter summon forth Disoto’s name when I needed an alias.

“Well, George, honey. What was it you were interested in?” Sherri seemed a bit tired and professional now, removing her pocketbook strap from around her shoulder. I suddenly noticed a nasal congestion in her voice, and a sloth-like droop to her eyelids. I checked her arms for needle marks, but they were smooth as Ivory Snow.

“You know. Just the regular stuff,” I shrugged. Sex was no longer on my mind. “I’ll congratulate you if you can get it up,” I suddenly said, hoping she’d think I was an old hand who just happened to call on a pro tonight. She didn’t seem to suspect I was a pathetic first-timer.

“Well, a
half-and-half
is fifty,” she said. I was confused. “You know, that’s where I blow ya first, then we fuck.” I fumbled for my bills and counted out fifty for the hooker. This was twice the going rate for girls on 8th Avenue. She bagged the money quickly, then sat down on the bed, in no rush to get undressed. We only had a half-hour, and she’d stretch every minute she could doing nothing.

She casually walked to the bathroom, picking through her purse, adjusting her hair, while she told me to “get comfortable” on the bed.

“You know,” I heard from the bathroom, “you’re not so lively as a while ago. What happened?”

“Well, I guess I’m not in my usual hotel room,” I said. I realized that if I was going to stick in in every hole she’s got, as I’d boasted to Roy, I’d better get started.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” The bathroom door was open as she applied lipstick over a lumpy porcelain sink. The mirror was tilted and cracked.

“Not right now,” I said. “They seem to be afraid of me.”

“That’s because you don’t smile,” said Sherri. “Square girls need to see a guy smile,”

Her observation came as a blunt revelation. It was true that I had acquired the joyless poker face of an elevator man. “I can’t just smile. You have to crack me up first.”

“You really should be out there every night having fun at your age, ya only get older. You shouldn’t hafta be here with me, a handsome guy like you. You should get over this problem with square girls. You definitely have a problem.”

I had gotten down to my Jockey underwear and sat frozen on the bed. I admitted to seeing a psychiatrist occasionally.

“It could be the psychiatrist that’s screwing you up. Maybe you should try prostitutes for a while until you gradually start to get better with square girls.”

I suddenly imagined 8th Avenue prostitutes and Central Park West psychiatrists as natural enemies, competing for the same dollar. Their time cost about the same. Sherri walked out of the bathroom in a black bra and panties. Her face and her skin and her curves were breathtaking. If I had seen her in a men’s magazine, it would be instant shoot-off. I imagined Dr. Greuland, my elderly psychiatrist, decked out in bra and panties, and what it might be like rolling around in the same bed at the Fulton with him.

“It’s another twenty if you want the bra off,” said Sherri, hesitating with her fingers at the back snap.

“What?” I asked, a victim of extortion.

“All I care about is money. You make me happy and I’ll make you happy. I’ll give ya a good time.”

“What makes you think I’m having such a good time?” I asked. She went about arranging the bed as though it didn’t matter to her one way or the other. I plucked out another twenty, which she dunked into her bag. Then she unhooked the bra. My eyes witnessed two heavenly white knockers unbound from their double C-cups with springing recoil. I had never really experienced live bosoms like these—only small, squirming ones, grappled for beneath sweaters of unendowed junior high girls.

Off with my underwear, she instructed, as she stretched her own panties off with an elastic swipe. She put a rubber in her mouth, and slickly applied it during the first half of the half-and-half. I was more preoccupied with flexing my arms, trying to look muscular. I cursed the rubber to myself.

“The reason you’re not hard and excited is because you have no confidence. You’re nervous with women, and it’s impossible to get hard that way,” she analysed. I took this as another fabulous revelation. I asked if we could start by kissing.

“I
hate
kissing,” Sherri said, pulling back. “I don’t do that for
no
price, with
no
body. If you’re lookin’ for love, honey, don’t be comin’ to a hooker. You won’t find it there... But I like ya. You can suck my tits.”

She fed me both of them. This turned out to be the highlight of the evening, so far. Her nipples were the best part, providing a rubbery tingle to my lips and tongue, which I’d only dreamed about. Then, gradually, the sensation lessened, and it felt like a mass of flesh with no sexual connotation. She seemed to be in a bored daze. I wondered whether I would be enjoying it more if she was responsive. But then, I knew from Roy to try not to take it personally. This whore wouldn’t be turned on if Paul Newman and Robert Redford were suckling each one.

