This book, though it is fiction and its characters thereby figments of the author's imagination, is in a very real sense authentic. The book is about prostitution, and the story as such is told by a Bawdy-House Madam, Claudia.
The strange, perverse, and often shocking sex-practices described in the book are not fiction; they were described to the author in great detail by an actual Bawdy-House Madam. The deviations of masochism, sadism, fellatio, voyeurism, homosexuality, inter-racial affairs, group-orgies, fettishes, lesbianism, etc. are common day-to-day occurrences in today's wide-open, hard-drinking, hard-loving bawdy-house. And while society in general tends to take a dim view of such sexual-license, sociologists concur that it often acts as an emotional outlet or "safety-valve" to men who might otherwise commit crime of sexual violence.
Looking at the problem realistically, the author of Joy-House, while not by any means condoning perversion or sexual license, is of the opinion that as long as these people do exist it is provident that society permit them the comparatively harmless outlet such brothels provide. And as for the question of morality it is far more "moral" to extend a deviate the prerogative of working off his needs and aggressions in a brothel, where women are equipped to absorb his unfortunate needs, than to turn his perversions loose on sometimes young and helpless female victims. The oldest profession in the world is always ready and is paid well to deal with unnatural sexual impulses and compulsions; some prostitutes, as you will learn through reading this book, actually enjoy their work. More power to them ... and more patience with them.
-The author
CHAPTER ONE
It's bad enough when a woman's husband finds her in bed with another man but it's worse (much worse!) when the man he catches her with turns out to be his best friend's son a man (or boy) that had barely turned twenty one. But it happened to me. That's why, at thirty one, I suddenly found myself without a husband. Yes the narrow-minded bastard divorced me.
My name is Claudia Benson; my disposition is bitter-sweet; my figure is ripely on the voluptuous side (though firm and without a trace of fat); I own and run a large, two-storied bawdy-house in San Pedro, California. I bought and furnished the house Joy House on the community-property money my cuckholded husband was forced, by state law, to give me. That was five years ago.
My clients affectionately refer to me as Madam Claudia, but I'm not, in the strict sense, a madam. That is to say, I'm not opposed (when my mood is right, and the man looks promising) to taking on an occasional customer myself. ... as the saying goes: "if you want something done right, do it yourself."
My business is good; I doubt if there's a place in the country that has as much action as Joy House (and not all horizontal either). My customers are varied. I get seamen, colored, Norwegians, young, old, rich, poor, in between and otherwise. Some of my regulars are bankers, lawyers; some of them are just "peekers". ("Peekers" pay to just watch.) My girls, too, are every shape, size, color and nationality (all of them specialists at some tangent of their trade).
But business wasn't always so good. My first six months was a little lean; I barely made enough to pay expenses and keep the bed-springs oiled. And then ... And then along came Ed Smith. I was out front with one of the girls (Tit-for-Tat-Tillie) when he walked up, an insolent grin on his average looking face, and said, "Morning, ladies. I've been told a man might ... er ... get a little pleasure hereabouts."
I nudged Tillie and cleared my throat, a sign that I wanted to show him some of my own hospitality. I don't know why (or didn't right then), but there was something about the guy, something in that know-it-all grin, that attracted me immediately.
"Yes," I nodded, smiling that wicked smile that men expect of business women, "I'm sure we can fill your prescription just what kind of medicine do you want?"
"Your kind, ma'am," he walked up close and peered down at me, still grinning like a kid with a secret.
And so and so I met Ed Smith. Three hours we spent in my bedroom, and three better hours were never spent there. He was fast, Ed Smith and yet he was slow. Out of his clothes and off with mine in less time than it takes to tell but then, ah then ... he went at me like a man in no hurry at all.
At first (for maybe ten minutes) all he did was look at me; standing there in front of me, everything right and rigid and ready to go, he ran his eyes up and down my body till his eyes must have grown tired. And then, when finally he reached out with one tentative hand and touched me his touch was so light I wasn't sure it had happened or not.
"Come here, mister," I said, holding out my arms to him. "Let's get together before your fire goes out."
"Don't worry about my fire, ma'am," he shook his head slowly. "I'm in no rush. Good things should be enjoyed slowly."
"Suit yourself," I shrugged, enjoying the trips his eyes were taking, feeling the flush of real desire suffusing my loins.
He began, finally, on my breasts: touching them with the tips of fingers, drawing circles around my nipples. I sighed, trembling, and closed my eyes, wanting him now with an urge that grew with every light-stroked caress. Soon I was moaning and, eyes still closed, I began to entreat him to take me. And so he did.
And so he did. Leading me to the bed, he eased me down on it and eased himself down on me. I sighed in relief and grunted in sudden pleasure when I felt his arched warmth within. And if his patient gaze had excited me before well ... his slow, patient, probing undulations were more exciting than they had any right to be. I behaved very un-madam like on that bed that day with Ed Smith. I grunted and squirmed like a high-school girl in the throes of first climax, and gave that stranger such a lusty ride that he stayed for more and more ... and more.
Walking downstairs with him afterwards my knees were rubbery; I felt good, though spent and weary but weary-good. And on the front porch, turning that insolent smile on me, he said, "You don't do much business here, do you?"
"Well, it is kind of slow," I admitted. "But we've only been open six months."
"What would you say if I told you I could bring in all the business you could handle ... maybe more?"
"I'd say you're welcome to try, mister..."
"...Smith. Ed Smith," he supplied.
"Claudia Benson," I nodded, taking his proffered hand; feeling somewhat foolish shaking hands after what we'd been through upstairs. "And if you think you can bring in the customers ... well ... I'll be more than glad to share the wealth."
"You're on, Claudia," he squeezed my hand warmly. "But I get twenty percent of every trick I bring in. Okay?"
"Okay," I smiled. "Twenty percent is a little high ... but ... business being what it is..."
"Good," he snapped. But I'll need a hundred in advance." He looked down at his clothes and grinned sheepishly. "I can't operate dressed like a ass," he explained.
"No," I nodded, amazed at his nerve. "I'll give you fifty ... you can get a suit and shoes for that."
He shrugged, raised his hands and dropped them limply to his sides. "Okay. Fifty it is. But get your girls all primed and ready. Business'll pick up fast ... real fast."
"Good," I told him. "You come through with half that promise ... and I'll save my personal business for you."
"Oh!" he raised his eyebrows and grinned. "All of it?"
"Well ... most of it," I laughed.
And come through he did! Big! How he did it I still don't know. It wasn't forty eight hours before Joy-House had a rush of customers, and the rush grew hour by hour and day by day until ... just as Ed Smith had predicted, we had more clients than we could handle. I hired more girls (three times as many!). I redecorated Joy-House, turned it into a lavish setting that in turn drew a lavish trade. I put in a fine bar of polished mahogany; mirrors on the walls and ceilings of every room; lush fun-test mattresses on every bed; piped in stereo music in every room. In short, Joy-House became a play-house for men of distinction as well as for men of just plain need. My girls, too, catered to every masculine whim from simple diversion to complex perversion.
And Ed Smith and I ... well, I kept my promise to him ... in my fashion. We had our innings, Ed and I. But a house like Joy-House drew lots of men ... and life is short. I played the game with Ed according to house rules ... and the rules of Joy-House were, to say the least, terribly flexible. Not that Ed Smith played it coy, either. He certainly didn't. He was much man and in Joy-House were many women shall we say that the mountain came to Mohammed or that Mohammed came to the mountain? In any case I didn't hold his vagaries against him; nor did he begrudge me my occasional lapse. It was simply in the last analysis a case of mutual need and greed. Ed was good for business, there was no denying that. And quite often my business and his got together in a fashion that was vastly satisfying to both of us.
But this book this chronicle of Joy-House events and characters would never have been written if it hadn't been for Ed Smith. In fact, without Ed's genius, Joy-House itself would've no doubt long ago deteriorated into another San Pedro flop-house or a home for active winos. But as it is it's a thriving pleasure-mill, where a man, for a few worthless dollars, can take off his boots and his pants and settle down to the serious business of having fun with another human-being.
The following pages are memories some fine some bad; some really wonderful some really rotten. But judge for yourself. Meet the Joy-House girls and their chesty, lusty tricks. Meet a host of shenanigan-crazy drunks and compulsive Don Juans. Meet our perverts, our sexual athletes, our users of aphrodisiac and benzedrene and fortified wine. Learn, like I myself learned (somewhat amazed), of men and women who are gratified by pain and of women and girls and men and boys who are gratified only by administering pain. Meet Tit-For-Tat-Tillie, the girl who achieves satisfaction from every trick; and then there's Jeanie and Queenie, two bawdies in love. And then there's ... but no. I'll begin at the beginning. I'll begin with Patricia Blake the first girl I hired and the first girl I fired.
CHAPTER TWO
I'd heard about Patricia Blake from a friend. The friend (a real con-artist) assured me that she was a willing girl and that she knew every trick in the trade. I'd just bought Joy-House and had to start with someone so I hired Patricia.
She was a fine looking, buxom blonde of twenty four or five and the difference in her bust girth and waist was just short of amazing with a waist of twenty inches her bust measured (I measured it myself) a full forty three inches.
Patricia came to work for me on a Friday night and fifteen minutes after I hired her a taxi pulled up with a very fat, very drunk customer. He waddled out of the taxi, paid the driver (who in turn got an automatic cut from me for every customer he brought) and waddled up the walk to the front porch where Patricia and I were sitting in lounge-chairs.
"Hi ya, ladies," he grinned foolishly and tipped his hat. "I unerstan this here's a ... a..." a. . . "
"...You understand right," I cut him off. "But do you think you're sober enough to ... do any good?" I added, smiling indulgently.
He reached in his pocket still grinning foolishly and came out with a thick wallet from which, after some trouble, he extracted two one hundred dollar bills.
"This says I am," he nodded, teetering to and fro like a weed in the wind.
"We don't charge that much here, mister," I said quickly.
"But I'm a ... a heavy tipper," he said, loosing a drunken burp.
"He's heavy, all right," Patricia commented in a low voice. "But I'll take him."
Something in the way Patricia said that "I'll take him" warned me.
"Okay, dearie ... we'll both get with you for that kind of money," I told him; rising, I took his arm and led him into the house.
"Name's Guy Drake," he mumbled good-naturedly, as I led him, Patricia following, into the first downstairs room.
"Okay, honey, off with your clothes ... need help?" I told him and asked him; Patricia, in the meantime, had slipped out of her robe and panties and brassiere and was already on the bed in the accepted position. This I didn't like. I wanted Joy-House to really give Joy; to have some warmth and class and bring back the repeat customers. I slipped out of my own robe (standard uniform in any bawdy-house) but left my panties and brassiere on; then, approaching the fat little man, I helped him undress.
"There," I said, as he stepped clumsily out of his shorts. "Now if you'll just help me with my panties ... and my brassiere, we'll be ready for anything."
It was quite an ordeal, that first Joy-House episode it took forty minutes of priming to get the little man ready for fun. And Patricia was damned little help she laid there, while I did all the hand-work, contenting herself with handing out vocal endearments and words of encouragement to the temporarily impotent little man. And when he finally did respond and I helped him get astride Patricia he pulled away after a few half-hearted stabs, and said, with an apologetic shrug of his shoulders, "I'm not that big."
And so it was that Joy-House's Madam had to take on the first customer and all to the humiliating tune of Patricia lying there beside us, whimpering something about it not being her fault he was so damned tiny (but he wasn't at all tiny it was she who was inordinately large).
"I like you," Guy Drake told me, patting my bottom affectionately as I helped him on with his clothes. "And I want you to have-" and here he flashed an unfriendly look at Patricia, who was still lying there watching us "the whole two hundred for yourself."
"Anything you say, Mr. Drake," I agreed with him.
"Oh, no!" Patricia said, jumping up from the bed, those massive breasts of hers undulating like jelly, "I get half that dough."
"Here," I said, handing her one of the bills. "Take your half and get out ... you're through before you've started."
She took the money, shrugged, made some half-hearted excuse about not feeling up to par, and trudged out of the room, dragging her robe behind her.
Sitting on the front porch that evening, feeling rather low about my bad luck with Patricia, I heard the rapid click of feminine heels and looked up to see a tall, lithe red-head walking up the steps towards me.
"Hi," she said, her voice a husky tenor. "Are you Claudia Benson?"
"Yes," I said, rising to take her outstretched hand. "What can I do for you?"
"I'm Tilly Watson. Guy. Guy Drake told me you might be looking for ... some help."
"I might be," I acknowledged, looking her over then with an eye to business appeal which, I was quick to concede, she had plenty of. She was, as I've said, tall and lithe. But that estimation had been what first glance and distance had revealed. Close up, I felt the impact almost physically of a strange and beguiling loveliness. It wasn't classical exactly if it had been she wouldn't've been in the business. But she had a compelling beauty that spelled sex and more sex than any girl I've met (before or since). Long, long legs, full and round in the calves, blended into the most delightful perfection of hip and buttock imaginable. Her breasts were high and jutting and intimidating and her face usually hard and cold in a prostitute, was warm and soft and full of spontaneity and life. She was, in short, quite a hunk of woman (she almost made me wish, as I surveyed her statuesque loveliness, that I were a man).
It goes without saying that I hired her but not (and this was the only time I felt compelled to employ this "method" of "interviewing" a girl) before asking her a lot of personal questions and asking her to pose for me in the nude. This, I told myself, was only a precaution. After all there was only one way to find out for certain if those jutting breasts were real ... and if she had any zeal. But Tit-For-Tat-Tillie, which she smilingly informed me was her nick-name, didn't object to such "methods" of "interviewing" at all for the very simple reason that she was the most passionate woman I've ever met or even heard of. But judge for yourself.
She undressed for me in my personal bedroom as if she were delighted at the chance of displaying her charms; she removed each garment with a provocative flourish that was terribly sensuous. By the time she'd gotten down to her bra and panties (still wearing high heels) I was twitching at the mouth and my eyelids felt unaccountably heavy.
"Why Claudia," she rasped in that sultry tenor, "I do believe you're all excited would you like to ... sort of ... try me out for yourself?"
"I might," I nodded, feeling a blush that encompassed my whole body.
"Wonderful!" she beamed. "Why don't you ... unhook my brassiere for me?"
I did, fingers trembling, knees growing suddenly rubbery; then, as I dropped her brassiere to the bed, I learned why she had been nicknamed Tit-For-Tat-Tillie. Everything I did, from unhooking her brassiere to ... well, all the rest, she immediately repeated on me. Unbuttoning my robe, she slipped it off, and then, with eager fingers, unhooked my own brassiere; I slipped off her panties; she slipped mine off; I reached experimentally for her navel, probing its depth with a forefinger; she inserted a finger into my navel too. Soon, melting into one another like playful kittens, we were giving and taking and kissing and caressing all tit-for-tat.
"You're marvelous, Claudia; it'll be such a pleasure to work for you," her husky tenor murmured into my ear; then, inserting just the wet tip of her tongue in that ear, she began a caress with her hand that soon had me moaning and twitching in the flagrant throes of lust. Returning her caress, she suddenly let out a long tremulous sigh-as if I'd reached some super-sensitive core of her, and with that sigh she lost every last vestige of sanity and coherence. Throwing those long tapered thighs around me she crushed me to her tightly and buried her hot mouth in the valley of my breasts. Biting, chewing, clawing, she gave vent to erotic squeals and grunts and the spasmodic thrusts of her bottom banged away at me like blows from a storm-thrashed bush. Her mad antics communicated themselves to me and soon I was returning every indignity (tit-for-tat) with the unabated fury of a woman gone wild. Wild women, jungle cats, primordial animals clawing at flesh with passions fanned by the spark of decerebrated idiocy
that's what we were. I mouthed strange and inarticulate gurglings as I buried my face in arcane labyrinths; electric tweaks snapped in places that surprised me and I ventured outrages that Tillie accepted as compliments. Thigh entwined with thigh, lip met lip, breast crushed breast, thrust met thrust, caress met caress, tongue met tongue and washing down met labrinthe, until, with concomitant gasps and guttural squeals of rapture, climax joined orgasm with the willy-nilly clasp of soft sweet Aphrodite.
We lay, panting and plucked, in one another's arms tasting the bittersweet aftermath of woman and woman. For some forty minutes we lay there, exchanging gratuitous stroking, sighing and whispering our soothed congratulations. We were aware both of us that something fine and rare had occurred we bathed in the satisfaction of that languorous aftermath like young girls toying with new-found developments.
"Are you as ... zealous with men, Tillie?" I finally found the strength and sense of immediacy to ask her.
"Usually," she nodded and smiled. "If they appeal to me at all ... I'm just as passionate," she added.
"But ... in this business ... I'd think you'd wear yourself out," I commented.
"No. As a matter-of-fact ... the more I get the more I want. That's why I'm in the game it's the best way to keep me financially well and sexually satisfied."
"Well, kid," I sighed, sitting up on the edge of the bed with an effort, "you've got yourself a job at Joy-House. But I think I'm going to run up the tab on you ... you're sure no twenty dollar trick."
"I know that," she said, looking a little surprised. "I've never taken less than seventy five."
"And d'you ... ever take a female trick?"
"Lots of them," she smiled. "I enjoy two things in this life, Claudia. Sex and money. So ... I've tied the two together. I give out with what comes natural to me ... sex. And ... being a natural at my trade I make more than my share of money."
"Fine, wonderful," I said. "I only wish I could find a few more like you."
"Why didn't you tell me?" she shrugged, looking surprised again. "I've got a couple of friends that are looking for work in this area."
"No! Really? Do me a favor, Tillie. Call them. Tell them I'll take them on on your recommendation."
"Okay, I will," she said. And she did. And I've never regretted it. Let me tell you about Shirley Trotter and Sally Gibson.
CHAPTER THREE
They arrived on a scorching day at high noon, Shirley Trotter and Sally Gibson. And like cooling breaths of Spring they brought the refreshment of laughter to Joy-House. Greeting their old friend Tillie with squeals of delight and raucous laughter, their good-natures seemed to light up any room they walked into. I was delighted with them they were both lovely girls, both a bit on the heavy side but proportioned in a way that turned men's heads and wet their whistles. Big and deep and round of hip and bust they brought two priceless ingredients to Joy-House: humor and genuine friendliness.
Shirley and Sally doubled up in a room (which made it nice space-wise) and I soon found why Tillie had been so quick to recommend them they were very much like her (only not nearly so lovely). The third day after their arrival San Pedro had its annual Fisherman's Fiesta, so we were tipped off it might be well to close for the day. So we did. And along about noon, lazing out back in a bikini, I heard this commotion coming from Shirley and Sally's room; curious, I went in, crept upstairs and, standing on a hall table, peeked through the open transom. There they were, having what might be called a reunion: Tillie, Sally and Shirley. And what a reunion. They were sitting on one bed, passing a bottle of gin around and they were all as naked as newborn babes. (Tillie, though, was still wearing heels, which gave her legs a breathtaking appeal.)
