Electroboy by Andy Behrman Read Free Book Online Page B

booth behind me. Obviously waiting for their next show at the Gaiety. I’m trying to listen to their conversation, but I can’t hear them too well. It sounds like some weird language. It’s like being in a hotel room and knowing the people next door are fucking and not being able to see and just hearing some muffled sounds. Except now I can see but can’t hear. What’s better? To be able to see or to hear? They are laughing hysterically about something. I think they’re speaking Portuguese. I follow them out after they pay their bill, and they walk up the stairs into the Gaiety. Perfect butts. I was right. Strippers. Hustlers. I walk down the block to McHale’s, sit down at the bar, and order an Amstel Light. I bum a cigarette from a blond girl who, if she isn’t a hooker, is badly trying to look like one. She tells me that her name is Tina and that she is from Ohio. I decide that at any given time there are more people from Ohio in New York than there are in Ohio. Tina tells me that her brother is the bartender and that she is waiting for him to get off work. The beer is on her. I thank her. She asks me what I do. I tell her I’m starting at Columbia in the fall. The school, not the country. Little giggle. Her skirt and heels, the beer and the smoke make me nervous. I am anxious for what might happen next. Tina stands up, picks up her purse, and walks into the bathroom. The bartender nicely tells me that he is, in fact, not Tina’s brother. I promptly pay for my beer and leave.
    I’m not looking for a whore tonight. But I also feel scared about sleeping alone in my apartment. And maybe I’ll die from the paint fumes. I’ll be the first to die in my graduating class. ButI really just want to get off. I think that’ll make things better. At about midnight I walk over to Show World on Eighth Avenue to see what’s going on. I’m surprised that there are still lots of semi-clad women hanging out in booths waiting to take dollars from horny guys like me looking to jerk off at this hour. Just walking around topless in heels. Big boobs. Small boobs. Pert ones. Firm ones. Real ones. Fake ones. The place smells like disinfectant, and there is an old Pakistani man mopping cum off the floor. There are some pretty young women with nice bodies and some older, less attractive ones who look like they’ve been working there for years making money for cigarettes, groceries, and lottery tickets. People’s mothers, sisters, and girlfriends. I follow a petite redhead inside a booth, and for $20 she lets me play with her tits for a few minutes. They feel nice. She tells me they’re real and smiles. I jerk off and for some reason kiss her forehead gently after I come on the floor. I walk up to Columbus Circle and hail a cab. I make it home in time to see the sun rise over the East River. There are still no messages on the machine.
Smash
    Summer in Manhattan. It feels like I am waiting for the next semester at Wesleyan to start again. I explore Columbus Avenue, Amsterdam Avenue, and Broadway and make it my business to get to know my bank manager and all of the tellers, the dry cleaner, the owner of the liquor store, the owner of the hardware store (he actually knows me well from my spree—all of the loot still unused), the owner of the stationery store, and the guy at the newsstand. I want to be the mayor of my little five-block neighborhood as I had been at the campus of Wesleyan. But this is going to be a tough feat, just from a numbers point of view. I waste hours wandering the streets, talking to neighbors, and walking in the park. I often forget that I have come to New York with the intention of starting an independent film company, which I have decided to call Smash, suggesting not only a huge hit but also a sense of being “out of control.” It also has a kind of hip Britishsound to it, which I like. The type for the stationery and announcements, which I work on for weeks with a graphic designer at his studio in Chelsea,