The EPs of R.P.: 1980

It had been a particularly cold New York winter. All his memories of those long months were of wandering aimlessly around the East Village. Once, he came upon a skinny body crumpled up like a stomped out cigarette in the street and thought it was Lou Reed. “Makes sense,” he thought, “that motherfucker is gonna get it sooner or later.”


He hadn’t had a girlfriend in a long time. His friends and dealers were always hassling him with their ideas for him, for his “perfect match.” In particular, his friend Sherrie, who he often ran into while making the allocated “rounds” of openings and dinners, wouldn’t let up about wanting to set him up with her friend Cindy. He had known Cindy for awhile, the way everyone knows everyone when you’ve been in New York long enough, but he never really thought of her that way. Of course she was beautiful, everyone knew that, but she was also sharp as nails and never let the boys get away with too much. All winning qualities, to be sure, but there was something about it that scared him. After all, he spent most of his days looking at porn magazines with names like Oui-ly Legal, Muggin and Juggin, and Freshman Razzle-Dazzle and masturbating in seedy restaurant bathrooms. Was he really the man to date Cindy Sherman?


Then one day it all changed. It was the first real day of Spring, that first glorious day when suddenly everyone seemed to come alive again. No longer were New Yorkers just faceless nomads packed up in heavy coats, but people were hitting the streets in force, bodies fully out. He was feeling good, his normal meandering around the city now punctuated with young bodies lithely rummaging here and there, girls in tight shorts and shirts that hugged their breasts just so. He was walking up Chrystie Street, heading to his favorite video store in the East Village, when he saw her. She was on the other side of the street, and when he looked over they caught each other’s eye. In that split second, he wasn’t sure whether he should keep going, pretend he didn’t see her, or acknowledge it. But then she waved over to him, flagging him down.


“Richard! Hey!”


He waved back, and jogged across the street to meet her.


“Hey, Cindy. What uh.. what are you up to?”


“I’m just on my way to the studio actually. You?”


“Ehh, nothing really... How about this weather, huh?”


“Oh my god I know! It couldn’t have come soon enough. Hey, I’ve actually been working on some new prints, and I’d love it if you came by the studio sometime. I know we never really talk all that much, but I’ve been thinking about asking you to come check this new work out for awhile now, and, well.…” She trailed off and looked down at her feet, suddenly shy. He’d never seen her this way, and he was surprised to feel himself getting hard.


“Hey, I’d love to. I mean, yeah, no, that sounds really great. When should I come by?”


“Oh, whenever is good for you. My assistants are all actually on vacation this week, so things are slow. Anytime is good, really, since they’re gone I’m pretty free.”


“How about tomorrow? Say around noon?”


“Noon works! Do you know where it is?”


“Yeah, I heard you’re in Sherrie’s old space right? I remember her telling me that once…”


“Yeah, thats the one. I’ll leave the door to the studio unlocked, so just take the freight elevator up and pop in whenever you get there.”


“Sounds good, see you then.”


They parted with an awkward wave, and he continued north. He was still hard, so he stopped off at home for a minute. When he entered his apartment, he intended to grab his newest porn discovery, The Oriental Inquisition, but he surprised himself again when he felt he didn’t need to. Instead, he sat on the couch, pants unbuttoned and shirt pulled up, and thought about Cindy. Her soft face, the way her hair bounced ever so slightly when she walked. He remembered a time when they had been at an opening together, waiting in line for the bathroom. She was ahead of him, and when she went in, the toilet paper had run out, so she reached up on a high ledge to grab another before shutting the door. The way her ass looked in those pants when she stretched out forward to pull down a new roll, it was so firm, yet soft and it filled up her pants just so. He wondered what her it looked like, felt like, tasted like. And then before he knew it, he came...


The next day he woke up early and made sure to stroke his cock until he came once before leaving for CIndy’s. Should he try for another time? He debated in his head. He didn’t want to be embarrassed when he got there by any unexpected erection, a constant worry and stress in his life, but in the end he just went with the once. He left the house a little before noon, and when he got to the building he found that the front door had been cracked open. He entered and pulled it shut behind him. He took the freight elevator and knocked on her door. She came and opened the door, but was surprised to see him. She was in full costume, as if she had just been shooting.


