Sex Wars (6 page)

When this draft was finished, Susan would transcribe it, for no one else could read her handwriting. She’d developed a terrible handwriting early, perhaps to keep her diary a secret from her stern mother. Or perhaps it had always been that her mind leapt ahead and her hand ran raggedly after to try to capture her thoughts. She scrawled and rushed on with that same feeling she used to have on horseback, a sense of being fast as the wind and conquering distance; that was all she could do to change the world so far. So quickly she wrote on.

A
NTHONY LEANED FORWARD,
placing his hands on his knees and peering into Edward’s face. “My mother was the purest soul I’ve ever known. She was a saint, Edward. Losing her when I was a boy of ten is something I’ve never gotten over and never shall. But while she lived, she taught me to be a true Christian.”

“I’m sure she was a remarkable woman, my friend. But the roles open to a young man in Manhattan are a far cry from the world of a ten-year-old on a farm in Connecticut. What did your mother know about living in a great metropolis?”

“Here are more temptations, more sinners and more ways to sin. But the way to live righteously is exactly the same.” Anthony found the city frightening at times, but he never imagined returning to rural poverty. He
must make his way here or not at all. They both stopped talking to watch a four-in-hand pass with matched horses, some rich guy off to an important appointment. The coachman in front and the footman standing on the back of the carriage wore livery of red and blue.

“There’s the good life.” Edward knocked his pipe out on the edge of the stoop where they were eating bread and cheese for lunch. Anthony thought smoking a filthy habit that could lead into temptation, for some of the so-called tobacco shops in lower Manhattan had a bevy of prostitutes on call or available in the back room, as he’d learned when Edward stopped for pipe tobacco. “Sometimes I feel you just don’t see what life offers, Tony—may I call you that?”

“Don’t. I like my own name. It’s more dignified.” No one had called him Tony since his mother died. It was too intimate for anyone else to use. “Life offers chances to sin, but they’re only useful to build your strength of character by resisting.” Perhaps it was futile to try to save Edward, but Anthony could not give up. Edward reminded him of his own brother Samuel, who had perished tragically of wounds received at Gettysburg on Barlow’s Knoll. Samuel had died slowly and in great pain over the course of a week, although Anthony had prayed for him day and night. Anthony had enlisted in the Fifteenth Connecticut Infantry to replace his brother. Because of Samuel, Anthony could not stop trying to reach Edward. Edward was his only friend so far in this strange city.

“Anthony, you’re twenty-four, right? Have you ever had a woman?”

“Had? You mean in the carnal sense?”

“Is there another way to have a woman?”

“Of course I haven’t. Purity is not only for women.”

“You’ll make some woman a good husband. If you ever get close enough to one to marry her.” Edward winked at him.

“But on what we earn, when can we think about marriage? Twelve dollars a week. Out of that we pay room and board, our clothing, transportation, and I have to give some to my church on Sunday—”

“The boss has you going to his church in Brooklyn. All the way on the ferry there and back every Sunday. Isn’t that a little excessive just to lick his boots?”

“It’s a decent church. I feel at home there.” He liked strict hellfire and brimstone sermons, just as in the Congregational churches of his childhood and the commanding revivalist preachers that had swept through, saving everybody again and again. That was real religion, religion that smote him to his bones. The fear of hell could make a man feel truly alive.

“Ah, Anthony, tonight after work, come with me to the Melodeon. It’s a concert saloon. There’s a fight on tonight and Katie Sullivan is going to dance with her Girly Girls. Enjoy yourself for once.”

“You go there every Friday night.” For Anthony, it was as if Edward plunged into darkness and vanished. Was it his duty to accompany him once, to see what so fascinated his friend? Maybe it wasn’t as bad as he suspected. Maybe he was unfair to Edward.

“Because it’s fun, Anthony, fun.”

Anthony was eyeing Edward’s pocket. Something yellow with printing on it. Edward succumbed to the dirty books that were sold everywhere in the neighborhood where they worked, on Pearl Street. Anthony had tried to reason with Edward before and gotten nowhere. Edward’s reading would have corrupted a far stronger soul.

“It’s a good-time place. Let yourself loosen up for once. Relax with the boys.”

Anthony passed those concert saloons, drab as empty warehouses by day, lit up at night with every window ablaze, men staggering in and out and women too on the arms of ruffians, sometimes alone as only a lady of easy virtue would appear. He should investigate. “All right, Edward. I’ll go with you tonight after supper.”

