Chapter 5
Jaccuri gazed about at the room. Anita had left just fifteen minutes ago and already the glow she had brought with her was gone. The sight, sound and smell of her had been like nectar to a bee. It had made his stinger rise again and again.
He felt better now that he'd had her and worse now that she'd gone. Jaccuri needed women like a chain smoker needed cigarettes. The cost to him in cash and health had been too much to calculate. When he went out on dates he spent from ten to fifty dollars and when he went to hookers he could blow from twenty to sixty dollars at a throw. Hookers cost more than dates and were less satisfying. Each time you asked them to do something they asked for an additional five dollars. With a date you got what you asked for nine times out of ten and it cost nothing extra. You could tell the big spenders who went with women. They were the guys who had quit going to hookers and spending those big bundles. The kind of men who'll blow twenty dollars just for a quickie blow will easily spend that for a date lasting hours, consisting of good talk, companionship, kissing, squeezing and maybe at the end of the evening it would mean more kissing, feels of tender, furry pussy, fine, resilient, bouncy tit, or a nice, hot, wet mouth sucking lovingly and slurpingly in the back seat of his car, till he exploded and relief was just a swallow away.
Taking another puff of his cigarette, he remembered the last massage parlor he had been to. He paid ten bucks and walked through the door into a wooden paneled room with long wooden locker-room type benches and about fifteen very pretty Spanish girls sitting in tight black and blue silk bathing suit outfits on the benches, waiting for the customers.
He stood there a moment choosing, some of the girls looking at him, some not looking, some just staring then looking away, a few actually hard-faced towards him, and one young one about to jump up as he stood there. He finally decided on one a bit older and better looking, who wasn't even expecting to be picked. And when he did pick her, she pointed to herself and asked, "you picked me?" She was obviously surprised. The one who was about to get up and almost expected to be picked he did not even think about or look at. It was her he should have taken.
The other was nice, but not that good. And the reaction in the cat house was the kind he received most everywhere. Some smiles, some wondering looks, some looks of outright hate and some of wonder. It made Jaccuri feel like Lucifer Lost; a name he sometimes called himself. There were times he when he did not know whether to shake hands or punch out.
He didn't like going into a massage parlor where it cost ten or more to enter and then having to pay extra in the booth, and at the same time wonder how people were reacting to him.
That was his problem, his lifelong dilemma. Anita could be part of the solace and perhaps part of the solution. He would introduce her to Clayton Bullay, the boss over him. Nothing could hurt in getting himself in solid with the boss.
He hadn't noticed he was different when he was young. When a man or woman is young they notice few of these things. It's when they grow older that the pain and differences come.
He had been the class clown when he was in school and had acted like a jerk. It was a way of making oneself important and interesting. As he grew older Jaccuri realized doing such things on a permanent basis would make him the school jerk. So he stopped. It took some effort, but he stopped. And to his surprise and shock he found that the laughter had not stopped. There was laughter in places that did not know him as a clown. He was grotesque in the extreme. And this was no laughing matter. It reflected directly on his self esteem and personal worth.
Jaccuri noticed it was the first time when he was in junior high. Tougher, older kids or those his age began to point him out with a laugh as if he was ridiculous. There were only a few incidents. It stopped him a moment and made him think. But not for long. One is young in junior high and Jaccuri did not think much of such harassment. It continued in ninth grade and just about ceased in tenth grade. He forgot about it.
At the same time as these things were happening girls began to notice him and find him attractive, much to his surprise and the surprise of others.
In fact, girls began finding him attractive before guys began finding him grotesque. Even some guys found him attractive, not in any homosexual sense, just in admiring a good looking guy. And when others, no matter how few, found him grotesque, he was confused. This was all over with by the tenth grade. But at that point a more acute danger to his self-esteem occurred.
A teacher began to pick on him. The teacher was in charge of the lunchroom. The teacher began to accuse him of dealing in marijuana and all sorts of trouble. It was his first encounter and Jaccuri didn't understand why he was being picked on. He did not yet realize that to some he looked bad. They were not aware of his obvious charm
To this teacher he was the most dangerous student around. He made sure to stay out of his way. At the time, Jaccuri was going with a girl named Lydia. A fine bitch with a big, healthy ass on her. This was the main point which made him go out with her. He wanted more than anything to get her to drop her panties and grease up her rectum so that he could fuck her asshole. A lot of guys had made that offer to Lydia and she told Jaccuri about it. He was hoping none of them was able to make time with her before he was. Once he did get into her pants he was sure Lydia would be so much in love with his cock she could think of so nothing else.
