WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
This book is for sale to ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It contains substantial sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which may be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.
All sexually active characters in this work are 18 years of age or older.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover Design: Willsin Rowe
Alice in Shtuppingland
By Barrie Abalard
Sticky Fingers Publishing
Smashwords Edition
Copyright March 2011 by Barrie Abalard
All rights reserved.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Alice In Shtuppingland
By Barrie Abalard
A Word About the Seventies
A side of the Seventies you don't normally read about concerns the people who burned out on Sixties anti-war, anti-establishment protests. While these folks fully participated in the group grope that was the era, not all of them frequented discos or wore Spandex. Some continued living in their blue jeans (though they did enjoy donning the occasional platform shoes with their jeans). Some of them were still hippies, mired in Sixties politics and attitudes and enjoying a slacker lifestyle, to use a phrase that hadn’t been invented yet.
While writing Alice in Shtuppingland, a project that took seven years to come together (pun intended), I did my best to keep the settings, fashions, household items, etc., true to the time period. If certain things seem outlandish, all I can say is, I was there. I did an awful lot of what’s depicted in the book, including being hired to drive a cab (when I had no clue where anything in Boston was located), and working in a clerical capacity at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston—the old building at Ten Post Office Square. (However, my boss was emphatically not the guy you’ll meet later in the story. My boss treated me well, and I enjoyed working with all the people in my department.)
Yes, I really lived at the YWCA on Berkeley Street, not far from Boston Police Headquarters, for a short while—at the time, it cost only five dollars a night. I literally did nothing there but sleep (no men were allowed above the first floor), so cheap worked for me. What I can't figure out these days is how I did without a cell phone when I was looking for a decent apartment/rent share. Pay phones were pretty damned inconvenient, but it was all I had available to me until I moved into a place with a land line (known back then as, simply, "a phone").
Rent in Boston today remains just as outrageously expensive as it was then. The Boston Public Library is still one of my favorite places, as is Copley Square, where I indeed got quite shit-faced on tequila one snowy January night. But not alone. Well, you'll read about it. Know that my drinking tequila straight from the bottle in sub-freezing temps, while wearing my beloved ankle-length wool coat and boots, is true, even if the guy who joined me didn't even remotely resemble the male character portrayed in the story.
However, I’ll not comment on the truthiness, to use a Stephen Colbert word, of Alice’s sex life when compared to mine. Some things are best left to the imagination. But I can tell you that the Chocolate Orgasm in the story is a real dessert (and is absolutely scrumptious and will add three inches to your butt, even if all you do is look at it). It is sold to this day by Rosie’s Bakery. Back in 1977, it was sold by Baby Watson, which (who?) was then justifiably famous for cheesecakes of all varieties.
Do you have the idea I spent much of my time eating my way through Boston and Cambridge in the Seventies? If you think that, you're right. Damn, how I miss The Coffee Connection! (Starbucks bought them out in the late Eighties.) Caffeine and nicotine were (mostly) my drugs of choice back then. I'm too old for both now. And, yes, back then you could smoke in any restaurant, any time. I add this for those who were born after 1980 or so.
Certain places in the story do exist where I bend the truth, or the local geography, for my own reasons. Know that any inaccuracies regarding Boston, Cambridge, and the time period are due to artistic license. It’s either that, or my failing memory. I can’t recall which.
As always, none of the characters in this story are intended to resemble any person, living or dead. The characters are, at best, amalgams inspired by more than one person, though several are outright fashioned from whole cloth. No one in the story is “you” (if you happen to know me personally). Not even if you think you remember participating in the activities depicted. With me. Nope.
Remember this: the original Alice in the original Wonderland (a place invented by a very strange mathematician) was a visitor to the locale. In the same way, my Alice lives in Shtuppingland but isn't of Shtuppingland. She doesn't participate as fully as some characters do, though she does her best to keep up. A in S is not a sex book, but it is a sexy, bawdy one. At least, that's my intention. And the word shtupp? It's Yiddish, a rather impolite word meaning, "to fornicate." If you've seen Blazing Saddles, you might remember Madeline Kahn's character, Lili von Shtupp. Just writing the name makes me smile.
