The Cesspool

He thought back. “Dad talked to me once or twice. Mainly in an attempt to scare me into behaving, I think. They were moral lectures rather than information sessions.”

“That’s average,” I said a little bitterly. “I got the same deal from my dad. You’re just a normal product of the times. As a kid, you had it pounded into your head that sex was something dirty and shameful. Subconsciously sex and dirt are so associated in your mind, you can’t fully enjoy a clean, healthy relationship. You want it a little nasty. That’s why happily married men go to cat houses. Because subconsciously they link sex and degradation.”

He thought this over, finally asked, “You think that’s my trouble?”

“It’s the trouble of ninety percent of the people walking around,” I said. “I wasn’t psychoanalyzing you; I was quoting from books I’ve read.”

“Then you think my fantasies about this Sally are entirely normal?”

“No,” I said. “But you’re in the majority. Our national attitude toward sex is so loused up by the puritanical idea that the best way to instruct kids about sex is to scare hell out of them, there probably isn’t one adult in ten with a really healthy mind. I spent a month in Paris once. And you know what I used to do? Deliberately look for women who couldn’t understand English. So that while we were making love, I could say all the filthy words I knew. I’m too inhibited to say them to a woman who could understand, see, even if I thought she wouldn’t object. Intellectually I know my mind is the same kind of cesspool you think yours is, but I can’t shake the emotional attitudes which were fixed in me as a child. And neither can you.”

“Well, I don’t intend to give in to mine,” Harlan said. “Thanks a lot, Pete. I feel a little better for having talked this out.”

Sally didn’t come back into our conversation until Friday night, when Harlan suddenly asked George if he’d been back to see her.

“You think I’m a millionaire?” George asked. “At a hundred a crack, about twice a year is my speed.”

I said, “I’ve been thinking of taking a look, George. How do I get in the Silk and Satin?”

A little importantly, George pulled from his pocket a small card advertising the restaurant where he worked, scrawled on the back, “Please admit bearer. George Swift.”

Handing me the card, he said, “You’ll have to hit it on your night off to see Sally. She works the same trick we do. Four P.M. to midnight.”

Harlan was eyeing the card in my hand fascinatedly. George asked, “You want an introduction too?”

“No, no,” Harlan said hurriedly. “I never go in those places.”

I used the card on my next night off, the following Wednesday. The Silk and Satin was an ordinary-looking two-story house up in the Eighties. From the outside it appeared to be just another residence, but inside it was elaborately draped and carpeted to look like an oriental harem.

I had no trouble getting in. A matronly-looking woman in evening dress answered my ring, briefly examined the card and graciously accepted five twenty-dollar bills.

“Just go on in,” she said, nodding toward an archway leading to what seemed to be the main lounge.

This was a room about twenty feet square furnished with nothing to sit on but low ottomans and cushions. There was some other furniture, however. A long table loaded with hors d’oeuvres, a small bar against one wall, a huge radio phonograph playing soft music and a number of low cocktail tables strategically placed within reaching distance of the cushions and ottomans.

The walls of the room were solidly draped with red silk, and the indirect lighting was just bright enough to see clearly without losing the glamorous effect of low lights.

Several men, some in evening clothes, some merely in business suits such as mine, lolled on cushions with drinks in their hands. Each had a slim female companion, dressed in the filmy attire of a harem slave: transparent nylon pantaloons bloused at the ankles, bare feet and a practically nonexistent brassiere consisting of two small circles of rhinestone-studded metal and a bit of golden cord. A surplus of three similarly-attired girls chatted together near the radio-phonograph.

As I entered the room, the three girls glanced up, and a slim redhead left the group to come over to me.

When she got close enough to smile a greeting, I said, “I don’t exactly understand the procedure here. This is my first visit.”

“There isn’t any formal procedure,” she said pleasantly. “If you’re in no hurry, why don’t you have a drink before you do anything else?”

I said, “I was looking for a girl called Sally.”

“Most first-time visitors are,” the redhead said without rancor. “She’s busy now, but should be free before long. What do you drink?”

I told her rye and water. She mixed two at the small bar and brought them over. We found a couple of cushions near a cocktail table and reclined.

“My name’s Sara,” the redhead said.

“I’m Pete,” I told her. “Do you always drink the same thing the customer orders?”

“Unless it’s something weird like straight gin. Good luck, Pete.”