One day, after having summoned all my courage, I walked into the church office.

“I need to talk to your nicest priest,” I said to the receptionist. I spoke in a low voice, feeling embarrassed and foolish. Why would any priest be willing to perform a wedding on my terms? The woman looked at me with a blank expression for a moment; then smiled brightly and told me to have a seat as she picked up the phone. Minutes later, a tall and handsome white-haired man wearing a brown friar’s robe and sandals stepped into the room. As he shook my hand my discomfort vanished.

I was instantly at ease with Father Mychal. He took me into a conference room, beckoned me to have a seat on the sofa, and looked at me intently while I tried to articulate why I was there. He seemed to understand what I wanted far better than I did myself. By the end of our meeting he had agreed to marry us, and wanted to meet Javier and our 18-month old daughter, Desiree.

I couldn’t believe my good fortune at having found Father Mychal. I was living a life of confusion and chaos, which was why I was reluctant to seek out a priest in the first place. Father Mychal was unlike other priests I had known: some apoplectic and unapproachable, others warm and caring—all ineffective in helping me understand the incomprehensible elements of my religion. Catholic-school educated as a young girl, I was continually warned of the dire consequences of straying from the faith. Yet so much of what I’d learned made no sense to me as a child, and much less as an adult. Father Mychal seemed to understand. “Sometimes I feel that way, too,” he said, laughing, when I disclosed my feelings of ambivalence. Despite his laughter I believed him. “You have to do what feels right to you,” he continued, “and listen only to yourself.” After spending an hour in his presence I felt I had embarked upon a profound spiritual journey replacing the road to hell I thought I was traveling on before our meeting.

When Javier met Father Mychal, he experienced a similar apotheosis. Javier, who is Bolivian and went to a very strict Catholic elementary school in La Paz, thought he had had it with priests and religion when he came to New York. But, as we discussed the details of our wedding, I could tell Javier liked Father Mychal and that the feeling was mutual. As we said goodbye they were patting each other on the back, like best buds. As for Desiree—for days she went about our apartment repeating “Far Mychal.” As in far out.

Father Mychal told us that the church schedule on the Saturday Javier and I had planned to get married was crammed with activities and appointments.

“So…” he admonished Javier. “That means 10 o’clock North—not South—American time. Don’t get me in trouble with the pastor.”

I nudged Javier, who—it’s true—was rarely on time; yet, I was the one who was late for our wedding. As soon as I woke up that morning I had a panic attack. I had meant to—but could not—prepare for the sacrament of matrimony by confessing my sins. How could I do that when I didn’t agree with the Church on what constituted a sin? I hadn’t murdered or robbed anybody. At the same time I didn’t want to be disrespectful, and now it was too late. Fortunately, I had a friend helping me get ready who pretty much pushed me out the door.

“Can we not do a Mass?” I said to Father Mychal, who had been frantically pacing the vestibule, according to what Javier later reported. “Can we just keep it simple?”

“We’ve got all these people in there waiting for a Mass. Of course we’re doing a Mass.”
As he laid his hands upon my head, I felt that any adversity lurking inside me had just packed up and left. Banished. Just like that.

After the ceremony Father Mychal remained to take photos with us, in spite of the fact that I’d made him late for his next commitment. In one of the shots, I stand between him and Javier, leaning closer to him than to my husband. I remember inhaling the scent of his freshly-laundered robe and the feeling of peace and security I had standing next to him.

“I’ve always been afraid of priests.” I whispered to him while my friends were snapping our pictures.

“Me too,” he whispered back.

After the wedding Javier and I made a point of showing up at St. Francis more frequently. Desiree loved the beautiful old church. “Far Mychal?” she would ask as soon as we pushed her stroller around the corner from Seventh Avenue onto Thirty-first Street. While I liked all the friars I considered Father Mychal to be my special friend. He never failed to approach us and hug us after Mass; sometimes he invited us in to chat, particularly if we hadn’t seen him for a stretch of time.

Besides regarding Father Mychal as a priest, I realized from the start that I also saw him as a man, a man to whom I was deeply attracted. I knew this from the way my heart raced whenever I spotted him. He was so readily accessible, he always said the right thing, he was funny—what more could a woman want in a man? When I mentioned this to Javier, who had many of the same qualities himself, he said that he felt the same way. You just wanted to be near the man.

At some point in the mid-eighties Father Mychal left the country to go for an extended visit to England. What will I do if I need him while he’s away? I wondered. When he returned I felt relief. He was my emergency back-up plan in the event of a crisis in my life. I thought of him as my own personal 9-1-1 and kept that feeling alive by greeting him and filling him in on the details of my life whenever I had the chance. When Javier and I had our second daughter, Valerie, Father Mychal christened her.

“Would you like me to come and bless your house?” Father Mychal asked one Sunday, as we had coffee together in the friary.

“Would that be the Catholic equivalent of a mezuzah,” I joked, and he laughed.

“Call me, or stop by, and we’ll set a date.”

I wanted to invite him to dinner; my biggest regret is that I didn’t. We had recently moved to Washington Heights and I told Javier it might be too much to expect a busy man like Father Mychal to travel that far. The real reason for my reluctance, though, was that while our new apartment was bigger than our studio in Chelsea, it was also quaint—meaning cockroaches and a bathroom door that had been painted over so many times it didn’t quite close. At the time I still didn’t fully comprehend the unimportance of such matters to Mychal Judge.

And then I didn’t see him for a very long time. Three months? Six months? More? I went into the church office to inquire.

“Oh, he’s now the chaplain for the fire department,” the woman said. “He’s very busy…not here all that much.”

I gaped at the woman, not knowing what to say.

“But he might be upstairs now,” she said, offering me the phone. “Why don’t you call him and see.”

I declined. Was it that I didn’t want to bother him? By then, my marriage was in trouble and I felt reluctant to tell him. Would he be disappointed in me?

One Sunday, when there was a call for Eucharistic ministers, I signed up. I wanted to know what it would feel like to take a more active role in church affairs. As a child I was envious of altar boys and badgered one particular nun in grade school over the question of why there were no altar girls. And, on a more adult level, I viewed it as an opportunity to continue to grow spiritually.

They needed me for Saturday Mass. Week after week I’d go to church, sit inside the altar, and distribute Communion at the appropriate time. I did this for over a year. I didn’t then, and I don’t now, consider myself to be religious. But it was important to have that time to be more in touch with my spiritual self, an aspect of my being that sometimes got lost in the complexity of trying to balance the demands of work, the educational and emotional needs of my two daughters—teenagers, by then—and the frustrations of a marriage that wasn’t working so well anymore.

On the evening of September 11, 2001, while Javier, Valerie, and I—Desiree had just departed a few weeks earlier to start her freshman year at Williams College—sat silently in front of the TV, trying to make sense out of all the senseless details of the day, it was I who noticed the news crawl.

“Oh, look,” I said. “Father Mychal’s down there.”

Of course he would be down there.

And then the words registered: the fire chaplain was dead. We sat silently for a long time staring at the TV. I kept waiting for the news to crawl around again with a different message. We made a mistake. Sorry. He’s actually alive. As reality took over, a cloak of profound sadness enveloped me as the horrors of the day suddenly became personalized for me. And the fear. What would I do now if a crisis arose in my life? Like this one.

One thing I knew for sure was that I wanted to administer Communion at his funeral.

I’m sure they didn’t ask me—I’m sure I had to beg to be allowed to be a Eucharistic minister at the funeral mass. The details are vague in my mind; what is clear is the memory of being there and the incredibly great honor it was. I learned that Father Mychal had thousands of friends with whom he’d had special relationships, just like me. The Clintons, Rudy Giuliani, Steven O’Connor, thousands of fire fighters and the widows of fallen fire-fighters. I distributed wine to scores of people who considered themselves his friends, and I was grateful and humbled for the privilege of being there.

Although I still occasionally go to Mass at St. Francis of Assisi, I never sat inside the altar as a Eucharistic minister again.

