Jill Emerson - I Am Curious (Thirty)

Not because I was told to, but because from the minute I walked into that fucking museum early in the afternoon I began to feel this twitching in my groin every time a man looked at me, which happened rather often. And in the movie I couldn’t keep my mind on the picture. And when the clown made his play for me I wanted him. I didn’t like him, I didn’t think he was attractive, all jowly and wolfish and popeyed, but I wanted him.

Okay. Acceptable, no? And so easy to do. Nothing to it. Nothing at all. Part of the whole female independence bit, right? A girl should feel free to ball somebody if she decides she wants to. Steady sex, after all, is healthy.

Right?

He gave me twenty dollars.

Can you believe it?

Can I believe it, for that matter? That’s the real question. And I would have been really infuriated by the gesture if he hadn’t been so cool about it, and actually rather nice. We screwed ourselves into a lather, we really did, and I guess he’s used to doing it once and then rushing off to catch the 6:04 to Westport, but I fixed him so he missed his train and a few more besides. I gave him a balling he will not quickly forget, and it was sort of delicious as we left the hotel to see the expression on his face, as if he was trying to convince me that he made out in the hay like this all the time.

He was really turned on by my scrawniness, which he of course did not call that. Slender, sylphlike. His very words. He probably has a wife who takes a size 56.

He tucked me into a cab and pressed cab fare into my hand. We were halfway home before I opened my hand to see what he had given me, and it was a twenty. I hadn’t asked for money. I don’t think I gave the impression that money was what I was after. I’m sure I didn’t behave like a whore. Like a whore morally, but not like a whore in attitude, I don’t think. I behaved like someone who just enjoyed balling.

Did he think I was a whore? I would say no. Maybe he just wanted to give me a present, or maybe he felt he had to give me money so that he wouldn’t feel he had received more than he’d given, or something. I don’t know. For all I know he wanted to give me two bucks for the cab but he didn’t have anything smaller than a twenty.

Meanwhile I was wondering how I was going to get the cabdriver to change a twenty.

And then I remembered that I had other bills in my purse.

And then — how did this happen? I don’t know. But I opened my purse and put the twenty inside and closed the purse, and when we got to my place I leaned forward and told the cabbie that I didn’t have any money.

The meter read a dollar thirty-five, a dollar eighty-five, something like that. Under two dollars.

He said, “Oh, Jesus, lady, you’re breaking my back. Now, what kind of shit is it to take a cab and when you get there you tell the cabby you got no money?”

I said, “Can’t we work something out?”

He looked at me, getting the message.

He said, “Look, I don’t know about this.”

“Do you like to be Frenched?”

“Jesus, honey—”

“I’ll French you. How about it?”

“Where? In the fuckin’ cab? Sure, and we all wind up in jail. I don’t need it.”

“Oh.”

“How about your place?”

“My husband’s home.”

“You got a husband?”

“But I’d rather suck your cock than ask him for two dollars. In fact I want to suck your cock.”

“Jesus Christ.”

He drove to the West Side warehouse district below the Village. All the way there I kept getting him hot with words. He parked the car between a couple of huge empty trucks. I got in the front seat and went down on him.

His penis was long and thick, the vein very prominent. He wasn’t circumcised. He had an odd generally unclean smell. I felt odd myself, and generally unclean.

He didn’t take long. Nor did he show tremendous enthusiasm. He sat there, behind the wheel, and he shuddered lightly as he popped, and then he sank back in his seat for a moment or two, getting his breath, and then he tucked himself in and zipped himself up. I would have done that for him if he’d asked.

He said, “You want to open the door so you can spit it out on the street.”

“Never mind.”

“Huh?”

“I swallowed it.”

“You’re some crazy broad.”

“Why, is it fattening?”

“You really got a husband?”

“Yes, and I’m late. Why don’t you drive me back to my place?”

“Oh, sure.” He started the motor. “Maybe you ought to get in back. Oh, the hell with it, I’m leaving the flag up anyway. The hell with it, they won’t stop me around here. The hell with them and you stay right where you are.”

“Thanks.”

And, as we neared the apartment, “You do that to your husband?”

“Do what?”

“You know. Like what you did to me?”

“You mean suck his cock?”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean all right.”

“Oh.”

“Well, do you?”

“No. He had it shot off in the war.”

“No shit.”

“It was a tragedy.”

“You’re just giving me a lot of crap.”

“Why would I do that?”

I think there was even more to this inane conversation, but I see no reason either to remember it or to record it. I got out of the cab and went into my apartment and kept bathing and gargling. Why? Because I was disgusting? Neither soap nor mouthwash would change this.

My first two experiences in prostitution, one for twenty dollars, one for two.

To tell you the truth, with the flipness held in abeyance, and with all the cool cooled down, I am, frankly, a little bit worried about me.

Three days in a row without balling anybody. I’ve even started to look for a job!

Not that I expect to find one. Or that I’m positive I want one. But it is good play therapy, looking at the employment listing in the Times and trying to decide what would be fun and what I might be qualified for.

I went to pick up my shoes from the Italian who was endeavoring to make them as good as new when a girl gave me a real up-and-down look followed by one of those soulful gazes, as if to say that she adored and respected me and wanted to put me on a pedestal and eat my box.

I resisted the temptation. Now I’m almost sorry.

I wish I could see David and Arnold again and have that kind of scene. That crazy lazy sex. Why does everything have to be all one way or all the other. I just don’t understand it.

Edgar Hillman, for the love of God!

I was standing on Forty-second Street between Sixth and Seventh, trying to get up the courage to climb a flight of stairs to one of the employment agencies, and Guess Who came out of one of the Dirty Books and Peep Shows places? None other than Edgar Hillman, the Lothario of Eastchester. Husband of Marcie, father of her children, and Dry Humper and occasional Finger Fucker of one Jan Giddings Kurland.

I didn’t notice him at first, being at the time lost in a reasonable facsimile of thought. A voice said, “Jan? Jan Kurland? Is that really you?”

I turned, and it was really me, just as it was really Edgar.

“Edgar,” I said, as if I were pleased to see him. Oh, stop the bitchiness — I was pleased to see him, the first familiar face since I had taken myself away from all those familiar faces.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “I was just thinking about you.”

“Now there’s a compliment. In there?” With a nod of my head for the peep show parlor.

He blushed interestingly, then saved it with a wink. “Oh, just like to keep an eye on what they’re publishing these days. But you look great, Jan! Though you do look about half-starved. Have lunch with me?”