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“You don’t mean the
lowest
common denominator,” the priest says jovially. We exchange a rapid look of sheer loathing, his face convulses, and he whispers, “Only trying to get a discussion started.” and I say, “Let me handle this my way.” He retreats to a seat shaking his head. I observe for the first time that he wears a large jeweled cross around his neck even though he has taken to a relevant business suit for the occasion. “Just trying to get a discussion going,” he says again rather hopelessly and looks down at the table.

“Yes, but exactly what
does
your newspaper publish?” the old woman asks. “No one here seems to be quite sure; nobody has seen it, you see. You’re some kind of a radical paper, right?”

“We’re a sex newspaper, ma’am. We publish articles and photographs dealing with sex.”

“Oh,” she says with a giggle and sits. “Oh.”

“There’s nothing wrong with sex,” I say rather defensively. “You know that.”

“Of course not,” an old man says, “but how much is there to say about it?”

The gentleman is apparently popular and this remark incites a large patter of applause, cheers, scraping of chairs against the floor. A tall girl with mad eyes, somewhere in her forties, wearing tinted glasses, stands in the midst of the applause and says, “Exactly what do you think you’re going to accomplish in this way?”

“Accomplish?”

“What do you hope to do?”

“The liberation of the culture,” the priest says. “The blasting of old myths and shibboleths, the removing of magic from the unknown by making it comprehensible. Isn’t that right?” He smiles, sweats, takes off his glasses and wipes them, gives me a nervous grin. “I think you’ve made that pretty clear.”

“Well, not exactly,” I say, filled with a sudden mad apprehension that I know exactly how the evening must end, “not exactly. It isn’t quite that way at all. Excuse me, all of you, but I just remembered a previous appointment that I had forgotten about when I arranged to come here and I must get to it. It’s absolutely crucial, this appointment. I’m sorry I forgot about it and that I’ve got to do this to you but I can’t afford to miss it. It isn’t quite that way at all,” I say, seizing my briefcase, patting the clips into place, reaching for my coat which I have flung across a chair. “It’s something else entirely.”

The meeting seems to have broken down into confusion. Some people are standing, shouting at me that I have no courtesy, others are urging me to go quickly. The room is full of shrieks and breath, small hobbling motions. It is a wonderful thing to see that senior citizens still have left so much energy and involvement. “All that I wanted to do,” I say when I get to the door, poised on the parapet to flee, “all that I really wanted to do was to make a buck. The rest was secondary, wouldn’t you say? Wouldn’t you say so, Father? You have to, after all, focus on relevance.”

Then I am gone. Out the door, into the night, briefcase slamming against walls with a clatter. But before I go, for an instant, the senior citizens and I exchange a single look at the door, and it is a look of such total understanding and communion, a look of such utter connection that I feel shudders passing through me as I hurtle down the streets. Never have I felt greater understanding than at that moment. The senior citizens, the priest and I, holding out in the basement, discussing matters while outside conditions persist. What are we holding out against? What is truly going on outside? What did we hope to gain?

I decide to limit my public appearances.

Virginia admits to me that she has become friendly with the faggarts. She had dinner at their apartment one night last week and for the past couple of weeks Donald or Jim has been calling her in the evenings for advice on personal matters. Also, they often have lunch together, the three of them. “They have a lovely apartment, quite a large apartment up on Riverside Drive, Walter. And they’re really sensitive men. The fact that they are what they are doesn’t mean that they can’t be nice human beings, you know.”

“I’ll fire them both,” I say. “That’s what I’ll do.”

“You’re not being rational, Walter. Why would you do something like that?”

“To keep you from getting involved with them. I don’t want you getting involved with people like that.”

“Oh, don’t be an ass. I’m twenty-five years old and I know exactly how I want to run my life and I’ve been around quite a bit. I wish you’d stop feeling that you can run people’s lives for them. You’re not going to fire them and nothing is going on so just cut it out.”

“I thought that we had an understanding.”

“What understanding? Of course we have an understanding. That doesn’t prevent you from living your own life, I’ve noticed. You go home to your wife all the time. I bet you’re making it with her, too.”

