Henry & Martha

 

It’s 2 in the afternoon, Henry's in Rico’s bar, a local Key West dive, drinking boilermakers, a mug of beer with a shot of whiskey dropped in. 

A Mexican man, middle-aged with an unkempt white goatee, wearing a straw Stetson and overalls sits a few barstools away. He orders a Corona, taking a long pull— it relaxes him. He says to Henry,

howdy amigo, they call me Pedro, I work at Anderson’s Banana Plantation. It's one big outfit alright, the bananas are harvested by two-man teams. We use a machete to cut the bunch from the stem, then the bunch is lowered on the back of the runners and they load em on the truck.

Sounds like hard work, plenty hot.

Sí señor, I’m a circus clown by trade, when summer comes, I travel round the country with the Ringling Brothers Circus, on the long train. 

I bet you're funny Pedro, best of luck, gotta go, adios.

It’s a hot South Florida day, in the upper 90s, Henry hustles ten blocks, walking briskly to his appointment.

Dr. Doodle’s office is in Sears Town, a single-level building constructed in the sixties, art deco style and painted pink.

He puts his shoulder into the double glass door, pushes it open, and walks to the nurse's station.

A big nurse, a no-nonsense type says, 

Mr. Lucowski did you shower this morning, you smell like a P I G pig. 

I can spell pig Nurse Oberman every first grader can. 

In the clinic's small washroom he locks the door, strips, splashes water on his body, then fills booth hands with liquid soap from the dispenser, rubbing it all over.

Then, rinsing the soap off with handfuls of water. Drying himself with paper towels, and washing his T in the sink, removing the sweat smell, putting it back on— he's dripping wet.

Leaving the clinic restroom, he mutely walks to the orange plastic chairs, bolted to the floor in rows. Nurse Oberman asks, 

What happened to you, Henry? 

I fell into the toilet.

Oh, I see, Mr. Lucowski, I’m sure Doctor Doodle will have something to say about that. 

A sultry young lady, in her late twenties, sitting two plastic chairs away, wearing a flower print dress and flip flops, opens her shapely legs a little, Henry notices her skin is smooth and tanned. He asks,

What's your name?  

Martha, what’s yours?  

I'm Henry, what are you doing here? 

I’m a sex addict, then he says, 

I went to AA, but I crave the smell and taste of beer, It doesn't make you drunk, so I drink. Have you been to Sex Addicts Anonymous Martha? 

Yeah, but I stopped going because too many guys were hitting on me.

you're sexy,

yes, I suppose I am.

Nurse Oberman calls Martha to Doctor Doodle's office. 

She opens the office door, sitting on the sofa, The walls are hung with pictures of Doodle's boat, The Magic Pill. It appears he's holding a Swordfish on chains, but the sea-going fish weigh 500 to 1000 pounds. Martha comments, 

Doctor those fish selfies on the wall are really cool.

Fish selfies, that's a new one on me.

Miss Graham, may I ask about your sex life? Do you think you're an addict?

Yes, I guess so.

Have you had sex or masterbated since our last session?  

Yeah, I play with myself whenever I feel like it.

As a sex addict, you need to resist the temptation of sex and masterbation.  

I’m going to give you some medication that will help control your sex drive. 

Salt Peter?

No, Salt Peter is a food preservative, it’s a myth that it lowers the carnal drive. 

Doodle writes a script for Benzodiazepine. Martha walks out of his office, sitting next to Henry, handing him the script asking, 

what's this? 

It’s diazepam, like Xanax, it's good stuff, it relaxes you.  

Will I lose my sexual desires? 

No, Doodle is off his nut. Let's get outta here, how bout some diner, Martha? 

Sure, 

While walking around Sears Town, Henry says,

I’m a mess, I need to buy something fit to wear. 

OK, darling,

she’s calling him darling, they’re beginning to click. 

Henry buys a pair of thin man khakis and a blue pinstriped Polo shirt, then picks up a pair of low-top Converse All-Stars, goes to the fitting room, throws away his soggy clothes, and changes into his new array. Forgetting to pay, nobody notices. 

Martha’s breathtaking in her flower print dress and pink flip-flops she looks like Playboy Bunny from head to toe. 

In the parking lot, he asks,

do you mind taking a bus? My Harley's in the shop. 

Darling, I have a car. 

