21 Gay Street

Watching the clock is a bad habit, even when you have held a job so long that it has become the penultimate in boredom, the quintessence of routine. When you are watching the clock on the third day of a new job, watching it with bated breath, this hardly bodes well for the future.

The clock informed Joyce that in ten minutes it would be five o’clock and she could get the merry hell away from the offices of Armageddon Publications, Inc. That, she decided, was fortunate. More than ten minutes would have been tough to take.

The job had been a mistake. To begin with, its title was appallingly misleading. She had been given to understand that she was to function as a first reader, the first eye to pore over the carefully typed manuscripts of aspiring authors eager for success. While the notion of poring over the tripe that Armageddon published wasn’t all that exciting to begin with, it was at least a “creative” job, an entry into the exciting world of publishing. Bad enough, but better than what she wound up doing.

What she wound up doing was a little frightening. She was, to all intents and purposes, a typist. She spent her eight hours—minus an hour for lunch and the standard number of coffee breaks and trips to the water cooler—pounding out miscellaneous trivia. Letters, order forms, trivial twaddle. Playing jockey to an ancient Underwood was her idea of nothing to do, but that was also her job.

The “first reader” bit came into play, but hardly in the way she had expected. For one thing, manuscripts submitted by anybody remotely worthwhile went straight past her desk without bothering to stop and chat. If an author had ever sold anything to Armageddon Publications, or if he was known at all by anybody, he did not need the approval of the first reader. If he was represented by a competent agent—and, it seemed, all good authors were—he also missed the indignity of a preliminary examination by one Joyce Kendall.

If, on the other hand, he was an incompetent, then he fell into Joyce’s hands. And there were many incompetents, one less competent than the next.

Unknown manuscripts were relegated to what was known as the slush pile, and it was there that Joyce came into the picture. She spent twenty minutes to a half hour of each working day slitting open the brown manila envelopes, reading the proffered trash within, and then doing one of two things with it. Either she returned it posthaste in the enclosed stamped self-addressed envelope with a printed rejection slip or she passed it on to a second reader. In three days she had glanced over approximately one hundred fifty pieces of garbage and had returned one hundred forty-eight to their hopeful authors. The other two scripts—one a confession story submitted to Armageddon’s two confession magazines, Desperate Love Stories and Passionate Confessions, the other, a true-adventure piece aimed at True Male Tales and entitled something along the lines of I Banged A Boa Constrictor—had been passed on, and Joyce neither knew nor cared what would become of them. She knew only that the whole routine was impossible, that she was a typist being paid off in glamour that didn’t happen to exist, and that the job was unbearable.

Five to five. She fussed with her hair, applied lipstick, and scanned the room, watching the other girls who were toiling right up to the bell like good earnest wage-slaves, covered her typewriter, straightened up her desk, and waited.

The job was a disappointment, and, for that matter, so was New York. There was an excitement about the town that she could not deny, but this excitement was more than counter-balanced by the fact that she was left completely out of it. In only five days in the city she had managed to settle haphazardly into a rut. There was the job, the subway to and home from work, the apartment, the Gristede’s where she shopped for food, the newsstand where she bought the Times every morning and the Record every night, and there were the Village streets she wandered occasionally. The Village streets were admittedly lively and intense, but again it was a life and an intensity which left her out in the cold.

There was little to compare with loneliness in a huge city. It was unlike anything she had ever experienced, although her life had frequently been a lonely one, and it was something she did not enjoy in the least. Loneliness had a way of sapping your existence of vitality, of meaning, of reducing everything to nothing at all.

There was the morning—a day or two ago—when she had awakened to the jangle of the alarm clock and turned her face wearily from the pillow, her eyes coming open slowly. She scrambled out of the bed, reached the clock, managed to tum it off, and then fell headlong upon the bed once more.

Sleep began to crowd in on her and it would have been pleasant to surrender to it. But she fought with sleep, remembering that she had to get to work. And she definitely had to get to work, because, she realized all at once, the people at her office were the only people in New York who knew that she was alive, the only people who could look at her and recognize her.

