Our Lady Of Greenwich Village (18 page)

“Wasn't that a little premature?” said McGuire with a look of disappointment on her face.

“Premature for
whom
?” answered O'Rourke. Then, retrieving a sexual trick from his youth, he started slowly moving again like a piston engine.

“What?” she said.

“I'm still hard. Let's keep going.”

“Yeah, let's.”

For forty-five minutes they rode. That was the amazing thing about good sex. The time flew. For the first time in years, O'Rourke felt like a real man. It was a gift to have someone like Sam McGuire for a lover. He had been a lucky man throughout his life with his lovers. But there were always two he thought of, even thirty-odd years after he had lost track of them—Rebekah Hoffman and Grace Phelan. They came back to him now and he began to drift in attention until McGuire suddenly stood up.

“You still with me?” she asked.

“Forever, sweetheart.”

She turned around and O'Rourke—a man who loved shapely women—admired her abundant chocolate rump. He looked down at his wet cock and he thought he saw it grow even more in front of his very eyes. Then McGuire lowered herself down on him and pulled herself forward, grabbing his ankles, and started pumping her bottom. In and out, up and down. O'Rourke's panoramic view made him so hard he was afraid his dick would explode.

“At
The
Mary Louis Academy,” she said as she laughed again, “the girls called this ‘The Reverse Proud Mary,'” she said, throwing the words over her shoulder.

“What the fuck kind of Catholic school is
The
Mary Louis Academy?” O'Rourke said, joining her laughter.

Soon both O'Rourke's hands were on the top of McGuire's wonderful bottom. She was still pumping with the robust energy of a very sexual and horny thirty-five-year-old. He moved his hand across her chiseled backside and his pinky found her other hole.

“You dirty bastard,” she said, but she really didn't seem to mind.

In and out, in alternate rhythms, they perfectly played. Then she stopped but O'Rourke continued to play her solo.

“My God,” she said.

“
Whence did all that fury come?
” he said.

“What?”

“
Whence did all that fury come? / From empty tomb or Virgin womb?
” McGuire craned her head over her shoulder to look at O'Rourke, his head comfortably on his pillow. “
Saint Joseph thought the world would melt / But liked the way his finger smelt.
”

“You filthy, blasphemous bastard!” she said as she leapt off him, and O'Rourke began to laugh uncontrollably.

“Who wrote that?” she demanded.

“I shan't tell.”

“Sounds like the work of that drunken poet friend of yours, Fergus T. Caife.”

“Fergus,” said O'Rourke, “would love the compliment.”

“You,” said McGuire accusingly, “didn't write that, did you?”

“Nope.”

“Well?”

“William Butler Yeats,” said O'Rourke with triumph. “It's called ‘A Stick of Incense.'”

“You're kidding!” said McGuire laughing, then slapping him playfully on his Vietnam scarred arm. O'Rourke winced. The smile left McGuire's face. “I didn't see that before,” she said quietly. “I was looking at your
thing
too much.”

“That's all right, Sam.”

“I'll never hurt you again,” she said kissing him and they embraced, not saying a word for the longest time.

Soon after, McGuire fell into sleep. Although O'Rourke came twice, he was still rock hard. McGuire turned her back to him and O'Rourke, looking to dock, slid his erection into the pier between McGuire's ass cheeks. Her hand in sleep reached back and pulled his hip closer to her. “Yes, honey,” McGuire said in sleep, “yes, that's it.”

O'Rourke's hand patted McGuire's soft belly and he began to drift back in time once again. Again it was the two loves of his life, Rebekah Hoffman and Grace Phelan. They had one thing in common: Rebekah was the only woman O'Rourke had ever asked to marry him and Grace was the only woman who had ever asked marriage of O'Rourke. Rebekah wisely had said no and O'Rourke, although it broke his heart, had given Grace a negative reply. He was 0-for-2. O'Rourke had slept with enough women, but these two kept bouncing into his mind. Thirty years and they would not go away. He didn't even know where they were anymore and wondered if they had grown gray and fat like he had.

Naked with Sam, O'Rourke felt very comfortable. There was no inhibition and that reinforced his ease. It was the same with the other two. You would never find three women as different as Rebekah, Grace, and Sam, but O'Rourke loved them all. With Rebekah and Grace he had been too young and immature. O'Rourke, in his fifty-third year, had learned that he should enjoy women, do exactly what they told him, and everything would be fine. His decreasing testosterone, O'Rourke was happy to concede, had been replaced by common sense. He leaned forward and kissed McGuire on the shoulder. In response, she squeezed the hand that rested on her belly.

O'Rourke thought that he had never had as much fun in bed as he had with Rebekah. They were at once complete opposites and still strangely alike. Over the years O'Rourke had to smile at the thought of him and Rebekah. She was a Mennonite and he was an Irish-Catholic. There just
had
to be a law. O'Rourke once, trying to be a smart ass, had introduced her as “Rebekah, the Amish.”

“How would you like me to introduce you as ‘Tone, the Orangeman?'” she said, clearly annoyed.

O'Rourke had gotten the message. Rebekah reminded him how the Mennonites had suffered martyrdom at the hands of both the Catholics and the Protestants during the Reformation. “They refused military service and would not baptize their children,” she lectured him. “They were considered subversives.” Rebekah knew of O'Rourke's Dublin passport shop and how he liked to disrupt.

“Subversive?” said O'Rourke, delighted, as he gently kissed her lips.

“Subversive,” replied Rebekah as she teased his tongue with hers.

