CITY_OF_GIRLS_by_Elizabeth_Gilbert

“Oh, I can sing, mister. Don’t you worry about that. I can dance, too. I just don’t wanna waste my time singing and dancing when I don’t gotta sing and dance. You hear what I’m saying?”

“In that case, I amend my offer,” said Billy. “You’ve got the job, period.”

Well, that got Olive’s attention. She looked up from her paper in alarm.

“We haven’t even heard him read,” Peg said. “We don’t know if he can act.”

“Trust me,” Billy said. “He’s perfect. I feel it in my gut.”

“Congratulations, mister,” said the kid. “You made the right call. Ladies, you won’t be disappointed.”

And that, Angela, was Anthony.

—

Ifell in love with Anthony Roccella, and I’m not going to dillydally around, pretending that I didn’t. And he fell in love with me, too—in

his own way, and for a little while at least. Best of all, I managed to fall in love with him within the space of just a few hours, which is a model of efficiency. (The young can do that kind of thing, as you must know, without difficulty. In fact, passionate love, executed in short bursts, is the natural condition of the young. The only surprising thing was that it hadn’t happened to me sooner.)

The secret to falling in love so fast, of course, is not to know the person at all. You just need to identify one exciting feature about them, and then you hurl your heart at that one feature, with full force, trusting that this will be enough of a foundation for lasting devotion. And for me, the exciting thing about Anthony was his arrogance. I wasn’t the only one who noticed it, of course—that cockiness was how he got cast in our play, after all—but I was the one who fell in love with it.

Now, I’d been around plenty of arrogant young men since arriving in town a few months earlier (it was New York City, Angela; we breed them here), but Anthony’s arrogance had a special twist to it: he

genuinely didn’t seem to care. All the cocky boys I’d met thus far liked to play at nonchalance, but they still had an air about them of wanting something, even if it was only sex. But Anthony had no apparent hunger or longing about him. He was fine with whatever transpired. He could win, he could lose, it didn’t shake him up. If he didn’t get what he wanted out of a situation, he would just stroll away with his hands in his pockets, unfazed, and try again somewhere else. Whatever life offered, he could take it or leave it.

He could even take it or leave it when it came to me—so, as you can imagine, I had no choice but to become completely smitten with him.

—

Anthony lived in a fourth-floor walk-up on West Forty-ninth Street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. He lived with his older

brother, Lorenzo, who was the head chef at the Latin Quarter restaurant, where Anthony worked waiting tables when he didn’t have an acting job. His mom and pop used to live in that apartment, too, he told me, but they were both dead now—a fact that Anthony relayed to me with no evident sense of loss or sorrow. (Parents: another thing he could take or leave.)

Anthony was Hell’s Kitchen born and raised. He was pure Fortyninth Street, right to the core. Grew up playing stickball on that very street, and learned how to sing just a few blocks away at the Church of the Holy Cross. I came to know that street awfully well in the next few months. I certainly came to know that apartment awfully well, and I remember it with warm fondness because it was in his brother Lorenzo’s bed that I experienced my first climax. (Anthony didn’t have a bed of his own—he slept on the couch in the living room—but we helped ourselves to his brother’s room when Lorenzo was at work. Thankfully, Lorenzo worked long hours, giving me ample time to receive pleasure from young Anthony.)

I’ve mentioned before that a woman needs time and patience and an attentive lover in order to get good at sex. Falling for Anthony Roccella finally gave me access to all three of those necessary features.

Anthony and I found our way to Lorenzo’s bed on the first night of our acquaintance. After the auditions were over, he’d come upstairs to

sign a contract and to get a copy of the script from Billy. The adults all conducted their business, and then Anthony left. But only a few minutes after he’d walked out, Peg instructed me to run after him and speak to the young man about costumes. I snapped right to duty, yes ma’am. I’d never flown down the Lily’s stairwell faster.

I caught up with Anthony on the sidewalk, grabbed him by the arm, and breathlessly introduced myself.

In truth, there wasn’t much I needed to discuss with him. The suit he had worn to his audition would be perfect for his costume. Yes, it was a bit modern for our play, but with the right suspenders and a wide, garish tie it would do the trick. It looked just cheap enough, and just cute enough, to suit Lucky Bobby. And while it might not have been the most politic thing for me to say, I told Anthony that his existing suit would be perfect for the role, precisely because it was so cheap and so cute.

