A few minutes later, as Hugo consulted the telephone weather report to determine how they were to spend the day, Garda had emerged from her romantic stupor and was amusing herself flipping through his record collection.
“King Crimson, Traffic, Pink Floyd, Moody Blues --Hugo, don’t you have anything that isn’t completely extinct?” she complained, lighting a cigarette as she recoiled at Hugo’s similarly Byzantine jazz-fusion collection.
“Shall we drive out to the country?” he asked her, determining that the day would be fair and fine.
“Oh, come on Hugo, do we have to behave like Druids just because you dropped acid? I want to go see that double feature at the Nu-Art this afternoon.”
“You don’t think we’ll have time to drive out to the country first for a few hours?”
“Oh forget that. It’s so clichéd. Since I’ve got you though, maybe you can do me a favor. There’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a few weeks now, but I’ve needed an escort.”
A few minutes later they had set off across the Common on the way to the Combat Zone, that seedy, red light district of downtown Boston, where adult bookstores, massage parlors and strip clubs nestled between discount sock stores, wig emporiums, dangerous Chinese restaurants and pawnshops out of the Twilight Zone.
Hugo couldn’t understand why they were spending a glorious autumn day in one of the worst parts of the city so Garda could experience the depressing reality of late 70’s pornography, but since she’d let him spank her and kiss her so prettily, he was ready to oblige her.
“You’re not going to like it, you know,” he said as they entered the shop twelve minutes later. He had been there before and went straight to the fetish section. Garda strode around the shop recklessly, then she came back to him at the rack of spanking magazines. Hugo showed her Crack and Sting. She drew back in repulsion. “These aren’t great, but they’re of some interest,” he told her, handing two issues of the English magazine Janus to the clerk to ring up. What he really wanted to buy was an anal plug to insert in her bottom. “Want anything else while we’re here? They have quite a nice selection of Doc Johnson vibrators.”
Garda wandered over to the wall full of dildos and vibrators. Hugo wished he knew whether she was truly intrigued or just fascinated by the freakishness of the display. He stood beside her.
“What do you know about vibrators?”
“Plenty.” Hugo told her, “My best friend in college was a lesbian.”
“Meaning?”
“She forced me to read a book about female self pleasuring to prove to me how useless men are. I learned a lot.”
“Enough to be useful?” Garda smiled at him.
“You’ll see.”
Garda colored and walked away. Hugo grabbed a few shrink-wrapped objects off the pegs on the wall and took them to the counter to be rung up with the magazines.
Now Garda wandered deep into the hardcore aisles, where only random males lurked, their eyes widening as she came into view. Hugo joined her and she whispered, “Is sex really that ugly?” directing his gaze to a magazine called Girls Who Eat Cum Vol. 6.
“Haven’t you ever seen hardcore before?”
“No.”
“Someday I’d like to put out my own magazine,” Hugo said as they walked away from the shop. “But it would be nothing like these,” he shook the bag containing the Janus magazines and the sex toys.
“What would it be like?”
“Oh, beautiful, tasteful and definitely something a woman would enjoy.”
“Think you know what women enjoy?”
“Some women,” he responded simply, for it was best to keep it simple when his brain had just clicked into Technicolor and Dolby sound. “But didn’t I tell you this was no place to go on a beautiful day?”
“What’s the matter? Can’t you take it?” she goaded him.
“Sure I can. I’d just rather not,” Hugo replied.
On the way to the movies they stopped back at Hugo’s apartment to check on the kittens, drop off the toys and smoke a joint. Hugo noticed Garda watching him closely and he laughed at her.
“What?” she demanded.
“I’m still amazed you played that trick on me. Why are you so suspicious of me?”
“I’m not. It’s just that every Ivy League guy I’ve ever met has been a total dick brain to me sexually. And Harvard men are the absolute worst.”
“The worst in what respect?”
“It strikes me you may be the exception,” she suddenly said, surprising him by placing a small kiss on his cheek.
“Of course I am!” Hugo assured her, returning her favor by kissing her hand.
“In fact, you’re showing remarkable restraint,” Garda complimented him, for she had noticed the effect she was having upon him.
“Maybe it will be more exciting for not rushing things,” he suggested as they strolled through Back Bay a few minutes later. Determining they had almost an hour before the show, they stopped at a cafe for sandwiches and hot chocolate. Then they looked in the windows of antique shops discussing which objects they admired.
“I want to buy you something,” he said.
“Hugo, where are you getting all this money?”
“All what money?”
“First you gave me all that expensive weed. Then you bought all those things at the sex shop. Then lunch. Now you’re talking about presents.”
“Hasn’t anyone ever spoiled you before?”
“No,” she said bluntly.
“Then I’ll be remembered as the first who did.”
Garda protested that there was no time to choose anything, but Hugo persisted and they quickly selected a gold tipped, white enamel, art deco cigarette holder for ten dollars.
And yet, five minutes later, Garda led Hugo remorselessly into the double feature of Todd Browning’s Freaks and David Lynch’s Eraserhead, not to emerge into the fresh air again until over three hours of desolation and degradation had marched before their eyes.
“Are you trying to kill me?” Hugo demanded, after they escaped into the late afternoon. “Or just drive me mad?”
Garda could not help laughing gleefully, “Didn’t you enjoy that?”
“Sure, the parts where I was planning what I’m going to do you later.”
Garda tried to put off going back to his apartment for as long as possible. She persuaded him to walk through the public garden and into the Mother Goose graveyard, so they could contemplate the old stone markers, with their irregular spelling and droll punctuation. The leaves were on the ground and the clear, crisp, blue day was waning as picturesquely as it had begun.
There being virtually no one else inspecting the tiny graves in the cemetery, Hugo boldly seized Garda by the arm, pulled her over to a charmingly positioned low, stone bench and sitting upon it, drew her down across his lap. “This is for drugging, mentally torturing me and attempting to deprive me of my reason,” he told her, giving her a second spanking on her jeans, twice as hard and long as the first. In fact, only the entrance of several tourists with cameras into the graveyard finally stayed his hand. “That’s just a prelude to what’s coming when I get you home, young lady!”