Zippers

It was the sound of his zipper that eventually got to me. The urgency of its short, quick cry that started to make me wince.

“I’ve only got a short time tonight, honey,” he’d say. “Let’s make this quick.”

Then he’d stepped out of his pants, drop his shorts and stand there looking foolish and needy.

Whatever happened to my stud muffin? The wannabe actor. The man who used to undress me with his teeth and make me feel so weak in the knees that I thought I’d been drugged.

I couldn’t believe the effort he would put into making me feel that good. But that’s all he seemed to want to do. Please me.

I figured it was because he could do to me what his wife wouldn’t let him do in their own bed. And, boy did he do it all. Backwards, forwards, upside down and around again. He’d leave this girl breathless, and then walk out the door with a big smile on his face and a dance in his step.

He didn’t use drugs. He didn’t drink. At least not around me. And he never tried to hurt me. Not once. He had a delicate, workman-like technique to his love making. He took pride in his efforts and wasn’t leaving till the job was over and the customer was satisfied.

I first met him during the early Kennedy years. The summer of 1961. He had a wonderful blue collar charm. That first night he stood over me in bed and did a dead-on Kennedy impersonation.

‘Ask not what your vagina can do for you! Ask what you can do for your vagina!'

I laughed till I cried.

Then he’d nestle his head between my legs and make my head spin.

It was like that until the assassination. Then he changed. I would smell the liquor on his breathe and watch as he fumbled his way out of his clothes. Then he became like the others. Nameless sweaty grunts. I’d lay there as they tended to business, looking over their shoulder, trying to concentrate on a movie that was playing on the portable black and white TV on the motel dresser. Usually something with Bette Davis or Joan Crawford. It was my main source of entertainment at the time.

He was the only one I ever thought I might marry. But customers don’t marry their whores. So I was told.

The last time I heard from him was in 1964. He could barely make it up the stairs and when he banged on the door I wouldn’t let him in. I just let him bang until he went away.

The next morning I took a bus from New York to Baltimore. It would take me a lot of years before I got wise enough to leave the business. Ten more to be exact. Then one afternoon I’m watching TV with the cat when I saw him again.

He was in a soap opera. Playing a lecherous gynecologist by the name of Dr. Jonathan Weller. He was saying to a patient in a mock Kennedy voice, ‘Ask not what your gynecologist can do for you! Ask what you can do for your gynecologist!'

I laughed till I cried.