I seized the opportunity to struggle out of his grasp, threw the door open, and was never so relieved to see a policeman in my life.
“What seems to be the trouble?” the two fresh-faced young Irish cops asked. As if they couldn’t see for themselves! My eyes were as big as artichokes, my nose was bleeding like a tap, and my mouth was three times its normal size. I looked like I’d gone five rounds with Sonny Liston.
“Oh, nothing much, officers,” I said. “Just a little family squabble. You know, my boyfriend here had a little too much to drink and got a bit frisky.”
If that looked like a family squabble, we must have looked like the Munster family, because sitting on the floor in full view was my goodie bag with the whips, manacles, and handcuffs all around.
I tried to bend over to pick them up, but the pain in my body made it impossible. Sarah could see what I was trying to do, so she scooped up the stuff and put it in a closet.
“Do you want to press charges, then?” the cops asked.
How could I press charges? I could be hung by the heels from the Empire State Building and not be able to press charges in the business I’m in.
“No, thank you, gentlemen, but if I could ask you to escort him off the premises, I would be very grateful.”
When the police left and the shock wore off, I really started to feel sorry for myself. My hair was falling out in big handfuls, and it almost filled the wastepaper basket. A tooth was chipped, the guy had banged me black and blue in my vagina, and my stomach felt like I just gave birth to a dinosaur.
So far I had kept my cool, but by now I was at breaking point, and I needed a strong shoulder, so I called the contact between me and my boyfriend. Half an hour later Larry came over and took me to the emergency room at the hospital on Seventy-second and York.
And what I went through there, it was a toss-up whether I might have been better just staying at hone. We sat there waiting for half an hour before anybody even bothered to see what was wrong, and then someone came along and asked a whole lot of questions, name, address, education, and whether I had ever been there before, and if so, did I pay my bill.
After about another hour a doctor came by and knocked me on my knee, knocked me on my head, knocked me on my nose, and said: “X rays.”
I was directed into a room where this little Spanish X-ray technician with a black moustache told me to get into a paper robe that opens down the front, and climb onto the table. He watched me undress, and he could hardly believe his eyes when he saw how badly I was beaten.
“My God, whatever happened to you?” he said.
To hell with it, I thought, I might as well tell him the truth in twenty words, no more, and I could use a little sympathy.
“Ah, you know, a little freak scene. I like to turn people into slaves, but tonight the slave turned on the master.”
But sympathy is not what I got. As I glanced out of the corner of my swollen eye, I could see there was a big hard-on in his pants. “Before we start,” he said with a slimy smile, “how about a blow-job?”
With all I’d gone through, all I needed was a horny Puerto Rican X-ray technician at five in the morning! “Baby, get your work done, one animal a night is enough.”
“If you give me a blow-job I’ll give you the X rays free; otherwise it will cost you $100 or $150,” he persisted.
“Forget about it, Charley, quit, split, get on with your work and send me the bill.”
The technician was crushed and disappointed, but not completely discouraged. “All right,” he said. “But can you let me have your card?”
13. AN ADULT TALE; OR: FANTASY AND ME
“I am a four-times married contessa, simply rolling in money left me by my three husbands who have all mysteriously died,” I tell the man sitting fully dressed in my living room.
“My fourth husband is ailing and may not survive the night…”
“Yes, yes, go on, go on,” he urges impatiently in his thin, piping voice. “What happened to these men? Tell me!”
“The first, poor man, drowned right before my eyes in the sea at Deauville. I, uh, sort of held his head under water.
“The second, rest his soul, died an agonizing death when his bedroom caught fire and I could not get the door open to let him out.”
“The third?” he prods.
“He fell over a mountain in Switzerland. I was standing right behind him and saw it happen…”
While I am spinning the story, the man sits there spellbound. His bony hand, shaking from the first states of Parkinson’s disease, goes to his pocket and starts tampering with his cock.
H. Christian Andersen, as he likes to be called, is the scion of one of America’s wealthiest shipping families. He is also one of the biggest-spending weirdos I have ever met.
Weirdos – or sickies – are freaks who prefer much more exotic and ingenious humiliation than the usual masochist. They will pay any amount; sometimes, the more you charge, the happier they are; and some of their scenes would bend your brain.
H. Christian Andersen doesn’t want sex, and he doesn’t want to know you’re a call girl. He wants to believe you’re a rich but chiseling woman. In other words, he comes to a brothel for a different kind of tail – a fantasy tale. An imaginative storyteller, which I can claim to be, can earn a really fat fee from this sickie by spinning out the episodes over a series of days.
“What about the present husband?” Andersen demands to know. “What’s bothering him?”
“Poor man,” I say, “the doctor thinks he ate poisoned caviar. He is in terrible agony and may not last the night, but I’ll let you know what happened when you come back tomorrow.”
He is happy to treat me generously for that little half-hour story, makes his appointment for the following day, and leaves.
I always try my best to give H. Christian Andersen original fairy tales for his money, but if I am distracted and can’t invent one sufficiently intriguing, he will sometimes settle for his old favorite, which is my version of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
In this story I play the role of the vendeuse at Dior’s New York salon and Andersen takes the part of Mrs. Rich-bitch ordering her new fall wardrobe.
On the first day we discuss fabrics and inevitably decide the entire collection will be done in crushed velvet – he adores crushed velvet – and satin. That being established, he pays far more than the standard fees for the consultation, out of which I have to buy the fabrics also. Before he comes back the next afternoon, I send out for ten dollars’ worth of the two fabrics, which he sits and fondles while we plan how we’ll make them up.
“Would you prefer to send the fabrics to Paris to be made by Cardin or Dior, or shall we summon one of them here?” I ask my client. Dior is several years dead, but he doesn’t know that.
“Bring me Dior,” he commands.
“These people don’t come cheap,” I warn him. “Dior will want at least $700 to cross the Atlantic.”
“Hang the expense, bring the man here,” he repeats, and produces his wallet.
Next day when he comes around to meet with Dior I have a very sad story to tell him. Dior’s plane has been grounded on the polar route in Anchorage, Alaska. “He is stranded in a snowstorm; and the cables, limousines, and hotel bills are mounting,” I have to inform him. Naturally, he covers the cost of all that.
While we’re waiting for the couturier to arrive, I make the suggestion that his new clothes would fit better if he had some silicone shots to plump up his breasts. “That is a splendid idea,” he, beams babyishly, and pays for a jab on each side of his chest with an empty syringe.
Eventually the clothes are ready, and I drape the invisible finery around him and assure him he is a vision of sartorial splendor. He settles up his massive account, thanks me profusely, and, goes merrily on his way. Andersen’s non-clothes have cost him dearly, but he is thrilled to pay, and always eager for more tall tales. However, that man has often exhausted my imagination.