So she had showered, dressed, headed for the yawning mouth of the subway that spat her out in the middle of morning Manhattan, and found her way to the offices of Armageddon Publications. And there, safe once more in the loneliness of a crowd, she realized that not even the people at work really knew or wanted to know her.

She was a girl who had never had many close friends, but this genuine loneliness was something she had never experienced and was thoroughly unprepared for. Schwernersville had been a small town, horrible in the way that Midwestern small towns can be horrible, narrow and Babbitish and stupid, but when she walked down the Main Street of Schwernersville people recognized her, said hello to her, stopped to talk to her.

Clifton had been still smaller, a tiny liberal arts college devoid of privacy, and while she had led a quiet life there, she had never had a chance at the complete solitude afforded by the nation’s greatest city. There were always people—a roommate, classmates, boys who took her to movies and parties and who attempted to seduce her in parked cars. Boys with hungry hands and moist mouths, boys who wanted her and who didn’t try to hide their desire. Boys who tried to seduce her, and a few who succeeded.

Not many had succeeded. Just two, really—Joe Cardigan and Ron Gibbs. And the two had been very different. Joe was a love affair, a very intense and very painful love affair that began in the fall of her junior year and carried through until spring. Joe was tall, lean, tense, a history major with a sharp tongue and a fast mind. She had been violently attracted to him, and the combination of his attractiveness and skilled approach and her own questioning seeking need for sex had permitted him to succeed where others had failed.

The first time—a parked car, late at night, a little too much wine, Joe’s hands more demanding than before, Joe’s caresses infinitely more effective, her own resistance low. Clothing half-off, half-on, the painfully awkward move from front seat to back, the fumbling that in itself increased passion rather than dissipating it. And then the pain, harsh and searing, and wondering what to do, how to do it, because none of the books actually told you how to make love and it was confusing, painful, embarrassing.

And then the knowledge that was born in the blood, and her own body making the right movements all by itself, learning, playing by ear, awkward at first and then graceful in its own awkwardness, with her passion rising incredibly, surprising her, frightening her and then burying the fright forever.

A trip to heaven that ended inches away from fulfillment. But pleasure, amazing pleasure that was good, very good.

And two nights later, in a real bed in a motel, with the combined guilt and excitement of registering as man and wife, and slow, complete undressing, and a coming together that was slow and gentle and, for the first time, complete. This time they built their pleasure slowly and firmly together, climbing together, working together, with his hands on her breasts and his mouth glued to her mouth, and the world racing and time miraculously suspended.

After that they were together constantly, sleeping together, walking together, talking together. Their relationship was not one in which permanence was a spoken word. Marriage was something off in the distance, something to be thought of privately but never to be discussed. They lived for the moment. The moments were good, perfect.

It was a strange ending. What it boiled down to, she knew, was that they simply were not right for each other, that no marriage between them could ever work out, that their interests were similar but their personalities had subtle yet basic differences that made a lasting relationship altogether out of the question. Thus it had to end, and when the ending came it should not have been a surprise. But it was.

There were little strains that developed over a two-month period. Then there was a fight that depressed both of them and left them more or less unable to talk to one another. They simply had nothing to say, no way of communicating.

There was the inevitable reconciliation, the lovemaking accompanying it that was born of desperation and conceived in misery. And then the inevitable reconciliation was superseded by the equally inevitable break-up, the final break-up, and that was the end of it. After that they never spoke, because speech was impossible between them, because the intimacy they had shared previously was embarrassing and made them awkward and ill at ease with each other.

Then, in May, there was Ronald Gibbs. Ron Gibbs was a purgative, a release, a respite from loneliness and an antidote for Joe Cardigan. Ron Gibbs was taken once, taken as directed, a single night in a single motel room, a night of sex, pure and simple, ending forever when the sun came up.