“That’s only temporary. It’s only a matter of a little time until the whole thing is over. I’m just paving the way.”

“Well, you pave the way. I’m not going to go to bed with either of them, believe me, Walter. I’d just make one of them jealous if I did.”

“Come here,” I say.

“Come here? What are you talking about?”

“I said, come here. I’m going to bang you right here in this office with the doors closed, just twenty feet away from them, that’s what I’m going to do.”

“Listen, Walter, if you want to do that you can. I won’t stop you, but it’s awfully immature, isn’t it? What is it going to prove?”

“Nothing,” I say, unbuttoning, unzipping, clinging, unfolding, suckling, “but it’s something I want to do.”

“It’s childish of you. It doesn’t change a single thing. And you shouldn’t have the idea that you can have me anytime you want. I have feelings you know.”

“Oh, God I know. I know you have feelings,” I say, and plunge thickly into her without preparation, solder her tight, begin the familiar in-and-out motions, but moving sidewise since she is sprawled across my lap on the editorial chair, holding my neck and stroking as I wedge in quickly. “Everybody has feelings.”

“The phone could ring, Walter. Someone could knock on the door. Someone could even try to come in. Oh, this is stupid, stupid. It’s stupid. Oh, stop that. Oh, God. Oh, don’t do that. Oh, it can’t go on this way. You’re just a bastard, do you know that? You’re an absolute bastard. I’m coming. I’m coming open inside me. I’m coming for you, all the way down. Oh, Oh. Oh, God.”

Afterward, routinely, we dress and separate, part with smiles. She is quite right, however: when she leaves the office the faggarts are still there, chatting seriously in the corner about inventory, and they give her waves as she passes. It is one more nest of complication is what it is, although I could hardly fire them; they know things about the business that I could never understand, they have close contacts with the attorneys, and they are responsiple for the cash flow. Besides that, they are homosexuals and homosexuals have no interest in women. I am positive of this although a strange flush seems to brighten Virginia’s cheeks as she sits typing near them when I pass on my way to the elevator an hour later. The flush is not for me; it is not for them; it is, perhaps, only for herself. I say something to her as I pass by but she does not hear me. Small dimples appear in the corners of her mouth; she smiles to herself winsomely as with perfect concentration she places her tongue between her teeth and uses an eraser to make corrections.

An advertisement appears in our classified placed by a young man deeply interested in the foot culture and anxious to give lessons in toe talk. Seeks same or females although males preferred. From a phone booth well removed from the office, I call him and make an appointment for the afternoon. He sounds cool, possessed, advises me that there will be a fee. I tell him that there was no such specification in his ad and he says that of course there wouldn’t be: do I think he is stupid? In any event, he does not practice his expertise for nothing; the fee will be $25 per half hour, payable in advance, and I am free to do as I please. I like his straightforwardness and tell him that I will be at his apartment at the appointed hour. He says that there will be no such thing and gives me the address of a hotel on the west side of Manhattan in whose Room 412 he says he will be at four o’clock. I am to pay the desk clerk the fee plus $5 room rent before going up. I tell him that I like his attitude and without arguing further, agree to what he says.

The classified interests me more and more; there is a whole world out there that I have literally never touched. At one point I felt like an entrepreneur, above the whole thing, manipulative, so to speak, but now I am not so sure. By opening up the market for advertisements of this sort I have, in effect, created desires, made possibilities, and I must be faithful to them. At the proper hour I am in the lobby of the hotel, a small, smoky building in which, signs tell me, classes in karate and black pride are offered on Wednesday evenings as well as a ceramics workshop. The desk clerk, a round menacing man in Army fatigues, asks me my business and I tell him Room 412; he asks me for $25 and drops his hands below the counter to fondle something which I very well think might be a gun. I remove the money from my wallet, give it to him and am then asked to stand straight, arms by sides for a moment. I do so and the clerk emerges deftly from behind the counter through a swinging door and checks me out top to bottom for concealed weaponry. At last he says I may go up, not to Room 412 but to Room 216 just one flight above. He advises me that I must return at the end of half an hour or he will go up to check on me.