“Hey! Richard! Oh God, I’m so embarrassed, I thought we said noon? I must have totally screwed up. Hold on, let me go get changed.”


“No, no, Cindy. It was noon. Wait, did I screw up? Shit, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to bust in on you.”


“No its ok, but it is 11....” He looked up at a clock hanging in her studio and saw she was right.


“Oh shit! You know what, I never rewound my watch after the last thing, you know, when the time changes. So my watch said noon but it must be… Ah shit, Cin, I’m really sorry.”


She laughed. “Richard! That happened so long ago. Have you been living an hour off for months now?”


He chuckled to himself, “I guess I have. Well, there goes any attempt to impress you with my total togetherness and busy, professional lifestyle.”


They laughed and she touched his arm softly. “Its totally fine, as long as you don’t mind the, well, my look right now.”


He laughed again, “No, no. Not at all. I just feel bad I burst in like this. Now I know all your secrets..”


Again they shared an awkward laugh and she lead him back into the studio. It was only then, when she was walking in front of him, that he fully saw this look she was talking about. He had heard she was getting into color photography, and pushing harder with the “characters,” but he hadn’t expected this. On this day, she was taking photos of herself as the all-American housewife. Blond bob, perfectly executed make-up, a tight pink dress that accentuated an idealized hourglass figure, with petticoats to pop out the bottom, all wrapped up with a tidy little apron that cinched her waist. Needless to say, his cock was hard as a rock.


From there, it was hard for him to remember exactly what came next. The “visit” as it were was now pretty much a blur. It consisted basically of him listening to her, responding every now and again, but mostly trying to maneuver any which way that would conceal his massive erection. He was trying so hard not to sound stupid, he really did want to impress her, but as long as she was dressed like this he literally couldn’t think about anything other than fucking her.


Little by little though, after all the posturing and art bullshit, she opened up to him and he to her. He was surprised by their easy rhetoric. It was something he hadn’t quite experienced with a woman before. Normally, his sexual relationships consisted of punishment. Either him being a pervert to a too young of girl he met at some dirty punk bar, or an older woman who wanted nothing more than to boss him around, sometimes even hitting him so hard he was left with bruises scattered around or the occasional black eye. The fucked up thing was that rarely did he even have sex with these women, instead he just entered into fantastical role playing scenarios he set up to be rejected, abused, reminded of what a piece of shit he felt like. But now what he was feeling with Cindy, was this what a real relationship could feel like? He always wished he could have “normal” fun. Is this what that was?


As it went on, he didn’t even care that his erection was still in full force. He felt so relaxed he had stopped thinking about it, and it now was on display. By now, she was leaning against the prop table she was been using for the photographs, it was full of homely kitchen supplies, bowls and mixing spoons and the like. He was sitting in a chair facing her. Their conversation slowed for a minute and they caught each other’s eye, she looked away quickly, an awkward glance gone astray. He knew it was now or never.


He stood up and walked towards her. He put his arms around her waist, and she responded in tune and lay her arms around his neck. He pulled her towards him and kissed her. She took his kiss and pushed back into him. There they were, she is full costume, him in his normal, nerdy cast-off army-navy surplus store garb, making out in her studio. Before he knew it, he was sliding his hands up the front of her dress. She wasn’t wearing stockings, just panties, and through them he could feel how wet her pussy already was. As his hands got nearer and nearer, she squeezed her legs tighter and tighter around him. He pulled off her panties and she threw her head back. She fumbled around with his zipper and belt and pulled his cock out. He looked at her, and then before he knew it, he was inside of her. Her pussy was even more amazing than he could have imagined. She moaned as he pushed in and out.


