Chapter 9
He called on Cora, and found her the same as she had been when he left, almost exactly as she had been that night of graduation. Her parents were as cordial to him as they were all the time. They went to a show, and after that they went to his mother's apartment. His mother had purposely taken a night job in private nursing that week to be certain they would have the place free.
His cock burned for her. He wanted that body which had so often tantalized him more than he wanted anything else in the world. She was ready for him, too, hungering after his flesh like a hot bitch in the middle of a summer night.
She kissed him as soon as he had the door closed, ran her fingers inside his pants and fondled his huge cock. There were no barriers here, nothing to hold him from getting naked and screwing her till she was exhausted from the pleasure she felt.
Soon they both were naked, squirming one against the other in the big double bed of his mother's room. His cock was like steel, hard and protruding, and it wiggled on his crotch as he shook her from side to side by his caresses and his fooling with her body.
Her luscious tits felt the male touch of his fingers rubbing into their mounds. When he got to her nipples she jerked.
Indeed, she had jerked several times. He knew from the past that meant she was having what she needed, that she was going to be hot for him when they finally got to the real fucking. Her tits were gorged with blood already, hard and sticking straight into the air. He ran his finger over them and gave her nipples great touches with it. She squealed with delight when he did that. The feelings he drove into her were superb, maddening her with the hot lust that she had come to bear with him. Her naked flesh writhed freely against his own, not ashamed of her cunt, not ashamed of anything, only wanting him more than ever, desiring him, her lover come home, with the desire that had haunted her pussy for so long.
He knew it never mattered to her whether any other cock got into her passages. When she was with him she was happy, and that made the difference. Another cock might give her the physical pleasure that she needed, but he was the only man who could reach her heart in the secret places that even she did not know existed.
Her caresses to his balls kept his cock steel-hard the whole time they rolled together. She sunk to his crotch on a sudden, soothing his pole with wet touches from her tongue, running that fleshy organ along the black stem that grew in his V.
Her hands fingered his balls while she sucked at his throbbing cock. This was glory for him, was fantastic from the beginning to the very end. At the same time that she ministered to his balls and his cock she whipped three fingers into his ass-hole, stretching him a lot, and soothing him even more. The touch of her digits against his walls drove mass waves of pleasure all through his naked flesh.
He noticed how her black skin contrasted with the white color of the sheet. He felt at home here, with his own color under him and fucking him. No matter how much he lusted for Vicky and her white flesh, he knew he still had a long way to go before he was free from his own fears and passions.
His balls tingled as Cora stroked them endlessly, fooling her fingers about and thrilling him for all she was worth. He wanted to screw her till the middle of the next day and all into the night. Her fingers in his ass-hole had a good hold on his pleasure by then, and what she did to his cock with her lips and her tongue was undeniably sensual.
Sometimes she paused in her tongue strokes and her hp-massaging to give his turgid tip a few nips with her teeth, jolting him back to the reality that he was fucking a woman who knew how to handle her body. His swollen cock called to him to get inside her and stroke her to pleasure, at the same time experiencing the lust which would drive him to his own climax.
He reached into her cunt, contorting himself to reach that honeyed channel, and discovered she was well-lubricated. No longer did he have to hold back from his desires. He plunged into her pussy with all the force he could bring against her. Her squeals and shakings told him he was doing a hell of a good job.
Over and over he drilled his streaking pole into her walls, rejoicing in the tight feeling against his naked cock when she contracted her membranes as he shoved into her depths. The sensuality of her affection was surpassed by nothing he knew. Her pussy was supreme and delightful, and he wished they could get along outside of bed as well as they did inside of it.
His heart beat with the passion in him. He stroked her hungering snatch with fire and brimstone, drove massive sheets of pleasure all through her so that she was writhing under him with the fiery lust that he had released from her cunt.
Her kisses rallied him, made him more certain that she loved him better than any other man she knew. The touch of her tongue against his outer lips drove him mad, and he hastened the thrusts that he gave her snaking tunnel, for he wanted to get her to her come as soon as he possibly could.
Again and again he plunged his fiery shaft deep into the burning recesses of her well-oiled, tight cunt. His desire was to soothe her so well that she could come at the exact same time he did.
