21 Gay Street

They walked east. Night was filtering down on New York, making its way slowly through the dense and smoky air. The sky darkened. While most New Yorkers lived their entire lives without so much as catching a glimpse of the sky, all New Yorkers knew that the sky was there, and believed in it with the same blind faith with which a man believes there is a God in heaven and gold in Fort Knox.

Periodically, New Yorkers receive evidence of the existence of a sky. When it rains, the rain has obviously come from some place. The sun, which occasionally lights up New York for brief periods of time, also has to come from some place. This mythical place, understood but rarely seen, is called sky.

Now the sky grew dark. The streets were still warm, with the buildings holding in the heat and preventing it from rising. Washington Square was cooler but when they had crossed the park and continued east on Fourth Street, the heat came back again.

She talked and he half-listened. She didn’t really care whether he was listening or not—he was there, and little else mattered to her for the moment. He was there—someone, someone to listen, someone to be with, someone to ease the impossible loneliness. Now he was taking her somewhere—God knew where—and she was going, and she did not know what was going to happen. But she knew that she was not going to be alone, not for a little while anyway, and that was enough for the time being.

He was a good-looking man, she noticed, ruggedly attractive and, well, sexy-looking. She liked the look of his hands and his arms and his face, and she was ashamed to find herself wondering what he would look like if he took his clothing off. The thoughts embarrassed and excited her. She pictured him naked, towering over her, reaching for her with hungry eyes.

The palms of her hands beaded with sweat. God, she thought, I need it more than I thought. I need it from a man, soon. A man who will do it to me and make everything good again. A man like this one. A man with strength and hunger and passion.

The thoughts shamed her, but they also excited her again, and she wondered if perhaps she was abnormal, a freak, a girl who was ready to stretch out on her back the minute a man was sufficiently aware of her to acknowledge her existence.

Maybe she would sleep with him and maybe she wouldn’t. First they were going to a party, and then, if he was nice to her at the party and if she had a good time, then she would let him come inside her apartment for a while. And then hands would grip her breasts and hands would run up under her skirt and touch her and hands would strip her of her clothing and ease her back down onto her bed.

She shivered, then thought again of the impending party, forcing her thoughts away from sex and lust and passion. It would be nice, she decided. It had been a long time since she had gone to a party. She hardly remembered what parties were like.

Maybe, she thought, she would meet some nice people. Maybe once you met people socially, you didn’t keep getting left out of things. A pleasant party, some nice people—then she would be set on her feet again, alive again.

Saint Marks Place was a small street, narrow, relatively pleasant. There was a jazz club on one block, a few art galleries on another block, a church here and there, a political clubroom. He found the address without any trouble and led her inside and up two flights of stairs. He didn’t need to look at the mailboxes or doorbells to figure out which apartment belonged to Fred Koans. All he had to do was follow his ears.

A tall, thin, very dark Negro stood at the door. He looked at the two of them very deliberately, as if trying to determine whether or not they were ones who should pay. Pete caught on at once, left his money in his wallet, and spoke in a low voice, gravelly and soft.

“All girls are named Sandy,” the Negro said. “It’s the most recent development since Shirley. Did you have any particular Sandy in mind?”

“In” was a huge single room, a loft converted into something approaching living quarters. It seemed, however, as though no one lived there. There was only the one room plus a bathroom and that left no place for Fred Koans to sleep, unless he curled up on the cushions that were scattered around the floor. Another possibility occurred to Pete. Maybe the guy was really a professional. Maybe he rented the loft solely for parties and had the intelligence to live somewhere else.

There were perhaps fifty people in the huge room, about a third of them looking like the Sunday supplement stereotype of the beatnik, another third looking as though they had been born in their gray flannel suits. The remaining third just looked like people. Ordinary people.

It wasn’t hard to spot Fred Koans. The man was huge, to begin with. He would have showed up anyplace. He was well over six-four, with a massive barrel chest and forearms like legs of mutton. A huge red beard hung like an oriole’s nest from his face and his moustache curled upward in the handlebar style. His hair was red-brown, a shade darker than the beard, and he had a high forehead.

Of course, since Pete had never received so much as a description of Koans, the man’s appearance was not enough for identification. But there were other subtle clues. There was the large congo drum which he gripped between his knees and pounded in a monotonous but stubbornly catchy rhythm. And, more important, there was the extreme air of command. He, obviously, was the man in charge. You could tell that both by the way he surveyed the room and by the way everyone looked at him.

