Notes From the Upper West Side - A novel by Dan Roentsch

The night of the Cynthia incident I got home — I’m taking you back in time again to last March — and I climbed up the steps to my front door and remembered I better call Parp before going upstairs. I wanted to tell him about the Cynthia thing and didn’t want the wife to overhear.

Logical, right?

So for the second night in a row I’m out there on my stoop dialing up the old phone to call Parp. And yeah, Parp is an amoral perv but he was the only person I could tell about this. And even if I could tell someone else I mean...who’s going to believe it? Parp was my only choice. At least that’s what I thought.

I thought: Parp knows what kinky freaks women are behind that fake straightness. I’ll call him up. We’ll connect.

It bugged me knowing I automatically thought of turning to Parp. Like a reflex. Like reaching for Daddy’s hand. Remember way back at the beginning when I told how Jessica couldn’t believe I was still turning to Parp, still confiding in him? I thought of her right then and I thought about how I always reached out to Parp because there was a part of me that was an amoral perv too and I just naturally expected him to have my back.

I was in the doorway to my apartment building. One of my neighbors — Mrs. Liang, who’s really short but has these fantastic tits — had to get by me to get into the building. We did some cordial giggling and then when I was alone again I leaned against the brick entryway opposite the black-and-white tenant directory in the metal frame with the buzzer buttons.

I sniffed the air.

Eighty-Fifth Street in that warm early spring smelled like fried chicken and falafel and...corned beef I guess. I love the smorgasbord that is my neighborhood. Upper West Side smorgasbord. And I don’t mean just the food. People, too. People mostly with cash in the bank and those little signs on their doors saying their apartments are protected by alarms and cameras and electric death.

And strollers. Women of all races pushing little white kids around in strollers while Mommy goes to the gym and does the four-hundred lunges.

That’s my Upper West Side.

I got out of the doorway and sat on the stoop and snapped open the cell and stamped out the cigarette on the step below the step I had my feet on.

Oh yeah. I was smoking a cigarette.

Parp picked up and I blurted out the whole story. I gigcackled frequently so he would think I was telling him about it because it was funny in a “what-the-fuck” kind of way and so he wouldn’t think I was scared.

When I got it all out he said: “What, were you scared of her?”

“Nahhhh.”

“Yeah you were. You were afraid because she was young, right? Afraid of what that dancer ass was going to do to your poor, frail vascular system. Afraid she might want to get pounded a little harder than you can pound.”

“Uh, nooooooo,” I said. “If I was afraid of anything it was that she wanted to drop a deuce on my face.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You didn’t hear what I just said?”

“Yeah. I heard. And I also know there’s a million miles of broken links between ‘I crap big like on a farm’ and ‘I crap big like down your neck.’”

“So why do you think she told me? Think that’s just something she shares on dates as a kind of, ‘oh-by-the-way’?”

“Nope. Sounds like she just found another way to let you know she has a wide asshole.”

“What?”

“This ‘big crap’ thing? Probably just another way of letting you know how the butt-plugs have transformed her ass for anal.”

“Then why would she say ‘like on a farm’? You think she was saying they have a lot of anal sex on farms?”

There was this long pause and then he said: “Jesus Christ...”

“Well don’t you think you could give me some credit for actually being there? Shit, if it was about a butt-fuck I think I would have known.”

“So you couldn’t wait until the crap was imminent and then say, ‘I’m sorry I’m just not into watching a lady load’?”

I knew somebody was going to ask me that. I asked myself the same question on the train-ride back from Cynthia’s. So I had an answer ready.

“Hey, people who want to do that to you aren’t all there,” I said. “I don’t know the chick. What if she’s a psycho? What if she drugged me, like Dahmer, and when I woke up I was all tied up —”

“— with her asshole aimed at your face?!” Parp laughed and laughed. “What if she had a cunt with teeth in it?”

“Sure. That happens all the time. I’m always reading about some guy who went home with a stranger and got his dick bit off by some cunt from the X-Files.”

“She’s just a girl who worked on the video! I don’t know what she’s into but I don’t see any of those girls slipping guys mickeys so they can tie them up and shit their lights out.”

“You weren’t there! I mean, a girl’s into weird shit! How do I know she’s not into biting my dick off!”

“Teeth again!” Parp said. “Really. Vagina dentata. Ask your therapist.”

“I don’t need to,” I said. “I have an education.”

I wanted to just kick the guy in the nuts right then. He couldn’t be a little sympathetic? A little?

“Okay. Look. I don’t know her that well so I don’t know maybe you have a point about her upgrading you to the premium funk.”

“Gee. Thanks.”

“But I’m ninety-nine percent sure she wasn’t going to tie you up and make you take a load you didn’t want to take.”

“Well, the remaining one percent looked pretty chancy when I was standing there in her living room watching her rub her butt. — Ya know she calls her ass a ‘shit-cutter.’”

“A what?”

“A shit-cutter.”

“Ominous.”

I just sighed really loud and stood up and brushed the seat of my pants and started pacing back and forth on the painted, cement top of my stoop. There was a really long pause while I tried to think of how I could tell this prick that the Cynthia situation wasn’t one he could have just fucked his way out of if it had been him instead of me.

“You know the real reason you bailed?” he asked, interrupting my train of thought.

I sighed loud again.

“You bailed because you have absolutely no idea why this hot young girl would want to get fucked by a chunky pale old geezer like you.”

“Oh, bullshit. I know why she was into me. It was because I told her I loved eating cunt but that Junior was too traditional to satisfy me with the flavor I crave.”

“Which was a big fat lie.”