My kids are now grown, and my husband and I are no longer together. Often, while going through the rough transitional stages of Javier leaving and the girls going out into the world , I thought of Father Mychal. So many times I wished I could sit down and talk to him about my sadness and anxiety. Although I had never called upon him before for a personal crisis, I was finally in the exact situation I knew he could help me with. He was the one person who could help me find the answers I needed.

I have since discovered that, if I sit very still and listen, he is there helping me with the answers. With empathy, without judgment. Whenever I am at my most despondent or irrational, all I have to do is conjure up the image of my friend on the steps of the church on my wedding day, or his hands touching my head, and I can find my way back to sanity.

The first time I recall getting spanked, I was four. I had stolen a box of matches and lit a fire behind my house. My father spanked me down the hall.

The last time I recall getting spanked, I was 25. I was in Paddles, New York City’s main sadomasochist dungeon. Megan, my spanker, a fat chick with a tattoo of a pyramid on her chest, was steadily increasing the strength of her swats. “It’s getting rosy red now,” she said.

WHAP!

“You have a really nice ass,” she continued, running her hands over my glutes sensuously. “I love the ass.”

I had long wanted to become a libertine. I had been sexually frustrated since I was six, when I took up the habit of humping my stuffed walrus. All through my adolescence, the spectre of intimacy terrified me. I feared I would become the Forty Year Old Virgin. To transcend my fear, I solicited a fat chick on the internet. She sucked my dick behind a sand dune.

WHAP!

I spent several years of my young adulthood involuntarily celibate. “No one wants to fuck me,” I thought bitterly over many bottles of liquor. I fell in love twice, was rejected twice. When I asked the object of my second infatuation to go out with me, she looked at me, turned around, and walked away. “In Buddhism, one of the best things that can happen to you is disappointment,” she told me later. She ended up having a kid with some other guy. I still meditate regularly.

WHAP!

My problem, I deduced later, was that I had been too stiff and inhibited. Had I swept her off her feet like a Spanish knight, she would have loved me. I would lose all fear and shame, I decided. I would become totally virile. Furthermore, I would go to New York and establish myself as a recognized writer. I would follow the footsteps of Gay Talese through the sexual underground, attending orgies and patronizing massage parlors. I would write my magnum opus and prove wrong all the women who had once rejected me.

WHAP!

About a year previous to this paddling, at a friend’s place back home in California, I watched Shortbus. The film opened with one of the main characters trying to suck his own dick while a neighbor spies on him through the window. The character then attended a series of orgies held at an underground club in New York. Overseeing the club was a transvestite named Justin Bond. I wanted to be part of that scene, I thought. I wanted to recapture the erotic spirit of the ancients.

WHAP!

First, I braved a sex party in my tiny home town. I was mortified that I’d see a friend’s father there. To fit in, I wore nothing but a fez and boots, and carried a horse whip. One of the two attractive women present told me a rape joke, then spent the rest of the evening fucking her boyfriend. I remained a voyeur.

WHAP!

Shortly thereafter I moved to New York, where I figured I’d find the real scene. During my first months in the city, I dabbled in cross-dressing. Justin Bond once complimented my get-up at a party. I attended a queer film festival, where I saw a man's pectorals get skewered by a pair of sharp hooks and watched a film that combined war footage with gay porn. I attended a sex party advertised as “Brooklyn's nastiest.” It was held in a squalid basement that stank of sweat. A man asked me through an intermediary to suck his dick. I left after about twenty minutes.

Another time, I attended The Pleasure Salon, a kinkster gathering hosted by a couple of Tantric sex coaches at a club called The Happy Ending. When I walked in, the first thing I heard was a guy telling another guy "I was physically abused as a child, so I'm not really much of a masochist."

There were about 50 people there, mostly in their 40s, none of them lookers. There was one tranny-- an old, wrinkled, obvious one. A good number of men loitered near the walls. A computer programmer approached me haltingly and tried to start a conversation, but it petered out after a few exchanges.

I struck up a conversation with a middle-aged fat woman. She told me her name was Hectuba. She gave me her card. Just "Hectuba"; no last name. It listed her occupations as 2nd Degree Wiccan Priestess and Crystal Healer, and Level 1 Reiki Practitioner. She said that she was also a sadomasochist. She and her husband, Garry, maintained a dungeon in their Staten Island home.

Hectuba told me she became interested in the occult at age 13, when she found a thin booklet about it in the library. She got Tarot cards and a Ouija board. During this time she had several close scrapes with black magic. One time she was playing with her Ouija board and part of the room began to smell strongly of onions and liver, neither of which she was cooking.

Her ex-husband got her into S&M. They met when she was 22. He was 44, a virgin, and a conservative Jew. He convinced her to become Hasidic, and she followed the tradition strictly for ten years. She suspected that he had been sexually abused as a child, and that he was also schizophrenic, because he told her that he talked to angels. Whenever she would put her hands “down there,” she said, he pushed them away. They lived apart for eleven years, then moved in together but slept in separate rooms. She had sex with him only once in fifteen years of marriage.

He enjoyed being beaten, especially while wearing a certain type of sandal. But he had no fortitude as a submissive. He would “safe word out” at the slightest provocation. That is, he would prematurely use the word they’d agreed on to cut off her abuse.

So Hectuba began venturing out by herself to find new partners. She met Garry on an S&M chat room in 2002. They began playing together. Hectuba's husband didn't like it, and asked her to stop. Hectuba dumped him and married Garry.

Garry was a quiet, gentle type. Like Hectuba, he was a “switch”; he could play either dominant or submissive, though he leaned submissive, while Hectuba leaned dominant. On FetLife, the big kinkster social media site that Hectuba suggested I join, he listed himself as “heteroflexible” with a “big messy fetish.” His profile photos showed him in a bathtub, covered in chocolate sauce and whip cream. He was also interested in drowning, slave auctions, cock ridicule, mind control, abasiophilia, and capsaicin (the spicy chemical in chili peppers).

The couple considered themselves “on the verge of polyamory.” Hectuba had sex with other men with Garry’s knowledge. Garry also submitted to other women. A mutual friend of theirs, the druid who originally got Hectuba into Wiccanism, had recently dominated Garry during a trip to Disney World. “She forced him to ride a roller coaster,” Hectuba said. Garry had a mortal terror of roller coasters. He cursed her the whole way up. “He couldn’t handle it,” Hectuba said. She called such over-aggressive domination “breaking your toys.”

“You can’t play with your toys if you break them,” she said.

Garry said he wasn't jealous that Hectuba had other lovers, but he was jealous of her ability to pick up men. He was not so gifted in picking up women. I found Hectuba's success surprising, given her stout stature, greasy, unkempt hair, double chin and stubble.

But I was intrigued. I still hadn’t explored the sadomasochism scene. A couple months later I attended a seminar held by the Eulenspiegel Society, the city’s oldest S&M club. It was called “Knife Play with Master Z.”

Twenty-six people came. One ancient guy in the audience was swaying back and forth; he later mentioned that he had so many neurological problems he didn’t trust himself to wield a knife over a woman’s jugular, but the fact that he might cut her got him off.

There was a guy wearing a thick soul patch who called himself Evil Sausage. “I’m dominant, sadistic and controlling,” Evil Sausage said, and he called his ex-girlfriends “former slaves.”

Master Z stood before a scaffold next to table covered in murderous shanks. His wife “lizbeth” wore a leather collar, eye shadow and fishnet stockings, but the only sartorial clue about Master Z’s proclivities were his studded black boots.

He first discussed safety. Keep knives very sharp or a very dull, he said, so that you’d know exactly the limit of pressure that you could apply before you moved into “blood play.”

“We’re not going to be doing any blood play today,” Master Z said. “Unless I change my mind midway through.”

Master Z got out an eight-inch hunting knife with a serrated spine. Some of the audience members also got out knives. One guy in chaps kept his knife out the whole evening. He kept jabbing it towards Master Z.

