Connie sat heavily down on the edge of the sagging double tied and began unbuttoning the buttons of her sweater, the garment falling, open to reveal the grimy material of her white brassiere. She was conscious of the john standing over, her and watching her as she undressed. Without even looking up at him, she said, "Ten dollars, if you don't mind. In advance." It hadn't taken her long to learn that a hooker who didn't collect in advance might not collect at all. She held her hand out for the crumpled ten that he thrust into it. Smoothing the bill, she folded it in quarters and slipped it into her purse dropping it casually to the floor. Then she returned her fingers to the buttons of her sweater. When all the buttons were open, she slipped out of the sweater and tossed it to the floor. A moment later she unsnapped her bra and shrugged it over her shoulders, tossing it carelessly on top of her sweater. She stood up and unsnapped her pants, stepping wearily out of them and adding them to the heap on top of her sweater and bra. She hooked her fingers into the waistband of her panties and was about ready to pull them down when the john stepped in front of her and placed his hands on hers.
"Let me do that," he said.
"Sure thing, hon," she answered. "Whatever turns you on." She moved her shoulders sensuously from side to side shaking her tits in the john's face as he hooked his fingers into the elastic top of her panties and slid them over her hips and ass. She had lost a lot of weight in the past few months, but her hips and tits were still full and shapely. It was a good thing, too, because the competition for business on Eighth Avenue had become pretty stiff.
When she was nude, Connie stepped backwards until she felt the mattress nudging at the back of her knees. She allowed herself to topple over onto the bed and lay, there looking up for the first time at the john who had picked her up at the corner of Eighth Avenue and Forty-First Street. He was middle-aged, pudgy, and pasty white – like most of them. The elastic waistband of his ridiculously flowered undershorts underlined the swell of his paunch. She could see the outline of his cock, raising the loose material from inside and pushing it away from the front of his body.
She shrugged mentally. So what if he isn't a glamour boy, she thought. Fuck 'em and forget 'em. That's the name of the game. She watched the silly shorts slide down over his chubby white legs, freeing his stiff cock from their confinement. Although he was nude, he made no move to approach the bed. Connie knew his type. They thought, that their ten bucks bought the whole night. Didn't any of them realize that shs had more important things to do than lie around some cheap Eighth Avenue hotel room sprawling nakedly on a spongy mattress while the johns took their time, getting their kicks by looking?
"Come on, hon," she said, her voice taking on a falsely seductive tone. "Your big beautiful cock is turning me on. Don't keep me waiting." She saw the john's face break into a smile in response to the "whore's lie". Poor bastard, she thought. He's so starved for female company that he'll believe any shit I sling at him.
"My goodness," she said. "What a big dick you have I haven't seen a cock like that in weeks. Come on over here and give me some of it."
"Do you really think it's big?" the john asked, his face beaming like a kid who just got a hundred on a spelling test. He walked to the edge of the bed and stood there, his prick jutting straight out from his body.
Connie sat up and took the stiffly swollen organ in her hand. "Tremendous," she said. "Would you like me to kiss it?" She had to do something to get the ball rolling. It had been hours since her last fix and her skin was already beginning to itch. She held her face close to the trembling head of the man's cock and warmly breathed on it, seeing it jerk violently as it increased in length and girth.
"Oh, yes," he cooed. "Kiss it. Just a little. But go slow. I don't want this to end too fast."
Connie planted a gentle kiss on the quivering head of his prick, watching a drop of thick lubricant ooze from the blunt eye at its tip. She snaked out her tongue, tasting the pungent fluid before opening her mouth wide to accept the entire bulbous knob.
Holding the head of his prick lightly between her lips, she ran her tongue rapidly across it in a swirling circular motion which brought the palpitating organ to full throbbing erection. Then she moved her head downward, swallowing as much of his thickly hard shank as she could and nibbling expertly with her lips at the silky skin which covered its length.
He won't be able to take too muck of this, she thought. His hips were already beginning to move forward and back with a rhythmic cadence and a long low moan of pleasure was already bubbling from his lips. She reached up to cup his balls in her hand, running her fingernails gently across the hair-covered skin of his wrinkled sack. She juggled the two fat stones around in her fingers, stimulating them to produce their hot load of bubbling fluid.
The john drew his breath in gaspingly as the shapely young prostitute's fingers toyed with his scrotum. This one's a real eyeful, he thought. Although he knew most of the Eighth Avenue streetwalkers by sight, he had never seen this one before. She couldn't have been around for long. Her skin was white and smooth and her body was still firm and beautiful. Although he could see needle scars on her thighs and upper arms, it was obvious that she hadn't been an addict for long. Couple of months. Three or four, tops, he guessed.
