69 Barrow Street (7 page)

“Then c’mon. Maybe you’ll dig it.”

“Where’ll we go?”

“Bedroom.”

“Can’t,” Jimmy said. “Larry and Sally are in there. I just told you.”

“Where, then?”

“I think the bathroom’s empty.”

Roger smiled. “So what are we waiting for?”

Sally took off her dress. She dropped it on the floor. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath it.

“Hurry up,” Larry said. “I can’t wait much longer.” She joined him on the bed. He pulled her to him and kissed her, his tongue slipping between her lips. She let out a little moan and put her arms around his neck.

“God,” she said. She buried her face in his neck. “Oh Jesus God.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I just wish I could make it,” she said. “That’s all. That’s all I want.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I just wish I could make it. I like it but it never happens for me.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“That’s a bitch,” he said. “Hell, you still got time though. How old are you, anyway?”

“Almost sixteen.”

“That all?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you got plenty of time. Lots of chicks, they’re twenty-five before they get banged for the first time. You got no worries.”

“I hope you’re right.”

He ran his hand down her back. She was plump, and he liked the feeling of plenty of soft feminine flesh under his hand.

“Hey,” he said. “I got an idea.”

“What?”

“You ever try it with you on top?”

“No. Why?”

“You might have a better chance of making it.”

“Honest?”

“There’s a chance.”

“What the hell,” she said. “A chance is a chance.”

Ralph was still handling Elaine’s breasts. She seemed totally removed to a dream world of her own and totally oblivious to his hands on her. He didn’t care. He just wanted to stand there forever with his hands cooled by her soft flesh.

Maria tugged at his arm.

“What do you want?”

“You want to make it with me?”

He flushed, remembering the last time. That time she hadn’t had to ask. She didn’t have a chance to ask, for that matter.

He shrugged.

“Please, Ralph. I’m trying to find someone who’ll make it Greek fashion.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Why the hell not?”

“I’m busy.”

“Busy? All you’re doing is giving her a feel.”

Ralph smiled. “Yeah, but it’s one hell of a feel.”

“Do it Greek with me and you can feel me at the same time.”

“Go away, will you.”

“You go to hell,” she said, leaving him. “You go straight to hell.”

Rhonda said: “If you’re on junk, do you and Luke do anything anymore?”

“No,” Betty said.

“That must be rough to take.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“No kidding?”

“Well,” she said, “he can’t do it any more, what with the junk and all. Sometimes I want to, but it doesn’t matter too much to me. Just being with him is enough.”

“I guess so.”

“It’s a shame,” Betty said. “Luke and I were good together, you know. Luke used to be wonderful in bed.”

“I know.”

“Huh?”

“It was a long time ago,” Rhonda said. “Before the two of you even knew each other.”

Betty relaxed.

“I wouldn’t horn in on you now,” Rhonda went on. “Even if I could. I know how you two feel about each other.”

Betty got a dreamy smile on her face. “We’ve very much in love,” she said.

“I know it.”

“Very much in love. It’s so good this way. He loves me and I love him and it’s wonderful. We’re both pretty lucky, when you stop to think.”

Stella and David Jordan were on the couch. Her arms were around his neck and their mouths were glued together. He had one hand under her skirt.

“I want you,” she said. “I want you bad.”

He lowered his head and began kissing her on the breasts.

“Oh, God,” she said. “I can’t wait, David.”

“Neither can I.”

“Then come on.”

“Where? There’s somebody in the bedroom and the bathroom door’s locked.”

“What’s the matter with right here?”

“Here?”

“Sure.”

“Here? On the couch?”

“Why not?”

“People’ll be watching.”

“I don’t care.”

“You sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” she said. “I don’t give a damn if the whole world is watching.”

“What the hell,” he said. “Let ’em watch.”

Maria stood in the middle of the living room. She took off all her clothes and stood completely naked.

Nobody seemed to notice her.

“God damn it,” she shouted. “Doesn’t anybody want to make it Greek style?”