A short, dark-skinned woman named Aden came up to the scaffolding. She had thick scars on her arms and tattoos on her hands and neck.

“It’s important to negotiate limits beforehand,” Master Z said. “Especially when you’re a hair’s breath from killing someone. So Aden and I have discussed her limits, and fortunately she has none.”

Master Z strapped restraints to Aden’s wrists and ankles and, while continuing to explain the importance of immobilizing your slave, he chained her to the scaffold so that she was standing, spread eagle, with her arms above her head.

“The best part about having a knife is that you don’t have to worry about getting her clothes off,” he said, and he cut her shirt and bra apart, breathing heavily. “This works great for a rape scene,” he said.

Aden’s wide dark areolas hung out and Master Z poked her armpits, ran the blade along the bottom of her tit, and then over the top. She squirmed and tried to move away from him. Then he dug the knife blade into her nipple, saying “Ah, you like that, huh? Do you like that?”

“Big knives and helpless naked women,” he said. “It’s the perfect combination.”

These proceedings pleased me. I could really mix up a routine bout of sex with something like a katana sword, I reasoned. Maybe I had found my scene.

I went to Paddles for the first time one evening soon after that seminar. The club’s entrance was set in a windowless wall perpendicular to the street, facing a parking lot. It looked like the door to a walk-in freezer. I passed a circle of smokers in black leather thongs and vests, descended a black stairwell, and emerged in a basement filled with the sounds of whips cracking and slaves shrieking.

At first I loitered uneasily at the Whips and Licks Cafe, which formed the center of the club. I could have used a dose of alcohol, but drinking and flogging is frowned upon in the community, so the cafe served only soda, cake, and ice cream. “You can cool down after a scene with a banana split,” a kinkster once quipped.

A television above me played a video of a woman's nipples being hung with weights while she was whipped. A huge mural opposite the cafe depicted a dominatrix forcing a man to drink nuclear waste in an apocalyptic landscape of broken cinder blocks and skulls. A dead woman was tied to a huge penis with horns. In the background, Paddles was still open for business.

After a while a dominatrix approached me and introduced herself as Miss Muse. She asked if I was new to the scene. I said I was. She offered to give me a tour of the club.

We walked first to the main play room, which evoked an Inquisition-era torture chamber. The grey stucco walls were made to look like stone. Thick, split wooden beams supported the ceiling. Gas lamps illuminated the space with a reddish light. Devices in this room included a four-poster bed with a leather mattress and cuff restraints hanging from pulleys on its tester. Each cuff could be pulled taught by wooden cranks on the frame of the bed. “Theoretically, you could be quartered,” Miss Muse said.

In the corridor leading to the back of the club, Miss Muse and I passed a naked man locked in a bird cage. We entered a stuffy room. A woman was hanging from by her hair from a hook in the ceiling, and a man was beating her. A chainsaw also hung from the ceiling. A kinkster named Ramon was blowing fire on his slave with a set of torches and an aerosol can. “Punieta!” his slave screamed. “No quiero mas!”

I can never go back to vanilla sex now, I thought to myself. Now, if I was really going to get off, I’d have to blast my partner’s vagina with burning alcohol.

Back home, I set up a profile on FetLife and trolled the events section. I found Hectuba’s profile. She suggested I attend a “munch” at Moonstruck, a mediocre diner in Chelsea popular amongst members of the sexual underground. A munch is a "vanilla” gathering at which kinksters eat and talk. I invited Evil Sausage to join me. Also present were Hectuba and Garry, a small, mousy man named Fred, his portly partner, and a guy with mutton-chop sideburns who called himself The Baron Von Brunk.

The Baron wore an American-flag tie. On his business card, which he also gave me, he was depicted wearing said tie. He was the chief executive officer of "Reel Splatter Productions," a film company, whose logo was a man in a gas mask chopping open someone's head with a machete. He said that he could reverse the the color scheme of this logo to transform the film company from one based on horror films to one based on zombie films.

Evil Sausage came in sweating, as he often did when he walked, wiping his brow with a handkerchief. He was rolling a suitcase behind him filled with floggers. He introduced himself to the others, using his real name, as always, and amending it with his FetLife name, as kinksters tended to do upon meeting. He had met Hectuba somewhere before.

Evil Sausage told me his awareness of his sadism had grown over many years. As a child, he went through his mother’s clothing catalogs and drew ropes around the wrists and ankles of the models, “especially the women.”

He had been estranged from his mother ever since he was a teenager, when she told his father that he was beating her. “You’re thinking that my conflict with my mother has lead me to want to dominate women,” he told me when he related this story. I told him I hadn’t been thinking that. “Well, you would have thought of that eventually, and you would be right.”

He got into the scene when he was in his thirties. He met his first S&M partner, Rebecca, on a website. “I beat Rebecca,” he said, his tone deadpan, and he nodded once and paused for two beats, as he did every time he said he beat a woman. “Then I brought her home.” She asked him to role play raping her, and he did so. After that, for the whole month that their relationship lasted, the couple’s foreplay involved Evil Sausage crawling through Rebecca’s window and assaulting her.

Evil Sausage had been polyamorous since his slave left him a few years previous, a betrayal that “left a scar.” He was 39, and his girlfriend was 19. She had moved into his apartment in Flushing. He put a collar on her-- Evil Sausage considered “collaring” equal in significance to putting on a wedding ring-- and she became his slave, a “24-7″ arrangement. That is, she submitted to him at all times, not just during sex. The only thing he had to do himself during their time together was to use the electric knife to carve roasts, since she was scared of it, and to shop for groceries, since she made irresponsible decisions at the store.

However, she flew into rages for the slightest reasons, such as when he tried to show her how to cook a roast without drying out the stuffing. One day, after he accidentally broke her laptop, she left him for a man her own age.

He was presently seeing three women, ages 23, 32, and 39, and seeking a new slave. He had not yet beaten his oldest girlfriend, because her Master had indicated that he wanted to watch Evil Sausage play before he let him beat her. “So one day, he and I and her will all see one another at a party, and I will beat her,” he said, and he nodded.

We spent much of the meal talking about tattoos. The Baron Von Brunk had tattoo of a Lego man on his arm. He had long been a Lego aficionado, and still built models, elaborate ones depicting such scenes as General Sherman's burning of Atlanta. On the middle of his chest Evil Sausage had a tarantula. To the left of the tarantula he said he would get a tattoo of Wolverine riding My Little Pony, surrounded by Care Bears wielding swords. He would get a second tattoo opposite the tarantula, that of a Smurf in a bloody smock, wielding a chainsaw.

Several of us went to Paddles. We sat awkwardly together for a long time. There were only about five other people there when we arrived, and there would only be about thirty through the whole evening. Hectuba blamed Passover and Easter. Evil Sausage blamed better parties elsewhere.

Hectuba donned a pair of high heels and Garry got into a leather thong and a vest. Frank and his partner came up to Hectuba and Frank stood there silently while his partner explained that he was into foot worship. She said that when Frank rubbed his stubble on her soles, she had a peak experience. So Hectuba sat in a leather throne and Frank worshiped her feet for ten minutes while she looked bored. “It's just not really what I'm into,” she explained later.

Eventually a young woman new to the scene came in and two fat dominatrixes strapped her to the quartering device. While a man put ice in her panties, Evil Sausage, delighted, poked her with the end of a rod he told me he'd once given to a friend, hoping to entice him to beat his girlfriend, who had confided in Evil Sausage that she liked such things. The friend had then suffered a psychotic break, though, compelling Evil Sausage to steal the device back.

In another room a beautiful young black woman in a leather suit and heel boots, which made her about 6'4”, was laying into a man's ass with a wide belt strap, throwing her whole shoulder into each flog and making the belt crack loudly. Every time he was flogged the man said “Thank you Miss Reign.”

