Don Juan in Helsinki: 17

But of course I fell asleep after all at some point that night. And naturally it was horrible, much worse than I was fearing. It turns out Stina is no easier to swallow after all this time, not even in a dream. I don't think it would have been quite so terrible if only I had some method of cooking her, a charcoal fire, perhaps, or a Tuscan grill. Properly broiled, the flavour might really be quite mild. People say human flesh tastes like pork, but that turns out to not be true. IMHO it is very much like beef, only tenderer and more lean. And saltier. But raw, it is not so good. Of course I was eating long strips from the upper arms and thighs, but perhaps the next time I doze off I will try the heart or a bit of liver. If I can find her heart, of course--not such an easy task with Stina, ROFL! Worst of all was to wake up with the taste in my mouth; rather like after oral surgery but much more disgusting. To be truthfully honest, I don't think I could ever develop a taste for it, like that fellow in those Hannibal Lector movies. I think they must be fiction.

And you know what else is bothering me? I don't feel that for me to be cursed by these dreams is so very fair! No, no, not at all; I have done nothing to deserve this fate. I have devoted my life to pleasing women, not to preying upon them. Yes, it is true! No woman has ever bonked with me except by her own choice and her own desire. I have never stalked or bullied any of them or made any false promises or told them any lies. At least not at first. Naturally, one has to later after a few weeks when they start to want a 'relationship'. But this is not my fault; I did not create women and men the way they are. I am not God! (Though some of my former lovers may not believe this! ;) ) And I have worked very very hard indeed all through the years to give these women pleasure. Oh yes. I have studied for it like for medical school. I have spent half my life at the gym or under the sunlamp. I have even subscribed to magazines for many years in the hopes of discovering new techniques. For years I subscribed to 'Penthouse Magazine', for example. But they never printed any of my letters, so eventually I switched to 'Cosmopolitan' for the sex tips and then lately to 'Mens' Health'. But these just pile up unread now, since I never find anything new in them these days or any technique I have not already invented. Oh yes, it is true! Likkanen could easily write one of those sexual self-help books one always sees on Amazon.com, like 'Five Minutes to Orgasm Every Time You Make Love' or 'The Ultimate Guide to Cunnilingus'. These books make me laugh! Likkanen has personally invented over two dozen different types of oral sex all by himself! And to each of them I have given the name of an animal. For example the 'kitten'. Or the 'butterfly'. Or, most amazing of all for the ladies, the 'elephant' (for which one needs the aid of a rubber sex toy, of course). I do not mock these other guides, but they are all written by women like 'Claire D. Hutchens' or 'Violet Blue', and although I am not a sexist, I think they show very little imagination. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but it is Likkanen who is yo' daddy, LOL! (BTW, several lady readers have messaged to ask about the details of the 'kitten' and the 'butterfly'. Well, imagine the little sandpaper tongue of the kitten as it licks up milk, for example. And for the 'butterfly', I use my eyelashes, of course!) When you make hot sweet squishy monkey sex with Likkanen, you are bonking an entire zoo!

No, no, since those early weeks with Stina, I have never had any problems persuading any of my former lovers to have a relaxed, entertaining, and most pleasurable orgasm. Well, none of them except for just one. And I don't think even Claire D. Hutchens or Violet Blue themselfs could have given that particular lady one of those delightful things, not even working as a team. I know what you are thinking. Oh ho, Donho, you are saying, I suppose you are not going to tell us this lady's name. You are too scared to. Well you are wrong, I will say it. I do not care if her lawyers sue me; I imagine they are too busy to these days anyway. She was Likkanen's greatest, most miserable defeat in all his many years of bonking. Her name was Christie Brinkley, but of course i could not remember that in those days before she was so famous. So my name for her then was 'Twiglet.' We met at the famous 'Club 54' in Manhattan (not the first one, the second more boring one) sometime in 1981 or '82, I think. Until this minute, I had blotted it from my mind. Thank you so much for making me think of her! Hyee! Now I cannot stop.

Like so many other great disasters in my life, this one began as a favour to a friend. How often this is so! One would think that by now I would be too wise ever to agree to any act of kindness to others, no matter how selfish the reason, but in this case I could not refuse. I have only had three good friends in my whole life. One was Bjorn Walroos, of course. Another was Johan Fremin. And the third was the late Lou Stathis. And on this night Lou needed me to be his 'wing-man'. He was very crazily in love with a beautiful fashion model, but she would not go out with him unless her best friend could come along, too.

