Dating : 198XXX

At Dot, ‘Duth-the-tooth’ Duthweiler’s new condominium, I mentioned to Chip Mapple that Ted did not satisfy me sexually.

We were at her housewarming. The only way she could afford a condo at Park La Brea was that she was a prostitute. In addition to her ‘day’ job. When she was hired for handwork, she wore her mother’s engagement ring, a meager gold band with a ruby chip. But none of us were supposed to know she was an actual hooker. We knew her from the Italian-Argentine restaurant on Fourth and Western. We all worked at the restaurant, and after our shift, Luke drove us across town in his lime green Nova. It was a Tuesday, so it wasn’t that late.

There was food, coke, drink stuff and around fourteen people at her place. Some of the bus boys showed up, still in their black double-knit pants and ties, the same uniform as the servers. You knew they weren’t waiters because they were Mexican, and the owner was prejudiced even though he spoke their language.

Chip faced me, but I didn’t know why. He leaned the side of his body against the sliding glass doors. Around 2 am he invited Tony, Luke, Bobbi, her friends and me to go back to his apartment in Playa Del Rey, to sit in his hot tub. Luke did not go. I asked him if I should go — he said yes.

I rode there with Chip in his black Mustang. Chip’s hair was wiry. It rose up and back over his skull like obsidian cotton candy. He changed the radio stations. We went in his apartment and walked around. Bobbi took a towel from Reggie’s bathroom. She left her tube top on the sink. They all left the apartment without my noticing. I took a margarita with me to the hot tub. I pulled down my jeans. I abandoned my peasant blouse behind a wall near the tub. I ran to the hot tub with a towel around me. Tony, Michele, Stephanie and Bobbi were already in the tub. Reggie slumped on the edge of a tan vinyl strap pool chair, still wearing his Blue-Blockers, drinking a Budweiser. He tapped at the finger-sized rolls of his stomach, waiting for someone to talk to him. He had gone surfing in Malibu earlier, but no one in the hot tub cared.

Michelle, the cashier, asked me if I needed them to turn around. Her chest was huge, too bulbous to float. The reflection made her look as though she had a realistic head atop a gigantic boob body. Her soft upper arms rested on either side of her, elbows propped on Mediterranean blue tile; a flower and vine tattoo entwined her left wrist. Dusty brown circles under her green eyes. Orchid eye shadow. Chip rose, offered his hand and helped me step into the cauldron. My towel got wet. I moved closer to him. Bobbi and Bill Buxton got out. Stephanie and Tony passed a roach between them, away from the yellow light. Stephanie was the manager, her hair, a convoluted brown mullet, giving her the look of a llama. She kept her white panties on in the water, and a pre-tied bat wing looped loosely around her neck. Tony had recently become headwaiter. Week before he flew over the top of his bicycle handlebars, face first into rough gravel. Gouged nicks formed rivulets down his cheeks. He started treating it with compresses of his own urine. His good looks were beginning to come back, but he said the pee stung.

Chip wrapped me with his beige towel. A cardboard tag from Pic N’ Save was attached to its corner. He culled some lint from my bangs and blew it away. His fingers shocked me. We scampered over the concrete to the apartment. I asked him if I could wear his robe. He said he would be flattered.

Bobbi was in one of the beds. I asked Chip to bring me a margarita. Bill Buxton got in the twin bed with Bobbi. I asked Chip if I could sleep with him in the other twin. We closed the door. I got in Chip’s bed. He put his arms around me and I moved back toward him.

Chip touched my XXX through his robe. I lay still and then turned toward him and kissed him. He XXX me. I XXX his XXX until he XXX; he XXX me until Bill Buxton moved. Then I tried to start again. When I couldn’t XXX him off I brought his hand down and had him do it. I put his XXX in my XXX. We rested and he took me from XXX (not XXX).

In the am he took me for blintzes with Bill Buxton and Bobbi, to an outdoor café in Venice. Next-door was a bookstore with cats who lived there. He looked for sunglasses to buy me. I wore his white sweat sox with red stripes; he said I could keep them. I left a phone message for Ted before breakfast. Then I called Luke, to tell him I would be home soon. We walked to where the car was parked at Hammond Lumber, which was really Roger Corman’s studio. I walked behind the three of them, and rode back to the apartment with Bill and Bobbie. I said goodbye to Chip at his car. I threw his sox on the roof of our building, next to the kiddies’ pool of cat litter. This was back in 198XXX.