Then there was graduation for both Gibbs and Cardigan, and a trip back to Schwernersville for Joyce Kendall, and then in the fall the return for the final year at Clifton. And then there were no more affairs, few dates, her own graduation, the trip to New York, and more loneliness of a new and different kind. Five days of it, a short time, but painful because there seemed to be little if any prospect of the loneliness ever ending. It would stretch on, and the job would stretch on, and where would it end? It wouldn’t end. Or it would—and she would go back to Schwernersville, her suitcase in hand, her mouth thin and lifeless, looking for something. For what? A man and 2.7 children and a white house with green shutters and a fence around it—to keep out the world.

Her loneliness was strangely asexual. A hunger for sex is easily assuaged, especially if the hungry one is an attractive woman. Such a woman has no difficulty finding a man willing to make love to her. Joyce knew that she would have no problem in that respect, there were always men who would be willing, and even in New York she had already noticed through her loneliness that there were men who stared at her on street corners, men in the office who would respond gleefully if given the least encouragement. But she didn’t want sex, not especially, not as a purgative or a crutch or anything of the sort. She wanted somebody to talk to.

The subway disgorged her at 4th Street and she hurried up the stairway, heading for home. Home? Not home. The apartment, then. 21 Gay Street. Home.

The day was warm and muggy, the sky overcast, and she was lonelier than ever. She decided all at once to start a conversation with somebody, somebody who lived in her building, man or woman, it didn’t matter, whoever happened to be the first person she saw.

She got to her building but she didn’t go inside. Instead, she sat on the stoop, waiting. Waiting for somebody. Anybody. Anybody at all.

A man was the first one, a man between twenty-five and thirty, with two day’s growth of beard on his face and a weary look in his eyes. He walked up to the building with the distinctive gait of someone who was drunk but not drunk enough to stagger. It was Pete Galton.

She looked at him, scared for a moment to approach him, then remembered her resolution and stood suddenly, her eyes on him. After all, she had made up her mind, she had planned, and she always carried through with her plans, always, whether or not she wanted to. It was the way she was.

He looked at her and the expression in his eyes was not one she could identify. There was something strange about him and she was lost for a moment, unable to say anything.

Then she smiled, a forced smile, and said: “My name is Joyce Kendall. I live in this building.”

His voice was low and surly. “Congratulations,” he said. “Why don’t you find somebody else to say hello to?”

“Go back to Iowa,” he advised her. “Go find a house to haunt. Just so you leave me alone.”

She stepped back without thinking and he walked past her, opened the door with his key and disappeared into the building. She watched until he had disappeared, then again sat down on the stoop, staring out across the street and seeing nothing at all. Obviously she had said something wrong, but what it was that had so thoroughly annoyed him was impossible for her to determine. What could it have been? She was pleasant and decent enough. She wasn’t a girl on the make, a tramp or anything of the sort, and he should have been able to figure that out. He was drunk, of course, she could tell that much, but he wasn’t so drunk that he didn’t know what he was doing. At least he didn’t look that drunk. Then why had he snapped at her?

Maybe he was just a peculiarly obnoxious man. Or maybe he was suspicious of any woman who talked to a strange man. Maybe he thought she was a nymphomaniac, or a prostitute with a unique come-on, or something along those lines. That didn’t seem sensible, but neither did anything else. It was the only rationalization that occurred to her.

She wanted to cry for some unaccountable reason, and she wanted to take his advice and go back to Schwernersville, where people were friendly even if they were dull and narrow. She wanted to go far from New York, far from 21 Gay Street, far from Greenwich Village, very far from the unshaven man with the low voice and the unpleasant words.

Then a girl approached, an attractive girl, and Joyce decided to try again. Perhaps it would be easier with a girl. There would be no chance of a sexual misinterpretation, nothing but casual friendship suggested by her approach. It would be safer with a girl and easier.

The girl was tall, slender, pretty, with dark hair cut short and a good figure and pretty eyes. Again Joyce stood up, forcing a smile. The girl stopped.

“I live here,” Joyce said, “and my name is Joyce Kendall and I just moved to New York and I’m terribly lonely and I just wanted to say hello. If you don’t mind.”

