Penthouse Quotes

Vowels are the most illuminated letters in the alphabet. Vowels are the colors and souls of poetry and speech. (1976 Penthouse interview)

People would say that it's impossible to have a private pool in the city, unless you were some sort of rich mogul and had it on the roof of your penthouse or something. But it's not illegal to have a really clean dumpster, and if you want to fill it with water, and if you want to get in it... well, that's your prerogative. People always say they can't do things, that they're impossible. They just haven't been creative enough. This pool is a triumph of imagination. That's how you win at life, Gin. You have to imagine your way through. Never say something can't be done. There's always a solution, even if it's weird.

After this is over, I want a shower in a really big bathroom." "I'll get us the penthouse." "What makes you think you'll be sharing it with me?" "I live in hope.

Mr. Grace sounded like a very small child, helpless, hopeless. I had made him fuck himself with his own big tool, like one of those weird experiences you read about in the Penthouse Forum. I had taken off his witch doctor's mask and made him human. But I didn't hold it against him. To err is only human, but it's divine to forgive. I believe that sincerely.

Sometimes people get the mistaken notion that spirituality is a separate department of life, the penthouse of existence. But rightly understood, it is a vital awareness that pervades all realms of our being... Wherever we may come alive, that is the area in which we are spiritual.

You’re right,” she acknowledged. “I don’t know you, really. We spent all of about thirty minutes together nearly a decade ago. Still, I think the Kyle Rhodes who walked me home and gave me the shirt off his back would do the right thing no matter how pissed he was at my office. So if that guy is hanging around this penthouse anywhere, tell him to call me.

Yeah,” Easton says, coming up on Ella’s other side. “Your room’s a mess.” “Because you keep watching football in there,” she mutters as we lead her away. “I expect you to clean it the moment we get back.” Easton stops at the penthouse door and looks at her incredulously. “I’m Easton Royal. I don’t clean shit.” Dad sighs. The twins snicker. Even the cops look like they’re trying not to laugh.

Inside the mirrored elevator, Mulch used a telescopic pointer to push P for the penthouse. For the first few months he had jumped to reach the button, but that was undignified behavior for a millionaire. And besides, he was certain that Art could hear the thumping from the security desk.

The natives knew better than to screw around with Tarzan. He was one bad dude. Lions, rhinos, just him and his knife. Great penthouse and elevator. Wouldnt last long in Brooklyn. Busted for indecent exposure. Me Tarzan you Judge. That is absolutely correct, and you are going to do sixty days. Try dressing as Beau Brummel the next time. Next case!

Forget about writing to Penthouse. This one was going to be a story for their grandkids.

Now, I can tell you about some women writers who truly are fantastic. One is Anna Kavan. She writes stories like I approach "Land of a Thousand Dances": she's caught in a haze and then a light, a little teeny light, come through. It could be a leopard, that light, or it could be a spot of blood. It could be anything. But she hooks onto that and spirals out. And she does it within the accessible rhythms of plot, and that's really exciting. She's not hung up with being a woman, she just keeps extending herself, keeps telescoping language and plot. Another great woman writer is Iris Sarazan, who wrote The Runaway. She considered herself a mare, a wild runaway. She was a really intelligent girl stuck in all these convents with a hungry mind. I identify with her 'cause of her hunger to go beyond herself. She wound up in prison, but she escaped and wrote some great books before kicking off. Her books aren't page after page of her beating her breast about how shitty she's been treated, they're books about her exciting telescoping plans of escape. Rhythm, great wild rhythm.... The French poet, Rimbaud, predicted that the next great crop of writers would be women. He was the first guy who ever made a big women's liberation statement, saying that when women release themselves from the long servitude of men they're really gonna gush. New rhythms, new poetries, new horrors, new beauties. And I believe in that completely. (1976 Penthouse interview)

TRAVIS: I never said I like boys! GORDO: Ever beat off to Penthouse? TRAVIS: No. GORDO: Ever collect baseball cards? TRAVIS: No. GORDO: How old is Barbra Streisand? TRAVIS: 36. Three weeks ago. GORDO:What do you need—a fucking blueprint?

He had given her a taste of two things she’d never had - safety and home. Both had been concepts, ideas that existed in the lives of people who didn’t belong in her world, mirages that illusioned her kind. But he’d been feeding her little doses of both ever since that rainy night in the penthouse, and she was addicted. In the arms of the most dangerous man she knew, she felt the safest she had ever been.

Actually, the only time I ever tried to cultivate being sexy was when I read Peyton Place. I was about sixteen and I read that this guy's watching this woman walk and he can tell she's a good fuck by the way she walks. It's a whole passage. He's telling Allison McKenzie, "I know you're a virgin." And she says, "Well, how?" And he says, "I can tell by the way you walk." And I thought, Uh-oh, everybody knows! I was ashamed to be a virgin, so I tried to cultivate a fucked walk. I tried to figure out what it looked like. I figured I'd watch any hot woman I could. I mean, look at Jeanne Moreau. You watch her walk across the street on the screen and you know she's had at least a hundred men. (Penthouse interview, 1976)

Look, here's a piece of advice. What you do is you think about the life you want, you think about it in your head. Make it a place where you want to be: a ranch, a beach house, a penthouse on the top of a skyscraper. It doesn't matter what it is, but a place that you can hide in. When things get rough, go there.

The Kyle Rhodes who walked me home and gave me the shirt off his back would do the right thing no matter how pissed he was at my office. So if that guy is hanging around this penthouse anywhere, tell him to call me.