The voyeurs sat silently. A fat young man in schlocky clothes who lived upstate chewed his fingernails. He asked Miss Reign's sidekick, a worse-looking, fatter woman, also in leather, how he should approach the dominatrix. “She would have you crawl up to her and kiss her feet,” the sidekick said. The man sat and kept looking at Miss Reign, his face sagging and expressionless, and when she came towards him to talk to her sidekick he scrambled away.

Later, I saw Miss Reign beating another fat man viciously. He was tied to a wall, writhing and moaning. “What's his safe word?” Miss Reign's sidekick asked her.

“He doesn't have a safe word!” Miss Reign said, laughing, and she flogged him again.

By this time, there were only about eight people and two scenes left in the club. I wandered between the two, feeling bored and alienated.

I hadn’t yet tried sadism myself, but I thought I should. One time, before a play party in Brooklyn, I bought a cheap whip at the Pussy Cat Boutique. I spent forty minutes on the train to get to the party. I walked twelve blocks from the station to the warehouse venue.

Before I entered, I looked inside. The room was black lit. A fat woman dressed like a Medieval wench drank from a goblet. A woman in a white leather corset had her boobs hanging out over a flogging bench. A woman in a leather thong was locked in a cage. Several men stood around by themselves, looking like they weren’t sure where to put their hands.

It was $35 to go in. I stood with my whip, pondering. I knew it would be a long, awkward evening, that I wouldn’t enjoy myself, that the guests would be sexually unattractive. I turned around and went home.

The night I was spanked, though, I wasn’t yet disillusioned with the scene. That night I had still found sadomasochism novel enough to pay Paddles’ $40 cover charge for single men. (To discourage creeps, a single man is charged $15 more than a single women or a member of a couple.)

When I met Megan, I told her I was a writer, and she told me that she wanted to spank me.

I looked around, nervous. A saw a man bent over with his pants down and a dominatrix paddling him.

WHAP!

“What are you so scared of?” Megan said.

“Ah, um, I don’t know,” I stammered.

I wandered away, but she followed me. Everywhere I went, people were providing social proof that a spanking was the thing to get. I realized that I was running up against my old, limiting fear, the fear that kept me isolated and conventional.

“Can we start with my pants up?” I asked Megan.

We went into a corner. She bent me over a rack. She began to spank me with her hand, but I was wearing thick jeans and couldn’t feel it.

“Can I take your pants down?” she asked after a few minutes.

“Yeah, okay, do it,” I said.

She pulled my pants down but kept my boxers up, and continued to spank me, and this time there was a bit more of a sting to it. I looked down through my legs at the corridor behind us. A small audience of feet had gathered, encouraging Megan.

Megan kept running her hands up and down my thighs, around my scrotum, and up and down my torso. Her hands were soft and pudgy. It was all about “getting in touch with sensation,” she explained. Once her hand strayed into my cock, and I said “Whoa!”

“Oh, sorry,” she said. “I just meant to go up and down your thigh, but my hand slipped. Can I take your boxers down now?” she asked.

“Yeah, alright, sure,” I said. “Now I can say I really did it.”

“No more faking,” she said, slipping my boxers down.

Megan eventually switched to her paddle. After about ten minutes, my ass was sore. I stuck it out another five minutes-- WHAP! WHAP! WHAP!

The spanking satisfied me. It was sensual, like a massage. I felt high, like I had been working out. Most importantly, though, I was a new man, one capable of being spanked before all the patrons of Paddles and feeling no shame.

Nathaniel Page is a California writer who lives in Brooklyn.

By Peter Wortsman

The following encounter between the late William Packard (1933-2002), poet, playwright, teacher, and publisher of the literary journal The New York Quarterly, myself, and a postal worker, took place at the Chelsea Station Post Office in the 1980s.

I immediately recognized the man in front of me on the package pickup line as Packard, his tousled hair, coat pockets stuffed with manuscripts, and an unlit cigarette dying to be smoked dangling from his lips, a dead give-away.

“I took your playwriting class some years back,” I said.

“Oh yeah? Are you still writing?”

“Yes.”

“What are you reading?”

“Kleist.”

“Too morbid for me,” the postal worker piped in, “I don’t like German writers.”

“Oh yeah?” Packard bristled.

“Don’t like Americans much either,” he added.

“You’re talking to two authors of the English language,” William Packard solemnly declared.

“English I like,” said the postal worker, “Anthony Powell, now there’s a novelist.”

Packard’s package picked up, he stormed off. The postal worker turned to me.

“A poet, huh?”

I nodded.

“Poets,” he opined, “they all think they’re Walt Whitmans nowadays. What about you?” he asked, studying my name on the official yellow post office pickup slip. “Have I heard of you?”

A writer in multiple modes, including fiction (A Modern Way to Die), drama (The Tattooed Man Tells All and Burning Words) and translation (most recently, Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist, http://www.archipelagobooks.org/bk.php?id=53 ), Peter Wortsman is the recipient of the Beard’s Fund Short Story Award and the Geertje Potash-Suhr Prize for Prose of the Society for Contemporary American Literature in German, and was a Holtzbrinck Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin in 2010. Also a widely published travel writer, his texts have appeared four years in a row in The Best Travel Writing 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011. “Notes of an Urban Nomad,” a series of his e-books, are forthcoming soon from New Word City (http://www.newwordcity.com/ ).

March 25th, 2001

Basketball City Chelsea Piers

There Were Horses

A pick up game at Basketball city. Cold Sunday afternoon. The academy awards that night. Dreading them. Miserable but psyched about the game. We ended up playing four on four full court. On the other team were the guys I play with in my league, on my team was one guy I play with and also a young guy with quick moves and a shot. We ran, and the quick guard was feeding me in the post. The ball went to me. Bucket after bucket. I was like, See, pass me the ball!

I was in the right frame of mind for basketball– pissed off and frustrated about things in general and a few things in particular, hating life and kind of loving it because there is this ball and when I put it in the hoop… but on defense, the old problems. The one guy who most explicitly never passes me the ball, and who is a very good ball player but, you know, he pats the ball too much, well, he got off some good shots in my face.

Three games, we lost all three. I’m always scoring high on the losing team. I felt like Patrick Ewing.

In the locker room after I got in the a conversation with the quick guard who was feeding me in the post.

"Feeding me in the post!" Sounds like I’m a fucking animal.

Anyway, once got my freezing and suddenly "Oh my God there are all these black guys in here" miniaturized dick inside my underwear, me and the kid, the guard, who was this dark black guy, young, little goatee on his chin, we got to talking while we got out of our b-ball clothes and went back into life, one clothing item at a time, and it turned out he was a senior in high school but didn’t play on the team because of grades.

But he seemed really smart. He had those thin wire smart glasses. I don’t know, he seemed smart and I said if he wrote a college essay that had personal character he’d be ok and get into a good school. Really, in that vague jock speak locker room chat I was trying to say something about being an individual and not saying what you think they want to hear. But I mostly felt like an idiot trying to get the point across, sounding extra white because there is nothing worse than a white guy endlessly sounding down. The inter-human warmth is always better when you don’t try to put it in words, at least in the basketball context. I think he understood the good will and it was good and I said good-bye.

There’s an equestrian center next to basketball city. It was dusk, the Empire State Building had blue lights, a dark blue against the faint light blue of the fading sky. And for some reason there were two horses out there, just watching the world, standing on the dirt.

2.

July 29, 2001

How To Stop Time

Basketball Junkie.

You hear the phrase, it’s like gym rat, same idea.

So I’ve been playing a lot. Going to gym a bit, too, because… really it’s because I want to make my game better. But it’s messing up my ball handling, what little flow I have.

Welt on eye from b-ball, just finished a three hour session. It’s almost my only enthusiasm, basketball. I am reading this fantastic book, How to Stop Time, Heroin from A-Z, by Ann Marlow. In some ways being a basketball junkie has similar properties of time stoppage.