He liked the way that she was licking and playing with his cock – almost as though she was really enjoying it. Maybe she was fresh and new. Maybe she hadn't been hustling long enough to become jaded like the rest of them. His prick surged with quivering excitement. Maybe I can even make her cum, he thought.
Connie felt her nipples hardening as she sucked the john's quivering penis, its spicy flavor filling her mouth. Maybe he'll be able to hold out long enough to satisfy me, she hoped. Maybe he won't be like all the rest. But deep down inside her, she knew that it wouldn't be so when they had to pay for sex, shopping openly on the street for the companionship of a woman, they never thought about anything but their own pleasure… What the hell, she thought. I guess that's what they're paying for.
The john was crooning softly now, his passion rising as Connie sucked his cock expertly and efficiently. He ought to be ready by now, she thought, letting the throbbing organ slip from her mouth and looking up at him, a quick mechanical smile flitting across her face.
"Oh," she moaned, like an actress repeating her lines for the umpteentb time. "I'm so hot. I want you in my cunt." She lay back on the spongy mattress and, spread her legs invitingly. "Come on, hon," she said. "I can't wait any longer."
The john crawled onto the bed, hovering over her for a moment on all fours. His cock was throbbing painfully, and the sight of her glisteningly juicy cunt was arousing him as much as the blowjob. She really looked like she was excited. Maybe she was different.
He crawled between her widely splayed thighs, holding his stiff cock in his hand. Then he worked his way toward her gaping cunt, its inner folds peeking pinkly out at him from between the puffy red lips. He lowered himself onto her, guiding his cock with his hand until it found the moist slit. He inserted it carefully, easing himself down as the long throbbing rod of flesh slid into her pussy.
She was all warm and wet inside, making it easy for him to penetrate her to the hilt. As soon as he had gotten it in, she wrapped her legs around his thighs, pressing her cunt insistently against his hairy pubic mound. She could feel his cock inside her, slipping and sliding like a fish out of water. Then he began to hump his hips rhythmically, working the palpitating meat in and out of her, pulling back until only the throbbing head remained enveloped by the folds of moist cuntal flesh, and then ramming forward until the erect organ was once again buried to its hair covered base in the slurping mass of drolling cuntal membrane.
She began rocking her hips up and down, synchronizing her movements to coincide with his. As he moved back, pulling his prick almost out of her pussy, she pressed her buttocks against the mattress. Then, as he surged forward, she lifted herself up to meet his thrust, feeling his hard unyielding pubic bone crash relentlessly against her clitoral mound.
The little button of her clit was stiffening, poking its scarlet head out of the tent of flesh which surrounded it, and bringing itself erectly against the stiffly curling hairs of his genital area as he rammed into her again. Connie felt her juices beginning to flow, lubricating the inner walls of her twat until it was slimy with her sexual secretions. Her breathing had deepened and was becoming raspy. For a moment, she thought that she might actually get off. It would be her first orgasm in weeks.
But then, just as she was beginning to believe that it could happen, she felt his prick expanding within her, preparing to spit out its hot load of life-giving semen. "Oh, it feels so good," she whispered, lying to hasten the john's fast-approaching climax.
She looked past his straining face to the cracks and blisters on the grimy ceiling. If she closed her left eye and turned her head slightly to the right, the cracks spelled out the word "fucking". She was getting tired of this room. Maybe tomorrow she would ask the desk clerk to give her another.
The john was puffing and panting now, his cock spitting spurt after spurt of hot spunk into her waiting pussy. She felt the jetting liquid inundating her cunt, greasing it thoroughly and filling it until a rivulet of the sticky white fluid followed the retreating shaft of his cock out past the lips of her pussy, trickling down into the sweaty crack between her asscheeks. He would be finished in a second and then she could be through with him.
When she felt his prick deflating inside her, she pressed her ass down into the mattress causing the shriveling organ to slip helplessly from her cunt. "Oh, that was beautiful," she said. "I hope you'll come and see me again, real soon."
"Maybe I will," the john answered. He was already on his feet, pulling on his flowered undershorts. "You're better than most of the girls," he said. "Maybe you just haven't been at it as long." He dressed quickly while she lay there watching him. When he had his clothes on he turned to leave. "Aren't you going back down to the street?" he asked.