When he was with Lydia, whom he never got, except for some feels and such, Jaccuri worried about nothing. It was then that he found out the joys of the female sex and how they could help take a man's problems away.
It was not with Lydia that he enjoyed his first tight, hot asshole, but with some prostitute, a Spanish speaking redhead, who for ten dollars, decent money for the time, raised those cheeks and spread them wide for the hard, greased cock going into and up her bunghole.
Things went better for him, later on. He began to get girls. At first it was just small things; hand-jobs, blows, then cunt screws and later, with more jaded and experience girl-women, he enjoyed hot, experienced assholes.
He sighed and shivered at the same time. Thinking about those days brought back pleasant and bitter memories. Times were simpler, seemingly more pleasurable, though they had not seemed so at the time. And there had not been all the trouble or the grimmer view of life that existed now.
As the eleventh grade ended and twelfth began he found that some more people disliked him just to look at him and that some guys would laugh when they saw him. It was that old stigma of being funny to look at that was returning and Jaccuri didn't like it. He stayed more with girls than guys after that and didn't think so much about it. Where there was cunt there was happiness. He needed them not just for the sex, but for the admiration, the smiles, the signs that he was good, okay, not grotesque.
Only a few guys made fun of them and it was so few and far between that he was able to ignore it despite the small subterranean tremors it set off. As long as he was appealing to girls it didn't bother him much and he was able to forget it. Still, it gave him his first major insecurity and inability to deal with people and that was not good. In later years he would have to fight hard to get over it.
Around that time Jaccuri found that older women and some men frowned when he went by as if he were some repulsive low-life. That bothered him. One of the men, a supermarket manager, would follow him around the aisles, as if he feared Jaccuri might steal something. Another who frowned at him, was a woman in the pool hall her husband owned. Jaccuri overheard her tell her husband that Jaccuri scared her and she wanted him put out. At the time, in his foolishness, he thought this was cool. Only later, when the impression one made when trying to get a job or find a permanent girl began to count, did he find out the true tragedy. Things became grotesque. You could not hide a face the way you could hide a damaged arm or leg.
There were times when this was no problem. For two years after he graduated from high school it disappeared. Then the problem returned. Things for him occurred in two year bursts.
Girls either liked him or didn't. Older women found him hateful and bad or didn't. Men more often found bad in him then women. But now, mothers and fathers of his new friends forbade them from going with him. They said he was bad and would be trouble for them all along the line. That was a new one for Jaccuri.
There was even the mother of a guy he knew who looked at him with total horror, as if he was the most fiendish creature in all existence. Looking at himself in the mirror he had trouble understanding why. He even had to laugh.
Still, the girls liked him. And as long as he could go to them he could be assured of his worth. Their warmth and their bodies gave Jaccuri all he needed, assuaged all his wounds.
He could not, of course, tell them his troubles. Unlike some men, he could not unburden himself before any woman or man. To tell a woman your troubles was to be weak and to be weak was shameful before a woman. To them he was always strong, hot, ready to go, a bundle of fun. The real Jaccuri was far less.
His grotesque reception by society disappeared as fast as it had come. And he thought he was rid of it at a last. But within a few years another phase began. At the time this was not realized. As with so many things that happen to men and women, they do not recognize the greater pattern till long after the event.
He found girls going after him now not because of anything in him, but because they thought Jaccuri was bad and therefore sexually exciting. They did not see him as a reliable worker, which he pictured himself as and which he was. It was his face, he knew. Despite this, he made his way through the business world without much trouble. He sometimes wondered why.
He remembered this period as the one during which he began to play the stock market. His father, who had played the stock market for years introduced him to that sport, which later cost him thousands of good dollars down the drain. It also introduced him to the Scuyer brothers, who served his father well. The first time he went to see them they gazed at him with wide eyes and said, "You're William Jaccuri's son?" They asked twice. He looked bad to them, he could tell and they did not much like him. He did not come back to meet them again, nor did they call him and try to keep his business, even thought they knew that as his brokers they could sell a lot.
