“Yeah … yeah … I want to fuck her all right, Ernest, but I’m not so sure about taking any pictures. It’s likely to spoil everything if you show up with a taxi full of lights and wires and things.”
“It won’t spoil anything … she’ll think it’s swell when we get her in the right mood. Wasn’t it her idea to begin with?”
In the end, of course, I go out to meet them. If I didn’t Ernest would be sore.
And there might be something to it after all … . free drinks, anyway.
It’s growing dark as I walk along and the whores are creeping out for the night’s trade. Who in Hell picks up a whore at this time of day, I wonder?
Tourists, probably … … anyone else would know that if you picked one up now you’d have to feed her. One falls in step beside me and gives me her little sales talk… . .
“It’s so nice, Monsieur … and costs so very little … . wouldn’t you like to know how they do it in Havana? Yes, I was in Havana, Monsieur … this is not my regular line … not at all! But the times being what they are… . Perhaps you will buy me a small Pernod… . .”
I give her the shake and walk for a couple of blocks behind a blonde cunt.
Picture under her arm … must be an art student, but she walks like a chorus girl. After the first fifty feet I have a hard on just from watching that ass sway back and forth, and I whistle a couple of times to see if she’ll turn around. She won’t.
How many times, I wonder, have I done this … gone chasing through the streets after a cunt like a dog sniffing after a bitch … . with not a chance in a million that she’ll give me a tumble. That ass moves like a pendulum, ticking my life to pieces. Here I am chasing a cunt that I’m not going to get … . a million other bozos must be doing the same thing at this minute … while that pendulum goes on swinging. I’m glad that I have someplace to go. If I didn’t I’d turn around and find that whore again … she wasn’t so bad.
The girl turns into a shop and I still haven’t seen her face … but I still have that erection she gave me. It’s like finding money on the street, getting that hard on and carrying it off with me. The difference is that nobody’s lost anything. I make a note that if I ever run into that cunt again I’ll have to go up and thank her, have to try to explain how wonderful it is that you can get something for nothing and nobody’s out anything. But I won’t see her again… . I never see them again, all these beautiful cunts who lead me down the avenues.
I nurse that erection along until I’m with Ernest and Ann. I follow one cunt after another, dreaming about them. Shit, I must be cunt struck … here I am talking to myself again … something I haven’t done since I first came here, when I used to get so fucking hungry just for something to eat that I was a little delirious most of the time … A fuck … hell. When I saw a big, juicy ass I wanted to eat the damned thing. But I learned one thing … . You can be starving to death and old Johnny down there can’t keep his mind off cunt. He still comes up strong when your knees are so wobbly that you can’t walk straight. It may be different when you get really bad and your belly starts to bloat. I never found out about that … I panhandled instead.
Ernest hadn’t told Ann that he called me. As soon as he sets eyes on me he sets up a shout. Well, well, well … . . imagine finding me there! He claps me on the back and shakes my hand … . they were just about to start talking about me, he says. As for Ann, she’s confused and embarrassed, but she has to make the best of things.
Christ, what a lot of shit there is to getting a woman to bed with you! Some women. It would be so much simpler if you could just thump Ann on the ass and say “Let’s go to your house and fuck.” … . . Ann maybe you could, if she were drunk enough. Instead, we have to finagle and fuck around. Ernest decides that it’s his birthday.
“Everybody have a drink on me!” he says, “My birthday… .”
… … . . Since there are only the three of us the celebration won’t cost him much. Ann is as surprised as I am to hear about his birthday. Ernest insists that it’s his birthday, but he forgets how old he is.
“I’d have a party,” he says mournfully, “but my place is so small…
“Oh yes, mine too, mine too,” I tell Ann.
“Well… .” Ann says doubtfully.
“Fine!” Ernest roars. “Just the place to have a little birthday party! Now you two just stay here … I have a little errand to do. But I’ll be back … I’ll be back!”
Aside, as he’s leaving, he says to me: “For God’s sake, keep her drinking… .”
“Sure … . keep her drinking! How the fuck am I going to do that if she decides that she doesn’t want to drink?”
“Stand her on her head and pour it in her asshole … that’s what I’ve been doing. Just don’t let her sober up before I get back.”
“What a fuck of a nuisance this is! Why don’t we go out and pick up some whore? There are lots of nice girls on the street tonight.”
“Now, Alf, don’t start that… . Do you know where Sid is?”
“No, I don’t know where Sid is, and I don’t give much of a damn. Do you realize that this used to be my cunt before you and Sid came sticking your fingers in the pie? Where’s that suit she was going to buy me? Is she going to buy it tonight? No, you’re going to gyp her on some camera deal you rigged up! By Christ, Ernest, there’s a limit to friendship! You and Sid are going to fuck up everything before you’re through.”
“Sh, she’ll hear you … . Listen Alf, I never pulled anything on you in my life …
. if I make anything on the camera I’ll see that you’re taken care of. Of course if you don’t want to screw her you don’t have to come along… .”
“What do you mean, if I don’t want to screw her? Who has a better right to screw her? Who got her started?”
I’d like to remember what I said to Ann in the next half hour. I poured… . I overflowed. I pissed conversation like a weak bladder. I talked about every fucking thing … . that came into my head, and every time I caught the garçon by the coattail that was a period. She forgot that she was sore at me, and she sat there with her teats hanging over the table and her mouth open a little while she tried to guess what it was all about. She even let me feel her up a little under the table while I sang her a song in Russian. But she wouldn’t feel me back, the bitch
… still too much of a lady. Anyway, she didn’t stop drinking.
She begins to get restless, though. There aren’t enough people in that joint to suit that tourist mind of hers. Couldn’t we go somewhere else for awhile and leave a note for Ernest? I think that’s a splendid idea, so we settle up and leave a message with the waiter and go down the street.
Ann is getting gay. Two drinks in the new place and she’s had enough of that.
We write another note and try another. By this time I’m beginning to feel those drinks a little myself. Another note. Ann doesn’t like one place because it’s full of sailors. The next one has too many whores. Then she counts six cats in one place, and she can’t stand cats. Christ, I’ve given up trying to let Ernest know where we might be… . I just leave a note each time to tell him we’ve been there and gone.
“Is it really Ernest’s birthday?” Ann asks me every few minutes.
Shit, I don’t know if it’s his birthday … . it might be. For that matter I don’t suppose that Ernest knows when it is. I’m wondering if I ought to come right out and ask her for some money … this drinking is beginning to get expensive. And every time I want to leave a note at the bar I have an argument with the patron who can’t understand why we don’t want to stay in such a nice place as this to meet our friends.
“If it’s Ernest’s birthday,” Ann decides, “I’ll have to get him something … . .”
Out of that place we go and into the nearest men’s shop. Ernest’s birthday!
Shit! Why couldn’t he have made it my birthday, I’d like to know? My heart sinks when she begins to buy things. She simply walks around the store and jabs her fingers at things, and the clerk puts them in a pile on the counter.
Shirts, neckties, socks … . my
