Anyway, I quickly forgot Bonnie, and as I became accustomed to being on my own, time passed more rapidly. My seventeenth birthday came and went, so did my junior year in high school. Relations with my parents improved after I finally told them the truth about how long I had been living alone. No matter how much Jewish parents may be convinced that their son is a no-goodnick living a fast and loose life, a report card containing all A's can smooth their discomfort in a hurry. I had moved to three different apartments since my first little basement room, which I found too depressing; first to an older place in the outer Richmond district, the kind with bench seats built into bay windows with no view of the Bay, then to a more modern apartment in the Marina district, where the weather was nicer, and finally into a newly completed fourplex, one-bedroom furnished apartment at the corner of Franklin and Jackson, on the edge of Pacific Heights. The rent was one hundred forty-five dollars, considered moderately expensive at the time. The apartment had a stainless-steel kitchen with a full-size range and refrigerator, a garbage drop, a garage, and above all it was light and cheerful and new.
My mother, her maternal instincts revived, took me shopping for furniture. I ended up with conservatively modern stuff: a couch, two easy chairs, lamps, tables, a small dinette set, and a blondwood bedroom set complete with vanity and mirror. My father, just to prove that his heart was in the right place and by way of a peace offering, paid for the whole thing. If he'd known how much I had in my bank account, he wouldn't have done it.
I was really excited about the apartment. It was the first place I had lived in that I really considered a home for myself. I was happy and content to stay alone and read, study, and listen to music. I bought a big bookcase, which soon became filled with books, magazines, and records, and I got a real hi-fi to replace the old portable phonograph I had used. The walls became filled with paintings and pictures of my own choosing. Life had become a ball.
I played jobs three or four nights per week; during the summer vacation before my senior year I got a job playing five nights a week with the relief group at the Jazz House. My love life prospered. For a while I had so much cunt I didn't know what to do with it all. I picked up girls at dances or around the club. Chicks seemed to be all over the place and ranged in age from twenty-one to fifty. They stayed with me overnight, or at the most for a few days, until I tired of them. None of them really had anything in common with me outside of the fact that I wanted their bodies, the experiences, the varieties, and differences of them. My problem was created mostly by Mora. After the first night, because they were used to jack-rabbit husbands and thoughtless lovers, they wanted more, wanted to come back. I got to the point where I would be in bed with one girl and two more would phone to ask if I was free, so I had to keep the receiver off the hook. Then the doorbell started ringing, while my bed partner and I tried to ignore it.
I finally realized that the only thing that works when you want to get rid of a woman is to be callous and abusive. So when I tired of a cunt, which was always in a few days, I would throw her out almost bodily. And even then, some would phone me back, and they would apologize for whatever it was they thought they had done to offend me. I was no sexual -superman. Unlike the heroes of the porno novels, I couldn't come twenty times a night, or ten, or even five. Many evenings I was lucky to make it twice, but I did know how to please, and how to treat a woman as if I appreciated her.
During the summer the guys from our combo, plus some other friends decided to have a smoker. They arranged to have stag movies and two call girls. The fee was twenty-five dollars apiece for eight guys, twenty for the girls and five for the films, with everybody bringing his own booze. I would never have dreamed of paying for a woman, but I agreed to go five for the movies. So they got another guy to make a ninth because the girls needed eighty each.
The smoker was held at the apartment of an alto man, Bud, who didn't play with our group. It was on Sacramento Street, way up on Nob Hill, and, while it was old, it had a lot of rooms.
I arrived late with my five bucks and no bottle, never having been a great (or even a poor) drinker. There were only seven guys there, including myself, and the two girls, to whom I was immediately introduced. Rita was a tall blonde of about twenty-five who looked like she had been pretty well used. I gave her a year before she would be sitting in bars, waiting to pick up Johns. She was just about through as a call girl, and I had seen enough of them to know when they got "the look."
The other girl was Terry. She was short, with smooth, olive skin and black hair. She was a doll, cute and pixyish, with dark, lustrous eyes. The same glance that told me Rita was an old call girl told me that Terry was a new one. Her eyes were fresh, her complexion clear, but most important, she didn't have that hard look about her.
