Chapter 9
In the next three months Jim Benton grew to like his work more and more. And at the same time he was less and less satisfied with his salary. While it was certainly true that the work he was doing was not what he'd set out to do, it was still interesting and rewarding.
Perhaps it was for the best that his life had taken this particular tack. If he'd moved into some other phase of the newspaper's operation he might have rapidly become disgusted with the work. The writing of trash newspaper stories and articles was certainly less honorable and rewarding than was success as a businessman.
Conklin formally named him advertising manager. But the official title wasn't worth any more money in his pay envelope. And Conklin had been leaving more and more of the remailing service in Jim's capable hands.
The remailing was another thing Jim really enjoyed. Of course, the dull routine was still the same, but somehow it gave him a feeling of power to know that he was the instrument through which many people got together.
Out there in the world were lonely and sick souls whom he helped to bring together so they could share their miseries and their aberrations. At first he'd taken no moral position whatsoever. Then, later, he realized that there was no coercion, no seduction, here.
The people who corresponded and got together were adults. Whatever they did, and he guessed that some of the things were pretty wild, they did by mutual consent. That was no one's business but their own.
In a curious way Tim came to feel a benevolent and paternal interest in his correspondees. This interest evidenced itself in the way in which he read those letters sent in to phony box numbers.
That was the one part of the operation he didn't like. It was patently dishonest to lead people on like that. The poor souls who wrote those letters prayed that they would be answered. Sure, they were only out a dollar by answering the phony ads. But who could calculate the growing disappointment as day after day there was no reply awaiting them in the mailbox.
Most of the letters to the dead box numbers were only slightly less circumspect than the ads themselves. And a surprising number of the letters used the exact wording from the ads. People described themselves in broad and general terms and only hinted at the exact nature of their interests.
A few of the letters were surprisingly frank and Jim was amazed that people would bare themselves so totally to absolute strangers. After all, the repliers had no idea who had placed the ads in the first place. And they all included complete return addresses. Those people were inviting blackmail.
Jim often wondered how many of the real ads were leads for blackmail and other rackets. But, then, anyone stupid enough to write letters like that to complete strangers had only himself to blame. The smart ones said, right on paper, that they would be more frank once they knew the other parties better.
And in every batch of dead letters there was always bound to be one from a real screwball. These were usually frank letters, using four-letter words and sometimes even enclosing unusual photos. Jim wondered what sort of person got his kicks by taking a nude photograph of himself and sending that through the mails to a total stranger.
He was always glad to throw away those letters.
As advertising manager of the newspaper he took it into his head one day to run a little spot check on some of the-more questionable-appearing advertisements. He took an issue of the paper home with him one Friday afternoon and went over it carefully. He already knew which ads weren't worth bothering with.
The ads from concerns with which he had contact were not the ones he was interested in. He wanted the ads that came from out of town, with checks signed by people of whom he'd never heard. You could always tell by the letter, by the ad itself, and by the check, which was a legitimate business and which was some fly-by-night operator. He was interested in the fly-by-nights.
After supper that Friday night he sat down with the paper and made up a list. Two hours later, when the list was complete, he was surprised at the size of it. More than half the commercial advertisements were questionable.
He wasn't making this check with any intention of taking any action. It was simply that he was curious. He went through his list and cut it down. It was out of the question for him to write fifty or sixty letters. He eliminated the ads that had been running for quite a while, the ones that offered only girlie pictures or nudist films, and the ones which were bigger and more elaborate than the minimum size.
This cutting down still left more than twenty addresses on his list and it took most of the week end for him to get the letters written. He was careful to make each letter different and unique and in each one he posed as a prospective purchaser of whatever product or service the advertisement offered.
A good many of the ads required sums of money to be included in the initial letter, such sums ranging from twenty-five cents to five dollars. These fees supposedly covered the cost of mailing and handling catalogues and samples. Of the more than twenty letters, fully one quarter were to be sent to Canadian addresses. Four went to Europe, two to England and one each to France and Germany. And included in the list were three clubs whose ads stated that members were all interested in the unique, unusual, and bizarre.
