Two Questions

I had a bad taste from the breakup with my wife that I had to purge, and I had to purge it quickly. I craved the electric thrill of a new, strange woman's touch, the heady high of getting off solely for the sake of getting off. There was a sure way to deal with this: I went to a brothel for an hour's session with someone I didn't know.

There were five women to choose from; an idea came into my head. Rather than choose on the basis of looks, or shape, or age, I'd try to probe their minds and life experience.

"Okay, Ladies, I have two questions, and I'll choose on the basis of your answers. First, what's the most exotic place you can think of? Second, what's the most exotic place you've been?"

Jessica, willowy blonde, barely twenty: "The most exotic place I can think of is, I guess, Las Vegas. And the most exotic place I've been is, I guess, Atlantic City."

Maria, dark, Hispanic, short, extremely busty: "Havana and Havana."

Catharine, tall, bushy auburn hair, curvy, a cherubic face: "The most exotic place I've been is Key West. The most exotic place I can think of is the Land of Naar . . . it's a place inside my head."

Molly, skinny, with well-scrubbed Waspish looks, who turned out to be a magazine writer: "Think of -- Marrakech; been to -- Beijing."

Janet, dark, short black hair, British accent: "The most exotic place I've been to would be Calcutta. That I can think of -- Kuala Lampur."

The questioning finished, I continued. "It wouldn't be fair to grill you like this without telling you the answers that I'd give. The most exotic place I can think of is Bali. The most exotic place I've been is Omdurman, Sudan -- a place of Arab mystics, minarets, mosques, camel markets, silversmiths, thick gooey coffee and cold frothy fruit drinks."

"Have you decided," Lori, the madam popped in to ask.

"Psychologists say that the people who see patterns in the shadows of the Rorshak test rather than in the lines, have vivid imaginations. So I'll pick the lady who didn't take the questions literally-- Catharine." She rose, and led me up the stairs.

I love the high, the danger and the tension of sex with a woman that I don't know. In one moment and one movement it is both a bold defiance of nature and the most primal act possible. My senses are put on high alert, my desire goes into overdrive and yet I am ready to defend. I want, no, I crave the prickly, moment-to-moment discovery of a stranger's skin and reflexes: will she be pliant or resistant? Will she lean into my arms or stand back rod straight? Will she turn her head or will her lips seek me out? My heart pounds as we approach the room.

"Do you want to take a shower?" she asked. This, I know, is sometimes a ploy, a way for the girl to send the guy into the bathroom for the first quarter-hour, yet at the same time I know there are plenty of guys out there who need it.

"Actually, I'm pretty clean," I responded.

"You don't want to take a shower with me?" Catharine said coyly. Well! This was something new! A working girl had never suggested joining me in the shower. I changed my mind.

In the bathroom, Catharine took my hand and led me into the tub, where we were instantly drenched with piercing streams of hot water. She encircled me with her arms and drew me to her closely; our bodies pressed against each other and she kissed me. Her full lips pressed against mine, and her mouth opened; her tongue was in me, and her hand wrapped around my wet head, pulling me to her. Her body pressed and writhed against mine; her breasts flattened and rubbed against my chest. My cock stiffened and slipped between her legs.

She broke the kiss and smiled at me, her face radiant, pink, streaming with water. Then she took a sponge and some soap and lathered me up. I returned the gesture, and with bodies slippery and soapy, she embraced me once again, kissing me harder, probing my mouth as before with her tongue. And then it broke again. My cock was sticking up at attention.

"Do you want me to give you a blow job in here?" she asked. It was a tempting vision: Catharine kneeling in the tub, the water pounding down, her taking my member into her mouth, my semen shooting like fireworks in the rain. But I wanted more.

"No," I decided. "I want to go back to the room."

She turned off the shower and we stepped out; she took some large terry cloth towels from a shelf and dried me off; I then dried her, and, towels wrapped around us, we stepped back across the hall.

In the room, Catharine picked up a cassette tape from a table, and put it in a player. "My friend's tape. He had a disco in the Middle East, Dubai I think. It's the best music."