Enjoy the Survival Rules at the beginning of each chapter. Many of them are based in fact, or were at least inspired by the hard knocks of experience. Truth be told, I took more than my share in real life, mostly because of my hard-headedness. (Cue the Cat Stevens song, "Hard Headed Woman".)
My coming of age (again, pun intended) in Seventies Boston provided me with many fond memories and, I hope, has provided you with an entertaining story. In my mind, Alice is still shtupping madly in some Boston-area apartment. Rock on, gal!
Prologue
I used to think, life sucks, and then you die. But now, I’m not so sure.
See, my original premise was based on eighteen years of hell, otherwise knows as home, not-so-sweet home. I flew the coop for Boston in 1977 and didn’t look back, figuring that the cold and snowy locale had to be better than what I’d known up to that point. I also figured 1977 had to be better than ’76, not to mention all the years that preceded it. Why? Because, at heart, I’m a cockeyed optimist.
Why Boston? It was supposed to be one of the best places for a writer to live. I’d read that somewhere. And writing has always been my passion. Besides men, I mean.
Men—I had a few back then, though I didn’t (often) date more than one simultaneously. That fact made me hopelessly square in the Seventies. But I lived my by my own rules, and one of the biggest ones was, doing things my way was worth any price.
That was before life took a twist I never, ever saw coming.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
PART ONE:
THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE, 1977
Chapter One
January, 1977
Alice's Survival Rule Number One: Use every ladies' room you run across in Boston, because you can never be sure when or where you'll find another one.
There's one thing to be said for a dysfunctional childhood—it gets you out of your parents' house, no matter what the price you pay is.
"More?"
The waitress held a steaming pot. I accepted more coffee, grateful for the restaurant walls separating me from Back Bay's January wasteland. The Boston Globe's front page that I’d seen on a newsstand had noted the day’s high would reach thirty. I’d learned in two short, frigid Boston days that "thirty" in the month following Christmas was practically a heat wave.
I smashed my half-smoked cigarette in the cheap metal ashtray, sparks flying. My little drawstring purse contained a few dollars and a partial roll of dimes for phone calls. The bucks were enough for my coffee shop bill and two or three subway rides, tops. But I was on my own, and happy, for the first time since I could remember.
Removing the two half-smoked cigarettes from the ashtray, I smoothed them, the better to re-light them later. My tobacco stash was down to eight. I needed to mellow out before I used up any more cancer sticks. Yeah, I shouldn’t smoke. But have you ever met a writer who didn’t smoke while pounding the typewriter keys?
To lighten my mood, I closed my eyes, willing silly images to appear on the inside of my lids. Imagining my parents puckering their lips up to my bare ass prompted a smile. I could hear Mama, complaining my underwear wasn't sufficiently proper for a hospital's emergency room. Eyes open again, my fingers scrabbled for the last crumbs of blueberry muffin while I flagged down the waitress for the bill. But when I asked her where the ladies' room was, she stared at me as if I were the dumbest rube ever to hit the big city: "We don't have one."
All Virginia restaurants, by law, had public restrooms. I thought that surely Massachusetts would be the same. "What do you mean, you don't have one? What do you use?"
"We have bathrooms for employees, but customers can't use them," she said while snatching up the check and the exact change I’d placed on top of it.
Big mistake, telling me about the employee bathrooms. "Wait a minute. I can't use the bathroom you do? Why not?"
She shrugged. "I don't make the rules."
"You served me three cups of coffee and you don’t have a bathroom for customers? Let me use the employees’ bathroom, or I'll climb on this table and pee right here. Don't think I won't." I pressed fifty cents into her palm, hoping she hadn’t heard the slight tremble in my words of bravado.