most cherished desires of present-day Westerners are shaped by romantic, nationalist, capitalist and humanist myths that have been around for centuries. Friends giving advice often tell each other, ‘Follow your heart.’ But the heart is a double agent that usually takes its instructions from the dominant myths of the day, and the very recommendation to ‘follow your heart’ was implanted in our minds by a combination of nineteenth-century Romantic myths and twentieth-century consumerist myths. The Coca-Cola Company, for example, has marketed Diet Coke around the world under the slogan ‘Diet Coke. Do what feels good.’ Even what people take to be their most personal desires are usually programmed by the imagined order. Let’s consider, for example, the popular desire to take a holiday abroad. There is nothing natural or obvious about this. A chimpanzee alpha male would never think of using his power in order to go on holiday into the territory of a neighbouring chimpanzee band. The elite of ancient Egypt spent their fortunes building pyramids and having their corpses mummified, but none of them thought of going shopping in Babylon or taking a skiing holiday in Phoenicia. People today spend a great deal of money on holidays abroad because they are true believers in the myths of romantic consumerism. Romanticism tells us that in order to make the most of our human potential we must have as many different experiences as we can. We must open ourselves to a wide spectrum of emotions; we must sample various kinds of relationships; we must try different cuisines; we must learn to appreciate different styles of music. One of the best ways to do all that is to break free from our daily routine, leave behind our familiar setting, and go travelling in distant lands, where we can ‘experience’ the culture, the smells, the tastes and the norms of other people. We hear again and again the romantic myths about ‘how a new experience opened my eyes and changed my life’. Consumerism tells us that in order to be happy we must consume as many products and services as possible. If we feel that something is missing or not quite right, then we probably need to buy a product (a car, new clothes, organic food) or a service (housekeeping, relationship therapy, yoga classes). Every television commercial is another little legend about how consuming some product or service will make life better. 18. The Great Pyramid of Giza. The kind of thing rich people in ancient Egypt did with their money. Romanticism, which encourages variety, meshes perfectly with consumerism. Their marriage has given birth to the infinite ‘market of experiences’, on which the modern tourism industry is founded. The tourism industry does not sell flight tickets and hotel bedrooms. It sells experiences. Paris is not a city, nor India a country – they are both experiences, the consumption of which is supposed to widen our horizons, fulfil our human potential, and make us happier. Consequently, when the relationship between a millionaire and his wife is going through a rocky patch, he takes her on an expensive trip to Paris. The trip is not a reflection of some independent desire, but rather of an ardent belief in the myths of romantic consumerism. A wealthy man in ancient Egypt would never have dreamed of solving a relationship crisis by taking his wife on holiday to Babylon. Instead, he might have built for her the sumptuous tomb she had always wanted. Like the elite of ancient Egypt, most people in most cultures dedicate their lives to building pyramids. Only the names, shapes and sizes of these pyramids change from one culture to the other. They may take the form, for example, of a suburban cottage with a swimming pool and an evergreen lawn, or a gleaming penthouse with an enviable view. Few question the myths that cause us to desire the pyramid in the first place.

For one thing, the penthouse was simply too big. Besides the seventy-one bedrooms, there were a number of living rooms, dining rooms, breakfast rooms, snack rooms, sitting rooms, standing rooms, ballrooms, bathrooms, kitchens, and an assortment of rooms that seem to have no purpose at all.

The harder I fought back every time he messed with me, the more he liked me. I bet if I set his penthouse on fire, he would laugh like it was all a big, fat joke. “Hell,

By Monday morning, two main things are accomplished. One, Harrison's penthouse is now officially broken in, and two, I think I may be walking bowlegged permanently now.

I'm a recovering addict who visits brothels and has a penthouse at a casino. You've seen me fucking a porn star—not too easy, either. You're riding an awful fucking lot on intuition.

Shame you also don’t date men, because I can think of a half a dozen places in this room alone that I’d like to fuck you and then I want to take you home and christen every room in that damned penthouse. Hell, everywhere you look in this office and everywhere you look at home, I want you to remember how we fucked there. I want those memories burned into your brain. And that…takes time.

America is not a simple place. Its contradictions set me spinning. I’d found myself at Democratic fund-raisers held in vast Manhattan penthouses, sipping wine with wealthy women who would claim to be passionate about education and children’s issues and then lean in conspiratorially to tell me that their Wall Street husbands would never vote for anyone who even thought about raising their taxes.

Between Friday evening and Sunday afternoon, I broke into a total of six offices, one penthouse suite and a small bank, and cursed them all. I cursed the stones they were built on, the bricks in their walls, the paint on their ceilings, the carpets on their floors. I cursed the nylon chairs to give their owners little electric shocks, I cursed the markers to squeak on the whiteboard, the hinges to rust, the glass to run, the windows to stick, the fans to whir, the chairs to break, the computers to crash, the papers to crease, the pens to smear; I cursed the pipes to leak, the coolers to drip, the pictures to sag, the phones to crackle and the wires to spark. And we enjoyed it.

Like you?” My face twisted in abhorrence, spitting the words like they were revolting. Her eyes widened. I shook my head, a dark chuckle on my lips. “You think I fucking like you? Are you kidding me here? I don’t like you. I love you. Even that’s an under-fucking-statement. I live for you. I breathe for you. I will die for you. It. Has. Always. Been. You. Ever since I saw your sorry ass for the first time on that threshold and you fucking poked me in the chest like I was a toy. We’ve been apart for ten years, Rose LeBlanc, and not even one day has passed without me thinking of you. And not just in passing. You know, the occasional she-could-have-been-a-g reat-fuck. I mean really taking my time to think about you. Wondering what you looked like. Where youwere. What you were doing. Who you were with. I stalked you on Facebook. And Twitter—which, by the way, you need to deactivate because you never once bothered to tweet—but you aren’t exactly a social media animal. I asked about you. Every time I was in town. And once I realized you were in New York with Millie…” “Rosie, I bought a new penthouse in TriBeca a few months before you moved into our building.” “Why are you telling me this?” She blinked away her tears, but fresh ones rolled down to replace them time. “Because I had to sell it and lost a shit-ton of money the moment I realized you were going to be my neighbor if I stayed in my current place. Real talk, Rosie, you are all I ever wanted. Even when you wanted me to be with your sister. She was a comforting candle. You were the dazzling sun. I’d lived in the dark—for your selfish ass. And if you think I’m going to settle for something , you’re dead wrong. I am taking everything . We will have kids, Rose LeBlanc. We will have a wedding. And we will have joy and vacations and days where we just fuck and days where we just fight and days where we just live. Because this is life, Baby LeBlanc, and I love the fuck out of you, so I’m going to give you the best one there is. Got it?

Like the elite of ancient Egypt, most people in most cultures dedicate their lives to building pyramids. Only the names, shapes and sizes of these pyramids change from one culture to the other. They may take the form, for example, of a suburban cottage with a swimming pool and an evergreen lawn, or a gleaming penthouse with an enviable view. Few question the myths that cause us to desire the pyramid in the first place.

We ain't got time for a goddamn poetry recital. An' your juices feel like rain on the inferno? What the fuck is that, is that from the letter you wrote to penthouse?

