The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica. Volume 3

Show Time by Julia Peters

I’m in the middle of being a dutiful girlfriend when I finally tell Paul we’ve just got to break up. He nearly drops the figurine he’s holding, a ceramic superhero. I’m helping him pick out presents for his twin cousins in Maine at a movie theme store we’d never go to otherwise.

“I can’t do this any more,” I say. I mean us and the store, but I mostly mean us. All this boyfriend-girlfriend crap we do isn’t any fun. A Midwestern family of eight pushes past us to stand right in front of the escalators and begins a loud, confused debate about whether to go up or down.

“Ann,” he says. “This is a really bad time to start this discussion.” He looks exhausted, his auburn hair and dark eyes both rumpled after a long day. He looks down sadly at the floor and notices a pair of yellow cartoon canary slippers with stupid plush eyes. He squats down next to them and looks up at me. “Are these appropriate for a twelve-year-old?”

“Very. So’s this whole damn store.” I glance around and just see a blur. They’ve rigged up fake vines and cardboard cut-outs swinging on mechanized ropes to push merchandise for a kids’ movie about the jungle. It’s six o’clock and I have to head to my waitressing job in two hours. Twenty-four hour French food. What a mess.

“Hey, I told you it was OK if you didn’t come. I knew you’d get all New Yorker-than-thou. I just, I trust your opinion.”

“I’m sorry. I hate those slippers.”

The mother of the Midwesterners, who has a winged haircut and several plastic shopping bags, directs the rest of them upstairs. I hear her say, “How often do you get to see original animation art?” Her husband and the kids, some of them, I realize, friends of the daughter, happily step on the escalator and glide up to the top floor.

“Fuck the slippers,” Paul says. “You’re saying you want to break up.”

“You’re right,” I say. “We shouldn’t talk about this here.”

“Well, it’s too late for that. I want to talk about it now.”

“I have to head to work soon.”

“OK. We’ll go for a walk. Could we get this out of the way first, though? If you do dump me, I’m not coming back here by myself.”

We leave with bags full of backpacks and stickers and emerge into Times Square. The sun sets like a long goodbye and the billboard glow is just starting to take effect. Everyone is in a line or in the push. Either way, it’s wall-to-wall bodies, looking ahead, looking up. We circle the same few blocks again and again. I steal glances at Paul as we talk. His carefully shined boots, something he does so they’ll let him wear them at work. The side of his strong jaw. The faintest touch of his stomach beneath a green sweater. I watch his parts as he listens to me drone on. He drones on in response, stuff we’ve been over before, long lists that boil down to shared unhappiness.

Times Square is dying out of its decay, being reborn into safe, fake glory. Used to be you couldn’t walk across Forty-second without getting your pocket picked or worse. Not that I miss that. But it’s like the whole city got a boob job. It used to be less than perfect, but definitely suckable. Now it’s this bigger-than-life, aerodynamic knockout, but without any feeling in its nipples. Paul’s less than perfect, but suckable. I’m nuts about Paul. I’m bored as Paul’s girlfriend.

We end up standing in front of the wonderful, ugly Port Authority, lingering there since my train stop is deep inside it. All kinds of young men prowl along the edges of the terminal.

“OK, we’re back where we started,” I say. “I like you but I don’t like us as a couple.”

“I can’t keep having this conversation, Ann,” he says.

“Do you want a break?”

“I don’t want to have this conversation any more. I want more time in the day. I want to do all the stuff we keep saying we’ll do.”

“Like?” A car hesitates in the taxi lane and everyone attacks it with honks and curses. The licence plate is New York. Go figure.

“I don’t know,” he continues over the cacophony. “Teach you chess. Go to the beach. Our jobs are just so fucked up…”

“Well, Show World’s right over there. That takes ten minutes.” I’m mostly kidding when I say this, watching the marquee wink at me from around the corner in red plastic letters. But I’ve always been curious and Paul knows it. Paul knows something else too. He’s staring at me like his grandmother just walked in on him having sex. Oh. “When’s the last time you went there?”

He looks around at the sidewalk, at the buses creaking out of Port Authority. “Three weeks ago.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You know I do that.”

“Not lately,” I reply, sounding a little angrier than I want. “You could have told me.”

“Yeah,” he says. It’s a weird yeah, both yeah, I’m sorry, and yeah, right.

“No, It’s OK. I mean, you know I’d be into it. But I understand it’s like, your thing.”

The crowd continues to brush by us. We’re just a detour in their collective path. Paul stands with my hand in his. There are so many ways he could go. He looks past me at the marquee, at the many possibilities of taking his girlfriend with him into the small rooms he doesn’t discuss.

“I’ll go with you,” he says. Before I know what I’m doing, I say OK. If we’re going to break up, at least I’ll have been to Show World before it gets zoned out of existence.