What is a wing-man, you ask? Well, this is a sad fate that all men must experience out of friendship, even Likkanen, at some time or another. I am sure you have seen the beer commercials on the subject; in fact, I believe someone has even made a film of it. And I know for a fact there is a Country-Western song. It is when one man sacrifices himself to be a false 'date' for a very ugly girl so that his friend can be with a pretty one for the evening. Because it is a law of nature that any man learns very soon--ugly girls and pretty girls always go together. For a pretty girl it is a chance to make herself look even prettier by contrast--and to have someone around who will actually listen to her stupid conversation for hours and hours at a time. For the ugly girl, of course, the rewards are even greater--she can bathe in the reflected glamour of the pretty one, plus she might always inherit a rejected guy. It is nature's way. And we men instinctively understand this. So when my friend Lou asked me to do this favour for him, naturally I agreed. Gentlemen have a code. And he was very honest about it. 'I won't lie to you, Donho,' he said to me, shaking his head in wonder. 'I've seen this chick, and she isn't easy to look at. She doesn't even have nice eyes.'

And he was right, she didn't, poor thing. They were like little black buttons. Even so, if she had not been so sick that evening I might have even given her a nice mercy-bonk out of simple pity. And of course, if I had, I would never have had to endure those weeks of sex from hell with the Twiglet instead. Those little old ladies with their knitting needles were having a good laugh with me on that night, I can tell you!

I believe I have mentioned to you that often women will vomit uninhibitedly around me. Well, never has any of them puked so fast as this one did! Poor Lou. For weeks, he had worked to make this a 'perfect date'. He had pulled every string he could at his magazine publishing house to get reservations for dinner at the 'Russian Tea Room' and then for after at 'Club 54' (neither of these places was so easy to get into at all in those days.) Then he had sold some rare vinyl albums of his and eaten nothing but candy bars for a whole week in order to save up the money to pay for the evening. This model he was so crazy for was no Christie Brinkley, BTW, she was instead a nice quiet Italian American girl, very tall and thin and blonde with a long face and flared nostrils, who reminded me of a Palomino horse. So this was my secret name for her. She had done a lot of work in Milan and for Roman fashion magazines. But for some reason she was shy. She was too shy even to go out on this date without her friend, who was very short and dark-haired and looked exactly like Porky Pig's girlfriend, Priscilla in the cartoons, even to her upturned nose one could see inside and the way she styled her hair. But Priscilla's family was very, very rich. She was a cousin of the Rockefellers or something and lived in a brownstone townhouse on the Upper West Side. Apparently she had been on very few dates in her life, however, because she became so nervous waiting for us that she drank several White Russians with her friend in the hour before. So when Lou and I arrive in our best clothes with two great bundles of flowers in our arms, she opens the front door, has a single look at me, and 'BLAAAT!' She pukes all over the top of an ornamental shrub outside. Then she runs away crying. So, perhaps not the best start for a big date!

Next the Palomino comes to the door and lets us in, whispering excuses. Her friend is very nervous, had too much to drink, etc. Priscilla is lying on a couch resting. The Palomino sits beside her and strokes her temples with a damp cloth, like a Pre-Raphaelite painting by Burne-Jones or Millais, perhaps. She is obviously a very motherly sort, and in fact in later life she will marry an Italian businessman who launders money for the Mafia and serves time in jail for this. I know these things because I will meet her again by accident 12 or 15 years later in a SuperFresh in suburban New Jersey pushing a huge shopping-cart with three small children in it. To be perfectly honest with you, I think fashion models are quite possibly the stupidest women on the planet. I have never had a single intelligent conversation with any of the many ones I have bonked. In addition, most of them have deep psychological problems and are often attracted to very controlling and abusive men like gangsters. Or artists. But, of course, we know nothing of all that now. Lou is very nice and patient and asks her if we should cancel the evening and do it another time; love has obviously driven him quite insane. From Priscilla on the couch rises up a wailing, 'Oh no!' She is sure she will recover, she just needs a few minutes to rest. She has been looking forward to tonight so much. She is wearing a ghastly short black dress which shows off her ghastly short, plump legs; however, like many fat women, she has lovely little feet. I try to remain focused on her feet throughout the rest of our time together. Finally, after 45 minutes or so of wailing and head-bathing and toilet-visiting, we are ready to go. 'I hope I have not made too bad a first impression on you,' she says to me. Ha!

At the Russian Tea Room I order blintzes and latkes and other Jewish dishes, because I am feeling a bit homesick, and Ukrainian food is very very much like Karelian. All these tiny old Jewish grandmothers you see in Manhattan would have been great prizes in Finland, where cooking is traditionally valued in a woman above everything else; perhaps they emigrated to the wrong place to look for husbands. Priscilla Pig, however, is not homesick--but she is still a bit carsick, so she orders very little. Naturally, this means that by the time our meals arrive, she is quite hungry, so she picks and nibbles from mine. The job of a wingman is not just to fill a seat; he must also pry the ugly one from the pretty one so that his friend can spend time alone with her. So not only do I let this person rummage through my food with her porky little fingers, I am forced to actually make conversation with her as well. Here is a typical example:

'Oh, you're from Finland? I've been there! That's where our plane used to land to refuel on the way to Europe. There wasn't a single tree.'