Rebekah felt guilty about everything and O'Rourke felt guilty about almost everything—except sex. Sexually, Rebekah was a walking dichotomy. To her sex outside of marriage was wrong, but, God, she loved it and she was expert.

O'Rourke had met her at the Moat and had taken to her immediately. To this day, he didn't know why. There was just something about Rebekah, a genuineness and goodness that, frankly, reminded him of his mother, Mary Kavanagh. She was a good conversationalist, liked a drink, and loved to laugh. She was a handsome woman, not a great beauty, but whatever it was, for O'Rourke, she had it.

It had taken O'Rourke two months to bed her, but it was worth the wait. She hesitated to take her clothes off, but when she finally did it was as if she was totally liberated. She was a true exhibitionist. She loved to walk around naked, posing her pouting bush and making sure O'Rourke saw enough of her curvaceous ass. After a mutual shower, she would put her hair up in a towel and hold her hands around the towel so her full breasts would stick out tautly. Tastefully, she was a great tease. She had a great body and she knew it. O'Rourke was thirty, she was 22. Just out of college, she was trying to fit into the New York publishing scene. There was no denying their animal attraction to each other. The only sex apparatus they needed was a towel to dry Rebekah, she was so excitable. Missionary, cowgirl, doggie, they would pump for hour after hour. They would fuck in bed. They would fuck in her rocking chair. They would fuck on the floor in front of a mirror so they could check themselves out in action. She would pose naked for Polaroids, staring into the camera defiantly or flipping her rump out provocatively. “I want to be,” she would say in an imitation of Greta Garbo, “your Priestess of Love.'” And the thing that made sex so much fun with Rebekah was that she felt so guilty about it.

“Oh, we shouldn't be doing this,” she would say in the middle of coitus.

“Shut the fuck up,” would reply O'Rourke with the sensitivity of the horny.

Never was fucking was so good, and never was fucking so bold.

O'Rourke loved her, and for the first and last time, he had asked a woman to marry him. She sadly shook her head and told him that it just wouldn't work. He would get drunk and show up at her apartment and pull his limp cock out, and she would be patient and he would fall asleep, his head on her shoulder. He just couldn't understand why she just didn't love him when he loved her so much, so much that he had exposed himself to her in every way. And her rejection had deadened part of his heart forever.

Grace was something else. She was probably the most beautiful women he had ever seen. She had the face of the Irish Madonna, resplendent with fine Celtic features including a broad forehead and high cheek bones. She looked like a young Gene Tierney, only more beautiful. He had met her, too, at the Moat. The first time he saw her, he desperately wanted her. O'Rourke wasn't often like that, but the look of her drove him insane. Grace loved a drink and pretty soon she had found her way down to the end of the bar where O'Rourke and his cronies sat, night after night. At first, he was very shy in front of her, as her beauty intimidated him. He didn't know what to say after he was introduced, so he offered to buy her a drink. She accepted. O'Rourke soon learned that Grace Phelan loved booze so much she would accept a drink from even Adolf Hitler. One night, drunk, O'Rourke had asked if she would like to have dinner with him. When he didn't call, Grace went right up to him and said, “You owe me a dinner.” O'Rourke didn't think the dinner had gone that well. He was a good conversationalist, but there were lots of awkward silences during the meal. The next day she called. “That was the best first date I ever had,” she said. “Want to come over to my place for dinner tonight?”

O'Rourke showed up with a bottle of champagne at her door on Grove Street and Grace answered the door in her birthday suit. “Grace, I don't think ...”

She took the bottle of champagne and put her index finger to his mouth, quieting his lips. Then she started undressing him. Apparently, he was on Grace's menu that night. He couldn't believe this absolutely beautiful woman wanted him. He looked at her, mouth open. She was the most exquisite woman he had ever seen. She had dark hair parted in the middle that fell to her hips. Wonderful active eyes, a narrow nose, and soft, soft lips. She wasn't as voluptuous as Rebekah, but her breasts were superb with lovely pink nipples. Her bush, like every bush he had seen before Sam McGuire's, was full and her bottom was small and tart.

They drank and they made love every night of the week, month in, month out. Grace's mouth was expert. She had an oral fixation, be it booze or cock. She would work O'Rourke for hours with her mouth, especially during her periods. “Where'd you learn to do this?” he demanded of the twenty-three-year-old.

“I read it in a book,” she had innocently said and it was true. She said she heard when she was seventeen in Catholic high school that boys liked getting head and had bought
The Joy of Sex
. O'Rourke couldn't believe how lucky he was. She was the most desirable woman at the Moat and somehow O'Rourke, the ultimate fuck-up, had won her.

Then she began dropping hints.

Grace was from Staten Island. She dreamed of the house in the suburbs, kids, and a backyard swimming pool. She tried to domesticate O'Rourke by taking him to see her parents and to her sister down at the Jersey Shore. Her sister had taken him aside. “She's not for you,” she said bluntly. “She's a drunk.”

It was true; they were both drunks. But O'Rourke was functional and would work all day, while Grace, who couldn't hold a job, sat home all day drinking gin and listening to Billie Holiday records. She would be plastered by the time O'Rourke got home.

“I'm so depressed,” she said to him.

“No wonder,” he would say viciously. “What do you expect, drinking all day and listening to fucking Billie Holiday?” He had hurt her and regretted his brutal honesty. O'Rourke had finally convinced her to visit a psychiatrist. By the second session the doctor had told her to stop drinking. Grace immediately found a new psychiatrist. O'Rourke would try to break up with her, but she would drop to her knees as if to pray and pull his zipper down. Like Neil Sedaka, he would find that breaking up was hard to do—especially when your cock was in Grace Phelan's proficient mouth.