Pete glanced around again, then remembered suddenly that he was not there alone, that he had brought a girl with him. He was sorry now that he had bothered to bring her. He had noticed a lot of females whom he wouldn’t mind making, and now this chick was along, and he was stuck with her.

She looked at him. Her eyes were wide and it wasn’t too difficult to see that she was greatly impressed by the party. Which was natural enough. The expression on her face, however, indicated that she was enchanted rather than alarmed.

“Cut loose,” he ordered. “Mingle. Walk around. Talk to people. It’s the only way.”

“At these parties,” he improvised, “it’s best not to stay in one place too long. Move around. Get acquainted. Otherwise it looks as though we’re uptown squares or something.”

Which was a strange sort of logic but which evidently made its own kind of sense to her. She nodded dumbly and began to walk away in no particular direction.

He immediately chose the opposite direction and began to see what was happening.

He ran into Sandy, to start things rolling. She was standing in a corner with a thin young man who looked at the world through nearly opaque glasses. He had a bad case of acne.

The girl seemed very willing to turn her attentions from Pimple Puss to Pete. She smiled, a big hello smile, and said she was glad to see he had made it.

“Nope,” he said. “Brought a chick and she didn’t have to pay either. But I’ll forgive you.”

“I wasn’t putting you on,” she said. “Never figured you’d make it on a freebie bit. Who was on the door?”

“You must look sick,” she said. “Aces only lets sick cats in for nothing. I guess you’re sick.”

The Pimply One had happily disappeared. Pete took Sandy in his arms, brought her up close and pressed his mouth to hers. Her tongue was a serpent snaking into his mouth and her arms came around him and held him close. He could feel the burning warmth of her breasts through the thin material of his shirt.

He kissed her again. Then she stepped back, took his hand and pressed it tight against her breast for a few seconds. She dropped it and grinned.

She shook her head. “Not a chance,” she said. “Too many people. Freddie usually gets a turnout of twenty tops. He’s got fifty now. Fifty people try to make a pot scene and the fuzz descends like a ton of crud.”

She grinned. “Like you could put it that way. It’s this new drug, like it’s even legal if you have a prescription. Freddie conned this doctor type into writing for him.”

“Like pot,” she said. “Change your perception of reality. But with a difference.”

She grinned wider than before. “Like a sex stimulant,” she said. “A dose of this and you start to itch and burn a little. And pretty soon everybody’s on the floor with everybody else. It makes quite a party.”

She patted his arm. “You got to give me one more squeeze,” she said, “and then you got to go pick up on a drink. This stuff works fast. Pretty soon things get moving. You don’t want to be left out of it, do you?”

“So squeeze me. Ooooooh, that’s right. Now give a squeeze as hard as you possibly can. Ooooooh! Too much, baby! You go get that drink now before I don’t let you go. Hurry!”

He forced himself to walk away from her and found a long wooden table with paper cups full of liquid set out on it. He took one of the cups and drained it in a single swallow. The cup contained mainly grape juice. He couldn’t even taste the added ingredient.

He didn’t feel any differently but he knew that he would in a moment or two. He walked away from the table, looking for a big-breasted girl to roll around on the floor with.

The Professor was holding court. He was a stringy man with long arms and long legs and a long face, not a real professor at all. As a matter of fact, he made his living as a shoplifter. He was not a snatch-and-grab artist at all, but a very careful and very selective shoplifter. He stole only what he either wanted for himself or knew that he could fence for a good price.

He patronized book stores, department stores, jewelry stores, pawn shops and small neighborhood stores. He worked a wide territory. He made enough money to live comfortably, worked his own hours, and enjoyed his work greatly.

The two men he was talking to, boys really, were apprentices of his. He was working both ends with them, setting up their scores, buying their loot from them and reselling it to his own fence at a profit. The two young men had nothing but respect for the Professor. He was a professional and they were just getting out of the amateur class. They thought he was great.

“The first thing one would notice,” said the Professor, “is the great physical appeal of the girl. You probably have noticed breasts and hips first of all. I trust they have passed inspection. I, on the other hand, have been noticing the face. The face is the most important part. Character and experience show up in the face. She has a good face.”

The two men nodded. As the Professor had guessed, they were now noticing Joyce Kendall’s face for the first time. But the breasts and hips had already made a tremendous impression upon both of them.