His caresses had their effect on her, and simultaneously, they flooded her walls with their juices. His cock spewed forth the hot gobs of his gism with the flashing shoots of electrical pleasure rippling through every corner and hallway of his nude body.
Cora's back arched several times while she struggled in the overpowering throes of her come. This was the man she wanted, the one she felt should be hers, but she knew that there was a scar in their hearts that might never be able to be healed, no matter how well they fucked together.
Incredible desire for another fuck overtook her, and she started in on his cock and his balls again.
The night went swiftly for them. He began to see her regularly from that day on, and the relationship was almost as if it had not been broken by his trip to the war.
The next Friday he woke from an afternoon slumber to answer the ringing phone. To his surprise he was talking to his old friend Marty Brandon, one of his best buddies from the war. They had come back on the same plane together, and they had exchanged addresses in case Perry was in St. Louis or Marty in New York.
"How are you?" Perry asked.
"Just great. I'd really like to see you."
"Sure as hell," Perry answered. "We can get together, but tell me where you are so I'll know where to go to meet you."
"At the YMCA. Sloane House. Do you know where that is?"
"Yes. On 34th Street. You're by yourself then?"
"You said it. I don't need a chaperone for what I'm looking for."
Perry could picture Marty's big square grinning face. "How long will it take you to get here? I'm ready to put on my drinking clothes."
"Gosh, Marty, I can't come down now. I've got a date for the rest of the day."
"Great! Has she got a girl friend for me?"
What the hell was the matter with Marty? Had he forgotten Perry was black?
"Not that I know of," he said, feeling trapped again in a situation which he could not control.
"Well, that doesn't matter, Perry. As long as she's old enough to go drinking with us. There certainly are plenty of girls around from the little I've seen of your town."
"What time did you get in?"
"About an hour ago. I should have been here earlier, but the bus got slowed down on the way."
"Look," Perry said, "I'll have to see what I can do to change my plans. You go out and explore the town this afternoon. I'll meet you at the Y about six o'clock. Is that okay?"
"Well, why not? Well still have most of the weekend to raise hell. I'm not going back before Monday morning."
"Okay, Marty. I'll see you there in the lobby at six."
Changing plans with Cora was easier than he had expected. Of course, she was not interested in going drinking with him and a Marine buddy. And, although she did not say it, Perry knew she would never consider going out socially in the company of white people. She didn't act hurt or insulted, but he felt she was a little less responsive in his bed that afternoon. More passive, as though she were doing it for him, rather than for herself, as well.
Marty Brandon was waiting in front of the big Sloane House building when Perry walked up.
Even in his Marine uniform, Marty was a big, freckle-faced farm boy, gaping at the parade of passing people, staring at the traffic and the buildings, and smiling like a kid who had been let loose in the circus.
He didn't seem to see Perry until he had called the Midwesterner's name, and then there was a double-take before they shook hands.
"Where's your uniform?" Marty asked. "For heaven's sake, if you're a Marine you got to be a Marine."
"It's at home," Perry answered. "For this month, I'm not a Marine. As my mother says, I'm on vacation. These are my vacation clothes. Didn't you bring any civvies with you?"
"Sure, but only to wear if I had to have my uniform cleaned."
"I think you'd be better off wearing them."
"You mean the civvies?"
"Yes."
"Why? Don't they like Marines in this city?"
"It isn't that," Perry said. How could he tell him how uncomfortable he felt? "I was thinking of taking you to visit some friends down in the Village, and the uniform would be kind of out of place there."
"What's the Village?" Marty asked.
"Greenwich Village. It's an old section of New York, very arty and mod and swinging. They don't do things the way the rest of the world does, and they think the service and the war is for the birds."
"Well, then, the hell with them, Perry. Who wants to get with people like that?"
"They're great people, Marty." Here he was defending the very ones he had spent the whole week avoiding. "Great for a good time. You can do anything you want and say anything you want when you're with them. And, there's plenty of sex for the taking."
"Then let's go!"
"We will. But honestly, the uniform will be a drawback."
"You mean I can't tell any of them I'm in the Corps?"
