Model seeks place, puts up with boob-squeezing enthusiast.[Ed. note: this article was originally published on May 20, 1996.]
Janey Wilcox spent every summer for the last 10 years in the Hamptons, and she’d never once rented a house or paid for anything, save for the occasional Jitney ticket.
In the early 80’s, Janey was enough of a model to become a sort of lukewarm celebrity, and the lukewarm celebrity got her a part (“thinking man’s sex symbol”) in one of those action movies. She never acted again, but her lukewarm celebrity was established and she figured out pretty quickly that it could get her things.
Every spring, Janey went through the process of choosing a house for the summer. Or rather, choosing a man with a house for the summer. Janey had no money, but she’d found that was irrelevant as long as she had rich friends and could get rich men. The secret to getting rich men, which so many women never figured out, was that getting them was easy, as long as you didn’t have any illusions about marrying them. There was no rich man in New York who would turn down regular blow jobs and entertaining company with no strings attached. Not that you’d want to marry any of these guys, anyway. Every rich guy she’d been with had turned out to be a freak or a pervert, so by the time Labor Day came around, she was relieved to be able to end the relationship.
In exchange, Janey got a great house and, usually, use of the man’s car. She liked sports cars best, but if they were too sporty, like a Ferrari or a Porsche, that wasn’t so good because the man usually had a fixation with his car and wouldn’t let anyone drive it, especially a woman. The guy she had been with two summers ago, Peter, was like that.
Peter had a blond crew cut and he was a famous entertainment lawyer, but he had a body that could rival an underwear model’s. They were fixed up on a blind date, even though they’d met more than a dozen times at parties over the years. He asked her to meet him at his town house in the West Village, because he was too busy during the day to decide what restaurant he wanted to go to. After she rang the buzzer, he left her waiting on the street for 15 minutes. She didn’t mind, because the friend who fixed them up, a socialite type who had gone to college with Peter, kept emphasizing what a great old house he had on Parsonage Lane in Sagaponack.
After dinner, they went back to his town house, ostensibly because he had to walk his dog, Choo Choo. She spotted a photograph of him in his bathing suit on the beach tacked to the refrigerator door. He had stomach muscles that looked like the underside of a turtle. She decided to have sex with him that night.
This was the Wednesday before Memorial Day, and the next morning, while he was noisily making cappuccino, he asked her if she wanted to come out to his house for the weekend. She had known he was going to ask her, even though the sex was among the worst she’d had (some awkward kissing, then he sat on the edge of the bed, put on a condom and stuck it in), but she was grateful that he had asked her so quickly.
“You’re a smart girl, you know,” he said, pouring cappuccino into two enameled cups. He was wearing white French boxer shorts with buttons in the front.
“I know,” she said.
“I mean, having sex with me last night.”
“Much better to get it out of the way.”
“Women don’t understand that guys like me don’t have time to chase them.” He drank off the foamy coffee, then carefully washed out his cup. “It’s a fucking bore. You should do all of your friends a favor and tell them to quit playing those stupid girl games. If a girl doesn’t put out by the second or third date, you know what I do?”
“No.”
He pointed his finger at her. “I never call her again. Fuck her.”
“No. That’s exactly what you don’t do. Fuck her,” Janey said.
He laughed. He came up to her and cupped one of her breasts.
“Maybe we’ll spend the summer together. Know what I mean?” he said. He was squeezing her breast.
“Ouch,” Janey said.
“Implants?” he said. “I like’em. I’ll call you.”
When he hadn’t called by Friday, she began to have doubts. Maybe he was totally full of shit. She called up Blaire, the sort-of socialite who had fixed them up. “I’m so glad you guys hit it off,” Blaire said.