We’re in a dark, empty hall on the third floor. Steps lead up to a large, bright room full of pool tables, but there aren’t any balls or cues. Not much left since the new laws took effect, re-zoning the sex clubs in favour of the citizens, or at least the tourists. Paul plays tour guide for what used to be the centre of Times Square sleaze. Now to stay open it has to shut down most of its operations and add in a dime store downstairs. We’ve already toured the fanciful circus sculptures, the long moaning hallway where the video booths still run, and a whole floor that is just empty and silent.

“What used to be up here?”

“A main stage with live performances, and a larger theatre with dancing.”

“Live performances?” I ask.

“Sex shows.”

“Oh. Really?”

“Well, yeah, but not that real. Pretty real, sometimes, people just going at it, a guy and a girl, two girls. But I was never into that so much. The booths are a whole different thing, but the shows were a real spectacle.”

“What are the booths like?” I ask.

“Hmm. They’re whatever you want with someone who’s only there for you, but you can’t connect with them. Sometimes it feels like you can, though.”

“Well, looks like the booths are all we’ve got,” I say. He asks me if I’m sure and I gesture toward the hall. Paul puts his arm around my shoulder and leads on.

“What do you want me to do?” Paul asks. He stands facing me in the dull black cubicle. Two people can come in here, but it’s obviously built for one.

“Oh, God,” I say. “Whatever you’d normally do. This isn’t for me.” The wall I’m pushed up against is like a cold hand on my back. His face doesn’t look that great in this light, a bare bulb hanging over us, but his body is tense and sweet beneath his clothes. A small stool sits in the corner.

“It’s for you,” he says, and smiles at me, a hint of hurt in a smile that could bloom into anything. There’s a surge of noise, like a subway car straining into motion after a mid-tunnel halt. The partition that separates us from the girl on the other side rises slowly with a mechanized clatter. I can feel the vibration of the rising screen in my feet. I can feel how many times it’s been cranked up before.

Her name is Miranda, at least that’s what she said when we chatted and chose her in a few moments of friendly negotiation. I see her in pieces as the partition goes up: arched bare feet with bright blue toenails, smooth calves, kind of chunky thighs, turquoise panties and lace bra that almost match, cute tits as she immediately strips off the bra. Her hair is in shiny, almost oily curls around a heart-shaped face. Her lipstick is bright pink and glossy, her smile seems genuine. She’s in another spare, closet-like room like ours, with a stool and a shelf full of toys and oils. Paul bought us eight minutes, no penetration on her. We can do whatever we want, she told him, although if we get caught she never said that. The digital clock on her side of the screen, facing us, changes from 0:00 to 8:00. “Hi,” she says wordlessly, pointedly to me. She’s done this a million times. Hell, so has Paul. I suddenly feel like maybe I should leave them alone. I smile weakly at her.

Paul watches for a moment, smiling, and then glances over at me. He doesn’t know what to do or which want to follow and neither do I, but, “Do it,” I say. He sighs as if someone’s touched him, and turns back to the glass and the girl behind it. Paul unzips his pants, quickly pulls out his cock. It is completely different how he does it here than when he’s done it for me. Not a striptease, just, boom, his cock. And we’re off.

What happens next is a delicious blur of acrobatics. Miranda immediately hops up on the stool and throws her legs up in the air. She parts them in a clean, cheerleader “V” – go team! – and peels her panties off. There is her pussy. Paul keeps stroking, accepting that I’m OK with this and just going with the fact that there’s a naked woman in front of him. She hangs her head to one side and grins crookedly, teeth just made for toothpaste, then puts her feet against the glass. She’s spread open, while I’m all crunched up in the corner. Miranda bends down, holds each of her ankles in one slim hand. Her knees are bent. Her wide smile is for my boyfriend, as if she were on her back in bed, holding her legs open wide for him. I’ve done that. With a deliberateness that makes me forget there’s only six and a half minutes left, she slides her slick, pink fingernails along her ankles, then inside her knees, then inside her thighs. The skin looks so soft there, like it’s nearly liquid.

I really want him. The little clock says we have four minutes and change. I don’t want to get in the way. I keep watching. Miranda slides down to the floor, places her hands around his cock and licks the glass in broad strokes, her ass moving as if someone’s fucking her from behind. “Come on,” she says, and starts to slap the glass with her hands, as if to pound through it and get to him. Paul laughs, his cock moves up so it’s almost flat against the leather of his belt. He’s close, but he’s being watched, so it’s still going to take him a while. I really want him.

“Fuck her,” I say. My boyfriend stops, his penis still in the firm, familiar grip of his own hand, and turns toward me.

“What?” he asks. I’m interrupting, all right.