As the beat began to crank up, she then lay down face up on the bed, spread-eagle, stretching her arms and legs to the four corners, bringing her skin taut and smooth and foldless, breasts flattened out and firm, her belly drawn in. Her calves were perfectly formed, with thin ankles and graceful, strong muscles below the knee. Her thighs curved gently up from the knees to her hips, with just the slightest bit of thickness on the inner thigh, just below her pubic hair. I relished those twin slivers of silken tenderness, that on any woman seemed even more private than anywhere else, more hidden, and more sensitive. And Catharine had spread her legs widely, leaving those places most exposed and open to me.

I climbed on to the bed on all fours, and hovered over her outstretched body; her skin, scrubbed pink, clean and barely moist, smelling of soap. I swooped down toward her with my entire body, grazing her lightly: nipple to nipple, thighs to thighs, my cheek next to hers, then my lips on her neck, and my breath, getting shorter, warmer, in the hollow of her collarbone. Down, so that my tongue circled her on her aureole; down, I playfully pulled niblets of her breast, then her belly, into my mouth and sucked on them. Down, I stuck my tongue in her navel and rolled it around. And down: the tip of my tongue traced the top edge of her pubic hair, slipped into the crease formed by her thigh. Down and around, my head bobbed between her lifted legs and the tongue circled the outer edge of her labia, back up to the top where it slipped between the sweet warm lips, and then wiggled its way to her clitoris. I was already aroused and hard, breathing in the rich aroma of her hair and her body.

She sat up and pushed me gently back on the bed so that I was lying down, took a condom from a drawer in the table next to the bed, and slipped it on. Then she climbed between my legs, and, staring up at me, swallowed my cock deeply into her mouth. She worked it hard, grasping it by the base with one hand and jerking it while her mouth sucked it in. I watched as she worked on it, saliva dripping down the sheathed shaft. Then she would stop for a moment, look at me and smile, lick the extra spittle off, and take the hot member back in.

I began to feel the urgency of a climax rumbling in my scrotum. I started to turn so as to get on top of her, but she came forward.

"Let me show you," she said in a low voice.

Then she straddled my cock with her perfect female form, placing her vagina right over it, stretching her body up fully so that I could see it completely -- her face, her round breasts, the curve of her waist, the flare of her hips, her thighs against my skin. With one hand, she reached down and pulled her labia up and tight, spreading them apart with her fingers.

"I want you to see yourself entering me," she said softly. And with that, she leaned back, bracing herself on my knee with her other hand, and lowered herself slowly on to my hardened cock. I watched intently as the head pressed against her opening and then popped in. Inside, she was tight and hot. She lifted up almost immediately, and the head of my cock came almost all the way out -- the very tip was still barely in her, and the folds of her labia wrapped around the head. Then once again, she lowered herself, this time a bit further, and the head popped in to her soft, close opening again. She lifted up, and I was almost out. I realized that even though I had thought I had been hard, she had made my cock even harder and bigger. I could feel the pulse of my blood in it as she lowered herself once again, this time very slowly, this time all the way down. I watched and I saw as the entire length of my shaft pressed itself inside her hot walls. She placed her hands on her knees and ground her hips down and around, so that her labia rubbed against my public bone, and I could feel my cock stirring around inside her.

Catharine leaned forward, and brought her face close to mine. I embraced her with my arms. She riveted her deep brown eyes on mine as she brought her hips forward, so that my cock came out a bit. Our eyes were locked together in wordless communion as I began to thrust upward in to her. She met me, bringing her hips down to meet me. We moved slowly at first, with me drawing my cock nearly all the way out before plunging back in. Out, and then in again, gradually picking up speed, but not losing eye contact.

Then, she broke the silence. "Fuck me, Paul," she said, staring into my eyes. "Fuck me hard, Paul."

