Harry was a classy exhibitionist. He was different from those Central Park trench coat perverts, freaks whose only gratification was based on the hysterical screams of an old Lady. It was them, the cheesy exhibitionists, who were responsible for the deterioration of his hobby. Nobody seemed to appreciate a good flash of cock anymore. In these times, Harry was scared to death: of the feminists, Karate-expert, nun-chucking big shouldered women; of the technical development of protection, pepper sprays, paralyzers and electro-shock gadgets; and of the ever-increasing gun possession, an evil that only pushed young women to start carrying loaded .38’s in their purses and empty the bullets into the helpless exhibitionist.
Whatever happened to the artistic aspect implied in the production, torero-style, of his fully erect piece? He would whip the fine silk garments away and strip his soul bare: behold the cock. Women weren’t aggravated by his methods, on the contrary, the victims of Harry’s mischievous acts experienced a feeling of happening, of participating in the current zeitgeist, of a certain revelation.
He wasn’t like them. He wasn’t a cheapskate. He would walk through all the stores looking for the right clothes. We’re not talking about popular market, street-like used clothes, no; Harry would shop for the best affordable accessories to his art. His CK underwear was essential -there was no changing that-, but apart from the silk boxers used to collect the semen produced by his confrontation with reality, he would buy the best suits, the best shoes, sometimes a hat and a cane. He wasn’t like one of those bums! How dare they compare him to those crackheads, obnoxious psychopaths that roamed the streets showing their rashed cocks, their stinking genitals?
Harry dreamt of becoming an African or an Indian, moving to one of those strange tribes in Africa or South America that speak Swahili or Quechua or something. Those cultures that allow people to be free, where one can roam around totally naked, dangling balls and smiling. But Harry wasn’t Black, less was he Indian, he’d probably die of malaria or food poisoning in a week. Nobody would let him join an Indian tribe. Interestingly enough, in those Indian tribes, everybody roams around naked, except for the prostitutes. Think about that. Provocation comes from imagination, not from exposure. Only Harry could understand this, and the liberation that would crystallize over such an advanced view of life, something that would fuel the critical views of his burgeois hypocritical society, forbidding sex, plagued by sexual harassment charges: some poor guy like Harry that let go of his self-control in the Subway and rubbed his genitals against a beautiful woman standing in front of him, not knowing that she was an activist of female rights. Two years in jail, two years for claiming and using his human, his male impulses, the same impulses that made him be alive, feeling and existing. Something was essentially wrong with this “Occidental” world.
Harry never tried to justify his behavior, as if he wanted to show people what he did was right. There are few things you can say are fundamentally “right”, but all he wanted was coherence, a bit of sincerity, for Christ’s sake. An eighteen year-old had the right to buy a video tape showing a woman being sodomized by a dog or a man screwing a goat, and he, Harry, was the “pervert”? I mean, let’s be honest, he wasn’t a Saint, but he wasn’t no Hubert Humphrey either. He would never penetrate a minor or even anybody at all. So exposing himself wasn’t normal. OK. Buying a gang-bang tape was? Some psychopaths walk around planning on getting a rifle and shooting half New York, and they can even do it. They can buy the rifle. They can walk around with it. They can hide it in a car. They can rent an apartment, set up their rifle and point at people and all. That’s not illegal. Yet Harry couldn’t whip out his cock in Central Park. That wasn’t “normal”. Please. Let’s be rational about this. Some teenager gets drunk, takes out his prick and pisses all of Times Square on New Year’s day, and people think it’s normal. Nobody calls him an exhibitionist. Harry, on the contrary, works a whole year to buy some Dolce Gabanna clothes, gets perfumed and cleaned, and shows his nice white scrotum to some young lady –who probably wants to get some, anyway-, and he’s the pervert. Harry. The menace to society. Give me a break.
But they would put him in one of those cells, isn’t that what happens when you go to jail? All white, staring at the wall all day. Nothing to do but count the hairs on your legs or squish your pimples. He’d have a sink, probably. And a shitter. They always give you a shitter. No reading, that’s for sure. Those bastards never let you read or think, in any case. Yer all scum, Yer all creeminals and basterds. Ya wanna book? What’s you’s a faggot? Books my ass. Just sit ere and rot in yer goddam cell. Don’t be messin’ wit nothin’ either. Don’t cher be causin’ no troubles, now. We likes ‘em troublemakers. Putem in the hole. I’ll wind up in that fucking hole, he thought, that’s for sure. I wouldn’t take captivity too well.