“Fuck her,” I say and in two steps I’m there, pressed against the glass, as fully clothed as him. I pull my skirt up roughly, just enough to get to my panties, pull them aside. No striptease, just clearing a path. I bring my leg up around him to rest solidly on his flat hip, feeling the leather of his belt against my calf. My leg starts to slide down and he catches it, stares at me for moment. His hand slides down to my ankle, deliberately, so I know as he grabs it too tight, as he pushes my leg back up around him, that he’s saying yes.

“God, this is pornography,” I say quietly. His cock is rubbing against me now as he fishes in his pocket for the condom that is usually in his wallet.

“Is that good?” he asks, finding it, getting it on.

“Oh, yeah.” Arrest me, I think. Better yet, re-zone me. Keep me at least 50 yards away from a school, church, or residential housing at all times.

“Fuck her,” I say, which is what I mean. He keeps his eyes on me for one more moment, smiling a little as he finds the edge of my panties and pulls them aside. He pushes in, he gets inside his girl and we both hold in our gasp. As he starts to rock me, all slammed up against the bulletproof glass, I take his face in my hands and push it back up to look at her.

Miranda has taken her cue well, taken it all. She has been behind me, straddling the stool, her face just behind mine but looking down at me. She let us have this together, a point of entry into her. Now, he’s all hers again. I turn half to the glass and watch out of the corner of my eye. Miranda scoots her feet up onto the stool’s edge and throws her hands up over her head as if welcoming the sun. She presses them against the glass. Her gestures are dramatic but I realize they also help her keep her balance. She’s scrunched up now, knees to chest, hands pressed high above us all while I’m spread out against her. She carefully pushes up until she’s standing, balanced on the stool. They’re both over me.

We’re all breathing hard in time with Paul’s thrusts, in time with our seconds slipping by. He slides his hand into the cup of my lower back and seals me against him, against his sweaty clothes and one hot bit of bare skin. Paul holds me tight and pushes into me, and into the girl behind me. She’s pressed her breasts against the glass and thrown her head back, she’s tickling her naked clit with her nails once again. He can pretend I’m her, a girl for pay, a sweet slut, a gorgeous, underpaid nymphomaniac. And maybe also he gets to do it and see it at the same time, as if it’s all the same thing.

We don’t have much time. I want to see but I want to make him come, so I pull him against me, one hand bracing his ass and the other snaking around the base of his cock, feeling my panties rumpled against my thumb. Paul’s mouth falls open and his inhales become shocked, boyish gasps. Miranda drops down so she’s squatting on the stool right behind me, as if I could lean back and be held in her slim arms. I barely see her glossy lips, her tongue running over them, then she and Paul move. She’s rocking her hips against the air and I know she’s telling him come inside me, yeah baby, fuck me, come, baby, deep inside, that’s it, I’m coming with you, yeah, yeah, and he says it out loud in my ear and moves my head so its hugged against the side of his neck and he presses his face hard against my shoulder, looking at her, and he comes and comes and comes.

I hold him there as he trembles and I try to suck air back into my lungs. There’s a dull thud. We both look up hazily to see the partition coming back down again. Miranda, sweaty and smiling, waves goodbye.

I can barely look at him but I have to ask.

“Good?”

He laughs and stuffs the condom back inside the foil packet, wads it into his wallet again. “Not what I usually get here.”

Paul zips back up and wipes his face with the sleeve of his sweater. I’m standing in the centre of the room, a little dazed. It occurs to me that the woman we were just with has a whole life I’ll never know anything about. Maybe she likes doing this, maybe it’s her ticket, maybe it’s hell.

When I look up, he’s looking down at the floor, nervous like I just was.

“Did you?” he asks.

“What, baby?”

“Did you?”

“Oh. It’s OK.”

“Do you want to?”

“Yeah, but, Paul, that was for you. It’s cool. Honest.”

Sometimes this is true and sometimes it’s not. Right now I’m all wound up and confused and we have no time. “Hold on one second.”

He opens the door and walks quickly into the hall. I’m scared at first, then I hear him say hello. A woman’s voice returns the greeting. It’s Miranda.

“I really can’t do that,” I hear her say.

“You can’t?” Paul asks. There is a silence and then more gentle words on both sides. I hear the soft click of high heels retreating, as he pulls the door open with an uneasy metal creak. He steps back in, shuts it behind him. Paul gets the footstool from the corner and smacks it down in front of me.

“We have six more minutes,” he says.

“How much did that cost you?” I ask.

“Shut up, baby,” he says and presses his whole body against me, from forehead to lips to cock to toes.

“I don’t have anything,” I say, meaning this is not what I thought would happen today. I thought we would buy key-chains and hats with famous logos and then break up. I have no protection on me or in me, and he was only carrying the one condom. Then I’m worried because I’ve never been able to come standing up, and I sure as hell don’t want to lie down on this floor.