I agreed with his thesis that God was not an all-powerful “cosmic superman” looking down from the penthouse as much as He was Love.

If you have read this far in the chronicle of the Baudelaire orphans - and I certainly hope you have not - then you know we have reached the thirteenth chapter of the thirteenth volume in this sad history, and so you know the end is near, even though this chapter is so lengthy that you might never reach the end of it. But perhaps you do not yet know what the end really means. "The end" is a phrase which refers to the completion of a story, or the final moment of some accomplishment, such as a secret errand, or a great deal of research, and indeed this thirteenth volume marks the completion of my investigation into the Baudelaire case, which required much research, a great many secret errands, and the accomplishments of a number of my comrades, from a trolley driver to a botanical hybridization expert, with many, many typewriter repairpeople in between. But it cannot be said that The End contains the end of the Baudelaires' story, any more than The Bad Beginning contained its beginning. The children's story began long before that terrible day on Briny Beach, but there would have to be another volume to chronicle when the Baudelaires were born, and when their parents married, and who was playing the violin in the candlelit restaurant when the Baudelaire parents first laid eyes on one another, and what was hidden inside that violin, and the childhood of the man who orphaned the girl who put it there, and even then it could not be said that the Baudelaires' story had not begun, because you would still need to know about a certain tea party held in a penthouse suite, and the baker who made the scones served at the tea party, and the baker's assistant who smuggled the secret ingredient into the scone batter through a very narrow drainpipe, and how a crafty volunteer created the illusion of a fire in the kitchen simply by wearing a certain dress and jumping around, and even then the beginning of the story would be as far away as the shipwreck that leftthe Baudelaire parents as castaways on the coastal shelf is far away from the outrigger on which the islanders would depart. One could say, in fact, that no story really has a beginning, and that no story really has an end, as all of the world's stories are as jumbled as the items in the arboretum, with their details and secrets all heaped together so that the whole story, from beginning to end, depends on how you look at it. We might even say that the world is always in medias res - a Latin phrase which means "in the midst of things" or "in the middle of a narrative" - and that it is impossible to solve any mystery, or find the root of any trouble, and so The End is really the middle of the story, as many people in this history will live long past the close of Chapter Thirteen, or even the beginning of the story, as a new child arrives in the world at the chapter's close. But one cannot sit in the midst of things forever. Eventually one must face that the end is near, and the end of The End is quite near indeed, so if I were you I would not read the end of The End, as it contains the end of a notorious villain but also the end of a brave and noble sibling, and the end of the colonists' stay on the island, as they sail off the end of the coastal shelf. The end of The End contains all these ends, and that does not depend on how you look at it, so it might be best for you to stop looking at The End before the end of The End arrives, and to stop reading The End before you read the end, as the stories that end in The End that began in The Bad Beginning are beginning to end now.

Not only will I discover every single nerve and crevice in your vulnerable, and very naked body, I will devour and exploit every one of your weaknesses. I won’t merely control you, Reina. I will own you.

I'm more and more positive about this. So I don't know anything about my husband or life. The point is, I've married a good-looking multi-millionaire who loves me and has a huge penthouse and brought me taupe roses. I'm not going to throw it all away just because of the small detail that I can't remember him.

And that’s all this Prime Minister needed, a nice multi-syllable word like destabilization to turn it into a fucking jingle. But he threw us on the defensive in a way that I’ll make sure never happens again. Of course the only people listening was Penthouse magazine. Goddamn, what does it mean when the conscience of America airbrushes pussy for a living?

I wanted him for more than a few months. Somewhere between his penthouse in Seattle and the ranch in Colorado, between the private jets, the dressing rooms, and my mom’s kitchen, I’d fallen in love with him. No wonder I was willing to break all the rules.

The sciences are sometimes likened to different levels of a tall building: logic in the basement, mathematics on the ground floor, then particle physics, then the rest of physics and chemistry, and so forth, all the way up to psychology, sociology – and the economists in the penthouse.

One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich laying bricks in Siberia probably generated a higher level of happiness than one day in the life of a retired rock star in a Manhattan penthouse with all the beer he could drink. Work was crucial to sanity. Which was probably why George continued to perform on the cruise ship.

in English and Arabic. Clearly, even personal shoppers had him pegged as a complete geek. The shopper also managed to find some supplies for our magic bags—blocks of wax, twine, even some papyrus and ink—though I doubt Bes explained to her what they were for. After she left, Bes, Carter and I ordered more food from room service. We sat on the deck and watched the afternoon go by. The breeze from the Mediterranean was cool and pleasant. Modern Alexandria stretched out to our left—an odd mix of gleaming high-rises, shabby, crumbling buildings, and ancient ruins. The shoreline highway was dotted with palm trees and crowded with every sort of vehicle from BMWs to donkeys. From our penthouse suite, it all seemed a bit unreal—the raw energy of the city, the bustle and congestion below —while we sat on our veranda in the sky eating fresh fruit and the last melting bits of Lenin’s head.

butterfly,

I’m pacing the apartment. Wondering: are the rest of them still up there, in the penthouse, drinking wine? Laughing at my stupidity?

Top floor. My penthouse code is pussy.

Optimism skipped out on the rent a while back, but the cynic in the penthouse won't leave until led out by marshals.

I thought you would never arrive.” “Traffic.” Warrick smiled at Samantha. She felt herself blush. She loved traffic. She hoped there was more on the way back to his penthouse.

My family lives in that building now, along with Grandpa in the fourth-floor “penthouse” apartment, as he calls the converted space that was once an attic studio.

My heartburn kicked in again. It was becoming a real problem. I had a stash of Tums in my penthouse for when these little episodes hit, though they didn’t seem to do much good.

I did have a better work-life balance now that Ava had moved into my Logan Circle penthouse, mainly because I’d much rather be eating her out on our bed than eating takeout at my desk.

My hand shakes and some of the coffee I was bringing toward my mouth slips out of the cup and onto the table. Starving? This handsome CEO with his Jaguar and penthouse suite was starving?

She sighed and lifted her hand to run it along the edge of his lip. "You want to stay here, in the employees' quarters? Wouldn't you be a little out of place?" "If you're here,it will be the Taj Mahal.

