A Descent into Hell

        I was strolling through the Tribeca section of New York City one
afternoon last week when Woody nudged me in the thigh. "Hey, you know
what's nearby, don't you?" he asked, straining to point the way.

        I tried to ignore him, but he was his usual persistent self. "The Church
Street Harmony, dude!" he cried. "You've seen the posts. Let's check it out."

        I tried to reason with him. "Look, you remember what the one in the
West 20's was like," I said. "Ugly women. Bad music. Smoky, foul-smelling
atmosphere. You hated it."

        "Yeah, but the New York ass-cers all say that the Church Street one
is better," he countered. His enthusiasm was beginning to draw stares from
the other pedestrians. "Let's go for it. We have time. You have cash in
your wallet. Besides, you owe the newsgroup a report. How long has it been
since you posted that review about Stiletto's? It's your civic duty, man."

        What could I say when he couched his rationale in such noble terms?


                                **********************

        I paid my fifteen bucks to the cashier (Woody got free admission,
as usual), then passed through the turnstile, inadvertently bonking Woody
in the head along the way. "Jesus Christ," he muttered. "You probably did
that on purpose."

        "Believe me, that hurt me as much as it did you," I answered with a
grimace. We passed through the dungeon-like door into the theater.

        It was so dark that at first I could barely see anything. I was
afraid to move for fear of toppling over a seat or a couple in mid-grope.
So I just stood there for a while, waiting for my eyes to adjust.
Unfortunately, they finally did.

        It was a scene out of Dante's "Inferno." The walls were a garish
salmon pink. Huge puffs of cigarette smoke fouled the air. It was too hot.
An overweight, unappealing woman went through the motions on stage; a
customer shoved some money into her hand and kneaded her ass cheeks. By
this time Woody had disappeared. I was alone.

        The inside of the theater has been described before by others. Some
theater seats (bolted to the floor) around a small stage. Large overstuffed
chairs -- of the undergraduate-type quality of furnishings, probably
purloined during a community "pick-up day" -- lining the walls. Washed out,
unhealthy-looking customers and dancers sitting in or draped over the
chairs. The milieu is half Heironymous Bosch, half Dante.

        I took a seat along the far wall and tried to get a sense of the
place. There were a lot of women, some sitting along the wall, some
circulating among the customers asking for dances. Varied races and
ethnicity -- white, African American, some Asian, Hispanic. Most were of no
interest to me. I discreetly spied on the few lap dances taking place. It
looked like the normal lap dance-type interaction, except that there was a
lot of fondling of bare breasts (for the right price?). Periodically, a
dancer would inquire whether I wanted company; I turned them down, one and
all. They went quietly, sullenly.

        Then we saw her. Straight ahead, 12 o'clock -- a slender,
bikini-clad blonde with hard eyes and what looked like a permanent, nasty
smile on her blood red lips. She was sitting and facing an older guy, in
his 50's probably -- one of her regulars, no doubt -- who was massaging her
feet and legs with some sort of lotion. They were talking in what looked
like a straightforward, familiar fashion. Every once in a while she would
lean back, puff on her cigarette and fix him with a look of -- what? It
looked like condescension and smug satisfaction to me. There was something
strangely stirring about the scene. I could tell she definitely had Woody's
interest.

        We decided to approach her as soon as she was free. Trouble was,
she stayed with the guy for what seemed like forever. They just sat there,
in the same position. Finally he whispered something to her and she nodded,
stood up, backed up toward him and bent forward, forcing her (still
bikini-covered) ass into his face. Looked like fun, in a mutually degrading
sort of way. After a minute or so of this, she sat on his lap and continued
talking to him. There was no grinding. I never saw any money change hands
-- perhaps he had given her a wad of cash up front. They just sat there and
sat there. Maybe her conversation was so scintillating that her other
attributes didn't matter. Maybe they were father and daughter. (Well, OK,
that's a bit of a stretch.) In any case, there was a depressing lack of
either playfulness or raunch to their interaction.

        After a half hour or so of this, Woody and I got bored and decided
to check out the lower level. The "Inferno" analogy once again came to mind
-- this "circle" was darker, seamier and physically much hotter. The air
conditioning was definitely broken down here. I half expected to see Satan
himself cruising the scene, but He was nowhere to be found. I looked around
the corner from the stairwell. Here was where the real activity was.
Commerce was definitely in the air. Transactions were being made. Breasts
were bobbing, rocks were being polished, hands were roaming. But it was
utterly sexless -- there was no elan to the licentiousness, no panache to
the corruption. Everyone, dancer and customer alike, looked bored, or
desperate, or both. The realization hit me: This was the grand nexus of
stripper and customer damage, the vortex into which all the lost souls of
assc-ing perish. This was the crack house of sexual interplay.

