And as in the Dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of Corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal
and frequently superior; every Knack being by Practice capable of improvement.
- Benjamin Franklin, letter, 17451
Some 500 years ago, John Heywood observed that "When all candles bee out, all cats be gray." (Proverbes,
Pt. 1 Ch. 5.)2 Heywood's younger contemporary, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, echoed the sentiment in
Don Quixote, Pt. 2 Ch. 33 - "In the night, all cats are gray"3. Presumably, Heywood saw fit to record it
because it was an aphorism in common circulation at the time; and indeed, there are much older German and Latin
sayings of similar meaning, warning against confusing superficial details with essential qualities.
* * *
In the night, all cats are gray
Copyright © 2004 Dayton Van Houten III.
All rights reserved. Keep refrigerated.
A cheap aluminum key dropped an inch from pasty, gnarled fingers with candy-apple-red nails to Ramon's lightly
calloused, slightly sweat-damp palm. "Two-fi'ty. Goo-ood. Last dwah onna right. Enjoy." The madame's makeup and
hair coloring suggested sensuous fire, but her skin tone and mechanical manner spoke more stridently of
decrepit numbness, born of life as a universal prop in decades of one-man acts. Ramon didn't notice. He didn't like her voice, though, and he consciously hung back to avoid her breath.
Ramon was intimately familiar with the adrenaline panic thudding beneath his ribs, the hot-and-cold sweat making his hair damp, the ragged trembling in his arms and legs. This nervous tension would peak when he unlocked the room whose key he'd rented. He would listen, against the blood ringing in his eardrums, for the sound of another customer turning the knob of another locked door; perhaps to bolt, or maybe to snatch a cheap peek. He never thought that far. He'd never passed another customer in the hall. His acute stress symptoms would subside to almost normal background sensations as he surveyed the prostitute who came with the room. Then, in about another three to five minutes, his blood pressure would stabilize in the more pleasurable sort of excitation. By that time he would be undressed and his rental's clothes would be sufficiently undone for... access.
His very first visit had been no worse, though at the time he'd feared he was having a heart attack. He'd been
divorced for just over 3 years, longer than his marriage had held together as such, really. For the first year he
browsed "escort" advertisements and nervously eyed trashy sex workers in trashy drinking establishments. But
he couldn't bring himself to approach them. Some would mooch drinks off him until he became too irritated and
anxious to stick around. One went so far as to question Ramon's masculinity. It wasn't the intended insult that offended him, so much as the unprofessionalism. If Ramon hadn't been a fundamentally cowardly sort, he might have produced an American Psycho scene. But then, if he wasn't a fundamentally cowardly sort, he might have held his marriage together in the first place.
The second year saw less of Ramon drinking in cheap, uniform bars, window-shopping uniform hookers, as he
discovered private-booth sex shows. Six months into this new hobby he'd "met" "Rita" - an in-betweeny
transsomethingorother with a giggly, lispy manner like the epitomal little girl next door. Something about the
exotic juxtaposition of masculine and feminine anatomy on one body connected a heretofore unbridged gap in
Ramon's neural network. His peepshow consumption became more frequent, and his subject matter more focused. Some might say he was delving into the "fringe"; as for Ramon, he didn't compare notes with anyone, and generally managed to keep thoughts about his hobby and his day-to-day life cleanly compartmentalized.
Rita referred him to two friends, and so on, and so on, and by the end of year three he was just jaded enough to
be receptive to a "more personal show" at Evènne's "place". When Evènne lifted her skirt... well,
you might say she was the first "tail" he'd had that truly lived up to the metaphor. Evènne had referred him to this brothel. It remained the only such establishment he visited, more out of desperation than any sort of customer "loyalty".
After his first visit he almost didn't go back. Where Evènne was slightly more than whole-bodied, Patrece
was radically less, being a limbless amputee leashed to the bed. Her ballgag fetish didn't leave many possibilities open for mutuality. But even as part of him recoiled from the memory, another part embellished on it,
and after a few weeks of tortured fantasy he returned to spend time with Kevin, a fellow with (and eventually
without) one glass eye. Then there was that hateful dwarf woman, and Ramon had almost stopped his patronage again.
Some of his servers undoubtedly had been criminally underage, and/or mentally disadvantaged, in addition to their various physical divergences. In his
head, it was their age, or IQ, not his patronage, that was lamentable. His powers of private imagination always proved no match for the lure of the unknown. So, here he was again.
He turned the doorknob. His date was seated on the bed, low-watt lamplight revealing shapely legs and the skirt of a gauzy black negligee ensemble; but the lampshade cast her in shadow from the waist up. Her boyish tenor welcomed, "You must be Ramon." At the same time, from the same direction, a slurred alto whispered, "It's another cus'mer. Isn't it."
In the dark, Ramon allowed himself a rare grin.
1. Ashland University's "Teaching American History" site at
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=468
2. Familiar Quotations 10th ed., John Bartlett, 1919, by way of bartleby.com.
3. Ibid.