He follows her and she opens the door of her white 1955 Porsche 356. Getting inside she unlatches the black convertible top and opens it, Henry buckles it down from the outside, then gets in.

Martha pulls out of the parking lot and he says,

this car must have cost you a fortune.

oh, Daddy bought it, he’s the Governor of Florida, Bob Graham. Henry chuckles saying 

so you’re Martha Graham the modern dancer. 

Well, I majored in dance at the University of

Florida. 

I should have known, you have legs like Julia Prouse 

As the sun lumbers into the Gulf of Mexico they drive to Dantes Lobster House on Highway 1, known as the Overseas Highway. 

Martha drives carefully, not exceeding the speed limit. Henry teases her saying, 

Put the peddle to the metal girlfriend, the governor can fix your tickets. 

They laugh raucously. 

When they reach Sugarloaf Key Henry gives her directions to Dantes, it's on Turkey Basin Beach. She parks in the restaurant's crushed stone parking lot.

Dantes is built on rows of five-meter-high cement posts, like a wharf. The building is quaint, with red brick walls on three sides, open on the seaside annexing the patio.

The floor is made of wood, the chairs are made of straw, and the tables and the bar are wooden.

On the walls, there are framed pictures of Ernest Hemingway, Tennesee Williams, William Faulker, Humphrey Bogart, Eleanor Roosevelt, replicas of Blue marlins and Sailfish, and even a picture of Martha's dad, Florida Governor Bob Graham. It's a classy place.

The paramours sit on the patio under an umbrella They feel encircled by the ocean, listening to the waves break, and smelling the briny scent of the salty air and seaweed. 

When the waitress shows, Henry orders,

two dozen fresh oysters, a strip steak well done, grilled grouper, wild rice, and martinis very dry. 

The food and drinks are perfect, they eat and drink to excess — a dozen martinis between them.

Martha pays in cash. 

They’re gin-soaked, laughing, holding hands as they walk down the steps of the seaside restaurant— feeling as good as a rolling drunk man and woman in love can. Over the moon.

The couple rambles barefoot in the sand, a few hundred meters from Dantes in the dark. They strip, then go for a swim. When they reach shoulder-high water they ball in the stand and carry position. A madcap sex position, but the seawater coddles them like a hammock.  

Onshore they dress, wet, not having towels. Sitting in the Porsche 356 they look at the sea. Henry musters his courage and asks,

I love you, Martha, do you love me? 

Yes, 

will you marry me? 

Yes.

Driving south to Key West on Highway 1 they notice a blue neon sign that reads, 

                   Reverend Saint John’s Casual Wedding Chapel

It’s 4 AM, Martha rings the doorbell, and the Reverend and his wife open the double door, smiling and welcoming the soon-to-be newlyweds. 

The Reverend and his wife Thelma are wearing pajamas and cotton bathrobes. 

Henry asks, 

Can you marry us Reverend?

Sure can son, I will need to see some ID, and you'll have to fill out some paperwork, then we'll go to the altar. My wife, Thelma will be the witness and I will officiate.  

After filling in and signing the paperwork, the lovers move to the altar standing with their backs to it. They take off their shoes Zen style for no reason. Their hair is wet. Henry can't stay dry.

The altar is purple with an abstract wooden sculpture of a Cross, the Star of David, and a Crescent and Star set on top. Good for any religion service except a few maybe—  Zoroasterism and Hinduism

Martha reads from the Christian script. 

I, Martha Graham take thee, Henry (she doesn’t know his last name) to be my wedded husband, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, to love and cherish till death do us part. This is my solemn vow. 

Henry then reads the wedding script, using his full name so Martha knows it, Henry Lucowski. When he finishes the Reverend says,

Lord, You guided them to each other, now guide them in their new journey as husband and wife.

Thelma hands Henry a tin ring straight out of a bubblegum machine. He wraps it on Martha’s fourth finger. They kiss, deep-tonguing a few seconds. 

Martha pays Thelma with a Visa card. The Reverend hands over a diploma-like certificate saying, 

your marriage certificate is valid at any courthouse in America.

Henry drives the Porsche 356 to the Hyatt Resort in Key West, on the sea.  

Inside Martha gives the receptionist her credit card. They book a luxury suite for a week. 

After tipping the busboy five bucks, Henry asks Martha, 

Are you going to tell your parents? 

Yes, I'll call eventually, I don't give a shit what they think. Will you tell your parents?