Both girls were wearing lacy bras and panties. Rita had on heels and Terry was barefoot. They smiled and waved as I said hello. There was something about Terry that I liked at once, and when she looked at me I could tell that she liked me, too. Everyone around the room was talking, all trying to monopolize the girls. I stood off to the side, not wishing to compete. But Terry's eyes and mine we're catching, even when she was conversing with somebody else. Bud, our host, was swacked out of his mind already. Lew, who was Bud's friend, was getting antsy about the other two guys showing up. He disappeared for a few minutes to phone but was unable to reach either of them, although he talked to the wife of one.
Meanwhile, Bud had Terry pinned against the wall and was trying to lift her breast out of her bra, slobbering drunkenly all over her chest. A couple of other guys came over and started feeling her legs and crotch. I caught the look on her face, panic; she couldn't cope with it. I walked over and held out my hand over Bud's bobbing head. Terry grabbed it and I gave her a yank, pulling her bodily from the horny group, and yelled that I wanted to talk to her for a minute. We crossed the room. "I just wanted to get you away from all that," I said.
"Thanks," she said, "I didn't want to run away, but I didn't know what else to do."
Then we heard Lew and Rita arguing about money. Lew wanted the girls to come across for just the group we had, sixty bucks each. Rita was adamant, eighty or nothing. They decided to cool it for another ten minutes and started the movies, old silents which kept breaking where the film had been respliced a thousand times. The guys all were getting pretty loaded. The bar, full of liquor bottles and mix, spilled liquid and crumpled dishtowels, was a mess.
After more frantic calls it became apparent that the other two guys weren't going to show. When Rita motioned Terry that she should start to get dressed, Lew just about nipped. He reached into his pocket, came up with another twenty, and I suddenly found seven threatening sets of eyes staring at me. It was a simple decision; if I didn't kick in twenty for a screw I didn't want, the girls would split and nobody would get laid. I sighed and dug out my wallet, to the accompaniment of cheers, a hero and hating myself for it. I didn't have many principles, but this was definitely against one of them.
Bud was too drunk to write, so Lew put the numbers one through seven on separate pieces of paper and mixed them in an empty ice bucket. Bud, being our host, was accorded the courtesy of first choice, leaving the rest of us to pick for position. I was the last to pick, and because number one hadn't been taken yet I knew that I had it even before I stuck my hand into the bucket.
Bud was very short, so he chose tall Rita to take to the back bedroom and I chose Terry for the center bedroom, with a plan beginning to form somewhere in the back of my head.
Terry looked almost grateful as she took my hand and led me through the bedroom door, which I closed and then discovered that I couldn't lock. She put her eighty dollars into a small purse and stripped off her bra and panties. Her breasts were small and high, with dark brown nipples that jutted straight out. I sat on the bed with my clothes on. As much as I instinctively liked her, I was beginning to feel that I really couldn't do it like this, not this way, like a John.
She looked at me, sitting on the bed. "Are you bashful?" she asked.
I ignored the question. "You haven't been hustling very long, have you, baby?"
"How do you know?" she asked defensively.
"By the way you panicked out there and because you still look fresh and pretty, and not all beat out, like Rita."
She liked that and smiled. "About two weeks, now."
"What did you do before?"
"I was a hostess in a restaurant on O'Farrell Street."
I stretched out on the bed. "I like you," I said. She sat next to me but didn't answer. "Do you think I'm just another trick?" I asked.
She hesitated.
"Yes."
"Bullshit."
"What?"
"You heard me. I said bullshit. You kept looking at me the whole fucking time we were in the other room."
"Do you want your twenty dollars back?" she asked sarcastically. Then, switching moods, she asked my name-having-forgotten it. I told her.
"Did Rita tell you about talkers, guys that pay just to talk, and get their jollies that way?"
"Yes," she said, surprise evident on her face. She hadn't figured me for a "timid John."
"Well, I'm not a talker, or a weirdo, or a special trick. As a matter of fact, I'm not a trick at all."
Now she really looked puzzled. She had an air of quality about her, and in spite of her puzzlement at my behavior her eyes reflected intelligence.
I took her hand, "Do you like being a call girl, after a whole two weeks in The Life?"
"Oh, sure, it's great. I get to meet a lot of interesting men and go places and make a lot of money." Only her eyes, hurt at the audacity of the question, told me that she was lying.
"And, of course, you really dig sex, right? I mean, all those Johns, out-of-town businessmen, fat politicians, and greasy Daddy Warbucks types, it must be great making it with them, huh?"