Yesterday at the end of a close full court game a guy came down the court, bounced the ball on the ground, jumped, and dunked on my head, basically hit me in the face with his sneakers. Today I had a stocky six two guy on my team who respected my game, good give and goes, and I scored all day until the last game when we finally lost. I am such a head case. I need encouragement and it’s never enough.

3.

September 19, 2001

Smoke

Horatio Street Basketball Court, West Village

There were clouds coming from the south. The wind was picking up. The sky darkening at seven. Soft summer long gone. I sniffed the air like a dog.

"You smell that?" I said.

No one did. The clouds were just clouds and that acrid smell of dust… who knows what that cloud that engulfed lower Manhattan for a week was made of?

We were playing ball. People were playing ball. My game has become stiff(er), but I will get back into the groove. The clouds were just clouds.

Thomas Beller is a writer and founder and co-editor of Open City magazine and mrbellersneighborhood.com. He teaches creative writing at Tulane University, and you can read his tweets at twitter.com/thomasbeller.

After you’ve seen the horrors of Chelsea Pier’s ice rink on a weekend afternoon, nothing raises the spirits of the inner-borough salary man like secret afternoons and evenings spent in Bushwick or Washington Heights trolling whores for coke (TWFC).

TWFC consists, at its simplest, of asking hookers to buy you coke and seeing where the relationship takes you.

Some say TWFC is nothing but safe sex for geezers. Maybe they have a point. I’m not a critic. I don’t want to start thinking about why I TWFC, I just want to tell you how great it can be and how you can do it too if you want to.

For starters, you must have the whores and the retail coke outlets in reasonable proximity. TWFC doesn’t work if you have one and not the other. So this means, in my experience, doing your trolling in poor neighborhoods. I like Bushwick and Washington Heights, but beginners can start with whatever slum is closest.

Maybe its just parochial favoritism on my part, but I don’t think you can beat Washington Heights as a place to TWFC. So I think its worth a trip uptown for most neophytes.

The first thing you have to do is find the whores. You tell them you don’t want sex, at least, not at first. You ask them if they would get you some coke. You tell them you’ll pay as much as for sex or close if they come back with the drugs. Since a lot of the whores are drug addicts, this is kind of like finding something in common with some woman in a bar or office and going from there.

One of the most obvious risks is that the whores take your money and that’s the last you see of them. You have to accept you’ll get ripped off a lot. If you can’t afford to lose the bucks, then TWFC is not for you. But it is cheap. You say you want a twenty of powder and you’ll pay them more than the twenty you’ve giving them to get it, like $35 or $40 or something when they come back with the drugs. Since a lot of them are crack addicts, you have to specify that you want powder or you’ll end up with useless crack.

A lot of times, if they want to do it, the whores will give you some worthless ID or a really cheap radio or CD player or something for you to hold to prove that they’ll come back. These gestures by the whores are all well and good, but whatever they give you is likely to be easily abandoned by them and certainly doesn’t mean they will come back. But there’s no harm in accepting these items. Soon, you too can have a collection of really cheap transistor radios at home.

If they do come back with the drugs, it means you can trust them. You can get to know them. Maybe you’ll do the drugs with them though they usually won’t have anyplace to go to do them. And you’ll just have to endure the whore’s complaints about what a waste it is to snort, rather than smoke the coke. I suppose, though, if you find yourself smoking coke with your new friends, you may be getting deeper into TWFC than I have. This article is really more of a how to get started piece, if you’re smoking coke with your hooker-friends, then, congratulations, you’re well past the beginner stage of TWFC.

The other obvious thing about TWFC is that you could get laid. They are whores even if you’re pretending just to be drug buddies. I never had sex while TWFC, but I tried to keep an open mind about it. Responses from a hooker-friend like “I’m not taking my bra off because I’ve got some kind of abscess on my breast,” or “I don’t know if I have AIDS or not,” or “If you think that when I’m on the roof of a six-story walk-up with one of my Chinese johns that I’m going to go all the way downstairs to the deli for a condom, you’re nuts” can be off-putting. Maybe I’m too sensitive.

I have supplied the following text based on an actual TWFC encounter for the beginner to get an idea of how conversations with your new drug buddies might go. This is how the TWFC apprentice might start up a conversation. Say you spot a young, white woman standing on the corner of 180th St. and Ft. Washington Avenue. Determine she is a whore. A sexy outfit and or waving at passing cars can be a tip-off.

“Hey, what’s up.”

“Nothin’”

“I’m trying to get some coke, some powder. Can you help me with that? Get me a twenty and I’ll give you a twenty and a tip.”

“You a cop?”

“Nah. I know the drill. Wanna take a look, make sure there’s no badge hanging on my neck?”

“Yeah.”

Lift your T-shirt or whatever you're wearing. Don’t worry about this question. The whores always ask this. For some reason, they also always think that there is some rule that if they ask you if you are a cop, you have to tell them.

If you’re white, as I am, the whores and anyone else you meet TWFC will think you’re a cop. This can be a pain in the ass. On the flip side, when you run into real cops even though you are a white man walking along with a frequently deranged looking, druggie woman in a neighborhood you don’t belong in, they don’t bother you.

“I gotta go to a spot on 173rd. Give me the money.”

“Promise you’ll come back. I might go for a blow job later.”

“If you don’t trust me, then forget it.”

“No, here’s the money. I’ll be at the back of the Port.”

(This is what the whores and dealers call the uptown Port Authority bus terminal, a center for your Washington Heights TWFC).

“Whatever. Be back in twenty minutes.”

Then you wait around to see if she comes back. If she does, often she’ll have gotten some crack for herself. Sometimes an invitation to get high together will follow. Sometimes she’ll want to see you take some coke to make sure you’re not a cop. But finding a place to do this is usually hard. Other times, you’ll just take your drugs and go home.

I like the frisson of TWFC for its own pleasure. You have to have a sincere appreciation for the women, their scene, and of course, for the drugs. I don’t think you can TWFC successfully if you don’t like coke. Nor will it work if you don’t have at least some slight erotic interest in the whores. Even though some people say TWFC is more about drugs than sex, (and maybe they’re right), you still have to have some slight bit of interest in the whores themselves to balance the thing right and make it work.

If you’ve seen the horror of kids running everywhere and wives yelling at husbands that is the weekend afternoon scenario when you’ve doing your parental duties at Chelsea Piers or other such outputs of the domestic life in New York, you can well imagine what a pleasant couple of hours of vacation TWFC can be.

“Of any sports bars around here?” I interrupted.

The towering man paused, chapped lips parted in a bewildered grin revealing white teeth caulked with white material. “You looking for one too?”

“No,” I said, “you asked me that last week.”

We stood this December afternoon on 22nd off 6th. Last time, 19th and 5th. He smiled a smile of forced recognition–having probably leaned into the faces of a thousand Manhattan pedestrians–then thumped my chest with the back of his red hand. “Hey man. What are you doin’ around here?”

When I started to tell him I interned at a nearby publishing house, he swung his 6-foot frame so close that it cast me entirely in shadow. Sour exhalations engulfed my unfortunately unstuffed nose, and I changed the topic to keep his boozy eyes from wandering. “So did you ever find one?”

“Sports bar?” he said. “Sure, just came from one.”

Football, baseball, related social events–all my personal Martian terrain. I could recommend more Christian fiction and brands of pickled herring than sports bars, and I’m a herring-hating atheist. But sensing a slight drawl, I suggested Blue Smoke, figuring if it drew a truly down-home barbecue crowd, it might have a sports bar. Or one where well-dressed execs yelled at a TV.

“It’s not that good,” he said, then, with the rehearsed hyperbole of the publicist I worked for, described Duke’s, a Southern comfort food joint down the street.

“Sounds regal,” I said.

“It’s not.”

With this, he stared. His sapphire gin bottle eyes locked on mine, gaze a west Texas pumpjack probing past my cornea and into my cranium. Pedestrians streamed around us. He never uttered a word. Even the African man selling socks from the corner fold-up table looked concerned.

“So,” I said, taking two steps back from his smothering presence until my shoulders hit the Barnes and Noble wall. “Have you lived here awhile?”