Edward clapped him on the back. “You won’t be sorry! New York has a lot to offer a young man, even sports like us with scarcely two dollars jingling in our pockets. There’s lots of pleasure to be had by sporting men, Anthony, a whole world of excitement. We work from eight till eight, and we deserve some fun.”

It was time to go back to work. They were both shipping clerks in a big dry goods importer, working at adjacent desks and going home at night to a dingy boardinghouse eight blocks away. Edward and he would probably never have become friends if they did not share that walk every day from boardinghouse to work and back again. Every day together they ate meager lunches that left them hungry. Edward was like the men in Anthony’s regiment in the Union army, who had teased him unmercifully, mocking his religion and his temperance, one of whom had actually knocked him down when he spilled his daily rum ration on the ground rather than passing it on. He had to fight Reddiger then. The ring of men gathered around them, one on the lookout for the sergeant, egging on that bully, jeering him. They had expected Reddiger to squash Anthony, although they were both big men. The men had mistaken blustering, drinking, whoring and playing cards on the Sabbath for real manhood.
Anthony could admit to himself how much satisfaction he had taken in laying Reddiger on the ground. He had proved that godliness did not make him a marshmallow. Years of hard chores on the farm had given him power in his arms and shoulders. He had sparred with his older brothers many times out behind the barn.

Not that Edward was a bully. No, he was simply weak, like so many of his fellow soldiers had been, without backbone to resist the temptations surrounding them. Prostitutes followed armies, and even the officers accepted that as a fact of life instead of a way to moral death—sometimes with the terrible diseases God would smite them with, actual death. Corruption sent out tentacles a hundred different ways, through obscene books, postcards and picture books the men passed around to each other and kept in their mattresses, through rum they drank and cards they played, the constant gambling, the dirty jokes they told as if nothing was worth laughing at that did not degrade women or insult anyone with faith.

Normally Friday he would go to the YMCA on Varick Street. He had come to know the work of the YMCA when he was in the infantry. The YMCA was one of the groups in the Christian Commission that sent Bibles, ministers and religious tracts to the front, along with blankets. When his fellow soldiers mocked him, he sometimes found solace with representatives of the commission. One minister had aided him in setting up regular prayer meetings in his company, but often he was the only attendee. It had been a frustrating time. When he arrived in the city with exactly five dollars in his pocket, and that borrowed, he quickly found the YMCA, whose officers helped him to his present job—such as it was.

After the usual greasy supper at their boardinghouse—unidentifiable meat in watery gravy topped with lard and eked out with turnips and mushy cabbage—he allowed Edward to take him by the arm and steer him in the direction of the Bowery. Anthony seldom walked there with its garish gaslights and huge crowds jostling each other off the pavement. The street was chockablock with carriages and wagons among the pedestrians. Women arm in arm accosted them as the two men struggled through the crowd. Many of the men and women were poorly dressed, tenement dwellers he judged, but he saw many young men, clerks, apprentices, office workers like the two of them. Anthony turned his face away from the advances of the wanton girls, but Edward bantered with them. On they went to a place where a placard proclaimed grog and dancing. It cost them twenty-five cents to enter, although Anthony noticed a separate smaller door for women, who apparently were passed in free.

Smoke, bad air, the smell of unwashed bodies and cheap perfume choked him, made him dizzy so that he wanted to flee, but he plowed on, following Edward to a seat. Waitresses in harem costumes sidled among the tables with trays, occasionally stopping to flirt with a man who bought them a drink. Sometimes they sat on a man’s lap wriggling in a manner he could only suppose was some kind of obscene activity. Up above on a balcony, women hung over the edge and called to men at the tables. They wore low-cut dresses and little else, being uncorseted, with their hair hanging loose and wanton. This was the kind of place those obscene books Edward bought near their office led him to frequent.

Edward ordered a whiskey for himself and soda for Anthony. Anthony would not stoop to alcohol even to blend in with the ruffians who frequented this place. Why would Edward waste his scarce money here?

A brawny man whom everybody seemed to know as Charlie the Chopper announced that a fight was about to start. A space had been cleared in the center of the room for two men stripped down to long underwear and undershirts to square off with bare knuckles. The fighting did not bother Anthony, although he knew prizefighting was illegal. At least the worst the men would get out of it would be a battered head or a bloody nose and bruises. Still, he could not share the half-mad excitement that swept the room. Even women were jumping up and down rooting for their favorite, Dan the Drayman, who was fighting a bigger man called Hooting Tommy. Tommy was bigger, but Dan was faster and more experienced as a fighter, Anthony judged. He had a good jab and an unexpected uppercut that staggered the bigger man. Anthony idly wondered if he could take Dan. He had a mighty jab of his own, honed in his army scraps. He noticed that Dan dropped his hand after he hit Tommy, leaving himself open. Yes, he could take him.