“You callin’ me cheap and cute?” he asked, his eyes crinkling in amusement.

He had highly pleasant eyes—dark brown and lively. He looked like he spent most of his life amused. Examining him this closely, I could see he was older than he’d looked onstage—less of a rangy kid, and more of a lean young man. He was more like twenty-nine than nineteen. It’s just that his skinniness and his carefree step made him seem a lot younger.

“I might be,” I said. “But there’s nothing wrong with cheap and cute.”

“You, on the other hand—you look expensive,” he said, and gave me a slow appraisal.

“But cute?” I asked.

“Very.”

We stared at each other for a while. There was a good deal of information conveyed across the silence—a whole conversation, you might say. This is what flirtation is in its purest form—a conversation held without words. Flirtation is a series of silent questions that one person asks another person with their eyes. And the answer to those questions is always the same word:

Maybe.

So Anthony and I just looked at each other for a good long while, asking the unspoken questions, and silently replying to each other: Maybe, maybe, maybe. The silence went on so long that it became uncomfortable. In my stubbornness, though, I wouldn’t speak, but nor would I break eye contact. Finally, he started laughing, and I laughed, too.

“What’s your name, baby doll?” he asked.

“Vivian Morris.”

“You free tonight to spend some time with me, Vivian Morris?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Yes?” he asked.

I shrugged.

He tilted his head and looked at me closer, still smiling. “Yes?” he asked again.

“Yes,” I decided, and that was the end of the maybe.

But then he asked it again: “Yes?”

“Yes!” I said, thinking perhaps he hadn’t heard me.

“Yes?” he said one more time, and now I realized that he was asking me about something else here. We weren’t talking about going out for dinner and a movie. He was asking me if I was really free tonight.

In an entirely different tone, I said, “Yes.”

—

Within a half hour, we were in his brother’s bed.

I knew instantly that this was not going to be the same sort of sexual experience to which I was accustomed. First of all, I wasn’t drunk and neither was he. And we weren’t standing up in the cloakroom of a nightclub, or fumbling in the back of a cab. There was no fumbling to be had here. Anthony Roccella was not in a hurry. And he liked to talk as he worked, but not in a horrible way like Dr. Kellogg. He liked to ask me playful questions, which I loved. I think he just liked to hear me say yes again and again, and I was more than happy to

oblige him.

“You know how pretty you are, don’t you?” he asked, once he’d locked the door behind us.

“Yes,” I said.

“You’re gonna come sit on this bed with me now, right?”

“Yes.”

“You know I’m gonna have to kiss you now, cuz of how pretty you are?”

“Yes.”

And sweet mercy, could that boy kiss. One hand on each side of my face, with his long fingers reaching behind my skull, holding me still while he softly tested out my mouth. This part of sex—the kissing part, which I always loved—was usually over far too quickly in my experience, but Anthony didn’t seem to be heading toward something more. This was the first time I’d been kissed by somebody who was getting as much pleasure out of kissing as I was.

After a long time—a very good long time—he pulled back. “Here’s what we’re gonna do now, Vivian Morris. I’m gonna sit here on this bed, and you’re gonna stand right there, under the light, and take your dress off for me.”

“Yes,” I said. (Once you start saying it, it’s so easy to keep going!)

I walked to the center of the room and stood—just as instructed— right under the lightbulb. I took my dress off, and stepped out of it, covering up my nervousness by throwing my hands up in the air. Tada! As soon as my dress came off, though, Anthony started laughing, and I was catapulted into shame—thinking of how thin I was, and how small my breasts were. When he saw the look on my face, he softened his laughter and said, “Oh, no, doll. I’m not laughing at you. I’m just laughing because I like you so much. You’re a fast little operator, and it’s cute.”

He stood up and picked my dress up off the floor.

“Why don’t you put this dress back on, doll?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “That’s all right, I don’t mind.” I was making no sense, but I was thinking: I blew it, it’s over.

“No, listen to me, baby. You’re gonna put this dress back on for me, and then I’ll ask you to take it off for me again. But this time, you’re gonna slow it way down, okay? Don’t be such a fast worker.”