One week went by before Jim received his first response. This was a catalogue of photo-fiction books designed to appeal strictly to transvestites. Ir the next two days there were no answers. Then, on the third day, there were four. The following day there were five.
The mail began to flood in. Most of the material was far less daring and unusual than the ads had claimed. However, there were two offers of stag films which appeared to be legitimate. In one offer, the letterhead included four illicitly suggestive pictures. In the other there was included a three inch strip of eight millimeter film. By using an eight millimeter splicer-editor Jim was able to view the sample strip of film. The few frames were part of a sequence in which a naked girl was about to climb up onto a bed upon which lay a naked man.
Jim made note of the addresses of those two firms, intending to talk to Tommy Guising about them the next time he saw his friend. The only other responses of any interest came from the clubs.
All three turned out to be correspondence clubs which offered a coding and remailing service much like the one offered by the Gotham Whisper. There were, however, several advantages in the clubs which the newspaper could not offer. All three clubs seemed to operate on a similar pattern.
There was a membership fee which entitled the member to place an ad and have all mail forwarded to him. The fee also covered copies of the club bulletin. And, if a member wished to reply to another member, he got a discount rate for handling.
The advantages of a club over the newspaper were these: It cost a lot less to run an ad in the club bulletin. Instead of five dollars per issue, the fee covered the full cost for the term of membership; for a small additional fee a member could have his picture published along with his advertisement. For attractive people this was a great advantage. And, perhaps most important of all, since this was a strictly private operation with direct mailing only-the bulletins were not sold on newsstands or anywhere else-members were assured of the maximum security.
Jim was even more curious now. He filled out an application and joined one of the clubs. The address was in a small town out in Illinois and he wondered what he was going to get for his five dollars.
While he waited for a further reply he noticed a curious thing. He'd sent out twenty-odd letters, and so far he'd received almost forty replies. There must be a great traffic in mailing lists in this business.
A week went by and when there was no response from the club Jim put it out of his mind. He was out five dollars. It wasn't .such a big deal.
In the office things were building toward a clash between Jim and Conklin. The old man was giving Jim more and more responsibility but he wasn't willing to give him any more money. The way it. was now Jim was practically running the paper. He handled all the advertising and was in complete charge of the remailing service.
Jim was dissatisfied about other things, too. For a while after that double date with Tommy Guising and the two show girls, and felt no loneliness. He'd seen Johanna several times after that-always with the most delightful results. And when she'd taken an out of town job he'd managed to get a few dates with Rita with equally satisfying results.
But then Rita had gone out of town, too, and he was back where he'd started from. For some unexplainable reason he didn't want to meet any more girls through Tommy, either. As Guising became deeper and deeper involved in his racket Jim came to like him less and less. There had always been an amusing and harmless charm about Tommy's dealings and manipulations. That charm was gone now, leaving behind only a coarseness and a toughness that Jim didn't like.
Yet he was frustrated and disturbed that after nearly a year in New York he had no social contacts. Female flesh was always available for someone who only required an evening's release, but for Jim that was too much like buying your groceries by the pound. He wanted more than that.
Friends, social contacts, meant more than just women and bed. There was no cameraderie with men, either. There was no one in the entire city with whom Jim could just sit and talk about anything under the sun. He missed an association with a family, something he'd had little of in his life. He wanted to be able to go to a friend's home for dinner, to play with the friend's children and joke with his wife.
Jim was beginning to feel the need for substance, for marriage and roots, though right then he would have settled for only friendship.
He remembered that the writing of the letters had not been an unpleasant way to spend the week end. The contact, even by letter, with other human beings, even for those doubtful purposes, had given him a good feeling.
So, one afternoon he went through the remailing files and picked out several names. When he got home that evening he sat down and wrote six letters. All were to people in the metropolitan area. Four of the letters went to couples and the other two went to single women advertisers.
In each letter he described himself truthfully and stated that he felt his interests were similar to those of the advertisers. He was polite, circumspect, and discreet. He wrote the letters, he told himself, because he was curious to know the kind of people who ran ads in newspapers.