A one-third tip plus my insane expression gained me entrance to Boston Bites's golden throne. When I left, I ignored the waitress’s glare as well as the ultra-convenient pay phone. The Back Bay location of the Boston Bites chain was a place I could never eat again, but at least I didn’t have wet pants.
I walked two blocks up Boylston before ducking into another small coffee shop. Using their pay phone, I lined up one employment agency interview for the afternoon, and one for the next morning. Last week I’d made the rounds of advertising houses. Photocopying expenses and riding the subway (the MBTA, Boston's transit system, known as "the T") all over town had dented my savings, with diddly-squat to show for it. I’d tucked away a lot by not buying another car with the money left over from my car-totalling accident, but the cash wouldn’t last forever. No jobs, damn the recession. The new year, 1977, looked no better than the old one so far. Same shit, different city.
Unsure where the library was, I stopped a passerby. At least she didn’t look at me as if I were something she’d scraped off the soles of her buttery leather boots. I pointed to my left. "Which way to the library? They have papers there, right?"
"Back that way," she answered, gesturing towards Copley Square. "Yes, they have newspapers."
"Thanks," I replied, but she grabbed my arm before I could turn around to head for the library. Pity danced in her eyes. Mentally, I scanned my outfit. Did I look that pathetic?
"What do you need?" she asked. "I have a Globe and a Real Paper here."
"A Real Paper, please. Need to find a place to live."
"Of course you do, darling."
She passed me the paper, along with a dollar bill. Feeling humiliated, I held out the dollar to the woman who saw me as a vagrant. "Wait. You think I'm, you know, but I'm not, really."
She patted my shoulder. "Of course you're not, dear. Get out of the cold and eat some hot soup, okay?" She strolled away, no doubt thinking she’d done a good deed.
"Thanks," I called, stuffing the dollar into an inner pocket. Nice lady. Now I wouldn’t have to ration my smokes as carefully.
At the Boston Public Library, I headed for the bathroom to study my reflection. Navy ankle-length coat, rainbow wool scarf knitted by my sister, worn boots, denim: I looked like a hippie, but not homeless. Then again, if I lived on Beacon Hill and shopped at Saks, maybe I'd look homeless to me.
I used the facilities, figuring I might as well, because the coffee I'd drunk was refilling my bladder. Back in the periodicals room, I settled into a chair, opening The Real Paper to the Roommates section. Living at the YWCA was cheap, but not cheap enough, considering I had to share a bathroom with nineteen other women. The nightly fee worked out to over one-forty a month and, for that price, I hoped I could snare a large, sunny room, sharing a bath with only one or two women. Or one or two men. I wasn’t picky, if the sunny room cost little enough, and platonically-shared apartments with the opposite sex were, I'd heard, not unusual in Boston.
Two situations in the paper held promise, both in Cambridge. After going downstairs to use the public phone, no one answered at the first number, but at the second one, an answering machine picked up after four rings. I wondered why these folks needed a roommate, if they were well off enough to have a machine. No one I knew back in Richmond could afford one, they were so new. One would have cost more than a week’s slave wages at my old job.
Hoping someone would be home shortly, I left a brief message, along with the number of the pay phone I was using. I knew I would have to wait by the phone in the hopes that no one else would tie it up, but an ample supply of phones would likely leave my right of possession unchallenged.
After about ten minutes and no call, disappointment settled in. Of course, the moment I started climbing the stairs, the phone rang. In my haste I tripped, but managed to grab the receiver on the third ring.
"Hello," I gasped, clinging to the phone's bulky black box to keep from falling.
"Hey, are you the person looking for a place to live?"
"Uh, yeah."
A beat of silence while I slowed my huffing and puffing. "Are you all right?" the guy asked.
I took a deep breath, exhaled. "I'm fine. It's just that I'm at a pay phone because I'm staying at the Y and I need a place to live, and—" I stopped babbling in order to breathe again.
"I just got up. Want to come over now? We're both home."
Well, the ad did say two male musicians were looking for someone to rent the third bedroom, so I understood their late rising. But I wouldn’t go to their place without meeting them on safe, public ground first. I might have been country-raised, but I wasn’t country-dumb. "Uh, do you have a Boston Bites nearby?" I asked.