"I'll be along," she said. "I just want to lie here for another minute. It's been a rough day." The john walked out of the room closing the door behind him.
When he was gone, Connie heaved a long sibilant sigh. Her life had become an endless procession of johns closing the door behind them as they left her alone and unsatisfied on the spongy mattress of the cheap Eighth Avenue hotel. But she had already passed the point of self-pity, now finding her solace in the needle and the snowy white powder with which she chased her daily cares away.
Johnny Walker had finished her off, all right. But not with a bullet and cement overcoat. He had been too sadistic to end it quickly. Instead, he was making it last, punishing her by letting her die gradually, by her own hand. He had made her his slave, lavishing elaborate sexual attention on her and teaching her body all the tricks of physical pleasure that he had spent years acquiring.
He had allowed her to ride to glory on the shaft of his stiff black cock, carrying her away with it to a place where pleasure was a way of life and sex was a magic carpet on which a journey to paradise was routine. And he taught her about the needle, and about heroin.
At first she bad liked the euphoric trance that it put her into. She would lie naked in his bed while be jabbed the needle into her body, allowing the drug to blanket all her thoughts and to bring a rich rosy glow to the world around her. Then, as she drifted on a junk-induced cloud of ecstasy, he would toy with her body, playing it like a violin to produce a celestial music that only the two of them could hear.
She would lie for hours, naked on his bed while he stroked and petted her – the junk, his fingers, and his tongue separating her from reality. The junk narrowed her world until, at last, it encompassed nothing more than Johnny's bed, the pleasures of the flesh, and the needs of the body. She spent three months languishing in his apartment, seeing the sun only when it appeared on television, serving Johnny's wants and awaiting Johnny's pleasure. She had been his sexual slave, satisfying all of his perverse sexual cravings and loving it.
In return he had given her a "jones" the heroin addiction which slowly robbed her of the ability to feel anything at all, including sexual pleasure. Finally the drug became something which she needed rather than enjoyed, and the last of life's pleasures was denied to her. And then, a month earlier, when Johnny was sure that she had passed the point of no return, he threw her out, telling her that he had no further use for her and suggesting that she join the ranks of the Eighth Avenue whores.
"Maybe you'll still be young and pretty enough to compete with the other junkie whores. For a while, anyway," he had said, his face twisting into a contemptuous sneer. "Just get out of here! And don't come back! I can't stand the sight of you!" His words hit her like a kick in the gut, sending her reeling against the wall and taking her breath away.
"But, Johnny," she had cried, "I thought I was your girl. I thought you were my lover man."
"Maybe I was," he had answered. "But not anymore." He threw a glassine envelope of heroin at her as he spoke. "Here's your only lover man now," he had said. "Now take it and get out! It's the last free fix you'll ever get from me."
The junk that he had given her didn't last more than a couple of hours. And when it had worn off, she was panic stricken. She had never bought her own dope before. She didn't know where to go or what to do. But a junkie learns fast. And if that junkie is a pretty girl with a nice ass and a good pair of tits, she can always earn enough to make a living. That is, if you called a twenty-dollar bag of dope a day and an occasional greasy hamburger a living.
Connie thought about the money in her purse. There was the ten that she had just gotten. And another five that she had earned earlier that day by giving a bearded young college student a fast blowjob. She needed more. And she needed it fast.
She got out of bed and began putting her clothes on, thinking of nothing now but the dope that she would soon have enough money to buy. She didn't even bother to straighten out the blanket before leaving the hotel room. The john's weren't interested in the bed. It was her pussy they were after.
She walked down the stairs and into the hotel lobby, barely glancing up at the desk clerk who gave her his usual lewd wink as she walked by. He looked after her, her firm young ass wiggling around inside her tight pants, and resolved to throw her a fast one one of these days. A little tip. When she strode out into the street, he returned to his newspaper, reading, for the third time, a lurid account of the rape-murder of a teenage hitchhiker.
Connie blinked her eyes in the brightness of the late afternoon sun. It was already mid-November and the air was getting cold. She would have to get herself a jacket one of these days. Maybe the Salvation Army had something warm – and cheap. She stood leaning against an Eighth Avenue lamp post and waited to be picked up. Most of the other girls on the street were skinny and pallid looking, already having bartered away their youth and vitality for the few bags of dope. They really had to hustle to make enough to keep them in junk. But Connie hadn't lost her good looks yet. They were her best advertisement.
