Peepshow and Other Tales (eBook)

When Times Square Was Times Square

James M. (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
100 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3178-1517-2 (ISBN)

Infos

A bawdy, humorous collection of short stories set around New York's Times Square in the 1960s -- the porn theaters, adult bookstores, peepshows, as well as the Broadway theater scene, the jazz clubs, New Years Eve celebration, and more.

James M. has a decades-long career writing for major magazines, newspapers and media sites.

---

A bawdy, humorous collection of short stories set around New York's Times Square in the 1960s -- the porn theaters, adult bookstores, peepshows, as well as the Broadway theater scene, the jazz clubs, New Years Eve celebration, and more. Meet the peepshow model, porn theater cashier, would-be Broadway actor, adult film actress, pimp, streetwalker, and pickpocket, along with Bennie, Janice, Vinnie, Evelyn, Eddie and the rest of the characters who populate the pages of this look back at the time when Times Square was Times Square.

Textauszug

PENTHOUSE

When darkness falls on Manhattan and the spires twinkle in place of the stars, there are but two aloft to enjoy the view: the apartment dweller high in a tower of steel and glass, nestled on a sofa with a magazine and cocktail; and the office orderly. The former pays dearly for the cherished panorama, the latter receives much less.

Late at night, when the lofty Manhattanite glances through a bedroom window buttoning a pajama top, the rings of yellow glass that girdle the office spires are mere ornaments in the steel forest, without cause or purpose. To the orderly pausing for a cigarette by an office window, each gleaming penthouse is a castle in the sky, often just 60 yards away but surrounded by the moat of 45 unbroken stories.

Vinnie was not such a “lofty Manhattanite,” but rather went by the oft-considered cognomen of “orderly.”

That Vinnie rose when the world went to bed, and slept while it cranked into motion, that he was inbound when everyone else was outbound, that he breakfasted while others dined and dined while they breakfasted, and in general led a life completely against the grain of the normal workaday world was, considering the details of his inglorious history, almost to be expected.

In all that he did, Vinnie had always been a minority of one. While other sixth-graders spent their summer days in the broiling sun bashing a horsehide spheroid with a tapered wooden stick, Vinnie passed his time prone on the living room floor, gaping in mute wonder at every movie, quiz show, and soap opera the local stations were good enough to televise.

While other eighth-graders were braving the afternoon chill on a frozen field in a helmet and shoulder pads, charging mindlessly at one another like a crazed rhinoceros, Vinnie was whiling away the hours in his parents’ apartment, curled up on the couch with a book of verse and a cup of hot chocolate.

While other junior-high boys eked out their evenings on a barren streetcorner smoking, bragging, clowning, swearing and scrutinizing the axial movements of each passing female in stunned, hopeless worship, Vinnie was bent over his bedroom table with a profusion of minute polyethylene components and a tube of plastic cement, patiently assembling the Sixth Fleet.

And while the rest of his high school senior classmates were reeling with dreams of jobs, cars and girlfriends, Vinnie was completely consumed by one obsessive intention: He was going to be a major writer.

Vinnie’s ambition did not owe all to an adoration of the Hippocrene Muse, but was strongly tainted by an appetite for the Almighty Buck. With little romantic talent, athletic skill, business acumen, criminal courage or lottery luck, and absolutely no connections in influential places, Vinnie quickly realized that for him there was but one avenue open to possible wealth: that of a successful artist.

To the young man enchanted by the stars of literary glory, the job of mopping, scrubbing and sponging after other people’s excreta need not be a thankless, demeaning and unremunerative dead end. In fact, to Vinnie the night-hour position seemed ideal, leaving free the most productive hours of his day and eliminating the distraction of financial pressures as well, a job totally undemanding of dedication, speed or creative energy. So when the 21-year-old community college dropout was offered the job of office orderly by a Midtown employment agency, he accepted it bravely as the first nail in the cross of artistic martyrdom.

In the 23 years since his appointment, Vinnie had scrubbed out some 500,000 toilet bowls, urinals and sinks, and written 123 poems and short stories. For the former he’d received $301,600, before taxes; for the later, an issue of Reverberations magazine, donated in return for a poem they accepted but alas, never published.

Still, just as each continuing day of a man’s carnal deprivation can make the sight of a woman ever more painfully alluring, each rejection slip made Vinnie’s quest for literary recognition ever more frantically urgent.

Despite his busy schedule of writing and latrine-washing, Vinnie always found time for the simple pleasures that 23 years of routine can make so existentially important.