"We have a small spa a block or so away."
Now confused, I replied, "A spa? You mean, like a health club?"
"No, like a store, newsstand. That sort of thing."
A new bit of Boston slang for me to absorb. "Is a spa sort of like a Seven-Eleven?"
"What's a Seven-Eleven? Never mind. Want to meet there? I mean, I figure you don't want to come to our place alone."
"You're going to have to talk me in. I don't have a clue where Cambridgeport is. Are you near Central Square?"
"Central's not quite a mile away, but it's easier to come across the B.U. Bridge. You know where I'm talking about?"
I hesitated, crossing my fingers. "I can find it."
"Jeez, another out-of-towner. You a student? You sound about eighteen. You don't mind walking? Where are you now?"
His detailed directions started with picking up the B trolley line at the Copley Square T stop. I searched my pockets for a ballpoint pen to scribble notes on the margin of The Real Paper, ending up writing on the back of my hand as I ran out of room in the paper's margins.
"So, you think you can find your way over?"
"Of course." I had to work at sounding confident and strong.
"Good. Call me when you find Cambridgeport Spa and we'll come right over. Rico's cool—if you tell him Todd and Marcus know you, he'll let you use his phone to call us. I'm Todd Butler. Who are you?"
"Alice. Alice—" I hesitated, and not only because I wasn’t ready to give my real last name. "Just Alice for now."
"Hey, Just Alice For Now, see you soon."
I hung up to pore over my street map long enough to panic. I didn’t have the faintest idea where in the Harry I was headed, as my mother would have said. And, damn it all, she would have been right, too. I always hated it when my mother was right.
"Need help?" The question was seasoned with typical nasal Boston inflection.
I glanced up into eyes a shade of blue that Boston Harbor hadn't seen since the Wampanoag met the Pilgrims at the big rock. His mahogany hair, a rebellious, too-long-for-the-business-world length, had a purple cast under the fluorescent lights. His nose, largeish and sharp, only accentuated his good looks. If it were the nineteenth century, I would have swooned.
"Hey, you're shaking. Don't be scared." The vision backed away, palms outwardly-facing me in the universal sign for, I won't harm you. Is this okay?" he asked.
Consciously willing my knees to stabilize, I said, "Yes, sorry, you startled me." I wet my lips and freed my long blonde hair, held captive by my coat. Maybe I could tempt this tasty god and indulge my Mount Olympus fantasy. After all, it had been over a week since I’d said goodbye to my just-for-kicks lover back in Richmond.
"If I startled you, I should do the apologizing. You look like an out-of-towner, and Bostonians don't believe in street signs, at least, not accurate ones. I think the long winters stimulate a sadistic desire to torment new arrivals." He cocked an eyebrow, and I swore I could see the Devil dancing in his peepers. "So, like I said before, need help?"
I stopped staring. Sex could wait if this guy could show me how to find Cambridgeport. I’d had it with living at the Y. "Show me where Putnam and Pearl intersect on this map. Also, how do I know which trolley stop I need for the B. U. Bridge?"
He stepped close enough for me to catch a whiff of wet wool, shampoo, and delicious male pherormones. I edged towards him, bumped his hip with mine, and he didn’t pull away. Taking my hand, he moved it to a spot on the map. I did my best to listen, but the tingle running up my arm, down to the center of my ying-yang, didn’t make it easy to do.
"Here's the intersection you're looking for. This whole area," he moved my hand in a small circle while my body pumped hormones, "is called Cambridgeport. Ask the B-line trolley driver to let you off at the stop before the bridge. If he's a jerk, pull the cord after you see the bridge on your right. You can walk back to it."
"Thank you."
He moved a half-step back. "You know where the nearest T stop is?"
"Yes. I have trouble with maps, that's all." I smoothed my hair while batting my lashes.
"Good luck, then."