He never answered, just said, “Duke’s passes my Southern taster.” He patted his chest like a vigilant primate, displaying fingers as puffed as pub sausages, tips chapped as his lips. “I checked Blue Smoke out,” he said. “See, we Southerners are nosey like that.”

“Oh yeah, where are you from?” This time he patted himself with his palm, gently, the way you might rouse a sleeping child, then threw back his head as if to tell all of Chelsea: “South Carolina.”

Layers of thin, mismatched clothing covered his chest: a white tee under a tattered gray V-neck sweater under a red and blue plaid flannel under a tan Dickies jacket. All sections framed the base of a startlingly hairy neck.

When I told him my girlfriend was from Alabama and that I loved barbecue, he poked his knotty sweet potato finger into my shoulder and said, “You know what you’d like then? Sylvia’s, at 328 Lenox in Harlem.”

Before I could mention that my girlfriend had suggested it, he belched and said, “I’ve been there lots. Soul food’s good for around here. It’s not as good as it used to be since her son took over and started franchising and publishing books with William Morrow, and not as good as joints in Greenville or Charleston.” I studied him as he lectured. The way his hands waved when he conjured surprisingly evocative descriptions of Sylvia’s dishes, the way he stiffened from a clumsy, forward-leaning tilt into a cocksure column, feet out, back straight, he assumed the worldly swagger of a sophisticated traveler. The encyclopedic pride he took in detailing the restaurant’s history and Sylvia’s heritage and recent health problems, mixed with the strength and depth of his personal opinions, he also resembled the carcass of a failed critic. A fallen Frank Bruni, Calvin Trillin’s miscarried cousin. Many renowned native Carolinians matured in the City, I thought: Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Joseph Mitchell. I wondered what this guy’s story was. When he finally took a breath, I asked if Sylvia was from North Carolina too. His lips puckered, eyes locked in a Frankenstinian gaze. “Hey. I take that insultingly.” The words “It’s South Carolina” shot a single glob of spit from his lip to my chin. He ground his teeth. Time froze like ice crystals in dead Everest climbers’ blood. Spit was all I could think about: wiping it off; the chill of wind hitting it; the sort of vectors it contained. Can herpes invade you osmottically? My inner banshee howled. The fanged, green cartoon germs of my imagination cleared the inch gap from chin to lip and dove like frightened penguins into my mouth. Twitching did nothing to dislodge it, either the spit or the worry.

Finally, he looked away, and I wiped it with my sleeve. I don’t want to insult him again.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I sometimes get the two states confused.”

“Ugh,” he groaned. “Come on now. You’re killing me.”

I tried to change the subject by suggesting the only thing I know really well: reading material. “Know what you might enjoy?” I said. “The Oxford American magazine – once called the ‘New Yorker of the South.’ It’s based in Arkansas.”

His eyes dipped slightly behind the lids as he blurted, “Jezebel’s on 630 9th Avenue and 45th is shit!”

I tried to avoid another gustatory tirade with “What’s your name, man?”

“Jesse Lee,” he said, squeezing my hand in a sandpapery grip. So clichéd a name, I thought, so close to the General Lee in Dukes of Hazard, it had to be a lie. “See you around again,” he said, smiling, and stormed off.

I raced to wash up in the Barnes & Noble bathroom. It was closed.

Aaron Gilbreath is an Arizonan who drank lots of coffee while living in New York. His essays and articles have appeared or are slated for Poets & Writers, Men’s Journal, High Country News, Saranac Review and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

It may not have been the 90th floor, perhaps the 30th or 40th. The exact number is foggy in my memory, but the rest of this “strange interlude” dances before me in primary colors. I met Petrillio, an architect, at a private erotic art opening in a Chelsea gallery that was generous with champagne. High on the bubbly, I found myself beside Petrillio while we both stared bemused at a painting of a watermelon-like vulva by Judy Chicago. Naughty, I imagined him following up the dry champagne with wet kisses.

It was difficult to concentrate on Petrillio’s words, rather musical notes, for he spoke in dulcet harp-like tones. Compact, only slightly taller than I, he wore his straight grey hair, a slight curl at the end, shoulder length. As he pointed at the painting I noted his long tapered hands which, I sensed, moved gracefully across a drawing board or along a woman’s body.

Hmmm, I thought to myself, it boded well that Petrillio chose to attend an erotic show rather then one displaying landscapes. When he asked for my card, then called a week later, I ransacked my entire wardrobe to find the perfect garment to bewitch a sophisticated older man who wore his age with the same distinction as his Pierre Cardin suit. I yearned to stroke his perky moustache that he unconsciously twirled now and then.

For five dates we thrust and parried in trendy Chelsea restaurants over dinners that tasted bland, for my attention belonged entirely to Petrillio. In the distance, he pointed to his abode in a tall modern building. Wistfully, I visualized us cavorting on his bed, or enjoying an intimate laugh after a savory breakfast, then back to bed for another roll under the covers.

Why didn’t Petrillio, as huggable as a baby penguin, invite me upstairs to see his etchings? “I’m yours, take me!” I screamed silently. Was Petrillio married, gay or hiding bodies of ex-wives or girlfriends? Finally, in January, on a snowy night–a breakthrough: my cavalier suggested a glass of Pinot Grigio chez lui.

“Oh, I couldn’t. It’s so late,” I answered trying not to appear over anxious. Meanwhile I was petrified he would change his mind. Mentally, I was throwing my coat, gloves, jewelry, high heels, underwear in a heap.

Petrillio passed the doorman with an insouciant wave. Offhandedly, he asked the score of the Sugar Bowl game. “Dip into my bowl of sugar so deep that I’ll have none left, go ahead scoop up handfuls,” I thought to myself. How many other women had zoomed up in this elevator to his perch in the clouds? Were they younger, prettier, sexier than I? How could I induce an amnesia that could beguile Petrillio into thinking that his love life began and ended with me?

Exiting the elevator, windows everywhere, a panorama of midtown floated up to meet my eyes. Was I flying in a stationary airplane about to land in paradise? I wanted to lie down and dream in this hallway of rugs plush enough to be comfy pillows. Petrillio’s hand on my elbow, our first caress, relieved any lurking uncertainty.

Voila, the minute I walked into Petrillio’s aerie it seemed I had been there before; if not in this life perhaps in the Twenties for cocktails and kisses. Tonight, I felt high both physically and intellectually. Petrillio’s apartment exhibited an artistic imagination scaled down to fit into New York’s astronomical rents. Each piece of furniture seemed about to burst into a chorus of welcome as though it had been expecting me. The simply designed chairs were made of wood finished to a silky texture. Flower-shaped lamps gave the room a feminine touch.

Japanese screens, judiciously placed art work–a Warholesque painting of Marilyn Monroe, a smiling Buddha, silk wall-hangings, a Tibetan rug–everything conspired to create an aura of enchantment. Paradoxically, Petrillio’s miniature castle in the sky seemed neither cluttered nor claustrophobic.

“Pardon this camping out,” explained Petrillio, as he gently placed me on a divan barely big enough for two that was set into a cozy nook that contained several small vases filled with palm fronds.

“Till I find something bigger, my art collection’s in storage. Supporting a home in Danbury, an ex-wife’s obsession with her shrink, plus two kids at expensive colleges keeps me hopping. Women haven’t been kind to me, especially Sally.” The pain in his deep blue eyes made me long to kiss away the suffering his thoughtless wife had inflicted. I vowed to soothe this old school gentleman, who exuded elegance and seemed absent from our technological age of cell phones and sound bites.

Petrillio sprinkled his conversation with references to Italian art films and Roman history. He was a genuinely sensitive man of letters rather than a dilettante, I concluded. Therefore, I expected that the books on his shelves would be scholarly. Getting up to examine his collection, I opened a folio written in Italian to a picture of a woman, legs spread, masturbating.