Nobody said anything.

“God damn it!”

Everybody ignored her.

“What a dull party,” she said. “What a stinking dull party!”

She sat down on the floor and rested her head on her knees and started to cry.

Jimmy and Roger walked out of the bathroom. “Well? Did you like it?”

“It was a scene,” Jimmy admitted.

“Yeah.”

“I like it better with women, of course.”

“Naturally. So do I.”

“But it’s another way to make it.”

“That’s how I look at it.”

“And everything’s worth a go at some time or other.”

“That’s the way I feel.”

“Yeah,” Jimmy said. “Well.”

Sally was breathing deeply. She snuggled her head against Larry’s chest and kissed him.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” she said. “I’ll be double-damned.”

“I told you it would happen. All you had to do was give it a chance.”

“You were right.”

“See? There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re as normal as anybody else. It was just a question of giving yourself enough time.”

She fell silent.

Then she said: “Could I come and live with you?”

“Why?”

“I like it with you.”

“How about Roger?”

“To hell with Roger.”

He thought for a minute. “Okay. I’ll tell Maria to move out. I was getting tired of her anyway.”

“Good,” she said.

“We’re pretty good together,” he said. “Maybe it’ll work out okay.”

Elaine Jordan seemed to be in a trance. Ralph held her still, his mind wandering into another world. The pot had hit him harder than he had expected and he wanted nothing more than what he had—his hands on Elaine’s lovely breasts and his mind floating through space and time.

Slowly he began to come back to reality. His hands continued their play with her breasts but now the process was beginning to excite him.

He wanted her.

Gently he slipped his hands around her waist and unbuckled her skirt. It dropped to the floor. Then he hooked his fingers under the elastic band of her pink silk panties and pushed them down over her hips and thighs. They dropped to the floor also.

He ran his hands the full length of her body, realizing for the first time what a truly beautiful woman she was. His fingers explored every area of her.

He wanted her. He couldn’t wait.

“Elaine,” he said. “Elaine.”

She was still in a trance.

“Elaine.”

She mumbled something unintelligible.

“Elaine,” he said. “Bend over, Elaine.”

Maria was crying.

Jimmy sat down beside her, slipped an arm over her shoulder. “Hey,” he said. “Why the waterworks?”

She looked up. “I want to make it and nobody wants to make it with me.”

“You shoulda asked me.”

Her eyes brightened. “You wanta make it?”

“Why not?”

“Greek style?”

“Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

They walked toward the bedroom.

“Only one thing,” he said. “Why Greek style? Isn’t that pretty painful for a woman?”

“Of course,” she said, puzzled. “Why else do you think I want to do it that way?”

The party didn’t break up until 5:30 in the morning.

I
T WAS WELL PAST NOON
when Ralph awoke and climbed out of bed over the still-asleep form of Stella. He yawned and stretched and reached for a cigarette. After the cigarette was lit and the first puff of smoke taken deep into his lungs he was able to think clearly.

But he didn’t want to think clearly. He didn’t want to think at all. He wanted to crawl back into the bed and pull the covers over his head and never come out. He didn’t want to see anybody or do anything.

He felt sick inside, sick and weak and tormented. He closed his eyes so that he wouldn’t have to look at Stella, but with his eyes closed other images, worse pictures, flooded his mind.

He opened his eyes again.

There are no physical after-effects from smoking marijuana. There is no hangover, no physical craving for the drug, no boggy feeling in the limbs or fuzziness in the brain such as frequently follows a good drinking bout. When the drug wears off, the user is right where he was when he started, right where he would have been if he had never smoked the stuff in the first place.

So he couldn’t blame the way he felt on the marijuana. Ralph felt sick, physically sick, but not due to any physical causes. The memories of the party churned in his stomach and rose up in his throat and for a moment he thought he was going to be sick.

The moment passed.