He started to walk away, but I wanted to prolong our contact. "Wait."
He smiled a smile that would have made a farmer’s daughter open her legs in joyous anticipation.
"What's your name?"
"Doug. Yours?"
"Alice."
"I hope you find whatever you're looking for over in Cambridgeport."
He waved before disappearing up the stairs. And me with no phone number to give him. Damn.
* * * *
My lust didn’t keep me warm for long. Thirty-five frigid minutes later, I was staring at a street sign, shivering upon feeling the bite of the wind off the Charles River. Neither Todd nor the tasty Doug had said anything about a Brookline Street. I rechecked the map to locate Putnam Ave and, after a short walk, found it. When I turned left, I could see the Cambridgeport Spa two blocks down.
A funky mixture of wet wool, spicy Caribbean food, and smoke of at least one illegal variety assaulted my nose. I'd never need to buy dope again—I could get high just stopping by to pick up my bread and cigarettes here.
The man behind the counter nodded. I nodded back. "I know Todd and Marcus. They want me to call them from here, and they said you'd let me use the phone." More silent nodding—the clerk must have been enjoying a mellow ganja high—while he handed the phone to me.
Todd answered on the first ring, telling me they'll meet me in five minutes. I thanked the clerk, who, of course, nodded. The store, at most ten by twelve, reached capacity when three additional customers walked in, so I went outside to smoke a cigarette. Before I could finish, two men, one short and stocky, one tall and skinny, approached, bundled in bulky parkas that looked like military surplus from the Army-Navy store I'd seen on Boylston Street.
Short and Stocky, his curly hair hanging past his shoulders with his face's lower half masked by full mustache and flowing beard, said, "Hi. I'm Todd. He's Marcus. You Just Alice for Now?"
"Hi, how are you?" I stuck out my hand, but he didn't take it.
Marcus, his Afro so large it obliterated my view of the weak sun, smiled. "We're musicians. That's how we are."
Todd bent over, howling with laughter at Marcus's non sequitur. Okayyyyy. Apparently someone else besides the nodding Rico was one toke over the line.
After his hilarity subsided to intermittent giggles, Todd stroked his mustache as if it were a pet. "Want to see the place? It's a dump, of course, but cheap, and no worse than other dumps around here. At least there’s no cockroaches. Marcus and I are gone most weekends for out-of-town gigs, so we need a roommate who'll be home more than we are. Having the place occupied most of the time scares off the burglars."
"Mmm, is crime a problem?" At the thought of burglars, I dropped my cigarette so I could shove my nervous hands in my pockets. Some big-city woman I was.
"No more than any other part of Cambridge. It's mostly property crime, not muggings."
"Not in the daytime, anyway," Marcus added.
Oh, great. That meant, this far north in January, I'd be housebound from four p.m. to seven a.m. But it was cheaper than the Y. Besides, who said it was any safer after dark near the Y?
"We've got six other calls to return. You're the first applicant, so you have dibs. Want to see it?" Todd pushed.
"Let's go," I said before my inner straight person could freak.
"You working, or a student?" Marcus asked while we three dodged icy patches on the unshoveled sidewalks.
"Working," I said, crossing the fingers hidden in my pockets.
"Your voice sounds southern. What brings you to Boston?"
"Fame, fortune, and men. Hey, why do you guys have an answering machine? They cost big bucks."
"Our manager was tired of us missing calls, so he gave us one." Marcus locked eyes with me, smiling as if he were the cat and I was the delectably-lappable cream. "Find any men you like yet?" he purred.
I was considering my reply when Todd butted in. "You got the money for one month's security deposit and first and last months' rent in advance? That would be, uh…“
“Two-twenty-five," I said. I’d always been quick with figures. "Yes, I have it."
"Where you working?"
"Shamrock Cab." I’d seen one moments before and I prayed these guys wouldn’t demand pay-stub verification.
"Cut the bullshit," Todd said. "You look fresh from the farm. Cabbing in the city would have eaten you alive by now."