As he fucked her, he lay his hands on the table to steady himself. She kept her arms around him, but he slammed his right hand on the table, right up against the mixing bowl. In an instant, he was brought back to his childhood in the Panama Canal Zone. Even though they were foreigners in a strange land, his mother did all she could to try and give him and his brothers what she thought was the perfect American childhood, which mainly consisted of family dinners every evening, and cookies freshly baked when they got home from school. Sometimes, when he would come home from a long day at school, he would burst through the door and smell the cookies and get a strange feeling in his pants. When he did, he would slowly enter the kitchen, seeing his mother fussing around the room laying the cookies out on plates. The smell and the sight of this coddled domesticity only made the feeling in his pants more extreme. When it got to be too much, he would go stand in his room against the open doorway and push up against the side of the door, moving up and down until he was relieved. He never understood at the time what was going on, but he knew now. Once, his mother caught him doing it, and slapped him. She told him to stop, that it was shameful, and that he wasn’t to think about it again. Touching the bowl now in Cindy’s studio, pushing into her tight, open pussy, he thought about all those times, looked at her face, and came immediately.


He collapsed into her, breathing heavily, as she kept her arms draped over him, unmoving. He gently pulled out and went to the bathroom. When he came back she was standing up, moving things around on the desk and fixing her wig. They gave each other their numbers, and he promised to call.


So began their relationship. They would meet up a few times a week, most often he would met her at her studio at the end of the day, take her out to dinner, then home. The playful gentleness of their first day in the studio had evolved into something else, and he was starting to see different sides of her. She was colder now, often curt with him when they were out. Their sex life was pretty standard. Usually missionary, just getting the job done. She wasn’t an active sex participant he wouldn’t have said, but he never had experience with a “normal” girlfriend so maybe this was just that, normal? Every now and again he would get an inkling of her reaching out for more- grabbing onto his ass harder than normal, fingernails pulling up along him as he fucked her. Once she even left a scratch on his back that remained there for a day. It excited him, but she never brought it up, so neither did he. Sometimes when he was walking around, to and from the video store or home from the bar late at night if they hadn’t met up, he fantasized about things like that, dominating her or her abusing him. He thought about taking her home, pushing her down on the bed, not allowing her eyes to meet his ever. Then, he would pull her pants off just so, just enough for him to enter her, and pound into her while his hand reached around and grabbed her face, preventing her from making any noise. She would just have to take it, take it like the pretty little cold bitch she was. And then, just before he came, he would pull out, and shove it in her soft ass just for a moment, before taking his cock out again and coming all over her. Maybe when he put it in his ass she would protest, but he would only grab hold of her mouth even tighter, shutting her up. On the flip side, sometimes he remembered that first day in the studio, when the sight of her in that dress and apron had made him so excited. He fantasized about her in more outfits like those, echos of his mother and aunts, fussing over him. Maybe he was sitting on the floor, cross-legged, watching her walk all around him. She would boss him around, tell him to clean up while she watched. If he wasn’t doing a good enough job, she might scold him verbally, maybe even hit him, or kick him in high, shiny heels. In his fantasy she was always wearing long, yellow, rubber gloves. The feel of those gloves, ever slightly wet and slippery, was forefront in his mind. Sometimes she would even take them off slowly, only to slap them across his bare ass before pushing him down on the floor again.


But then, when he would meet up with her in real life, he would remember his fantasies and feel a strange guilt and shame seep up inside of him.


Meanwhile, his daily routine changed little. Despite finding himself settling into a nice play on domesticity with her, his day to day life of wandering around, looking for porn, working on the occasional painting remained totally the same. Sometimes she would bring up wanting to go to his house, but he always found a way out of it. He didn’t want to bring her to his dark apartment, stacked to the ceiling with porn magazines, old VHS tapes, joke books, and whatnot. He lived like a 90 year old hoarder with a fetish for young girls and the last thing he wanted to do was let Cindy see it.


It had been a few months now with Cindy in their little routine, but he wasn’t sure what to make of it. She didn’t seem like she wanted more, she seemed happy enough to show up at openings together, have dinner and have their same old same old sex at her place a few times a week. He visited her studio a few more times, but the conversations never really flowed like it had before. Most of the time, he was locked in his own mind, a filthy feedback loop of underage sex and mommy fetishes. Ironically, the longer their relationship went on, the more trapped he was in his own mind. He even started pulling away during sex with her, preferring instead his own dirty thoughts than what was in front of him. He knew Cindy was the best he could ever do, but why wasn’t it enough? Sure, she could be cold, and she never really let him in, and he was starting to get the feeling that she liked the appearance of their relationship more than she liked any of the contents of it. But who was he to say boo to that? Maybe that was what he needed. But this perverted prison of his mind was wearing on him, he used to have a release, but now he had this act to go through, and he noticed himself starting to lash out in other ways. It started out slow, but quickly reached a boiling point. One night, after dropping Cindy off at home, he feigned a headache, just to leave. He blamed it on work, said he was stressed about some upcoming show, and just need to be alone and lie down.