They were telling bawdy jokes and laughing up a storm until Sally, evidently inflamed by a long joke Tillie had told (one of those jokes that are accompanied by much physical demonstration) suddenly fell back on the bed and began stroking herself fervently. And her action, it seemed, was the detonator that set off a lust-bomb as big and powerful as any I've ever witnessed.
"Oh, Sally baby!" Shirley cried and, taking one last pull from the gin bottle, fell back on the bed beside Tillie. Tillie bent, like an ardent pretzel, and nuzzled Shirley's breasts; Shirley, reaching over with one hand, began tweaking one of Sally's flouncing nipples.
I watched, utterly fascinated. But soon my own libations demanded attention; pulling my bikini aside I began to manipulate things while the scene I watched went from very warm to very hot. Dipping into moist geography with the frenzy of zealots the three lovely animals before me turned reunion into union soon a tangled and entwined ball of bottoms and thighs and heaving breasts and seeking mouths coalesced and melted down into a flux of electric movement. The punished bed-springs shrieked in squeaky agony as the writhing trio gave vent to splenetic urgings and Neolithic assaults.
Tillie's face, that perfect cameo-like gem of a face of hers, was what brought me to such a peak of passion. Her lips were pulled back over her even white teeth, giving her the look of one who was bravely smiling in spite of excruciating pain. Her eyes were half closed and appeared to be all whites; her nostrils were quivering and dilating like a brood-mare at first scent of a stallion; her forehead was creased in wrinkled concentration; her cheeks were taut as drum skins and every second or two, spastically, they twitched. Glancing at Shirley and Sally, comparing their looks of carnal pleasure with Tillie's, I was once again brought forcefully to the truth that Tillie was the hottest human I've ever known. Ignoring Sally and Shirley, my eyes glued to Tillie's rapt face, I felt the libidinous etchings of orgasm begin to crawl within me; grasping the transom with both hands I loosed climatic snorts of consummation and three surprised and frightened faces surveyed my contorted face from the bed below.
"It's okay, girls. It's only Claudia. She's hep to this scene," Tillie told the other two, her voice shaking with emotion.
"Oh, lordie!" Sally exclaimed. "I thought we'd had it."
"Me too," Shirley grinned and nodded, wide-eyed.
"Come on in and join the party, Claudia," Tillie smiled up at me. (I was still pulsating; I couldn't oblige her for at least another half minute.)
Finally, shaking with excitement and tension, I got down off the table, opened their door and walked in.
"Enjoy your little peek?" Tillie's smile was half scolding, half approving.
"Yes..., "I loosed a long tremulous sigh. "Very much in fact."
"Can I ... help you out of that bikini?" Sally said, a little doubtfully.
"Please do," I said, hurrying over to the bed and sitting down.
And so I got on their sexual merry-go-round; and so I really got acquainted with Shirley and Sally. Let me make a long and rather repititious story short by saying that when the four of us gave up, quit, hit the showers that enough passion had been generated and dissipated in that room to heat Joy-House through a long cold winter. And we agreed the four of us that we'd spent our holiday well. And we also agreed unanimously that the four of us should do very well in the world's oldest profession. We would enjoy our work.
* * *
It was about this time that Jeanie and Queenie joined the troop. Very young (but old enough), they knocked one night rather late, and said Jeanie doing the talking they wanted to start selling what they'd been giving away. Jeanie was a mulattress, small-boned and pretty; Queenie was a petite little Chinese girl. I hired them, after a brief interview. And, for the simple reason that many men like other nationalities, I was quite happy to get them for Joy-House.
They were fun kids, Jeanie and Queenie. Oh, not in the boisterous, come-what-may fashion of Shirley and Sally but in a quieter way. Close friends (but firmly opposed to any woman-to-woman relationships), they hung together like bees and honey when they weren't busy.
Guy Drake, the fat little drunk who'd put me wise to Patricia Blake (first trick and first girl) came in sober several times and tried both Jeanie and Queenie.
"You've got something there, Claudia," he assured me, a wise glint in his eye. "They're as good as they come lot's of class, too."
This pleased me. It was evident that Joy-House was slowly but surely developing into the sort of place that wealthy business and professional men (and women) would be inclined to visit. And this was what I wanted. Not purely for money reasons either (though I've nothing against making big money). But I wanted Joy-House to become a sort of haven for all men a refuge from nagging wives, a place where rich, poor or middle-class could mingle without prejudice or conceit-drawn together by the common denominator of lust and need and world-weariness that is the lot of all men, rich or poor; a dark, cool, shady place where troubles are left behind and laughter and joy and the free play of passion-perverted or whatever is the rule of the day; a place to cuss around women if one wants, or to take a man sized gulp of draft-beer and then burp without the synthetic necessity of saying pardon me; an oasis of soft white thighs and pleasure and sighs, without which man dies a little; a castle of warmth and fun and folly where men can laugh and lust and be great without worry of criticism or phony moralizing; a place where a man can get a good bed, a good lay and, afterwards, take a sudsy drink with the boys downstairs in the spirit of bravado and devilish accomplishment; a place where when all is said and done a man can grow hair on his chest and let his conscience take the hindmost.
Jake Purdy came to Joy-House highly recommended as a bartender. But shortly after I'd hired him I found he was much more than an efficient bartender. Dark-skinned, effeminately handsome, he drew a certain type of man to the warmth and hospitality of Joy-House. I found out about his interesting trait some four or five days after I'd hired him. A slim, quiet man had come in for a drink; Jake talked quietly with him for perhaps ten minutes, and then surprised me no end by asking if he could use one of my rooms to..."talk to the man in private." I gave him the key to an upstairs room (the "mirror room" so called because of a large mirror on one wall through which the occupants could be watched from the next room) and, waiting a few minutes, walked up to see what they were up to.
Jake and the man were talking and while I couldn't hear their voices (it was like watching a silent movie) I could tell by their expressions and mannerisms that something "physical" was about to happen. And I wasn't wrong, either. Jake, with a shrug and a smile, accepted several bills from the man, jammed them in his pocket and began to undress; the man, too, a look of greedy expectancy on his drawn features, began to disrobe.
"Oh, lordie!" I exclaimed aloud at the sight that met my eyes. Jake Purdy! My wiry little bartender was to put it mildly simply enormous when aroused! I couldn't believe my eyes! I blinked stupidly and gripped the arms of my chair, feeling somewhat dizzy at the awesome sight before me. The slight little man was evidently as amazed as I; he stood there, jaw gaping, eyes riveted upon the amazing size and heft of the spectacle that confronted him. Half man, half horse was the only way to describe him.
The little man reached out hesitantly, like a child with a new toy whose immensity and proportions seem a threat as well as a temptation. But once his hand closed there and that mighty implement arched and reared even larger he cast all inhibitions aside and plied his need with urgency and undisguised greed. I watched, curious and interested; never before having seen man with man I was somewhat surprised and shocked at their antics. But amazement followed my surprise and transcended it by many times, when Jake, leading the little man to the edge of the bed, began to put things where I hadn't dreamt they'd fit ... not that things really did fit ... it was a question of force on the one hand and the ability to take pain on the other. But after maybe five minutes of persistent effort and of the little man gritting his teeth in what must have been almost unbearable anguish and pain Jake succeeded. My eyes popped in utter amazement. How was it possible? How had that shrimp taken such massiveness without sustaining actual injury. Or had he?
And then, almost as slowly as entrance, came withdrawal; slowly, ever so slowly the little man's face alternating between pleasure and pain Jake picked up the cadence. Some five minutes later describing a to and fro trip that traveled an interminable distance Jake's rhythm was fast and regular; the slight man's face wore a rapt smile and his tongue protruded from the side of his mouth like an exhausted dog's. Faster, faster, Jake buried and then unburied that ridiculous monstrosity; seconds later, backs knotting up like convulsive hunchbacks, I saw both men's mouths gasping like beached fish and I heard dimly the wailing shriek of two lost souls that had momentarily found one another.
CHAPTER FOUR
And so it was that at the end of my first six months in business, Joy-House had acquired five girls and one well-endowed bartender. (And Jake, by the way, gave me my due cut on his take with that little man; so, in effect, I had "one of the boys" working for me too.)
And then came Ed Smith with his ironic smile and his good love-making and his genius for bringing in new customers; indeed, in the next six months, I had fifteen girls working for me, two full time maids, a handyman and a gardener; Joy-House was a resounding success: money-wise and joy-wise.
Edna Roth wandered in one wet foggy morning and told me she'd kill herself if I wouldn't hire her. She was a tall, rather disheveled girl; she had potential though, I could see that (and feel it) right away. Quiet and sullen, she exuded that sexy mystic which, though enigmatic, is so powerful and compelling it tweaks you in tender places. I hired her, telling her, in an attempt at levity that didn't go over, that Joy-House had plenty of room for horizontal girls but not for dead ones.
And then, some two weeks later, I began to notice that Edna seemed to be all tired out after being with a trick. Curious, wanting to find out why, I assigned her to the "mirror-room" one busy Saturday night. (And I'd noticed, too, that all her tricks looked and acted the same ... all nervous men with mean faces and expressionless eyes.)
It was around midnight when a man asked for her (a big, shifty-eyed Swede with lantern jaw and a gruff voice).
"Is ... ah ... Edna free right now?"
"Yes,' I told him, "follow me," and I led him upstairs to the mirror room, recognizing him then, as I opened the door for him, as one who had been with Edna before.
Watching from the next room, I was scarcely prepared for the events that followed. Edna, with that sullen slowness of hers, began to undress rather cold-turkey, I thought. The Swede stripped down too, and, as he removed his pants, he pulled off his belt and held it loosely in one hand. Then, beckoning to Edna, smiling cruelly as she approached him, he suddenly lashed out with the belt, delivering Edna a cutting blow across her bottom that left a red welt. I began to rise from my chair with the intention of calling for help but then I saw Edna's face. Carnal pleasure! Bestial lust! All the strange excitements that pain brings I saw on her face. Oh, no! I thought, sitting down again to watch. She can't actually enjoy that. But when he let her have another cutting blow I knew she did enjoy it ... and immensely!
And then I sustained another surprise. After receiving perhaps half a dozen more whacks from that belt, Edna snatched it from the big man and, her face contorted in hate and passion, began to hit him with it. I half rose again from my chair, expecting to see that big lout take the belt away from Edna and really lay into her with it. But no. The brute's mouth sagged in evident enjoyment and his eyes were half closed they were two of a kind; they both enjoyed administering pain; they both enjoyed receiving pain. (They were fortunate, perhaps, in a way in a world where pain is so prevalent, they could at least enjoy its hardships.)
And then they embraced ... standing. Picking Edna up, using those belt-scarred cheeks of hers for handles, the Swede pulled her to him. And then, Edna's clutching thighs embracing him, he lashed her tightly to him with the belt. They began then, with open palms, spanking one another soundly; for a good five minutes they continued, both engrossed in their work, both obviously enjoying the whole scene tremendously. And then, Edna's eyes rolling back in her head so that only the whites were visible, she bent forward and evidently in the throes of inchoate climax sank her teeth into the Swede's shoulder. The Swede in turn dug his fingers fiercely into Edna's round bottom, his big hands kneading her raw flesh like dough. I heard the ghost-like wail of their peak then and saw a crimson stream of blood flow down the Swede's white chest where Edna had bit him. They vibrated together like light-blinded moths and their faces were contorted in imbecile lust as their chemistry exploded in a peak that was wrought as much from pain as from pleasure; as much from hate as from fraternity. I confess, the sight of so much unchecked perversion awakened my own usually dormant fetish: that of watching someone during their ... togetherness, and bringing myself to satisfaction while I watch. (And I find it even more "satisfying" if the subjects know I'm watching.) So in a matter of seconds I had dug in and, clawing with desperate abandon, brought myself to that woman-made mountain top (to that penultimate peak!).
And so I learned the why and wherefore of Edna's apparent fatigue after a session with a customer. Her customers, most of them anyway, were as much bent on destruction and mutilation and pain as on individual or mutual satisfaction. There was something in Edna and in her customers that compelled her to hurt and be hurt: somewhat like the spanked child who yearns for affection and then pouts and refuses it when it is given. I came to understand that those who take pleasure through this pain route are children in adult's bodies; they can't cope with the problems of maturity so they slip back to childhood's pleasure-pain principle in their sex relations. Edna Roth was a sullen, moody child living flesh-enmeshed in a woman's body. Nature had really sort of short changed her.
I grew to like Edna, though. There was just enough of the petulant child in her to bring out my latent maternal instincts. And then to put it bluntly she was good for Joy-House; she was one of my busiest girls and I never had one customer complain about getting his money's worth from her. Every week or two though she had to take a couple of days off. She'd ask me first if I could spare her. I'd say yes, of course. And she'd leave for a day or so and presumably crawl off to some lonely room where she could rest and sort of lick her wounds, as it were.
My "mirror room" was turning into quite a diversion (or perversion). After watching Edna, I decided it might be fun to assign all my girls to the "mirror room" for an occasional observance. So I did and I was surprised to learn that nearly every girl (and every trick!) had some unusual specialty some tangent sex-wise that was their own particular cup of tea. Take Kitty Prentiss, for instance. Kitty was a really lovely young girl; she had grace and charm and as fine a set of manners as Emily Post could hope for. And her hair was, as the saying goes, her crowning glory. Long, nearly down to her waist, it was a soft, lustrous red; she wore it high on her head, very cosmopolitan and sophisticated. But when she went upstairs with a trick be he ass, sailor or business man she'd let her hair down (literally and virtually).
Leading a customer upstairs, hips swaying like a camel's hump, she'd slowly pull out hairpins and combs and let that red mane of hers fall loose and natural. And the effect for "effect" it was breathtaking! Falling to just above her hips; her hair would shimmer and sort of bounce, as if it were possessed of some esoteric vigor that surpassed life.
Seeing Kitty take a trick's money one night, watching her lead him upstairs while she let her hair fall into that loose, bouncy naturalness, I told her to use the "mirror room". Quickly ducking into the adjoining room, I hurried to my chair before the mirror, and watched.
Kitty helped her trick undress; apparently, by the way he was grinning, she was joking with him, putting him at ease. But after he finished undressing there was no move made (by either of them) to remove Kitty's clothes. And then I gasped in astonishment when I saw them begin. The man, things well in hand, advanced on Kitty who had dropped into a chair and leaned forward so that her gorgeous hair nearly obliterated her face. And then the man, his face foolishly serious, grabbed two handfuls of Kitty's hair and sort of plunged himself into them pressing the hair against himself and arching like a sleepy cat. I was dumbfounded; stunned. The fellow began to undulate, slowly at first and then with every increasing rapidity. Until, toward the end, his movements were in the nature of a vibration.
Kitty, as the man's love spilled onto that scarlet mane, seemed to grow instantly excited; reaching up to her own hair, running her fingers through it rapidly, she slumped low in her chair and her pelvis began the north and south grind that can only occur when one is being racked by the generous spasms of poignant orgasm.
I watched, absolutely enthralled! Kitty, as her spasms continued, pulled a portion (a wet portion) of her hair down to her mouth and kissed it, her tongue lolling it hungrily as if she were proud and anxious to taste the proof of her hair's excitability. This was all I could take, rather repulsed I bolted from the room, went downstairs and had Jake mix me a stiff drink.
And so I learned that there were men and women who were "hair lovers" they had an obsession for hair, their own or someone else's. I learned, too, from an encyclopedia on sex, that hair fetishes are like most fetishes a case of arrested development. Those who are able, those who need to be associated closely with hair to have a sexual climax, are emotional infants; sexual cripples. Not that I condemn them, far from it. If there's one thing I've learned as madam for Joy-House, it's that abnormalcy is the rule where sex is concerned; indeed, one might almost say that abnormalcy is so common that it's abnormal to be normal. And if the foolish law-makers of foolish sex-laws would take an honest peek into the depths of their own hearts (and innermost thoughts and desires) they'd be forced to admit that they too are capable of (and even desirous of) corruption; they'd be in the curious position of having to arrest themselves for breaking their own subhuman laws....
CHAPTER FIVE
The "mirror-room" taught me something about myself, too, shortly after watching Kitty and the man with the "hair fetish." Jeanie, the mulattress and close friend of Queenie (the Chinese girl), took a tall, swarthy looking man upstairs and deciding to watch them I told her to take him into the "mirror-room."
I haven't mentioned it before but Jeanie, while rather plain of face, had the loveliest legs (especially calves) in Joy-House. They were full, rounded, and they curved down into the smallest ankles imaginable; the dull golden sheen of her flesh enhanced their contours immeasurably.
Having seen such queer things through "mirror-rooms" secret mirror, I was prepared for anything from common intercourse to ... well ... almost anything. But what I witnessed that night had a profound personal affect on me for you see, I found, so to speak, that I was one too.
Now I had always liked shoes, especially high spiked heels. I must have had over thirty pair, and had always enjoyed putting them on and looking at myself in a mirror while arching my foot this way and that. So I wasn't surprised to find myself hoping-as I watched Jeanie undress that she'd leave her shoes on. But she didn't. She removed them. Then, reaching into her inordinately large purse, she pulled out another pair of shoes-a very strange and old fashioned looking pair of boots. They were dull black leather, had lacing up the front-and very high, spiked heels. At first sight of them something convoluted inside me and I began breathing rather heavily. I noticed too that they were lined with soft fur.
Jeanie put them on, lacing them tightly to her slim ankles and flaring calves, and soft surges of desire began to well within me. Her customer, his dark eyes staring intently at those boots, hadn't bothered to undress. like myself, he seemed terribly excited at the sight of those booties; his hands clenched and unclenched and he kept licking his lips nervously.
Both boots on, all laced up and bound tightly to her lovely ankles and calves, Jeanie sat down on the edge of the bed, laid back, extended both legs above her head and began to sort of preen those booties: arching her feet, posing them in seductive ways, bending first one knee and then the other.
I confess, I went more or less out of my head. The sight of Jeanie lying there, those sweet little booties high in the air, set off some strange brand of desire inside me and I began feverishly on myself in an attempt to put out the fire. The man, I noticed angrily (jealously!) was touching the boots now; standing in front of her his eyes tightly closed he was lightly stroking their arch, the lacings, running light fingers from ankle to calf and back again. In a sweating torment of desire and feral need, I jumped up from my chair, ran out to the hall, and without so much as a knock barged into the "mirror-room."
"Claudia!" Jeanie gasped, jumping up from the bed.
"It's okay, it's okay," I said, trying to sound calm and reassuring. "It's just that ... well ... I was peaking on you, Jeanie ... and ... I'd like to get in on the act ... touch those ... lovely booties of yours."
"Really!" her eyes were wide; a smile of amused incredulity played around the corners of her thick lips.
"What's going on here?" the man finally asked, a bewildered look on his pinched swarthy features.
"Nothing, honey," Jeanie told him. "The lady just wants to join us ... you don't mind do you?"