The Playboy Foundation provided $10,000—and the use of Playboy’s offices as an assembly line, where volunteers, mostly senior citizens, were provided with foldout tables and free coffee and sandwiches while building the first of these revolutionary kits. “I took a lot of flak from the women’s movement—but too bad,” Goddard says. “If it was Penthouse or Hustler, no. But Playboy? Please, give me a break.

Shall we?” The doors slide open and he leisurely extends his arm to the looming double doors marked Penthouse. I get the feeling that I’m about to step through the wardrobe. And the lion is right behind me.

Like the elite of ancient Egypt, most people in most cultures dedicate their lives to building pyramids. Only the names, shapes and sizes of these pyramids change from one culture to the other. They may take the form, for example, of a suburban cottage with a swimming pool and an evergreen lawn, or a gleaming penthouse with an enviable view. Few question the myths that cause us to desire the pyramid in the first place. c.

I’d learned Troy, knew that he would take the bait. The harder I fought back every time he messed with me, the more he liked me. I bet if I set his penthouse on fire, he would laugh like it was all a big, fat joke. “Hell,

Hordes of people on the street, lighted Christmas trees sparkling high on penthouse balconies and complacent Christmas music floating out of shops, and weaving in and out of crowds I had a strange feeling of being already dead,

Nessun problema. A patto che non si portino via i taccuini. E perché dovrebbero? I delinquenti del loro calibro sono attirati solo dal denaro. Probabilmente non riescono a leggere niente di più impegnativo della posta di Penthouse.

He’d never answered the text from his brother last night because he was otherwise occupied getting a gorgeous stranger off on an open-air balcony in the middle of downtown Chicago. You couldn’t make this shit up. Penthouse, check your mail.

I smile at her even though my heart is aching. What would she say if I told her I designed this place with her in mind? This penthouse is everything we’ve ever wanted, our every dream and fantasy come true. This is exactly where she’s supposed to be.

Leaving the age of materialism and duality behind us, we now seek to become Masters of the Spiritual Kingdom ~ moving into the penthouse of ourselves, the crown chakra, as it were. Herein lays all our joy, our progress and our discovery of our superior and limitless Divine powers. By loosening identification with the sense world, we begin to access the greater causal gifts and realms. I believe we must always learn to use our power of choice ~ to develop Spiritual authority, and come out of victim consciousness. It is important to encourage the setting of strong goals (focusing around fulfillment of pure heart’s desires). When the will is highly focused, the reader become receptive to the Higher Way and technologies of God I wish to impart.

If I could have predicted how this day was going to end, it would not be in Ho the Not-Pimp’s upscale flat—if I was in America, I’d call it a penthouse, but I’m not—eating cheeseless pizza and making out. I don’t even care about the tomato-onion-oregano

Art is more like real estate than stocks. Some Warhols are like studio apartments in midblock buildings with northern exposures, while other Warhols are penthouse properties with 360-degree views. A share of Cisco, however, is always just a share of Cisco.” Judging

Where am I going to grow a garden in a penthouse?” “Next time I visit I’ll fix you up a spot in one of the corners. You won’t even know it’s there until its time to harvest.” “Wonderful.” But then it occurred to her. “Jenny, next time you visit?” “What? What is it?” Jennifer asked. Christine half stuttered. “You have never been to my penthouse.” “Really?” Jennifer thought back when something came to mind. “Well, what was that great big building we went to the last time we visited? You know, we went all the way to the top.” “That was the Empire State building.” “No fooling? Huh, what do you know? Well you should move in there, it was beautiful as I recall.” “You can’t move into the Empire State building.” “Oh, that’s right,” Jennifer soon realized, “those mean terrorists tore it down. My, that was just awful.

It all made too much sense. Why Padmé had disappeared on Naboo. Why the schedule had changed and why the staff had such a new routine. This was why Padmé’s evenings were free. This was why her handmaidens slept on the floor below instead of in the penthouse suite as they used to.

The size of your bank account doesn’t make you classy. It’s the dignity you carry yourself with and the respect you show to others. If you have an ugly attitude and belittle those around you, it doesn’t matter who designs your suits or how posh your penthouse is. None of it matters.

Organized religion was the first and greatest protection racket, an economy of perpetual profit built on voluntary fear and coerced guilt. Donating money to churches, temples, mosques, synagogues, cults, et cetera, to help ensure a spot for one’s soul in the express elevator to that penthouse in the sky known as the afterlife was marketing genius! Had Sleepy paid his spiritual insurance? If so, had it done him any good? According to Shorty, whose memory had been beaten into the consistency of oatmeal by a length of pipe, or so said Bon, a quartet of Arab youth had set on them.

I’m in love with a man who can’t be honest with his family or anyone in his life outside of this penthouse. I desire a woman I barely know but crave more than I can understand. On top of that, the man I love wants her too, and it makes me want her more, if possible. How is any of this practical?

Sit down," she ordered Peabody. "I prefer to stand." "And I prefer to give you a good boot in the ass, but I'm restraining myself." Eve reached up, fisted her hands in her own hair and yanked until the pain cleared most of the rage. "Okay, stand. You couldn't sit with that stick up your butt, anyway. One you shove up it every time Subject Monroe, Charles, is mentioned. You want to be filled in, you want to be briefed? Fine. Here it is." She had to take another deep breath to insure her tone was professional. "On the evening of March twenty-six, at or about nineteen-thirty, I, accompanied by Roarke, had occasion to visit Areena Mansfield's penthouse suite at The Palace Hotel, this city. Upon entering said premises, investigation officer found subject Mansfield in the company of one Charles Monroe, licensed companion. It was ascertained and confirmed that LC Monroe was there in a professional capacity and had no links to the deceased or the current investigation. His presence, and the salient details pertaining to it, were noted in the report of the interview and marked Level Five in a stupid, ill-conceived attempt by the investigating officer to spare her fat-headed aide any unnecessary embarrassment." Eve stomped back to her desk, snatched up her coffee, gulped some down. "Record that," she snapped. Peabody's lip trembled. She sat. She sniffled. "Oh, no." In genuine panic, Eve stabbed out a finger. "No, you don't. No crying. We're on duty. There is no crying on duty.

But the moment you realize that it’s useless to fight the tension between us, I will have you spread open on every fucking surface of this penthouse. I’ll prove to you just how much you deserve to be worshiped. You’ll find out very quickly how exquisite it’d be if not everything in this agreement was fake.

