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Weekend: Avenue B

By Paul Ford

Meeting a woman and talking about getting taken from behind, and so on.

Saturday I met with a woman on her way back to Arizona after a lousy run in NYC, named Sue. She is a natural light blonde, well spoken, and very sharp and well dressed; she weighs about twenty-nine pounds and peers out at the world with bright, searing eyes.

When men come to the East from the Southwest or California, they often ask, shocked, "are all the women on the seaboard brutes with mustaches?" These men were trained on women like my friend, thin women who look like sunflowers. The men speak to those women at barbecues and car shows, and in the parking lots at massive organized sports events, then come to New York or Philadelphia, to witness our softer, pasty bodies, raised in lamplight on saltwater, dressed in grays. The mens' muscular hearts sink.

On a coffee shop on Avenue B, Sue described her last boss, a powerful senior executive at a massive advertising firm, a woman who never leaves the office or refuses a phone call. My friend said, "I thought about it, and you know what she needs to be better as a manager?"

I looked across the table. I was drinking an herbal tea, because I've stopped drinking most caffeine, and ordering decaf at 24 opens me to mockery. Sue sipped from a glass half her height filled with milk, sugar, and a few ounces of brownish coffee.

"A sense of compassion?" I said.

"That too, but this woman needs fucked. She needs a man to come into the office, bend her over her walnut desk, and fuck her skull out. Until there's nothing but a stain."

I thought about this. "Would she stop working, even for a moment?"

"No," said my friend.

"So it would be like this?" I asked, and began to smack the back of my hand while pushing my face forward, simulating being taken hard from behind. "I'll--smack--have--smack--to--smack--call--smack--you--smack--back."

She giggled. "Yes. Just bent over and reamed, by a muscular guy. You could arrange for it, and she would suddenly be chirpy and cheerful and you'd know they'd sent the guy over and he'd done his job. She might even be a good boss." Sue thought for a moment. "Maybe I could start a clinic."

"Women with powerful careers but no time for love come in," I said, "and look through one-way glass at men lifting weights, and get their pick. It would be very empowering."

"There are some rooms," said my friend, "where they enter and the men come in and--" She began to smack herself in the head, like I had. "Than you God--smack--I'll be a better boss now--smack."

People in the shop looked over at her.

She thought for another minute, then said, "There's money in it, I could start a business. I have business smarts. I'd love to be a..." She considered the word. "Procurer."

"All those women are here, not in Arizona."

"No, to hell with this city," Sue replied. "My ticket is for Thursday."