"Naw," he shrugged. "Not if you don't. The more the merrier."
And so we went at it..."merrily." Jeanie laid back down, raised those bootie-clad feet high above her. The man, his eyes closed again, began to caress one leg and bootie; I, my hands trembling in anticipation, reached out and lightly stroked the other. And at first touch . . .flitting little spasms began coursing through my thighs and delta. It was marvelous! My throat grew dry and my chest felt as if it were being constricted by some external force ... but it was marvelous! And when the flame of my passion grew hottest and I began ululating and undulating concomitantly, Jeanie brought one bootie down there to me and, clasping it there in the idiot urgency of climax, I raved and panted and inundated that bootie with the libations of berserker consummation.
Curiosity they say killed the cat. I don't know about that. But I do know that my own perverse curiosity showed me something about myself that might better have remained hidden. So I too had a "fetish"; I too was vulnerable to a salacious form of infantile perversion. The thought tortured me for weeks, threatened to severely injure my self-respect until. Until I kept watching more and more strange things happen through the secret mirror in the "mirror-room". After a while I came to the conclusion (and four more years in the business have convinced me I was right) that everyone has a fetish of some sort or to some varying degree. Some men (and women) can't enjoy themselves unless their sexual partner is wearing some odd bit of clothing, or talks in a certain way (usually dirty), or behaves in a certain fashion. But now I'm running ahead of my story again. Fetishes! Fetishes! Perversions! Perversions! All part of the whole; all part of the diversity that makes life interesting and Joy-House more joyful. But now let me tell you more about my favorite Joy-House character: Ed Smith.
Ed certainly wasn't good looking at least not in the popular sense. His face was deeply lined, his skin leathery (sort of a poor man's Palladin). But he made up for his lack of looks by his surplus of energy and fine personality. His surplus of energy he could display in any one of a hundred ways: from being good for a long-winded siege in the hay with me, to the three or four hours of sleep he got each night that seemed to be all he required. And his personality! Well, the way he brought customers to Joy-House was a stroke of pure personality and genius! And pimp though he was he had that quality and fineness that one finds all too rarely in any man nowadays. In my own odd fashion ... I guess I loved Ed Smith.
Ed's marvelous energy and endurance were displayed forcefully to me one dreary Wednesday morning. He and Tit-For-Tat-Tillie had been talking about something in low tones out on the front porch. "That's a bet, Tillie!" I heard Ed exclaim in a tone of finality. "Come on the mirror room's free right now," he added; rising, he pulled her up by the hand and led her upstairs. Naturally ... I followed.
It didn't take me long to divine their bet, either. Quite obviously the two of them had decided to see who could out-last the other in the hay. My bet was on Tillie: I'd seen (and experienced) her insatiable tactics before and knew she'd be nearly impossible for any man to exhaust.
They went at it and how they went at it! Forty five minutes of continuous romping had them both bathed in perspiration and panting like overheated puppies. On the bed, on the floor, on chairs, bottom-side up and upside down, perversion, diversions, excursions, they played their passions like love-starved satyrs and nymphos. I watched in awe, certain that at any moment one of them (or both of them) would collapse in a heap of spent flesh but no! On and on they plunged! And Ed asked no mercy and gave none. And Tillie gave tit-for-tat. Two hours later and they were still at it, mouths wide open for more air, eyes dull and listless with a terrible fatigue. But in the end it was Ed's last burst of energy that put Tillie on her back and completely out of commission. Where that last spurt of drive came from is anybody's guess perhaps he'd been saving it for just that purpose? But in the middle of it, flailing away at Tillie like a bronc-rider, she shoved him away with the last of her strength and gave up. Ed rose, staggered once or twice, shook his head, straightened, seemed to gather strength, picked up the bet money they'd laid on the dresser, dressed and went downstairs, where, after two drinks, he spied me looking at him, beckoned to me, whispered his request in my ear, led me upstairs and spent thirty glorious minutes with me in my own bed. And this so help me is actually what happened. Is it any wonder that I rave so much about Ed Smith's energy?
But energy and personality weren't Ed's only attributes. No, he had others that while not as overly obvious were even more valuable. He had a heart that was as big as his lust, and a form of integrity that would put most so called "good people" to shame. For example:
Sean O'Flattery was a tough Irish cop who derived great pleasure from arresting sidewalk solicitors (my girls never solicited). Shirley Trotter and Sally Gibson (two of my personal favorites) were shopping one Saturday afternoon in downtown San Pedro and, while waiting for a taxi at sixth and Gaffy, Sean O'Flattery approached them and accused them of soliciting.
They denied it, naturally showing him their packages telling him they were waiting for a cab. But O'Flattery ignored them and called a patrol car. And while waiting for it, Ed happened along. Seeing the girls in custody, he stopped nearby listening to Shirley and Sally's affirmation of innocence. Just as the patrol car pulled up so did Ed Smith pull up: his collar. Tucking his suit collar under to look like a man of the cloth he approached the ladies who were by then showing the newly arrived officers their identifications, and said, "Oh, Miss Trotter and Miss Gibson, I've been looking for you everywhere. I see you've got the presents for the orphanage ... how kind. Oh! These officers! I suppose you were asking these kind public servants how to find my church, eh? Well, I'll be more than pleased to escort you there myself, ladies. Here, let me help you with your packages ... and, oh, yes ... thank you officers. We won't be needing you now."
And off they walked, with Sean O'Flattery standing there red-faced and fuming.
If Ed's little ruse hadn't worked if they'd have taken him in for trying to obstruct justice or for interfering with an officer in the performance of his duty, he'd have gotten at least six months. Now Ed, more than most men I've known, hated the idea of incarceration; he truly loved his freedom. That little act on his part took a great deal of nerve and a whole lot of kindness. Shirley and Sally will never forget him for it ... and Sean O'Flattery will never again be so quick to jump to conclusions about side-walk solicitors.
All of which brings up the subject of Gloria Greenhouse. I met her on Fifth and Beacon Streets in front of Shanghai Reds she was "sidewalk soliciting," and she was ... well ... really something!
CHAPTER SIX
She walked with a stride like Paul Bunyon and she must have been at least six foot one or maybe two. I was standing nearby, waiting for Ed to pick me up, when I heard her proposition a sailor. The sailor declined, saying he was broke-but as he walked away he looked back at her and gave a long slow whistle. For which I couldn't blame him. The girl for girl she was (she couldn't've been over twenty one or two) was breathtakingly beautiful ... and an Amazon if ever one existed!
Wearing heels, her calves were flaring and powerful and yet their shape was delicate, superb. Her thighs pressed hard against her skirt and hinted of imperious skills; her waist was small and tight and her breasts threatened to burst the inadequate blouse she was wearing. She had classical features and wore her dark hair high on her head which gave her the appearance of even greater height.
I approached her, and in quiet even tones, said, "Why don't you come and work for me? I have a nice place, clean, busy, a bar. Ever heard of Joy-House?"
"Not really! You're not the ... the lady who owns that place ... are you? If you are ... if you're not kidding me ... I'd just love to work for you."
"C'mon, then," I smiled as Ed pulled up. "Get in. We're on our way home."
44, 24, 39 were Gloria's actual measurements. And though she was a veritable giantess, she was, according to Jake Purdy, my well-endowed bartender, "as small as a petite young girl in important places." (Jake had welcomed Gloria with several drinks on the house and then she'd asked him if he'd like a little something "on the house".)
Gloria worked in wondrously well at Joy-House. She was a likeable girl, had a good sense of humor, and drew lots and lots of well-heeled trade. I don't know why but men with money-lots of money seem to prefer large women. Maybe they equate size with quality or something...? Who knows...? But be that as it may, Gloria brought more than her share of that evil green stuff to Joy-House. A real cool pro, she had the knack for making lousy inadequate lovers feel like Casanovas. She had one weakness an ironic one for a woman of her size: small men. "They drive me right out of my mind I don't have to put on an act when I crawl in the hay with a little guy," she confessed to me.
So when one balmy night I saw her go upstairs with a little shrimp of a man I went up too to the "mirror-room."
I could tell right away that Gloria was terribly excited. Her eyes fairly danced as she helped the little fellow out of his clothes (he turned out to be a well-known jockey). She took her time, dawdling with him like a cat dawdles with a mouse ... tickled him, nuzzled his hairy little chest with her chin, kissed him lightly on his eyes, nose, mouth, chewed teasingly on his neck, caressed his hirsute thighs with her fingertips, pinched him, stroked his arched rigidity with patient thumb and forefinger, laughed at him and with him, put his little hands on her face, in her hair.
And then, having roused herself to a pitch of passion, she literally tore off her clothes. And what a sight she was nude! Firm everywhere, her flesh had a glowing luminosity, a vibrance that advertised unusual health and vitality; I wondered, fleetingly, as I gaped at her symmetrical massiveness, if Ed Smith could outlast her. She was richly tanned (I learned later that she was an enthusiastic nudist); the great muscles in her calves writhed vaguely as she stood on one foot to remove a shoe; her brown thighs glistened with perspiration, enhancing their rib-cracking power and making them look as if they had been carved from great oaken beams. She saw the little fellow staring at them; she lifted one leg towards him, twisting it slowly, provocatively. Then she reached up and lifting both breasts-breasts that jutted as high and as formidably as captive balloons said something to the man. Apparently it was an invitation, because, eyes wide with wonder at so much taut flesh, the shrimp advanced on her, reaching for those superb breasts with eager little paws.
And then I witnessed one of the most devastating and lascivious sex-scenes of my life! Gloria fairly enveloped that little creature! Her massiveness spun a flesh-web around him that threatened to devour him. His eyes were glazed with terror and he poked and shoved at her, wriggling like a skewered worm, as she bent him this way and that like some rubber tinker-toy so that she plyed her whims and cogent lusts more effectively. Picking him up as if he were a rag-doll, she embraced his distraught little form between those timber-like thighs and, rolling back and forth, crushed him so that his eyes bugged and his face turned reddish-blue.
I was appalled; it was all I could do to refrain from screaming at her to ease up, to give the little fellow a chance and a fair run for his money. But I didn't, for as appalled as I was ... I was also fascinated. There was a weird kick in watching the mountain lord it over the foothill. And for all his terror, the shrimp didn't lose his urge; that remained staunch and steadfast and ready and finally, ready to settle down a bit and try it out, Gloria got the most she could of his staunchness and she bounced him there like a doting adult bounces a baby.
Bringing him to pitch, she removed him suddenly and, spinning around, caught his spilling love with an ardent kiss; the little man in turn cooperated; buried like an ostrich, his extremities were all that I could see as he returned her maneuver in hungry appreciation. Spasms evidently ebbing, she lifted him up, kissed him soundly, and then, flipping over, offered him her rotund nether-region (which apparently pleased him greatly for he labored there with zest and enthusiasm, bringing himself to peak in a buzz-saw flurry of motion which brought smiles of delight to Gloria's rosette cheeks).
After a few reasonable romps, the little fellow went limp; his expression was one of profound exhaustion, his eyes two red little orbs that pleaded for surcease and pity. But Gloria's roiling chemistry had only just reached the boiling point; she dipped down to him and revived him with ravishing kisses and tongue probings. Heroically he climbed astride once more bravely he thrashed away, like an exhausted miner digging into the wet hot pit of a salt mine. The buzz-saw was slower this time, its vibrations sapped by the greed of the machine that milked it. And when the last pulsing throb had spent itself, the effete little creature rolled off onto his back, where he lay panting like a man in the racked reaches of pulmonary consumption. His eyes had a pitiful pleading look I had not seen since a kid brother with his tonsils freshly removed had silently begged me for a drink of cold water. He was done, finished, exhausted, effete, spent, wasted, bone dry and limp ... or at least I thought he was. But Gloria, eyes blazing now, chest heaving in determined anxiety, didn't think so at all. She plied pressures in arcane places, gently nibbled at frayed and worn tissues, kissed and stroked pliant membranes ... until. Yes ... until, slowly, but ever so surely, what had died a noble death was resurrected and lived again.
This time, though, she carried the little fellow to a chair where, sitting him down carefully as if he were a crate of eggs she lowered herself down on him gingerly. I looked, astonished, seeing only Gloria; the tiny creature was entirely obscured beneath her voluminous limbs and heaving flesh. And then, horror of horrors, she began a bouncing motion; raising herself several inches, she let herself drop her entire weight. Surely, I thought, that little runt will be crushed lifeless. But then suddenly Gloria stopped bouncing-eyes rolling wildly, breasts raising taut in strain and toes turning up sharply, she found what she'd been searching for (and evidently the waiting had been worthwhile). A look came over her face that was absolutely indescribable something like the expression on a kid's face when he does something he shouldn't do and knows he's going to get away with it.
But the most amazing thing of all was when Gloria got up! The little man wasn't crushed; he wasn't even dented. Far from it! He was arched and firm and ready and obviously on the verge. Gloria bent quickly and, guiding him to her kiss with both hands, received the last libations of his tired finish. It was all over...
I applauded the little man. He deserved it. And I applauded myself, too, for having had the foresight and temerity to ask Gloria to come to work for me. She was different, really unique, there was no doubt about that; she complimented Joy-House's melange of unique girls very well. I was pleased with her. I found it singularly satisfying to have girls working for me that could pleasure as well as give it; I wanted to avoid, as much as possible, the calloused old (or young) pros who put on a passion act with every trick they take on. It was my contention (and it still is) that business and pleasure can and should be mixed.
I came downstairs to find Jake Purdy arguing with a milk-faced young man. The kid wanted a drink, Jake wouldn't serve him without seeing some identification. I walked up to the bar and, for some unknown reason, said, "Give the kid a drink, Jake. I want to talk to him." Jake shrugged and served him the beer he'd been asking for.
"Thanks, ma'am," the kid said, raising his glass to me briefly before drinking.
I nodded and said, "That's okay. You look thirsty. Just one though, and then you'll have to scram."
"Why?" he frowned, wiping his mouth with his arm, "I'm twenty one. It's just that I lost my driver's license."
"What's your name, kid?' I asked him.
"John. John Gunder. I heard a guy could ... you know ... find a ... a woman here.'
"Are you just passing through?" I ignored his statement.
"Yeah. I'm headed north. San Francisco. I just got off a ship here and I'm pretty ... well ... you know," he blushed and grinned.
Queenie, who was standing by, walked up and said to me: "If you don't mind, Claudia, I'll entertain the young man."
"Well...,"I hesitated; then, glancing at the kid's wistful expression, I relented. "Go ahead, Queenie. But you've got to leave right after," I told the kid.
"Oh, sure, ma'am. Right after. And thanks a lot."
This was the first time I broke one of Joy-House's rules and I paid for it. Queenie and the kid were upstairs for five solid hours and when they came down, arm-in-arm, it was to tell me that they were in love, and that Queenie was going to leave. What could I do? Out of pity and generosity I had broken a rule given a hard-up kid a break. And, in so doing, I had lost one of my best girls. And love ironically enough is universally an occupational hazard in call houses. Men figure they can trust a woman who has, so to speak, been through the mill. And perhaps they're right I've never known a prostitute that made a bad wife. But live and learn. One can't break one's own rules without being sorry later and while losing Queenie was a low enough blow to Joy-House, Jeanie, her closest friend, was in tears for a week. And so I learned the valuable lesson that in our business toughness is kindness in the end.
Which brings up the far from gentle subject of two of my girls: Mildred and Ruth. The two of them most successfully point-up the fact that "toughness" is an essential part of the makeup of human-beings (women, as well as men). Mildred and Ruth, while well-behaved young ladies when the occasion demanded, could turn into veritable tigresses at the drop of a twenty dollar bill. They lent Joy-House three priceless ingredients: drama, showmanship and violence...
CHAPTER SEVEN
Mildred Cantfield and Ruth Bradshaw were consummate actors (and if ever a bawdy-house academy award is instituted they deserve a whole batch of Oscars). They brought a weird clientele to Joy-House, and because of what they had to go through to earn their money I gave them a bigger percentage than the rest of my girls. Their specialty was staging fights. Yes, hair-pulling, scratching, dirty-tactic, fights, punctuated by profanity and all kinds of verbal abuse. But they also submitted to being tied up, gagged, female dominance, and a drove of other lesser indignities.
I'll never forget the first time I watched them from the mirror-room. Ed Smith went up with me; we were both curious to see their show. They had a man and his wife in tow; the man was a fat, balding old toss-pot; his wife a fairly attractive blonde of about forty. They stayed very close together, holding hands; I guessed that this was their first adventure along these lines; and wondered where and how they'd gotten the idea.
Mildred was a rather copiously upholstered girl, the kind men like to ogle in the follies; Ruth was a homely, hard-faced tart a nice figure, but a bit sloppy in posture and dress. But both girls moved with the effortlessness that advertises latent strength and fine physical condition. I watched them with rising curiosity as they stood together in the center of the room, glaring balefully at one another. The man and wife, still holding hands, had positioned themselves against one wall they wore the sickly grins one sees at bull-fights and their eyes shifted expectantly from girl to girl. Ed, sitting close beside me, snickered, and said, "I'll bet those two learn a few things tonight."
"Yes," I answered him, enjoying the soft pressure of his hand on my bare thigh, "I expect they will at that."
Suddenly Ruth reached out, grabbed Mildred's blouse at the shoulder and ripped it open; Mildred, in turn, got both hands in Ruth's hair and, pulling, tugging and jerking, down to the floor they went. Rolling, clawing at one another like alley-cats in heat, they moved about on the floor; their faces working in evident hatred, we could see their mouths working too and could only imagine the foul language they were exchanging.
The viewers, in the meantime, were rapidly becoming terribly excited; the man had his hand in his wife's blouse; the woman was holding her husband in a way that seemed to suggest urgency. And Ed, always ready, was stroking me in places that I found singularly disturbing ... but very nice.
The girls' clothes were in tatters in another few minutes, and Mildred's corpulent thighs were exposed, a thin trickle of blood running down one from a nail scratch. One of Ruth's breasts was loose, and Mildred, seeing it, grabbed it and bit into the nipple; this infuriated Ruth and, crying out in pain, she brought one knee up hard between Mildred's thighs; a bone-crushing blow that put Mildred on her back, writhing in agony. Ruth bent over her, and taunting her, spit right in her face.
"Look, Claudia," Ed nudged me, "we're going to see something we hadn't bargained for that guy and his wife are really all tore up."
Ed was right. The woman was fairly tearing at her clothes in a frenzy to get out of them; her husband had his pants off and had things well in hand as he watched the girls' fight. And Ed and I ... well ... we were half undressed by then too; Ed's hands were everywhere and I quickly bent and kissed him where his excitement bulked biggest.
Mildred, meanwhile, had reached up and tore off Ruth's tattered skirt glancing quickly at the husband and wife I saw them gasp in pleasure: Ruth, it seemed, wore no panties. Her rounded whiteness quivered like jelly as she twisted frantically, trying to get out of Mildred's bear-hug. Kicking, clawing, slapping (and slapping hard!) the battle went on; minutes later both girls were naked, except for their high-heeled shoes, nylons and garter-belts. Mildred had clasped Ruth's head between her thighs and she was backhanding her with vicious cuts that quickly laid one cheek open, the blood trickling down to her panting mouth.
