I started working as a freelance legal proofreader. Slaving for
the corporate dollar was something I had unceasingly insulted and
mocked, but it paid more than I ever thought I'd make. I had to call
ten times every day to plead for work from the agency that handled all
the big law firms. They usually gave me the dead shift from eight at
night to eight in the AM, with only a few minutes notice beforehand.
Sitting by the phone all day and working in deserted law firms at
night kept me from circulating in all normal circles where people had
regular jobs and kept regular hours. It also threw off my sleep
rhythms to such an extent that I was almost always zombified.
The first few days in my new bachelor pad, a 2' x 4' closet space I
had finally found for myself in Chinatown, I just sat and stared at
the phone that refused to ring, climbed the dirty walls, guzzled cheap
American malt liquor, or gazed stupidly out my dirty window at the
giant apartment building across the street.
I could see into dozens
of apartments full of normal life and normal people. None of the
normal people ever bothered to look across the street to see what I
was doing, however, so full were their own lives.
In a moment of inspiration, or perhaps it was desperation, I got a
piece of paper, drew lines across it to correspond to all the windows
facing me, and, with pen in hand, I sat in front of the window with
the lights off for two weeks straight, filling in information in each
of the boxes. Old timers had their boxes filled in with a large X, as
did bachelors. Married women and single girls got more information in
theirs: the time they got out of bed in the morning, the time they
usually took their showers, the time they went to sleep, and the time
they made love to lovers or themselves. After the two weeks, I had a
precise timetable for the whole building, allowing me to plan my
jerk-off sessions way in advance. The binoculars I bought at the
local Salvation Army helped the matter at hand considerably.
I started to get work more often. Perhaps too often. The people who had worked the dead shift in corporate law firms for years were infirm creatures, with nocturnal habits similar to bats, and after a few months I could begin to see myself as a strong candidate for their freak show. I would wrest a few minutes of relief at times by calling up phone sex lines and whacking off onto corporate letterhead or into inter-office envelopes and forwarding them to all the female lawyers in the firm. I also got into the habit during my half-hour break of running outside and taking a cab to the nearest stripjoint. I'd quickly toss down a few drinks and slip a few dirty dollars into some healthy cleavage. But the healthiness and beauty of the bodies floating in front of my face made me feel more and more pathetic, anemic, and perverse, especially as I knew that in two minutes I'd be forced to return to the picayune paperwork and pencil-pushing awaiting me back at the office. After work, I would drag my sorry ass back home to my pitiful collection of 70s polyester porn, or, if I had any energy, I'd go to the little stores that had the video booths in the back, and watch mindless bodies doing exactly what I was dying to do. Sucking and fucking--even getting paid to do it.
I started drinking more and more, earlier and earlier, often for hours into the morning after an all-night shift. I slept little and had nightmares almost every night, usually about losing my hair or having my dick fall off. I got fewer and fewer calls for work, as the law firms must have been catching on to my hundred-dollar sex calls and scum-o-grams. When I got so thoroughly disgusted at myself for having sunk to such depths of depravity, I made myself take long walks, from Chinatown up to the northernmost tip of Manhattan and back again, or across the bridge and all over Brooklyn, at all hours of the day or night. Walking the streets, I could tell that every girl I passed knew exactly what I was doing to her body in my imagination. I couldn't help it. The only contact I had with girls during the past few months was watching them get naked, get fucked, and get off on it, all while I sat there freaking out, alone, hunched in a tiny 42nd-Street booth, or at home, or in a sleazy cinema, trying as hard as I could to wrench fantasy into reality.
The long walks were supposed to be a kind of therapy, a siphoning off of my libidinal overflow, only it didn't work that way. Unable to restrain myself, I began to go up to girls, good-looking or not, it didn't matter, and ask them if they'd please take pity and have sex with me right away. I figured that at least one out of fifty, or at the worst, one out of 100, would feel sorry for me and say yes. Instead I was mostly punched in the face or spit on.