My parents are dead, so they don't have nothin to say, I like it that way. 

The next day the newlyweds wake at noon. After a quicky, Martha calls room service ordering a couple of bottles of Brut champagne, and salmon eggs Benedict. Asking Henry,

darling, remember the part in our wedding vow—

to love and cherish till death?  

Sure dear,

well, I hope I don’t fuck you to death.

They laugh and hug, two outsiders — desperately in love.  

Nazi Speed & Trollops on the Equator

There are abundant articles on the web about pain, heartache, pleasure, and happiness, stuff you read in Psychology Today— words, words and more words, soapy stuff, experts and more experts writing the same twaddle, non of it out the box.

The experts, how do they become experts? Make the point that we are living in a world where people take too much psychotropic dope, particularly anti-depressants and mood stabilizers— I’m on anti-depressants, a few months ago a dark shadow began following me.   

Maybe the psycho dope helps but beer and Tramadol works for me. 

A few years ago I met a German psychiatrist in Pai, Thailand, an unorthodox hippy town that looks like a Spaghetti Western set in Kao Tao Mountains. 

We drank Thai beer, Leo, with ice like Thais do. Earl says to me, 

psychotropic drugs are useless, I couldn’t live with myself prescribing them. After a month the body becomes immune so you must continue increasing the dosage. 

I got the vibe the German shrink was on the run— Pai’s a scene where people can slip away from the de facto world, a no man’s land. 

I eat a lot of raw carrots, three or four a day, big ones, dildo size. I’m too lazy to scrape the outer skin or wash them, so I eat the dirt and pesticide with the rest of it.

Carrots absorb pesticide residues from the soil, if you don’t peel them you get 80% pesticide, peeling them you get only 50%, that’s how much the pulp contains.

I’m too cheap to buy organic carrots but how in the hell does that work? Do farmers hire migrant workers to walk the rows with fly swatters, swatting the stalks, you don’t eat the stalks, so what the fuck? Do they inject the soil around the planted carrots with syringes of Lysol? Anything will pass as organic and it’s big bucks.

I’m going to flush the pesticide-ridden carrots down the toilet with the anti-depressants.

I’ve flushed a lot of weird stuff down the toilet in my day— unwrapped Tootsie Rolls that look like turds, chicken bones, lit cherry bombs, Ken and Barbie Dolls in odd positions— a hobby you wouldn’t mention on a job application, the kind of things Ottis Toole did in kindergarten at break time. 

Porn is OK these days right? Hustler Magazine was the only thing happening porn-wise, twenty years ago— Playboy seemed tame compared to Hustler. But, Playboy was more literary with contributing authors such as—  Vladimir Nabokov, Kurt Vonnegut, Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, James Baldwin, John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, and Ray Bradbury

I've heard rumors about retirees in Pattaya, the Thai, Disneyland for sex, having heart attacks during sex because they overindulge in viagra and beer. 

After cashing their Social Security check and paying rent what's left goes to getting loaded and laid.

The horn dog chazers can get laid for 1500 baht, $44.82 per go, at bars with names like— Pussy Bar, Throb Night Club, Boom Boom Pub, Titty Title Wave, and Doggy Style Lounge. 

Almost all Pattaya bargirls, and massage workers, are from Isan, a region in the southeast of Thailand. The lions' share have dark skin, tit jobs, and tattoos. 

The economic environment in Pattaya revolves around the sex industry, both gay and straight. The scarlet boys and girls feel sex for money is a normal thing. For them peddling booty is a career choice, honest to goodness work, while working as a clerk, or office worker is a waste of time, slavery.

The sex-for-hire scene in Thailand doesn't turn me on. What could be more ingenious than mock-up fucking with a hooker asking you every few seconds?  

Did you cum yet? 

My fantasy is taking off a nurse's pantyhose while she relaxes on the sofa after a day of pill-pushing, then sniffing her stockings. 

Non omnino sanae, not completely sane, that's my motto.

In the early sixties, the beginning of the US involvement in the Viet Nam war, Pattaya City was a string of bamboo huts on the shore of the Gulf of Thailand.

When GIs began coming to Pattaya on R&R, drinking beer, beachcombing, and playing touch football, the bamboo huts were converted to bars and whore houses in no time.

So you can blame the sex trade in Thailand on GIs. 