“Sure, Rich.” She said without a fight. “Call me tomorrow, ok?”


He agreed, and walked straight to Mars Bar. He sat at the bar, taking shot after shot. After not so long, he was approached by a young Asian woman in a tight red dress. She had her make up done like Siouxsie Sioux, all the rage at the time.


“Hey, you.” She purred. “You don’t look so hot tonight. You need some company?”


He scanned the bar and saw another young Asian woman in similar garb hanging toward the back of the room.


“Your friend?” He motioned to her and she nodded.


“How much.”


She giggled and feigned shock. “Can’t a woman be interested in a man sometimes? Why you gotta turn this into something it ain't though.”


“A woman like you would never be interested in a man like me.”


She laughed and nodded to her friend. “For you, $200 for the night. Anything you want.”


“Anything?”


“Anything.”


“Let’s go.”


Her friend approached and he got up and walked out. They followed. It was October already, starting to feel a slight chill in the air. They followed him silently to his apartment, and entered. They both tried not to look shocked by the mess he lived in. He didn’t apologize. He opened the door to the bedroom and lay down, pushing magazines and papers off the bed to clear it.


“You’re both wearing heels, good. Now put these on.” He reached in the door in the table near his bed and pulled out face masks.


“Uhh.. what kind of shit is this?” The one girl asked.


“A nurse’s face mask. Don’t ask stupid fucking questions.”


“Oh I see, I see. You got a nurse fetish huh? Well, we can work with that.”


“Like I already said, don’t be stupid. I want you to put the mask on and hurt me.”


And with that their exchange became wordless. He leaned back on the mattress and the girls peeled off their dresses, leaving both heels and masks on, and the followed suit by pulling off his clothes. The one girl rummaged around and found some old ties he had, and tied his hands and feet to each other, and then they gagged him. After that they went to town. They walked on him, their tiny bodies pushing their heels into his ever-softening flesh. They hit him with their hands, and anything they could find in the apartment: heavy books, cables, the stick from the toilet plunger, one was even about to try with an empty beer bottle but then thought the better of it. By the end his body was battered and bruised, and he was crying like a baby. He just wanted to have fun.


A day or two later, Cindy announced she was leaving for Munich for two weeks, she simply had to fly over for a big show there that she had some work in. To be honest, Richard was slightly relieved. He wasn’t healed after his rough rendezvous and kept having to think of half-assed excuses for Cindy about why they couldn't have sex. He bid her goodbye on the day she left for the airport, kissed her and wished her good luck.


But now he was a man unchained. His night with the two women had activated even more possibilities in his mind, he just needed to figure out what they were. He spent his days much the same, walking around, but now he had a new thing—a Walkman—to aid on his daily wandering commutes. The first tape he bought was the first Ramones record. “Can’t go wrong with this one,” he thought. He spent a few days pacing around, checking out shows in Chelsea and Soho, renting smutty videos and old B-movies from the video store, drinking in the night with old friends he ran into occasionally. It was all well and good, but his urges and sexual appetites needed something new to satisfy him. Cindy would be home in just over a day now, he had to act fast.


He was walking home one night, at around 3 in the morning, after a long drinking session with his dealer. His dealer had been getting on him to make more paintings, which only made him want to act out even more, especially when he said things like, “Rich, we all are so happy you are with Cindy now, we thought it would really pull you together.” Pull him together? Fuck off. As he sauntered home, walkman on full blast through his headphones, “53rd & 3rd” came on.


If you think you can, well come on man...


In an instant, he knew just what he had to do. He hailed the nearest cab and hightailed it north. He let himself out just on that corner and searched for the nearest bar. A notorious cruising spot, he ambled into Cowboys, one of the roughest of the gay bars in the neighborhood. They let him in with no trouble, he ordered a whiskey, on the rocks, and searched the bar. Standing in the back of the room, he saw a young-ish Puerto Rican boy, couldn’t be more than 17. He was wearing high waisted jeans and a strange white mesh shirt, long, that cinched at the bottom. He looked sweet somehow, but with cuts in his eyebrows on each side. Richard approached him.


