New York had him down. The weather sucked, the women were ugly and the audiences were hostile. His jokes were stale and his timing was off. He was a washed-up comedian looking for a change of scenery a new stage in the pageant of life. Then a friend invited him to L.A. and things took a definite turn for the better. The weather was warm, the women were beautiful and a mysterious, seductive stripper caught his eye and fired up his imagination among other things . But will our hero be up to facing the most challenging performance of his career? Can he handle a one-on-one monologue in Gretchen the stripper’s bedroom? Can he bed a girl who won’t take off a stitch of clothing unless he can keep her in stitches? K.G.
For some obscure reason, my best friend Adam suddenly grew tired of the three-ring circus that we refer to as Manhattan. So, one fine, sunny day, it happened that he woke up and took his bulldog Rusty, his three Persian cats, his four-inch tarantula, his six spotted tortoises, his potted plants, all of his LPs, cassettes and compact discs, his wife and all his other worldly possessions, piled them into his old orange Volvo P-1800 and moved to Los Angeles.
Actually, he moved to Reseda, a suburb of Los Angeles. It’s a small town in the valley, where the thermometer mercury regularly hovers around the ninety-degree mark, and the suburbanites sweat and drink beer and watch a two- or three-pound slab of beef cook over a bed of hissing charcoal briquettes.
My career as a stand-up comic in New York was stuck in neutral and showing serious signs of slipping into reverse. On top of that, it was one of the coldest, wettest, grayest winters in local recorded history. So it didn’t take me all that long to make up my mind when Adam phoned and popped the big question. He said that, while he knew it was on short notice, he and his wife had just decided to take off for Ensenada, Mexico, for a two-week vacation to celebrate his winning the trifecta that day, and would I have any interest in watching their plants, animals and house?
When I deplaned in L.A., Adam was at the airport to pick me up. As we walked through the terminal, I couldn’t believe how many beautiful, healthy, blonde creatures were milling around, all smiling, all seemingly happy. A knockout in a baby-blue halter top and pink hot pants smiled at me and I smiled back. Her breasts were perfect small and firm, the size of ripe papayas and her legs were long. She was a vision of earthly paradise, a promise from the Lord of great things to come.
“She’s really just common stuff,” said Adam. “Believe me, she’s really nothing special. You’ll get used to it, kid.”
On the drive from the airport to Adam’s house, we decided to stop for a beer at a topless place he knew. It was only a couple of miles out of our way, just over the hill in North Hollywood. It was a neighborhood joint. Lots of the locals stopped in on the way home from work, or after an evening’s bowling, or just to grab a nightcap and lay the groundwork for some sweet, sweet dreams.
The bouncer was an enormous Samoan named Juma. He was wearing a three-piece beige linen suit and power glasses. An old friend of Adam’s, he bought us each a beer. The three of us went over to the pool table and played a little threeway screw-your-buddy while checking out the action on the stage. An intolerably beautiful woman in red leather short shorts and a fringed, long-sleeved, white leather bolero jacket had just come onto the stage. The deejay introduced her as Gretchen. He then played Patsy Cline’s “Walking After Midnight” and Gretchen made it work like magic. She didn’t hustle rapidly through the moves, as many dancers do, but danced slowly, showing us a little here, a little there, working the crowd into a frenzy.
I purposely lost the pool game and moved closer to the stage. The strings of my heart could not have been pulled any tauter. Gretchen removed her jacket and twirled it above her head, then turned her back to the audience and tossed it over her shoulder into the crowd. I outreached a short Korean and grabbed the blessed garment from the air. I smelled her perfume lily of the valley adhering to the butter-soft leather. When she turned around she flashed a big, bright smile at me. Then she kissed and sucked the index finger of her right hand. With the tip of the wet finger, she slowly circled her right nipple, and then her left one. I couldn’t tell if this was done for my benefit in particular or for that of the entire crowd. When the song ended, I returned her jacket to her and our hands touched briefly. Something passed between us then, something electrical, very high voltage.
Adam’s wife cooked us a great dinner that night, and we polished off three bottles of wine. They gave me a schedule of which pet was to be fed what food, and when to water each plant, and I assured them that everything would be all right. We went to sleep early because their flight was scheduled to depart before eight the next morning and I’d agreed to drive them to the airport. I scarcely slept, however. Visions of that dancer kept me awake.
My first week in the city of the lost angels passed in a smog-colored blur. I fell in love with the heat, the hard, clean light, the cartoonlike palm trees growing almost everywhere, the slow pace and the friendly people. I ran into Jessy Klausner, also known as Cruel John, an old friend of mine from the comedy-club circuit in New York. We lunched together at the Friar’s Club in Beverly Hills, where he was a member. For three dollars they let you park your car. For another five, you get a slice of fairly decent cheesecake and six or seven cups of thin coffee to wash it down with. Then, while we were waiting in the garage for a parking attendant named Julio to bring back Jessy’s big black-and-blue Olds Delta 88, a very famous TV comic pulled his Volvo into his private space, which was clearly labeled: Reserved for the President. For just the price of lunch, we were treated to forty-five minutes of grade-A shtick. The comic, Jessy and I all did our Joe Besser impersonations. It was a blast. I had a lot of fun. When Jessy convinced me to go to the Improv that night to watch him work, I began to think about standing up myself.
I drove back to the house, took care of the menagerie, and then sprawled in the sun awhile, sipping at a succession of gin and tonics and remembering the last time I had been on a stage. I was the opening act for a punk band, the Holy Molies. The gig was at a small community college in New York State. Everyone in the audience was looped on dope and booze. Not a one was able to recognize a good joke not even if the joke were to drop its pants and sit on their face.
When I was about ten minutes into my prepared material, I gave up on it and did a little good cop, bad cop a little Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I told some awful Henny Youngman one-liners, like, “My wife’s so fat that when she sits around the house, she sits around the house.” When the audience began booing, I rushed over to stage left, ripped all my jacket and joined in the heckling: “Hey, you comedian! You bastard! That joke’s as old as the crust in your underwear! The last time I heard that one, I fell off my dinosaur!” These were lame put-downs from the third grade. But I kept rushing back and forth across the stage, taking my jacket off and putting it back on, first doing Abbott and then Costello then doing Lewis, followed by Martin. It was all old material, very stupid and very juvenile, and this crowd ate it right up.
After the show, I felt as if I had somehow betrayed my profession. To punish myself, I hung out with the Holy Molies. I was drinking Jim Beam from a liter bottle like it was Perrier, and swallowing Percodans like a Hell’s Angel with a bad toothache. All of a sudden, I found myself sitting on a toilet, doing thick lines of bad coke with a short sophomore coed. I remember she had shoulder-length, curly brown hair and huge bazongas. She suggested that we might enjoy the evening more if she were to take me back to her room and fuck me dry. I didn’t know if she was offering to do this because she was a comedy groupie or because she thought I was with the band. It didn’t really matter to me.
I had a wonderfully horrible time debauching the little thing. She was really quite skilled. Her nipples were enormous.
I was unable to get my mouth entirely around her areolae, which resembled huge, ripe strawberries and were twice as sweet. I was so high that I couldn’t come, so I spent hours going down on her. My entire face became sticky with her honey.
She was a believer in fair play. So she went down on me magnificently, performing extracurricular tricks that made my limp dick rise to the occasion. She rolled over on her tummy and begged me to fuck her from the rear. How could I refuse? My hands found those luscious ta-tas, and stroked and squeezed and kneaded them. We fucked so smoothly that I felt like I was cycling through heaven.
Somehow I don’t clearly remember it I made it to the bus next morning to head back to New York City with the band. When my hangover subsided enough for me to think straight again, I vowed to quit stand-up comedy and try my hand at something a bit more legit like writing, maybe.
Well, it didn’t take me long after that to find out that the only thing I write well are jokes. After putting together five or six sets worth of material, I thought that I might be able to sell the jokes and keep a low profile. But then, out of the blue, came Adam’s offer to house-sit for him in L.A. and Jessy’s invitation to watch him perform at the Improv, which got me thinking about going back into show business.
I arrived at the club at about ten and was waved through the door as soon as I mentioned Jessy’s name. I went directly backstage to the green room. Jessy was there with four other guys, waiting for their turn to go on. They were watching the show on a closed-circuit TV. I watched with them. Having watched each other perform in various clubs for months, even years, they knew every joke by heart. They beat the performer to the punch line every time, making derogatory comments about the size of his penis and his sexual orientation. Some of the jokes even I was able to remember from when I’d been on the circuit. I felt slow and unequipped to participate in this ferocious back room ritual.
I excused myself and went out front. Away from the sniping comics backstage, the acts were funnier. The audience wasn’t there to criticize but to have a good time. After they had drunk four or five foot-tall margaritas, a comic would really have to try hard to disappoint them.
Jessy came out and was really good. I wondered what nasty things the boys in the green room were saying about him. At the end of his set, he introduced me in the audience. There was a smattering of applause from a few people who had seen me do my five minutes of shtick on one or another of the few obscure talk shows I’d been on. But I waved Jessy off and sat back down. My jokes, which I’d scribbled on index cards, remained in the breast pocket of my black silk blazer.
Jessy did a few more minutes to wrap things up, and he got a good round of applause. Then he came over to join me. “Cold feet?” he asked.
“Cold jokes,” I replied. “I just don’t think my material is hot enough to make the grade here. Maybe I should go into cosmetology. Thermopane window installation. Land a gig with the Department of Health and Welfare.”
“You’re just out of practice,” Jessy said. “The only thing for you to do is to climb back on the horse. The only way to get any good at this game is to just get out there and do it.” We sipped at our beers until they were empty. Then Jessy went to the bar to join some friends. They were deciding which comedy groupie each one of them would have the honor of entertaining that night. I remembered the times when I’d been hot, able to pick some cute number and know that I had guaranteed access to her pants after the show.
Leaving the club, I got into my car and started driving back to the valley. I thought I’d go straight to Adam’s to comfort myself with brandy and pet the dog until I fell asleep. But I found myself driving to the strip joint instead.
When I entered, Juma remembered me and found me a seat alongside the stage. The place was bopping. There was a bachelor party going on for a Mexican teenager whose friends were indescribably happy that they weren’t the ones facing marriage. They bought the poor lassoed sucker shot after shot of tequila, and they kept tipping bare-titted dancers to play up to him. Because there was so much loose money in the room, the girls put a little something extra into their performances. They were all beautiful girls, and they were putting on a great show, but between glimpses of those lovely tits and asses, I couldn’t help brooding about my lack of career, and I cried tears of self-pity into my beer.
When the deejay announced that it was time for “Bitchin’ Gretchen” to step on stage, I paid less attention to my beer and more to the floor show. Gretchen appeared with a big red umbrella in hand. She was wearing a red slicker and red high-heeled shoes. Her lips were glossy red. “Singin’ in the Rain” started playing as Juma stood off to the side with a green hose in hand, gently spraying Gretchen as she splashed about. Soon she took off the slicker and prepared to throw it into a corner of the stage, but I stood up and reached for it. She smiled and handed it over. She now had on just a white teddy, and the more Juma spritzed her, the more transparent it became. The wet material clung to her full breasts. She stepped out of her shoes and handed them to me, bending low, her breasts hanging. Her dark nipples were visible in every detail through the soaked bodice of the teddy. Finally, she stepped out of the garment, revealing herself in nothing but a pair of sopping wet panties. I was in love. Handing her a twenty-dollar bill, I asked her to marry me.
“Is that supposed to be a joke?” she asked.
“No,” I replied. “But I am supposed to be a comedian.”
Gretchen collected the rest of her tips and headed offstage. Flop sweat broke out on my forehead. Too bad I hadn’t come up with the perfect one-liner, I thought, because she sure as hell looked like the perfect one-night stand. Sighing, I sucked down what was left of my beer.
“Go ahead. Make my day. Make me laugh.” I looked up from my beer and there was Gretchen. She’d changed into her street clothes and was sitting beside me. Snakeskin cowboy boots, tight jeans and a baggy red cotton sweater nice.
“What? Right here? In front of all these people?” I responded. “There’s a proper place and a proper time for everything.”
“So when? Where?”
“Tonight. Anywhere you say. Just give me time to go home and change into my tux.” I was still stalling.
“We’ll go to my house now. I’m sure I can find something appropriate for you to wear. After an evening entertaining these lug heads, I could really use a good laugh.” And she took me by the hand and led me past a smiling Juma and out.
We were at her place quickly. She sat me on a plush gray sofa and then went into the kitchen to fetch me some courage, returning with a bottle of Boodles and two glasses. I downed about three fingers of encouragement and shuddered. She tossed back a short one herself, smiled, and got up from the couch. Standing by the fireplace, she spoke into her fist as if it were a microphone.
“Ladies and germs! Presenting live, on our stage for the very first time, from New York, a city so dumb you have to call it twice for dinner how about a warm southern California welcome for our very own Pinky Simowitz!”
I swallowed hard and stood up. I straightened my jacket collar. I tightened my tie. I cracked my knuckles. Then, having run out of phony stage business, I put on a big phony Hollywood smile, gave a big phony Hollywood wave to the invisible crowd and planted a big, wet, genuine Hollywood kiss on Gretchen’s beautiful red lips. Then I began:
“Hello, hello, hello. It’s really good to be here. I haven’t played here in Gretchen’s little living room before but if I do a really bang-up job, Gretchen will consent to give me a crack at the big time. Let me play her bedroom.” Ba-dump bump.
“Maybe that ought to be our theme tonight. Just imagine what it would be like if we could get all the men and all the women playing in all the bedrooms in America right now to just get it on together. Just think of it. A line of naked people stretching from coast to coast. A man pleasing a woman who’s pleasing a man who’s pleasing a woman, and so on and so on and so on. We could call it handjobs across America.” Ba-dump bump.
And an amazing thing happened. With every joke I told, Gretchen got hotter and hotter. I stood up and watched her. It was unbelievable. For every big punch line, I was rewarded by Gretchen taking off an article of her clothing. A dud, and she’d put something back on. When she was at last down to bare skin, I hit her with a real zinger. She crawled across the carpet, curled up at my feet and began stroking my legs. Her long, cool fingers raised goosebumps on my scrotum. I went into my old-Jewish-man character and told jokes no one’s heard since Myron Cohen’s retirement and her fingers were on my thighs. After a bit more shtick, she had her hands in my pants. I stopped cracking jokes instantly.