His day usually began at 3 p.m., with a cup of instant coffee and a slice of toast in his one-room Brooklyn apartment. After a subway ride and a copy of the Post, he’d emerge in Midtown Manhattan to kill time before his 8:00 punchin at the ancient office building on Times Square.

Depending on his mood of the day, he might stroll for a mile or so up Park Avenue, stepping between the old women, doormen and small dogs; or lounge around the fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel and watch the limousines jockey for position; or saunter along Fifth Avenue on the wide, busy sidewalks; or on Madison with its hurried, headdown crowds. In warm weather he might walk as far as the United Nations, stopping to read the menu of an occasional restaurant. In the rain he invariably took in a movie. But no matter the course of his afternoon ramblings, they always ended at precisely 7:45 before the midtown office building filled with talent agents, entertainment lawyers, theater impresarios, and “modeling” agencies of questionable scruples.

He took lunch at midnight, wolfing down a delicatessen sandwich and a container of coffee and then passing the rest of his half-hour with a walk through the surrounding side streets, lurking for a few minutes outside a nightclub to examine the traffic, lingering now and then around a Rolls or Bentley parked in unabashed violation before one of the more elegant establishments. He often ended his lunchtime jaunts with a brisk walk along the glass menhirs of Sixth, marching headlong into the glare of streaming taxis.

The work was simple and solitary. At each new floor Vinnie would leave the cleaning women’s polyglot jabbering in the offices and enter the damp, quiet room that for the next 20 minutes was to be his exclusive domain. After scrubbing the bowls and sinks, swabbing down the tile floor and replacing the toiletpaper rolls and paper towels, he would wait by the door until he heard the women depart for the next floor, then emerge from the bathroom to savor a smoke on a clean, empty floor.

Every now and then he’d drift into an executive’s office and take a breather with his feet propped up on the desk, or just sit in the middle of a massive pool of office equipment listening to the hum of florescent lights. And, especially on the higher floors, he often relished a few tranquil moments leaning over a windowsill, gazing at the nearby office buildings, the hotels in the distance, the leaf-fringed penthouse terraces nestled atop the apartment towers.

Each morning when work let out at 5 a.m., Vinnie hiked over to a favorite allnight cafeteria on Sixth Avenue and savored a leisurely steamtable dinner over an early edition of The Daily News.

After a second cup of coffee came a walk over to Broadway for his daily discussion of politics, literature and practical philosophy with the newsstand dealer in front of Nedick’s, then a drop into the subway just as the vanguard of the morning rush was rearing its hurried head on the streets.

The ride home to Brooklyn he devoted to a magazine, or on more disheartened days, a nap. His day customarily ended with a visit to a local tavern for a cold beer or two, where he’d stare blankly ahead in the dim, empty room, the world rushing by the window on its groggy way to work wondering what kind of poor, unfortunate soul might conceivably be ensconced on a bar stool at 8:25 in the morning.

If Vinnie’s cleaning agency hadn’t lost its account with the Times Square building and been obliged to transfer him to a client structure farther east, his routine might well have gone on unchanged for another 23 years. For despite a wealth of energy, enthusiasm and perseverance, Vinnie’s actual literary talents were, in actual fact, hardly sufficient to gain him admission to the world of belles lettres. As it was he felt thoroughly uprooted, torn from the womb of his daily habits, forced to establish an entire new itinerary for his peregrinations and to introduce himself to new subways, delicatessens, coffee shops and newsstands as well.

On the plus side, he had an entirely new window vista to familiarize himself with. Once again there were the office towers, the apartment buildings, an odd hotel or two. But here the view offered an extra treat. For shortly after beginning his new assignment, Vinnie was delighted to discover that the eastern windows of the building offered a splendid view of the penthouse next door.

There it was in all its moon-washed majesty—the flowery terrace bedecked with lanterns, the parasoled tables and chairs, the sliding door and floor-to-ceiling windows that when the curtains were open lent a partial view of the lavish living room beyond.

Night after night Vinnie watched whenever he found himself alone on the 48th floor, gazing in rapt wonder at the comings and goings of the penthouse’s unknown occupants. A light blinks off in the living room, another goes on in the bedroom; a couple emerges through the sliding doors and converses at the edge of the terrace; a woman models a long gown in the living room; a group of men chat excitedly in the lantern light — Vinnie saw it all from his hidden perch, searching for clues to paint the lives of his unheard idols, who sometimes loomed so close it seemed he could reach out and take the glasses right out of their hands.

After five months of...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 10.10.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Comic / Humor / Manga
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3178-1517-2 / 9798317815172