“So? I’d’ve crossed that bridge —”

“Now I get it,” he said. “It all makes sense now. You were afraid of getting her cunt jammed up in your face. You were looking for any out and then this poor chick who thinks she’s got your head for the night mentions that she loads large and bam! Just the excuse you need to run.”

I was seething.

“Your therapist is going to park that when you pitch it to her,” he said.

“I gotta go.” I could barely get the words out. I had that much rage in me right then.

“Whoa, wait! We’ve got one more day of shooting at Vider’s tomorrow. Are you going to be there? Cameron is.”

“Well, yeah,” I said. “Definitely. You gotta promise me not to tell Cammy about big-crap Cynthia though, okay?”

“Come on, she’ll think it’s cute. Maybe she’ll get jealous.”

“Dude.”

“Maybe we’ll see a catfight.”

I froze. “Cynthia’s there again tomorrow?”

“Nahhhhhh...” he laughed. “No dancers tomorrow, which I have to say kind of sucks. And don’t worry about your secret. It’s safe with Tony.”

I gigcackled. I was relieved. See, back in those days — five months ago — I knew that Parp was a human turd but the legend about him was that he was really good at keeping secrets.

Everyone said so. — Even Carol Weiser who we called “the Doll” because she was this girly girl who looked like a Barbie doll and dressed like a sitcom mom from the fifties.

Now, lots of people hate Parp but nobody hated Parp and talked shit about him like the Doll did. I guess it kind of makes sense because she and Parp used to be great pals. The greatest pals. But the Doll was a no-dick-ever dyke so they never fucked and that pretty much was the kiss of death on their paldom.

See ladies, Parp will never love you just for being you. With Parp you’re either biting his pipe or packing your bags.

So, yeah, Parp wanted to fuck the Doll and the Doll said no. But she still liked sleeping with him. And by sleeping I do mean sleeping.

I think she got away with it once and then halfway through their second platonic snooze Parp told her to wake up and fuck off.

See, the Doll was hot. Those fifties-style dresses she wore? On the one hand they made her look kind of traditional. Maybe even like your mom. On the other hand she wore them cut high so you could tell just by looking that she was inviting your mind’s eye to flip the hem up on her back.

It was a look that said Wally and Beav were asleep and June had plans for Ward.

It was all just a lure for other dykes. She was advertising her majora and minora to ladies who love muff. But the side-effect was she was also advertising them to Parp.

Nowadays I just laugh at the asshole when I picture him lying there staring at the ceiling with this sweet babe snoring into his chest, but back then I could kind of see his point. I mean, when you’re married to a bitch for ten years you get used to not touching her even when her ass is out. But a hot chick who flirts with you? Who strips down to her tiny panties and gets in your bed and then yawns and says, “What do you think you’re doing?”

I’m not saying a guy has to be a dick about it. If you’re a decent human being you don’t want women just for sex. You want them for, you know, all that other great stuff.

But in case you haven’t figured it out by now, Parp is not a decent human being.

I was backstage with the Doll a few nights after the night he kicked her out. It was opening night of some show she was in where she played an angel who comes down from Heaven to help out this motorcycle chick who starts out thinking she’s straight but ends up licking the angel’s clit like it’s a revelation and an epiphany and Christmas all rolled into one sweet set of bucking hips.

Kind of an It’s a Wonderful Life for dykes.

So anyway me and the Doll’s girlfriend Maria went backstage after. The Doll was pretty drunk already even though she was wearing her angel outfit still.

It was a little tense because Maria was already annoyed at seeing her girlfriend getting eaten out in public by somebody else, even if it was fake eating out.

You know. Funnilingus.

The Doll started in on Parp as soon as she saw me.

“I said to him, ‘Hey, what the fuck, we’re friends!’ and he said ‘Tell it to my unsucked cock’,” she cackled.

“Why were you in bed with him anyway?” Maria asked.

“Mariaaaaaa! We talked about thiiiiiiiiiissssss!!! Sometimes a girl needs man-snuggles. It doesn’t mean she wants to kiss one-eyed Pete.”

“Fuck that guy,” Maria said.

“So I said to him, ‘You’re telling me suck your cock or get out?!’ and he says, ‘Yep’! Can you believe that shit?!”

“Sounds like Parp,” I said.

We went to this diner called Moonstruck in Chelsea and an hour later we were still at the table and she was still dishing on him.

“If he’s such a fucking dick then why were you in bed with him?” Maria still wanted to know.

“You know, he really is an anal fissure but what you can’t take away from him is that you can tell him anything and he’ll keep it a secret if you ask him to.”

“Like what?” Maria asked.

The Doll hesitated. That was a mistake.

“Secrets about who you FUCK?!”

Wow. I just watched while Maria went up like Vesuvius — if you can picture Vesuvius pounding a laminate table top with chapped-knuckle dyke-fists.

The guy from the register had to come over and ask us to leave. Maria called him a cocksucker and we were out on the sidewalk fifteen seconds later.

The reason I’m telling you that story is so you’ll know why I trusted Parp with all my secrets. It was part of his rep even with people who hated him.

I was in such a good mood when Parp said the dancers wouldn’t be there and my secret was safe with him that I made the mistake of offering to help out again with the vans.

I was pretty sure he was going to say, “No we’ve got it handled,” but instead he said: “That would be great. One of the vans is filled with props and in that lot on Eighty-Third and Amsterdam. Can you meet me tomorrow morning at six to drive it out?”

“Yeah sure,” I said. “See you tomorrow morning.”

“Hasta la later.”

I hung up and went upstairs and googled “vagina dentata.”