Husband and wife were nearly stripped by now; the blonde was down to panties and heels; her breasts, I noticed, were firm and high and large and the sight of them sent a hot flash through me that was accelerated by Ed's lavish attentions (I was in his lap, moving about deliciously while his fingers dialed my nipples gently).
With a powerful wrench, Ruth jerked her head from between Mildred's obese thighs; then, rather surprising me, she pulled Mildred's head down and kissed her on the mouth, hard and hungrily. Mildred responded, she pulled Ruth to her and, clasping her waist with her thighs, began nuzzling her breasts and lolling her nipples with her tongue. Soon both of them were locked in an embrace, rocking like a see-saw as their spent emotions coalesced and drew down to rutting lust.
This sight sent the man and wife into their own variety of sexual frenzy; dropping to the floor, the blonde pulled her husband down on her and, with jerky thrusting motions, put him where he belonged. Twisting their heads so they could still watch Mildred and Ruth, the man reached back and, probing with his forefinger, put it where it caused his wife to ululate in prime pleasure.
Ed and I, watching the four of them, tried everything at once in the eagerness of our greed. Dropping down to him, after romping conventionally, I muted myself with his pride, tasting woman and learning of myself in the tasting. Tit-for-tat (like Tillie) Ed spun around and knew the need of my moistness sipping the libidinous wine of my effusive love; lingering long there (both of us) we stopped, just as the vague tweakings of consummation began, and came up for air and another look at our side-show.
Mildred and Ruth were locked in Aphrodite's embrace; their bodies heaving in that age-old rhythm that seeks its end but prolongs that end in the pure pleasure of seeking. Mildred's ponderous thighs were rippling spastically as she assimilated Ruth's ministrations; Ruth's fine body was tense and rigid as rapture tied her muscles tight and goose-flesh rippled across her perspiring back like wind across water. Their mingling had lost all fury of combat; there was in it now only the joy and pleasure of give and take, do and be done to.
The blonde and her pudgy husband has risen; they were standing over the girls, toying with one another playfully their eyes keen and avid on the salacious sight below them. Suddenly the blonde bent down and touched Mildred's thigh a tentative touch, but one that implied much more than idle curiosity. Mildred drew away from Ruth a little and looked up at the woman; the woman smiled at her and nodded slowly. Disentangling herself from Ruth's clasp with evident regret Mildred rose. And no sooner had she risen than the blonde threw herself into her arms, crushing her against herself and running her hands frantically up and down Mildred's back. Her husband, face beaming in a smile of rapt approval, quickly dropped down to Ruth, where, swooping like a bird of prey, he took over where Mildred had left off.
That did it! Seeing that naive man and his wife cast aside all inhibitions to such a feral degree was like an overdose of aphrodisiac; Ed pummeled me with his pride, getting to me where I'd never been taken before, de-flowering me in nether-regions and teaching me the strange fierce masochism of surrender. I wallowed in a well of riotous lust and let my glands rule my will and rent my reason and discretion with a series of sever depredations. Weird, voluptuous little chill-thrills crawled up and down my spine and I contracted muscles that itched deliciously against the impulsive rigidity within; giving me a preview of avantguard orgasm and making me grunt and moan with each imperious thrust.
Ruth, while the blonde's balding spouse tended to her, was tending to Mildred again, who, in turn, was commencing to tend to the anxious, spraddle-thighed blonde. A quartet of united action, they moved with the undulating and anfractuous gyrations of a hot pie baking eight thighs, four pair of clutching arms, four sedulous mouths, all immersed in a game that they could not hope to win, but that had no loser. The blonde's face was working queerly her mouth was pulled all awry, giving her the half-grin, half-frown of someone in pain, but who, as the doctor bends over her, morphine ready, anticipates the cessation of pain and the beginning of blissful release.
And as I watched them, their faces, their greedy mouths, their receptive postures, I felt the thin wire edge of peak beginning its tremendous ascension back there; I lifted myself high against Ed, greedy for everything I could get and when I got it, roaring like a rutting rhino, I saw cascades of stars and knew plump passions and esurient ecstasies. Settling down hard, reaching for more and more, I felt Ed's erupting apogee and squirmed in ever greater lust as his teeth bit into the taut flesh of my flexing back.
"Oh, Ed, darling, Ed, darling!" I heard the thick grunt of my teeth-clenched voice.
"Yes, baby I wasn't sure whether you could or not ... this way."
"Oh, yes, yes! Move, Ed! Move!" I dug my nails into his muscular thighs and jammed my full weight against him. Spasms ebbing slightly, I found the sanity to be aware again; I looked again at the lust-joined quartet and had to snicker at what I saw.
The man was on his knees; his face flushed scarlet he was trying to accomplish three things at once and his impossible task made him appear ridiculous. Ruth and Mildred were trying to keep straight faces; the blonde, evidently on the crusty verge from Ruth's energetic stroking, looked even funnier than her husband: her tongue protruded a good two inches out the side of her mouth, her eyes were crossed, her nose twitching like a frightened rabbit's. And then, reaching her event, she twisted that rather pretty face into the most grotesque caricature imaginable; I felt the quick floodings of desire well-up again at the sight of such acute satisfaction and I wiggled about, communicating my fresh need to the still rigid and ready Ed. And when my need had been met-and met and met again, I had learned the valuable lesson that big fine things can occur behind one's back one might say that ... in the end I was wonderfully satisfied.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ruby Washington was an eastern import that is she was sent to us from the east coast, and with glowing recommendations. Ruby was a statuesque colored girl, a beauty contest winner. After turning away several customers who asked for colored girls, I decided I'd better find one and so Ed, through a friend of a friend of a friend, made the connections that brought us Ruby. And what a fine she was!
Black, absolutely black, Ruby had that ebony skin that has a slight oily shine. Her features were extremely fine and delicate for a negress, nose not excessively broad, lips just full enough; her eyes were full of grace and mystery and hinted of latent savagery. Her body was a composite of all things fine but for want of an adequate description let me merely say that it was lust provoking. She carried herself with an air of tempered insolence, her full hips swaying temptingly as she walked, and the way she held her head sort of high, chin in lent her a somewhat regal aura.
Ruby caught my bartender's eye right away; the second day she arrived Jake bought her a couple of welcoming drinks, and I saw him pour a quantity of white powder into one of them. Calling him down to the far end of the bar, I quietly asked him what he was up to. "Ever try any aphrodisiac?" he whispered.
"No," I said. "Is that what you poured in Ruby's drink?"'
"Yess, why don't you let me mix you the same kind of drink ... I'm having some. We could ... have a little party ... the three of us."
"Okay, you're on, Jake," I nodded. "But d'you think you can ... you know ... please both of us?"
He winked, nodded slyly, and said, "I don't know ... but it'll be fun trying."
And so he mixed me a drink too and himself one. The three of us conversed warmly, Ruby telling us how much she liked California. And then I felt a series of hot flashes, accompanied by the most pleasant itching sensation. Ruby, I noticed, was beginning to squirm around restlessly on her bar stool; Jake's mouth was beginning to twitch when he talked.
"Man! I don't know why ... but I feel sorta all shook-up," Ruby suddenly exclaimed. "I feel like having a man ... or-,"she glanced quickly at me, "a woman."
"Why not both," I shrugged, smiled.
"Yeah, we could make it a three-some."
Jake hung his "bar closed" sign over the bar and the three of us went upstairs. Things moved quickly, too. That stuff whatever it was was sexual dynamite! I felt soft sensual urgings surging through me like molten lava and, watching Ruby and Jake disrobe, I could scarcely get out of my own clothes fast enough. And Ruby, by the time she was down to her bra and panties, had begun to moan deep in her throat: the primordial sound of savage Africa reverberating up from her depths. And she gasped, as I had gasped, at her first sight of Jake Purdy in the nude; that ridiculous pride of his appeared even larger than before and I felt strong yearnings as I saw it throb and arch tightly when his eyes fell on Ruby's ebony loveliness.
"C'mere, you," he beckoned to her, his voice gruff with command.
"Ya'll take it easy...,"Ruby drawled, her eyes glued to his massiveness. "That could hurt a woman bad," she added. And then, catching her breath with a little sob, Ruby suddenly leaped at Jake; jumping up, she threw those glistening thighs around him and began kissing him hungrily. And Jake, responding just as ardently, proceeded not to take it easy; he reached down, guided, plunged like a long-denied bull. Ruby's wail was a long drawn-out squeal that combined all the elements of terribly pain and sheer delight; the muscles in her shoulders and back went rigid and stood out prominently; her toes turned up sharply, making the muscles in her calves writhe seductively. Then I too got in the act. Dropping down, I began nibbling at Ruby's feet and calves and thighs and ... well ... completely out of my mind ... I drove a probing, tongue-searching kiss where kisses were definitely hot in the sequence of conformity. I dallied long there, until, black cheeks vibrating in a convulsive shudder, Ruby peaked-off ... I caught the redolent effluvia of blended man and woman and knew the gourmet's knowledge of succulent fruits and forbidden sweet-meats.
And then it was Jake and myself I took his great offering in humble gratitude and felt the immensity of his pride as it swelled to near bursting within my frothing labyrinth. I was on my back, playing it conventional, and reaching up for Ruby I drew that humid black cloud down to my waiting lips, and hp to lip I knew the odor and flavor of the Black Sea at low tide. Jake's trips those indescribably long trips increased their tempo slowly; reaching up greedily, I met each journey half way and withdrew each time with sharp regret and a poignant anxiety for home-coming's flesh-in-flesh reunion. And when the steep climb was over and we reached our pleasure-peak together, I felt Jake's passion spilling in fulminating gushes, and Ruby, maddened by our cries and writhing, lowered her weight on me and, half smothered, I felt the trickling tallow of her completion and I surrendered myself to the blackness of her ephemeral abyss.
We rested. Sitting apart from one another, panting heavily, we regarded ourselves with the curious apathy of satiation but satiation and those powders Jake had mixed in our drinks were not compatible; minutes later we clashed again, reaching once more for that intangible release that such scenes promise but never fulfill. Jake took Ruby by surprise (and by pain) when he flipped her over and reversed the order of play; she grunted like a stuck pig when he started-and before he was half there she was gasping and grimacing in pain.
"Easy, Jake, you're too...,"I began but never finished.
"Oh, lawdy!" Ruby's piercing cry rent the air, as Jake, with one brutal lunge, finished his trip.
"Oh, Jake, you've hurt her," I remonstrated.
"Oh, lawdy, no! No! It's good now! Good, good, good!" Ruby cried shrilly, threshing about like an impaled snake beneath him.
Ruby's words, the erotic thickness in them, raised me to a pitch of carnal urgency; I dropped back on my haunches and began to caress myself lightly the meanwhile watching the rutting Jake's action and listening to Ruby's groans and grunts of deep, deep pleasure. Gazing at them, rapt, I felt as if I were opening like the petals of some heat-loving flower; my hearing grew intense; I heard their sounds: moist, rhythmic; I heard my own sounds: fast, urgent, like batter being agitated by an egg-beater. I caught odors; my own sense of smell seemed enhanced, magnified preposterously. There was the muck of heat generated by friction; the miasma of slavering lips.
Suddenly Ruby uttered a long low cry, half animal, half human and then, Jake beginning his hiss of completion, Ruby raised those undulating black cushions up to him and gave vent to the most frightening howl imaginable. And I, digging hard and fast to catch up, caught up and three voices harmonized in the sing-song nasal-drones of orgasm.
Those powders, whatever they were, must have been terribly potent. We grew tired, the three of us: glutted, replete, sated. But our chemistry was rolling and would give us no repose. On and on it went: come and go, on and off, pain and surcease, pleasure and throbbing joy, satisfaction and dire need. Our faces grew taut and drawn; Jake's eyes became dull with dark black circles beneath them. I felt the whirling vertigo of nausea; my head throbbed; my tongue felt as if it had been immeasurably abused. We tried to stop, parting for a moment or two now and again-but then those soft itching surges would start again and we'd be up and at it, throwing caution to the winds and exhausting the facilities of imagination as well as flesh. Bone-weary, we clashed as marathon wrestlers clash, overcoming inertia by sheer will and devastating desire. And when finally those powders wore thin, we found ourselves tied in a threesome knot, a knot too tight for our fast waning forces to untie; we lay panting, stupefied, numb. I awakened in the dead of night, cold, to find myself nestled between Ruby's satin-smooth thighs, my head resting on Jake's lower stomach. I rose slowly, not waking them and, knees shaking, throat dry and burning, got into my clothes and stumbled downstairs to my own room, where, undressing in a sort of trance, I crawled between cool sheets with a sigh of exhaustion and utter satisfaction.
It was several weeks yes I said weeks before I felt the need of sexual diversion again. That glandular orgy had wasted me and Jake and Ruby. Our juices had been severely overtaxed, strained beyond the limit of human endurance, and we paid as the extremist must ever pay for our excess. For several days we walked around like zombies, not much interested in anything, not much caring what we did or didn't do; vastly preferring to do absolutely nothing.
"I guess I used a little too much of that stuff," Jake commented some ten days later (it was ten days before he had the strength to comment about anything).
And so it was that the three of us learned by experience that one can live and love too much ... and that powder in a drink can be almost as dangerous as powder in a bullet.
CHAPTER NINE
I heard about the party several days ahead of time. Tit-For-Tat-Tillie, Shirley Trotter and Sally Gibson, Gloria Greenhouse, Kitty Prentiss, Jeanie and Ruby had scheduled a "hen-party" for election day (we always closed on election day). They invited me, but I declined for the simple reason that I thought such a "party" might be more fun to watch than take part in. I figured nor was I wrong that their "hen party" would come off in the fashion of a "busman's holiday."
Rising to their occasion, I donated three bottles of select gin two of which I had Jake Purdy pour a small quantity of his powder into ... yes, I said a "small quantity." (I didn't want my best girls put out of commission just for the pleasure of watching them.)
The party began at nine Tuesday morning and lasted all day. And what a party! What startling contrasts! Gloria Greenhouse, looking like a giant temptress as she sucked greedily at a bottle of gin; Kitty Prentiss, her lovely hair down for the affair; Shirley Trotter and Sally Gibson, sitting close to one another on the bed and both drinking thirstily; Jeanie, her high-yellow skin enhancing her fine figure; Ruby, her jet blackness standing out boldly, her lovely body catching everyone's eye; Tit-For-Tat-Tillie, moving about the room energetically, drinking heavily in her rising enthusiasm. To say the least, it was quite an assemblage; I sat back and relaxed, waiting for the festivities to begin; nor was I forced to wait long. Gloria Greenhouse, who had already swilled a good deal of that aphrodisiac loaded gin, jumped up and, bumping and grinding like a burlesque queen, began to undress a piece at a time. First came her blouse, then her brassiere; her melon-sized breasts flounced tantalizingly as she moved them with a flexing movement. Next came her skirt; I could see some of the girls express amazement when they caught sight of Gloria's tan and massive thighs. Then came her panties, then her nylons; she left her heels on. Dancing to and fro, moving those great hips of hers in seductive north and south grinds, her impromptu act was the fuse that set things off. Everyone seemed suddenly eager to get out of their clothes as quickly as possible.
And then I saw that thing! I don't know where it came from; in the confusion I hadn't noticed which girl had it first. It was enormous, at least half again the size of any normal man's, and it appeared to be made of ornately molded rubber. The thing was realistic down to the minutest detail; from its great knobbed end it curved in a long, corded arch to its other end. I squirmed restlessly, imagining the pomps of pleasure and lust that that avenging weapon could inflict. And then Gloria got ahold of it and, with a quick ramming thrust, put a portion of its base end where it gave her the appearance of a gigantic man. Laughing, swaying the thing to and fro in her hand, she extended her invitation to any willing taker; she got one: Tillie.
Now Tillie wasn't a large girl. When Gloria hovered over her I got the fleeting impression that I was about to see the horse mount the rider. But credit to her, Tillie scarcely batted an eye when that behemoth descended on her, that fantastic implement ready to go. And she took it, Tillie did! All of it! With a long, half-sob, half-sigh, she took all Gloria could present her with; even reaching up, when it was all there, and pulling down on Gloria's rotund posterior, as if to gain a wee bit more. The other girls watched, eyes bright with excitement and wonder, as Gloria began to undulate; all giggling and drinking had ceased seven pairs of eyes (including mine) lowered and raised as they followed the stabs and retreats of that magnificent rotundity. I could see the mattress give several inches with each lowering assault and Tillie's expression, with each withdrawal, was one of transient pathos and nostalgic yearning.
Jeanie, whom I'd heard was definitely a man's woman, period, had begun to caress herself; with quick, clandestine digs she was amusing herself with that thick staid passion some heterosexuals achieve from watching bisexual or homosexual acts. Shirley Trotter and Sally Gibson were enjoying the show (and each other's helping hand) tremendously. Sally's face was working nervously and Shirley's tongue as always when she was unduly aroused was lolling like a panting puppy's. Kitty Prentiss had that faraway look on her lovely face as if at any moment she might decide to go off by herself. And Ruby Washington had her ebony thighs wrapped around a bed-post, enjoying the pressure of it and the up and down movements of the mattress. And I, watching first one girl and then the other and the flailing Gloria and her willing victim was gently massaging myself, taking it slow, wanting it to last, taking a lesson from the fastidious gourmet who lingers long over his meat, savoring each delightful sensual experience to the utmost.
Suddenly Tillie threw both legs high and, squirming like a trapped mouse in the paws of a sleek house-cat, clawed at Gloria's heaving back while her chemistry erupted. And Gloria, brought to the same state by Tillie's agonized writhing, plunged with the desperate power of a fullback who sees in the glory of touchdown the greatest reward of his life; the great dimples in her bounding backside pulsated spastically as her machinery tweaked in the convulsions of passion's pinnacle.
Brought to some madness of lust by watching, Jeanie had risen, pulled a rope-sash off a robe that was lying near her and, approaching the side of the bed, where Gloria and Tillie were enjoying their ebbing spasms, brought it down and across Gloria's tweaking roundness with all her strength. Gloria moaned sharply, shot a quick and curious glance at Jeanie, and evidently thrilled and enlivened by the pain of the blow and its implications, began moving once more. Swish! Crack! Crack! The silken sash-rope cut the air and laid crisscross lines across Gloria's undulating whiteness. Crack! Crack! Jeanie delivered blow after blow, her face contorted in fury as if she were punishing the two of them for their unnatural togetherness. Gloria loosed a queer little cry with each resounding impact her great body was tensed into a hard muscular knot and she flailed away at Tillie as if she were trying to exorcise some unregenerate demon.