But she would have none of that. It was strictly tit for tat, a lascivious treat for a laugh, a case of quid pro joke. I would have to impress her with my comedic prowess. So I told her the one about the nightmare diet on Elm Street. If you want to lose twenty pounds in twenty minutes, Freddy Krueger takes a chain saw to your right leg. Ba-dump bump!
She liked this one so much that she told me the one about the big, firm, milky-white tits pressing hard on my dick, rubbing up and down its whole length while her fingers stroked and caressed my wrinkled balls. Her lips brushed softly against the head, her mouth opening just enough for me to push it in. Her teeth held on gently as she slipped the tip of her tongue into the little hole there and then she stopped. Nada. Nothing. Zero. Zip.
So what could I do but tell her the one about the special-ed teacher in California, who, on the first day of school, gave each of her dyslexic students a number-two pencil and an AK-47. An alumna of the school of hard knocks, she told the kids that they could use the pencil to write wrong, and the AK-47 to right wrongs. Ba-dump bump bump.
That joke worked. Gretchen melted into a warm puddle of lust and told me the one about her ass wiggling back and forth before my eyes, ever closer and closer to my face, until the silky skin of her soft buttocks were rubbing my nose. At the same time, I let my fingers do the walking down to her cunt to caress and squeeze and probe it, and then to tickle and tweak her clit, already too hard for either of us to be comfortable.
We were both sweaty and sticky when I rolled her over on her belly and finally, after all my hard work mounted her. I placed my thighs against her hips and stroked and rubbed her back and neck. Then I ran my fingers through her hair before letting my hands slip down to take hold of her swaying breasts. I fingered her hard brown nipples, and then, from the rear, I thrust my cock into her wide-open cunt and banged away until my balls were sore from striking against her firm, creamy thighs.
Gretchen was screaming now with pleasure, screaming louder than anyone in any audience had ever screamed for any comedian. As I was pumping my fat dick in and out of her cunt, I reached around and placed a finger on the hot bead that was her clit, which I kneaded until she came so hard that my dick almost slipped out of her hole. I pushed it all the way in again and began fucking for all I was worth until we exploded simultaneously in a supernova of heat and light and gushing thick spunk.
When it was over, I was quite proud of the fact that it was really nothing more than my talent at imitating an old Jewish man that had brought me to this glorious place and point in time.
Someone once said, dying is easy, but comedy is hard. Well, let me tell you, comedy is hard hard as a dick, hard as a clit but fans like Gretchen make it all worthwhile.
“It’s a great script,” the actress said over drinks at La Dome. But then, what else could she say? She knew I’d written the damned thing. Even if she hated it, she’d have said it was great.
Terri had been a big star in her day, but she last appeared in a movie ten years ago. In the intervening years, not only had she put on a few pounds, she’d lost the blush of youth as well. It was the plastic surgeon’s work that you saw on her face now beautiful in a sculptured, unreal sort of way.
“He wrote it for you,” Grey Densley told her.
It was a lie, of course, but producers lie all the time. To coddle an actress or actor. To make a connection. To get a deal done. Both of us knew Terri’s name still had some cachet in the Midwest, where Grey’s investors were. If he brought the script to them, with Terri attached, Grey felt sure he could raise the three million needed to make our low-budget feature.
“The problem is,” Terri said, sipping her drink, “I’m not sure the part would be good for my career.”
What career? I wondered. Nobody in town would touch her. She was washed up. Over the hill at thirty-nine. Useless to anyone except me and Grey.
“It’ll be great for your career,” Grey shot back. “We’re talking Academy Award nomination, at least. Tell her, Nate.”
“He’s right,” I said. “Its a very demanding part. We need someone with your acting ability. Someone with your range. The character is too deep and complex for most actresses.”
I was being as dishonest as Grey. All she had ever been known for was her tits. But one of the first things that you learn in Hollywood if you want to survive is that no compliment is too outrageous. People in this business, especially actors and actresses, want to be deceived. They deceive themselves all the time.
“You’ve been away from films too long,” I added. “Your fans want to see you back on the screen. I want to see you back on the screen.”
I really did. In Hollywood, success is determined by a circular process. Terri, for example, had no credibility because nobody wanted to make a movie with her. But I felt sure that, once she became involved in a film that was actually funded, her image would automatically be refurbished, just because somebody did want to make a film with her. And, as the scriptwriter of the project, I’d also be a beneficiary due to Terri’s involvement.
A look of apprehension flickered momentarily across her face. “You…you don’t think I’m too old?”
Of course she was too old. She was, in fact, totally wrong for the part. But if Grey could get financial backing with her connected to the project, I could rewrite the script and make it work.
“Too old?” I did my best to look surprised. “That’s ridiculous. You don’t look any different from when you made Judgment Diary.”
“Oh, come on now.” You could see the conflicting emotions play across her face. Vanity mixed with fear and hope. “I’m not as slim as I once was…”
No, she wasn’t. In fact, she was a real porker. Although, I had to admit, it was proportional. She still had the same hourglass figure of her youth. Only the hourglass was larger.
“It becomes you,” I answered, half believing what I said. There was something erotic about her, but it was a grotesque, cartoonlike eroticism. “If anything, it makes you more feminine, more attractive.”
She preened happily. “You really think so?”
“Absolutely.”
I cursed my life. This is what it had all come to: partnered with a down-and-out producer and stroking a fat over-the-hill actress.
The shit had really hit the fan a year earlier, when I’d gotten drunk at a party and insulted a network programming head. You just don’t do that kind of thing in Hollywood. It’s a small town. So small that, by the middle of the following week, I’d already been fired from the show I was working on, dropped by my agent, and just generally frosted out of the TV community.
Sure, I’d made attempts to smooth things over, but I was, in the parlance of the entertainment business, “too hot.” If I ever wanted to work again, a well-meaning studio executive told me I’d best hook up with an independent producer. Under the circumstances, that meant someone working out of his apartment, trying to put low-budget movie deals together with independent financing.
Enter Grey. Five years earlier, he had made two moderately successful horror flicks. But a bout with cocaine and alcohol put an end to his hot streak, and now, like me, he was trying to pick up the pieces of his life. Hopefully, he would do that with my script. And with Terri attached to it.
“She said no,” Grey told me the next day by phone. “But I think we still have a chance. She likes you. She thinks you’re sexy. She wants you to call her.”
I digested that slowly. “What are you trying to say?” I asked finally.
“I’m saying that I think you can talk her into doing the part if you play your cards right.”
“You mean fuck her, right?”
“She’s not that hard to take.”
“Are you nuts?”
“So she’s a little on the zaftig side. Let me tell you something about zaftig women. They’re better in bed than those skinny broomsticks you go out with.”
“There’s no way I’m doing this. You hear me, Grey?”
“Fine. I can’t make you. But you can kiss our deal good-bye. You sure you want to do that?”
My mind said, “Take your deal and shove it.” But my mouth said, “What’s her number?”
“I’m glad you could make it,” Terri smiled seductively as she let me into her Brentwood Canyon home.
“Nothing could have kept me away,” I answered, looking around a living room filled with mementos from her glory years mostly photographs of herself with other big-name celebrities. Despite myself, I couldn’t help being captivated by the image of Terri in the pictures. She had, indeed, been breathtaking.
“What would you like to drink?” she asked, crossing to the bar.
I looked up from the dazzling beauty in the photos to the woman in the room. Despite the difference between the two Terris, I felt myself responding to the way she filled out her tight-fitting black dress. Maybe, I thought, it’s the plunging neckline, which revealed tits that were firm despite her weight.
“I’d like a R my, straight up,” I answered. She smiled and turned to face the bar, her large, curvaceous ass capturing my eyes.
“What did you think when Grey said I wanted to see you?” Terri asked, pouring two large snifters half full of cognac.
“Why, I was pleasantly surprised,” I lied. “I never thought someone like you would be interested in someone like me.”
“Why not?” she asked. “You’re a good-looking man.” She handed me the drink and steered us to the couch. “Make yourself comfortable,” she said.
So, I thought, it’s going to be this easy. No dinner. No night on the town. No pretense. Just some drinking, polite conversation and then, no doubt, a mad rush to the bedroom.
I sat down and took a large gulp of my R my. Something about her was making me nervous and very horny. Maybe it’s her attitude, I considered. The way she carries herself. The way her full, wet lips purse mockingly. The way her eyes drip lust, clearly broadcasting a female in heat. Then, too, there was her past beauty, hidden behind the years and the weight, but not totally obscured. Maybe I was responding to the woman she had once been. And, finally, there was her body, so obscene in its corpulence, clearly going to seed, yet still curved in all the right places.
I looked over at Terri’s fleshy, white thigh, clearly visible with her legs provocatively parted. Without even thinking, I reached over and stroked its soft smoothness. In response, Terri opened her legs wider, inviting my fingers to advance into more exciting territory. As my hand brushed against her already moist panties, her eyes glazed over and a soft, low moan slipped past her parted red lips.
I leaned into her. Placing my mouth against hers, my weight slowly pressed her down into the couch. Soon her body was churning under me, giving expression to the intensity of her lust. A moment later, I pulled her shoulder strap down, exposing one of her more-than-ample tits. The nipple, perfectly formed and jutting out in excitement, invited my mouth to suck on it, my tongue to flick across it. Soon it glistened with my saliva.
“Get me out of this,” she said, urgently tugging on her dress, struggling to free herself like a butterfly from its cocoon.
I quickly obliged, yanking the dress down over the thick flesh of her body, tossing it on the floor. Stripped of her clothes, her pale, Rubenesque form sprawled against the red silk of the couch, I saw her as something designed solely for fucking. The very extremes of her body suggested an unspeakably perverse object of gratification, something best kept to yourself like a love doll, or an Acu-Jack lest you become an object of ridicule.
What was it Grey had said? Let me tell you something about zaftig women. They’re better in bed than the broomsticks you go out with. Maybe he had a point. In a way, the added bulk seemed to enhance her role as sex object by exaggerating all the curves until her very humanity had been stripped away, leaving nothing in its wake but the sex and the object.
“Help me,” she moaned, spreading her legs wider.
I slid between her legs to give her head. Working on her pussy with my tongue, I noticed that each thrust of her pelvis sent her belly rolling like waves on a beach. Yet, somehow, that also added to my excitement. The very ruination of her stomach through childbirth, I was sure reinforced her biological function and, consequently, her femininity. Before I knew it, I was totally engulfed by her sexuality, worshiping at her meaty pussy as if it were some primordial temple, a place designed for the reverence of all that is female.
When I finally penetrated her, I had one of the best orgasms of my life.
“She’s agreed to do the movie,” Grey said, a knowing smirk etched on his face. We were sitting in his office really a room of his apartment drinking orange juice. I was pretty sure that Grey’s was laced with vodka.
“So we’ve got a deal, right?” I asked him hopefully.
“Well, there’s a slight hitch,” Grey answered. “My investors want to meet her. Two of them are flying in tomorrow morning. But it’s just a formality.”
“Just a formality?” I was incredulous. “They’re expecting to meet the woman who starred in Judgment Diary, and you’ll be introducing them to Miss Piggy.”
“Talk about hypocrites,” Grey sneered. “You take the cake.”
He knew Terri and I had been seeing a lot of each other since that first night together. I’d even admitted that I found her hypnotic in the bedroom. But that didn’t change anything as far as our business deal was concerned. Whatever her sexual powers, she would still look like a gross caricature of herself to the world at large. And I said as much to Grey.
He waved his arm, dismissing the notion. “I’ve thought about that,” he said, “and I don’t believe it’s a problem. These guys are from the Midwest. They’ll still be impressed with her, fat or not. Trust me.”
Trust me. I hated those words. Every time someone in Hollywood had asked me to trust them, I’d gotten screwed. But what could I say? That I trusted him as far as I could spit? That I thought he was a totally corrupt and spiritually bankrupt asshole? Insulting people was how I’d gotten into this mess in the first place.
“Okay I trust you,” I answered at last.
“Good,” Grey said smugly. “I want you to come over to my place at three tomorrow. My money men will be there to meet you and Terri.”
There was something about his look that made me smell a rat.
“What do you mean, you don’t trust Grey?” Terri said, her voluptuous, nude body stretched out across her bed, legs slightly spread, tits jutting in the air. Ever since that first night together, I’d been practically living at her place most of our time together being spent in bed in a seemingly unending series of sexual acts. And, though I didn’t approve of what I was doing, I didn’t have the will to say no.
“He’s up to something,” I answered, “I thought you might know what it is.”
“No,” she said, her hand gently pulling my cock out of my underwear. “I don’t know anything. I think Grey is a very honest, trustworthy producer.”
My shit detector went off. That’s the kind of thing everybody in Hollywood says about everyone else. But no one believes it. It’s just a way for people in the business to cover their asses. But why was Terri saying it to me now?
“I guess you’re right,” I said, not wanting to pursue it any further. Terri had just put my cock in her mouth, after all, and I was captivated by the perfect a shape of her lips as they slid up and down my rigid member. A few moments later, my entire body ached with passion.
“Lie on your stomach,” I told her.
My cock flipped out of her mouth with a popping sound as she rolled over, exposing her massive, white ass to me. An instant later I was between her legs, my hands running over her ass, which jiggled to my touch. Then I slipped my fingers into her cunt and gently massaged her to excitement. Soon she was undulating her hips in a lazy, erotic motion her ass, in all its outrageous glory, rising and falling in front of me.
When I could hold back no longer, I slid my cock into her yawning cunt from behind, pushing her shoulders down flat on the bed. Then, to my surprise, she looked back over her shoulder, not at me, but at her ass, as if also caught up in the animal nature of her body.
“Come in me,” she moaned.
My hands grabbed her hips and I heaved myself against her, my cock plunging into her deepest recesses. A moment later both of us were shuddering in orgasm.
The next day I arrived at Grey’s place an hour early, quivering with nervous energy. I was pretty sure of what I’d find as I knocked on the door.
“Who is it?” Grey’s voice was dripping with anxiety.
“It’s me,” I said.
The door opened a crack. “What are you doing here?” the producer whispered. “I told you to come at three.”
Even with Grey hiding behind the door, I could tell he was sweating and in his underwear.
“Let me in,” I said firmly, my foot wedged in the doorway.
