The Cesspool

Richard Deming The Cesspool

I never met Harlan Johnson’s wife, but she couldn’t have been the paragon he said she was. No woman could be.

On the other hand, Harlan wasn’t the paragon his wife might have thought him. I know, because when he was particularly disgusted with himself, he let me have a glimpse or two into what, he called his “cesspool of a mind.”

According to Harlan, his wife Janet thought he was just as wonderful as he thought she was. He always gave the impression of being a little humble because Providence had let something as nice as Janet happen to him.

George Swift spoiled the little pink cloud Harlan lived on. George, and Harlan’s own cesspool of a mind. When a man strays from a wife like Janet to a cheap tramp like Sally, you can’t put all the blame on the guy who introduced them.

The three of us had a rather peculiar relationship. We became close enough friends to confide our intimate thoughts to each other, without ever getting to know each other well. We never saw each other anywhere, except at the Men’s Bar on Forty-second Street.

What brought us together originally was simply that all three of us worked till midnight, and we all fell into the habit of stopping at the Men’s Bar for an after-work drink. Harlan Johnson managed a movie house just off Times Square, George Swift worked the four to midnight trick as head waiter in a restaurant frequented by theatrical people, and I worked the same trick as a police reporter. We were all in our early thirties, all had been married, but Harlan was the only one still working at it.

Probably what first drew us together was the mutual recognition that we were usually the only fully-sober midnight customers at the Men’s Bar. By midnight most tavern customers are pretty well on the way to hangovers, but as we’d all just gotten through work, we’d come in cold sober.

At first it was just polite nods of recognition when we met at the bar, then a little casual conversation, finally mutual introductions and a nightly habit of matching for drinks. We never did reach the point of going out together anywhere other than the Men’s Bar.

Nevertheless, we became pretty firm friends.

George Swift was the core of the trio. Tall and skinny and full of nervous energy, he always knew the latest jokes and, because of his nightly contacts with theatrical people, always had up-to-the-minute inside dope on everything going on in town. Harlan Johnson was a big, blond, quiet man with glasses, a listener rather than a talker. As I’m not much of a talker myself, we spent most of our nightly half hour together listening to George.

That’s how we first heard of Sally. George knew all about her within twenty-four hours of her appearance in town.

“Boy, have they got something hot over at the Silk and Satin,” he announced as we awaited our drinks.

“What’s the Silk and Satin?” Harlan asked.

George gave him a wide-eyed look. “You were born in this town and never heard of the Silk and Satin?”

I said, “It’s a cat house, Harlan.”

George raised a supercilious eyebrow. “That’s like calling the Stork Club a saloon.”

“Okay,” I said. “So it’s high-class. What’s it got that’s so hot?”

“A new gal. Who likes her work.”

Both Harlan and I looked puzzled.

“I mean really likes it,” George explained. “Not just puts on an act. Sally’s her name. They say she’s insatiable.”

Our drinks arrived then, interrupting the conversation. We matched to see who paid. I won the honor.

After we’d all tried preliminary sips, Harlan set his drink on the bar and regarded George thoughtfully through his glasses. He asked, “What’s so strange about a woman in that business liking her work?”

George said, “Know anything at all about abnormal psychology?”

Harlan shook his head.

“Well, it takes a peculiar psychology for a woman to become a prostitute. Studies by Kinsey and other psychologists indicate that very few pros have any passion at all. A large percentage have schizo tendencies. That is, they live in a world of fantasy and have the ability to dissociate their minds entirely from what they’re doing. Nymphos hardly ever go into the business. They just go around giving it away.”

While George was no dunce, this dissertation was a little too glib to come from his own reading. I guessed he was repeating something he’d heard one of his customers say. Probably the same customer who’d told him about Sally.

When Harlan had absorbed this, he said, “I can see how that would be. A prostitute would almost have to shut her mind to reality to be able to live with herself. But how do you know this woman isn’t just putting on a good act?”

“Testimony by an expert. Tony Severn was over to the Silk and Satin last night.”

If Tony Severn was the source of George’s information, it was probably accurate, I thought. Severn was a fading matinee idol and a notorious satyr. Probably no one in town was better qualified to judge female passion.