"Stop it! Damn you, stop it!" Ruby suddenly cried out angrily. Leaping up from the bed, she jerked the sash-rope from Jeanie and, shoving her against the side of the bed began to give her a taste of her own medicine. Swish! Crack! The rope tore into the cringing Jeanie's flesh, across her breasts, her panting abdomen. Then, just as suddenly, Jeanie's frown of pain and astonishment turned into a leer of lust; she sank trembling to the floor beside the bed where, receiving several more cutting blows from the enraged Ruby, she began to writhe and squirm in the obvious throes of acute pleasure. Ruby, observing what was happening, laid on the sash-rope even harder; soon Jeanie was snorting and slithering about on the floor in intense joy and there was that in her movements that reminded me of the desperateness of the human state ... as if by alternating violence and surrender we might learn the secret middle-ground of peace and eternal satisfaction.
Shirley and Sally, with cries of, "Damned black-bitch!" descended upon Ruby as one. Sally got one arm around her neck and, jerking viciously back, Shirley grabbed her legs, pulling them out from under her. Down on her back, Ruby tried as best she could to ward off their blows. Reaching up quickly, she caught Sally by the hair and, pulling her down to her, planted a frantic kiss on her open mouth. Sally relaxed; with a low moan of desire she melted down and on Ruby; Shirley followed suit; dropping to her knees she swooped and planted her own version of a kiss on the now busy Ruby a kiss that brought astonishment to the faces of the viewers (including mine). Sally, after kissing Ruby long and hard on the mouth, had begun on her breasts; circling one nipple with the wet tip of her tongue she had the other between thumb and forefinger and was gently pinching it.
Shirley's kiss was long, low and inspiring; Gloria and Tillie, who had risen from the bed to watch, joined the act. Gloria, with care and precision and patience, began to introduce that huge implement to the crouching Shirley. And Tillie, finding no place to play, began, as best she could, on Sally duplicating Shirley's ardent kiss.
I watched and stroked, stroked and watched my libido stirred to perverted heights at the sight of such volcanic passion. My one regret my one jealousy was that I too could not ply myself with the pleasure of that implement Gloria was plying Shirley so successfully with. But no sooner had my regret registered than I heard a soft knock at the door behind me and heard Jake Purdy's voice.
"Can I come in, Claudia?" he intoned plaintively.
"Lordie, yes, Jake. Hurry!" I told him, my stomach flipping in pleasure (Jake could supply me with as much or more than Shirley was getting and the real goods, too!).
Which he proceeded to do. Quickly! Sitting in his lap, settling down ever so slowly and ever so pleasurably and ever so carefully, I sighed and relaxed wanting to postpone frenzy the better to enjoy the frenzy I was watching. And it came to me as I watched again as Jake unfastened my brassiere and began dialing my nipples, that a brothel is much like a zoo or a menagerie in that prostitutes live only to be fed, watched, or to fornicate. Not that I'm complaining. In these days of civilized complication there is much to be said for a simple life of eating and loving. Believe me the neurotic or frustrated prostitute is a rarity.
Ruby, it seems, was receiving more than her share of attention. Whether this was because her color brought out some indigenous lust, or whether it was because she was our newest girl I can't really say but she did receive the lion's share of attention that day. The girls swarmed over her like bees; they played old games and invented new ones, surprising me in their fecund ingenuity. But along towards the end, when even Jake's powders were wearing thin, the most disgusting and revolting (and yet exciting!) thing happened. Jeanie, who had withdrawn to minister to her own needs after Ruby had beat her, approached the squirming, undulating group of girls and, standing over Ruby straddling her she squatted quickly and relieved herself. The girls were horrified! Drawing away with evident loathing (Tillie holding her nose and making a wry face), they stared at the mephitic mess as if hypnotized. I expected anything but not what happened. Ruby, instead of expressing the revulsion and anger I expected, smiled broadly and, pressing the stuff against herself, brought herself to consummation in a matter of seconds.
There is, within us all, something immeasurably evil and beast-like; whatever it is, it hit me hard when I saw Ruby enjoying herself in that besmirched fashion it seemed as if I were watching some forbidden manifestation of foulness, and in the watching I had become part and parcel of that very rottenness and foulness, so that, in essence, I approved of it (not to approve of one's essence is to court disaster ... or suicide).
I settled down hard, grunting my sudden and terrible need to Jake, who, responding like the perverted experimenter he was, gave me all and more than I needed and my flesh quaked everywhere as stabbing pain met stabbing joy and my revulsion at the scene before me joined hands with the mighty member that throbbed and spewed within. It was over. I went downstairs filled with wonder at the depravity of human affairs and with self-doubt as my bed-partner that night I tossed restlessly, wondering what the logic was for everything ... but doubting that even logic was really reasonable.
CHAPTER TEN
Watching the girls and their "hen-party" set me to thinking; I asked myself some questions and came up with I think a pretty fair set of answers. What makes a woman decide to become a prostitute? Are prostitutes average in intelligence? Are they above average? Or are they stupid? Do most of them intend to follow prostitution indefinitely? Do they feel any shame? Are they happy people or miserable people? What motivates them? How can a prostitute commit an act of fellatio with a perfect stranger and then turn around and, perhaps even within the same hour, kiss the man she actually does love. And, last but not least, how can a person put a price on love without turning love into a cheap commercial farce? The following are my answers to these questions ... and I think they're honest answers.
What makes a woman decide to become a prostitute?
Poverty mostly. Or a bitter remembrance of poverty. Very seldom does a girl from a rich or well-to-do family turn to prostitution. Of course there are other (and lesser) reasons: dreams of easy money, difficulty in finding regular work or inability to hold a regular job, self-hatred, laziness, a neurotic personality and all too rarely simple lust. One often hears opinion expressed that most prostitutes have hot pants and that they gravitated to their profession merely to satisfy their unnatural cravings. Not so. By and large, prostitutes are semi-frigid; their act of passion is just that: an "act." Oh, sure, they're human occasionally a man who appeals to a girl does arouse her sufficiently to bring her to climax. But on the whole, most prostitutes think of sex as work; besides, if every trick a girl took on stimulated her to orgasm ... she'd soon be literally "stimulated" to death ... or at best to nervous exhaustion. But for every girl that turns to prostitution for one of the above reasons, ten turn to it for reasons of sheer poverty. They grew up in poverty, without sufficient education, without the chance to cultivate themselves, so they ignore the alternative of the primrose path (thinking of marriage as poverty built for two) and join a brothel ... or begin free-lancing on a part-time basis until they're hooked by some pimp who gives them five out of every twenty they make.
Are prostitutes average in intelligence, above average, or stupid?
All three. Some are smart. Some average. Some have to take off their shoes to count to ten. Take Tillie, Ruth Bradshaw and Edna Roth for instance. Tillie is definitely above average in the brains department she has read the classics, plays a domineering game of chess, and no one can surpass her when it comes to figures ... numbers I mean. Ruth Bradshaw is average, run of the mill; she's nobody's fool but not too sharp when it comes to problems that are just a bit difficult to solve. And then there's Edna Roth dumb! Smart as they come with a whip or a belt or in the hay but terribly dull (and downright stupid) when called upon to exert her brain a little.
But if I were to be forced to come to a definite conclusion about the "average" prostitute and her intelligence I'd probably be inclined to sway a little toward the opinion of "above average." After all it has been established that a great many neurotic persons are rather high in intelligence and it has also been established that an overwhelming majority of prostitutes are either neurotic or close to neurotic. I realize that this comparison doesn't constitute a really valid hypothesis but it's the best an old ... madam ... can do.
Do most prostitutes intend to follow prostitution indefinitely?
No. Or at least very few. Most begin with the idea that the fast buck in prostitution will free them from immediate poverty and give them the time (and full stomach) to look for something else..."a good job." But something happens. They harden. And usually rather fast. A year in the game, two years and, "I can't get out now. I couldn't work hard all day for ten bucks a day besides, I'm doing all right at this racket. It's really not so bad after you get used to it."
And so it goes. Ninety out of a hundred hit the hay for pay with the idea that it's only a temporary thing and they end up as hardened whores. Once in a great, great while a girl breaks rank and escapes (like Queenie with that milk-faced kid who took her away), but they are the rare exception to the rule. Most get in the game, are trapped there for one reason or another, and stay there until they are too old or too undesirable to make it any longer (and that age can vary from twenty eight to sixty).
Do they feel any shame?
Naturally, at first. But as I've said, they harden remarkably fast. I've seen a girl go through torments of shame when they took on their first trick and then change and become the hardest, most calloused and foul-talking girl in the house. Shame is largely an individual matter; it has a great deal to do with a girl's past, her environment, her degree of involvement with friends and other outside forces. Take Tillie, for instance. She not only feels no shame in regards to her occupation she's "darned proud of being a first class whore." Tillie feels that most morality is false and synthetic: "a cheap paint we've painted onto ourselves to protect us from the ugliness and responsibility of reality."
But on the other side of the ledger, I don't suppose there is a prostitute alive who, when confronted with the question of occupation in front of cherished friends and relatives, would be proud to admit the truth about herself. As Tillie put it once: "I'm proud of my ability to make love but discreet about my ability to receive it."
"Are prostitutes happy or miserable?
Both. like you and I, they're first one and then the other. Their occupation as an occupation doesn't tend (after their breaking-in period) to make them either happy or miserable. like anyone else, a prostitute is affected by good news and bad, by a new dress (good); by an un-tactful remark (bad); by an unexpected visit from a favorite client (good); by a disrespectful drunk who can't make the grade (bad). Naturally a girl is bound to get the blues now and again (who doesn't?). But by and large, prostitutes are just as happy (and just as miserable) as anyone else in this happy miserable world.
What motivates them?
Need. Hunger. Sympathy. Love (real love). Enthusiasm. Fatigue. Their motivations are your motivations; their needs, hungers, sympathies, enthusiasms and fatigues are your also.
How can a prostitute commit an act of fellatio with a perfect stranger and then turn around and, perhaps even within the same hour, kiss the man she actually does love?
A tough one. (The question, not the prostitute.) Well ... how can a man have a normal intercourse with his wife and then, within the same hour, allow a prostitute to commit an act of fellatio upon him? A different thing, you say--? Not essentially. They're both women. But it was the prostitute that was subjected to an unantiseptic indignity. The point is that a prostitute when committing such an act is thereby engaging in a facet of her profession; but a man who would bring his wife's juices to a prostitute is selling out his wife and himself. A prostitute has no feeling toward a man when she is committing an act of fellatio she is merely an expert receptacle, providing a perverted form of catch-all for his lust. But a wife in such an act is displaying her love. Neither should be criticized or censored, neither should be used at the expense of the other. A prostitute can commit fellatio with a client and then kiss the man she actually loves, because the professional act has no significance for her ... no more than if she were to kiss the client's cheek or hand.
How can a person put a price on love without turning love into a cheap commercial farce?
The answer to that is that one can't. But all of man's external wares are to a greater or lesser extent "commercial." This surely doesn't preclude man from buying ... or from selling. That you get what you pay for is as true with a whore as it is with anything else: beefsteak, jewelry, etc. Men sell so that they can buy so that they can sell so that they can buy ... on and on it goes. A prostitute sells her love, her body so that she can eat and sleep and love and sell her body again. Sound tragic? It's not. It's the same commercial merry-go-round that you and I and everybody else rides from birth to death and it'll keep spinning just as long as this old world keeps spinning ... and the only difference in a prostitute and a preacher (commercially speaking) is that one sells his wares standing behind a pulpit and the other by taking men for a hey-ride (and by this I mean no disrespect for preachers, I happen to think they do a lot of good). After all, as Tillie says: "Preachers mean well; they do as much good as those nice little old men who spend their spare time mending broken toys."
But on the serious side, I'm all for commercialism which is really commensurate to saying that I like living. Give a little, take a little, that's about what prostitution adds up to; placing it on a "commercial" basis is no more cheapening than charging for any other work performed. Oh, I suppose from the abstract viewpoint, love for the sake of love (sans money) has special value for most men but even a wife extracts some kind of payment from the husband she sleeps with and loves. As I said, one gets what one pays for.
All things considered, I think prostitution does far more god than harm. I've seen men come into Joy-House who if they hadn't the possibility of release that one of my girls could give them-looked to be on the verge of violent rape; when they left their faces were almost always in comparative response. I assert, no I claim, that prostitution is much like a safety-valve on a steam-engine just enough steam is allowed to work off (harmlessly) so that all dangerous pressure is released. A warm bed, a warm pair of arms, a warm pair of thighs, a soft breast, can do much to repair the shattering damage that modern society imposes on man's dented ego. Marriage, a home, a wife are vastly superior to any form of body-lending, but lacking these fine comforts a man must have someplace to go, someplace to hide, someplace to get next to a warm, breathing human being and enter into some sort of relationship where flesh touches flesh and where all needs are met in the ephemeral flailings of brother and sisterhood. And such a place, I'm gratified to say, is Joy-House.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Charlotte Bronson could make a girl laugh no matter how far down in the dumps she might be. She was a natural comedian, and never tired of telling jokes even when they were at her own expense. like the following tale she told about herself whether it's true or not, I couldn't say. Decide for yourself.
When I first turned twenty one ... not so long ago ... I had no idea I'd ever end up a hooker ... until. Well ... until I learned the awful truth about myself.
Having taken a business course in high school, I landed a job, shortly after graduating, as a stenographer. I worked downtown, in Los Angeles' Frisby Building. Being naturally beautiful ... don't laugh Tillie ... I was much stared at, whistled at and whispered about. But ... at that time ... my opinion of myself was as high as the fourteenth floor of the Frisby Building itself ... an opinion that soared even higher when Ron Terrance ... the handsomest bachelor in the building ... began ... you know ... dallying with me.
Well Ron fit into my egotistical scheme of things very nicely. Good-looking, well-built, brilliant; considered to be particular as hell in his choice of food, booze and women. And good ol' Ron ... unlike some of the other guys in the building that I'd ... played around with ... could play without bragging about it afterwards. He was one of those rare guys who can give and take without need for advertisement. He took from me what it pleased me to give him and that was that. A nice neat sex-package, signed sealed and delivered by mutual enjoyment, without unfavorable after-effects. Believe me, girls ... the arrangement was terribly satisfying to both of us. Terribly satisfying!
And then along came that damned Vallerie Hennesy. A lovely kid, really but awfully narrow in that she just couldn't seem to take Ron's good talents for what they were and share 'em with me. Oh, no. Vallerie wanted to re-design the guy to the confining pattern of her own selfish little morality. In short ... she wanted Ron for herself.
Vallerie was a steno, too. We all worked on the same floor, Vallerie for a corporation lawyer, me for an insurance company. Ron, an industrial engineer, had a suite of offices on the same floor. A commodious and luxuriously appointed part of that suite consisted of a jazzy kitchenette and bedroom. The kitchenette was always well-stocked with good food and it had a built-in bar that had every booze you could think of. And the bedroom ... well ... it was precious little more than a green-lighted stereo-chamber and king-sized bed.
Now it had been my pre-Vallerie custom to have lunch several times a week with Ron in his suite ... a lunch that was usually sandwiched between a few drinks and a bevy of music accompanied Romps. But some three weeks A.V. ... after Vallerie ... that custom had been shot to hell. Ron began stalling me with one phony excuse after another ... and Vallerie ... when we'd pass in the hall ... was beginning to give me that smirk they give you in funeral parlors when they take your money and tell you how sorry they are about your loss ... you know ... real phony. Well ... I was shook-up, to say the least. Not only did I miss Ron's . . .you know ... attentions ... but my ego was all tore up.
And then ... one Monday morning ... some four weeks after Ron had dumped me for Vallerie ... Vallerie and I locked verbal horns. She was just coming out of Ron's suite when I saw her ... and she had that well-used look on her face. She passed me and grinned a phony flip little grin that set my teeth on edge. Okay, lover-girl, I told her. Go ahead and have your kicks, but don't break your pearly teeth smiling at me. That got her. Oh! she said. I'm sorry you're taking it that way, Charlotte. I'm only trying to help Ron, really I am. He's a very brilliant man and ... well ... until I became acquainted with him he was wasting himself terribly ... all that middle of the day drinking and everything. Oh, yeah, I said. Just what the hell do you mean by everything, Vallerie? Well, she shrugged, you know what I mean ... he ... Yeah, I cut her off. I know damned good and well what you mean. But don't think I'm stupid enough to believe you've turned Ron pure. Not 'ol Ronnie boy, you haven't. You're enjoying his everything just as much as I did. You've got the hots for him and that's all there is to it.
Could be, she told me, surprising me. And could be you're jealous, too, she added and then spun on her heel and walked away like a Beacon Street Tart.
Well ... ol' Vallerie's words had hurt particularly so because they were true. So I got mad! Mad as hell! In a blue rage that found its outlet in a stream of cool, revengeful calculation, I began to lay my plans ... plans that would satisfy both my needs ... revenge and sex.
The next day at the lunch counter I made it a point to sit beside Gladys Loudspeak. Gladys was a shot-down, old-maid secretary whose only virtue was her asinine devotion to truth. Tell Gladys something ... anything ... and convince her that it was the unvarnished truth ... she'd broadcast it loudly through inter-office gossip.
Well ... as I munched my hamburger ... gazing at myself approvingly in the mirror behind the lunch-counter ... Gladys brought up the question I was waiting and hoping for. Is it true what the girls are saying, Charlotte? she asked me. Is what true, Gladys, I acted innocent. Is it true that Ron dumped you for Vallerie? she whispered. I didn't answer right away. I smiled, shrugged, took another bite of my hamburger, a sip of coffee. And then, with a funny little grin I said, No, Gladys. The truth is that I dumped Ron. I dumped him because he was ... well ... I'd better not say ... even though it is the truth.
Well for gawd's sake why not? she got all shook-up with curiosity. C'mon Charlotte, the truth will always out, you know. Tell me, kid. Why did you dump him? Well ... I said, looking around like someone about to let loose some big important secret ... Ron's a swell guy and all that ... a real nice guy. But in bed he's ... not much, because ... well ... let's just say that nature sort of short-changed him. He was always in there trying, but ... you know, Gladys ... the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak.
Oh, really! Gladys' eyes bugged. I could almost hear her gears stripping, she was so anxious to tell everybody the truth. Yes, Gladys, I sighed, nodding meaningfully at the hot-dog she'd half eaten ... that's just about the size of things.
Well, it was a few days in incubation, that big lie ... actually Ron was quite a big box ... and I began to wonder if for once Gladys had kept something to herself. But no. It came out. And when it did the whole Frisby Building echoed with jeering laughter. Ron became the butt of every stenos' joke ... he was damned near destroyed. And good ol' Vallerie ... her reputation at stake ... promptly dumped him.
So I waited, biding my sweet-assed time ... confident that Ron ... his tower toppled ... would be all the more eager to resume our old lunch-time relationship whenever I chose to offer myself. I ... you know ... smiled sympathetically at him whenever we passed ... and I got a big kick out of all the puns that grew and grew about his ... short-coming.