“Okay,” Grey whispered back. “But don’t make a scene. I’m doing this for both of us.”
I stepped inside and surveyed the room. It was empty, although I noyiced a mirror on the coffee table with cocaine residue on it. Then I looked through the sliding glass door to the pool, and my suspicions were confirmed.
Terri was out there with the two money men, one taking her from the rear, as I had the night before, and the other kneeling before her, his organ wedged deep in her mouth. Caught up in ecstasy, they were oblivious to me and Grey.
“She’s good, Nate,” Grey told me. “She’ll get us the money.”
I looked over at the sweating producer. “You fuck her too?”
“I’ve been fucking her for years,” he said. “But so has everybody else in town. You must have realized that, for God’s sake. She’s a pig.”
I glanced over at the swimming pool. Of course I’d realized that. Sort of. It just hadn’t occurred to me that anybody could have her. Later, though, I’d learn this was what had finished her career. She’d become a joke because of the ease with which she’d drop her panties. Eventually, people became too embarrassed to be associated with her.
“Come on,” Grey encouraged. “You can get some of it too. They don’t care.”
“That’s okay,” I said, feeling sick. “Make an excuse for me, will you? Tell them I couldn’t make it.”
I left feeling jealous, hurt and angry.
“We’ve got the money,” Grey told me over the phone a few days later. “I’ve got a check in my hand for you right now. We want you to start on the rewrite immediately.”
I greeted the news with mixed emotions. It was a relief to know that my involvement with Grey and Terri had finally paid off. But I was less than thrilled with the circumstances.
“By the way,” Grey added, “Terri’s upset that you’re not returning her calls. She wants to get together with you. Told me to tell you.”
I felt a responsive twinge in my groin, but I pushed the feeling aside. “I’ve got a little problem with that,” I answered.
“You mean because of the scene at my place, right?” Grey said. “For God’s sake, you were just using her to get your rocks off. It’s not like you loved her or anything. What do you care if other people were using her too?”
It was a question I couldn’t easily answer.
I don’t want to be a slut basher. And I know it’s nice to have them at your disposal, as it were. But even as you’re bending them to your sexual will, you have to understand what they are essentially untrustworthy, loyal to you for only as long as your dick stays hard, and always ready to open themselves up for the next rutting male they encounter.
In and of itself, that would have been okay. But this had spilled over into my business life. Thanks to the hypnotic effect Terri’s pussy had on my brain and groin, I’d not only turned over my power to her, but to Grey Densley as well. Together they had conspired to deceive me about the nature of our relationship to the investors. They had treated me like a sap. It wasn’t something I regarded with a lot of pride.
I know that most men would have handled it better, particularly by not allowing their emotions to get tangled up with a slut. But that wasn’t me. Despite my better judgment, I hadn’t been smart enough, or detached enough, to avoid getting sucked in by Terri’s charms. I hadn’t fallen in love with her exactly, but I’d fallen in love with what she made my body feel.
“Just put my check in the mail,” I told Grey. “I’ll start on the rewrite as soon as I get it.”
“Fine,” he answered, his voice suddenly tense. “But I’m already talking to Terri about a follow-up project. And you sound like you may be cutting yourself out of it.”
“I’ll live with that,” I told him.
As it turned out, living with it was pretty easy. Once word of my film project with Terri spread through the entertainment community, I was suddenly rehabilitated along with Terri and Grey. Low budget or no, everybody likes a winner, and the film gave me just the credibility I needed. I’ve got an agent again, and an offer to staff a TV show. But I probably won’t take that on, because I’ve just signed a three-picture deal with a major studio
What can I say, except that fucking fat paid off?
Ready for a little ride? Slip into the cramped canopy of a Thunderboat, a high-powered hydroplane that is to a normal powerboat what a biplane is to a Stealth fighter. You’re lying nearly flat on your back, surrounded by so much instrumentation that there’s barely enough room to turn your crash-helmeted head. You’re breathing oxygen through a mask.
Until you crank the engines to life, you’re sitting just four inches above the water. But turn them on, and it isn’t the chugging rumble of a diesel that meets your ears it’s the wailing scream of an almost three-thousand-horsepower turbine jet. Soon you’ll be going so fast that you’ll skim the water at speeds in excess of one hundred fifty miles per hour, with only one inch of the thrashing propeller blade left in the water. Make a mistake and you’ll rocket skyward, maybe to have the craft disintegrate on impact with the water.
Luckily, the real action at these superboat regattas, held around the country on three-day weekends in warm weather, is among the spectators. Forget about tailgate parties in parking lots, or chugging near-beer with howling idiots in baseball stadiums: Try baking waterside or bobbing in a Cigarette boat, a bucket of iced champagne within arm’s reach. Hopefully, it’s not that easy to reach, what with a lithe woman on either arm, dressed seasonally in a bikini or halter. The allure of sun, water and speed draws some of the foxiest groupies of any sport so just lie back and let the Thunderboats roar. N.F.
There they are restrained by thonged tops or not at all, in various sizes, shapes and stages of summer tan crowding lake- and seashores across the country. At every hydroplane race, they jiggle and bounce on sun-and-fun-filled three-day weekends. Tits! The breasts and their owners come to these races prepared to let everything hang loose.
Debra is a pert blonde with small pert breasts who can’t be more than five feet two and one hundred five pounds. Debra is a killer in a one-piece, a knockout in a two-piece and looks to spread a piece whenever possible on the hydroplane circuit. For the past three seasons, Debra has yet to miss a Thunderboat regatta.
Hold it a minute. You’re not sold on the high art of hydroplane races nor the potential entertainment value of this sport? You don’t care how nice the hooters might be, watching really fast, loud boats bounce across water isn’t your cup of tea? Well, it is that of a quarter million or so who come to each of the ten races held annually across the United States. And all these people have essentially the same agenda to party.
It is true, however, that a taste for hydroplane racing is acquired, even for those who spend time on the water. Hydros are to boats what the Indianapolis 500 is to a morning commute. And therein lies one of the sport’s chief attractions the boats are on the cutting edge of high-speed technology, and like jet fighters, they attract a special breed of pilot and a very special breed of groupie.
The similarities between Thunderboats and modern jets are striking. Made of aerospace composite materials, a Thunderboat sits low and wedgelike on the water with a cockpit like an airplane’s at one end and an enormous stabilizing rear wing at the other. Some call the look functional to an extreme, but the appropriate word is sexy, especially when one of them skims across the water, the pointed sponsons stabilizers dancing, at nearly two hundred miles per hour.
It takes incredible concentration and tremendous skill to skipper one of these superpowered craft without capsizing it or launching it skyward. If the impact’s hard enough, the craft will disintegrate into fish-size splinters.
And hydroplane racing, like automobile racing, lures a bevy of beautiful circuit faithfuls who travel to each event. Except that in hydroplane racing, spectators like Debra wear bathing suits, the skimpier the better
Debra’s forays have become near-legendary on the racing circuit, but her conquests and you’d better believe she’s the hunter in these sexual contests continue to push the edge of sexual limits farther each season.
A case in point is Debra’s initiation to Thunderboat racing. At the suggestion of a male acquaintance who wanted desperately to shiver her timbers, she went to the Detroit regatta aboard a party boat. Three other girls, all in their early twenties, and two other older guys came along for the ride.
Anchored outside the oval racecourse’s limits, the seven of them floated along, getting buzzed on a concoction of scorching sun, tequila sunrises and coconut oil. The real fun started below deck. The boat’s owner, a former college football player named Jim, was demonstrating to his well-endowed, brunette girlfriend of the moment, Nancy, how aerobics had strengthened not only his abdominal muscles, but those below his waist as well. As their moans of lust grew so loud that they could no longer be masked by the racing boats or a boom-box cranking tunes, the others on board gave a collective shrug and joined in the fun.
Debra was drawn to the noise in the cabin and ventured below in time to see Jim draw his cock out of Nancy’s mouth. Without pausing, Debra stripped off her bikini and moved beneath Jim, sucking his balls between her lips. And Jim thus got one of the greatest blowjobs of his life.
Barely slowing a beat, the two women switched places. Debra got down on all fours in front of Jim, her backside arched invitingly toward his well-moistened member. He slid into Debra in one deliberate, slow motion, which left her mouth free to nibble and gnaw at Nancy’s waiting maw. Debra dove at the opportunity to tickle Nancy’s clit, lashing it with her tongue in rhythm with each thrust of Jim’s hips. The boat’s rocking aided the fun sort of an enormous water bed for all. Shortly thereafter, all three came in lip-smacking orgasms.
By the time the three found their way above deck, the others on board were well into their second round of summer exercise, humping and moaning, slithering and slurping the afternoon away, as the boats raced on.
Needless to say, all this activity did not go unnoticed by the other boats anchored at the course’s edge. After about an hour, they were interrupted by the sharp, quick blast of a siren from a passing Coast Guard cutter all hands were above deck, giving them a hearty and well-deserved salute. That was the beginning of a lust affair with Thunderboat racing for Debra.
There is a reason these creatures are called Thunderboats. The wail they emit is a primal scream, an eardrum-piercing howl that reverberates and amplifies off the water’s surface. The noise of a Thunderboat’s engine isn’t the gentle rumble of a chugging diesel motor one ordinarily associates with boating. It’s the piercing whine of a turbine jet.
How much power does a Thunderboat have? One of the most potent production cars available on the road today is a Chevrolet Corvette. Powered by two hundred and thirty horsepower, it’ll suck the doors off all but the most exotic cars built.
Now multiply that number by a dozen. At two thousand seven hundred and sixty horsepower, a hydroplane can average over one hundred fifty miles per hour on a two-and-a-half mile closed-loop course. That, by the way, is hauling ass.
In Detroit, the racecourse is laid out east of downtown along the Detroit River, between the mainland and a recreational Island called Belle Isle. While those who want to watch the Thunderboats for free flock to Belle Isle, those who care to mingle with the crews, to be in the thick of things, find themselves along the racing “pits” docks, actually.
It is in these pits and adjacent areas where the corporate hospitality tents are generally located. With the cost of building a boat edging well into six figures, and the driver’s retainer very close to one hundred thousand dollars, it goes without saying that corporate sponsors help defray those costs.
In return for the financial support each boat is painted with the company’s insignia and christened with the corporate name. Hence, you’ll see vessels with none-too-subtle names like the Miss Miller American, Oh Boy! Oberto, Mr. Pringle or the Pepsi America’s Choice.
Janice and Karin, like Debra, have been going to the races in Detroit for some time. They do it because they’ve made a good many friends over the years who insist on the pleasure of their company when the races come to town.
Janice and Karin are known affectionately around Detroit as the Red October Twins. Though they aren’t related, nor do they have reddish hair, they’ve earned their nicknames from the Tom Clancy naval suspense novel they both go down like submarines.
The girls are well known to the crew members, and even the kings of the sport a couple of drivers. It’s not as though these wenches troll the pits for dates the denizens thereof are known in boat racing, as in auto racing, as pit lizards , it’s that they are both funny, pleasing to the eye and very edible, thereby making them great company on a summer weekend.
Janice and Karin first came to the attention of a couple of crew members. Mark and Greg were away from the pit area walking along the shore. Tucked away in a cove, each on a separate rubber raft, the two gals were sunbathing topless. Never men to back down from a sight as inviting as this, Mark and Greg sauntered close enough to invite the ladies to dinner that evening. What impressed Mark and Greg the most was that the girls turned to them as though they were sitting at a bus stop, not worried about covering anything up.
Of course, Mark has little difficulty picking up women across the country on the racing circuit. One story still floats around about the time in San Diego when he chatted up one college-age young thing who took a shine to him. Now, he was no dim bulb: He could tell she was young, but he thought with a body like that, she had to be old enough to use it.
The conversation turned to things they both enjoyed. When she said she liked to dress up in a cheerleader’s outfit and toss a baton, Mark broke into a wide grin. He thought he could more than happily play the football-hero role in their sexual games if that was what she wanted him to do.
Then she threw him for a loop: Did Mark want to see her routine? He jumped at the chance, and suggested it would be best to meet back at his hotel. The news filtered to his team members and some of those from the other crews.
He’d showered, shaved and ordered drinks from room service when the knock came at the door. Mark met his little cheerleader in nothing more than a towel wrapped around his waist.
But little Miss Pom-Pom was not alone. Dressed in her scanty cheerleading costume, with a tape recorder in one hand and a baton in the other, she came to Mark’s room accompanied by both of her parents. Quick thinker that Mark is, he invited them all to the pool area where she could perform for everyone, including his teammates. Mark still hears about that one to this day.
But now he was with Janice and Karin, adult women whose sensuality began at the very edge of their luscious lips. It was Mark who gave these two their nicknames. The action started at dinner with the nearly six-foot Karin. The fairly small-chested, hazed-eyed blonde waited for Mark to sip from his water glass before moving her hand from its resting place on his leg to give his warming cock a healthy squeeze. It took every bit of strength he had to prevent a spray of water from launching across the table. After a short while, she worked his zipper down and liberated his cock from its cotton prison. She scraped her long nails along the shaft.
Unbeknownst to Mark, Greg was getting the same treatment from Janice. Of the two girls, Janice was the more voluptuous, a taut 35D-24-34, auburn-haired package of fun. They decided to forego dinner and go straight to the girls’ apartment.
The car ride over was a study in restraint not from the girls, who each bobbed fervently on the instrument she had played inside the restaurant but from Mark and Greg, who were each sure that if he unloaded on the ride over, the evening would be through.
On the contrary, not only did the boys enjoy the car ride with their dates, but once at the apartment, they swapped partners for what became an evening, and morning, of uninterrupted bliss. Then it was back to the pits again to service their howling masters and be distracted by the sea of tanned, bouncing flesh.
Last summer in Korea, records fell by the hour and not just in athletics. Olympic training often leads to Olympic desires, as we see in this account of the loves and lusts of near-immortal athletes.
J.S. Bergol gets right to the heart of the matter in Seoul’s It’aewon district, a mile-long strip of shops, bars and brothels, which became an elysian hangout for off-duty Olympians, their handlers and an assortment of media types. The It’aewon has it all from squid dogs and beer to Miss Kim and the best damn barbershops in Southeast Asia.
For a few weeks last summer, Seoul was a truly international city and It’aewon was the center of the action. Fortunately for us, Mr. Bergol, serving as a faithful Boswell to throngs of Olympian Johnsons, was there to tell us about it.
