Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
When he's at the wheel of his limousine, it's all about listening to his female passengers. But later, in bed with them, his phallus is the engine.
May 14, 2003 | A grand lover of women
Eddie is a limousine-for-hire driver in Chicago. He's a very large black man of 38. He wears a black suit, white shirt and black tie when he drives, and black leather driving gloves. His sunglasses are by Gianni Versace. Extremely articulate, he is nonetheless soft-spoken and very kindly.
I wanted to cultivate this image of being a grand lover of women. So I speak this way, with this voice, because I want to be a man of authority. Not cruel authority. Rather the kind of man in whom women feel they can find strength, sympathy, intelligence.
I've found that women respond very favorably to a man who does two things: He asks them questions about themselves, and then he listens to the answers. It's remarkable how few men seem to do this. I've been very successful doing it. If you show respect for someone, they'll respect you, and I've had many women fall in love with me, or just want to go to bed with me, simply because I listened to what they had to say. I ask more questions and listen to more answers, and it has always worked.
In my work, I meet a lot of women. Women going to the airport, women going to the theater, women going to the museums. We talk while we drive, and that's where I find out if I'm going to ... well, usually I can see it in the rearview mirror, the way their eyes look at me. So I'm asking questions, listening to their answers, and watching their eyes. Not directly. Not overtly. Just glances from time to time. I can see it in the glances.
If a woman invites me into her apartment, I know I'm in. I'm very considerate. I don't push too hard. I don't insist. But when we begin making love, things change. Then it's as though this engine takes me over, and my penis becomes the center of everything. It feels that way to me, and the women feel the same way. They tell me that. They think I'm fine, attractive and all that. But they think my penis is a dynamo, some sort of creative blizzard.
This has been going on for years, and I used to classify it as a kind of gig, like a musician's gigs. But lately I've begun to understand what it's like for a musician to be on the road, night after night, club after club. It's got to be difficult for them, playing in so many places to so many audiences. But I imagine the thing that sustains them is the fact that they're playing. They're improvising all the time. They're looking into their hearts, no matter whether it's in Philly, Pittsburgh or Chicago. No matter the moment, they're feeling their heart.
It's not like that for me. I'm beginning to think that, although my penis is talented, its talent is nothing more than superficial. I'm playing the notes, but what the tune can mean, what it can make you feel -- that eludes me. These are nice women, usually. Some of them have even been in love with me. Some of them. But after it's all said and done, they don't really seem to be into it.
My penis is into it, but not my heart. So every time I get into my car and drive away, I feel like this beautiful limousine is pulling from the curb with a well-spoken, considerate, grand lover of women in it who, way down deep, is a shallow loner.
A gringo lover
Jeffrey is 28 years old, born and raised in Los Angeles. He lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, works in investment banking and is a salsa dancer of remarkable ability.
It doesn't interest me so much, but it sure interests the women I dance with that I'm white. I mean, look at me! I've got this curly blond hair. I look like a Swedish accountant. If you were a film director and you wanted to cast some swarthy matinee idol to play the lead in your movie about Che Guevara, maybe you'd go to Benicio Del Toro, but you'd never even look at me. Maybe you'd let me park your car or something. I mean, you wouldn't even notice me.
But I was born in the barrio in East L.A. My parents had grown up there and the Latinos just moved in around them over the years. I spent years dancing salsa, at junior high school parties and in high school. I've been going to the Mayan in downtown Los Angeles for years, and that's the biggest salsa club in the world! So, I can dance! Salsa, son, son montuña, mambo, merengue -- all of it.
Everybody was used to me in L.A., so this wasn't a big deal. But here in New York, it is a big deal. You know the Copacabana on West 34th? Every Tuesday night at 6 they have a deal where you can get in for 5 bucks. Five! And that includes a buffet meal -- you know, chicken, rice and beans on a paper plate. But it's delicious. The crowd gathers outside after work, so you see hundreds of women, every kind of woman, mostly dressed for work because that's where they're coming from. Wool skirts. Heels. Conservative! But these are Latin women, so they're there to dance.
The minute the doors open, the DJ starts up, and those guys play the best music ever. The dancing is immediate. The first time I went to the Copacabana, I couldn't get anyone to even look at me. I stood in line, and I had a coat and tie on because that's the way I have to dress at work. I did get a few looks, but they were mostly of, uh, amusement. I went inside and got a plate of food, and sat down to watch the dancing. It was right away astonishing, just as good as at the Mayan. The difference was that at the Mayan the women are dressed in next to nothing. It's L.A., after all. At the Copacabana on Tuesdays they all look like lawyers. But they're lawyers that can dance.
I sat and watched for about an hour, and no one even noticed me. But then I asked this one girl to dance. Alma. She's Puerto Rican, very cute, with beautiful makeup. She was wearing a business suit, kind of State Department style, you know, dark blue with a dark gray blouse. Except she had on 3-inch red heels that she'd brought in her purse. I asked her to dance because she was absolutely the best dancer on the floor. But when I asked her, she looked at me as though I was the geek who wins the science prize in high school. I think what got her to acquiesce was that I asked her to dance in Spanish. That was a big surprise.
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