The Thai government does little to enforce the anti-prostitution laws, making a public statement once a year proclaiming they are going to crackdown. 

But to their credit, the government strictly enforces statutory rape and sex slavery laws. 

The Bangkok Post often runs stories about mothers getting arrested for pimping their 15-year-old daughters. 

There are also bits in The Post about the Thai mafia, scary creatures with green tattooed faces and empty yellow eyes, selling sex slaves and yaba, meth, the madness drug, or Nazi speed— that one cracks me up— Nazi speed? The World War II metal cylinders of speed tablets, the size of a pack of Lifesavers. Stuka pilots ate it like candy. 

Yaba is cooked by the Wa Army in Myanmar. The Wa State is an autonomous region within Myanmar. It is de facto independent from the rest of the country and has its own political system, administration, and army. They export meth to Thailand to fund their war against the Myanmar military junta.

Both outfits are what cops call bad guys.

I occasionally wonder who is smoking Nazi speed? You presume it's the homeless or local trailer-trash, but it could be anyone 

— your boss, teacher, paster, a pal in the Elks Club, the pizza delivery kid, an NFL player.

I have never seen people in Thailand that look like the before and after pictures on the drug rehab web pages—  zombies with black zits, meth mouth, missing clumps of hair, and body odor like turpentine. 

The meth addiction experts on the web write blandly like TV doctors speaking to patients— Dr. Kildare, Marcus Welby, Ben Casey, or Trapper John.

The expert's research is based on the biochemical and physiological effects of yaba on the body. But, how can the experts know what is going on in meth addicts' heads if they haven't smoked it? 

I haven't used Nazi speed, I can only imagine what a speed freak's life might be like.

Four drags from a glass pipe, and it goes directly to Stewart's head. — his noggin is rushing in all directions. Stewart believes he's the master of the universe, it’s the dopamine rush.  

In a short time, the harsh intensity slows to a trot, paranoia sets in, Stewart walks to the window, peeking through the tightly closed curtain, surveying the scene outside. 

It’s ghost-free, so he places a CD in the ghetto blaster, Black Metal by the band Venom, the furious music feeds his mania. 

Two days later— there're Bic lighters, pieces of aluminum foil, and newspaper covered with muck strewn all over the living room floor. 

Blood on Blood by Wild Thunder pulsates through Stewart's living room.

Mrs. Mabel Stew, a widow who lives next door is scared, shaken by the shattering vibrations coming from Stewart's house, she calls the cops.

The patrolmen knock on Stewarts' door, the meth-head opens the door and the police walk inside without a warrant. Blinded and paranoid he pulls a kitchen knife on them, thinking they're home intruders.

Three months later, Stewart, the Nazi speed head is in jail on Rikers Island, serving two years for assault— of course, there's plenty of dope in the joint.

Asia, & Other Stuff

Sometimes you can’t get a story off the ground, your thoughts are flat and you don't seem to have the piss and vinegar to get started.

Beer works, I’ll suck a few down. 

Haruki Murakami is a Japanese author who doesn’t need beer to write. I love his work, he’s everything David Foster Wallace isn't. Wallace's work is impossibly wordy, causing you to wonder where he's going with the heap, what's going on and why bother?

Wallace writes cryptically and no one gets the drift so they assume the freak must be a genius. 

 

Haruki’s work travels through a tunnel to another world, then returns to earth. In his own words,

I go somewhere else. I open the door, enter that place, and see what’s happening there. I don’t know, or I don’t care, if it’s a realistic world or an unrealistic one. I go deeper and deeper, as I concentrate on writing, into a kind of underground. 

Haruki is akin to the Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez but Marquez taps Magical Realism much more than Murakami.

There’s a scene in Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Cholera where Mauricio Babilonia is constantly followed by yellow butterflies wherever he goes— a symbol of love and hope. 

In The Green Mile by Steven King, — John Coffey cures Old Paul Edgecomb’s kidney stones by exhaling hordes of flies onto him. 

Stephan King surely didn’t lift the insect cure from Marquez, but the notion crossed my mind. Perhaps both garnered the insect visualization from the Bible that says flies follow you when you’re sad.

Thais are golden people, Thailand is the land of smiles. The Western world could learn a lot from them, they know how to toe the line. They’re like bamboo, sturdy, but able to sway with the wind. 