By daylight, It’aewon, the entertainment district of Seoul, is dedicated to the foreign shopper. It’s a mile-long strip of jewelry, silk, leather and luggage contained within the Korean capitol’s Yong san district, which runs east from the American army base across the southern edge of Mount Namsam. By moonlight, It’aewon is dedicated to pleasure, with an equal number of clubs devoted to the local populace as well as the military and tourist factions. Club Seven, Rock ‘n’ Roll Amazon, Texas 2×4, Nashville, The Seven Dolphins Disco, Star Trek, Las Vegas and the Sportsman’s Club are all It’aewon landmarks, and for a few weeks last summer they became the most important bars in the world. Swedish high jumpers, Canadian fencers, Soviet basketballers, French cyclists, Iraqi wrestlers, Brazilian runners and boxers from Cameroon they could all be found in It’aewon wolfing down squid dogs or the ubiquitous, smelly kim chee a variety of pickled cabbage .
Night after night, It’aewon saw more and more of the large plastic “F” credentials worn by the nearly ten thousand Olympic athletes. As each day passed and another event was completed, the years of training and sacrifice gave way to release. For the majority of athletes, win or lose, reaching the end of the rainbow meant freedom from team- and self-imposed restraints. It’aewon was a perfect place to run loose as was the case with the two American swimmers who nearly provoked an international incident by trying to appropriate a mask from a hotel bar as a souvenir.
Off It’aewon’s main strip is a steep rise to the south known as Hooker Hill, a place the athletes grew to know and love. The cost of that love was inflated to an Olympian forty thousand won approximately fifty-six U.S. dollars at the beginning of the games, but some, like two West German rowers, were successful in bartering Olympic pins for the incomparable sexual favors of Korean women. These finely tuned athletes from the Americas, Europe and Asia may have been able to run faster and jump higher than any men in human history, but few could compete on the level of sexual performance achieved by these women. For the duration of the games, nothing but admiration was expressed for the attentive skills of Korean women.
“I didn’t want to fuck her,” professed a Nordic athlete named Leif, after he had careened across a typically chaotic Seoul intersection and banged into the middle of a street-corner conversation. Typically Scandinavian, blond and muscular, he towered over the correspondents standing on the street corner as well as the diminutive Koreans nearby. Despite the ever-increasing numbers of visitors in Seoul, blond hair still fascinates Koreans and during the course of his story, several locals stopped to admire Leif’s pale locks.
“I had to. She grabbed me and asked me to come to her house. I said no, I do not want to come to your house.” He stammered his saga between large swigs of beer and helping himself to the bag of fried sweet potatoes and onions in one newsman’s hand.
“She started grabbing me here,” he said, pointing to his crotch. “And she did it very well. Then she took my hand and put it on her breast. It was a very nice breast.” He demonstrated on himself, pulling open his shirt. His admiration was sincere.
“Her name was Miss Kim I think they are all named Miss Kim. She took me to her room and she did wonderful things to me.” Without waiting for someone to ask, he went on to inform anyone within earshot of what those wonderful things were.
“At first I believe I scared her. When I took off my pants and she saw how big I was, her eyes got even bigger. I stood there naked and she walked around me. She reached between my legs from behind and started to stroke me with both hands. Pretty soon, I was standing there with my penis pointing at the ceiling. She pushed me and I fell onto the bed. She then walked around her room, which was very small, slowly taking off her clothes.
“My small head was now in charge of the big one and I tried to pull her onto the bed. But she said no, that I must wait, which was very difficult to do at that moment. Did I tell you about her breasts? They were wonderful. Round and soft with hard, brown nipples.”
Assured that he had, Leif went on.
“I was flat on my back, pointing toward the ceiling. She crawled toward me from the foot at the bed, sweeping her hair from side to side across my legs. If it is possible to pass out from anticipation, I was about to do so. I could feel her nose and chin on my stomach, then her breasts and her stomach on mine. She slid forward to kiss me and then back. Something felt very nice and I realized that I was inside her. It was like someone putting your pants on without you knowing it.”
And then as quickly as chance had delivered Leif, it took him away. A petite brunette in traditional Korean dress paused briefly on the sidewalk to look at the blond athlete, then disappeared into the crowd. A glimmer of recognition lit up Leif’s face. “Miss Kim,” he murmured, and took off after her. In his wake there was a consensus of opinion: Korean women know things that other women will never know
A tired British coach recounted another unexpected diversion. “Over the course of the games, the schedule at training and competition had made shaving quite a low priority for me. But soon my stylish stubble was looking more like a bad attempt at a beard, so I opted to treat myself to a Korean barbershop shave. Across the road from the Olympic Stadium, I had a choice of about three dozen or more red, white and blue spinning poles.”
Barbershops in Korea are second in number only to tailors, but are second to none in service, because well, let the coach tell it.
“With nothing else to go on, I picked one of the larger poles and made my way down a narrow hall to a flight of stairs topped by a smaller spinning pole and an arrow directing me downward. At the bottom of the stairs, I pushed open a glass door and was greeted by a pleasant-looking man in a white smock. Two raven-haired women in modest dresses came through a curtain and flanked him. His mastery of English matched my command of the Korean tongue, so our conversation was mostly hand signals punctuated by nods and pointing. No, I didn’t want a haircut. Yes, I wanted a shave.
“Guided by his beautiful almond-eyed assistant, I found myself in a small alcove in the center of which stood a large, plush old-style barber chair. At the foot of the chair was a shampoo sink. A wooden screen could make the room private.
“The second woman, slightly taller than the first, followed behind me and took my jacket and shirt. I sat back as the chair reclined and a towel was laid across my chest. A large pillow was placed on top of the sink. Each girl then took a leg and pulled oft my boots. Socks followed, and the faucet was turned to a gentle, warm flow.
“As I lay there, they washed my feet, paying careful attention to every toe. I smiled and thought to myself, my, my, this is good. The barber came in to make one last plug for a haircut, but I didn’t let him sway me.
“After the last drop of moisture was dabbed from my dogs, I discovered that it would not be the barber that attended me, but his assistant. He left the room and a soft pair of hands reached from behind and began to massage my face with a creamy lotion. With delicate precision, she put the razor to my neck. My eyes grew heavy, and when I awoke, my face was as smooth as a baby’s behind.
“Completely relaxed, I was less than ready to move when she pulled the screen shut, placed a towel over my eyes and turned off the overhead light. Petite but firm hands began to massage my shoulders. A full shiatsu manipulation of my limbs ensued. My mind hovered somewhere close to the alpha state. Just as I was about to bonk out completely, I felt her fingers kneading my thigh. Consciousness returned as her hands moved farther up my leg. Slowly but surely, she began to massage my groin, which was still lost in another world. She kept at it and when she detected signs of life below my belt, she leaned over and whispered into my ear, ‘Special massagee, you like special massagee?’
“My mind raced. I had a dinner appointment in less than an hour but her insistent whispers and learned hands had destroyed my sense of priority. ‘Neh,’ I responded in the Korean affirmative, ‘Neh.’
“She pulled the towel over my eyes down a little farther and left the room. When she returned, my sense of hearing, heightened by my inability to see, acutely followed her movements. In the darkness I tried to picture her face. Attentive hands loosened my pants and, like a Catholic gift in the back of a Cortina, I nonchalantly lifted myself up as she slid them to my knees. I heard her move to the sink and turn on the water. Her slippers slid along the floor as she returned to the side of the chair. If it’s true that the imagination exceeds reality, then imagination would have to work overtime because reality was doing quite well. She washed me with a warm, wet towel and carefully, caringly dried my now-erect staff. I felt her tongue glide up from the base to the tip and I couldn’t stop smiling. The wet towel pressed down on my eyelids, I was enveloped in darkness and all I could hear was the tiny liquid sound of her tongue on my cock.
“I heard a rustle of clothing as she lifted her dress and my ears perked as I heard elastic twangings she’d removed her panties. She turned and smoothly pulled a condom over my cock and then climbed atop the chair, placing her legs on the arms. As she leaned over me, I felt her long, dark hair drape over the towel on my face. Wanting to become more involved, I tried to remove the towel. She politely but firmly took my hand and placed it on top of her back. From there I followed the curve of her side past the dress gathered at her hip until I touched the silky smoothness of her skin. But before I could navigate the circumference of her ass, she returned my hand to the top of her back, and I resigned myself to her lead.
“She reached down between us and positioned herself above my cock. Her hot breath swept through the towel and onto my neck as she lowered her hips, sucking me into her with one smooth motion. This Asian goddess kept her hand on my shaft as she gyrated on top of me. In timely fashion she pinched her fingers at the base of my cock. Each of her motions was felt in every pore of my body. Her head fell beside mine and she pulled me close. I had lost all track of time and space I wanted nothing more than to stay in this woman, in this position, for a very long time.
“I maintained this pleasure as long as I could, but suddenly an even greater sensation flooded me. Beyond control, I began to come. My toes curled and I clenched her to me with my left arm as my right hand grabbed the chair for support. My hips lunged to meet her thrust: my entire body was centered in my groin. Like an old film, waves crashed, trains plunged into tunnels and volcanoes erupted in my head. I felt everything and I felt nothing. This kind of shave could be habit forming.”
His experience was special, but far from unique. After the Olympics, Korea would no longer be the well-kept secret of American servicemen and shoe manufacturers. It was a turning point for the country, moving into the ranks of larger nations. For sixteen days, Seoul had been the most important city in the world and it would never be the same, not for anyone who had sampled her treasures.
This month, Gulliver travels to San Diego in search of love, ladies and a place to make beautiful music. Instead, he finds sailors, stockbrokers and yahoos. But with a car and a little luck, he succumbs to the allure of the Left Coast.
A willing blonde at his side, he hops into a borrowed roadster and heads for the hills. When she reaches for his stick shift, Gulliver believes he has attained Nevada, but it’s only the Santa Rosa Mountains.
Here in San Diego one so easily mistakes the landscape for hallucination. One’s senses must readjust to receive the subtleties of tempered elements. Cloudless seventy-degree days languish in a climate that blurs the seasons. Longings are fueled by the often uninterrupted sunshine that illuminates a land of transient desires, cooled by silken Pacific breezes during balmy liquid nights inevitably one’s thirst for intimacy drives one to the relentless pursuit of fulfillment.
In a cab from the airport I am listening to the driver, Phil, a recent immigrant by way of Chicago “There’s more sun here than anywhere else on earth,” he says. “People are friendly. The women hey, I’m hard all the time from these lookers! I’m here to stay.”
I cannot argue with him as we pull up alongside a white BMW convertible containing three sun-kissed morsels of female confection. A big-haired brunette of not more than eighteen years leans forward from the back seat to share a giggle with her companions. Her white cotton tank top clings to her olive-skinned breasts, which turn slightly upward, the nipples well defined even at this distance. I am seized by an impulse to bolt from the taxi and join her for a ride in that back seat, but before I have the chance, the trio glances over to us with varying grins of enticement then speeds off as we are left with just a promise and a smile.
Though I had known it to be the case, this incident makes clear that I am going to need a car of my own. “I need a car. Take me to a rental agency,” I demand of Phil, who unquestioningly understands my requirement. In Southern California, the automobile sustains life as a basic natural element and often articulates a sex-power fantasy of the driver. In San Diego this could not be more the case.
Cruising the arteries, I am taken by the allure of curvature sweeping lines of an overpass echo those of the bodies concealed within the cars around me. Since I got on the freeway, I realize a possibility of never getting off the sense of freedom you get from driving here is that captivating. Heading to the beach, I notice that three of the four cars surrounding me are driven by single women, all provocative. Facing me, a billboard: Welcome to San Diego, America’s Finest City! I am a believer: I clutch the wheel of the rental car, an American midsize as sexy as they come, with only eight hundred miles on it. I like how it rides, gliding close to the road, slipping through openings in the ever changing patterns of traffic.
Rosie, the young woman at the rental agency, with her generously endowed breasts and succulent thighs caught in a leopard print silk blouse and matching crepe slit skirt, had rejected my idea that she accompany me for a test drive with grace and civility. Dangling the keys between two perfectly sculpted fingers, she cooed with a warm smile, “If it doesn’t work out, you know where to find me.”
At a bar in Coronado, I met a bronzed naval weapons specialist. “If it weren’t for all these military installations, San Diego could count on a greater number of available chicks,” he remarked while leaning a little too close to me. This island town is noted for its two naval bases and the distinguished Hotel del Coronado, prominently featured in Some Like It Hot. The hotel was no doubt chosen not only for its splendid Victorian architecture, but also for its propitious locale on the sand across the bay from the thriving city, now just over a million in population and growing fast.
“It’s a drag,” continued the sun-bleached blond dude. “We outnumber the ladies by at least two to one, and there’s a sizable lesbian community besides. There simply aren’t enough to go around. Competition is fierce.”
After several days’ investigation, I would come to understand his point. On street corners groups of sailors in full regalia laugh boisterously or stand in varying states of disorientation while paused in quests for erotic adventure.
My work is cut out: I need the right instance, a moment in time to catch a woman’s interest. Will a San Diego woman understand my allure? Will a woman who has fashioned her standards with surfers some now middle-aged , real-estate agents, stockbrokers and the legions of young sailors and fighter pilots, recognize my potential, my worthiness?
As a community of San Diego, Ocean Beach, or O.B., functions much like the Left Bank does in Pans, the Village in New York, or Venice in Los Angeles. It maintains a precious reputation in this particularly conservative region as an alternative community and bohemian enclave, a place where the status quo is kept at bay, lest conformity seep in like an oil spill. It is in this refreshingly colorful milieu that I would meet a member of the opposite sex in a tryst of extemporaneous attraction.
“Maybe men do deserve each other,” she stated just loud enough for me to hear, as two men of considerable good looks wearing tank tops and shorts passed into the sunlight from the cool interior of the local health food store. She had just rung up their six ounces of wheatgrass juice. Her smile drew my attention from a basket of produce and grains alongside her register. She handled my selections with care while entering the price of each. It was her delicacy that drew me in. Her softness excited me.
What could I say? She wore no name tag, but I recalled hearing a fellow employee call her as Diane during my initial visit two days before. Her eyes met mine at intermittent instances, but not long enough to invite comment. I reached for a brown bag and began packing my own groceries. This was a cooperative store, after all, and I was probably its newest member.