“You’re crazy.”

“I just want to see you do it again. Come on, doll. I’ve been waiting for this moment my whole life. Don’t rush it.”

“No, you have not been waiting for this moment your whole life!”

He grinned. “Nah, you’re right. I haven’t. But I sure do like it, now that it’s here. So how ’bout you give it to me again? But real slow.”

He sat back down on the bed, and I put my dress on. I came over and let him do up the buttons in the back, which he did, slowly and carefully. I could have reached the buttons myself, of course, and in just a few moments I would be unbuttoning them all over again, but I wanted to give him the task. Honestly, the experience of feeling this young man buttoning up my dress was the most erotic and intimate sensation I’d ever experienced—although it was soon to be surpassed.

I turned around and went back to the center of the room, fully dressed again. I fluffed my hair a bit. We were smiling at each other like fools.

“Now try it again,” he said. “Go real slow for me. Make like I’m not even here.”

This was my first experience of being watched. And while I’d had plenty of men put their hands all over me in the past few months, I’d not had nearly enough of them appraise me with their eyes. I turned my back to him, as if I were shy. Truthfully, I was a bit shy. I had never felt quite so nude, and I was still clothed! I reached back and unbuttoned the dress. I allowed it to drop from my shoulders, but it caught around my waist. I left it there. I unhooked my brassiere and slid it over my arms. I placed it on the chair next to me. Then I just stood there and let him look at my naked back. I could feel him looking at me, and it was like a current running up my spine. I stood there for a long time, waiting for him to say something, but he didn’t speak. There was something thrilling about my not being able to see his face—not knowing what he was doing behind me on the bed. To this day, I can still feel the quality of air in the room. That cool, fresh, autumnal air.

Slowly I turned around, but kept my eyes down. My dress was still gathered loosely about my waist, but my breasts were bare. Still, he said nothing. I closed my eyes and allowed myself to be inspected and contemplated. The voltage I’d felt running up my spine had now circled to the front of me. My head felt light and spinny. The prospect of moving or speaking seemed impossible.

“That’s right,” he said finally. “That’s what I’m talking about. Now you can come over here next to me.”

He guided me down onto the bed and pushed my hair back away from my eyes. I expected him to more or less attack my breasts and mouth at this point, but he didn’t go near them. His lack of urgency was driving me a bit wild. He didn’t even kiss me again. He just smiled at me. “Hey, Vivian Morris. I’ve got a big idea. You wanna hear it?”

“Yes.”

“So, here’s what we’re gonna do now. You’re gonna lay back on this bed and let me take off the rest of your clothes. And then you’re gonna shut your pretty little eyes. And then you know what I’m gonna do?”

“No,” I said.

“I’m gonna show you what’s what.”

—

It might be difficult for someone of your age, Angela, to understand how radical a concept oral sex was for a young woman of my

generation. I knew about B.J.’s of course (that would’ve been our term for “blow jobs”—which I’d done a few times and wasn’t sure I liked or even exactly understood), but the idea of a man putting his mouth on a woman’s genitals? This was not done.

Let me amend that. Of course I’m sure it was done. Every generation likes to think that they discovered sex, but I’m sure that far more sophisticated people than me were experiencing cunnilingus in 1940, all over New York City—especially in the Village. But I’d never heard of it. God knows, I’d had everything else done to the flower of my femininity that summer, but not this. I’d been palmed and rubbed and penetrated, and certainly fingered and probed (my heavens, how the boys liked to poke about, and so vigorously, too)—but never this.

His mouth had ended up between my legs so fast, and the sudden realization of his destination and his intent had shocked me to the point that I said “Oh!” and started to sit up, but he reached up one of his long arms, placed his palm on my chest, and firmly pressed me back down again, without once stopping what he was doing.

“Oh!” I said again.

Then I felt it. There was a sensation occurring here that I didn’t even know could occur. I took the sharpest inhale of my life, and I’m not sure I let my breath out for another ten minutes. I do feel that I lost the ability to see and hear for a while, and that something might have short-circuited in my brain—something that has probably never been fully fixed since. My whole being was astonished. I could hear myself making noises like an animal, and my legs were shaking uncontrollably (not that I was trying to control them), and my hands were gripping down so hard over my face that I left fingernail divots in my own skull.