He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another, admonishing himself that he was smoking too much. He yawned. This thinking was making him tired.
A year later, he left his job and began looking for another. Curiously enough he was having an affair with a stockbrokers wife. He was getting to dislike her because she was treating him as more of a plaything then a real person.
That was one more facet he disliked about women. As soon as they in any way grew critical of him he began to hate them and left them. And they always wondered why.
Once a woman criticized him she was done for in his eyes; no longer a source of joy or comfort. He hated them. Puzzled by this, the women he now disliked tried to make up, hoping the affront, which she supposedly committed and which she combed her mind to find, would soon be forgotten. But Jaccuri never forgot. His mind was that of a tortured man. And small, insignificant things became hard and serious for him.
He soon found himself new women to give him joy and comfort and make him feel like a real person. He grinned at the thought of some of the dates and hot numbers he'd had.
But then he frowned. Frowns often followed smiles these days. As the months and years added up in his life he became a harder man. He thought now about two jobs he had gone after.
They had started out with friendly phone calls about the work available. He was told to come down. He explained that he wanted a change from his office job working for an auto company and wanted to go into the stockbroker line because of the fat money sharp ambitious brokers were making. The first manager he spoke to said he could offer him seven hundred a month, plus what he made on commission. At the time Jaccuri went for that job seven hundred a month was a lot more then it is now.
As soon as he got down there and sat down things changed. The manager had a funny smile on his face and asked about Jaccuri's background. Jaccuri went over that quickly and started to ask about the job. Men were coming into and out of the office to fix communications equipment and put in new lines. As he talked with the manager he found them smiling derisively.
Things were happening so fast and were so unexpected he almost did not realize what was happening till he saw the looks on the faces of the men coming in and out to do the wiring. Their looks and his realization that he was being treated with contempt came home to him quickly.
Finally things got down to the point where the manager said he did not think Jaccuri was for the job. When Jaccuri, rapidly growing impatient asked why, the manager said he just didn't have the right qualities.
"I have two hands, two legs, a mouth, two eyes. I can talk, read, write and know the language. I'm willing to work, have a business background. What else do I need?"
The manager went on about his not having the right qualifications and his not being married and perhaps he would not keep the job and might skip out. He didn't say it right out, but that was the impression.
Jaccuri was too jolted by this new reception to think it out and answer. As with many people, he thought of all the right answers on his way home. He should have told that manager that his not being married didn't count. He was a good worker and had been one with the old firm he worked for. He left saying, "thank's a lot." And the manager just said, "go to a larger firm. We can't handle a training program which you would need."
That was bull. On his way out he saw one of their brokers. The man must have been seventy years old and barely spoke English with a broken accent.
Some guy who should be out grazing in a pasture was good, but not him. He decided the manager was some jerk. He saw no reason for such a reception.
He told a friend about this and Jaccuri's friend agreed. The guy must be some sort of jerk. His friend also had a lot of good answers and asked why Jaccuri hadn't used them. It's easy to offer advice after the battle.
Then came the next job interview. Only this manager was a lot sharper. He gave no information over the phone. He asked Jaccuri to come over. By now Jaccuri was a bit unsure of himself. He wanted to stop by at his girl's to get a quick dose till he felt better, but decided to wait till after he landed this job, which he was sure of getting.
He went there, went into the office and talked to the secretary, who had her desk at an angle to the bosses. He was on the phone. The secretary told him to sit down and wait at the desk. He did. The boss got off the phone in a minute and said, "no jobs."
Jaccuri's mouth fell open. Before he could say anything the manager began asking him questions. All sorts of questions. He could not remember most of them now. There were also men coming in and out to do the wiring. He had a funny feeling of deja vu, as if he were reliving the last interview. Only it could not be.
He began to ask him what he would do as a broker. Jaccuri answered he would report to customers, check their accounts, put their offers to buy and sell on the market, give them tips.
The manager exploded. "There are no tips."
"Well, something like that," Jaccuri mumbled.