Calmly he gazed around the small bedroom. Everything was in a frightening state of disarray. Feminine undergarments, some forgotten in the excitement of the evening and others torn to ribbons by the haste of the participants, covered the floor.

Ralph stooped over and picked up a tattered pair of lacy black panties. He stood up and held them in his hand, studying them. Vaguely he wondered whose they might have been and how they might have been reduced to their present torn state.

Well, it hardly mattered. Nothing mattered. Nothing could possibly matter, not when everything was so horribly sick and rotten inside.

Again his eyes scanned the room. Used contraceptives littered the floor, the castaways of those few couples who had cared enough to take precautions. Feeling his stomach beginning to turn over again, Ralph dressed in a hurry and left the room.

The front room was even worse. He sat down weakly on the couch and surveyed the damage. Most of the furniture was scarred with cigarettes that had been forgotten to burn themselves out on table-tops. There was a large burn in the center of the oriental rug.

But worst of all was the memories that the room held.

How could he banish those memories from his mind? It would be hard enough to attempt to forget what he had seen, the dissipation and perversion and decadence, the switching of partners back and forth, over and over until at last the sun streamed through the window and the party came to a grinding halt.

But how could he forget what he had done?

How?

He made room for himself on the couch by pushing aside some of the debris of the party and sat down heavily. His mind refused to focus properly and he lit a second cigarette from the butt of the first, chain-smoking in an effort to bring himself back to something with a vague resemblance to life.

To hell with it, he thought. To hell with trying anymore and to hell with pretending. He was no better than the rest of them, no better than Stella even. He was a sick, twisted little man and there was no point in pretending to be anything else. An artist? Sure, sure he was an artist. A pervert was more like it.

Now it would be very simple. He would stick to his life with Stella and he wouldn’t complain anymore. He would let himself enjoy it. It could be an enjoyable life—if you threw morality and human decency to the winds and let yourself be led around by the sheer pursuit of pure physical pleasure and gratification.

And he could probably learn to appreciate a life like that. He was sick and perverted and twisted enough to begin with…

Anything would be better than what he had now. And once he relaxed and accepted himself for what he was things would be one hell of a lot easier. Life would be a constant ball with lots of things happening, and so what if he couldn’t look at himself in the mirror without getting sick to his stomach? There were still a hell of a lot of kicks to try, still a countless number of women to make it with and a countless number of ways to make it.

Marijuana—as much as he wanted as often as he wanted it with no guilt feelings attached. Bennies and Dexies and goof-balls. Cough syrup with a high codeine content. Cocaine to sniff, heroin to sniff and to joy-pop.

So many ways.

Coke and snuff and aspirin. You mixed the three ingredients in a bowl and drank what you wound up with and got high on it.

Nutmeg. You took a spoonful of it and chewed it up and swallowed it and got high.

Mescalin. You took the peyote buds and cored them and chewed them up and swallowed them. They tasted terrible but after a while you managed to get them down and keep them down. And then for the next twelve hours you were in dreamland, entranced by the beauty in the folds of a piece of cloth, hearing colors and smelling music and seeing perfume, with all your senses joyfully confused and your appreciation of everything intensified beyond description.

So many kicks.

Too many kicks.

Too many kicks spoil the broth, he thought insanely. Too many kicks in the head break a man’s spirit. Too many kicks in the…

He had to relax. He pitched his cigarette into the fake fireplace and stared at it.

Too many kicks.

He stood up. It was tempting, the notion of not pretending anymore, of letting himself go to hell completely. And perhaps it was the right thing to do, the course that was morally right as well as attractive. What did the word
perversion
mean, anyway? He knew that a good ninety percent of the sexual customs of the average human being were technically abnormal and quite often illegal. In his own home state, for example, almost anything the least bit different was against the law, although the laws were in fact never enforced. Ohio actually made any sort of intercourse virtually impossible due to a strange law prohibiting any person from touching the genitals of any other person—this law applied to married persons as well, and anybody who observed it would have one hell of a tough time doing much of anything.