“I haven’t seen you very much,” she said, finally meeting my eyes with her own crystalline orbs of blue. Midway through her comment, I had lapsed in my duty of bagging, for an instant forgetting who and where I was. She pushed a pair of perfectly ripe cantaloupes onto the scale and said, ”I’m here in the mornings. When do you get up?”
Her boldness caught me off guard. ”I’m a late sleeper,” I replied.
“I have seen you before.”
“Of course, two days ago, when I came in to join.”
“Oh, yeah.”
She rang up a jar of organic raspberry preserves. “What’s your number?” she asked.
I told her, and said, “My name is Gulliver,” which made her smile.
She entered my membership number into the register before totaling the sale. “That’ll be nineteen seventy-five, Gulliver,” she said, still smiling. The register’s cash drawer slid out.
I dug into my jeans for a crumpled twenty. It was then that I noticed how translucent her skin appeared. I unfolded the twenty, caught in her luminance. “Come to the mountains with me,” I said, handing her the twenty. “Diane, if you’re kind, you’ll come with me to the mountains.” My desire had become specific at last.
“I’m kind,” she said while taking my twenty, then handed me my change of a quarter. She giggled. I was enraptured.
Later, as we drove upward, to the mountains in the east, Diane’s hair was a blustering mass of gold, I moved into lane number one while gently accelerating.
“That woman you live with dominates the message on your answering machine. Does she dominate your life as well?”
“Not really,” I answered, bringing my free hand up to massage the nape of her firm and slender neck. “That voice belongs to my sister-in-law, Margo. It’s her answering machine. She’s been kind enough to let me stay with her until I find a place of my own, and to loan me this car for a week. She’s a lawyer. I guess her voice suggests dominance and with this being the age of law yeah, I can understand your presumption that she has a certain effect on me.”
“I neither program, nor am I programmable,” Diane said, relaxing not only her neck, but much of her lustrously tanned body, a body that begged to reveal itself.
“That was never a concern of mine,” I said, assuring myself more than her.
“I have significant impact on those I encounter, according to my chart,” she said and turned to face me directly. After several moments of studying my prominent forehead, she asked, “You’re a conceptualist, aren’t you? I sense that the blood goes to your head and nowhere else.” She placed a hand on my forehead. “Is that true?”
“I’m an impresario, but the blood goes to both heads.”
We laughed, and I explained that my visit to San Diego would involve securing a suitable venue for producing classical and new music concerts. To change the subject, I asked how she liked the ride.
She nodded her approval. “It’s all in your head,” Diane said suddenly. “It’s got four wheels, an engine that works, and it goes!” Then she moved her hand to caress my hardened rod as I tightened my grip on the wheel. Boy, did she have a way of setting priorities.
We were surging nearer the mountains. East of San Diego we reached the suburbs: La Mesa, El Cajon, Santee, and Lakeside. I pushed the pedal closer to the floor.
On the ascent, speeding out of the suburban landscape, we could recognize the rock-strewn hills of the American West, at least as I had come to envision it. Diane popped a tape into the deck.
As soon as we left the interstate for a winding country road, the air changed. We were close to four thousand feet in elevation, and our desires intensified as the oxygen waned. Through groves of oak trees, we sped in a mounting search for solace. Diane slipped off her cotton panties as we rounded a steep incline, which brought us close to the timberline. Shafts of sunlight flickered through the pines, taking licks at Diane’s great golden bush, now exposed. Ahead, a lake came into view and just before it a dirt road took a steep ascent into what we hoped would be oblivion.
Deep into the forest, we had left a trail of dust behind us on the sinuous dirt road, where no signs of life had been sighted for the last mile and a half. Diane pulled off her loose-fitting sweatshirt to reveal what I could only peripherally see as a perfectly proportioned pair of ripe breasts. She leaned her lips to my ear. “If you’re looking for tan lines, there aren’t any.” she whispered, biting my earlobe gently.
“I’m looking for a fucking place to pull over,” I responded, nearly unable to steer the car any farther. To our left lay a small clearing in the forest. I coasted the car into a meadow of brush as goldfinch and crossbill took flight upon our arrival. Diane had undone my shirt before I could even shift into park. She ran her fingers across my chest while nibbling my neck with her teeth and gripping my excited cock with her right hand. I teased her breasts, cupping them lightly, bringing them up and catching the swollen nipples as they fell. Her skin was as satin felt, but warm and alive. For this was flesh, the sweetest, most delicious flesh I had tasted. Lapping my tongue at her rose-scented breasts, I could barely wait to taste her insides.
Positioning her left leg over and behind my headrest, she offered her labial treasure. I parted her quivering vulva as she gripped the crown of my head and drew a lock of hair into her mouth. She let out an extended sigh as my tongue found its way to a succulent trove of sweet-tasting warmth. Her fingers kneaded my backside as I brought my tongue up against the wet walls of her interior. A scent of sage enveloped me. I lightly boxed her swollen clitoris with the tip of my voracious tongue. Diane was moaning and kneading my ass with her warm hands her breasts brushed my hairline. A moment later, she shrieked and convulsed, pushing her pelvis upward and bringing my face tightly between her soaked wings. I wanted to see her face all their faces transformed by ecstasy. The girls in the BMW convertible, Rosie with the dangling car keys, those speeding women on the freeways, each and everyone of them rocking with this intense pleasure.
Diane had quenched my desire there in the purple mountains at dusk, but a taste, as I know now in America’s finest city, can only ignite the rushlight of endless possibilities.
Five dollars and she’s ready to position herself. “Where do you want me?” asks the best looking woman you’ve seen outside a centerfold spread. Your mouth is dry and your heart is pounding as you look for a suitable spot. It should be close though very, very close…
Are you in heaven? No, you’re in Windsor, Ontario, where bottomless is the byword and strip joints constitute a mainstay of the local economy. Just step across the Canadian border from Detroit and you’ll find a different world: Streets are clean, slums are nonexistent and a civilized, cosmopolitan attitude toward sex allows the best strip joint in town to stand proudly beside the old, stately city hall.
Join our epicurean author for a blue-balled tour of the best burlesque in town. From the swankest nightclub to the sleaziest gin joint, there’s only one rule to remember: No touching.
Betty Boobs. I wondered if she’d been born with that name. I wondered if she’d been born with those boobs. The marquee of the Million Dollar Saloon, where she was stripping, boasted that her upper dimensions were 55FFF. Betty was amazing in every respect, from the heft of her chest right down to her slim waist and agile, blonde pussy. Particularly astonishing was that, despite her provocative undulations not to mention her cooing of “Ooooooh, baaaaby” while expertly mimicking fellatio on one of the silk stockings she had just removed I still had a hard time paying attention.
My diverted focus might have had something to do with the delightfully untanned ass of another stripper swishing a millimeter from my nose. Or it could have been the third one, Tanya, squatting at my knee and peeling back the folds of her vagina so I could have a better look in.
Understandable distractions.
All this was happening while laser beams sliced through the darkness of the room and rock ‘n’ roll reverberated from the walls. All this while I was on my lunch hour.
Welcome to Windsor, Ontario, a sleepy little city of two hundred thousand, located across the river from Detroit. Similar to Detroit, though much smaller, Windsor is largely a working-class town. Lacking Detroit’s racial and economic problems as it does, the Canadian city can mask its seamy aspects with a tidy facade. The river and the zealous customs office at the border also help Windsor to maintain its quaint charm.
It’s really no wonder that so many Detroiters visit as often as possible. They tend to view Windsor as an oasis, a place where they can do lots of things that can’t readily be done in Detroit walk safely along the streets, for example, and choose from an incredible range of excellent restaurants in a compact area. Hell, there are even bingo parlors. Add the international flavor and the fact that the American dollar remains strong in Canada expect to spend only seventy dollars for a hundred-dollar dinner and there’s no need to guess why the Detroit-Windsor tunnel is clogged by Michigan cars.
Then, of course, there is that powerful cultural lure for Detroiters the Windsor Ballet, which has no equivalent in their own city. The name is ironic those in the know can’t mention it without smiling. For the term Windsor Ballet refers collectively to the city’s clubs that feature female entertainers. Depending on who you talk to, Windsor boasts from eight to a dozen such clubs. The big three Jason’s, Cheetah’s and the Million Dollar Saloon are downtown among the major hotels, the gift shops and the finer restaurants. They are front and center, right along with city hall and the art museum.
What truly sets these places apart though, is the magic word “bottomless.” In Detroit as in most American cities, where modes of striptease are intimately connected to state liquor-control commissions the furthest any dancer is apt to strip is down to a G-string. In Windsor there is no tease in the strip the G-string is but a quaint American custom.
Recently, when a friend who had just moved to Detroit asked about the Ballet, I gladly offered to act as a guide. The first stop for most balletomanes here is usually Jason’s. The club is windowless, and the mirrors that line the foyer tantalizingly capture images of the terpsichorean take-it-off performers farther inside.
An air of respect greets the patrons of Windsor’s top clubs. The atmosphere is strictly on the up-and-up. Proper attire, please. Jason’s charges a cover, a mere five bucks. Drinks are reasonably priced, too. Many an American businessman, recognizing a good thing when he finds it, keeps coming back with out-of-town clients happily in tow.
There is one overriding rule that everyone must abide: No touching.
The setup at Jason’s is like that at the other clubs. One dancer is featured on stage while a dozen other girls parade around the large mirrored room, temptingly attired in skimpy bikinis, nighties, togas or short shorts.
The key is to get strategically situated, scan the room for the most luscious female and wait for the opening strains of music. Then signal to one of the sashaying girls. For five bucks, she will treat you and your tablemates to some close-up entertainment. I motioned to a slender brunette. She smiled and flashed her big blue eyes at me as she slinked over to my table, holding a wooden crate over her head.
“Where do you want me?” she asked, licking her frosted lips.
I turned to my friend, who answered with a shoulder shrug, “How about here between us?”
She set the crate down, climbed atop it and began swaying with the music. Maria was her name, and she turned out to be one of the rare dancers who not only lives in Windsor, but understands English. Most of the girls are French Canadians from Montreal, the hub of a loose confederation of clubs scattered about the country.
Without the slightest hint of self-consciousness, Maria soon began to undo her athletically inspired garb. Each girl’s costume is intended to inspire a different sort of fantasy from farmer’s daughter to gartered French maid. When Maria got down to her headband, powder-blue kneepads and high heels, she went to work on the flimsy bit of material at her crotch. It was fastened at either side by a thin elastic with clips.
Her beautiful features demanded eye contact, but when my gaze met hers, she gently directed the focus down to what was showing between her legs. There, beneath a tightly muscled stomach and an immaculately groomed hair patch, the pink lips of her snatch were pulsating in perfect time with the music. She reached down and sensuously caressed herself there. All the girls who work in these clubs wear minimal pubic hair the better for patrons to see what’s beneath it.
When the music took a slower turn, Maria’s knee brushed against my thigh as she stopped performing and lowered her face to mine. The scent of her perfume was intoxicating. When she raised herself back to her full height and extended her arms toward the ceiling, her sweet cunt was about an inch from my nose. In much too short a moment, she spun around and her supple buttocks now filled my field of vision. Seconds later, she bent over and let her hair cascade down to touch the wooden crate. I was confronted by the entirety of her cunt, at which I kept my cool until she started to wiggle before me. That’s when my tongue made some involuntary movements. Luckily, the music ended before I could strike.
Maria remained demure as she slipped her costume back on and thanked us. Her little performance had stirred a dozen wildly gesticulating men at the surrounding tables. They and we wanted another look at what we’d just seen.
“I find this hard to take. How are you doing?” I asked my friend.
“Just fine, and don’t worry. What’s next?”
“Cheetah’s,” I responded.
At Cheetah’s a long, narrow, mirrored, black room the music was louder and the stage lights were brighter. Each girl came onstage by descending a staircase and then danced three numbers. The routine was enticing, if predictable. Opening tune: She languidly danced about the stage in costume. Second tune: Off went her top. Third tune: Her peeling proceeded until nothing was left to the imagination.
As a stripper named Dawn neared the end of her set, she rubbed her nipples lovingly, sat on the edge of the stage, grabbed her feet and lifted them skyward. Upon seeing her glistening vagina exposed, some guys dining just inches away dropped their forks.
As at Jason’s, five dollars hires a table dancer. Instead of wooden crates, Cheetah’s girls dance on circular, chrome-legged pedestals. These simple devices serve an important function: they raise the dancer’s bush and tush to eye level.
The table dancers at Cheetah’s are also more forward than those at Jason’s. They make sure you notice them either by affecting a strut that’s guaranteed to boil your blood, or with a smile and an impudent gaze. No guy with five bucks in his pocket is likely to be immune. It’s impossible to estimate how many expense accounts Cheetah’s has figured into. The place is a favorite spot of the traveling businessmen who stay in the Windsor Hilton across the street.
As we emerged from the bar, I was disappointed that the shower bit hadn’t been presented. I remembered my old friend Paul’s bachelor party at Cheetah’s. After a bunch of strong drinks, he was invited to take a shower with a couple of the lovelies. They led him onto the stage, stripped him down to his Calvin’s and ushered him into a glass shower stall. The crowd watched as Paul and the girls cavorted in the stall for five minutes. The water was obviously cold: all six of their nipples were rock hard when they emerged to thunderous applause.
Turning a corner, I said to my companion, “Now you’re really in for something special.”
As we walked, I saw Detroit across the river. Seen from Windsor, the city looked gorgeous and safe. The view was stunning, but we were heading to another place, one where the sun never shines. Well-known as the raunchiest of Windsor’s downtown clubs, the Million Dollar Saloon instantly offered up a boisterous atmosphere. The hostess led us and all who entered the club along the bar, where the stools were occupied by beautiful, naked women who were singing along with the music. ZZ Top’s song, Legs, shook the air as we negotiated our way past a dozen shapely, kicking legs and took our seats.
As the dancers did their acts on stage, the real action was taking place at the tables. An electronic newswire overhead flashed the day’s business news and sports scores while the women of the Million Dollar Saloon strutted their stuff. The pace of the place was hyper some men surrounded themselves with two or three table dancers at a time. What ensued was like something out of Suetonius. The girls wasted no time getting down to basics. They knew what we wanted and they delivered quickly and fully. Not content merely to show themselves off, they bumped and ground and bent and stretched and spread their pussies wide open. You don’t often see tits, ass and pussy in the same close-up frame except at the Million Dollar Saloon. After my friend and I engaged a naked trio for a couple of numbers, I could take no more. The management’s strict no-touching-the-girls rule was killing me. We left.