Then there’s the Asian squat—a triple-flex movement done by bending at the hips, knees, and ankles, folding everything up underneath you.

Thais can squat like this for hours, eating in the position on a straw mat. A family of four consuming a plate only from a US-sized Christmas dinner portion.

I couldn't do the Asian squat if someone put a gun to my head.

Thai women are considered to be some of the most beautiful women in the world. When they travel to America they're forthwith gobbled up by local men but watch out, they're quick on the take when it comes to the almighty buck, out to marry a old guy for money.

I can’t speak Thai— it’s a linguistic screwball for me— every syllable is pronounced in one of five tones, low, mid, high, falling, or rising. The tone must be spoken correctly for the intended meaning of a word to be understood.

I know a masseuse who works in Pattaya, I need her company, we're attached somehow, but, because of philosophic or language disparities, we have never had a deep conversation. We talk about rudimentary things, what did you eat, or it's raining or hot out.

In Thailand, non-Thais are known as foreigners. I have lived here for a gazillion years and will always be considered a foreigner or outsider. 

It’s against the law for foreigners to run for public office. Not that I care, I’m not wearing a suit and tie or cutting my hair for anybody. Besides, I'm corrupt.

 

Also, it’s against the law for foreigners to own land— if foreigners could buy land the Chinese would own Thailand.

Foreigners must report to immigration every ninety days, which isn’t so bad, there’s a drive-thru, and the immigration officer in the window is a hoot, or if you work at it you can register online. 

Thailand is by no means a police state, like Laos or Myanmar, It's free here, but terribly conservative, like most of Asia.

     

My girlfriend Tea knows I write, she sees me typing day after day on my laptop in bed. Early in our relationship, she said— 

I don’t care about your writing. 

The comment came outta nowhere, we weren’t talking about writing— she could have said, 

fuck your writing.

I forgot exactly, it’s not important because I will write if I want to.

If you don’t have a girlfriend who likes your writing, invent a character in your stories. 

If you have read my stories, you know Henry is married to a Cuban woman, Lucia Varga. They met in Havana while he was editing an English language ex-pat rag, The Gringo Times. 

Like my real-life girlfriend, my character Lucia  isn’t crazy about my work, Spanish is her first language. But, Lucia and I can communicate on the deepest level, I write the dialogue, so I control where it goes. 

Walking Pattaya City, the disparity between the down in the mouth, and those with too much is heartbreaking. 

I see a sparrow, pecking at dirt, looking for seed, or a homeless person sleeping on a mat on the sidewalk. A street dog with mange drinking water dripping from an air-conditioner pipe. A four-year-old beggar holding a toddler, shaking a plastic cup in front of a 7-11. 

People doing awful work, pushing heavy carts with fried fish on them, others cleaning the street. I sewage truck operator holding a hose sucking human waste out of a septic tank into a small tanker, the stench is awful. People working for pennies, animals, and, people living in loathsome conditions. 

I watch a Mercedes Benz drive by, I shrink, there's an aura of

arrogance surrounding the car— the suffering of street rabble means fuck all to the flush passengers. 

Nothing is written in stone for the rich, they’re consumed with calculating stock options, or making real estate acquisitions, things that blind them to the real world, feeding their haughtiness.

Socrates wasn’t an admirer of the rich saying,

what a lot of things a man can do without. 

War Hath no Self-love

 

I had been feeling beat, unable to write, wondering if it was the end— thinking there was nothin left.

So, I downloaded a few Ebooks from PDF Drive for inspiration— Thompson’s, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Collected Stories of Raymond Carver, and Factotum by Bukowski. 

I began with Factotum, noticing Bukowski's detailed character descriptions, thinking, maybe I need to work on that. 

I got the feeling Factotum was an early book and Buk left the Mark Twain shit behind later. Buk, overdoing it like Twain—

I worked with a little fat man with an unhealthy paunch. He had an old-fashioned pocket watch on a cold chain and wore a vest, a green sunshade, had thick lips, and a meaty dark look to his face. The lines in his face had no interest of character, his face looked like it had been folded a few times and then smoothed, like a piece of cardboard. He wore square shoes and chewed tobacco, squirting the juice into a spittoon at his feet.

Bukowski’s mumbo jumbo about the guy left me blank, all I got from it was the guy was fat.

I look at Carver’s book. He doesn’t mention his character's appearances— the color of their hair, what they’re wearing, if they're fat, thin, pretty, or rat ugly. 

