21 Gay Street

The girl paid off the cab at the door and walked up the steps to 21 Gay Street. She was a short girl, just an inch or two over five feet, and she had very curly blonde hair. It was autumn. She wore charcoal gray slacks and a nubby yellow sweater. The sweater was tight on her well-formed breasts and the slacks were tight on her well-formed behind.

She made a careful search of her purse until she found the two keys that the rental agent had given her when she signed the lease. She tried the wrong key first on the front door. The other one fit and she opened the door and stepped inside.

She walked up the stairs, found apartment 2-A, and used her key—the other one—on the door to the apartment.

She walked inside, then closed the door behind her. Tomorrow, she thought, she would put her name on the mail box, stock up the refrigerator and do what she could to make the apartment a little more livable. It wasn’t a bad apartment but it could certainly use a little color.

But that could wait. She was tired and she was all sweaty from her trip on the train. First she would take a shower and get some sleep. Everything else could wait until the next day, when she would be a little more in the mood for work.

She had no suitcase, only her purse. The rest of her belongings were in a trunk shipped by Railway Express. Tomorrow, she guessed, the trunk would come.

She peeled the sweater over her head, rolled off the slacks, removed bra and panties and socks and shoes. Then, slowly, she walked to the tub.

The man in apartment 3-B, a recent arrival, was looking at pornographic pictures. He had a whole stack of them, ranging in size from 4 x 5’s to 8 x 10’s, and the stack included some very unusual material.

At the moment the man was studying the picture that showed two girls and a man. It was an extremely imaginative picture. The man observed the artwork, the composition and the lighting. Moreover, he observed the man and the two girls.

One of the girls was a willowy blonde. She was doing something incredibly clever to the man, while the man was doing something equally brilliant to the other girl, a stocky, busty, hippy brunette. If a person could judge by the expressions on the faces of the three performers, all of them were enjoying the whole affair tremendously. They were grinning like ghouls.

The man picked up another photograph. This one showed two women. The women were posed in the classic position of lesbian love, and a close examination disclosed that the models were the same two from the last picture. Again the man studied it very carefully.

Slowly, methodically, the man shuffled through the stack of photographs, taking a long look at each. The more he looked, the more the pictures excited him. He decided that he needed a woman.

The man liked women. He liked to get them alone, away from everybody, and to make them do the things he wanted them to do. He had fun with women.

For all he knew, it might be someone right there, someone in the same building with him.

She had seen the girl, the girl who had finally come to take the place of Joyce Kendall. The girl was a curly-headed blonde with a delicious figure, and Jean was worried. She was worried because the attraction she felt for the girl was overpowering.

Terri was beside her, naked and asleep. She looked at Terri’s breasts, at her hips, and desire came to her. Terri was sleeping but if Jean were to touch her, the girl would wake up. And then they could make love.

Jean looked at Terri and thought about the other girl, the one with the curly blonde hair and the delicious body. And she knew it was going to begin again, a sequence that could only end in some sort of heartbreak. She would make a pass—and if it was accepted, Terri would be hurt and if it was rejected, the girl with the curly blonde hair and the delicious body would hate her and run from her.

She wished that she could sleep but she knew that she could not, not yet, not until something happened to relax her, to release her, to let sleep come to her. And so she opened her eyes again and reached out a moist hand, cupping Terri’s full breasts, squeezing gently.

It was silent lovemaking, the union of bodies half-drugged with sleep. She kissed and stroked Terri’s body and received similar caresses from Terri and things began to happen.

The other half wondered, curiously, what it would be like with the girl with curly blonde hair and a delicious body.

The girl woke up. She was used to cheerful surroundings, and her apartment seemed horribly drab now, drabber than it really was. Maybe she could paint the walls chartreuse or something, she thought. Anything to make the place more lively.

She got out of bed, got dressed. She opened her door and walked downstairs and out onto the street. Then she turned and looked back at the building, at 21 Gay Street.

Romantic. Greenwich Village, she thought. There was nothing so romantic about a broken-down old dump on a dusty street. The people who talked about romantic Greenwich Village had sawdust for brains.

She shook her head sadly. What a cruddy building it was! She wondered if anything exciting had ever happened there, if anybody the least bit interesting ever lived there.