'No, no, that is Iceland. Finland is a country in eastern Europe.'

'Oh, right! Duh! You must be so proud of Lech Walensa.'

Nature has at least compensated her by making her very rich. But what about the millions and millions of girls like her who are not? It is hardly fair. They should all sue someone for compensation! This thought makes my eyes fill up with tears. Likkanen loves all beautiful women equally, even the poor and the stupid ones. I sneak a peek across the thick white candlelit tablecloth at Lou and the whispering Palomino. He is being very wry and amusing and is making her laugh. Oh Lou, Lou, I think in despair--how many times must I tell you? To bonk a married lady, you first make her laugh. To bonk a virgin, you must first make her cry. A woman who is experienced with men is always very bored with them; to her, laughter is an erotic distraction. But a young girl doesn't yet know she has a heart at all; to make her discover it, you must cause it to hurt a little. Lou is a big strapping sardonic guy who looks and even talks a bit like the movie actor Hank Azaria. Everyone wants to be his friend, and women like him very much. But still he commits this foolish gaucherie. And in a public place on a first date! I sigh with frustration. Hearing it, the Pig falls silent. It is about that time she begins to drink seriously.

By the time we get to 'Studio' on West 54th, as the regulars call it, she is quite drunk. I have arrived in New York too late to see the glory days of this place, and besides, neither Lou nor I is a disco sort of person. Dancing is too much hard work for us. So there are not so many celebrities here tonight in this huge, glittering dark barn full of noise and flashing lights, except for a few of them who are always hanging about like barflies, such as the clothes designer Halston or Margeaux Hemingway. And of course, the era of American 'disco music' is dead, so they are playing European hits from Sparks and Munich and M-Machine, etc. But to the Palomino, it is heaven. So we all order Cuba Libres and then do some cocaine together--and after that, naturally, Priscilla starts puking again. Soon our table looks like the statue of La Pieta, with Priscilla in the role of Jesus, lying on a tablecloth draped between two chairs. Caroline Kennedy comes over to say hello; apparently the two of them have been to school together. 'Oh, she's always thick,' she lisps dismissively. The Palomino deserts her duty as Madonna long enough to visit the bar. She has spotted an old friend from her Eurotrash jet-setting days; it is Christie Brinkley, or Twiglet as I already am thinking of her. Her face is familiar to me--I have seen her several times at the American Bar and Closerie des Lilas in Paris. We say 'salut'.

'What's with your friend?' she asks. Her teeth are huge, even bigger than the Strawberry's. And she is even taller than the Strawberry. In fact, both of them share the same type of healthful, athletic Midwestern good looks, but of course, the Strawberry is much prettier and more feminine. I am surprised to find myself thinking that. What a shame she is such a clinging, nagging sort of person that I have to avoid her. But back to 1981 (or '82?). At the mention of Priscilla, who is now causing a dramatic commotion on the other side of the dance-floor, the Palomino is guilt-stricken and rushes back to our table, after soaking a napkin in cold water.

'She cannot control her vomiting,' I tell Twiglet. 'It is some sort of disorder.'

'Oh, yeah--it's called bluemeenia or something. Lots of girls in the industry get that. They put their fingers down their throat every time they gain an ounce.' Like me, Twiglet has just dumped her first husband in Paris and moved to New York. She has been signed by the Ford Agency to be the face for Cover Girl cosmetics, she tells me. 'That's why I can't eat peanuts.' Now, I will be honest with you. We have no secrets from each other now. There is something about this Twiglet woman I find deeply annoying and irritating. This is my instinct trying to warn me to stay away from her. I don't know whether it is her brisk sense of self-importance, her awkward, graceless manner, or her habit of saying aloud whatever pops into her head, no matter how rude or stupid it is, but something about her makes me dislike her very much. So naturally, I ask her if she wants to bonk. Well, what else can you say in a situation like this? But she just laughs--very loudly, and, I cannot help but feel, a little too long--and goes off with some friends. So I go back to the bathroom to do some more coke. I do not do drugs often, you understand. Being Finnish, I am naturally too thrifty to pay for them. But tonight they are free. And I can tell I will need something to get me through the rest of this evening. As I inhale I notice there are puddles of piss on the tiles beneath the stalls. Why is this always the case in men's toilets? And these could have been made by Andy Warhol or Elton John or even Sylvester Stallone! You would think they would have better manners. I have never made such a puddle in my life. A true Finn is very clean and tidy, no matter how drunk he is. Except on a sidewalk, of course. The bathroom is veneered in white-veined black marble, with rows of bright little dressing-room lights around the mirrors. I look up to find Twiglet in one of them. 'OK,' she says, smiling. Uh oh...

Next time: Next: Likkanen's sexiest secrets exposed...