A friend and I were in a cab going home. It was late. 3:30 in the morning. Drunk.

The cab took us through Times Square and up 8th Avenue. Somewhere around 43rd Street the both of us simultaneously got the bug to hop out of the cab and see some naked ladies. We were just burning money that night.

I shoved a $10 bill into the cab-driver's grubby paw (it was a $4 fare at that point), he slipped a sly, knowing smile into my eyes, and my friend and I leapt from the vehicle onto the street. There were hookers and scumbags and police everywhere, and in retrospect I guess the 2 of us only added to the mix.

I always feel very safe in the red light districts of the cities I visit. We went into a place I recognized from the back cover of an S&M book I once read. It was called Pain & Pleasure. There was a huge painting of an eyeball over the entrance to this establishment; this was not the first time I'd seen the phony eyeball in person, but this time, with the slinky grin of that cab-driver fresh in my mind, I swear that thing blinked at me as we entered the crazy place.

It was a place where you stand in a booth and look at a naked dancing girl through a window for 3 minutes at $5 a pop. There was loud, ugly music and groups of mumbling men huddled in corners and at the tops of staircases and you could hear them mumbling throughout the place but it was all in Spanish and to me it sounded like gibberish.

We walked beside each other, my friend and I, stumbling and bumping each other around, and before I realized it I discovered I had entered a small, dark room. Looking behind me, my friend was stumbling off the other way, and to my shock a door slammed in my face and it was dark as the night outside.

My pupils bulged. The dark made it feel like I was falling into infinity. I wanted to sleep, and the plywood door felt like a most excellent bed.

Lights came on. I turned around and there was a woman there, naked and frowning, her breasts flaccid and her eyes almost shut. We were separated by 2 sheets of glass and a cash/token receptacle.

"Hello," said I, quite loudly.

"Hi. It's $5 for 3 minutes."

I said nothing, but tried to make eye contact while dropping a token into the slot. "You're really beautiful," I said. This was a lie. Her face was blistered with acne and her ass was fat as a hog. But she responded to what I said, and in the instant in which my token filed into the coin slot our eyes met, and she opened her mouth not to smile but just to open it.

"Thank you," she said as she started to finger herself. "Thank you. I really mean it."

I stepped back. Leaned against the door, and wished I was asleep, at home, in bed. So tired.

"You can jerk off if you want to. Most guys do. It's nothing to be embarrassed about. If there's anything you want me to do just ask. If you want more time you can put more tokens in the slot. Take your pants off and masturbate if you want."

I smiled and sort of waved my hand in that innocuous "this gesture will answer all questions" kind of way, and quickly but inaudibly stated "I'm not gonna do that."

I folded my arms and stood there, becoming distracted by the cracks in the wall behind her. I wondered, if I could peek through that hole in the wall would I see naked ladies? Are there holes in all these walls? Are there naked ladies behind every door and every wall? Is this place infested with naked ladies?

My eyes continued to get used to the darkness; all around were what I later deduced to be cum-stains on the walls and on the floors. I looked again toward the woman, who was then shoving 4 of her fingers way the hell up into herself and jamming her tongue against the inside of her cheek and making an altogether preposterous expression on her face.

On the floor beneath her bare feet were more cracks, more holes, more stains.

After our 3 minutes of wonder ended a curtain came down between us. Totally dark again. I opened the door to leave, passively wondering if there was cum on the doorknob, and I saw a guy standing out there with a mop and a bucket of steaming, soapy water. He was inspecting the other booths, and slopping his mop into a few of them.

He was the Mop Boy at the Naked Lady Joint, and he went around all night mopping up after guys who couldn't restrain themselves while looking at the naked ladies.

My friend was standing nearby. He had not summoned the nerve to go in to any of the booths. I asked him what he'd been doing for the past 3 minutes, if he'd found the girl of his dreams, and he said that all the women had gone home.

I gestured toward the room I'd just left and said "She was a fuckin' slob. This is a pit, man, let's get outta here." I don't know why but I felt like I had to make him feel at ease in there, I suddenly being the worldly one.

We walked down the stairs, suddenly sober and I for one disgusted at myself for being in such a rotten, filthy place. That awful music raped my brain, pounding on it and foolishly trying to pull me back in to the place.

I said "Did you see that guy with the mop?"

"Yeah!" he said. And in rhythm, as if on cue, we both simultaneously shouted "WHAT A SHITTY JOB!"

And we laughed and laughed and laughed, and I'm laughing about it right now, and have been laughing about it right out loud all day, and my stomach hurts from laughing so much, but I couldn't tell anyone at work what was so funny because who wants to hear about cum-stains and fat asses, but I told you just now, so maybe I can stop with these selfish giggle fits.