Then it became more.

And after that, it became even more still.

Then I screamed as though I were being run over by a train, and that long arm of his was reaching up again to palm my mouth, and I bit into his hand the way a wounded soldier bites on a bullet.

And then it was the most, and I more or less died.

When it was all over, I was panting and crying and laughing and could not stop shuddering. But Anthony Roccella just smiled that same cocky smile as ever.

“Yeah, baby,” said the skinny young man whom I now loved with all my heart. “That’s what’s what.”

—

Well,she?a girl is never really the same after something like that, now is

Here’s the extraordinary thing, though: on that night of our remarkable first encounter, Anthony and I did not even have sex. By which I mean—we did not engage in literal intercourse. Nor did I do anything to Anthony that first night, to offer him pleasure in return for

the potent revelation he had just delivered unto me. Nor did he seem to need me to do anything. He didn’t seem to mind in the least if I just lay there, as immobilized as if I’d just fallen out of an airplane.

Again, this was part of the charm of Anthony Roccella—that incredible lack of urgency. The way that he could take it or leave it. I was beginning to understand the origins of Anthony Roccella’s immense self-confidence. It now made perfect sense to me why this penniless young man strutted about as though he owned the whole town: because if you’re a fellow who can do that to a woman without even needing anything in return, why wouldn’t you think awfully highly of yourself?

After he’d held me for a while and teased me a bit for having screamed and cried in pleasure, he’d gone to the icebox and come back with a beer for each of us.

“You’re gonna need a drink, Vivian Morris,” he said, and he was right about that.

He never even took his clothes off that night.

That boy had ravaged me right to the point of unconsciousness without even removing the jacket of his cheap, cute suit!

—

Of course I was back there the next night to writhe around once more under the magnificent powers of his mouth. And the next

night, too. Still, he stayed fully dressed, without asking for anything in reciprocation. On the third night, I finally dared to ask, “But what about you? Do you need . . . ?”

He grinned. “We’ll get around to it, baby,” he said. “Don’t you worry.”

And he was right about that, too. We got around to it—boy, did we ever—but he waited until I was famished for it.

I don’t mind telling you, Angela—he waited until I was begging for

it.

The begging bit was somewhat tricky on my part, because I didn’t know how to beg for sex. What sort of language does a nicely bred

young lady use to plead for access to that unnamable male organ, which she so dearly wants?

Could you kindly . . . ?

If it’s not any trouble . . . ?

I just didn’t have any of the terminology required for this sort of exchange. Sure, I’d been doing a lot of dirty, filthy things since my arrival in New York, but I was still a nice young lady at my core, and nice young ladies don’t ask for things. For the most part, what I had been doing over the course of these past few months was allowing dirty, filthy things to happen to me, at the hands of men who were always in a big hurry to get it done. But this was different. I wanted Anthony, and he was in no hurry to give me what I wanted, which only made me want him more.

When it got to the point when I would stammer things like, “Do you think we might someday . . . ?” he would stop what he was doing, rise up on one elbow, grin at me, and say, “How’s that, now?”

“If you ever wanted to . . .”

“If I ever wanted to what, baby? Just say it.”

I would say nothing (because I could say nothing) and he would just grin wider and say, “Sorry, baby, I can’t hear you. You gotta enunciate.”

But I couldn’t say it—at least not till he taught me how to say it.

“There are some words you need to learn, baby,” he told me one night while he was toying with me in bed. “And we ain’t doin’ nothing more till I hear you say it.”

Then he taught me the nastiest words I’d ever heard. Words that made me blush and burn. He made me repeat the words after him, and he relished how uncomfortable it made me. Then he went to work on my body again, leaving me splayed and flayed with longing. When I had reached such a peak of desire that I could scarcely draw a breath, he stopped what he was doing, and turned on the light.

“So, here’s what we’re gonna do now, Vivian Morris,” he said. “You’re gonna look me dead in the eye, and you’re gonna tell me exactly what you want me to do to you—using the words I just taught you. And that’s the only way it’s ever gonna happen, baby doll.”