I bucked hard with my hips, slapping against her thighs, impaling her with my cock. She responding, thrusting her hips down on me, pushing my cock into her to the hilt, until I could feel it hitting the hardness of her cervix. I began to spasm in anticipation of coming. Catharine leaned back, pressing my cock further into her, stretching it harder against her inner walls.

And then I came: furiously, copiously, shooting my semen into the tip of the condom. Catharine pressed her hips down on me yet harder, as though to squeeze out the last drop. Then she leaned forward, smiled and kissed me. A moment later, she was up, and cleaned me off with a hot, wet towel.

I stretched back on the bed. Catharine lay next to me, her head in the crook of my encircling arm.

"How'd you get into this?" I asked.

"My friend Norma's been doing it for years. I always wanted to try, and it's wonderful."

I was taken aback. "What do you mean?"

"My job is to love people, to take care of them, and the men who come here are very loveable."

"I'd think they'd be pretty rough and horny."

"Oh, some, of course. But most are... well, needy. There's Jim, who's impotent but loves to pleasure a woman with his hands and mouth. But he's too embarrassed to try outside of here, too afraid that women would make fun of him. And Michael, whose wife was burned in the pubic area when she was a teenager, and she freaks if he touches her there. He loves to look and to touch me. Another guy comes in and has me dress up in a school uniform and knee socks and sit on his lap and jerk him off. It's sick, but it's better he do it to me than a schoolgirl on the street. They come here, they tell me their innermost needs, their secrets, and I love them for an hour."

"You can't really love someone for an hour," I protested.

"Of course you can." Catharine smiled. "The heart knows no clock. Besides, love is an act -- it doesn't exist unless it's done. And sometimes the doing is simply in saying it -- look at the way people worry about whether their spouses say that they love them when it's so obvious that they do."

"You're cheapening it," I protested.

"You're putting a price on it," she retorted, raising her eyebrow. Then she winked and laughed.

"There's my friend Nelson, who comes to see me twice a week. I love Nelson, but I'd never tell him that. He's a Hasidic Jew, only 32 years old with seven children. They drive him crazy. Because of his religion, he can only have intercourse with his wife through a hole in a sheet -- he can't feel the touch of her skin against his. So he comes here for the touch of a woman's skin. But you know what he really cares about? He cares about the ball game on Sunday afternoons. His wife won't let him watch the ball game on Sunday afternoons or wear blue jeans. So he comes over to my little apartment on Sunday afternoons and puts on some jeans I keep for him and watches the ball game."

"And guys like me?"

"I look in your eyes and I see loneliness, Paul. Maybe you're not from here and this is a strange city, or maybe you just lost someone, or perhaps this is a special time of year that makes you sad or lonely. But I look in your eyes and I see you falling and spinning, as though you've nothing to hold on to. So for an hour I'm your parachute."

"You're very perceptive. I just split up with my wife."

Catharine smiled. "So like a man. You're all so adorable, like little boys -- so afraid to go into the void alone. I don't mind. I've been there. And besides, women are stronger, emotionally."

Her eyes became glazed and dreamy for a moment, and she sang along with a haunting melody that was playing on the tape:

Well, the Heroes never call,

Nobody's there and there's nowhere to fall.

Don't you ever wonder? Or it don't matter at all?

I looked at her quizzically. "Rosie Vela," she answered. "A supermodel turned musician. So good that Steely Dan was her backup band, but she never made it big commercially."

A knock signaled the end of our hour. We dressed quickly and Catharine showed me to the door. Downstairs, outside, I walked to the corner, then turned around: a nondescript building, with a pizza parlor at street level and two additional stories above it.

It was early June. Day was turning to twilight and the smell of night was in the air. I felt a pang -- envy -- for Nelson, spending his Sunday with Catharine, wearing his jeans, watching T.V. I was, suddenly very, very lonely. Against all reason, I intensely wanted to be back with this stranger, with Catharine, to know who she was, to insinuate some filament of my being in her.

And then the words of the song echoed in my mind: "Don't you ever wonder? Or it don't matter at all?"

Two questions.

The light changed and I crossed the street.