That made her belligerent. "What the hell kind of a nut are you, anyway? You come in here to get laid, flop on the bed without even taking off your shoes, and start asking me all these questions that are none of your goddamn business. Now do you want to or not? I have other clients waiting."
The madder Terry became, the more I liked her. I laughed and pulled on her hand. "Come lie with me, baby. I'm gonna tell you a story you'll never forget."
I told her about hustling queers, about knowing every whore in town and about those whom I had lived with, and what eventually happened to most of them. Fascinated, she put her arms around me and pulled close, like a little girl getting a bedtime story from her father.
Every five minutes the door would pound, and Jack, who was next in line for Terry, would yell, "Hey, -what're you cats doin' in there? F'Chrissake, hurry up."
And Terry and I would yell, "Not yet, still busy!"
I told her about the whores' pecking order and how a big percentage of them end up on drugs or sauce, walking the streets. Then I asked her, "I bet you're going to just stay in a couple of years, till you can save enough to open a dress shop of your own, or make a killing in the blue chips, right?"
Terry gasped. "How did you know that? Did Rita tell you?"
I had to explain that she was suffering from the same useless dream that tens of thousands of broken-down old whores all over the country had dreamed at one time or another, that her chances of ever seeing it come true were practically zilch because The Life got to you after a while. The money you made just seemed to disappear and somehow it was always "next year" that you were going to do it, until it was too late. I told her to look at Rita carefully, because she was about ready to slip down the ladder to the- bars. Terry, amazed again, said that sometimes when things were slow for Rita she did go to some of the better bars to work.
Jack banged on the door again.
"Goddamnit," I yelled, "keep the hell away until we come out."
I heard some drunken grumbling as he faded down the hall.
There was a wetness on my shirt -and when I looted down I saw that Terry was crying silently. I held her closer and stroked her hair. She was so little and cute, cuddled into me. I wanted her; not as a whore, but as my woman. I wanted to live with her and take care of her because I had just uncovered somewhere within me, a fatherly bent to which Terry appealed. I didn't want a cat or a dog; I wanted Terry for a pet, and the idea that I knew I could drag her out of The Life appealed to my ego.
"Our lives 'Sometimes take strange twists, and yours
She looked up at me. "What do you mean?" took one today, honey."
"I mean you're through, finished. Your big two weeks as a call girl are over and you're all washed up, unless you're looking forward to those plastered slobs out there bouncing all over your belly and puking on you."
"What am I going to do?" She tried to dry her eyes on my shirtsleeve.
I put my hand under her chin and lifted her face slowly to mine. "You're coming home with me, right now," I said firmly. "That is, if you want to. I've got a real nice apartment, and we're going to find you a decent job with a decent salary, and you're going to stay with me as long as you want to, no strings attached. You take the bedroom and I'll take the couch. What do you say?"
Terry looked into my eyes long and hard for hidden motives, chicanery, perfidy. Finally she nodded her head up and down slowly and got up to get dressed. "God! And to think that when you walked in here I thought you were a bashful cutie who had never been with a girl before. I thought I'd have to coax you to get undressed, and now here I am going home with you and changing my whole life and I'm not even sure why."
"Don't worry," I said. "You would have made a lousy whore, anyway. Some girls just aren't cut out for it, and you're one of them!"
She got her purse, put sixty dollars on the bed, and gave me back my twenty.
The pounding on the door started again and a jumble of drunken voices began shouting. I could hear Rita over all of them, demanding that Terry come out. But as drunk and as mad as they were, nobody opened the unlocked door until, holding Terry's arm, I threw it open from the inside.
"What the hell were you two doing all that time?" Jack yelled. You couldn't have been screwing that long."
"Fer Chrissake, we'll be stuck here all day if you don't hurry with them." Rita whined.
"Rita old girl, Terry just turned in her trick towel and quit, she's going home with me," I said.
This brought pandemonium. The guys who were waiting for Terry started moaning about their money, and Rita screamed obscenities at me. I told the fellas they'd find their dough on the bed, and if they wanted to give it to Rita instead, that was their business. I told Rita to go fuck herself, grabbed Terry by the hand, and left them all standing there in shock.
We drove right to the flat on outer Washington Street that Terry rented with Rita and two other girls, got her stuff while nobody was home, and went to my place.