And then one day at noon I was amazed to see Gladys Loudspeak come out of Ron's office. And she had that slack mouth, satisfied grin on her homely face, too. Liar! she said, and she damned near spit in my face as she passed. I couldn't figure it out. I was confused as hell ... and really put down.
And then ... the very next day at the lunch-counter ... I got more confused ... and put down. Everyone was giving me those coy, sideways glances, and laughing at me.
Hi there, C.C., one of the office boys saluted me with a sarcastic leer. So what could I do? I ignored him, that's what. I had too much class to be bothered with office-boy monkey-business. I wondered, though, why the kid had called me C.C. He knew damned well that my initials were C.B. And then ... a couple of seconds later ... I found out.
Carlesbad Cavern, that's her, I hear a laughing whisper close by.
And that, girls, is why I decided to go into business for myself. You know ... there's a lot of dough to be made in these ... ah ... volume deals.
Yes, Charlotte Bronson kept Joy-House in stitches. But Ed Smith's sense of humor was just as good. He told me the following story about himself one rainy afternoon. I asked him afterwards if it were true ... he wouldn't tell me. But I've told you about Ed's marvelous stamina and endurance in the hay ... if the following story is true, the gal must have been quite a woman. But judge for yourself.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was afternoon, it was raining lightly, traffic was light and business was slow. Ed Smith and I were sitting on the front porch, talking quietly, absorbing the fine smell of the rain listening to the lonely whistles of tugs and ships as they wended their way out to sea.
"How'd you get started in this racket, Ed?" I asked him the classic question. And this was the crazy, Ed Smith kind of answer he gave me:
It all started with this lovely little chick named Diane Payne. I was just a kid, and Diane really excited me. She had that Polynesian look about her: full lips, heavy-lidded eyes, happy hips, the whole exotic works! She' lived three houses down the street from me as I remember she was a year or two older than me ... about twenty two or three. She'd married some punk who'd deserted her, and when I met her she'd moved back in with her folks.
It just so happened that, at the time, I too had just broken up with a chick a no good little tramp who cleaned me out of everything. Well it was about a week after I'd met her through her folks, who no doubt thought I was prime marriage material that she called me on the phone. It was the middle of a Friday afternoon I'd left work early, looking forward to a long, wet week-end of guzzling beer and feeling sorry for myself when she called.
Gee, Ed, she said, I'm real sorry to bother you, but I saw your car out front and ... and ... You're not bothering me, Diane, I told her. Now spill it ... what's up ... what can I do for you? It's my back, Ed, she said. I was making my bed ... and suddenly I got this awful pain. I can scarcely straighten up, Ed. D'you suppose you could ... sort of rub it for me? My back, I mean. Of course I realize you're probably busy ... No! No! I told her. I'll be right over. I haven't any plans anyway. I was going to go out and have a few drinks ... but I'd rather help you. Oh, wonderful, Ed! she said. And as far as drinks are concerned ... we've plenty here ... scotch, bourbon, beer anything you like. Maybe I'll join you. It might help relax my back.
Be right there! I nearly shouted feeling that warm glow in my chest a guy gets when he knows something good something female is about to happen.
Two minutes later I was ringing her doorbell. Come in, Ed, I heard her call out. I walked in; the house was cool and dark with the shades all pulled. I'm upstairs in my bedroom, I heard her call out. I went up, walked into her bedroom there she was. One sweetly curved thigh had escaped from the folds of the robe she was wearing she was on the bed, lying flat on her belly. She twisted her head and looked up at me, smiling coyly, and said she was awfully embarassed but that she was desperate for help. I told her not to be embarrassed that I was a neighbor and only too glad to be of help. Now lie still and relax, I told her I'll rub your back. Where does it hurt? I asked her, then I put my hand on her back and lightly rubbed it. Right there, Ed, right there, she sighed and relaxed. That's it, she said only a little bit lower ... and rub kind of hard. So I rubbed kind of hard ... and soon she was emitting distracting little gasps of mixed pleasure and pain. That feels wonderful, Ed, she sighed. Good, I said, but I think you were right about having a drink to relax you ... your back muscles are all tied-up. This was a lie. Her back muscles were as soft and pliant as they could be. But it was disturbing work. I wanted a drink bad! Oh, that's a marvelous idea, she said. Mix us both a couple of stiff ones. You'll find everything you need downstairs in the kitchen cupboard. So, I mixed two stout V.O. and waters and climbed back upstairs, my heart pounding harder than the exertion demanded.
Diane had turned over on her back that same rounded thigh emerged from her robe.
She took the drink and in three fast gulps tossed it down. Wow! I said. You were thirsty! Yes I was, she nodded. I was bone-dry. Damn this robe, she said, suddenly squirming. Would you mind, Ed, if I ... slipped out of it? I think the rubbing would be far more effective that way. Good idea, I said. Here , let me help you. I got her out of it by turning her over on her stomach again and there she lay on her belly beside me as bare as a baby ... except for a pair of very sheer and very scanty panties. Gee, that's much better, she said, and she groaned in pleasure as I resumed rubbing ... though my hands were shaking so much by then that they must have felt like a vibrating machine. Only just a little lower, Ed, she sighed.
Lower was impossible! That is if she wanted her back rubbed it was! But never one to argue with a lady, I obliged. Here, she sighed, raising her bottom temptingly, take them off for me ... they're only in the way.
I pulled them off and then running my fingers caressingly over the loveliest, roundest, most cherubic bottom I had ever seen I wasn't the least bit surprised when she suddenly turned over and, reaching up, pulled me down against her.
Believe me, Claudia, I'll remember that afternoon and evening for the rest of my life!
Never not in my wildest dreams did I imagine a woman could give a man such ... such exquisite pleasure! That first time was good, beyond belief. But our second clash refreshed by another V.O. and water was even better!
It was soon after the curtain had been raised for our third act that I realized something. Diane's back was okay, had been from the first ... but she was in trouble. She was in trouble with herself! And then I knew why her husband had ran out on her who wouldn't? This was no ordinary slip of an affectionate young girl this was a sex-machine an insatiate animal!
Good, I thought. This is really a sweet setup. My girl friend had left me because in her books my twice a week urge had been too much for her. So ... I'd gotten rid of a human deep-freeze and had been suffering the tortures of none a week. But now ... what a perfect setup! With plenty of good booze, too! And if I wasn't mistaken, the Paynes, who sure as hell weren't suffering financially, usually spent their week-ends in the country. I had it made!
Our third act left me a little frayed around the edges my back was beginning to feel like a wet noodle. I stalled for two drinks ... long cool ones ... and took my time in the shower.
Come on, darling, she kept calling me anxiously while I was drying off. I've got something special for you this time, she said. Hurry, Ed. We're wasting precious time. What time is it? I asked, beginning to think that enough was enough. Only eleven thirty, she told me. The night's young, darling. Yeah, I said, but you can never tell your folks might come home early that'd be damned uncomfortable. I grinned at her then, wondering if she could tell I was looking for an out.
Oh, don't worry about my folks, Ed, she said. They're very reliable, my folks. They won't be home until late Sunday night. Okay, I told her. As long as you're sure. I'm sure, she smiled ironically. Just as sure as I am that you and I are going back to bed for some unfinished business. I'm game, I told her, trying to act anxious and frisky but my voice creaked a little and my knees wobbled slightly as we headed for the bed, hand-in-hand.
That V.O.'s getting to me, I guess, was my remark but I was beginning to wonder why men prize sex more than sleep.
Then came our fourth act! I gave it my all hoping to make it my grande-finale ... and it left me a shambles. Somehow I made it out of bed and, knees trembling, made it to the shower where, sitting in a heap on the tile floor, I let the cold water pour over me. It must have been thirty minutes before I revived enough to crawl up from that tile floor, turn off the shower, dry off, wrap the towel around my sapped loins and stagger downstairs to mix myself ... and my wild little playmate ... a bolstering highball. Three shots I poured in mine, four in hers ... maybe she'd get drunk or sleepy or something.
This is a good deal you've got yourself, Ed, I told myself in the downstairs bathroom, where I was brushing my teeth with Diane's toothbrush after having polished off a steak and four eggs washed down with cold beer. But everything's got to end, boy. Tell her you're tired. Honesty's the best policy. Admit you're wasted. Tell her you'll see her later ... next week maybe.
So I did. I told her. It's been great, Diane, I said but frankly I'm bushed. Oh, really! she said, looking surprised. Yes, really, I told her, accentuating my condition with a yawn and a sleepy sigh. Forget it! she said, and her tone was scathing, domineering. You're not leaving this house until I'm damned good and ready to let you go. And that'll probably be around ten o'clock Sunday night. Are you kidding? I asked her, trying to smile. No! Definitely not! she said, frowning deeply. We've got droves and droves of unfinished business to attend to. If you walk out that door ... I'll scream my ever-lovin' head off. What'll the neighbors think, Ed? What'll happen to you ... your job ... if I holler rape? Now come on, Ed ... be nice to Diane ... let's go back to bed and you can . . .rub me a little.
Well I'd wanted a long, wet week-end ... and I got it! How many more ... back-treatments ... I gave her is anybody's guess. How many times I sat on that goddamned cold tile floor in that goddamned shower is anybody's guess, too. I must've more or less went off my rocker. But one thing I do remember exhaustion, complete and total exhaustion didn't come to my rescue like I'd thought it would. Diane had methods that amounted to black-magic when it came to keeping me on the plus side of total exhaustion. I grew weary with weariness that seemed to penetrate my very bones but Diane with that irresistible talent of hers, could always revive me enough for one more curtain call.
Wake up, Ed, she'd repeat and repeat in my ear the meanwhile performing tricks with her hands and lips that seemingly had the power to raise the dead. Wake up, Ed, I've got something for you ... something nice and wet and warm.
I had a vague recollection of being finally released from that long, wet week-end after what seemed an impossible length of time days, weeks, eons!! ! You can leave now, Ed. I had a fun week-end. You were simply marvelous! Don't forget to come back now.
I staggered home, scarcely able to put one foot in front of the other, feeling as if the slightest breeze would blow me away. Walking in, I dropped on the couch in the front room, feeling that sick fatigue ... like seasickness ... that one feels after repeating the same thing over and over. Then the phone rang. Summoning my last bit of strength I answered it. Hello, is this Ed? a woman's voice asked. Yes, I said weakly. This is Mrs. Payne. My husband and I just got home and Diane's been telling us how kind and marvelous you were ... rubbing her poor back and all. Her father and I certainly appreciate your kindness, Ed. We ... ah ... know you wouldn't rub her the wrong way ... ha, ha. Poor child. Her back's been such a trial to her. We've sent her to the best chiropractors, but they just work and slave over her and never seem to give her much satisfaction. She says you did her a whole world of good, though, Ed.
Excuse me, Ed. Diane's interrupting me. What's that Diane? Oh, yes, Ed. Diane says she's going to drop in on you next week ... something about unfinished business. And she says she's going to bring you something nice.
Bye now, Ed.
And that's how I got in this business, Claudia, Ed told me grinning.
"But I don't understand," I said, "Why should a deal like that turn you into a...?"
"A pimp?" he supplied.
"Yes," I smiled and nodded.
"That's simple, Claudia. I left town ... had to ... had to get away from that Diane. I landed in Chicago ... no money ... no job ... was picked up by a hooker who was looking for a partner ... we teamed up ... I was a natural ... so here I am."
"Yes, Ed," I said. "Here you are ... and here I am. Let's go upstairs and strike up a two hour merger. I can't hope to equal Diane ... but it'll be fun trying."
"You're on, Claudia," he jumped up and gave me a tug.
"That sounds like fun, too,' I quipped, pinching him playfully.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Kathy the Cat girl came to Joy-House highly touted. She was a tall girl perhaps five eleven and she was as slim and sinuous as a cat. Her legs were particularly long, and when she walked she seemed to move effortlessly; hence her alias "Kathy the Cat." She had a reputation for being able to arouse a man to the pitch of passion by certain artful devices. And I, naturally, was terribly curious about those "artful" devices and anxious to see her at work (or should I have said "at play?").
My chance came the second day after her arrival: a colored man came in a muscular truck-driver and said he wanted a tall thin girl. I asked Kathy if she had anything against colored tricks she said she didn't have so I told her to take him to the mirror-room.
I settled back in my chair, opened the robe I was wearing, and prepared myself to enjoy the scene ... little did I know then that I was soon to become both disgusted and fascinated with what I saw. Kathy, I saw right away, was a teaser her method was to drive a man mad with desire and then let him take her. (There are two natural advantages to this method. One: the trick really thinks he's getting his money's worth, because the girl takes her time with him.
Two: the actual act is short-lived because the trick is already primed and ready to finish fast.)
Kathy undressed the smiling negro very, very slowly, touching him lightly here and there with her finger-tips as she removed each piece of clothing. He was a rugged, hungry looking young buck; his eyes were wide and piercing and his broad, flat nostrils quivered and dilated reminding me of an unbroken horse. His torso was terribly muscular, and his ... other parts ... were magnificently developed, hard, pulsating and blacker than the rest of him. Except for the kindly hair on his bullet head, he had practically no hair elsewhere; the great globes of his masculinity were tight and the size of doubled-up fists. I grew restless at sight of him and, touching myself at the crux of my restlessness, I began the light rapid stroking that enhances the pleasure of watching and that made of me a vicarious participant.
Finishing at last her undressing of the negro, Kathy began a light-fingered game on his ebony nakedness. She flitted her fingers over him, pausing here and there to pinch lightly and to prod teasingly. The buck's eyes began to smolder; his abdominal muscles were tight with strain and his pride pulsated strongly with the by now accelerated beat of his heart.
Damn it, Kathy, I said to myself, take your clothes off before that buck tears them off for you! And with that very thought she did begin. Tauntingly, caressing herself as she did so, she sat down on the side of the bed and, pulling her dress high, unsnapped her nylons from her garter-belt; then, taking off her shoes gracefully, she slowly rolled her stockings down and removed them then, smiling contemptuously at the panting black-man, she put her heels back on again.
She was an artist, no doubt about that. Every cat-like movement was performed with deliberate slowness and finesse; every gesture was sensual, calculated to arouse the viewer's passion and anxiety to the highest possible pitch. And it worked, too! Not only was the negro a twitching mass of excitement I was rapidly losing control of myself too! Hot little spasms were darting through my extremities and my hand was digging away for dear joy.
Finally Kathy got down to her panties and bra, which, with that vague half-smile, playing around her thin lips, she allowed the by now frantic negro to remove. The brassiere came first, and then, dropping to his knees, he slipped down her panties and she stepped gracefully out of them. Nude, Kathy was quite a sight. Lithe, almost too thin, she exuded the aura of a half-fed cat who, because of her very leanness, would be everywhere at once with a man-tearing, scratching, biting hungrily.
The negro licked his lips, a stream of spittle running down his powerful chin, and pulled the pliant Kathy's hips close; kissing her with an urgent, probing kiss, her eyelids fluttered like a moth's wings and I knew her teasing had served a double purpose ... she, too, was ensnared in the very lust she had provoked.
They clashed then, very quickly and seemingly without concern for anything but satisfying their maniacal lust. The negro had Kathy down and in less time than it takes to tell about it he was stabbing away at her with long vicious strokes. Kathy responded in kind by sinking her teeth in the negro's shoulder and biting down with all the power of her lean, voracious jaws. The negro cried out in pain and, though I couldn't hear him from my point of concealment, I felt a wave of shock and disgust overwhelm me.
But my shock and disgust turned to surprise and then amazement when I looked closer and saw that the negro's grimace of pain was in reality a grimace of joy, of pure unadulterated ecstasy! He withdrew and rolled over on his back his eyes were closed and his mouth was working in the half-frown, half-grin of sheer erotic delight. Bending over him, lips red with his blood, Kathy bent suddenly, like a swooping hawk, and sank her sharp little teeth in the taut flesh of his stomach. He drew his knees high, flexing the sharp muscles of his thighs, and pulled her head against him enjoying, in some perverted fashion, the indignity and pain of that savage mouth.
I was absolutely dumbfounded! This girl was really hurting the man with her biting there was here no usual love-play of sadist and masochist ... this was for real, and it was brutal and nasty and blood-curdling. But still ... watching the evident pleasure on the negro's ugly features ... I felt that shameful tug of sensuality that accompanies the observance of violence and destruction. I felt that hot, flashing urge and my chemistry responded with its own debased set of salacious libations. Trembling in revulsion, albeit enjoying being repulsed, I laid into myself with urgent stroking and soon my reward came and my delirious moanings and snorts filled me with the brand of self-hatred that is, ironically enough, also the embodiment of self-love. I, too, in my heated mind, was sinking my teeth in that buck's black flesh; I too was tasting the salty richness of his rabid black blood!
But my peak was not their peak. Kathy's mouth had begun a new tactic now it was kiss and bite, alternated by persuasive stroking of his throbbing, blood-smeared pride. She kissed his dark-brinked navel, then bit him severely an inch or two below; she kissed the inside of his hairless thighs, then punctured his nubian buttocks with her incisors. It was revolting, hideous ... terribly exciting! My emotions and feelings alternated as quickly as Kathy's bites and kisses. I felt an awed confusion and a sharp shame to know that I was obtaining such keen profit and pleasure from another's lacerations but not enough shame and confusion to stop me from watching and enjoying. And it occurred to me then amidst the tumult of my ministrations that most of us enjoy the sight of another's pain and misfortune ... else why our pleasure in watching a prize-fight ... or our sneaky satisfaction when a friend suffers a vital loss of some kind? Such enjoyments then are sexual in nature; blood, another's blood, is a sign of our victory and victorious we live to love and lust again.
But suddenly I was aware that the negro's pain had mounted considerably why, I didn't see, until he suddenly stood up and led Kathy to the bed. I heard the raspy intake of my own breath and my stomach convoluted in churning waves of nausea! "The poor bastard!" I hissed aloud. She'd bitten him ... there. Blood, red and thick and frightening, was dripping from his arched rigidity and I was shockingly reminded of raw hamburger.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, Kathy caught hold of that abused avenger and, with a sudden tenderness that surprised me, lavished it with kisses and tongue-washings. For perhaps five minutes she continued in this; then, seeing that Vesuvius was about to erupt, she guided him down to her own need, where, digging her nails into his back (one finger tearing into a jagged wound her teeth had made), she evidently met him with a peak that matched his own. I nearly retched as a look of imbecilic lust and pleasure etched itself on Kathy's blood-smeared features; her tongue darted out and licked up a wet splotch of blood from her chin and I was reminded of Dracula and of blood-lusting vampires. And as if to put the seal of degeneracy and immeasurable perversion on the whole sordid scene, my own nerves exploded set off by a lascivious set of lady-fingers the like of which no Fourth of July could ever boast. I clawed at myself like one scratching for a hard to reach itch and finding it I loosed a volley of oaths and denunciations that would singe the ears of those in the devil's lowest and hottest hell. I literally hated myself as I loved myself and in the confused apathy that followed ... I began to wonder if such a thing as a truly sane person ever existed....