The interview went on, going from bad to worse. Jaccuri was answering, but jolted, wondering why he was sitting there, but held down by some strange sort of momentum. And the manager kept talking to him in a smooth, silky voice, a false smile on his face, hate in his whole demeanor. Hate of Jaccuri; immediate, ruthless, bone boiling hate.
Jaccuri looked at the secretary, who gazed at him with shocked eyes and one of those I-feel-sorry-for-you looks on her face. That this manager was a vice president made his treatment of Jaccuri seem more revolting. He was the higher echelon. What would the lower echelon have done?
The manager began asking what sales ability he had, if he had ever sold shirts. Jaccuri answered he had no sales ability and what difference did that make. It was the job of the firm to train him. After all, he had done desk work before.
The manager looked at him with a sweet smile. "This is a job for doctors, lawyers, brain surgeons," he said. "Not you."
"Look, I know this line, Mr. I've bought stocks before. This is a job butchers, bankers and candlestick makers also go into."
The manager looked at him coldly. "This is not the job for you. Get a job as a door-to-door salesman out of town. That's more in your line."
Jaccuri had had enough. "I definitely don't want that kind of work. I'm talking to you about this job."
"Sorry," the vice president said with the sweetest of smiles. "No jobs."
Jaccuri got up in a huff and left, finding himself saying thanks a lot, like last time. There were a lot of things he should have said, but didn't.
He knew it now. He should have realized it before but had been too blind. He was unlike other men. He was a marked man. He was no longer a V.I.P., a Very Important Person in his mind, but a V.U.P., a Very Unimportant Person.
He had gotten his last job, working his way up in the firm and taking night college courses to get ahead, when he was sure of making it. He had not forgotten his past and how people treated him. Things were serious now. If you had no job you had no money. Such a situation could not be tolerated.
He tried for all sorts of jobs before this. In a travel agency, where the daughter nearly went bonkers when she saw him and wanted to do just about anything for him. But the mother looked at him with a mouth twisted by hate. And she was the one who hired and fired. She had a job alright, but not for him.
Finally, he went to work for an old coot with the kind of face you saw on pugs who drove bootleg whiskey during prohibition. With a face like that everyone would look good to him. Jaccuri loved him and spent quite a few years working for him.
Two years earlier Jaccuri went on vacation. At the hotel where he was staying he seduced a couple of women. They were around his age and he found they thought him exciting but shifty and untrustworthy. At the same time others thought him to be very nice.
Then there was the young man who began pointing to him and calling him ridiculous. Then there was the woman in the dining-room who told him quite sharply not to overload one of the waitresses with orders, as she was rushing back to the kitchen. And this was after he had been extra careful not to be too demanding on the waitress, because he had once been a bus-boy and knew the difficulty of that line of work. He stared in shock as the woman turned to those at her table and said, "who is he? I hate him." Everything had returned with a vengeance.
And then it went away as suddenly as it had come. But not all the way. There were people who still exploded in laughter at the sight of him, whereas they smiled before, as if he were some sort of a caricature. And in a way he guessed he was.
He could walk into a room and be admired and loved by some; hated by others; laughed at by still more. It would go away and then return in waves. There were times when he didn't know whether he was coming or going.
Women and only women could restore his balance. They were like a narcotic for him. A good narcotic to have, he thought with a smile.
After he got his job with the auto company Jaccuri worked hard to make a name for himself. Lately, people had even taken to him as if he were some nice guy by the look of it. No one who saw him now could even imagine how he had looked to people once.
But he knew this was only temporary. It would change. His face would make people hate him, laugh at him. He had to build such a name for himself that no one would challenge him or throw him out on his ass.
It wasn't that most people would hate him. But all he needed was one executive to come in, see his face and say, "I hate that guy. Get rid of him."
All his hopes and dreams would go down the drain. All his work would be for nothing. He was a man who walked with a stagger and waited for the other shoe to drop.
This Anita Dumont was good for him and could provide many of his needs. She could also help him in the company. He would get her a job off the assembly line. He had promised. He would also get King a raise and a promotion. To do that he would talk to Bullay. And if Anita could do things for Bullay, then Bullay could do them for him.
He went and picked up the phone and dialed. After two rings the line was picked up at the other end and Jaccuri began to speak.