Peepshow Memories

By Peter Landau

The neon, blinking eyeball is staring, daring you to abandon all hope and enter the illicit environs of the neighborhood peepshow. It takes a desperate man to cross the threshold. That first step is one driven not solely by a nut-twisting urge for release, but also a kind of bravery, a perverse courage that I could not muster.

While I was drawn from my suburban home to the urban wonder lust of Times Square in the late 1970s and early '80s, while the hordes of baking-soda-dealing drug dealers, hustlers, and mad bums didn't frighten me, the final stage of my journey--from the public street into the dark, private shame inside the adult shops that were littered around 42nd Street--I could not make. I froze, transfixed by the lights and the incongruous image of my reflection on the storefront window next to topless come-ons.

This was before I became a regular contributor to Sex Wrecks and MrSkin.com, before I was managing editor at Genesis and associate editor at Screw, before I freelanced girl-copy, features, and porn reviews for Hustler, Barely Legal, High Society, and so many other titles I can't keep them all in my head. Before the pervert became professional the urge was still present, if not satisfied. That's because as persistent as the penis is, for me there was an unconscious hurdle, or perhaps just a middle-class fear, which I could not clear.

I needed an escort, a Virgil to lead my Dante through the gates of Hell. That's a melodramatic way to introduce my old and good friend, who had recently taken on the personality of Selwyn Harris, named for two grindhouses on the Deuce, and was publishing Happyland, a fanzine devoted to his adventures with his penis. He always had a smirk on his face, a beer in his hand, and a bulge in his pants. Most striking about this striking young man was his complete transparency--in fact, outright pride--in masturbation. Usually his own.

Selwyn actually boasted about that which I vehemently denied doing, but did with what I thought frequency, yet nothing verging on the level of Harris's self-abuse. Not that I was competitive; I was ashamed. This was not for public discourse, not even private discussion, but for Harris it was a badge of honor. One girl remarked that she would not shake his hand because he likely had just jerked off with it. And Harris laughed, because it was true.

Selwyn Harris was a denizen of the peeps. They were his beat and his beat-off. He came back from the field with stories that filled Happyland's Sharpie-marker-marked pages. And it was on one of these assignments that my wife Pagan and I joined him and his underage girlfriend, whose overactive libido already scarred her as a veteran of the windowless peeps.

Stop and think about that for a moment: "windowless peeps". The peeps that I saw on TV and movies featured drooling men's faces framed in glass as they ogled an undulating undressed woman fondling herself on a Lazy-Susan-type turntable--a feast for the eyes, but untouchable. The entrepreneur who removed that transparent barrier found himself on the lowest rung of prostitution, a pimp offering johns a titty squeeze for a dollar tip, one hand on the merchandise and the other down your pants.

It was a revolution. But I was ignorant of this decadent development until Harris and his then paramour, Jailbait, ushered Pagan and me into Live Nude Girls Working Their Way through College. That's what the license said; there was no visible name on mirrored plate-glass window. I was drunk and holding onto my sexually adventuresome better half like a shield.

Mrs. Landau had supernaturally red hair, short skirts to show off her shapely legs and the recent convert's passion for thongs, which gave passers-by a cheeky treat on the windy streets of New York City. She was more than game for our naughty night out. She might have even worked at such an establishment, though not to pay her way through college. Mrs. Landau earned her living as a dominatrix, but that's for another story.

Entering this forbidden paradise was anticlimactic. First of all, I didn't climax, which is the point of visiting these places. Instead I squeezed into a small booth with my wife and dropped my tokens in the slot. The partition came up and I was privy to a porthole peeking on a trio of fat ladies. They looked naked, but on closer inspection their G-strings and skimpy bras were partially obscured under many flaps of flesh that rolled off them like a gooey waterfall. None looked like college students, except in the blank and dull expression they shared.

I am not a chubby chaser, or at least I was not at that point in my career as a pervert. I was still young and full of youthful idealism. I had not yet been fully corrupted by pornography's objectification of women. But after you have whacked off to scores of perfect tens, you began to desire a bit of diversity.

It starts with something as simple as hair color or maybe race. Maybe it's big boobs, or small boobs. Suddenly, you're getting hard at the sight of plastic-surgery victims, the blonde plastic fantastic lovers whose bodies defy gravity and reason.

In the beginning, you wouldn't fuck them with Shemp's dick. Then, slowly, you realize there is something sexy about a woman modifying her body to turn you on, and it does. Maybe not sexy, but nasty, which is even better. This leads to dark places. Obesity becomes attractive because it's new and different and what the hell. Next, you're getting a blowjob from a trannie.

But I was not there . . . yet. I saw beyond the peepshow façade and realized it was nothing but a freak show, a test of one's endurance for the obscene, like watching Faces of Death. Then I looked over at the other window and saw Jailbait maniacally shoving her tongue into the gob of a bored sex worker. Harris was enjoying the scene. Like a maestro he waved crumpled dollar bills in his hand, conducting the action.

Our next stop, Peepland, was less a freak show than a circus. Inside, the multi-floored Peepland was sprawling. There was what looked like tents, half a dozen of them, on top of each popped out a few topless women beckoning the crowd. These women were uniformly beautiful, which may explain why I blacked out and cannot recall anything more than a montage of perfect tits and ass. It was too much for me to process.

While Harris and Jailbait nearly climbed out from their windowless peep to paw the naked teases, my wife and I acted like the whole thing was a big goof. In reality, I was in awe, confronting my primitive lust. I now regret not taking full advantage of this literally open window of opportunity.

It was years later that I returned to this Shangri La, naturally accompanied by a friend, the same friend who bought all the cocaine I just shot up. I always want a front-row-center seat at the show, but refuse to pay for the ticket. This time I went into the booth alone, with my pants down, a dollar in one hand and the other frantically tugging at my limp joint too pooped to pop.

I motioned a tattooed punk girl over. As she approached me, I noticed she was no girl. Handing her the money, I proceeded to handle her, squeezing one jug with my shaky hand that traveled over her hip and landed on her exposed ass-cheek. "You got to pick one, honey," she said, not looking at me. She was deep in conversation with another groped girl. Not a girl, a mother. They were talking about their kids. I kept my hand on her breast and somehow managed to coax a dollop of sperm from my flaccid member.

Selwyn Harris, Jailbait, Pagan, and I ended the evening at our apartment overlooking the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel. The bedroom turned into a makeshift peepshow when Jailbait stripped nude and spread her legs. Harris was again orchestrating the coupling and directed my wife to nestle her head between those recently pubescent gams and suck jailbait's shaved pussy, imitated in the most sincere form of flattery to my wife's own bald beaver.

My wife was into fun, but not games, and it took only a few licks to get to the center of this Tootsie Pop. She pulled her head up and out from that pink hole as Jailbait flailed and wailed.

Regardless of how genuine those emotions were, Harris was giving the performance a standing ovation in his pants, or was. His pants were actually off, in a clump at his hairy ankles as he wildly stroked himself in approval of the debauchery, the nudity, the lesbianism, everything.

After a succulent spell, Pagan pulled up her panties as Jailbait remained splayed and squirming on the bed. My penis was retreating from all the drugs and alcohol I consumed and had pulled its head into my scrotum like a turtle. It was not coming out to play. Anyway, playtime was over.

Within an hour, my wife was passed out on the couch and Harris and Jailbait were unconscious on the bed. Jailbait was still naked. The night's perversity sobered me up some and I wanted to jump on the love train now, long after it pulled out from the station. You only get a peek in the peeps and that flickering neon eye was shut tight for the night. Sadly, there's always tomorrow night.