        We fled back upstairs. Our blond friend was bidding farewell to her
companion. Even Woody was getting cold feet by this point, but I decided to
go for it. I approached, smiled, asked for some of her time. She consented.
I took a seat near where she had been with her previous customer. Uncertain
as to the local customs, I pulled a ten from my wallet and handed it to
her. She sat on my lap, straddling me. I cursed myself for not wearing
thinner pants. (Woody was even more pissed off.) Her hands strayed under my
shirt, found my nipples, played with them. This was not unpleasant. My
hands roamed over her thighs and haunches. The flesh was pale, firm,
honest, praiseworthy. (Amen!) She asked me my name. I gave her a false one.
(Don't ask me why.) I asked her what her name was. "E****," she said. I
took a closer look at her face. She was definitely pretty, yet vaguely
feral, dangerous. A good girl gone bad. Nah. Just a bad girl. She was hot
in a mean, dirty, lowdown way. Yum.

        I asked about her previous customer. She smiled, said he was indeed
a regular. "I have many regulars," she said with a sigh, strangely
detached. It wasn't braggadocio, wasn't self-justifying. It was like she
had just figured this fact out. I thought at first that she might be one of
the famous Russian girls known to frequent the Harmony, but her accent was
pure New Jersey. She asked me what kind of girls I liked. I wasn't quite
sure what she was getting at. "You mean physically?" I said. She smiled,
hugged me. "That was sweet," she said. "Most guys would never even ask that
question. But yes, I meant physically." She took her top off. Nice, small
breasts. Her hands went back to my tormented nipples.

        I told her that I was sort of fat averse, that I liked slender
girls. "I like a toned figure," I said, smiling and slipping my hands
inside the back of her bikini bottom. She smiled back at me. The
conversation stalled. "So what kind of guys do you like?" I asked, more out
of obligation than genuine interest.

        She paused thoughtfully. "I'd like to go back to olden times," she
said. "I want a guy who goes out and kills for food, who conquers his
enemies." I gulped. That didn't sound like me at all. "Did you see
'Braveheart'?" she asked. I allowed that I hadn't. "That's the kind of guy
I want to meet," she said with conviction.

        "So you want to meet Mel Gibson," I said with a smirk. "What girl
doesn't?" She shook her head emphatically. "No, not the actor. The
character. There's a difference, you know." She delivered all of these
lines utterly without affect. I couldn't tell if she was smartly ironic,
stupid, sociopathic or on drugs.

        We chatted for another few minutes, exchanging other bits of
important information. Finally she asked if I wanted her to stay. I took
her hand, led her downstairs to the nasty section. I had a job to do, a
report to file to ass-c. Deadlines loomed; I sure as hell wasn't going to
shirk my duties. We found a chair amidst all the heaving flesh. I sat down,
handed her a twenty. "How about we let things get more interesting?" I said
in my most debonair voice. She didn't smile, took the cash, sat on my lap,
began a listless grind. At first, Woody was subdued; soon however, E****
reached behind her to fondle him through my pants. I gallantly returned the
favor, stroking her bikini-covered crotch. Despite the fact that I was hard
and she was damp, the entire process was mechanical, joyless, completely
unerotic. Appalled, I realized I had joined the ranks of the sexual undead.

        After a few more painful minutes of this, almost certainly the
absolute nadir of my assc-ing career, I leaned forward to bid a not-so-fond
farewell to E****. But before I could, things got even stranger. A
well-dressed Wall Street-type approached her, greeting her enthusiastically
as she continued her languid lapping. He spoke animatedly; she seemed
embarrassed by the awkwardness of the situation. I certainly was. (Hello?
I'm here with this dancer you're talking to; do you mind?) I heard only
snatches of his conversation. One sentence that came through loud and
clear: "I fantasized about you as I was fucking my wife last night."

        Finally he left. "What the hell was that all about?" I asked. E****
apologized, gave me her weary, stripper smile. "He likes to talk to me when
I'm with other customers. He gets off on seeing me with other guys. Sorry
if that weirded you out."

        And so ended my nightmare pilgrimage to the Church Street Harmony.
I thanked E**** for her time, gave her a warm smile, said it was time for
me to go. I really wanted to get the hell out of there. "I have to give you
a hug before you leave," she said solemnly. We stood and embraced -- me
reluctantly. I moved to go; she wouldn't let me. She wasn't hugging me
hard, just insistently. It wasn't a sex thing. I don't think it was a
business thing, either. It wasn't an affection thing. It was the hug of a
completely lost person, or a non-person. It was the hug of a ghost.

SubSonic