She loved it. Dropping an armful of clothes and a cosmetics case, she danced about, laughing and touching everything, like a puppy in a new garden. She swore she had never seen such a super apartment and asked if she could cook me dinner now. Was I hungry? Did I want anything? Could she do anything for me? For the first time she felt free, and I felt it with her because I had been there once myself.
I put on music and made drinks and she fixed spaghetti, a huge salad, and garlic French bread for dinner. And we talked. Her parents lived in Belmont, on the peninsula, and were divorced. Her father used to beat her regularly, accusing her in his heavy Greek accent of whoring with boys, when she really wasn't. But then she started to, just as a means of getting back at him, figuring that if she was going to be damned as a sinner, she might just as well sin. There was never any enjoyment out of it, except thinking to herself that she wished her father could see her with Charlie's prick in her hand, or Joe fucking her, or jacking Bill off all over the seat of his car. However, her father never did see her, so her revenge was only symbolic, and she would come home and try to soak off her guilt in the bathtub.
By the time her parents were divorced she was seventeen. She lived with her mother, who spent every evening out cruising the bars looking for a new husband. Many nights her mother never came home. After Terry was graduated from high school and turned eighteen she left home and went to San Mateo Junior College for two years, and also to secretarial school, where she learned to type eighty words a minute and take dictation. But when she came up to the city to find work there was nothing available, so, rather than return home, she took a job as hostess in a restaurant, making barely enough to pay the rent on a dumpy basement apartment in North Beach.
Rita came in for late-night snacks when she had dates along Motel Row on O'Farrell Street or nearby Van Ness Avenue, and Terry got to know her pretty well. Early mornings were slow, so Terry would pour herself a cup of coffee and sit with Rita, and the two of them would talk.
Finally, a few weeks later, Rita had made her the offer, using the chance to make big money as a come-on and painting mental pictures of the beautiful dress shop the two of them would one day buy. Terry, who spent her days looking fruitlessly for work as a secretary, spent another week thinking about job hunting and about Rita's offer. At the end of the week she decided that she would try being a call girl, at least for a while.
She moved into the flat with the other girls and took her first trick, or client, as the high-class girls call them, on the second night. The girls had a referral-only system, which isn't the best, but if the heat's on it's usually safe. One of the girls would service Henry S. If Henry was pleased, he would tell a visiting executive friend about it, and the friend would phone and say that Henry had referred him. The girls would get the friend's phone number, then tell the friend to have Henry phone to verify. When Henry phoned, they would ask him a question that only he could answer, and check it in the little black book that all call girls keep on their Johns, just to be sure it wasn't a setup by the cops. Then they would phone back the friend to arrange the date. If he just wanted to get laid, the rate was fifty dollars if he came to the flat or fifty plus cab fare both ways if he wanted the girl at his hotel. More often than not the trick wanted a real date for dinner, a show, and the whole evening, in which case the fee was a flat hundred, plus whatever he wanted to spend on her.
In fourteen days of whoring Terry had screwed twenty-two Johns, none of whom satisfied her sexually, although they all were good guys. She had a couple of local politicians, a famous baseball player, some big-wheel corporate people, and a smattering of local and out-of-town businessmen, all married. She took her first two tricks at the flat, and was scared to death. But, being first-rate clients, they were awfully nice and tried to put her at ease. The other girls gave her tips on how to get the client off in a hurry. However, she said it wasn't necessary to use special motions with most, they popped pretty fast, anyway.
The one thing Terry hated was having to suck cock. Call girls, unlike street whores, do not charge for each separate service; the price includes anything the customer wants, within reason. And also unlike street whores, it is not considered good etiquette to ask a client to wash himself before hand, it's assumed that he will be clean. Most weren't, especially uncircumcised men. Terry even tried to hold her breath while sticking but it didn't work very well. Often she had to fight back retching. She enjoyed being taken out for dinner, going first class on the town, and resigned herself to the rest.
I've known enough whores to know the business fairly well, and also the people. Any hooker or ex-hooker who writes books telling about the great life she had and how fantastic the sex was is just simply full of shit, there's no plainer way to put it. Glorious tales of wild orgies may sell enough books to make those broads a lot of bread, but truth they ain't.