I climb the dangerous stairs, sliding a bit on the unsteady steps, clinging to the bannister, and walk down the hall of the second floor, past a few pans of lukewarm soapy liquid and an old man dozing inside an open elevator. Room 216 is at the end of the corridor, and I try to enter without knocking, find it locked, knock gently until the door is opened by a huge blond man bare to the waist. He asks me to state my business and I say that I have an appointment. He gives me a long, careful look and then takes me into the room and leaves, locking the door behind him. I feel no sense of apprehension; I am too suspended in admiration for technique to have any fears whatsoever. Besides, all advertisers in our newspaper, we give our readers to understand, have been pre-selected and may be assumed to have our Seal of Approval. Even the prophylactic creams.

A small, wiry man is on the bed, naked except for socks which are knee-length. He is wearing glasses which he removes when I come near him. “Please undress,” he says. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk. I don’t like conversation and if you have anything to say, you’d better say it now.”

“I don’t have anything to say.”

“Good. Then please undress.”

I undress except for my socks. “The socks off too, please,” he says. “How can you leave those on?”

“You left yours.”

The man shakes his head. “You don’t understand,” he says. “I’m very sensitive about my feet. No one sees my feet, do you follow that? No one.”

“Why not?”

“You don’t understand toe queens at all, do you?” the man says. “My feet are mine. They are the most private part of me. Take off your socks unless you want to leave the room at once.”

I do not particularly want to leave the room at once. I remove my socks, looking out the window which has a fine view of Broadway; several people are gathered around a fruit stand which seems to have toppled; a perfect explosion of cucumbers, peppers and grapes lie on the asphalt, and the owner, tearing at his head, is trying to get some organization into the affair while passers-by snatch up the scattered fruits and vegetables and stuff them into large shopping bags which they appear to have brought for the purpose. I lie down on the bed next to the toe queen who instantly moves away, comes to his knees, looking at me with piercing eyes.

“Do you really want it?” he says. “Do you?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Tell me. Tell me you really want it.”

“I do. I really do.”

“Tell me what you want me to do with your feet. Go on. Tell me.”

I tell him, relying upon certain chance phrases which I recall from a couple of dimly remembered books. Also I rely upon an article on foot-fetishes which we had received for publication a year ago but which I rejected at that time as being wildly improbable and applying, at best, to a very small segment of the population. I had suggested that if the author tried to inject some humor into it and did it as a satire on normal sex practices it might be funny but I could hardly see it as a serious piece. It is hardly likely, but perhaps I am with the author of the article now.

“All right,” the toe queen says, “I’ll do it. I’ll do everything you want. Just lie back.”

I lie back and let him perform upon me. It is quite interesting although not particularly exciting. From the new angle I cannot see through the window; I wonder if the vegetable crisis has continued or whether the owner has somehow taken control over the situation. I am all on his side; it is no fun to see one’s goods and produce shuffled away by small old people with brown paper bags.

“You’re not concentrating. You’ve got to put your mind to it.”

“My mind’s right on it.”

“No it isn’t,” he says, but continues. I observe him for a while and find, much to my surprise, that I have an erection. He observes it with satisfaction, reaches out to touch it, then continues. The sensations are mildly pleasant although nothing to write home about. They have everything and nothing to do with the act of screwing. I decide that I am not really a toe fetishist and at that moment, to my greater surprise, ejaculate. The toe queen makes a small approving noise, moves away from me and says, “Well, that’s it.”

“That’s what?”

“That’s it. You got what you came for. Now you’ve got to leave.”

“So quickly?”

“Unless you want to pay again.”

I decide that I do not and get up slowly; feeling vaguely disconnected; get into my clothes. The toe queen, of all things, curls himself on the bed, yawns, and goes to sleep. I dress; try the door, find that it is locked, suppress panic and knock lightly. The blond man opens it from the outside, comes in, checks the sleeping man on the bed and nods.