Regiment of Women Read Online Free PDF Page A

“you’re making all this up.”
    However, the story did succeed in raising Cornell’s spirits. Charlie was good at that. He took nothing seriously and had no pride, but his heart, behind the cynical armor, was soft as nylon fleece.
    â€œI wish I was,” said Charlie, shrugging dolefully. “That wasn’t exactly my high point in life. I was rolled a couple times before I learned how to take care of myself. You know, they stay dressed and fool around while you get your clothes off, then grab your purse and run out of the hotel. What are you gonna do? Go to a cop? Or you’ll pick up a cop, some plainclothes bitch from the Vice Squad. With your pants around your ankles, she’ll flash a badge. Payoffs are what they’re usually after. They’re all crooked. And then there’s the real mean type who will pocket your evening’s take and run you in anyway. Who’re you going to appeal to? It’s her word against yours in court.”
    Cornell began to believe this, and was stunned.
    â€œBelieve me,” Charlie said, “I’ve seen all sides of a man’s life and most of them are shit.”
    Cornell sighed. “What’s the answer then?”
    Charlie produced a ghastly sort of grin. “Keep your powder dry. Whimpering won’t help.” Suddenly, though, he looked vulnerable. “I used to cry a lot. Then one day I saw myself in the mirror.” He grinned again, this time in better humor. “Can you imagine how I look crying? Like beads of grease on a ham. I realized at that moment I was not just another pretty face.”
    â€œCharlie…” Cornell said compassionately. It was all he could think of.
    Charlie got out his purse and took from it a wretched-looking compact. The mirror inside was cracked.
    â€œI don’t know why I bother doing this,” Charlie said, grimacing at his own image. He slapped on some powder from a dirty puff.
    â€œI’m going across the street for a hero sandwich,” he said, rising. “You still on your diet?”
    â€œI’ll go off it tonight at your house,” Cornell told him.
    Charlie made his frumpy departure. Before the evening was over, he would probably break out his pornography collection. His sex life was all perverse fantasy: transvestite pictures, women in dresses, lace nighties, panty girdles and bras; men dressed as airplane pilots, boxers, soldiers. Most of this stuff was of little interest to Cornell. He looked at it only to humor Charlie.
    But there was one photograph that did stir him strangely. It was the most obscene gem in Charlie’s lode. An infant was depicted as sucking a breast—the breast of a woman . Oh, it was a shameful thing, outlandish and probably faked. The breast was much too large to be that of a normal woman, who would have bound hers tightly from puberty on. But the adult who was pictured did have the smaller facial features of the average female.
    The baby seemed to be sucking his heart out, the tiny voracious mouth covering the entire nipple. The woman, if such she was, wore what Cornell saw as an evil, demonic smile.
    The picture was the dirtiest, filthiest, most thrilling thing Cornell had ever seen. He could never resist looking at it, and during his sleep thereafter never went without a nightmare. That was one of the many things he had not told Dr. Prine.

    Women are called womanly only when they regard themselves as existing solely for the use of men .
    G EORGE B ERNARD S HAW , 1908

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    C HARLIE LIVED in the area called East River Park. There had apparently once been a stream flowing through that neighborhood. New York was characterized by names that referred to bygone geographical features: Kips Bay, Morningside Heights, Central Park, etc.; and the vast sewage system separating Manhattan from New Jersey was still known as the Hudson River.
    According to Charlie, a repository of negative information, the East River buildings had been