Financially it wasn't such a great deal for Terry, either. She had taken twenty-two tricks, five for one hundred dollars, and seventeen for fifty. She made a total of thirteen hundred and fifty dollars, out of which she had to give half to the house for rent, bail, and jail fund, lawyers, doctors, and payoffs, including that unknown portion that the other girls stole from.her because she was new and square. This left her with six hundred seventy-five dollars for two weeks' fucking, or three hundred thirty-five per week, which isn't bad. But wait a minute. She's out of action one week a month with her period, and whatever other days she wants to take off. The three hundred thirty-five is for a seven-day week, so this means she actually made only a thousand a month, or two-fifty a week, about the same as a good private secretary. And because she was new and fresh she was in great demand. After a while those figures would have dropped considerably. Still, it was better than working in a hash house and living in a cellar.
We had a nice dinner and talked far into the night. I liked her very much, and I knew that she liked me, but I wanted to play it very cool, to be sure that she still didn't confuse me with a John. I got out spare blankets to make up the couch, but Terry insisted that I sleep in my own bed, and that she should take the couch. She threatened to leave if I gave her any trouble about it, so I acquiesced. As she was making up the couch I stripped naked as normally as one might take off a jacket, and went into the bathroom to shower and shave. Normally I don't shave before retiring, but I figured I had better play it safe, because I wasn't sure what, if anything, was going to happen.
When I came out, laundered and dry-cleaned, Terry was smiling.
"I guess you're not shy after all, are you?" she said.
"You mean because of this afternoon?"
"Yes."
Now I smiled. "Baby," I said, "I like you. I'll be your friend or your lover or both, but I'll never be your John-not as long as I can still get my hands up and down my cock to jack it off."
We both laughed.
It was strange that Terry made an effort to keep her eyes on mine and not look at my dangling dong. "Are you looking only at my face to show me you're a hardened veteran and could care less, or are you the shy one?" I asked.
She blushed. "I didn't know I was doing it."
"It's okay," I said. "I took in every inch of your body today and came to the conclusion that you're female. K you'd like to look down, it might reassure you to know that I'm not."
Then, making a point of it, she looked me over carefully as she slid under the blankets. "You're definitely not," she said softly.
I kissed her good night just once, gently on the lips, and went into the bedroom to sleep.
I think I was aware of light in the room before anything else. The sun was just coming up, its rays streaking up Jackson Street and obliquely through my Venetian blinds. Then I felt her arm around me, lying heavily across my back, her weight pulling at the mattress next to me, her breath warm 'and steady into my left shoulder.
I must have been deeply asleep, because I had no idea how long she had been there. Shifting my weight, I turned to face her, feeling myself get hard as her scent and softness permeated my senses. I watched her face for a long while, distorted slightly by her pillow. She was so tiny and cute, so helpless and trusting that I felt almost paternal toward her, but paternal with a hard-on. I stroked her cheek and tousled hair with the backs of my fingers, moving closer to her as her eyes opened slowly and regarded me sleepily for several minutes. She moved closer, pressing my cock against her soft belly, so warm and giving, and we kissed very slowly, very lovingly, as our hands explored with a light touch. She took hold of me lightly, moving her hand along the length of my shaft. We were still on our sides. She threw one leg over my waist and guided me into her. I had never felt a woman so wet without first having a lot of stimulation. She held me tightly until it was fully within her. Then for a long time neither of us moved, except to kiss and caress. Finally, slowly at first, and then wildly, we made love. And then I used my mouth on her and she on me, and this time I knew she didn't mind, I knew, even though we were wet with each other's juices, that she loved it, knew that I could never again be a John to her. And later, although I was still only semi-hard, I put Terry gently into the right position and entered her again. This time it was long and tender and so sweet. It was the first time since Mora that I had felt really satisfied with a woman. We made our cocoon, our small box of space, darkish and warm, and floated endlessly in it. The universe became our bodies and our feelings, and there was nothing else.
Terry stayed with me until summer vacation was almost over. She loved to cook fattening Greek foods for me and I gained about eight pounds, as we ate at home almost every night. She was sweet and kind and generous, but not overly bright. She had an annoying habit of being a slob, leaving clothes and things strewn about the apartment. When I would ask her to be neater she would try, but shortly fall back to her old ways.