Before I opened my computer in the parking lot today, I relived one of my favorite memories. It's the one with Woody and me sitting on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum after it's closed. We're watching people parade out of the museum in summer shorts and sandals. The trees to the south are planted in parallel lines. The water in the fountain shoots up with a mist that almost reaches the steps we sit on. We look at silver-haired ladies in red-and-white-print dresses. We separate the mice from the men, the tourists from the New Yorkers, the Upper East Siders from the West Siders. The hot-pretzel vendor sells us a wad of dough in knots with clumps of salt stuck on top. We make our usual remarks about the crazies and wonder what it would be like to live in a penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue overlooking the Met. We laugh and say the same things we always say. We hold hands and keep sitting, just sitting, as the sun beings to set. It's a perfect afternoon.

I’d received countless gifts in my life. A customized Audi for my sixteenth birthday; a limited-edition Vacheron Constantin watch when I was accepted into Oxford; a penthouse atop the Peak in Hong Kong when I graduated from Cambridge with my master’s. None of them touched me as much as a flimsy paperback of velociraptor erotica.

The wind made an effort, but failed, and a batlike shadow sank toward the roof garden of the penthouse opposite. Piece by piece, I fed my wardrobe to the night wind, and flutteringly, like a loved one's ashes, the gray scraps were ferried off, to settle here, there, exactly where I would never know, in the dark heart of New York.

Like the elite of ancient Egypt, most people in most cultures dedicate their lives to building pyramids. Only the names, shapes and sizes of these pyramids change from one culture to the other. They may take the form, for example, of a suburban cottage with a swimming pool and an evergreen lawn, or a gleaming penthouse with an enviable view.

Let’s just say that it did not end well. Things were thrown, curses hurled, none of the three ever came over again, and I had to recruit a whole new stable of booty calls. Maybe a better man than me could have turned that night into something out of Penthouse Letters, but all I did was end up with my dick in my hand and a mess in my apartment.

It doesn’t, but I’m not leaving a single piece of myself in there. Not my favorite chips. Not a toothbrush. I want to disappear from his life. Just poof,”—she snaps her fingers—“gone, like I never existed in that penthouse. For a while, I felt like he deserved an explanation. But I don’t think he does anymore. That was the only closure I needed.

Time was when my little feet were the only ones welcome in the establishment, from the chorus girls’ dressing room to the owners’ penthouse. However, the newcomer—who has no obvious attractions other than the dubious ability to scream like a harem of Siamese in heat at odd hours of the night—is the center of an epidemic of cooing that leaves myself cold.

By this point American pragmatism was in decline. Academic philosophy had begun to make its unfortunate ascent to the penthouse of the ivory tower. The idea that philosophers might have something useful to say about foreign policy or religion or even life was slowly going out of fashion. Hocking sensed this trend and fought the dying of philosophy’s light for more than half a century.

I looked up at the ivory towers above us all. Nowhere else equals the feral design of this city. Tall skyscrapers that act as gorges hollowing out between flat cement dancing into narrow alleyways like bottomless pits. Building walls rusted the color of blood. Sometimes when you look down the horizon from afar the city looks wider than it is, like a thin field of magical lights gleaming with the hopes of children and idealists; a light on at midnight in one of the penthouses or the changing hues of the Empire State Building. Most of the time though, the city is covered with a layer of honking cars and greed, sirens and the war cry of solicitors, all full of brambles and impenetrable conscience; garbage, steaming manholes, and heat waves twirling smog and pollution through your lungs like mirages as you walk breathlessly through a boiling desert.

Her blank eyes burrowed through the fetid air between herself and her visitor. They were without content; hollow pools of meaninglessness. They were not eyes, but voids sunk between two jutting pent-houses of bone and two bloodless hummocks of cheek. They suspended two raw rods of grief before their own immobility, like frozen fountains in a bright wintry air; and on these rods the fluttering rags of a futile grief were hung.

Honestly, I didn't expect anything. I didn't plan on standing in your penthouse kitchen this morning." A grin splits his face. "But you are." Keeping the smile, he sticks his tongue through his teeth. "Yeah, I am." I beam up at him. "You stay'n in my kitchen?" he asks, his face moving closer. "I thought we are seeing how things go?" I press my hands to his chest, sliding my arms up to his shoulders. "I'll just take that as a yes.

[Tennessee] William's writing has the effect that all great writing has on an actor. It steadies you. It emboldens you You ride an elevator to the top floor of a building, you jump off the penthouse balcony, and you fly. Just put one foot in front of the other, one line after the other, one moment after the other, and you are walking on air. It was the creative experience of a lifetime. (playing Stanley in Streetcar Named Desire)

There are other models to explain Cygnus X-1 that do not include a black hole, but they are all rather far-fetched. A black hole seems to be the only really natural explanation of the observations. Despite this, I had a bet with Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology that in fact Cygnus X-1 does not contain a black hole! This was a form of insurance policy for me. I have done a lot of work on black holes, and it would all be wasted if it turned out that black holes do not exist. But in that case, I would have the consolation of winning my bet, which would bring me four years of the magazine Private Eye. In fact, although the situation with Cygnus X-1 has not changed much since we made the bet in 1975, there is now so much other observational evidence in favor of black holes that I have conceded the bet. I paid the specified penalty, which was a one-year subscription to Penthouse, to the outrage of Kip’s liberated wife.

I offered my most enticing smile, the one I’d been perfecting for years. Sincere and encouraging, it brimmed with counterfeit confidence. My smile had earned me forgiveness when I deserved none, a seat in first class though I’d only paid for coach.

