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'What do you do, Martin?'

'I'm a writer, Moby.'

'But that's really interesting,' she said sternly. 'You're a writer? What do you write?'

'Uh. Fiction. Stuff like that.'

'John roar mainstream?' she seemed to say.

'Pardon?'

'I mean are they mainstream novels and stories or thrillers or sci-fi or something like that?'

'What's mainstream?'

She smiled appraisingly and said, 'That's a good question . .. I'm fucking my way through college? English Literature, at NYTE? You write novels? That's what you do? What did you say your name was?'

By this time I was more than ready to ask Moby what she did, and how much it cost — but then I felt the full-thighed waft of a new female presence. I turned. A big bimbo in cool pants and bra came swaying from the shadows of the rear corridor. She was built on the Selina model, with several dirty-minded enlargements, the emphasis all on protuberance, convexity. And I thought: I want. Me, for me. She sat with a sigh on a black plastic mushroom by the bar. A few seconds later a smug, exhausted man in an impeccable business suit went staggering past.

'Take care now, She-She,' he said richly.

'You too, sir,' said She-She, in the brisk commercial tones of hostesses everywhere. 'I'd like to thank you for stopping by. See you again, sir.'

'Oh yes.'

She-She's trick staggered on. His slack, slaked face seemed about to drop off with sheer gravity of dissipation. He obviously hadn't' stinted himself with She-She back there. No. He had given his senses all kinds of presents and treats with She-She back there.

'Hey, She-She,' said Moby. 'Martin here's an English writer.'

'Yeah?' said She-She.

'Yeah,' I said. I stood up, in my grey skin, stacked gut and floral wraparound, my hair the colour of London skies — under the bam, under the boo.

——————

'Aren't you excited?' I was asked, ten minutes later.

'Yes and no.'

'Come on. Ooh, you must be so excited.'

'Well yeah,' I said, 'I suppose I am quite.'

True, I was now lying naked in a locked and candlelit cabana, alone with the industrious She-She, whose fleshy right hand made smoothing motions on the hair-dotted slope of my inner thigh ... For a while, back there under the bam, I had hesitated before arriving at my selection. Perhaps little Moby would be hurt by my preference for her talented colleague — would walk out, burst into tears, commit suicide. But there doesn't seem to be a self-pity problem in the Happy Isles. You know, I suspect I'm not cut out for brothels. I can't help getting engaged on the human scale, minimal though this is, fight it though I do. I just can't get off the scale ... Moby and I swapped fond farewells as She-She led me away. I shadowed her down the tapering passage, all its planes carpet-covered, like four floors. She-She then parked me in the aromatic cubicle. Standing at the door with her knuckles on her hips, she bade me recline on the high wall bed, as if for a medical inspection. Yeah, that's what it felt like: a much-dreaded, long-overdue and sinisterly ritzy visit to the dick-doctor. 'Why don't you make yourself more comfortable?' she asked, with a touch of joshing indignation. Obligingly I leaned back an additional inch or two into the firm and furry pillows. 'No — take off your sarong! Now I'll be with you in just one minute.' So I lay naked in the rinsed airlessness of the room, waiting for She-She's return, and wishing pretty earnestly that Ihad taken my chances with Moby.

'If I was you,' resumed She-She, 'I'd be very excited.'

'You would, would you.'

'I'd be just wild.'

'Well I'm looking forward to it, certainly.'

'I'll bet.'

'Yes, it should be fun.'

'I'd just be so excited.'

I frowned and said, 'About what, exactly?'

She-She gave an incredulous pout.

'I mean, you're a great-looking chick and everything,' I said, but—'

'Not me, God! Your new Princess!'

'Oh her.'

So for some time She-She and I talked very seriously about the future Princess of Wales. The future Princess of Wales is evidently a big hit with the hookers on Third Avenue. She-She was full of admiration of Lady