While he was waiting for replies he received his membership in the club. He read the bulletin with interest, amazed to discover that the club had more than three thousand members. There were several ads which interested him but he wanted to hold off taking any action until he had gotten some sort of response from the first six letters. If he got no action, as long as he'd already paid for membership he just might run an ad in the club bulletin. He had nothing to lose.
At the end of another month Jim had received only one reply from the six original letters. But that one was promising. It was from a couple named Larry and Josie Brooks. They were a fairly young couple. He was twenty-nine and she was twenty-five. Larry was an engineer with a big company. They had no children and lived in Westchester County.
In their letter they told Jim they had a small circle of select friends and were interested in adding a few people to the group. And, as there were already a couple of Josie's single girl friends in the group, a couple of single men were needed.
The letter suggested that Larry and Jim meet one evening in the city and look one another over. Neither side would be committed and no decisions had to be reached immediately.
The Brooks's and their friends got together about once every two weeks. They were modern, uninhibited, free-thinking people who were interested in photography, nudism, and artistic things.
There was a phone number at the bottom of the letter and a postscript requesting Jim to call one evening to set up an appointment for the meeting. Or, if he didn't want to move that quickly he might wish to correspond further and perhaps exchange photos.
Jim was eager to meet these people and he phoned the same evening he received the letter. A woman answered. Jim introduced himself and asked for Larry Brooks.
"Oh," the woman said. "You're the fellow we wrote to. I'm Josie Brooks."
"How do you do."
"I'm sorry," she said. "Larry isn't home right now and I don't expect him until quite late tonight. Are there any questions you have that I could answer over the phone?"
"Well, I don't know. Your letter was pretty general. I'm not one hundred oer cent sure I understand what you mean when you state your interests."
"Oh! I guess you'd better talk to Larry about that. And that's much easier in person."
"I understand," Jim said. "Look, let me give you my phone number. Your husband can call me at that number any time up to midnight tonight and any time after five tomorrow afternoon."
"I think that would be best," the woman said. She left the phone for a moment to get a pencil, then took down the phone number. "Thank you very much for calling, Mr. Benton. Good night."
"Good night."
Jim was a little disappointed. He'd hoped to set up a meeting. He settled down for the evening with a paperback novel and read until nine o'clock when he was disturbed by the ringing of the telephone.
"Hello," he said when he picked up the receiver. "Hi, this is Larry Brooks."
"Oh, hello. I didn't expect to hear from you tonight."
"I just called home and Josie told me you'd called. She gave me the phone number. Since it was still early I decided not to wait until tomorrow."
"Good. I'm very anxious to meet you."
"Your letter gave us a pretty complete description," Brooks said, "but there if one thing I'd like to know."
"What's that?"
"What kind of work do you do?"
"I'm advertising manager for a ... uh ... for a sales corporation." Jim didn't want to tell the other man he worked for the newspaper. It might make him suspicious with no real cause. "I'll tell you the name of my company if you insist," Jim went on, "but I'd rather not, if you don't mind."
"No. Not at all. I understand A man has to be very careful. Look, when can we get together?"
"You name it. I'm free most every evening."
"Well then, how about tomorrow night?"
"Fine with me."
They arranged to meet for dinner at a midtown restaurant at six o'clock.
"I guess you're wondering why I asked about the kind of work you do," Brooks said when the arrangements had been completed "I was trying to find out if you're a college man. You know, we're much more likely to be compatible with one another if our backgrounds are similar."
"I did go to college but I never graduated," Jim confessed. "I had two years before I went into the service."
"That's what I wanted to know. It's fine. The degree doesn't really mean anything. Well, my train is pulling out in a couple of minutes. I'll see you tomorrow night."
Jim spent a restless night and was increasingly on edge as the next day wore on. After work he went home, showered, shaved, and changed into his best suit for the meeting.
At ten minutes after six he entered the restaurant. He gave Brooks's name to the waiter and followed the man to a table. Brooks was already there. He rose, they shook hands, and they both sat down. Jim ordered a cocktail and the waiter went away.