Cea mai minunată femeie din lume este cea care te iubeşte cu adevărat şi pe care-o iubeşti cu adevărat. Nimic altceva nu contează. Odată, pe vremea liceului, umblam pe bulevard cu un prieten, doi puşti zăluzi şi frustraţi care dădeau note «gagicilor» şi vorbeau cu atât mai scabros cu cât erau, de fapt, mai inocenţi erotic. Ce fund are una, ce balcoane are alta... Femeile nu erau nimic altceva pentru noi decât nişte obiecte de lux, ca automobilele lustruite din vitrinele magazinelor «Volvo» sau «Maserati»: nu ne imaginam cu adevărat că vom avea şi noi una vreodată. Prin dreptul cinematografului Patria am zărit o tipă trăznitoare. Am rămas înlemniţi: ce pulpe în ciorapi de plasă neagră, ce fund rotund şi ce mijloc subţire, ce ţoale pe ea, ce plete de sârmă roşie, răsucită în mii de feluri... Ne-am învârtit în jurul ei ca s-o vedem şi din faţă: cum putea avea aşa pereche de ţâţe, aşa de perfecte cum numai în albumele de artă — care pe-atunci ne ţineau loc de Penthouse—mai văzuserăm? Pentru cine era o astfel de fiinţă, cum putea fi o noapte de sex cu ea? Până la urmă ne-am aşezat la coadă la bilete, fără s-o scăpăm din ochi şi fără să-ncetăm comentariile. Când, îl auzim pe unul, un tip destul de jegos care stătea şi el la coadă, mâncând seminţe, înaintea noastră: «E bună paraşuta asta, nu? V-ar place şi vouă, ciutanilor... Da' ascultaţi-mă pe mine, c-am fumat destule ca ea: cât o vedeţi de futeşă, să ştiţi că e pe undeva un bărbat sătul de ea până peste cap! Poa'să fie cea mai mişto din lume, poa'să fie şi Brijibardo, că tot i-e drag vreunuia de ea ca mie de nevastă-mea...» Am fost mult mai şocat de remarcile astea decât mi-aş fi imaginat. Cum să te plictiseşti de frumuseţea însăşi, de neatins şi de neconceput? De cea pentru care ţi-ai da şi pielea de pe tine? Ce ar putea dori un bărbat mai mult decât să-şi poată trece braţul în jurul mijlocului ei, să poată privi minute-n şir în ochii ei, să o întindă încetişor pe pat... Să o scoată din învelişul ei de dantelă mătăsoasă... De-aici încolo imaginaţia mea se bloca, nu-mi puteam închipui cum e să faci dragoste. De câte ori mă gândeam cum ar fi, vedeam doar un ocean roz care se răsuceşte asupra ta şi te sufocă... Am cunoscut apoi femei reale, femei imaginare, femei din vis, femei din cărţi, femei din reclame, femei din filme, femei din videoclipuri. Femei din revistele porno. Fiecare altfel şi fiecare cu altceva de oferit. M-am îndrăgostit de câteva şi de fiecare dată a fost la fel: primul semn că aş putea-o iubi a fost mereu că nu m-am putut gândi, văzând-o, «cât de futeşă e». Chiar dacă era. Bărbaţii au creierul impregnat de hormoni. Nici cel mai distins intelectual nu e altfel, până şi el, la orice vârstă, îşi imaginează cum ar face-o cu fata plictisită, necunoscută, de lângă el. Dar când cunoşti cea mai minunată femeie din lume, care e cea pe care o poţi iubi, semnul este, trebuie să fie, că nici pulpele, nici «balcoanele» nu se mai văd, de parcă hormonii sexului şi-ai agresivităţii s-ar retrage din creierul tău tumefiat şi l-ar lăsa inocent ca un creier de copil şi translucid ca o corniţă de melc. Facem sex cu un creier de bărbat, dar iubim cu unul de copil, încrezător, dependent, dornic de a da şi a primi afecţiune. Femeile minunate din viaţa mea, toate cele pe care le-am iubit cu adevărat şi care-au răspuns cu dragoste dragostei mele, au fost într-un fel necorporale, au fost bucurie pură, nevroză pură, experienţă pură. Senzualitatea, uneori dusă până foarte departe, nu a fost decât un ingredient într-o aventură complexă şi epuizantă a minţii. Pentru mine nu există, deci, «cea mai minunată» în sensul de 90-60-90, nici în cel de blondă, brună sau roşcată, înaltă sau minionă, vânzătoare sau poetă. Cea mai minunată este cea cu care am putut avea un copil virtual numit «cuplul nostru», «dragostea noastră».

The Præsidium stood on four pillars and for most of its height was square in cross-section. Not far above the dials, however, the corners of the square floor-plan were cleaved off, making it into an octagon, and not far above that, the octagon became a sixteen-sided polygon, and above that it became round. The roof of the Præsidium was a disk, or rather a lens, as it bulged up slightly in the middle to shed rainwater. It supported the megaliths, domes, penthouses, and turrets of the starhenge, which drove, and was driven by, the same clock-works that ran the dials.

Dancer finds me the next day as I practice my Aureate accent in the penthouse’s holomirror. I can see a three-dimensional depiction of my head in front of me. The teeth move strangely, catching my tongue as I try to roll my words. I am still becoming used to my body, even months after the last of the surgeries. My teeth are larger than I initially thought them. It also doesn’t help that the Goldbrows speak as though they’ve had golden shovels stuck up their bloodydamn stinkholes. So I find it easier to speak like one if I see that I am one. The arrogance comes easier.

We kiss, and it’s better. Better than the last time, better than the first time. Better, always. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, and I’m sure I’ll find it one day. Beneath Sigmund’s tongue, perhaps, or hiding in his hair. I’ll keep looking. I’ve got time; it’s a long way up to the penthouse, after all. When we reach it, there’ll be friends and allies, family, explanations. Fantales. One ruffled raven. And the first rays of dawn, exploring the remade world with all the wonder of a child. Welcome to the Golden Age. An old end, but a new beginning. Stick around. You’ll see.

One of the prostitutes, an Asian who can’t be over twenty, with boobs that can’t be real, with a sudden interest in him that can’t be sincere, approaches him as he walks back into the penthouse and slides the door shut. “Wie lautet dein name?” she asks. What is your name? He smiles. She is just flirting, playing a part. She doesn’t care what he tells her. But there are people who would pay anything, or do anything, to know the answer to her question. And just once, he’d like to let down his guard and answer the question truthfully. I am Suliman Cindoruk, he’d like to say. And I’m about to reboot the world.

She'd been twenty-one when she'd met Marko in an upscale hotel, where she worked as a housekeeper. He hadn't heard her knocking and came into the bedroom, while she changed the sheets, in nothing but a damp towel. At first, she'd been embarrassed and tried to leave, but then the towel dropped. Next thing she knew, she was tied to the bed, begging him to flog her again. His brand of sex had been a mix of pain and pleasure, bringing her to sexual highs, she'd never known existed. She'd quit her job after that encounter and moved into his penthouse. For three years, he was her master and she was his submissive.