“That’s right. You must have just moved into 2-A. I live right above you. You must be pretty lonely.”

“Sort of. I’m a first reader at Armageddon Publications. Sort of a typist with prestige.”

The girl laughed, a low and easy laugh. “Poor kid,” she said. “Look, you don’t have any plans for tonight, do you?”

“Then come with me,” the girl said. “My roommate’s a good cook and we’ll have plenty for three. You’ll like her—she’s a nice kid. We’ll have a feed and then go out drinking or something. Sound okay to you?”

Joyce brightened. “It sounds . . . fine. If you’re sure I won’t get in the way. I don’t want to put you to any trouble or anything. I mean, I can manage alone if—”

“Hey!” The girl took her arm, the pressure of her fingers simultaneously comforting and disturbing, and led her to the door. “If you’d be getting in the way,” she said, “you wouldn’t have been invited in the first place. Just relax and come on.”

They entered the building and started up the stairs. “I forgot the introduction routine. You said your name was Joyce something-or-other, didn’t you?”

“Joyce Kendall. That’s a nice name, Joyce. My name is Jean. Jean Fitzgerald.”

Jean Fitzgerald didn’t know quite what to make of the whole bit. Here was this girl coming on as gay as a jay, obviously looking for somebody to play house with. And yet there was something wrong. A lesbian had to develop a pretty good sense of instinctual judgment if she wanted to stay on her feet, or be swept properly off them, and if there was one thing Jean’s instinctual sense told her, it was that Joyce Kendall was not gay.

Which confused the issue. Here was a girl, beautiful and eminently desirable, who had introduced herself to a lesbian without seeming to know what she was doing.

The problem, she thought, was to figure out where to go. There was an obvious answer. The place to go was upstairs, where Terri was creating dinner. Then the three of them could sit down and eat, playing it properly straight, and if Joyce Kendall was gay she would let something slip, and if she wasn’t that would be the end of it. That was obvious.

But there was something else that was almost equally obvious. That was that one Jean Fitzgerald had found herself too strongly attracted to one Joyce Kendall in an altogether too short period of time. Jean had an idea, a not-unpleasant idea, of what it would be like to sleep with Joyce Kendall. She felt the desire building subtly within her, and she wondered just what was going to happen if the girl had no interest in horizontal games, if the girl was straight as an arrow and dumb as a lox.

They reached the third floor and Jean banged on the apartment door until Terri came and opened it. Looks passed between them, quick looks that sailed over the head of Joyce Kendall. A look from Terri asked what was happening, and an answering look from Jean said simply Be cool, ask questions later, this one is probably straight and I don’t want to tip her yet. Then, with no loss of momentum, the introductions were made, the small talk was started on its way, and the game began.

The meal was paella, a Spanish shrimp-and-rice concoction that Terri created masterfully. Before dinner they had two Gibsons apiece, drinks that loosened everybody up enough to ease conversation pleasantly but not enough to let cats loose from bags. Joyce talked about college, about New York, about her job, about being lonely, and Jean and Terri remained guarded, cautious, pariahs playing the part of societal pillars.

And all the time Jean’s mind raced, imagining, dreaming, planning . . . and remembering.

She remembered one affair, one case of mistaken identification, one very unpleasant experience in her life that she would have liked to forget forever . . .

She had been out of college for a little over a year, living for a little less than a year with a pretty redhead with big breasts and an incredible sexual appetite, a beautiful girl named Lonnie who filled her with pleasure and drove her mad. Lonnie was bisexual, a roommate and lover who would leave her bed and go to a man, a lovely girl who brought everybody pain. Life with Lonnie was hectic and hellish, and life with Lonnie lasted as long as it did and no longer. Then she was alone, not yet firmly introduced to New York’s lesbian society and tragically alone.

A blonde girl, very very young, not more than eighteen, if that, young and fresh and pretty. They had met—at work, over coffee—and they had had dinner together, and Jean had been so strongly attracted to the girl that she couldn’t stand it. She had half-known that the girl was not gay, that Jean’s hidden meanings sailed past her, that the girl was lost and out of her element. But desire had been the master of reason, or the mistress of reason, and Jean had done something horrible, something she could not yet bear to think about.