I never cared much for Kathy after that. I kept her on though ... why not? It would have been hypocritical of me to let her go ... after the perverse enjoyment her sadism had afforded me. But I never liked her. One can never really forgive another when that other exposes one to one's self. There are things in all of us that should be kept secret ... especially to ourselves.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Joe Kurt was a regular customer at Joy-House and he was as weird a character as ever walked through our front door. Scarcely ever sober, he was a devout wino; he had the perpetual red-flushed face and wine-breath that most winos have, but he never staggered when drunk. He was of average height and build, perhaps a little on the slim side but when it came to sexual prowess, Joe Kurt was second to none! He had a rare gift of gab, too, and could talk like a college-professor.
I remember the first time I met him. I was out front, sitting in the swing, watching the passing parade of winos and harried businessmen pass by, when he walked up to the front porch steps and, seeing me, said, "Good afternoon, ma'am. Would this happen to be a house of prostitution?"
"Might be," I said. "What can we do for you? D'you want a little party?"
"Well ... yes, in a way I do,' he smiled, his eyes shifting nervously.
"Either you do or you don't," I snapped impatiently he didn't look as if he had the price of a cup of coffee, let alone the money for a session with one of my girls. "D'you have twenty dollars to spend, mister?" I added, not wanting to waste time with him.
"Yes, certainly," he nodded; extracting a worn out wallet he pulled out two twenty dollar bills and, approaching me, handed them to me.
"I ... ah ... want something rather special. I don't want to ... er ... do anything physical. I'd merely like to ... you know ... look at two or three of your girls ... while they ... er ... watch me."
"Oh, I see," I nodded. "Well, come along. I'll get you a whole drove of girls if all you want is to have them watch you."
"Splendid, splendid!" he beamed, following me into the house.
I got him Kitty Prentiss, Sally Gibson, Tillie, Gloria and Ruby Washington. I told them what he wanted and joined them myself, leading the whole pack into my own bedroom. Once there, the man introduced himself quite formally "I'm Joe Kurt, ladies, and I'm happy to be with you-" and then began to undress.
"D'you want us to strip?" Tillie asked him.
"Oh, no," he said, "very emphatically not! Just be at ease, ladies ... I'll do everything myself."
And so he did. Once undressed, he looked quickly at each girl and then walked up to Tillie. Not touching her, though standing quite close, he said, "Now let your eyes cover me look at me everywhere ... yes ... that's it ... wonderful!"
He stood there, not touching Tillie, not touching himself, his eyes half closed, a look of almost pious appreciation parting his lips and giving him the look of a pleased child. And then, his pride coming up stoutly, he began to talk to Tillie in a low, resonant monotone.
"Ah ... ah yes ... let your lovely eyes caress my limbs ... my stomach ... my ... yes ... yes ... yes ... your eyes are as the touch of a hand ... keep looking at me ... stare hard ... look just a bit surprised and shocked at the sight of my ... yes, just like that."
After perhaps five minutes of that erratic talk, Joe Kurt began to tremble all over; his face had a strained, pleading look. And then suddenly, with a low gurgling moan, he got the release he sought his "exhibitionistic" love spilled freely and he undulated his spare hips in ersatz coition. But scarcely had his libations slowed to a pulsing trickle than he approached Kitty Prentiss.
"Your hair is quite lovely, young lady," he told her. "But it's your eyes I want. Look at me! See the mess I've made. Watch me! Let your eyes drift over me! Yes ... fine ... wonderful
... Oh, yes ... yes! Smirk at me ... look disgusted ... revolted ... hate me ... destroy me with those eyes!" And the same performance was repeated. And then with Sally. And then with Gloria ... and at last, his limbs trembling as if with ague, he confronted the lovely negress, Ruby Washington and each act was complete, spilled lust and all!
All finished and dressed, he thanked each girl profusely, and then asked me if my bar stocked any Muscatel Wine. I told him it did, and led him downstairs where fetching a bottle from behind the bar, I sat it in front of him. He opened it quickly, filled the glass I'd given him to the very brim and, smiling tiredly at me in salute, downed it. And then another and another and another. Then, warmed by the wine, his tongue loosened and his inhibitions relaxed, he began to talk.
"Wine is he best blood-builder there is you know. The trouble with most winos is that they're improperly nourished. They lose their appetites drinking large quantities of sweet wine ... and they go without eating. If a wino would only keep eating ... even if he had to force his food down ... he'd be healthier and more virile than most. Take my case for instance. I'm an old man. And yet, because I eat correctly when I'm drinking ... I'm as potent sexually as any boy of twenty.
"And as for my method of enjoying sex ... I wouldn't trade it for any of the so called normal ways. When a woman looks at me ... when I'm indecently exposed ... I get the most marvelous sensations imaginable. It's as if her eyes were tickling my parts, tickling them with the lightest, most delightful touch possible. Oh, I've had so called normal sex-relations with many women. But I was always left with a feeling of incompletion and emptiness. Believe me, ma'am ... I feel more strange and perverted when I have a normal heterosexual intercourse than when I have it my way. For me ... if you'll forgive me for saying it ... your way is perverted and strange.
"By obeying my own instincts ... regardless of what people call them ... I'm being true to my own sexual nature ... true to myself. Well," he nodded and grinned, gulping down the last of the wine, "I've enjoyed everything very much. If I pass this way again ... and have the money and the urge ... I shall certainly stop by to see you and your girls ... and to have them see me."
With this he left, leaving me filled with wonder and an increased sense of awe at the prolific maze of "weirdies" Joy-House seemed to draw.
I had a drink or two myself, pondering the paradoxical mystery of sex and human (all too human!) frailties.
But the king of "weirdies" came to Joy-House one hot August day and before he left I felt as if I'd seen one of the devil's own disciples come to the earth's surface. His name was Butler, James Butler. He introduced himself to me as a paint salesman, but it wasn't long afterwards that I began to believe the only paint he'd ever sold had been bought by himself to paint the town red. He was as wild as an unbroken stallion and just as vicious and black-hearted. After introducing himself, he spent an hour at the bar, drinking straight shots of tequila like he was some kind of sponge, shouting, laughing, spending money like he hated having it around. He had a certain roguish charm, though and I saw Ruby Washington looking him over with a definite gleam of interest in her smoldering dark eyes.
Mr. Butler carried what he called his "sale's kit" with him wherever he went even when he went to the John he took that "sale's kit" with him, setting it down on the bar beside him when he returned as if it were something very precious and valuable. And when finally he asked me for a girl, and I gave him Ruby, he carried that "sale's kit" upstairs with him as if it were filled with rare gems or something. I was curious, naturally so I told Ruby to use the mirror-room ... and I followed them up.
Ruby liked James Butler, that was evident from the very beginning the way she helped him undress, the way she encouraged him to undress her. Not that he needed encouragement. He didn't. He helped himself to her like a starved man on his third course of some succulent, gourmet's delight! I settled back in my viewer's chair, prepared to enjoy a rare treat, prepared to treat myself rarely.
Once undressed, they stood there surveying one another; Ruby's eyes looked avid and terribly anxious; his expression was one of tense expectancy like a carnivore biding his time before the feast. Ruby made the first move lifting a black, jutting breast in each hand she held them out to him, like a slave offering her master a taste of her choicest fruits. James stepped forward, reaching out for them; his expression changed to one of supplication and humble gratitude. Touching her breasts with a feather-touch, he gently pinched her nipples, and then, bending quickly, he lolled his wet tongue over and around one scarlet nipple. Ruby closed her eyes; reaching down she caught his pride in tremulous hands and guided it to her labyrinth's warmth and wetness, closing her thighs upon it like a child on a rocking-
Their play was delightful! Their' patient passion teased me, lifting me slowly on my own strata of perverse voyeurism and blatant lust. The slow, wet sounds of my action was soothing, and the mephitic redolence of my moistness wafted up to me like a pungent zephyr of sea-water.
And then they got together, becoming one enfractious union of flesh and idiot need. And then, quite abruptly, James drew back his pride gleaming like a dunked chocolate do-nut he walked over to a table where that "sale's kit" was lying and opened it up. Extracting a small, cloth bag he approached Ruby with it. And then you should've seen Ruby's face! he opened the mouth of the bag and pulled out a small, wriggling snake!
I flinched involuntarily; my flesh crawled and goose-flesh ripped up and down my parted thighs. What in the plum-perfect hell did he intend to do with a real live snake? scare the hots right out of Ruby? I soon found out.
He let the snake crawl round his arm, trying, I guess, to show the wide-eyed Ruby that it was perfectly harmless. Reaching out, he caught Ruby's hand and, pulling it close, laid it on the coiled little creature. Ruby's eyes narrowed a little; then, wrapping the slimy little monster around his neck, James began on Ruby, who, though she kept her eyes on the snake, received his renewed attentions gratefully and with returning enthusiasm. Soon, as he lolled her nipples again and then dropped down to kiss a more vulnerable area her eyes closed as before and that look of sheer animal pleasure sagged her mouth into a scowl of lascivious lust.
James led her after a long, hot while to the bed, where, easing her down on it, he lowered himself down beside her. Then, kissing her breasts, her delta, her slowly undulating jungle, she closed her eyes again and let him run his gauntlet. Reaching up slowly, careful not to disturb or frighten the soothed and sighing Ruby, he removed the snake from round his neck. Then, laying it lightly on Ruby's panting stomach, he pinched its tail (or did something?) which made it thrash frantically about. Ruby must have known what was happening but she didn't let on. She merely laid there, moving her dusky hips in jerky, thrusting movements, an expression of mixed loathing and passion coalescing on her twitching face.
James reached down after a bit and, with gentle pressure of his hand, opened Ruby's lovely thighs. My breath caught in my throat and sheer terror made me moan out loud when I saw what he intended to do. No! No! I gasped under my breath as he, holding the snake's slim head, guided it to Ruby's enflamed machinery. And then as if trained and eager to respond the creature wriggled in, not stopping till' only his slim tail was still in view. And then Ruby Oh, she must have been in some state of shock! began grinding her ebony buttocks in north and south grinds that were the epitome of wantonness and debased, salacious sex-greed.
James reached up, straddled her and, guiding things to her ready mouth, let her take as much as she could manage which, because of her snake-crazed madness was much! I watched, utterly fascinated, utterly repelled! I wondered what intense sweats of itching, tickling frustration that serpent was causing her; I wondered what horror and trepidation its defilements were telegraphing the remnants of her lust-enfeebled reason.
Suddenly James bent and whispered something in Ruby's ear withdrawing, then, he stood up, pulling Ruby to her feet too. Then, clapping his hands sharply, he shouted something that sounded like "dance."
And Ruby danced eyes slitted, face working savagely, she began to gyrate and move like a sinuous serpent the meanwhile that revolting creature was still deep within those African depths, doing, I couldn't imagine what, to excite Ruby beyond human measure. James led the beat of her orgiastic dance by the clapping of his hands. Faster, faster he clapped, until Ruby's mid-section and buttocks became a veritable buzz-saw of erratic movement and decerebrated lunges. Then, at the height of her frenzy, James caught the vibrating tail of that snake and tugged it forth a bit then, pinching its tail, he allowed the thing to hide again. Repeating this maneuver several times, Ruby suddenly stopped dancing; staring at James with wide, startled eyes, she eased slowly to the floor where, closing her thighs tightly (as if to imprison the wriggling creature securely) she peaked off in a climax that must have been the most powerful and awe-stricken experience of her life! She arched her body so sharply in a backbend that her feet and head were only inches apart and her lower abdominal muscles convulsed in rigid spasms. I could hear her ululating cry the wail of some haunted tear-embalmed soul, venting its outraged spleen to man and beast and syprian lust.
Later I walked downstairs badly shaken there had been no rhyme or reason or sanity in what I'd been. Only three animals, three serpents, brought together by some unholy vision of devilishness and cretinish perversion. I wondered if all three of them had achieved their lusty ends.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I've waited long to tell you about Joy Fourney for the "simple reason that she became literally and virtually the "Joy" of my life. But let me describe her, which won't be easy ... how does one describe a flawless jewel?
Small, petite, Joy's figure looked as if it had been molded by some master sculptor at his very best. Her face was symmetrical and its bone-structure fine and delicate and yet there was no hint of ethereal weakness in Joy's features. Her hair seemed a thing alive, framing that perfect gem of a face it fell in soft waves to her shoulders blonde and shimmering it made one's palms itch to touch it. Her ears, when her hair exposed them, were cupid's ears: pink, pleasing, enticing made for the tip of a man's (or woman's) tongue and too received muted whispers of sensual endearment. Her eyes were set rather wide; they were dark blue and they could dance with spontaneous gaiety or smolder with the most profound seriousness or syprian desire. Her complexion was milk and cream and soft white clouds, dotted with just the hint of blushing pink at the cheeks! And her mouth! Ah, try and describe that scarlet gash, that petulant concrescence of hp, and you realize the inadequacy and futility of mere words.
Let me only say that Joy's mouth was a thing of joy, a work of art, a masterpiece!
Her neck, round, column-like, flowed down to deliciously round and firm-fleshed shoulders; her arms hung from those shoulders like fine paintings on a wall of vapid velvet. Her breasts weren't large, but their contours gave them the appearance of largeness: high, proud their nipples were twin halos: dark-red, perpetually moist, maddeningly inviting! They were the kind of breasts that did amazing things to even the plainest sweater or blouse, lending these mundane wrappings the eye-enticing glamour of mink or sable; they were the kind of breasts that dried the mouth and throat and turned the hands into yearning instruments of torture when denied; they were the kind of breasts that inspire poets and pornographers and that please and titillate painters and photographers, urging them to surpass themselves; they were the kind of breasts that scorn the petty prisons of brassiere and that flaunt the despisers of beauty and nakedness, making even prudes and old-maid spinsters drool with envy and rabid admiration.
Joy's waist was small and trim and firm and fatless, like all lovely waists should be and it was punctuated at dead-center low by a navel that hinted of dark secrets and that begged for probing finger or inquiring tongue. Slightly irregular at its brink, as if punctured by the inaccurate phallus of some lusting satyr, it had all the feminine charm of a deep dimple, all the fascination and invitation of savory sweetmeats ... a pool's edge to linger long by, a promise and a preview of the matted and redolent labyrinth that laid below.
Hips can be big, small, rounded, flat, fat, shallow, deep or inadequate ... but, as in Joy's case they can be sweetly rounded, delightfully dimpled, deep, down-fleshed, curved like the rosette flesh of a Jonathan apple, clefted like plethoric breasts and firm and fulminating as a wrestler's upper thigh. Hips can be boyishly thin or flabby and shapeless as a spilled bowl of Jello or, as in Joy's case, they can incite a viewer to immediate and inordinate sexual lust by a passing glance, due to a rare combination of lascivious attributes and innate qualities. Quality! Quality was the word the only word for Joy's breath-taking bottom: a bottom that had bottomless beauty, buxom charm, a salubrious facade and felicitatious talents. For know this Joy's bottom, while a thing of beauty (and a "Joy" forever), was also capable of delivering pound for pound, as much rear-end power as any woman Joy-House could boast!
Her thighs, her calves! How to tell of them, how to describe them and not fall miserably short in the telling. How does one describe perfection? How does one utter the unspeakable? If I were to go on and on and on about the size and shape and contours and symmetry and classical lines and firmness and fullness and flaring loveliness of Joy's dear, dear thighs and calves, I would be thought of as a gross exaggerator. If I were to dwell on the tremulous gifts and ingenious talents inherent in Joy's thighs I would be accused of sheer favoritism, Well ... any and all accusations would be right! For one must resort to what appears as flagrant exaggeration to even begin to tell the story of Joy Fourney's thighs and calves; to give anywhere near an adequate description of Joy's body anywhere ... any part ... one must take the risk of being thought a downright liar ... or at best as one given to flamboyant exaggeration.
But in truth the simple truth uttered by this simple writer as a simple fact Joy was as perfect a female as it has ever been my pleasure to look upon and to know. But she was human she did have one fault and, I suppose it was because she was so perfect otherwise that one fault was a big one. Joy, for all her loveliness and seductive perfection, was absolutely and irretrievably without any kind of morals. Morally speaking, Joy Fourney was an unmitigated bitch and a totally perverted slut! There was no act sexual or otherwise that was too heinous or rotten or perverted or debased or licentious or plain out-and-out filthy, that Joy would not perform at the drop of a suggestion or for the bribe of a few paltry coins.
Joy would never sleep alone. She was afraid of the dark for one thing and for another her atavistic cravings demanded that she perpetually "get next" to someone, anyone, in a sexual embrace. I remember so well the first time she crawled into bed with me. I'd heard all the stories about her persuasiveness and about her bitchiness when she was refused the prerogative of choosing her bed-partner, so I moved over and made room for her without saying a word.
She laid there for a long time, very quietly, not touching me. Then, with a quick intake of breath, she said, "Claudia, are you awake?"
"Yes, Joy. What do you want? Can't you sleep?"
"I'm not sleepy, Claudia. I'm ... I'm hot. I want you to ... make love to me."
"I'm afraid that's not my style, Joy," I told her. "But if you want to ... you can..."
"Oh, really!" she cut me off. "You mean you really wouldn't mind, Claudia?"
"No, I don't think I'd mind, I said. I've heard you're ... quite accomplished!"
"Oh, I am," her voice fairly bubbled with confidence and enthusiasm. "That's the one thing I'm really good at, Claudia."
"You're good to look at too, Joy. You're very beautiful."
"I know," her voice lowered an octave, "that's what everyone tells me. But sometimes I wish I was ugly and ... you know ... good like other people ... you know."
"Yes, Joy, I know," I said. "But go ahead ... be good to me."
It all began like a light rain slow, no threats of the storm to follow, no thunder in her actions. And then lightening struck! I learned the feral force of a woman's tongue that fine wild night; I learned that woman at her worst is at her best when her best is giving and her worst is refusing to take but to give some more. There was Joy much "Joy" in places that sent me close to the crusty brink of accepting lesbianism as my tool for the present and the future. Chaos prevailed! Limb entwined limb as I eagerly sought that divine mouth of hers with rabid kisses and breast crushed breast as the wine of our lust flowed freely from the crevices of requited need and passions spewing consummation. Reason was usurped! Lust in all its lascivious tangents became king of the night, lording over us with trembling scepter and royal ruthlessness.
During a brief respite I turned on the bed-lamp wanting to give my eyes a feast where my mouth and hands and grasping limbs had tasted such fleshy delights. I threw off the blankets, imploring Joy with the silent request of pleading eyes to excite me with her most perfect beauty. Rising, as if hearing my silent request quite plainly, she bent low over me, letting her breasts dangle lightly against mine, nipple against nipple: Lowering suddenly, I put one of those red red globes in my panting mouth; the other I pinched with milking fingers, enjoying, as I continued, the low throaty cries my ministrations evoked. And then, lowering myself still further, I explored the dimpled brink of her navel, letting my tongue reconnoiter its shores, plunging into its arcane cell with tentative probings. Then ... ah yes ... then! Then I reaped the harvest of woman on woman, gleaning the vast satisfaction of oral rebirth and tasting the sublime taste of pure unadulterated "Joy."