My vision blurred as volume after volume contained pictures of women in classic pornographic situations: multiple partners, orgies, animals, including a monkey. Keeping my voice under control, I whispered: “Are all your books porno? No Dickens or Proust?” I whined. “And Screw magazine. You read that . . . . Why?”

“I’m a collector,” answered Petrillio proudly. “I somehow managed to get a complete run. No small feat since Screw has been published for decades. Don’t those models wear some delightful outfits? Mostly black leather but a few show real imagination. Here look at this foxy lady, her nightie of leather and lace. See, this blondie’s hot pants are cut out at the crotch and rump. Fun, huh?” Cheerfully, Petrillio thrust the well-thumbed magazine in my face.

My smile belied tears oozing from my eyes, about to course down my cheeks. The room started to spin and so did my mind. Was this porno maven the man I had fantasized would be my lifelong partner? I squirmed and intended to leave, however, my feet felt plastered to the floor.

“Pinot Grigio, darling? Other than bubbly, it’s all I drink. It’s good for the heart too. Ah, what beautiful visions my elixir conjures. It compensates me for this meaningless, brutal existence. Water is for fish. Drink up, you angelic creature. Together we shall pay homage to the versatile grape.”

Petrillio sighed and moved my hair away to lick my earlobe. Then he raised the window blinds higher to expose a view of the Empire State building ablaze with colored lights as bright as crown jewels. Pouring glass after glass of wine, soon he finished the entire bottle as though it were apple juice.

The more wine I consumed, the more I yearned to become part of Petrillio’s scenario. As he smoked a cigarette in a long golden holder, I marveled at the movement of his graceful wrist, the erotic way his lips puckered to inhale smoke.

“Darling, mind if I change into a cozy dressing gown?” Disappearing into a small alcove, Petrillio blew me a kiss.

I had anticipated him caressing me slowly, awakening each erogenous zone in turn. Mad from an overabundance of wine and desire, I shivered with longing ready to open every orifice to him.

Ten excruciatingly long minutes later, Petrillio appeared wearing a gold-colored silk robe that Noel Coward would have fancied. Underneath what a shock: black lace panties and bra, a red garter belt that held up black fishnet stockings and an antique locket with rhinestones dangled from his neck. Prancing like a rotund fawn drunk on wine, Petrillio’s reserve evaporated.

“You think I should get a bustier? Petrillio murmured, twisting and turning before a decorative mirror on a stand. He thrust his chest forward provocatively. Meanwhile, he applied layers of makeup to his face and rouged his cheeks. “Could I look worse than Madonna? That slut! Staring at me, darling, why?” asked Petrillio, his speech slurred. “C’mon, never seen a man wear a locket before?”

“Any picture inside it?” I asked, motivated by a mounting hysteria.

“A picture of Mae West taken when the cops arrested her and closed her show. Bought it at a flea market in Danbury along with a hairpin the dealer swore belonged to Mae herself. Some pisser!” he slurred. Fondling the locket self-consciously, Petrillio wriggled in a vain attempt to assume a dignified posture. One of his frilly-topped fishnets dropped.

Bug-eyed, I watched my courtier metamorphose into Tony Curtis’s drag character in Some Like It Hot. Perhaps in a former incarnation I had stolen Petrillio’s garter belt, kicked a cat or spit into a beggar’s bowl? Buddhists say that debts from a previous life must be repaid. By then I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream for help–fat chance on such a high floor. Dazed, I watched this fan of Victoria’s Secret consume another bottle of his “elixir.” Just as I was figuring how to sneak out without Petrillio noticing, he sidled over, crossed his hairy legs and plumped down beside me. Suddenly sober as a deacon, although his breath smelled of alcohol, he crept up close to my face, examining it minutely.

“There’s something I’ve wanted to do since the first moment I saw you, Darling. May I?”

“Why not?” The wine had plunged me into a lethargic reverie. The scene assumed a fin-de-siecle aura reminiscent of a novel by Gabriel d’Annunzio. Only lacking was the subtle odor of heliotrope or the green fairy, absinthe.

Mesmerized, I watched Petrillio fling open two drawers brimming over with makeup. Other drawers in a delicate lacquered chest were bursting with hairnets, rollers, and hair conditioners.

“Sorry Darling, but your eyebrows are so. . .” he searched for a word. “Yuck! Like they’ve been sprayed with DDT. The hairs scraggly every which way. No arch to speak of, tch tch. Let me fix them, pretty please?”

Before I could say Estee Lauder, Petrillio started plucking away. Expertly, he wielded the tweezers across my brows. Da Vinci painting the Mona Lisa could not have been more intent on his task. Foundation, powder, rouge and lipstick were applied with the same agility.

Next Petrillio covered me with a plastic cape and took out a professional scissors. While he snipped away, he supplied highlights of his biography.

“Wanted to be a stylist since I played with grandma’s curling irons back in Bumfuck, Ohio. My parents, especially tight-assed Dad, insisted I study architecture. The bastard died last year. Left me some money, and soon I’ll have enough to quit drudging away. Hell, let those snooty, philistine clients of mine live in a sewer.” Venting his irritation, Petrillio threw a brush across the room.

“I’ll find women to beautify, even if I have to chase them down Broadway. No more men’s suits either. Before the great drag queen in the sky pulls down her shade, it’s gonna be gowns and champagne at The Four Seasons for this tootsy.” While applying pomade to my hair, Petrillio chortled merrily.

“Let me look, please,” I murmured half-expectant, half-fearful. Like moths, Petrillio’s hands flitted around my face and throat.

“Trust me! In you I shall reanimate Rita, Ava, and Marlene. Stars then were glamour pusses. Not like those anorexic twits on screen today. Turn right, chin up, my lovely.”

Petrillio moved my face around to different angles to check if the colors were coordinated and flattering. Was he going to make me look like Mae West?

Finally, after I couldn’t sit still one more second, Petrillio brought over a hand mirror. As he sprayed my hair with jasmine-scented mousse, I examined his handiwork, which had turned a boring shingle cut into a layered fantasy of curls that made me look years younger.

“What d’ya think?” he inquired, fists clenched. The artist wanted to be certain the canvas on which he’d painted his masterpiece had the right proportions. Meanwhile he rubbed heavy dabs of setting gel on his grey hair that now looked shellacked.

“A red streak, gold eye shadow!” For a moment, I hardly recognized myself. Alchemically, Petrillio divined from my soul the audacious way I had always wanted to look but never dared.

This chic, yet funky style eventually caused a renaissance in my social life. I bought form-fitting clothes, ventured into offbeat clubs, bought spiky, black-heeled shoes with ankle straps. As though I were a car, Petrillio gave me a complete overhaul.

At this time, I desperately wanted a lover–not a cross-dresser. If he wasn’t the elusive Mr. Right, at least Petrillio had given me a valuable crash course in cosmetology. I remembered John Lennon’s words: “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”

“Oh my god! How the hell did you know!”

I wanted to say, it’s really not that difficult when you date someone for nearly a year. And we did meet through craigslist ourselves. His words got me everytime. Even when placing an ad for a trannie or a woman with a strap-on. I knew it was Luke. And this made him cry. Because we couldn’t make it work between us. He hasn’t come to terms with his sexuality yet. Doesn’t want to deal with his “heteroflexibility” as he likes to call it which I think is really a cop out.

In any case, he is this amazing guy, who dates great women like me, gets bored, ruins the relationship–and goes for these people men, women, somewhere in between, that are after money, a place to stay, not a relationship, not even sex or friendship. He has to double check each time he has a date from craigslist, to make sure that the date isn’t an escort-referencing the escort services section! Half the time they are.

When we first met, his “assistant” was a trannie named Layla. She had nowhere to stay so he took her in after their craigslist fuck. When I came into the picture, she had been around about a month. She stayed another month or so. Free room and bored. MetroCard and lunch money. I was sure she was planning to run a bordello out of his apartment. She tried to break us up from the start. I wanted to feel sorry for her because I knew it wasn’t easy living in transition; between two genders. She made this impossible. She was a pathological liar. Taking and taking and basically feeling it was her right to do so. I spotted her lies the first day. It took Luke much longer. I guess he needs to see the good in people while I see them for what they are.