Brooks was a distinguished looking man, prematurely gray at the temples, tall, well-built, and with a rugged countenance. The black-framed glasses he wore could not disguise a nose that had been broken. He was a college man, but not any Ivy Leaguer. The Midwest, Jim guessed. And the twisted nose was probably a football injury.
Jim felt himself under a similar scrutiny and hoped he was making a proper impression. Brooks broke the silence.
"You're younger than we imagined," he said.
"I wrote my age in the letter."
"I know. But somehow you look younger than your letter sounded."
"Is that good or bad?"
Brooks laughed and both men relaxed. "I'll tell you a secret," he said. "I'm a little nervous, too. Tell me a little more about yourself."
"There's not much to tell," Jim said, taking the first sip of his drink. "When I left college I went into the Army for three years And when I got out of the Army I came to New York and got a job. I've been here a little more than a year now but I haven't made any real friends. I saw your ad. I wrote to you. And here we are."
"I know what you mean about friends," Brooks said. "That's the way Josie and I met most of the people in our little group. We were strangers here in New York and couldn't seem to get in with a crowd. We answered an ad, too. Since then, of course, we've had some friends move to New York and join the group."
The conversation was interrupted when the waiter came to take their dinner orders and they didn't pick it up again until the mea! was served. In the interim Brooks suggested a second round of cocktails but Jim begged off.
"I'm not much of a drinker," he said.
"Well, neither are we."
Once they were safe from interruptions by the waiter they began to talk again.
"Josie told me you had some question about our interests."
"Well, yes. The things you mentioned were pretty general. Could you be more explicit?"
"I'll try. Perhaps it would make things clearer if I made a few general statements first."
"All right."
"Good. To begin with, we're nonconformists. We have values and opinions different from most people. For instance, we don't believe people can grow and mature if they limit their relationships, physical and intellectual, only to their marriage partners. My wife and I love each other and the freedom we have keeps that love going."
"I understand," Jim said.
"Fine. Now to specifics. The people in our group are nudists. But not the nature camp, sun worshipping kind of nudists. We just like to take our clothes off with other people. And we like to take pictures of one another when we're undressed. We have almost a thousand feet of movie film and two full photo albums. Does anything so far shock you?"
"Not at all."
"Good. Basically, I guess, you could say we're hedonists. We believe in pleasure-in the pursuit of pleasure and in the enjoyment of pleasure. There's no petty, middle-class morality, no inhibitions. We get together and we have good times and that's about all there is to it. There's not much more I can tell you."
"How many people are there in your group?" Jim asked.
"About fifteen or so. We're very informal. There're no rituals, no set ways of organizing things. Not everyone shows up at every get-together. We just meet and let things happen. Now, what do you think?'"
"I'm very interested," Jim said frankly. "I'd like to join your group. And how do I measure up?"
"Oh, I made up my mind about that the minute I saw you. I liked you right off. You'll fit right into our group."
"Whew! That's a relief," Jim said, leaning back in his chair.
Brooks returned his smile. "Have you ever been a member of a group like ours before?"
Jim shook his head. "No Why?'"
"Well, sometimes it takes a little getting used to. If you like, I can arrange for a small party with only a few other people before you meet the entire group."
"You must be reading my mind," Jim said.
"I was the same way. Neither Josie nor I slept for two nights before our first party. I know what that can be like. I'll tell you what. I want to make a phone call. When the waiter comes by order me a cup of coffee."
Brooks left the table. Jim caught the waiter as he hurried by and ordered two coffees. When Brooks returned to the table Jim had already finished his coffee and was smoking a cigarette. Brooks was smiling.
"Everything's all set," he said.
"What's all set?"
"I just called Josie and told her I was bringing you home with me. She's going to make a few phone calls and get a couple of people to come over."
"Tonight!"
"Sure, Why not? You can take the train in with me in the morning. It gets you into town by a quarter of nine. We can be at my house by seven-thirty or a quarter of eight. We'll have the whole evening ahead of us."
Jim shrugged. "As you said, why not!"
Brooks insisted on paying for the dinner and also insisted that Jim call him Larry. They caught a cab to the railroad station and just managed to catch an outbound train.