Anthony watched the audience instead. Certainly the bloodlust they were screaming out was unedifying, but less appalling than the open sexual lust he had observed before. At least for the length of the fight, even the ladies with their bosoms mostly bare hanging over the balcony stopped trying to entice male patrons and egged on the fighters. The fighters were ill matched and Dan got his man down not once but three times. The third time Tommy was out cold. He was hauled off to the alley. Dan raised his bloody hands in triumph and was given his purse. Then he passed among the crowd in his underwear with cap in hand to collect what people would give him. Several women embraced him.

Charlie the Chopper got back on his chair and bellowed, “Drink up or
clear out, boyos! In half an hour, Katie and her Girly Girls’ll dance the cancan. Let’s all have a drink and toast the serving girls and have a good time.”

A fight broke out near the bar that ran the length of the immense room. Two burly men who appeared to be official bouncers quelled it. Charlie mounted his chair again to shout that he would not tolerate fighting between the patrons unless it was an official fight. The bouncers threw out the three men involved, and what passed for normality in the saloon resumed.

Anthony observed a regular passage of men up to the balconies. The women disappeared into curtained alcoves with their clients. Edward introduced him to four other young men, employed downtown by importers or law offices, clerks come to the city like himself from respectable and God-fearing families—here in this den of shame where women were garishly painted and men handled them at will. Some seemed much too young to be selling their bodies. Others looked too old to be salable, but all seemed sought by men who should know better. One of the women took a seat on his right. He suspected that Edward had motioned her over, for he bought her a drink. Drinks for the women cost more than for the men, Anthony noticed. She put her arm around him, leaning close, her bosoms loose in her gown. He froze.

“Don’t be afraid, dearie. I won’t hurt you. I know something about young men, and what they need.” Her breath reeked of beer and she smelled unclean. She put her warm moist hand on his thigh, then stroked his manhood through his trousers.

He was ashamed by his reaction. He closed his eyes for a moment and thought of the eternal fires of hell. “I’m not interested.” He pushed her hand away.

“Sure you are, dearie. I can feel you. You’re just scared.” She tried to touch his manhood again, but he caught her wrist.

“What I fear is what I should fear. Please let go of me.” He disengaged himself and stood.

“Then I won’t waste my time on you. Maybe you like the boys better, um?” She flounced off to pester someone else.

“Anthony, you passed up a golden opportunity. Sally’s a good whore. You could do a lot worse for your first time.”

“You’ve been with her?”

“When I can afford it.” Edward looked after her longingly. “She knows I don’t have the wherewithal tonight.”

The air was foul and getting thicker. He drank his soda and ordered another. He tried to discuss the place objectively with Edward, but his friend was accosted by another young man who began arguing the merits of various terriers used to fight rats in pits. Such fights offered an opportunity for gambling, as did, he gathered, dogfights and cockfights.

Charlie the Chopper mounted his chair. “Now the main event of the evening for all you sporting gents. Here comes Katie Sullivan and her Girly Girls ready to dance the cancan. And afterward, if you’re up to it, you can buy the girls a drink and drink in their charms.”

The woman who led the way out for three others was red-haired and sharp-featured, no spring chicken, dressed in a bright red outfit with several petticoats which, as the pianist started banging out some rancid ditty, she began kicking high up, turning and kicking some more, and finally holding her leg high above her head as she turned on one foot, hopping awkwardly. All four women including one who looked barely sixteen and had no more curves than a rake were kicking with great vigor but little grace, screeching out some incomprehensible and repetitive lyrics. Anthony suddenly realized that they were exposing their most private parts. Blushing, he turned away to fix his gaze on the tabletop scarred with initials and phrases from a dozen penknives. Around him men were rising to their feet and cheering, pounding the tabletops with their tankards, whistling and clapping. So this was how Edward spent his Friday evenings. Anthony despaired of saving him. Edward was too far gone, he suspected, for any arguments, any pleas to reach him. Anthony stood and made his way out. Edward didn’t notice. He was banging on the tabletop with the worst of them, shouting like a wild beast.