I still troll craiglist once in awhile–it’s like watching soap operas. Mindless entertainment. I will always be able to pick out Luke’s ads because he writes a certain way and I doubt he will change his character or his desires. I know I freaked him out by picking his ad out so easily, but after all, I chose his ad out of over two hundred when we first met. Words get me everytime.

Later on, when we had the stroke of luck we expected four and a half years earlier, we moved to a place three times bigger, overlooking the Queensboro Bridge. We could finally get our long-lost things from storage. We splurged on movers. They carried everything down five flights of steps, made a stop at Chelsea Storage, then carried it all up four more flights to our new place.

We were ecstatic. We spent the weekend dusting furniture and unpacking boxes of books that hadn’t seen daylight in five years.

But there was a problem. There was still a bunch of stuff left in storage that had to be disposed of. We’d discovered that some of the things we’d done without for five years we actually preferred to do without. But rent for the unit—$134.60—was due Tuesday unless we emptied it and left it broom-clean. I worked from home. My hours were flexible. I’d take care of things.

I was a model of ruthless efficiency. I arranged to have a furniture dealer who rented out props to movies come meet me at the facility. I had a 1915 maple dresser with a swivel mirror that I’d refinished myself in the backyard in 11th grade. No sentimentality. No prisoners. The dealer only offered me $40, but I ran a quick cost-benefit analysis and took it on the condition that he’d cart away the folding chairs and broken washstand too.

Now came the tricky part. Big, heavy stuff to throw away. There was the 1920s battleship of a typewriter my mother had bought in the 60s when her office upgraded to electric. It was a hunk of cast iron weighing a good thirty pounds (the dealer refused to take it), black, with beautiful white keys and the name L.C. Smith in worn, gold paint. And there were a couple of big, bulky computer monitors too. I bought them cheap when my old office upgraded.

I put everything on the trolley Chelsea Storage provided, and wheeled it to the glassed-in office downstairs. "Is there somewhere I can get rid of this?" "Nowhere here," said the guy on duty, "But there’s a dumpster around the corner on 22nd. Trolleys have to stay here, though."

Well, I paid to lift weights at the gym, so why not do this for free? I hoisted the L.C. Smith off the trolley, and put it on the edge of the loading dock. I hopped down to sidewalk level and reached up, easing it into my arms. I shuffled along 23rd with the monster braced against my belly.

I finally reached the dumpster around the corner. There were a couple of guys from the warehouse there, taking out the trash. When they caught sight of my L.C. Smith, they said they’d take it. Somewhere deep inside the warehouse they were keeping a "museum."

One down, two to go. I grabbed the first monitor, a bulky whale of a thing. I was tired from my last trip and my arms were trembling. I didn’t know how much more of this I could take. After about half a block, though, a man from the garage across the street shouted out to me, "Does that still work?" Yes, thank God. "I have another one too," I told him. I’d be back in a few minutes’ time.

I walked back to Chelsea Storage. Sweat was trickling down my back. I brushed the dust off the front of my shirt and off my black cotton pants. I stretched my arms and shook out my hands. Almost there. After this was done, I’d go home and lie down in the bath.

The last monitor was sitting on the edge of the trolley. OK, almost there. I did a deep knee bend and reached forward. Rrriiiip. I stopped short, frozen. A roar of laughter came from the office. I felt a cold breeze at the seat of my pants. I remembered I was wearing a thong.

I shuffled to the ladies room to check out the damage. The guys in the office all turned away. It was worse than I thought. A tear in the fabric along the seat seam, a good six inches. I rifled through my purse. Safety pin? Bandaid? Paper clip? Nothing. I was screwed.

I went back to the loading dock. Maybe nobody noticed. Maybe they were just laughing at something else. I didn’t have enough time to go home and change, then come back again before closing. I’d just walk, you know, carefully.

A man in coveralls came up to me. I acted casual. "Do you need help?" He was a tall Jamaican with a lilting accent. I tried to act like everything was normal. "You mean carrying stuff?" "No." His face was serious. "Your pants broke." I started to laugh manically. "It’s not funny," he said. "Look, I have a t-shirt underneath. You can tie it around your waist." "OK," I said. My eyes were tearing up.

With Winston’s t-shirt on, I hauled away the last monitor, then hailed a cab. Once I got home I washed the shirt, and mailed it back to Chelsea Storage with a thank-you note. The pants weren’t salvageable, so I threw them away—along with all my thongs. I’m sorry now about the typewriter, but I’m glad it’s in a museum.

“Hold my bag, would you,” I say to my poor friend Chris, who I drag along with me to art openings each Thursday. The bag is full of library books and has been throwing off my back for the past two days. “Great, I was looking for something to make me look gayer,” said Chris, and I’m surprised that he’s willing to say that in such a crowded Chelsea setting, given his overall shyness. Then I start counting back to how many drinks he’s had and never get to zero.

Each mugshot is accompanied by a description of the person and his alleged crime. One man’s crime is listed as “Communist (drunk)”. Any physical irregularities and vices—i.e. tobacco use, bad temperament—are also listed, and a woman with a quaint British haircut turns to ask me what a carbuncle is.

I go up to the free bar and there’s a complex array of dyed syrups, juice, vodka and twists. I don’t see a drink list so I just wait and ask for what the lady before me had.

“Are you sure?” the bartender starts, grinning at me. He begins making the drink, which involves pouring orange juice and vodka and some red dyed substance back and forth between two plastic cups. “This drink has arsenic in it, you know,” he says, still grinning.

My mind boggles at the fact that he’s treating me like a three year old and sort of coming on to me at the same time. I mumble something meant to make him awkward but he doesn’t stop.

“That’s what you get for blindly following,” he says, handing me the drink. He made it extra strong with plenty of warm vodka so that it tastes something like goose’s vomit.

I circle around the rest of the exhibit slowly. Mugshots are easier to appreciate than other forms of art because they aren’t really based on a certain technique or viewpoint—each one invites its own narrative. I look around for Chris but he isn’t in the room. I call him on my cell. “Hey, what’s going on?”

“Oh, I’m across the street getting arrested.”

“Drinking in public?”

“Yep.”

I’m zipping down the stairs and I open the heavy metal door, stepping into one of the last hot breaths of September night. The sun has already gone down and I see the cruiser first, then the red tufts of Chris’ bad haircut, then a fatass female police officer leaning onto the trunk and writing Chris a summons.

I step across the street. There are at least three people within a ten foot radius gulping down PBRs on the sidewalk. I think to myself how noticeable Chris is in everything he does. He tries to do things when people aren’t looking but spends so long looking around suspiciously that by the time he gets around to doing whatever it is everyone’s ready to pounce. It’s like that time I convinced him to run out on the bill of this shitty Mexican restaurant we were at. He spent so long debating on how to do it—should we leave at the same time or one after another—that the waiter caught up to us easily.

“Where I come from, in upstate New York…” Chris was intoning.

“Well this is New York City, and if you don’t like it here, you can get the hell out. You know, I can just put you in the car and take you down to the station.”

“Yeah,” Chris said, “I guess you could arrest me for about anything you wanted. I found that out at the Republican National Convention.” They started mouthing off to each other about George W. and who made the laws and who enforced them.

“You better watch it, or I’ll be throwing you right over the roof of this car, I’ll be showing you how liberal I really am,” the cop said. The woman writing the summons looked up, bored, her eyes half-lidded like a cow’s. “Don’t you get him started,” she said to Chris.

“Yeah, come on Chris, this is the most obvious place to get caught drinking,” I said. “We saw the cruisers all around.”

Chris looked straight forward and said nothing, doing the stoic drunken hipster bit. I sort of wanted to kick his ass but I restrained myself until later when the cops weren’t there.