Panic can make you tell strange lies. "I don't drive. I'm the announcer.”
Todd squinted at me. I put on a hard stare and my best tough-bitch expression.
"The 'announcer'? It's called 'dispatcher'. Now I know you're lying."
"Hey, don't hassle the chick," Marcus said. "If she's crazy enough to live with two musicians, I say we believe her."
My boldness faded. Living with two musicians. Were they expecting more than rent? I had to ask, stupid as it might sound. I liked lots of sex, but I wasn’t ready to sell myself for anything, to anyone. "I’ll have my own room, right? And we're talking a roommate situation, nothing more?"
Todd brayed with laughter. "Now I know she's fresh from the farm. Where you from, babe, Kansas? Toto living in your luggage? Shit, you don't look like the type to run out on the rent—the guilt would kill you. Hell, you could be a Combat Zone hooker for all I care, as long as you pay up the first of every month. And yes, we want a roommate, not a piece of—"
"Hey," Marcus interrupted, his voice as sultry as Barry White's. "The lady wants to hang with me, I won't toss her out for eating crackers."
Parts of me were melting under the glare of Marcus's bald flirtation. I liked him better than squat, hairy Todd. Marcus was fine.
"Here we are." Todd pointed to a sagging triple-decker done in baby-poop-yellow. The paint was peeling like skin after too much sun, and the minuscule yard lacked enough snow cover to hide abandoned odds and ends. "We've got the whole third floor," he bragged.
"Oh, goodie," I muttered while climbing the creaking steps. They were so narrow, Todd had to walk in front of me, and Marcus, behind. I could feel the man’s eyes on my ass. Not that I minded much.
"You got a TV?" Marcus asked. I shook my head. I didn’t even have a bed, just a couple of suitcases of stuff that I hauled via Greyhound.
"You can watch mine whenever I'm away,” he offered. “Just don't spill crap in my bed. Late on Saturday nights they show Creature Double Feature, with all that old science fiction shit from the Fifties. Like the giant ants. You know that movie?"
"It's called Them, I think."
"Yeah, that's it. Channel 56. Check it out. Lots of fun if you're high. 'Course, if you're high with a righteous dude, forget the TV. You'll have better things to do."
* * * *
On Friday I packed my two suitcases, eager to leave the Y behind. Two days before I’d bought a mattress and wheedled Friday afternoon delivery out of the discount house. I also purchased mismatched but almost-new bedding at a Goodwill store.
Tonight I'd sleep in my own room. Mine. I savored the thought, even though I’d be sharing a bathroom with two guys.
Todd and Marcus told me they’d be away at a gig when I arrived, but the keys I needed were dangling on a plastic key chain that bore a local bank's name. I didn’t have a job, but, because I was twenty-five and stupidly optimistic, I figured I'd land one before too long. Strangely, the idea of driving taxi was growing on me, so I planned to check out Shamrock Cab.
Speaking of cabs, I splurged on one after dragging my bags down several flights of stairs to the curb—the damned elevator was out of order. Luckily, a cab appeared within the first thirty seconds I waved my hand, and, oddly enough, it was a Shamrock. The driver kept his thoughts to himself while we threaded our way through traffic. His lack of banal chitchat guaranteed a nice tip.
When we pulled up to the baby-poop-colored building I now called home, I handed over twenty percent, mostly because he carried my bags to the triple-decker's worn front steps.
"Thank you." He lifted his cap.
"Let me ask you—do you like your job?"
He smiled and shrugged. "It's a job, and I've been doing it for thirty years."
"Are they hiring?"
"It’s no job for a young girl like yourself. But, yes, they are. They always are."
Again, I thought about driving cab for a living. Doing that would kill my parents, always an attractive thought. Tempting as the possibility was, I'd probably stink at cabbing. Still, as a temporary measure to fatten my bank account, I could do worse, I knew.
I hauled my bags up the winding staircase, still thinking about my parents. My mother would have fainted to see the place, but it was cheap, near public transportation, and all mine. One room of it, anyway.