Not that first night. Later, two nights later, when the blonde girl named Carole had come to her apartment for dinner and drinks. Skillfully and wretchedly Jean had loaded the drinks, plying the blonde with alcohol until she literally did not know what was happening, literally did not realize what she was doing.

It was a game at first. “Pretend I’m a man,” Jean had said. “Pretend I’m a man and I’m kissing you. Show me how you would kiss me.”

And Jean had taken the blonde girl in her arms and had kissed her, her hot tongue harsh and demanding in Carole’s mouth, her arms taut and unyielding. There had been a buried glimmer of understanding in Carole’s blue child-eyes, and then the glimmer had faded as the alcohol washed over it.

The trip to the bedroom was accomplished easily enough. Then Jean had removed the girl’s clothing, kissing her again, kissing her over and over, exciting the girl until the alcohol and the excitement combined so that the girl was lost forever, lost because Carole did not know that she was with a woman, knew nothing other than that she was receiving pleasure and that the kisses were good and sweet.

Jean had wasted no time. She hated herself, despised herself, but still could not help herself, could not keep her hands from Carole’s plump girlish breasts, could not keep from touching and kissing all the sweetness that was Carole.

Jean did everything to the girl, everything that could be done. Her heart swelled when she saw that the girl enjoyed it as much as she herself did, that her skillful caresses were setting Carole on fire. She showed Carole what to do to bring her the same pleasure and they made love for hours, made love in all the secretive and delicious ways of lesbians, and then they slept.

Jean awoke in an empty bed, remembering, remembering with no passion to conceal the overwhelming rush of guilt. She was glad that Carole was gone, glad that there was no girl there to accuse her with sullen, hurt eyes.

And the worst did come. Not that morning, that cold gray morning when Jean stayed home from work in fear and shame.

The Record carried the story. And it was not a nice story. Not a nice story at all. It was a story about a young girl, a blonde girl, a girl named Carole. Somebody had found her, found her in her own room, at noon, with all her clothing off and her head in the oven.

Jean never went back to work. There was nothing to connect her with Carole’s suicide, nothing to implicate her, nothing to point accusing fingers at her. There was only her own guilt, only the knowledge that, to all intents and purposes, she had murdered Carole as surely as if she had stuck the blonde girl’s head in the oven and turned on the gas herself.

She was a murderess. She had seduced a girl, seduced her into something the girl could only conceive of as foul and inhuman perversion, and after the seduction, Carole had found life impossible.

For several weeks Jean had stayed in the apartment, unable to face the world or to face herself. She remained alone, barely eating enough to remain alive, hating herself and her world and the perversion which made her inhuman, a murderess.

At one point she even toyed with the mad notion of going straight, of abandoning her lesbianism and becoming an ordinary woman again, of finding a man, marrying him and settling down. She even went so far as to pick up a man in a bar with the sole purpose of forcing herself to submit to him, to learn to like heterosexual relations, to become a woman instead of a freak.

She couldn’t go through with it. The man’s touch revolted her. They were in a hotel room he had rented for the express purpose of sleeping with her, and he had her bra off and was squeezing her breasts harshly in his huge hands. She knew what he was going to do and the thought nauseated her. She couldn’t submit, couldn’t let it happen, not to her, not with him.

She told him to stop, and he wouldn’t stop, and finally she had had to stop him. She kicked him square in the groin with all her strength and the man bellowed and pitched forward on his face, holding himself and moaning like a wounded steer.

She was a lesbian and nothing would change that. So she found a girl again and the game began once more. But she had taken a vow. She would make love only with true lesbians, only with girls who had been there before. She would not seduce anybody. There would never be a another Carole.

Dinner was over. Jean looked around the table, at Terri, and at Joyce. Her hands were trembling slightly and her heart was beating strongly. Too strongly.