And within two weeks, Peter Foo was already proven right. Business for the firm expanded in leaps & bounds as both old & new clients wanted to meet the lovely slave girl that he kept naked in his penthouse & to partake of the ambrosial Nectar that she served. So much so that the three million dollars that he had paid for her was fully recovered out of profits. And new orders that flooded the firm showed that his initial investment on the girl would increase in value tenfold within a year. He had therefore acquired the lovely slave girl, Briseis,for free. And that was why Peter Foo was likened by the Directors to Zeus/Jupiter, the King of the Gods.[MMT]

after major-league criminals who couldn’t be caught through legal means. So Nick remained a major-league criminal himself, secretly working for the FBI, and Kate remained a top FBI field agent, secretly working with an international fugitive. And that’s why Kate was currently taking the curves on Sunset like it was the Talladega Superspeedway. She was hoping to catch Nick in his Sunset Strip penthouse. Technically, the penthouse wasn’t Nick’s. The IRS had seized it from a rapper who’d neglected to pay his taxes, and then the IRS had left it unoccupied pending sale. Nick had posed as the listing agent and quietly moved in. Thanks to rich tax cheats, Nick could always find a swanky place to stay that didn’t require him to show

I HAVE to stay here. I simply have to. To be honest, too much of my identity comes from possessing this space. As my job used to define me, living here’s all I have left. This apartment makes it OK that I can’t buy Prada’s newest anymore. I can be content going on lousy interviews and begging for positions that pay half of what I used to earn as long as I know at the end of the day my glorious penthouse awaits. The minute I climb into my Jacuzzi tub, all the day’s unpleasantness is rinsed down the drain. When I step onto my deck and survey the city, I feel like anything is possible. This apartment keeps me centered; it keeps me sane. Without this place, I’m just another nobody from Indiana with a worthless state college degree. Before

For 3,000 years the most sought-after rooms were on the first floor—or the second floor if you’re an American. The piano nobile, the grand first floor, was for animals or the shop. One flight up was the master bedroom and reception rooms, and the further up you went, the lower your status. Scullery maids roosted like swallows in the eaves. But the lift brought us to the penthouse to live with the angels, the glass walls, the silent buffet of the wind, the hiss of climate control. And beneath the great, blinking panorama of the city, wall evaporated into air. No art or bookshelf could compete with the view of omnipotence, the sense of living on Parnassus, a double-glazed Valhalla. And a view suddenly had a value—real estate agents could sell something they didn’t own.

Day One, Morning  The Dempsey Penthouse, New York On the morning the ships came, Meyer Dempsey found himself preoccupied with drugs, sex, and business. It would have been hard to believe that just six days later, only one of the three would seem to matter.  “You’re not listening to me, Heather,” he said into the phone. “I’m going to be in LA from Friday to Tuesday. I’ve already booked time with the studio on Monday. The whole reason I’m coming early is—”  Heather cut him off, probably to feed her need for a zinger more than a reply that couldn’t wait. Heather was always “on,” never really able to take a break and just be a person for once. It was one of the reasons they hadn’t been able to stay married. It was like living with a jester.  “Because you want to do the Walk

Daniel Giordano reached into his pocket and held out the beautiful, emerald necklace for his date. He'd met this woman in a night club two weeks before. He certainly didn't give her the expensive jewelry because of any emotional attachment on his part. The rich bachelor was careful about keeping a collection of extraordinary gifts inside of his penthouse to give to the women who pleased him the most. This was the second date with her in a week, and she was very good at satisfying his needs without hounding him about a relationship. Any such talk on that subject warranted indefinite distance. Daniel was a player and was perfectly happy with that decision. Life was just too short. "Oh my God! I love it!" "I bought it just for you, Monique," whispered Daniel as he fastened the clasp around her delicate neck. She

A long suburb of red brick houses -some with patches of garden-ground, where coal-dust and factory smoke darkened the shrinking leaves, and coarse rank flowers, and where the struggling vegetation sickened and sank under the hot breath of kiln and furnace. On mounds of ashes by the wayside, sheltered only by a few rough boards, or rotten pent-house roofs, strange engines spun and writhed like tortured creatures; clanking their iron chains, shrieking in their rapid whirl from time to time as though in torment unendurable, and making the ground tremble with their agonies. Dismantled houses here and there appeared, tottering to the earth, propped up by fragments of others that had fallen down, unroofed, windowless, blackened, desolate, but yet inhabited. Men, women, children, wan in their looks and ragged in attire, tended the engines, fed their tributary fire, begged upon the road, or scowled half-naked from the doorless houses.

I have always had a weakness for footnotes. For me a clever or a wicked footnote has redeemed many a text. And I see that I am now using a long footnote to open a serious subject - shifting in a quick move to Paris, to a penthouse in the Hotel Crillon. Early June. Breakfast time. The host is my good friend Professor Ravelstein, Abe Ravelstein. My wife and I, also staying at the Crillon, have a room below, on the sixth floor. She is still asleep. The entire floor below ours (this is not absolutely relevant but somehow I can't avoid mentioning it) is occupied just now by Michael Jackson and his entourage. He performs nightly in some vast Parisian auditorium. Very soon his French fans will arrive and a crowd of faces will be turned upward, shouting in unison, 'Miekell Jack-sown'. A police barrier holds the fans back. Inside, from the sixth floor, when you look down the marble stairwell you see Michael's bodyguards. One of them is doing the crossword puzzle in the 'Paris Herald'.

Compare a medieval French peasant to a modern Parisian banker. The peasant lived in an unheated mud hut overlooking the local pigsty, while the banker goes home to a splendid penthouse with all the latest technological gadgets and a view to the Champs-Elysées. Intuitively, we would expect the banker to be much happier than the peasant. However, mud huts, penthouses and the Champs-Elysées don’t really determine our mood. Serotonin does. When the medieval peasant completed the construction of his mud hut, his brain neurons secreted serotonin, bringing it up to level X. When in 2014 the banker made the last payment on his wonderful penthouse, brain neurons secreted a similar amount of serotonin, bringing it up to a similar level X. It makes no difference to the brain that the penthouse is far more comfortable than the mud hut. The only thing that matters is that at present the level of serotonin is X. Consequently the banker would not be one iota happier than his great-great-great-grandfather, the poor medieval peasant.