"Sure you can. But let them judge you by what you really are like. The uniform kind of hides the real person. You know that."
Marty looked a bit unhappy about it, but then he smiled his little-boy grin. "Okay," he-said. "If the Corporal says that's the way to 'do it, that's the way I'll do it. You want to come up to the room with me?"
Perry had noticed a neon sign down the street.
"No," he said. "I think I need a" drink to start off with. See that bar down the block? I'll meet you there. Make it as fast as you can."
Marty made his clothing change fast. Within an hour the two of them were well on their way to getting plastered.
Perry knew he was using the alcohol to steel himself against whatever their trip to the East Village would entail. He chided himself for being afraid of seeing Al and his friends without being quite sure what it was that seemed to be threatening.
Conversation was a great distraction from Perry's problems. They talked about everyone in their company, including those who had been killed. They recalled some of the toughest moments of patrol, fire fights, VC attacks; but, in retrospect, Perry could no longer sense the terrible fear and despair which had engulfed him overseas. Was it possible that New York was really more frightening than Vietnam? Was there more to hurt him here in his own home town than there had been in that shapeless jungle of a country?
By the time they took the subway downtown, he found himself looking forward to seeing Al, and the others, too. Vicky and Olivia and Margaret. He had a buddy with him, tonight; things seemed suddenly safer.
They came up to the street again at the same spot, where he'd arrived that first r ght last week. And, sure enough, there was the same little bright-eyed, black-faced shoeshine boy plying his trade next to the subway stairs.
"I want you to meet a friend of mine," Perry said to Marty, and led him over to where the youngster was standing by his working equipment.
The boy looked up at him. "Shine?" he asked.
"You bet," Perry answered. "I've come to get the thirty-five cent special you promised me the other night."
The kid looked closer, and his smile got broader.
"Yes, sir!" he exclaimed. "You the one that gave me the quarter, aren't you?" Perry nodded.
"How did you make out that night?" He started to get out bottles, rags and brushes.
Perry felt the irony twist down deep inside of him.-"You were right, son. I didn't do so well."
"I told you! I told you! It takes a real spit shine to get 'em every time."
"I think you're right."
"You better believe it," the little guy said, sounding oddly wise and adult. "Is this man with you?" he motioned at Marty.
Perry nodded.
"You better tell him to get a shine, too. Unless he don't want to get a girl, he better have the best kind of shine in the Village."
"Do you want to get a girl, Marty?" Perry asked.
"Yeah, I sure do."
"Then you better get a thirty-five cent special shine from my friend, here."
Marty looked down at his own shoes, as brilliantly polished as Perry's had been the other night.
"Doing it yourself doesn't count," Perry said, before Marty could object. "It's not the same thing. You have to let the expert do it." He looked at the boy. "Right."
"Right!"
When the youngster was finished with both shines, Perry gave him a dollar, and told him to keep the change. The kid followed them almost to the corner thanking them, but not forgetting to remind them to come back on their next trip to the Village.
"Isn't he awful young to be out on the streets working like that?" Marty said, when they were out of the boy's hearing.
"Maybe," Perry answered, "but I don't think he's as young as he looks. In any case, it's honest work, and whatever money he makes, I'm sure his family can use it. He's a real good salesman, too. He reminds me of my little brother Mike, when he was younger."
"Did Mike work as a shoeshine boy, too?" Marty asked.
It had been a perfectly innocent question, Perry knew, but suddenly his insides tensed up and that anger he had lost the last few days began to build again. He glanced sideways at Marty. So close and yet so far away. They had been buddies of the best kind during the whole Nam tour, sharing danger, the possibility of death, hope, food, drink, and, on one occasion, a girl. They knew an enormous number of facts about each other's lives; statistics of parents, siblings, events. But they might just as well have been total strangers for the amount of understanding which existed between them.
Their worlds were separated by much more than just the geographical distance between where each was born and brought up. It was the bottomless chasm of color difference. The enormous space which existed between black and white. It was a goddam shame, but it was so.
He finally answered Marty's question in the same spirit in which it had been asked.
"No, Mike didn't have to do that," Perry said. "We were never in want for money."