Unlike all the others who had stayed with me, I had no thought of throwing her out. Our lovemaking was too good and pleased both of us too much. Terry was the first girl whom I actually tried to teach, as Mora had taught me. Sex bouts with adolescent boys and two weeks as a pro hadn't given her enough opportunity to learn. I taught her sex, a little bit at a time, from anus to urine, and she enjoyed it all. As a matter of fact, Terry liked urine even more than Mora had, after I gave her my own version of Mora's little talk on what is dirty and what isn't; what is normal and what isn't. She went so far as to buy a rubber sheet to put on the bed, because my shower and bathroom were small and cramped. I will admit that it did feel much better to piss on each other in the comfort of the bed; and even lying in pools of wet urine didn't bother me. However, if we didn't get up to clean the bed within a couple of minutes it became cold, sticky and quite smelly. Also, it was a pain in the ass. Terry would grab one side of the rubber sheet and I would grab the other, and we would have to let it drop in the middle, where the urine would collect, and walk gingerly to dump it into the shower, being careful not to drip any on the carpet. After a while, we did it less and less, not because we didn't enjoy it but because it was just too damn much trouble.
I took Terry to the symphony. She didn't dig classical music very much, and preferred pop stuff and vocals. I took her on jobs with me occasionally, but unattached men would ask her to dance, and she usually did. She told me that several had asked her for dates but she had declined. I couldn't blame her. It was boring for her to sit all evening and wait for me, and of course I couldn't dance while I was working.
One day, lying in each other's arms after making love, Terry told me that she loved me. She asked if I thought I might ever marry a reformed hooker. I knew that she loved me in the way a puppy loves its master, but I also knew that as fond of her as I was, I didn't love her. We had no basis for a lifelong relationship. We spent the summer days at the beach or park, or over in Marin County, and it was all very idyllic, but I had always assumed that there would be an end; there had to be.
I told her gently but honestly how I felt and she cried the rest of the day. Ours was a surface relationship; there was nothing deep or binding in it, and at seventeen I felt that I wasn't ready for that kind of commitment. I was the first solid support that Terry had known since she moved away from home, so I knew how she felt. I could remember how I had felt about Mora as a pillar of security in a swirling new world of self alone. Now I was such a pillar to Terry.
She spent a good deal of time job hunting but still hadn't found anything. Then, the week before my senior year began, a musician friend who worked days for the phone company told me about a secretarial opening in their head office. I set up an appointment for Terry. She went, was interviewed and tested, and filled out forms, and the following morning we were notified by phone that she had been accepted for the job, with a starting salary of ninety dollars a week as secretary to one of their executives.
Terry's depression over my rejection of her turned to mania. She was so excited that she couldn't sit still. We celebrated by going out for dinner, and then I took her to the Fairmont Hotel to see the Danny Thomas show, bought her a corsage, and had the photo girl in the hotel's Venetian Room take our picture.
The next morning she went for an employment physical, and when she returned I showed her the letter that Mora had written me almost two years before. Watching her face as she read the letter, I knew that she understood. I told her that another chapter in my life was over, as was another chapter in hers; that it was time for us both to move on, time to continue our search.
Three days later I found her a nice furnished apartment on Bush near Laguna and helped her move her things. We continued to see each other often for a while. Several times I stayed overnight at her place, and several times she stayed over at mine, but we both knew that it was over.
I gave her good advice; I told her to start dating and looking for a husband and a nice, normal life as a nice, normal housewife and mother. I told her to pretend that she was a virgin and fight for her "honor" for all she was worth with each man she dated. The old adage is still true, even for today's socially aware male. Each man wants to screw every girl he meets, but down deep, under all the sociological bullshit, he still wants his wife to be a virgin, to have the knowledge (or at least the illusion) that he is the only man with whom she ever made love, and all the New Liberal talk about preferring girls with experience melts into a deeply ingrained puritan ethic.
And so, although I continued to see her, I wrote off Terry, ex-hostess, ex-whore, ex-lover, as another learning experience. It would seem that she had learned more from me, but I doubt it."
For the first time I had a woman, another human being dependent upon me for support, for morale, and for moral sustenance. I paid the bills, took care of her when she was ill, gave her advice, looked out for her welfare, and was concerned for her happiness and her future. I did the right thing by getting her out of whoring, by keeping her with me, and by sending her gently into the world on her own when I thought she was ready. It was my first taste of real responsibility.
I liked it.