She knew that it wouldn't be long before she, too, had to walk up and down the avenue swishing her ass inside some shockingly bright-colored miniskirt and winking at the passing johns. She saw most of the other girls doing it all day long. "Sportin', mister?" they would ask as the johns looked them up and down. But Connie hadn't sunk that low yet.
She looked down at the ground, not really thinking of anything but the dope that she would soon have the money to buy. She hoped. Then she felt a man's hand on her elbow. She could see his shoes – black and highly polished – and the knifelike crease of his trousers where they showed beneath the hem of his topcoat. She didn't even bother to look up at his face.
Allowing him to hold her elbow as they walked, she led him up the street to the hotel and walked with him up the steps into the lobby. She gave the desk-clerk a wave and headed for the staircase, still looking down. When they got to the second floor, she turned right and walked up the hall until they stood in front of the door to her room. Taking the key from her pants pocket, she unlocked the door and pushed it open. She went directly to the bed and sat heavily down on its edge. She began unbuttoning her sweater. When she had opened two of the buttons and her grimy white bra peeked through, she said, "That'll be ten dollars if you don't mind. In advance."
"Ten dollars, Connie? Is that all?"
She looked up in surprise, glancing for the first time into the face of her john. It was Lieutenant Blumenthal.
"I'm sorry, Connie," he said. "But I had to see for myself whether it was really true."
"Well, it's true, all right," she said. "I'm a whore. A lousy ten-dollar whore. And you know why? Because I'm a dope fiend, that's why! Does that surprise you?"
Lieutenant Blumenthal's voice was soft and troubled. "No, Connie," he said. "It doesn't surprise me in the least. I've known you were a drug addict ever since that day, three months ago, when you walked into my office and told me you were quitting the force. I saw it in your eyes. And in the way you walked. You can't be a cop for as long as I have without learning a few things, you know."
"Yeah?" she said. "Well what good does it do you?"
"Maybe you're right, Connie," the lieutenant said. "I never in my life felt as hopeless as I did on that day. I knew that Walker had gotten his filthy hooks into you. And I knew that it wouldn't be long before you ended up here. And there wasn't a damned thing I could do about it."
"Oh, I wanted to rush right out and arrest the bastard, only Captain Brennan stopped me. You see, a former policewoman's junk-lidded eyes and heroin stroll aren't grounds for an arrest warrant in this state. And we didn't have any other evidence against him. Probably never will have! Because the only cop – and a damned good one she was – who ever got close to him blew it. She was corrupted by him and she let him destroy her."
Connie had been looking down at the floor during his little speech. No way that he was finished she looked up at him with icy disdain.
"Spare me the hearts and flowers, Lieutenant," she said. "Johnny Walker is your problem now. I'm through with him."
"Are you through with him?" the lieutenant asked. "Or is he through with you? How long did he keep you before he tossed you out on the street like an old newspaper?"
"Three months," she said bitterly. "Thirteen weeks, like a new television show. And then he just didn't pick up my option."
"Listen, Connie," the lieutenant began. "I don't know how to tell you how sorry I am about what happened. I feel that it's mostly my fault. I had no business sending a young and inexperienced girl like you out against guys like Walker and his crew. I'll never forgive myself."
"Forget it, Lieutenant," she said. "Nobody's to blame for anything."
"But wait," he continued. "It isn't too late yet, you know. There are treatment programs. The city has lots of them. There's the Phoenix House. And the Rockefeller Program. And there's methadone. And I still have a little influence around this town. I could get you into one of the drug-addiction programs tonight, if you're willing. I can't promise to get you your old job back again. But if you really want to beat this thing, I can promise that you'll have a good chance to lead a clean and decent life. What do you say, Connie? Let me help you."
Connie looked up at him, an amused smile on her face. "I don't want your help," she said. "Not yours or anybody else's. All I want is to be left alone. I don't mind what I've become. It isn't such a bad life. Maybe I even like it. You and I just don't understand each other anymore, Lieutenant. You are what you are and I am what I am. Why don't we just leave it that way?"
Lieutenant Blumenthal looked at her for a long silent moment, a muscle in his jaw twitching silently. He cleared his throat before speaking. "I'm sorry you feel that way about it, Connie," he said. "I guess we don't understand each other. I don't really know anything about what you've become. But whatever you are, I'm still a cop. And I'd hate to have to arrest an old friend." He stepped back toward the door as he spoke.
"So do us both a favor," he said. "And stay out of my precinct!" Then, turning abruptly on his heel, he left, closing the door behind him.