At one point he says of his wife— 

I noticed white lint clinging to the back of her sweater. 

This gave me the feeling she was a mannequin. 

Carver displays his characters through their, actions, interactions, and dialogue. His characters are domestic, drink a lot, and rarely leave their neighborhood except to go to work. 

Hunter S. Thompson is the unsullied opposite of Raymond Carver. When you read Hunter you get the feeling he’s writing flow of consciousness on LSD, traveling through the cosmos. But, he’s a master of his craft who has— in the words of Pablo Picasso, 

Learned the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist.

I was ten at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, puzzled and clueless.

In our den, we had a Sears Toshiba console TV. In the sixties people thought things made in Japan were cheap— they all had RCAs and Motorolas, but our Toshiba was the best TV on the block. 

I think my parents were as dumbfucked about the Cuban Missile Crisis as I was. Of course, they were more aware of the ins and outs, but watching TV for hours dulled their senses— filling their heads with cotton candy, causing world events to look surreal.  

The origins of the Cuban Missile Crisis lies in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, during which US-supported Cuban exiles hoping to ferment an uprising against Castro were overpowered by the Cuban armed forces. Who were tipped off about the invasion beforehand and were waiting for the hapless exile invaders.

After the invasion, Fidel persuaded Khrushchev to give him nuclear missiles to safeguard the Cuban Revolution against US aggression.

Once the nukes were in place on Cuban soil, the shit hit the fan. And, Che Guevara attempted to coax Castro to fire the rockets on major US cities. Guevara, the cold-blooded prick.

What could have been a tragic nuclear holocaust— leaving behind a post-apocalyptic world, was settled in thirteen days of negotiations. Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles if JFK and America would accept the existence of Cuba.

A bogus agreement by the US, considering the CIA tried to assassinate Fidel over 600 times during his reign using such tricks as exploding cigars and pens.

I have never tried to write like anyone but myself. I don’t think you can and do bonafide and heartfelt work. 

Surely, there are people out there trying to write like others— Bukowski, Kerouac, Steven King, or even Shakespeare, laugh, the idea of trying to write like The Bard seems silly.   

In yonder cornfield, my true love frolics with a comer, off with their heads.

Shakespeare's work is timeless, great and all that, but, when was the last time you sat down and read Richard III or The Tempest for more than a few minutes?  

What are you gonna do this evening Fred? 

Oh, I’m so excited, gonna make popcorn and sit in the den and read Hamlet.

In high school, we were thrilled to finish the seminars on Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, and Beowulf, progressing to— Henry Miller, DH Lawrence, Phillip Roth, and JD Salinger. 

It was springtime and the books were exuberant— Tropic of Cancer, Portnoy’s Complaint, and Lady Chatterley's Lover. 

The sexed-up books and spring air made us horny— more than a few lost their virginity. What would The Bard say?

When daffodils sprout, a maiden's flower opens, and rigidity pangs of hunger.

I didn’t have a clue about sex back then, I knew what it was but had no idea how to do it.

I discovered masturbation by mistake in the bathtub, soaping my penis overzealously, flowing with the sensation.  

Still a virgin my Senior year, I made it with an older friend of my mother's, a nurse. Nurses were considered to be loose back then. 

She and my mother were drinking in the living room and my mother went to her bedroom and passed out. 

The nurse and I flirted some, walked outside to the backyard, fell on the grass. I had a hard-on instantly, she pulls up her white dress, drops her panties, puts my cock inside her, saying, 

push harder, harder, fuck me, oh God, fuck me.

The language of screwing was new to me, It sure wasn't Shakespeare.

We made it again a few more times at her apartment, but she moved to Minnesota.

Sex with the nurse gave me an itch for older women. After high school, while working at Shultz’s Kielbasa Factory, living at home, I spent most of my income on Times Square whores. Going out for drinks with and getting to know a few. 

None of them enjoyed sex, one, a gal who called herself Brandy, a fake name, told me.

Nobody, no hookers, enjoys being pawed and fucked by men we wouldn’t give the time of day to if we met them somewhere else.

The Time’s Square hooker episode was a phase, eventually, I realized buying sex made me feel empty.

Today I have wicked sex with my Cuban wife Lucia. What would The Bard say—

She has a simian's spunk which maketh her hoot like a hyena.