Turn about was fair play that night like Whirling Dervishes we whirled, tasting and re-tasting the dry-sweet wine the age and maturity had brought to the ripeness of perfection. Like wine-bibing gourmets, we sipped and supped upon mutual flesh-treats, taking generously, giving selfishly. Peak after peak we zenithed together, arriving at top panting, eyes dilated with lust, but with the reserve spark of another encounter smoldering beneath the very surfaces we had just climbed. Mounting and re-mounting, like children at horseplay we gave without request and received without thanking.
Generous to the point of absurdity, the gold of our bodies melted to silver and then to copper and then to lead ... and we lay panting and juiceless in one another's arms ... till' the faint rays of morning's false dawn filtered through the blinds of my room and lulled us to sleep with its spell of loneliness and quietude. And when I awakened Joy was nowhere to be found. . .
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It is said that there is a reason for everything. Well, could be. But when Ed Smith pinned me down and asked me why I'd gotten into such a business, I was hard put to tell him. Sure, my marriage had made me bitter, and my divorce had given me the chance (financially speaking) to go into business. But why had I picked prostitution? Why hadn't I used the money to get into some respected business some business that might have been just as lucrative?
So I told Ed. And in the telling I had to go back to my early twenties back when I had the urge to become a professional writer. Here it is, my story, my reason for becoming a Joy-House Madam.
When I went to Mexico to write, I never dreamt I'd become an artist's model; I never dreamt, either, that I would inspire a man to find his genius, and that in the end that "genius" would cause me to return to Los Angeles thoroughly disillusioned with men and life.
Let me begin by saying that my decision to become a model and to pose in the nude didn't come easy. I held out as long as I could, stretching my last limp peso to the breaking point; even going native for a week and existing on little else than tortillas and beans and watered-down black coffee. I don't care for tortillas and I hate beans and I like my coffee strong with lots of cream and sugar in it. And Mexico, even a spot as green and enchanting as Pureto Vallarta, Mexico, isn't particularly sympathetic to the problems of the hungry writer even when the writer is young, fairly attractive and female.
Puerto Vallarta lies some two thousand miles below the California border. It's a small village, very warm and tropical, very pleasant with its manana mood. Donkey-drawn carretas rattle down its cobblestone streets, Indian processions from smaller outlying villages file through town singing weird chants, pigs roam up and down the sidewalks, and hardly a soul understands English. The plain, red tile roofed buildings that crowd to the edges of the sidewalks, are in immediate contrast to the thatched-roof grass shacks clinging to the hillsides at the edge of town. The blue Pacific pounds noisily at is western beaches, and sunburned, eager-eyed tourists from California pound its rustic sidewalks, wearing the local juaraches and searching for the inevitable souvenir. I pounded a typewriter.
I was twenty two at the time this story begins, a brunette with an angular face but with eyes expressive enough and mouth smiling enough to soften the angles enough. My figure showed to advantage beside the thick, Gauguin-limbed girls of the village; there were those that thought it was lovely.
As I've said, I went to Puerto Vallarta to write and to lead an uncomplicated life. But after six months of writing all I had to show for my efforts was a stack of rejection slips and a bad case of writer's cramp. My New York agent hadn't sold a thing I'd sent him. And after that trying week on tortillas and beans I realized that hunger could get terribly complicated. Thus my decision to pose in the nude for the expatriate artist, Paul Callahan.
I met Paul on the beach one afternoon two weeks after my arrival. (Mornings were for writing, afternoons for the beach, and evenings for conversation and drinks or whatever with a small group of writers and artists who'd come to Mexico for reasons similar to mine.) He was straightforward in introducing himself and in his appraisal; his eyes kept dropping to my thighs as he talked, explaining that he was desperately in need of a good model. "Some of the local girls aren't too bad," he explained. "But they're awfully thick in the middle and they're flat-chested." He glanced at my breasts then and added, "Too much starch in their diets, I suppose. And besides,' he'd went on, "they make lousy models; they wiggle and giggle continually."
I had declined, adding that I thought that I too might wiggle and giggle, but that I was flattered to know he thought I'd qualify.
"Okay, then," he'd nodded, flashing a nice smile. "But if you should ever change your mind, you'll find my studio ... such as it is ... in Gringo Gultch. Just ask around, everyone knows my place."
Undressing that first time was an unpleasant experience; though Paul Callahan tried to make it easy for me busily arranging his easel and laying out brushes and paints I felt a distinct aversion to undressing, cold turkey, in front of a nearly strange man. I told him so.
"You'll have to overlook my red face, Mr. Callahan, but, while I've never thought of myself as a prude ... far from it ... there's something about standing naked in front of a stranger that...."
"Not naked, Claudia," he cut me off. "Nude."
"Same difference," I shrugged, completely undressed by then. He was turned away from me. Suddenly he whirled and faced me. I swallowed hard and stood tall, goose-flesh and posture my only shield; but it was my hands, stupidly enough, that seemed most exposed. They felt large and awkward at the end of my long, bare arms; large, awkward and indecent.
"Not at all," he said, smiling slightly. "To be naked brings to mind a huddled and defenseless body. It implies shame. But to be nude implies only art."
"I never thought of it that way," I said. His eyes appraised me then, and I must admit that his appraisal was gallantly brief: a quick sweep from head to toe and back again ... with an almost imperceptible pause mid-journey.
"You're even lovelier than I imagined, Miss Benson," he said.
"Please," I implored, my voice trembling (his gaze, artistic or whatever, was still distressingly male). "Under the circumstances I think it would be sensible to use my first name."
"Fine," he nodded. "And the same goes for me. Now if you'll just go ahead and assume any pose. I want to do you in charcoal in a dozen or so varied postures. Uh . . .sort of get the feel of you. There, hold that one. That's fine."
He worked fast, using quick, deft strokes. In a short time I no longer felt self-conscious; it seemed perfectly natural to be standing "nude" in front of him. This was partly due, I imagine, to the concentration he put into his work. He seemed to be looking at me not as an unclothed woman but as pure subject; something to be projected onto canvas with the hand and charcoal acting simply as an intermediary. I got a kick out of watching him. His face, not at all a bad looking face, was evidently a barometer for his feelings. When a sketch went well he pursed his lips ironically and nodded repeatedly; when he didn't like what was happening he wrinkled his nose and chewed on his lower lip. About an hour after he'd begun he sighed deeply and said, "Let's take a break. I'll get you a robe." He walked to a closet, pulled out a gaily colored robe, returned and handed it to me.
"Thank you," I said, slipping into it; I noticed it was clean and freshly pressed. His whole studio, I've forgotten to mention, had a well-scrubbed, almost feminine, freshness; it was very comfortable and pleasant.
"Sit down," he waved at a nearby couch. I sat; he offered me a cigarette, lit it for me and then lit his own. He sat beside me. "Why are you here, Claudia?" he suddenly asked. "Because I'm broke ... I...."
"No," he smiled. "I mean why've you come to Mexico? I've asked about you since that day on the beach. I've heard you're here alone. That you're some sort of writer."
"Some sort is right," I laughed. "But you heard right. I am alone. And I am some sort qf writer ... the sort that doesn't sell, I'm afraid."
"I see," he grinned, pulling hard on his cigarette, reminding me of those TV Marlboro ads. "You thought Mexico would give your writing a shot in the arm, eh?"
"No. Not at all. I was selling pretty regularly in the States. Los Angeles. No, I came down here for lots of reasons. Let's just say that things were getting too complicated for me in the States. I'm a pretty simple gal. And why are you here, Paul."
"The same," he nodded glumly. "Lot's of reasons. Shall we get back to work?"
I soon had reason to be glad I'd made my decision to pose for Paul. The money he paid me for my twice-weekly sittings, while not much according to state-side standards, was enough to allow me to live nicely in Puerto Vallarta. And relieved of the fear of starving, my writing improved immeasurably; my agent began to sell nearly everything I sent him. I bought new clothes, had dinner once or twice a week in the very posh restaurant, Avanti, and managed to lay a few pesos away for any future dry spells (either mine or Paul Callahan's).
I came to look forward to my posing sessions with downright pleasure. Not only was Paul fun to be with an interesting conversationalist, and a willing, sympathetic listener but I felt he was an unusually talented artist.
I say 'I felt he was unusually talented' because there was no other criterion except feeling upon which to base my opinion. Certainly his work wasn't popular; he sold a canvas now and again to a tourist, though he certainly wasn't commercial in any ordinary sense of the word. But amateur though I was, I saw something in his work some brilliant fluidity of line (or was it the delicate, almost feminine way he juxtaposed primary colors with such weird shades of purple and lavender?) that made me feel he had a really unique gift.
And then one rainy afternoon, posed on a low bench with my thighs spraddled wide in a suggestive posture, Paul lowered his pallet and said, "I'd very much like to make love to you, Claudia. Might I?"
And so my twice-weekly sitting became even more enjoyable and fulfilling; indeed, along with my writing, which was improving day-by-day, posing for Paul and going to bed with Paul became the very crux of my existence. Life was sweet; almost unbearably so. We grew, both of us. I was dexterously stringing words together and my art was proliferating. Paul was juxtaposing his delicate mauves and, while in some vague way I found them curiously disturbing, I assumed he felt his work was coming along. The two of us were juxtaposing our bodies and artfully proliferating. The both of us grew.
And then, I think it was about two weeks after we'd begun mixing business with pleasure, Paul showed me three paintings of me that he'd finished and framed. I was speechless; nonplused. Something had happened to his work; something wonderful. Here was no longer any subdued whispering of brilliance; no faint feeling that just below the surface struggling im-potently to realize itself was an inordinately fine talent. No. Now it lay bared; exposed. Overnight, like the painful budding of a young girl's breasts after the helpless humiliation of her first menses, it was there for all to see. Here was genius; sheer, uncompromising genius! It was impossible not to recognize it. Every canvas displayed that quality, that sublime synthesis of qualities, that is patently the work of an individual gifted beyond more talent; beyond measure!
One canvas, though, became my immediate favorite; I recognized the spraddle-thighed pose as the one I'd been holding the afternoon Paul had told me he wanted to make love to me. It was obvious he'd finished the greater part of the painting afterwards there was so very much of what we'd done in its daring motif. The painting was exuberant with sensuality and movement.
My breasts were third dimensional protuberances that jutted with an aggressive vitality; my flesh everywhere had an ambient luminosity as if a fire were smoldering just beneath the surface. My thighs he had done, not from visual experience, but from geographic familiarity. They were parted, more parted than I had posed them, and they had a clutching, grasping quality that lent lasciviousness and meaning to the whole canvas.
"It's because of you, Claudia," Paul told me. "Making love to you has given me something new. I'm painting with a sureness that's entirely new to me. After knowing you ... everywhere ... I'm suddenly en rapport with my work. Now I'm painting with a passion generated by passion. I've come to realize that my failure before was due in part to not knowing ... not really knowing ... my subject."
As they say: 'talent will out'. It wasn't long before the tourists began to buy Paul's nudes of me as fast as he could paint them (and every painting was prefaced by a work of art just as consummate on Paul's studio-couch). And it wasn't long until one of the tourists turned out to be a well-known art dealer from San Francisco. His name was William Thames; he was a tall young man, with long wavy blonde hair and an affable personality. It was obvious that Mr.
Thames was certain he'd made the discovery of a lifetime in Paul Callahan. He bought the half dozen or so nudes of me that Paul had on hand, and then enthusiastically agreed to buy all the canvasses Paul could supply him in the future and for a price that, according to the ecstatic Paul, was 'out of this world'.
"Just think of it, Claudia. I'll be able to stay down here for the rest of my life!" he assured me joyfully. "But you must stay with me. Without you I'd be what I was when I first began painting you: a mediocrity, trying vainly to accomplish something only vaguely felt. And we'll live the good life, Claudia. The gracious life. I'll do one, maybe two canvasses of you a month, no more. We'll live the way artists are born to live. A little work. A lot of live. Bathing in the sea. Drinks before dinner and wine with at the Avanti, three, maybe four times a week. And love, love, love! We'll love, Claudia! We'll really love!"
And then, in the flood of his happiness and enthusiasm, he took me, and I was well taken.
There began, hen, the happiest and most rewarding period of my sojourn in Mexico. We did live the good life as Paul had predicted. We did live the gracious life. We did love and love and love! And everything we did, whether it was making love or drinking Sauterne with our lobster at the Avanti, was done without haste; we gave ourselves up to the manana-mood, led the slow, unhurried existence that Mexico lends itself so well to. And as the days and weeks passed softly into months, time ceased to be important; each day shared its mood with us, for we became creatures of mood, content to accept the thought or whim of the moment without question; uncorrupted by future fears or past regrets.
But as all good things have something of the end in their beginning, so that they may sour and diminish in time, so then, in the end, did our good thing sour and diminish. And in the end, it was, ironically enough, our love that had become too much love, that did it. It was a fine warm morning that Paul announced to me, with poorly-concealed annoyance turning his tone nasal, that William Thames, the San Francisco art dealer, had returned his last two canvasses tersely stating that the paintings simply weren't up to Paul's standard.
"I knew damned well they were lousy," Paul admitted to me. "I had a hunch Thames would reject them. They were pretty awful. I ... I don't know what's happened ... but lately I seem to be painting like I was before you came along. Maybe I ... uh ... need a rest. Maybe we both need a rest, Claudia."
I didn't argue with him. I knew what he meant and, despite my disinclination to agree with him, I had to. With our abundant leisure, our rich diet, our loose work schedule and our lazy days spent lolling on the beach, had come two things: boredom, and an increased capacity to make love to relieve that boredom. It was, admittedly, rare that a day ended without our having been at one another for from one to three times. It had become simply too much. Something had to give, and it was apparently going to be Paul. Though, I, too, had so to speak, surrendered to the climate; I'd stopped writing. Our idyllic existence had rotted away any need for self-expression; for communicating. Paul and I were communicating that's all I needed.
I moved reluctantly back to my old place and tried to get started writing again, but it was no good. Paul and I met once or twice a week as in the past; we'd have dinner and then repair to his studio for an extended session on his couch, and a short all too short posing session that usually ended abruptly with Paul cursing his seemingly deleted talent; or with, worse, him trenchantly accusing me of drying him out. I'd leave in tears, and after a few days he'd show up at my place and contritely ask me to forgive him. And I would.
It was about this time that Paul began doing landscapes and still lifes; one day I came to his studio and found several poorly done sketches of a nude male. A young Mexican. And the next time I came there were more of them; many more. The same young Mexican. His work along these lines was clumsy and inept and I told him so. He agreed, but persisted, telling me that the change might be just what he needed; that perhaps he'd "painted himself out" with the female nude.
And then one bad afternoon I learned what Paul had really meant by "change". I'd been posing for him, following a particularly uninspiring session on his couch, and during a break I casually turned a large canvas around that was facing the wall. I gasped and stepped back; my stomach drew into a cold knot and I became positively giddy. It was a nude, and my first glance at it told me everything.
It was a masterpiece! An inspired piece of work! The model was a young, beautifully proportioned Mexican youth. He was posed seductively, almost lewdly; his eyes were half closed and his effeminately handsome face wore an insolent smile. I turned and faced Paul, wanting him to reassure me but the sick, guilt-ridden half-grin on his face told me everything. "But, Claudia," he shrugged, raising both hands in a helpless gesture, "we artists have a right to..."
"Oh, shut up!" I shouted. I dressed as quickly as I could, biting my lips and blinking back tears, and walked out without a parting word or glance. I went to my place, packed, hired a carreta to take me to the airport, and bought a ticket for Los Angeles. I'd had my fill of Mexico and Paul Callahan.
It was some four months later that I read about Paul in the Los Angeles Times Art Section. The review stated in part that Callahan's genius had 'come into its own'. But I'll quote:
Paul Callahan, the enigmatic and prolific artist who lives and works in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, is supplying his San Francisco Art Dealer, William Thames, with a steady stream of superb canvasses. Some time ago, Callahan, long a master of the female nude, discovered that specialization stunted his talent; that he must experiment with, and bring to full development, the dominance of the male nude. Since his discovery, Callahan has acquired a cortege of both male and female models. When he tires of working with one subject, he turns to the other, and thereby has his inspiration freshly stimulated. Callahan's nudes are not thin, demure, cloak-shrouded figures, but full, fleshy, fully-exposed Rubensian nudes, set in natural settings and displaying unashamedly their magnificent charms and attributes. It must be stated that Callahan's work depicts a familiarity with his subject that rivals that of a Michelangelo.
And then, it must have been about a year later, I read of Paul Callahan's strange death. There were few details, but it seemed that for some obscure reason one of his models had murdered him.
So there's my story the reason, when all is said and done, that I (years later) became a Brothel's Madam. I had fallen in love with Paul Callahan deeply and irrevocably in love. And then to learn that my lover was ... homosexual ... was simply too much! I suppose that's one reason my marriage to Mr. Benson failed. I was eternally suspicious of him whenever he went out with the boys, I was filled with doubts.
But now I have no regrets. I myself have run the sexual gauntlet and I've found it delightful! I can engage in any kind of sexual alliance now with an absolutely clear conscience. I for one am thoroughly convinced that sex is fun and that it's here to stay! I feel nothing but contempt and pity for the moralists who are always raising a hue and cry about prostitution, pre-marital sex, etc. It took an act of lust to bring them into existence! But perhaps that's it perhaps they hate and despise the act that gave them life precisely because they hate and despise their own inadequate little lives!
Be that as it may, I make no apologies for Joy-House or for this chronicle of perversion and unabated lust. These things exist! They're here! All around us! To jam our heads down into the mire of ignorance like an ostrich solves no problems. If prostitution and its attendant perversions are a "problem" (and I doubt that), they must be faced realistically. Raids on bawdy-houses accomplishes nothing they merely force the prostitute to ply her trade on the city streets, where sanitation and supervision is almost non-existent.
But the reason I told the author of this book all these sordid details is something else again something quite important. The structure of society is and has been since time immemorial a "guilt" structure. We all feel "guilt". Guilt is often a useful emotion; without it man might be reduced to the level of the ape arid the saber-toothed tiger. But sex-guilt is useless! Even a vicious pervert one who is potentially capable of harming someone through his unnatural cravings cannot be helped or cured by increasing his burden of guilt. A pervert's traits must be un-learned, which is a reverse process of the same long, patient training he went through to learn his peculiar habit or set of habits.
But if, on the other hand, a person (a mature person) feels "guilt" about his or her sexual feelings and cravings, perhaps a reading of this chronicle will help relieve that guilt. At least I hope so. If it does ... maybe it will help relieve me of my own guilt ... human though it be.