“If you look at the face,” the Professor continued, “and if you are an astute observer of such things, you can discover a good many things about the girl. Insights into her personality, her background, her moral character.”

“Don’t be coarse,” the Professor said. “Essentially, that is what I was referring to. There are other things to be learned as well. Would you care to hear me enumerate them?”

“To begin,” the Professor said, “the girl is not a native of this city. She is from another part of the country, probably the Midwest. She has been in New York a short period of time. Less than a month, I would guess.”

“In addition,” said the Professor, “she has no idea of the true purpose of this party. She is wandering around lost, digging everything because it’s real, as it were. If she had any idea that she is going to conclude this evening in an incredibly physical manner, she would be greatly surprised, if not horrified.”

The Professor sighed. “She has not had much experience but she is a passionate girl. She shall enjoy it. She shall feel uncomfortable about it in the future, but she shall enjoy it.”

“All this,” the Professor assured them. “Now I have a suggestion to make to the two of you. You may be interested and you may not. Would you like to hear what it is?”

The Professor sighed wearily. “As you may have guessed,” he said, “I find this girl intriguing. I think of her as something special. She excites me.”

“Of course,” said the Professor. “In turn. Each, needless to say, in a different manner. For the sake of variety. We wouldn’t want to bore the poor girl.”

The Professor sighed again. Why was it, he wondered, that he was doomed to have dolts for associates? The answer, he decided quickly, was simple. Dolts were easier to exploit.

“I shall approach her,” he went on. “I’ve watched her take one drink so far. Soon she shall have had five more drinks. That makes a total of six,” he added. He always liked to spell things out for his associates. Even arithmetic gave them a hard time on occasion.

“That’s one hell of a lot, Professor. A girl has six of those and she’s out on her ear. I mean, you could put it like the sex urge is all she’s got left. Like she turns into a sex machine.”

“My boy,” said the Professor fondly, “if you would listen for just a moment, I will fill your ears with a dose of eternal wisdom that will ease your lot in life immeasurably.”

“Just this,” said the Professor. “If you keep your mouth shut at all times you will find it considerably more difficult to plant your foot in it.”

The Professor smiled briefly, an engaging smile, and walked over to Joyce Kendall.

Fred Koans gripped the congo drum tight between his knees and pounded it furiously. He dug himself on drums. He liked the punishing feel of the taut leather under his hands, the way his fingers stung pleasurably from the blows, the resonance of the drum, the pulsing monotony of the beat.

He looked around the large loft and was happy. The stuff in the grape juice was a good idea—better than pot, legal, cheap. A good idea.

In one corner, a man and a woman had already gotten started. They were well on their way. Both were still fully dressed, but the man’s hand was already under the girl’s skirt and the girl was obviously enjoying what he was doing.

Two other girls had already removed their sweaters. They were not with men yet but they were attracting attention. One of them had large breasts. The breasts were not perfectly shaped but the quantity compensated for the slight lack of quality. The girl was walking around looking like a free and unfettered spirit.

Fred Koans was happy. To begin with, there was better than two hundred bucks in the till. The loft rented for forty a month. Twenty for refreshments and twenty more to the cop on the beat. That left a hundred and a half, maybe a little more, for the private use of one Fred Koans.

It was his biggest party so far, the most nicely attended, and Fred Koans loved to throw parties. Before he had devised the miraculous gambit of throwing beat parties for squares to buy their way into, he had thrown beat parties that didn’t net him a cent. Hell, they cost him money.

It was worth it because Freddie was the perfect host. A good host is a person who enjoys being a host, not somebody who gives a party just to pay back previous hosts. A good host enjoys watching people drink his liquor and have a good time.

There was never a better host than Freddie. He stationed himself at the bongo drums at the beginning of the evening and didn’t get up until the end of the evening if he could help it. He stayed where he was, drumming away and watching his friends have a good time. That was what he liked best.

Other cats threw parties. But they weren’t like Freddie. Other cats would try to pick up on chicks themselves, to cut out some of the guests.

He stayed at the drum, beat the drum, watched the people, watched them having a good time.

Watched them take off their clothing and kiss each other and stroke each other and rub up against each other. Watched them neck and pet and feel and kiss. Watched them get down on the floor on a cushion or not on a cushion. Watched them make love.

Because, you see, that was Freddie’s kick. He liked to watch people. It was much more fun for him than doing anything, you see.