“You here alone tonight?”


“Yes, sir. All by my lonesome. I haven’t seen you here before.”


“Its my first time.”


“A first-timer, huh? Fun.” As he said it he stroked the top of Richard’s waistband.


“I, uh.. I don’t really know how this all works.”


“Listen, I got a room upstairs. I rent by the hour. If you wanna come up, we can work something out, papi.”


They exchanged a few more casual exchanges, but soon were headed upstairs. After some fumbling and initial awkwardness, he laid down the ground rules: no kissing, no funny stuff, he just wanted his cock sucked, and then to really give it to this boy, this young hustler. He paid extra to not wear a condom.


He got on his knees and went to work. Richard was surprised at how easy it found it to get hard, but he called it off sooner that he thought because he just didn’t like looking down and seeing a boy there. Now he had nothing against the gays, but, it just wasn’t for him. He pulled him up and and turned him over, pushing him down so he was laid flat on the table in the room. Richard stood behind him and entered him. And soon, he was off. He rammed into him, he could tell this boy hadn’t had a cock as big as his in a minute because of the way he screamed. It turned him on. He was relentless with this boy, never letting up. He pounded and pounded for a solid 15 minutes before slowly slightly, he could feel himself tensing up and getting close to coming.


“Yo, waitwaitwait wait listen. You can’t come inside me. That was the deal, ok—”


“YOU shut the fuck up!!!!” Richard screamed. He was going to get what he wanted tonight, and what he wanted was to punish this boy. With that, he came.


He pulled his pants on and walked out, throwing the money on the dressed as he left. He didn’t turn back to look at the boy on his way out.


He took a cab home and slept for hours and hours. When he finally woke up it was late into the afternoon. He fucked around as normal, and remembered that Cindy would be home tonight. He promised her he would come to her apartment around 9, after she had been home for a few hours to settle in. He had keys to her apartment.


He showered and ate dinner, killed some time before walking over. His brain was a blur. When he walked in her apartment, he called her name. “I’m in the bedroom.”


He stood at the entrance to the bedroom and looked in, finding her lying on the bed, in expensive looking lingerie.


“Mhmm...I missed you.” She stretched her hands out and motioned for him to come closer.


He knew he should approach, but he was frozen. She was moving ever so slightly, caressing herself through her tight, lacy panties and bra.


“Richie...” She moaned.


But all he could do was watch. He felt himself get hard, and she cooed and tried to coax him over to her. But then in an instant, as if he was operating under some outside orders that he couldn’t explain, he walked over to the open door, and started rubbing himself against the door frame, just like he had always done as a child.


“Richard, what are you doing…”


He didn’t say anything, but sped up. The harsh angle of the door activating him like no other, all the thoughts barreled through his mind like cars racing around a Formula One track: his mother in her tight housewife-garb in the Canal Zone, the look of Cindy's face, covered in dense make up the day she first opened the door to the studio, the two naked Asian women in nurses' masks beating him with bathroom plungers and brooms, the young hustler's tight asshole at Cowboy. The thoughts careened back and forth, ping ponging through his confused mind at hyper speed. He rubbed his erection harder and harder into the door frame of Cindy's well-curated bedroom. At one point he thought he might even cry, so he knocked his head against the wall, at which Cindy gasped, but it only brought him closer to ecstasy.


“Richard, what the… Are you really….What the fuck Richard?”


Her words ran right through him, and he felt himself finally get release. He turned to face her, copious cum stains now seeping through his light khaki pants. He stood there for a minute facing her, as if on display. Fully clothed, he felt more naked than he ever had in his life.


“OK, um...you can go. No you need to go. This is...What is this Richard? I just.... Listen if you don't want me to mention this to your dealer, I won't, ok? Just....just leave."


Wordlessly, he turned around and left. On the walk home, he thought again about what had happened over the past few months. All he wanted was to have fun. But, he sighed, it’s just like Iggy Pop was saying on the new tape he had bought for his walkman, No fun. No fun for me or you.


"This is the life for me."