I was lucky this time, for my friend and I were to spend the rest of the night in Windsor. My friend, I should explain, is named Monica. As we headed to our hotel, I asked if she had enjoyed herself.
“It was great,” she enthused. “I thought I’d be grossed out, but I got used to it. I began to like it. It’s exciting and sexy.”
Many Detroit women seem to tolerate their boyfriends’ trips to the bottomless clubs across the river. Many even express an interest in checking out the clubs personally. Monica, however, is among the few who have actually done so.
Back at our suite, she inserted a tape in the boombox we always bring along. I got comfortable in a chair by the picture window and gazed at the lights of Detroit. Monica went into the bathroom, emerging a few minutes later with a red plastic milk crate held over her head. Her evening dress had been replaced by a cut-to-the-butt spandex miniskirt. Her bare waist was girdled by a gold chain. Her hard nipples were discernible as half-inch bumps in her suede halter. I asked her some questions, to which she replied, “The crate? I got it this afternoon…Yes, I enjoyed what we did tonight. I wanted to pick up some pointers on how to be a better tease.” She placed the crate on the floor and stepped up on it. I went to close the window drapes. “No, leave them open,” she said. Tina Turner’s hit, Private Dancer, came up on the tape.
“How long have you been planning this?” I asked, grinning.
She didn’t answer. Her eyes were closed as she swayed to the music and undid her halter. When her breasts were bare, she leaned forward and dangled them over my head.
I reached for them, but she slapped my hand.
“No touching!”
As the music grew more bass-heavy, she hiked her skirt up to reveal that expertly coiffed pussy of hers. Reaching down, she spread the lips and fingered her slit and clitoris.
After a few seconds of this, she held her musky-smelling finger under my nose as she undid her skirt with her other hand. She was soon naked, except for the chain and heels.
Monica’s performance a marvelous synthesis of what we had seen earlier continued for about fifteen minutes. Then she reached down and unzipped my fly. My prick sprang forth without coaxing. Monica worked it with her hand and then, while maintaining her balance on the crate, engulfed it in her mouth. When I started to caress her hair, she stopped and said again, “No touching.”
“Anything you say.”
After affording me a few more minutes of bliss, she stopped sucking, stood up, turned her back to me and bent over. Her long hair brushed the crate. Through the window I could see Detroit glimmering in the distance, but my focus was only inches away, where the most beautiful pussy in North America was being swayed back and forth. I felt familiar stirrings, and remembered a sign we’d seen upon emerging from the tunnel into Windsor: “Ontario. Incredible!”
Nick Zedd is an anarchist. He is also a filmmaker, writer and performer frequently in drag . He shudders at the label “artist.” His work, which bulldozes through the bars of the social order’s collective brain cage, although well-known in Europe, is largely ignored here at home. Such progressive popcorn pits as New York City’s Film Millennium and the Collective For Living Cinema do not exhibit his films most recently, Police State and Whoregasm. The once-irreverent counterculture weekly The Village Voice, now grown fat and complacent, betraying the very purpose for which it was conceived, has consistently dismissed Zedd and suppressed any serious consideration of his work.
Police State is an important underground effort. It attacks the illusion of freedom in a “free society.” It says we are not free. It says that if we confront the restraints on our “freedom,” we will be brutalized into submission by the state’s sadistic authoritarians. In the film, Zedd underscores this point with a scene of castration-by-paper-cutter.
For those who care, Zedd is one of the most vital and cogent voices in the wilderness of mass-media gibberish. His aim is not to entertain, delight or charm. His blend of confrontational politics and shock aesthetics is intended to make you think and thereby to question the very fabric of your existence “Are you really free? Do you understand your sexuality? Your identity? Who is in control, you or a clique of madmen?” Darius James
Andrea, the teenage crackhead who wanted to move in with me, was supposed to take me out to Tavern on the Green for a huge dinner. Instead she went to Hotel 17 and died. They found a bunch of needles on the floor next to her.
A week later, somebody sent me a plane ticket to go to Germany to read poetry. I spent the first night of the Poetry Festival in Hamburg bored out of my mind, wandering around a club while German poets recited drivel to a well-behaved crowd of trendy Eurotrash. I couldn’t get any vodka since all they had at the bar was wine, so I kept telling myself, “Be happy you’re in Europe and looking for girls to pick up.”
I kept noticing this one girl with a bald head with red veins painted on top. She kept stumbling and going to a sink backstage to pour water on her head. When the bathroom door was locked, she got mad and started kicking it and fell down on her ass, laughing. I noticed her stomach and breasts showing through the tight dress she was wearing, and also her big ass, and I started following her in order to see if she’d get in a fight or fall down again. She was more interesting than the so-called talent on stage.
She sat on a stool backstage, undoing some bandages tied around her ankles, and she took her shoes off to massage her feet. She began pouring beer on her bald dome, and the liquid soaked through her dress so I could easily assess the shape of her body. She didn’t seem to notice anybody else in the room.
She had shaken my hand the night before and introduced herself in a kitchen belonging to the festival organizer while I sat talking to Erica, a pregnant girl. I thought she was an ugly skinhead and ignored her.
A video was projected backstage of Burroughs and Giorno talking, but it was incoherent soundwise, so I was bored. Erica was standing next to me and I didn’t want to be with her. Since she’d become pregnant, she seemed to age ten years and she never had anything to say. She just glared at everybody and wore black. Meanwhile, this bald girl in the tight, wet dress kept getting looks of disapproval from everyone as she carried a chair around in order to get a better view of the screen. I kept staring at her, thinking she must be a mental case, and wondered if I could say anything to her that wouldn’t make me sound like an imbecile. She got up, asked me not to let anybody get her seat and walked off. I sat on a broken stool, watching the seat in a room crowded with German people. I sat there ten minutes and watched someone sit in her seat. She came back. I picked up my stool and told her she could sit on it, but she turned to leave. I asked her her name.
She said her name was Uva and she introduced me to her younger roommate Karola, a bad German poet in a tight green miniskirt and a beret. I thought Karola was sexy, but she was too skinny and young-looking, and her poetry sucked. I wanted to heckle her when I saw her onstage, but I felt sorry for her, so I just walked away as she spoke of butterflies. Uva invited me to her apartment with Karola. I didn’t know where I was, but I wanted to get away from Erica.
When we got to Uva’s apartment, I told her I was hungry, so she said she’d make me food. She put cheese on a cracker and poured curry powder on it. She then got down on her knees and started scrubbing the kitchen floor. She spent an hour doing this and picking up cassette tapes and jewelry while her roommate and I watched. I asked her why she was bothering to do this at three in the morning. Scrubbing the floors for no reason seemed neurotic and bizarre, but at least it was unexpected. I ate some spaghetti and we went to her bedroom with her roommate.
There was a TV on with only one channel the Olympics. I sat on the bed with Uva and her roomie, and she said I could sleep in the kitchen. I said I wanted to sleep with her, so she pulled a mattress out of her bedroom, put it in the studio and told Karola to leave.
The walls were covered with elaborate collages of Marilyn Monroe, naked Africans, Prince and Hollywood starlets, and her mattress was covered with twigs and leaves. I examined the round surfaces under her dress and got a hard-on. I grabbed her ears and kissed her. I liked the strange scent of an Indian perfume she wore. We made love on the bed, on top of the annoying twigs, while the TV showed an Olympic race by amputees. I laughed when one of the legless men fell off his wheeling device and had to be picked up. Then they presented medals to the deformed athletes, with close-ups of them crying. Uva seemed nervous as we fucked. But she sweated a lot and wore herself out. She wouldn’t look me in the eyes, but she’d brush up against me with her head, which I kissed. She told me that she’d been raped by a man with a fifteen-inch penis and had lived a year in Kuwait with a Lebanese prince who cut his penis off after she left him.
I went with her to the second night of the Poetry Festival, which consisted of another five hours of milling around. European “culture” is all secondhand, and occasionally people with money there pay people like me to bring them the real thing from America so they can decide what next to imitate. The organizer, Margot, a grotesque, middle-aged woman with too much makeup, gave me a bottle of vodka that I hid in the refrigerator backstage so I couldn’t get drunk before I went on. This was a mistake. Somebody found the bottle and finished it while I did my reading before an indifferent crowd of apparent drunks.
I was so distracted by offstage talking that I ended up boring myself onstage. I didn’t care about what I was reading, and I didn’t want to be there, but I was being paid five hundred bucks. Nobody appeared to understand what I was saying, and I couldn’t speak German. When the heckling started, I said, “Go to hell, Nazis!” and walked off. Nobody applauded. I hung around a few hours and wandered around the dingy, cold club while boring German poets whined academically at the polite audience. I ran into John Giorno, who told me about the time he’d passed out and woke up to find Andy Warhol giving him a blowjob.
Suddenly a girl appeared in a black dress, holding the skinned head of a dog. Her face was smeared with blood and her eyes were smothered in black mascara. Her hair was a rats’ nest of black weeds and her makeup sloppily covered her face, forming a frighteningly clown like grimace. She asked Margot if she wanted to talk to the “friend” in her hand, to which the grotesque averaged groupie woman replied, “No, I’ve talked to enough dead things tonight.” The vampire girl looked me directly in the eye and asked, “Will you kiss me?” I was repelled and attracted simultaneously by the sight of her face smeared in blood. I stuck my tongue in her bloody mouth and we continued to kiss as milling cretins tried to look away from our tasteless display. I was suddenly swung across the room, the iron grip of Uva holding my arm. She asked, “Do you want to fuck her?” I thought a moment and said, “Sure, why not?” Uva slapped me in the face and then stepped back to throw a bottle of whiskey at me. I ducked and it flew twelve feet, hitting Margot’s husband, the coorganizer of the festival, who looked directly at me. “I didn’t throw it. She did,” I said, and Uva stormed off. I didn’t want to lose her, but I knew she was mad, and I decided to stay away from her till she cooled off.
As part of a performance-art farce, a beautiful, fat, naked Chinese girl with white clown makeup all over her body lay on the floor under a twenty-foot wooden tower while a dreadlocked American bimbo cut the whole thing down with a chain saw. This took an hour and a half. Any normal audience would have walked out, but not these geeks. Uva returned and forgave me. She then went to the toilet.
For some reason, I thought I wanted to be alone with Erica, so I sneaked off to meet her outside. We walked toward the apartment I was staying at, but as she spoke of the baby carriage and crib she had to buy, I began to realize that it was Uva whom I really wanted to be with, so I told Erica I’d only walk her home, explaining that I had to catch an early train to Frankfurt for the last two days of the festival. After dropping her off, I took a cab back to the club to find Uva. I met her inside and a photographer took shots of us before we left. I took her to Eric’s apartment and fucked her on the fire escape.
The next day, I went by train to Frankfurt with a tall German named Johann and with Diamanda Galas and her English-twit entourage. When I got to my hotel in Frankfurt, I went to my room, turned off the lights and slept. Suddenly there was pounding on the door. I opened it. Erica stood there, asking to come in. Erica started asking me questions about Uva. When the questions got too personal I told her it was none of her business. I then regarded her pregnant belly and felt the movements of the child within. She was nine months pregnant now, and I felt a neurotic kinship with the creature inside. I hated Erica, this beautiful Swedish girl. In spite of the hideous emptiness of her brain, I found her compelling. We made love and lay in the dark so long that I missed the whole first night of bad poets in Frankfurt.
The second night, we arrived at the poetry fest just as Kathy Acker commenced a boring diatribe on the subject of cocks and clits, delivered in a middle-aged schoolmarm’s voice that grated on my nerves. Once again, they placed me so late in the program that most of the crowd had left before my appearance, so I decided to tell stories off the top of my head and won the audience’s approval before subjecting them to Whoregasm.
Next day, I took a train to Munich and was met by Boel, a cute girl with a white mohawk, who was putting me up while I was there to show movies. I was also met by Uva, who carried my luggage for me. She did this during all our European travels. After I’d shown my movies that night, while Boel and Magnus were running some bad super-eight films before a small crowd of serious Krauts, Uva and I kissed and held each other tight. I licked her eyelids and her ears and squeezed her before taking her to a bedroom upstairs where I could look at her magnificent body and fuck her.
The next day, I went alone to Salzburg, Austria, to show movies. During my whole stay in Austria I didn’t meet one girl. This pissed me off, since I’d left Uva behind so I could fuck as many frauleins as I could find.
The hedgerows in the center of the Parque Eduardo VII stretched in a series of interlocking boxes from the majestic statue of the Marquess de Pombal, builder of modern Lisbon, two hundred yards across a lush carpet of grass. I had often wandered through the park during the day, watching children play hide-and-seek among the waist-high hedges but this was the first time I had entered its precincts at night. Maria’s bottom, encased in skintight white jeans, moved invitingly in the moonlight, holding my gaze as she pulled me by the hand down the path running parallel to the hedges. As we passed each box, she drew up for an instant, cupping her ear, before pulling me onward.
“Why do we keep stopping?” I asked, running my hand over her buttocks, containing my excitement with difficulty.
“Shh, querido,” she replied in a throaty whisper. “Do you think we are alone here? And I forgot to make a reservation!” She giggled and gestured towards the maze before us. Now, as we stood still, I could make out the undercurrent of discreet murmurs, punctuated by occasional cries of feminine passion that my lust for the comely young Portuguese at my side had kept me from noticing before.
Halfway between the Pra a Pombal and the end of the hedgerows, we came to a spot that seemed to suit Maria, and she guided me into the maze until we were standing in our own small cubicle of shrub-bery. The moment I’d been awaiting since first spotting this shapely brunette on the crowded dance floor at Maxim’s disco two hours earlier had at last arrived!
She dropped to her knees, pulling me down, too. Our heads were just below the top of the hedges as I felt her mouth press against mine, her tongue snaking in to duel with mine, her left hand slowly moving down me until she was stroking my throbbing cock through my slacks. With her right hand, she pulled me down with her until we were stretched out full length on the thick grass.