"That's good," Marty answered. "I hate to think of little kids being forced to work. When you're little, that's the time to have fun."
They found a restaurant, and had a drink at the bar while waiting for a table.
Marty couldn't get over the types of people that they had passed on the street. "It looks a lot like Halloween, don't it? Where do they find those get-ups they're wearing?"
"I couldn't tell you." Perry said, shrugging. "It's all new to me, too."
"If anyone dressed like that in my home town," Marty said, "I think they'd be run in on some kind of suspicion or other."
"I know what you mean, Marty, but there's a whole new kind of society down here. Everybody dresses and acts the way they please. It has some good points, the way I understand it. If they believe a certain way, that's the way they act. If someone else doesn't like what they do, they don't have to join in. But they also don't have to criticize the other guy for doing his own thing."
Marty took another gulp of his drink. "Well, I certainly don't care, as long as I can have a good time. The only problem is it's sometimes hard to tell if someone is a girl or a boy."
"Well," Perry grinned, "down in this part of town, I'm not sure it always makes a hell of a lot of difference."
"I don't know about them. But it sure makes a big difference to me!"
"Where I'm planning on taking you, Marty, you won't have any doubts about it."
Marty grinned. "In that case, I wish they'd hurry up and get us a table. I don't know how long I can hold out."
Perry wanted to tell him that that was what he had been thinking last week, but that having the urge and the energy didn't always mean you were going to have the opportunity, as well. He thought better of it and said nothing.
About halfway through the meal, it occurred to Perry that he'd assumed Al would be at the apartment, when last Friday Al had stayed late at the newspaper office. He excused himself, and went to the telephone, trying the number of the East Village Alternative first.
Al was there. After a few seconds, he came on the phone.
"Where are you, Perry?" he wanted to know.
"Over on Mac Dougal at a restaurant. I wondered if you were going to be at your apartment later."
"I will be if you will be."
"A buddy of mine from Vietnam is in town. I thought your pad would be the best place to show him what the big scene is here."
"Great. What time will you be over?"
"In about an hour," Perry said, looking at his watch.
"Go straight over there. Someone will be around. Vicky, at least. Or the twins can let you in. I won't be late." Perry didn't want to ask the next question, but he could not hold it in.
"Will Olivia be around tonight?"
"Probably. She works till nine at some imagine dress boutique uptown, but she usually comes down in this direction for her weekend's relaxation."
There was a pause, and Perry thought Al was going to ask him why he wanted to know. He was relieved when all Al said was, "See you later, then. And this time we'll really talk."
It was more than an hour until they finally made it to St. Mark's Place, because Marty wanted to look at every person, and in every window, and at every advertising poster along the route, and was getting higher on the scenery than on the booze he'd been drinking.
"They're just kidding!" was his most often repeated expression. He said it four times in a row just looking at the photographs outside a movie house. He said it about the clothes some people were wearing, about hair styles, ogling miniskirts, and in' reference to a strikingly handsome young man who passed wearing see-through shirt and pants.
The phrase became a stuck needle when they reached St. Mark's Place and its flamboyant shops. On one hand, Perry was smiling to himself at Marty's naive reactions to this special part of the city; but on the other, he felt a growing apprehension. Now they were only steps away from Al's building. Who was up there? How would tonight work out? Was he about to run into another drowning fog "of understanding in which was hidden a solid brick wall of rejection?
"Here we are, Marty," Perry stopped in front of the brownstone steps.
The other young man looked up at the building, and then back along the busy street. He shook his head in amazement, then seemed suddenly thoughtful.
"They all look so friendly," he said. "I bet you could just walk up to some of those girls and say hello, and have yourself a great time for the night."
"I guess you could."
Marty was quiet again for a moment.
"Don't you want to go up?" Perry asked him.
"Oh, sure. That's what we came here for." There was only one way to find out what was bothering his friend.
"Is something wrong, Marty?"
"No, Perry, not wrong. It's just that I kind of-well-forgot something I should have asked you before. I know you'll understand what I mean. I certainly don't want to say anything to insult you."
Perry felt cold inside. "Then, ask it," he said.
"Aw, shit! Okay. Will there be any white girls here at all? I've never gone out with colored girls."