I mounted her on top. She was clean and fresh, the faintest perfume scent rising from her hairdo. I was awaiting some sort of magic, cruising through the atmosphere like an astronaut entering space for the first time. But I just sort of swished in, three-quarters erect, no friction, lots of spare room inside. No lust. Sherri still lay there nearly unconscious, with an occasional grunt of annoyance. Then she’d tug, try to milk it out of me fast, which I found hateful.

“Did you come yet?” she asked.

“No. Did you?” For a moment she snapped out of her daze and spoke to a childhood doll. She wrapped her legs around my back. “Baby, I don’t get too many nice young boys like you.”

I just wanted to keep my arms around her. “Hell, I know you don’t particularly dig sex,” I said. “But I hope you don’t
hate
it. I hope it’s at least as exciting as brushing your teeth.”

She pulled her legs back down and became a zombie again.

“Look,” she finally said, the businesswoman taking charge, “we’re about to go overtime. You are gonna tip me ten?”

I believed she’d up and walk out before I finished. I agreed to give her another ten. But I had no sense of time, and there were no clocks in the room. A loud, abrupt knock at the door made me jump.

“Yeah, Joe, yeah!” screamed Sherri. She reassured me the management was just checking on her safety, and letting us know time was up. Even though she wore no watch, she was accustomed to the passage of thirty minutes the way a boxer was to three.

“You have to believe you can do it,” coached Sherri. “Close your eyes and think of coming.” I concentrated, and when I finally did, it was like a cap gun instead of the dynamite I’d expected. Miss 8th Avenue Hooker couldn’t even tell, so I stayed in there an extra minute before she caught on.

Sherri was into her clothes in a jiffy. I mourned each body part that she covered. The bra was an especially sad sight to see go on. The panties went back over her rump, the stockings came over her legs, and all the things I’d paid $85 to spend a half-hour with, and would likely never lay my hands on again, were gone. The average rate outside was $20. Sherri stood before the bathroom mirror, picking her nose. I felt like I’d been in the room for hours.

Her Puerto Rican girlfriend was standing in the lobby, and I followed them past a line of other newlyweds waiting to sign the register. The act had felt mediocre, kind of like brushing your teeth. Yet I wished I could remain in that Times Square honeymoon suite another few hours, or that Sherri could become my girlfriend. I sensed that in time I’d be back on line, with the rest.

I JUST MET A GIRL NAMED MARIA

The hottest stripper of late to headline the Harmony Theatre (48th Street’s “Home Away From Home”) is Maria Krupa, the twenty-two-year-old daughter of Gene Krupa. She migrated up from the nightmare alley of 42nd Street’s peeps to the relative sanctuary of the Harmony. Only the prettiest need apply, those with a modicum of ambition or stage presence.

The tall blonde worked onstage here for a year before revealing to Harmony owner Bob Anthony whose daughter she was. This news came like a battering ram. Anthony, as some of us remember, was a leading front man and vocalist throughout the big-band era. An old crony of Gene Krupa, Bob related all kinds of memories to Maria. The Harmony Burlesque video series titled Maria’s segment “Dancing to the Beat of Her Own Drum.”

The most famous drummer of the swing band era died when Maria was eleven, in 1973: “We were very close. I was his little girl. I was placed somewhere, but I made the decision to be on my own. I always got away and came back to New York, always, always. Me and my mother don’t get along. She’s a Jehovah’s Witness. I tell her I’m bartending, but she knows what I’m doing. My parents were divorced when I was six and my father took custody. He used to show me off on tour, in Hawaii, California. He didn’t want me to be in show business. I know he would turn over in his grave if he knew what I was doing. He was very religious; we used to go to church every Sunday. I’m not religious, but I feel he’s my guardian angel.”

Maria began on the ugly streets of 8th Avenue at the age of fourteen, as the prostitute boom began slowing down. “I had no other choice. I had to survive somehow,” she says of her drug-addled teen years. She then spent four years working the champagne-hustle topless bars, then the peeps. A girlfriend of hers used to bring home a shopping bag of money earned at the Harmony. So now the leggy blonde dancer, after a hard youth in Times Square, has her name in lights at the Harmony, the only on-the-level joint left in the Square.

“I have fun onstage,” she sighs, backstage, in what I assure her was once the headliner’s dressing room at the old Melody Burlesk. “I like to dance. The money’s not like it used to be, but it pays the bills. Sometimes it’s good, they tip $30 or $40 during a set, but most of the time between $10 and $20. Either the crowd is gonna tip, or they’re not gonna tip.”