With a sigh, she rolled onto her back and used one hand to open the buttons of her blouse while the other hand never ceased its slow stroking of my surging manhood. Her apple-size breasts, completely tanned, thrust up at me invitingly from their white silk frame. I lowered my mouth to one brown nipple, then to the other, sucking them to full erection as she turned both her hands to the job of undoing my belt and zipper. She pushed my slacks down over my hips and began stroking the bare shaft of my throbbing organ. Then she began to moan softly.
My need was immense as she arched her back to help me peel her jeans and panties down over her firm rump. She kicked off her dancing pumps and lay fully exposed, her body glimmering in the moonlight. I ran my hand over her generous thatch of dark pubic curls, dipping one finger into her moist pussy. She was more than ready for me as I rose up and entered her with one powerful thrust. I began a slow pumping in and out of her clutching, moist womanhood. She met my thrusts as our rhythm increased. We worked together until I felt myself explode within her and heard her choked-back cries of simultaneous satisfaction.
The afterglow barely outlasted our cigarettes. It was five in the morning and the discos and fado clubs of Lisbon had been closed for an hour. It was time for Maria to get home.
“You must understand, querido,” she said softly as we strolled down the broad, palm-lined Avenida da Rep blica toward her family’s apartment. “We Portuguese are an unusual people. Even though I have twenty-two years and may stay out at discos all night, or in the park with you, it would be improper for me to have my own apartment before I am married, and impossible to go to your hotel room!”
Portugal is a strange mixture of liberal and conservative moralities. The appearance of propriety often masks a delightful, Fellini-esque abandon in practice. After forty years of dictatorship, the Portuguese overthrew the fascist “New State” in a nearly bloodless coup on April 25, 1974. The anniversary of this so-called Revolution of the Camellias is celebrated as a great national holiday. After more than a generation of repression, freedom of expression is now absolute in sexual matters as well as the political arena. Political figures are lampooned mercilessly in such publications as Gaiola Aberta Open Jail , which proclaims itself the voice of “possible humor in the impossible country” and often publishes pictures of the heads of prominent politicians superimposed on the bodies of nude, lewdly posed women, a practice that, before the revolution, would certainly have led to prison or exile to the colonies in Africa. More standard erotic literature and magazines from the world over, including our favorite Penthouse publications, are openly displayed at every news kiosk, and several hardcore cinemas thrive in the capital city.
Not that prudishness has ever been characteristic of the Portuguese. During the nations’s four hundred years of Imperial glory, and for several millennia before that, Lisbon’s strategic position along the sea route from the Mediterranean to Northern Europe, and her magnificent harbor, have attracted the attention of, and led her conquest by, a wide range of outsiders Romans, Moors, Spaniards, Britons and Gauls. All have left lasting imprints on the character and physiognomy of the people. As a result, today’s Portuguese are outwardly conservative but tolerant and laidback to a degree undreamt of even in California. A Portuguese woman is as likely to be svelte and blonde, almost Nordic, as she is to be compact and dark-complected like my Maria in the Latin mode.
One feature left to this spectacularly beautiful city by its colorful past is the Rua S o Paulo. Like its cousins, the Reeperbahn in Hamburg and Canal Street in Amsterdam, this small red-light district has for centuries satisfied the lustful needs of seafaring men from all over the world. Befitting Lisbon’s smaller size, Rua S o Paulo is only a few blocks long. It lies near the waterfront, well away from the center of the city and the monuments and museums so well known to tourists. But the street boasts its full complement of raucous, neon-bedecked clubs: the New York, the Copenhagen, the Tokyo, and all others with strobe-lit dance floors, B-girls and out-and-out hookers. Walk through the narrow, high-walled alleyways that lead from the Rua, however taking care to avoid paying undue attention to the occasional sight of a furtive couple in a dark doorway, the man standing, his hands on the woman’s head as it bobs up and down at his groin and you emerge in a quaint, romantic Lisbon neighborhood with inviting shops and sidewalks cafes.
For the more discriminating, there are several elegant brothels in the city, reminiscent of those described in Victorian erotic novels, with lush carpets and drapes and a selection of girls from the far-flung corners of the old Portuguese empire. Here you will be greeted at the door by a liveried butler and, if found acceptable, ushered in for an evening of delight. To gain admission, however, it is also necessary that you be referred to the establishment by someone known to the management.
If you should fail to meet a congenial girl, Portuguese or otherwise and many young German and Scandinavian lovelies flock to Portugal for vacations , in one of Lisbon’s discos or cocktail lounges, and if you are unwilling to partake of the less savory pleasures of the Rua S o Paulo, there remain the happy hunting grounds of the Costa do Sol, the Portuguese riviera. Small beaches dot the coast for forty miles north of Lisbon, all of them easily accessible by rail from the city. These beaches include fabled Estoril and popular Cascais, which boast perhaps the finest tanning rays in the world, along with some of the most delectable sun-bunnies to be found anywhere. An Estoril tan should not be marred by unsightly white lines, so you can expect to be surrounded by a mouth-watering assortment of bare breasts of all sizes, shapes and colors. Although Portuguese girls are not as approachable at the beach as in more formal and clothed circumstances, this is, of course, not true of the Scandinavian sun worshipers, who are on vacation as much to meet men as to get tan. On one trip to Estoril, a friend of mine struck up a conversation with two buxom blondes just arrived from Munich, eager for male company to help them experience the pleasures of Portugal. Alain was happy to oblige.
“They were even sexier in their street clothes than when their naked nipples were pointing at me on the beach,” he told me. “We went to the Casino Estoril for drinks and a little French dice, and in their miniskirts and loose-fitting peasant blouses, with their luscious tits and asses barely covered, we really put a crimp in the reserved atmosphere of that club! The croupier could barely turn the dice cage. And with those two sweethearts stroking my thighs, one on either side, I could barely concentrate on my bets. We decided to take a cab back to Lisbon to catch a show. By the time we’d gone a mile down the coastal highway, I had my mouth buried in one’s tits and my hands in both their panties. One of them was stroking my cock while the other gently kneaded my balls and the driver struggled to keep from running into the seawall.
“Back in the city, after a couple of hours in a dark, smoky club, sipping red wine and listening to the soulful, lovely songs of a fado singer, we barely made it back to my suite at the Ritz before we were going at it like dogs in heat. When I wasn’t humping one or the other, they were giving each other tongue baths.
“We wound up naked on my balcony, watching the sun rise over the Parque Eduardo and the botanical gardens. I had Inge bent over the rail, doing her from behind. At the same time, I held my open hand against my thigh as Gisele humped herself against it, running her fingers over my body and Inge’s. We were on the fourth floor and a few early commuters on the sidewalk below looked up to see Inge’s tits dangling in the morning air. They all smiled and kept walking,”
It is not surprising that the plaintive strains of fado should cap an evening of sexual excitement. More than anything else, the haunting tunes of the fadistas, tales of abandoned love and spiritual pain, express the Portuguese national emotion of saudade, a nostalgic regret for the way things might have been, combined with acceptance of life as it is. This mixture of melancholy and joy permeates every aspect of Portuguese life and makes this lovely little country, with its wonderful people, among the most relaxing and sensual places in the world to visit.
Of course, nothing can communicate the erotic and romantic flavor of Lisbon like being there. Even now, as I sip at my smuggled Absinthe Ancora legal in Portugal, but not widely or openly displayed , I can only hope that my memories, so vivid to me, will whet the reader’s appetite for the extraordinary pleasures of Portugal.
As I walked through the cool sand, the full moon began to sink behind the high, spired mountains. The broad beach, which had sparkled during the day like a long, giant band of sugar, submerged into the dark-ening shadow of the cliffs. By the time I got to the shallow caves that opened near the water’s edge, the night was very black. I stopped to hear the waves breaking in a muffled harrumph of foam while gusts of wind whipped and whispered along the rock face.
That’s when I heard it. At first I thought it was the rushing wind. Then I realized that there were other natural forces at play nearby. It was too dark to see anything, but the unmistakable sound of a woman tossing in the waves of climax seemed to be coming from the mouth of the next cave just a stone’s throw up the beach. It was too good to be true. I had come to this remote valley on the Hawaiian island of Kauai the day before precisely to investi-gate what kind of sex scene thrived at a place where people came to camp and take off their clothes. And now it appeared that I had stumbled on what we call “pri-mary sources.” I suppose a more polite fellow would have turned around and walked away. But what harm could it do to take another few steps just for a quick glimpse of the coupling couple?
The woman’s cries were subsiding now, but I could still hear her whimpering with little shivers of delight. I walked up next to the outcropping of rough lava rock at the mouth of the cave. From there I could just make out a darker shadow lying on the sand in the center of the cave. The woman let out a long, languid “Mmmm.” I couldn’t resist getting a little closer. Was he licking her? Or slowly sliding his dick in and out? Staying close to the wall of the cave, I drew nearer. That’s when I found out I’d been presuming too much. This lady was her own lover. Lying on her back on a towel, her legs propped up slightly, her feet dug into the soft dry sand, she stroked a breast with one hand while lightly touch-ing between her legs with the other.
Then she exhaled a sigh and her hands fell to her sides. It suddenly seemed very quiet and I realized how close I’d let my-self get to her. To make matters worse, the clouds had drifted away and the bright stars reflecting off the ocean cast a pale glow onto the sand. I felt exposed and naked which of course I was, that being the uniform in these parts. I tried to think how I’d explain to her that I wasn’t a voyeur, but a reporter just trying to do a good job. For a long moment she lay there without moving, her long legs stretched out in the sand. The starlight rendered her skin luminous, with her still erect nipples forming tiny shadows on her full breasts, and her fuzzy triangle a thick dark bush between her thighs. Her hair, long and shiny, lay swirled upon the sand above her head.
For a couple of minutes we both re-mained utterly still. I was hoping she would fall asleep and let me slip away. No such luck. Instead, she soon lazily raised a finger and began to rub first one nipple, then the other. Her hips began to sway slightly and her other hand went down to caress her furry mound. She brought her knees up further, slid a finger inside and began to pull on her nipples. Her moaning started deep but gradually changed to the heavy breathing I’d heard before. She propped herself up on one elbow, pushing and pulling her thumb in and out of her box. Her pelvis rose to meet her pumping hand and in another moment she was coming, gasping and shuddering with pleasure. As her breathing began to subside, I realized I’d missed my chance to get away unnoticed. That’s when she suddenly turned over on her side, looked right at me and said, “Did you come yet?”
That wasn’t the last surprise I got from this lady. She had a flair for the unexpected which she exhibited again that first night when she declined my suggestion that we waste no time in conducting an up–close-and-personal horizontal interview. “I wouldn’t want to compromise your jour-nalistic objectivity,” she said with a grin. Of course I thanked her. Instead she offered to act as my guide, taking me to some of the sexier spots, telling me of her adventures and those she’d heard about. Well, it was a start.
The next morning over coffee and gra-nola, “Ginger” the name she asked me to give her for this article started telling me about her experiences in the valley. “I live on the other side of the island, so I come to the valley at least two or three times a summer. I always hike in alone, but I rarely hike out that way.” As we sat there on a blanket next to her campsite on the beach, I could see that the body which had appeared luminous white un-der the stars was in fact a soft, even, allover bronze. Even her luxurious mane of hair was burnished gold-brown by the sun. She fit in with the surroundings perfectly, looking for all the world like Ayla, the tall, blonde cavewoman from the novel, Clan of the Cave Bear. The nearly vertical, serrated mountain ridges separating the valley from the civilized parts of Kauai were pointed with needle-like peaks. It was easy to imagine pterodactyls soaring from their perches among the green cliffs. And as I watched Ginger eat her granola from half a coconut shell, wearing nothing but her forest of sun-gold hair and looking utterly natural, it was easy to imagine a pet lion curled up beside her.
“There’s something about a lot of the guys who come here that just turns me on,” she said. “It’s not just seeing them walk around with nothing on, though I have to admit that’s a nice way to start the day.” She laughed, pointing to two tanned, lanky gents wading into the waves for some early morning bodysurfing. “It’s the kind of guys who tend to come here,” said Ginger. “They’re sure not the ritzy-glitzy Club Med type who lie around waiting to be fed peeled grapes by serving girls. They’re adventurous. To get here most of them have either hiked all day up and down the narrow, hilly trail, or they’ve kay-aked in. They’re in good shape, strong and lean. And,” she smiled, “they like to go exploring.”
Ginger offered to introduce me to a prime example. She led me over the long strand of beach to a grove of coconut trees where several campers had set up their tents. Her long strides through the sand always kept me a half step behind -which was fine, since it allowed me to better enjoy the sight of her firm, caf -au–lait body in motion, her little round butt and those apple-size breasts quivering with each step. When we got to the grove, she pointed to a small green tent with a pair of feet sticking out of the door. Tiptoeing up, she peeked inside, then motioned si-lently for me to quietly sit down where I was. Now on her knees, she slipped half-way past the mosquito netting at the tent door and straddled the two feet. Now all I could see were the feet and her exquisitely tanned, heart-shaped bottom. Suddenly the man’s toes jerked and went rigid. He moaned, and, it wasn’t just your normal waking-up sound. Ginger’s butt began to sway forward and back, forward and back. Through the veil of mosquito netting I could just make out her golden mane slowly rising and falling and in perfect synchronization, the man’s feet looked like they were doing calisthenics, stretching out, then up, out, then up.
Yes, here I was for the second time in less than twelve hours watching Ginger get it on. She obviously liked that. As she slipped a hand between’ her legs and began to toy with her clitoris, I couldn’t help wondering just how long a reporter was supposed to remain the “detached observer.” She was very hot by now and the two of them were moaning together in matching rhythms. Clearly they’d practiced together before. Then his voice began to rise. His feet suddenly jutted straight out, and Ginger rubbed herself furiously.
That’s when I had to look away. I’m no prude, but there were other tents not too far away and for all I knew someone had heard the commotion and was looking at me through their mosquito netting while I watched the show from my front-row seat. So I looked the other way and pretended to be oblivious. I would have gotten up and walked away, but with no pants to pitch my own tent in, walking would have been a little embarrassing. Instead, I opened my notebook and tried to take notes. That only made it worse, so I prac-ticed my multiplication tables.
For fifteen or twenty minutes five times three, five times four , the tent was quiet. Then there was low talking and laughter. A man with long, tousled locks of sun-bleached hair poked his head out, spied me and smiled as he asked, “Did you come yet?”
“Twelve times nine equals one hundred and eight,” I replied.