But he just couldn’t get his eyes off the girl strolling through the park tonight. He stood in the shadows and watched, slowly getting more and more excited, ideas racing in his mind:
“...and she is a fine girl. Just seeing her from here gets me real horny. Way she moves that ass. See? I’m no pervert. You’ll get a thousand guys out there on the street watching girls’ asses. They’re no perverts, so why should I be? Maybe I like stroking myself while I watch her. That ain’t no friggin’ crime. If I flashed her some meat, now that would be different. Wind up in the goddam joint”.
“Hey son, whatcher here for? What? Indecent exposure? Shit. Getta loada this boys: seems like we got ourselves a bitch. Indecent exposure. We’ll expose you, kid. Hahaha. Won’t be much to expose after we’re through with you. See ya at the showers, baby. And they’ll probably do me. What the hell. Nowadays, shit, everyone is in the joint together. There’s no fucking difference between the petty thief and the killers. No siree. Go to a jail today and you get some seventeen year old car thief doing time with a murderer sonofabitch”.
“After all, it’s just a question of law. So many goddam laws in this here country nobody can do anything without getting busted. Who knows all the laws there is? There’s like two hundred ways you’re gonna get busted just by walking on the friggin’ sidewalk. Hell, nowadays you can’t spit, smoke, run, cross the fucking street… Get you for jaywalking. You get a goddam dog and it’s even worse, twice the trouble. Excuse me, sir, your dog shit on the street, you’re smoking in public and you just jaywalked past that red light. Damn, are you in deep trouble. We’ve got you for ten thousand years, brother. Your grandkids will still be paying the sentence by the time they’re twenty-two. But that girl has a hell of an ass, I’ll tell you”.
“Only way of really getting them is screwing them good, like really stealing. Some guy robs a watch or steals a wallet, gets two years in Riker’s Island. A corporate banker steals all his tax money and he never gets caught. All the same, even if he does, he can still pay all the hundreds of thousands of dollars that’ll getim free. Get a top lawyer. Fucking ironic. I get nabbed and nobody’s gonna give a fuck about me. Nobody’s gonna defend me. Sonofabitch lawyer that does stand up won’t give a fuck. He’ll probably be thinking about how to pay his bills, or the color of his new car, or how many broads he’s gonna get this week. Leave me out to dry. He don’t care. I’m just another case, another strike or what have you. He’s trying to build a career or something. I’m just a goddam brick”.
“But this girl is fine. Maybe I will flash her some cock. What the hell. I’ll risk it. Gets me horny just thinking about it. But there have been all those reports, about “perverts in the park”, and all that. Press must really have nothing to say to go on about that. Why can’t we bomb a foreign country or something and get the cameras zooming there. What the hell. What I do need, though, is a good defense. Not That I’m gonna get caught or anything, but I’ll defend myself. I’ll write a goddam letter. Leave them all sitting on there asses, such a good letter it’s gonna be. It’ll explain everything. If you’re gonna go down, might as well go down with a good blast”.
I’ll say: “dear people of the jury”; nah, that don’t convince nobody. “On the art of pornography”, that’s it. But this isn’t pornography. Damn. I used to write back in high school. Even directed the school paper. Lost all of my talent! “Exhibitionism isn’t a crime”, that’s it. “We must establish…” but where’s the girl going? She’s breaking my high. Maybe I should… Wait… That’s funny, I don’t feel all horny anymore… What was that letter again? “Establish the facts of exhibitionism”, that’s great.
And strangely, little by little, Harry felt his desire shifting. His cock started feeling numb, and he tucked it in his pants. He felt a twitch invade his fingers, a new obsession entering his mind: The words, all the words, all the possible combinations, the metaphors, the analogies, infinite descriptions of his human state. He felt the typewriter under his palms, warm and waiting like the body of an expectant virgin. He closed his zipper, went home, and started writing: “Harry was a classy exhibitionist”.
Originally written in 2004, this unpublished text was one of the first experiments I did in English. Nowadays, I largely prefer to write in Spanish, translate into English and then edit and re-write; but for an English-only text I kind of like it ;-)