“We don’t need anything,” he says and grabs my leg, lifts it up and slams my foot down on the footstool, spreading me open.

He crumples down in a smooth movement to crouch at my crotch, pulls my skirt up, pushes my panties aside again, and kisses me square on my pussy.

“Use me,” he says, and uses one fat hand to pull me against his mouth by my ass. “Make yourself come with my mouth.” I can’t come standing up. I think this for a minute, then replay the last few minutes in my head and start to move against him as he starts to kiss me there. Jesus, he does this well. He kisses my clit as if it’s every part of me, a sweet kiss like on my forehead, deep licks like it’s my mouth, then wet, sweet sucking as if on a nipple, as if he sucks my clit to stay alive. I start to moan in the quiet little room. I wonder if a woman has ever been in here before.

Paul pulls away for one evil moment and replaces his mouth with his fingers so he can get out a good line: “You think this is for me. Fuck that. Fuck me, Ann,” and with that he dives back into the underworld of my cunt. It works. He does me with his hand and mouth, his tongue lapping at my clit. I like it in here, all dark with the dim blue light, without the other side of the partition glaring through at us. I’m thinking about Miranda, on her knees, how good she was, pounding on the glass and getting to us without one single touch.

I grab his head and rub myself against his lips, his tongue, against his chin. He stops moving his mouth for a minute. Maybe he’s surprised. Maybe he’s just letting me use his head like a cat uses a scratching post. Paul’s my whore for the next few minutes, and he’s even paying for it. He begins to lick me again, following my motions. He grips my thighs, then wraps his arms around my hips with a moan and does everything he knows I like, for both of us, and something about being held like that, something about his face smashed up against me in this little room, something about him being my whore, for – I look at the clock – just under a minute, makes it start. I take his wrist and move his hand between my legs so I can feel him inside me as I start to contract around his fingers, as I start to whimper and sound kind of stupid and feel really fucking amazing. I come like a circus, whirling lights and flying through the air, bucking my body shamelessly on his fingers and mouth, hard, rapid, painful. I grab his hair in my hands, hold his head and give him all of it. The clock clicks down to zero and I’m still finishing.

“Oh, my God,” I say, panting hard. Paul looks up, his lips and chin wet, a grin of “look what I just did to you” on his face.

“Oh, my God, Paul. Should we get out of here?”

“Let’s not find out,” he says, stands up and lets me fall back into place. He opens the door and peers out, reaches back for me with his hand, takes it when I give it to him. He leads me out the way we came.

“What was all that for?” I ask him, laughing. We’re in the lobby, having made our escape from the cubicle of love. A few men, different types, mill around aimlessly, probably heading up to where we just were. We walk past the newest addition, a bizarre storefront on the first floor that must have sold videos or peepshows before. Two stock boys are pushing a cart full of “I Love New York” paraphernalia through the doorway.

“I don’t know. I always wanted to do that. You always wanted to do that. So now we’ve done it,” Paul says. He checks inside the shopping bags to make sure everything is still there.

“There’s my problem,” I say.

“That’s a problem?”

“Yeah. When I like something I usually want to do it again.”

Paul stands and looks at me underneath a fake circus bear wearing a clown hat, balanced on a tightrope. We hear all kinds of soft, pre-recorded moans coming from the rows of video booths.

“Well,” Paul says brightly, “let’s have lots of one-night stands.”

“That could be hard.”

“I know,” he says, looking happy in a conversation with me for the first time in weeks, looking like he used to. “But, I mean, I’m crazy about you. That was fun. We’re a lousy couple and we don’t want to break up. I want to see other people but I don’t want you to,” he adds.

“Same here.”

“That’s very male of you, Ann,” he says.

“Ooh,” I say. “We could pay each other. $20 for 10 minutes of whatever we want. Pass it back and forth.”

“And you won’t feel cheap?”

“Well. Maybe. Won’t you?”

“Yeah. I kind of like that.”

“I know. Wow. This is nuts.”

We walk back out into a city that is so lit up it looks like a summer day. We’ve lit the night up so well that there’s no more night.

“Where can we go now?”

“Where do you want to go?”

The unspoken options perch on our shoulders and glare at us, just as our shopping bags and fears weigh us down. Part company or keep going. Call in sick to work tonight, the one thing that is certain for me. Go talk some more or find a place to fuck. An hourly motel, the park, home. I don’t know what to pick, so I kiss him, just, boom, my tongue down his throat, tasting myself in his mouth right out here on the street. There’s so much to deconstruct and discuss, but after all this I just want to kiss him, just want to do whatever can make us both happy, whether it’s OK or not. So I close my eyes and move forward, turning off all these damn lights. We wrap our arms around each other and go back into the darkness.