Ginger’s friend Bobo his real name, he swore , looked like he could have been her brother, but they had only met two days before. His shoulder-length hair, the seashell pendant he wore around his neck on a leather thong and his ample supply of that combustible herb they call pakalolo “crazy grass” in Hawaii showed that, like many of the valley’s regulars, he still be-lieved in hippies. Bobo was from La Jolla, California, and it was his first time into the valley. “When I was on Maui, somebody told me about this place,” he said. “They described the mountains, the waterfalls, the beach, the dolphins offshore I knew I was coming even before they told me how most of the campers didn’t wear any clothes and the mood was real free and easy. The best part is how natural the people are. Everyone seems to just enjoy the nice bare bodies for what they are.”
This made Ginger laugh. “Wait until you’ve been here a while,” she said. “You see all types. Early this summer there was a guy camped right along the path above the waterfall. It seemed like he was always up there with his Walkman on just grinning and staring down at the girls. Or else you’d see him sitting at the mouth of the wet cave where we go to swim and play. He always had on clothes and those ear-phones and this silly grin, and he never said a word. Then, about a month later, some guy wrote an article in a Honolulu newspaper about his trip here, and all he talked about was all the naked ‘body parts’ he saw from his ‘prime’ campsite just above the shower. I’m sure it was the same guy.” Ginger threw up her hands. “Body parts!” she laughed. “Like we were cuts of meat or something. Boy, has that guy got a problem.”
After assuring Ginger and Bobo that I was not into “body parts,” and that I intended to keep my campsite on the beach, I took my leave they were begin-ning to look amorous again and I wanted to get out of there before my fishing pole extended itself again .
I decided to hike the trail going up- stream into the valley and search out other wildlife. I was glad I did. After maybe a half hour of hot tramping through tropical forest, I came upon a natural pool where two men and a woman were sunning na-ked on the rocks. They looked to be in their thirties with firm bodies. One of the men had white ginger blossoms woven into his pubic hair. They welcomed me and showed me how to swim under the little waterfall to the spot where you could sit, with the water cascading down inches from your face. Afterwards we all broke out our assorted fruit, cheese and bread for an early lunch. While eating I told them about the article I was researching. The two men looked at the woman. She looked at them, then said, “Sure, let’s tell him.” Out came my tape recorder.
“If you’d have been here an hour ear-lier,” said the man with the brown arms and white butt, “you’d have gotten some very interesting material.” The three of them laughed. “We’re pretty good friends- especially now,” he continued, all of them grinning.
“It was great,” said the woman. “We should’ve done it years ago. I feel so much closer to you guys,” The three of them spontaneously came closer to each other and hugged. There was nothing sexual about it at first. Soon there was a hand here, a mouth there. They started to undu-late. Then they remembered I was sitting there with the tape recorder on. “Any-way,” said the woman, “it was all pretty sudden.”
“Except that we’ve all been thinking about it for the last several years,” added the man with the tattoo of Celtic scrollwork around his ankle. “The three of us have been friends for nine years. But I think that before we even got to the valley, we all thought this would finally be the time.”
“It happened over there,” said the woman, pointing to a little island of boul-ders, ferns, moss and bushes. “We were watching a little frog and then we all just started rubbing each other and then- zoom!” She was getting a little worked up now. Only a moment before, her nipples had been tucked in, cozy like dozing tur-tles. But now they were hardening. “After nine years it took us all of about five sec-onds to go from being bosom buddies to heavy boinking,” she laughed. She looked at the man with the tattoo and stroked his cheek. “When you started sucking me, when you did that thing with your tongue . . .” She turned to the other man, absently touching her breast. “And to finally hold your penis, to have it rubbing between my tits “
Then she remembered I was there. By now all three of us men were sitting with our legs bunched up in front of us like closed missile silos. I was sure they were going to ask me to excuse them and that would be embarrassing. Sitting around na-ked with strangers and feeling natural about it is easy enough when the little man be-tween your legs is reclining, but when that part of you with his own mind starts listen-ing to the conversation and raises his hand to ask a question, it can get a little awkward.
“Just one more question before I go,” I said quickly. “Do any of you know offhand what seventeen times eight is?”
Three days later I found myself alone again in the cool night air, sitting at my campsite before the large fire I’d built, watching in the water the reflection of the flames leap up against the overhang of the cliff. I’d been in this lush valley for five days with Ginger as my guide, introducing me to people who showed me their favor-ite spot for lovemaking. What had I learned? That there were also some people who kept their clothes on, and some who weren’t having any sex and some who kept their clothes on and weren’t having any sex often found at the waterfall . Be-yond that I had learned that being the detached observer was wearing mighty thin. This occurred to me once again when a shooting star flashed a trail across the sky and was gone. It was an exquisite sight, but all I could think of was that that was as close to a piece of tail as I had gotten since I’d been here. I looked at my notes and tape recorder for a second, then gathered them up, threw them into plastic bags, and tucked them away in my backpack.
When I returned to the fire, there was Ginger. Standing before the jumping light of the fire, her curves, bronze skin and gold hair made her look like a tall lick of flame. “Pau hana?” she asked. This com-mon Hawaiian expression means, “Are you finished with work for the day?” I told her the tools of my trade were packed away for the rest of this trip, that these last three days were all for play. I didn’t have to tell her that my other tool was still anx-ious to be useful. Ginger smiled. “That’s good,” she said. “See you tomorrow.” She stepped out of the firelight and there I was staring at empty space. Just then another shooting star flashed past like it was laugh-ing at me.
But the next morning as the sun rose, so did my prospects. I had slept that night on the open sand. Throwing off my sleep-ing bag, I stretched and looked at the orange sun floating just above the water, only to see three bodies step in front of it and walk toward me. At first they were just three womanly silhouettes, with long wisps of hair drifting in the breeze. When they drew near I saw it was Ginger holding hands with two Polynesian women who wore nothing but huge white smiles and long, silky black hair. The three of them walked up to me and reached out their hands. “Come on,” said Ginger, “it’s time to go exploring.”
With breasts bouncing and hips humping, Madonna burst onto the stage of the Oakland Alameda Coliseum during her Blond Ambition tour. Grabbing at her crotch, she shouted to her frenzied fans, “Okay, SAN FRANCISCO!” Poor Oakland: An entire city living in the shadow of San Francisco.
This was far from the first time that a sexy superstar had belittled Oakland.
The slights started with Isadora Duncan, the free-spirited, free-love advocate who scandalized and revolutionized the dance world at the turn of the century by cavorting onstage in diaphanous costumes that did little to hide her lithe body and unbound breasts. Isadora always let the world know that she was born in bawdy San Francisco, but she forgot to mention that she actually grew up in Oakland.
And then there’s the case of Gertrude Stein, who once remarked of her native Oakland, “There’s no there there.”
Although Stein’s line has entered California folklore as an indictment of the East Bay as a cultural void, Oakland apologists have long contended that she was referring specifically to the demolition of the house in which she grew up.
Regardless of how you interpret Stein’s remark, Oakland suffers from a classic inferiority complex. To put that complex in sexual terms, which is only appropriate for the magazine of sexual marvels, San Francisco is a sexy, sophisticated, self-confident big sister to Oakland’s gangly, gawky, awkward little sister. But it’s often the gawky, younger sister who offers the sweetest pleasures and the most unexpected delights. And, true to metaphor, Oakland is full of such unexpected delights. With Gertrude Stein’s words echoing in our ears, here’s an insider’s tour of the real “there there” in Oakland and its environs.
Despite what the East Bay’s culture-vultures might say about the Oakland Museum or the Paramount Theater, the heart and soul of Oakland is the Oakland Coliseum. No city in America, with the possible exception of Green Bay, Wisconsin, clings more desperately to its “major league” status than Oakland.
That vital status was called into question when the Oakland Raiders football team moved to Los Angeles after the 1981 season.
The Raiders, despite playing their first two seasons in San Francisco’s Kezar Stadium and Candlestick Park, were nothing short of Oakland’s darlings during the sixties and seventies. The team itself embodied everything Oakland wanted to be: a hard-playing, hard-partying winner. But the party ended when owner Al Davis moved the team south in search of a larger stadium and a pay-per-view television audience. Neither has since materialized in La-La Land, and Davis has recently talked about bringing the team back to the Coliseum.
While Davis talks, the Oakland Athletics burn up the American League. The champion A’s draw huge crowds to the Oakland Coliseum crowds that those familiar with Oakland’s gritty image might expect to be on the rowdy side.
But oddly enough, it’s at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park that more than a few Giants fans look and act like recent escapees from San Quentin. In general, the Athletics attract a kinder, gentler following. This isn’t to say that a visit to the Oakland Coliseum on a beautiful Sunday afternoon is like a trip to church. There is always plentiful female pulchritude on parade during the game. And unlike San Francisco where some ape with a tattoo on his back is liable to scream, “Look at the hooters on that bimbo!” , at the Coliseum, the expression of appreciation is more subtle.
In a section near first base, one group of season ticket-holders alert fellow fans to the display of fresh, firm female flesh by yelling, “Emerson!” When the lady on view happens to be braless and proud of it, one of the men will shout, “Fittipaldi!”
If Oakland is rightfully famous for baseball and football, it also deserves its rep for great barbecue. Kansas City, Dallas and Houston can brag until the pigs come home, but Oakland serves up the kind of pork ribs that remind you there’s more to sensuality than sex.
When the New York Times did a survey of the best barbecue joints in America, the paper featured Flint’s Bar-B-Q of Oakland and wrote, “Flint’s probably has the longest line, the slowest service and the shortest menu of any East Bay barbecue spot, but it remains the first choice possibly because of the hot sauce, which some say takes the bark off trees.”
Located on Shattuck Avenue near the Berkeley border, Flint’s is an old-fashioned take-out joint featuring beef and pork ribs, hot links and chicken, all smoked slowly over an oak fire. The service, as the Times suggested, is glacial. But sensationally succulent pork ribs are the reward for those who wait.
Flint’s hot sauce is one of life’s singular culinary experiences. Amateurs might want to settle for the mild or medium sauce, but that would be like spending a week with Julia Roberts and only trying the missionary position. As the readers of this magazine are already aware, the best things in life are hot and juicy.
Another roadside attraction in Oakland is an otherwise nondescript warehouse near the waterfront that serves as a federal “free trade zone.” The warehouse contains an odd assortment of imported goods that have been detained until they meet federal import regulations.
Among the trinkets that have been inside the warehouse are two Porsche 959 sports cars valued at more than six hundred thousand dollars each. The cars were held for over six months this year because they couldn’t pass U.S. safety and smog regulations. The owners, two Seattle software billionaires, William Gates and Paul Allen, hired attorneys and experts to argue their case. But federal officials didn’t want the two-hundred-plus mph cars on the road until crash tests have been completed. The problem was that Porsche only built two hundred of these exotic cars and no one was interested in crashing one to satisfy government regulations.
Back when sex was still a sin, the little industrial city of Emeryville tucked between Oakland and Berkeley along the San Francisco Bay was the place to find illicit action.
These days Emeryville is home to legal action that some fools might still consider a sin. That action is some of the purest gambling between Macao and Las Vegas.
A quirk in the California Penal Code has long allowed poker to be played throughout the state, but only in recent years have the courts permitted the addition of an exotic oriental domino game called pai gow. This game can make two-hundred-dollar-limit poker look like nickel-dime-quarter around the kitchen table.
The hub of pai gow action is the Oaks Club on San Pablo Avenue in Emeryville. Most of the tables in the large, Vegas-style club are still devoted to poker. But the big money changes hands when the Chinese high-rollers meet for a fast game of dominoes. To the American eye, pai gow is like a busy street scene in Hong Kong crowded, noisy and confusing. And to almost any eye, the betting can seem astronomical. The average bets range from five hundred dollars on a weekday afternoon to over ten grand on Chinese New Year. Pai gow is elemental gambling, a game of almost pure chance.
All bets are placed before the dominoes are “dealt.” One player acts as the “dealer” and plays against up to seven other players. Each player receives four dominoes from the house dealer and arranges them into two “hands.” Both hands must beat the dealer’s two hands in order to win a bet.
That’s the easy part. The dominoes are ranked according to a traditional Chinese system. The best hand called gee joon or “supreme” is the combination of a domino with one pip spot and two pips along with another domino with two pips and four pips. That beats, for example, the second-place hand which has two dominoes with six pips at each end.
For those who can’t memorize the combinations which include hands called teen, yun, gor, mooy, bon, foo, ping, tit and look the house dealer willingly arranges the dominoes. The actual gambling is only slightly less chaotic than the pit of the Chicago Board of Trade.
A babble of languages Cantonese, Vietnamese, English wells up from the bodies crowded around the table. Players laugh, curse and cajole as small fortunes exchange hands.
At the center of the action on a recent Friday night is a woman that regular onlookers have dubbed “the Dragon Lady.”
She’s the sexual embodiment of the mysterious east. Sporting red stiletto heels, a tight black skirt and a clinging white blouse, she would catch everyone’s eye even without the added attraction of two racks of one-hundred-dollar chips worth ten thousand dollars each.
She moves her chips into play and wins another ten grand in less than three minutes. Within half an hour she’s up more than fifty thousand. An hour later she’s back down to one rack of one-hundred-dollar chips. Her expression is the quintessence of “easy come, easy go.”
Speaking of gambling, another oasis of East Bay action is Golden Gate Fields racetrack in nearby Albany. A team of bettors recently won more than one million dollars by correctly naming all six winning horses on a Pick-Six ticket.
And not all the action is at the betting window.
One local jockey made himself famous by telling a Washington Post reporter that a disgruntled but beautiful female bettor once spit on him after he rode a losing favorite. What did the jockey do? He told his agent that he had to find that “girl in the sweater.”
The jockey managed to meet her and the happy couple was later married in a Las Vegas wedding chapel in the nude, according to the Washington Post report.
During our search for the “there there” in Oakland, we discovered something more important than mere roadside amusements. Oakland is a mecca for people of different races, sexual orientation and political opinion.
The Oakland area, certainly one of the most free-thinking in America, exudes an air of personal freedom.
People dress, act and speak exactly as they please. Moralistic nonsense rarely interferes with life, liberty and the pursuit of pleasure. And any city providing that much freedom to its residents and visitors doesn’t have to be considered anyone’s little sister.
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