The Praying Mantis Visits A Penthouse The praying Mantis with its length of straw Out of nowhere's forehead born full armed Engaged the century at my terrace door. Focused at inches the dinosaur insect sends Broadsides of epic stillness at my eye, Above the deafening projects of the age. My love, who fears the thunder of its poise, Has seen it and cries out. The clouds like curls Fall in my faith as I seize a stick to stop This Martian raid distilled to a straw with legs, To wisps of prowess. Bristling with motionlessness The Mantis prays to the Stick twice armed with Man. I strike, the stick whistles, shearing off two legs Which run off by themselves beneath some boards. The Mantis spreads out tints of batlike wing, The many colored pennants of its blood, And hugs my weapon; the frantic greens come out, the reds and yellows blurt out from the straw, All sinews doubtless screaming insect death. Against the railing's edge I knock the stick Sending that gay mad body into the gulf. Such noisy trappings in defeat wake doubts. I search my mind for possible wounds and feel The victim's body heavy on the victor's heart.

Is it as bad out there as they say it is?” he asked. “From my six-inch window, it looks like we got hit with one hell of a storm.” “It took me nearly an hour to shovel the sidewalk this morning,” Jordan said. Kyle brushed his neck-length dark blond hair off his face. “See? That’s one of the positives of being in prison. No shoveling.” Her brother had long ago set the rules regarding their visits. Jokes about being in prison were expected and encouraged, sympathy was not. Which was good for both of them, considering her family had never done particularly well with the mushy and sentimental stuff. “You live in a penthouse condo and haven’t shoveled snow for years,” she pointed out. “A deliberate choice I made because of the trauma of my youth,” Kyle said. “Remember how Dad used to make me shovel the whole block every time it snowed? I was eight when he came up with that plan—barely taller than the shovel.” “And I got to stay inside making hot chocolate with Mom.” Jordan waved off the retort she saw coming. “Hey, it was good for you—it built character.” She paused for a moment, taking in their steel-barred surroundings. “Maybe Dad should’ve made you shovel the next block over, too.” “That’s cute.” “I thought so.

There's mainstream pornography--soft-core airbrushed fluff such as Penthouse and Playboy. The folks makin' this stuff do men and their range of desires a disservice; their implication is that anything outside the "big hair, fake tits, tiny waste, no pores, limited body hair" aesthetic is deviant, weird, not normal--and not something that a red-blooded American man would be interested in. The common boys-will-be-boys explanation for porn--that men get turned on visually (in contrast to "feminine" mode of arousal, which is mental and emotional)--is nothing more than an insult, making men out to be Pavlovian dogs who salivate uncontrollably and strain at their trousers upon contact with nudie pictures. Antiporn arguments, however well-meaning, are no better. Folks like Catherine MacKinnon also believe that men are inherently drawn to porn. And to them, porn is by definition violent, suggesting that it's somehow in men's nature to be aroused by hurting others. Furthermore, antipornography activists think that porn leads men to commit violence--as if men have no self-control or capacity to separate fantasy from reality, as if an erection is a driving force that can't be stopped once it's started... The only difference is one of perspective: Antiporn folk believe that male sexuality is always threatening, while men's-magazine editors think it's always fabulous.

En el corazón de la Ciudad de Nueva York, el majestuoso Hotel Nueva York se convierte en el telón de fondo de un escalofriante crimen que sacude la ciudad hasta sus cimientos. Cuando un prominente magnate de los negocios es encontrado asesinado en su lujosa Suite, el jefe de detectives del Departamento de Policía de la Ciudad de Nueva York, Michael J. Montgomery, recurre a dos de sus mejores detectives, Andrew Melconian y Aaron McCallister, para desentrañar el misterio. Mientras Melconian y McCallister se sumergen en el opulento mundo de la clientela de élite del hotel, pronto descubren una red de engaños, traiciones y motivos ocultos. Las conexiones de la víctima con figuras de alto perfil aumentan las apuestas, y los detectives deben navegar por un laberinto de mentiras y pistas falsas para descubrir la verdad. A medida que aumenta la presión, los detectives se encuentran en una carrera contra el tiempo, enfrentando giros inesperados y cuestionando sus propios instintos. La investigación los lleva desde los glamurosos penthouses hasta los bajos fondos de la ciudad, revelando una compleja red de relaciones y secretos. Con cada descubrimiento, los detectives se acercan más al escurridizo asesino, que siempre parece estar un paso por delante. El tiempo se acaba y los detectives deben resolver el caso antes de que se pierdan más vidas y la élite de la ciudad cambie para siempre.

Hillary rode her husband’s success to become first lady of Arkansas, then first lady of the United States. Then she won an easy race in liberal New York to become its junior senator. As a senator she accomplished, well, nothing. Then she ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, losing to Barack Obama, who appointed her secretary of state. Despite extensive travels, Hillary’s achievements as secretary of state are essentially nil. As with Benghazi, most of her notable actions are screwups. In an apparent confirmation of the Peter Principle, however, Hillary is now back as the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016. Hillary is fortunate, not merely in her career path, but also in being the surprise recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars that have been rained on her and her husband both directly and through the Clinton Foundation. The Clinton Foundation has raised more than $2 billion in contributions. A substantial portion of that came from foreign governments. Some sixteen nations together have given $130 million. In addition, through speeches and consulting fees, more than $100 million has ended up in the pockets of the Clintons themselves. The foundation, although ostensibly a charitable enterprise, gives only one dollar out of ten to charity. It has also been disclosed that the Clintons have developed a penchant for traveling in high style, and use a substantial amount of donation money on private planes and penthouse suites. The rest of the loot seems to have been accumulated into a war chest that is at the behest of the Clintons and the Hillary presidential campaign.

I am excited to report that I may have gotten a job as an elevator attendant. It's a three-flight elevator, and my primary objective is to push one of three buttons, 1,2, or 3. I know, it seems complicated, but I am sure I am intellectually mature enough to handle it. I feel confident that I have this job because the owner of the elevator operating company, Mr. Pushkin, of Pushkin Push-button Services, shook my hand, winked at me, examined my index finger for button-pushing capabilities and then licked my armpit. It was very flattering. Since he is obviously a man who is continually rising in the elevator world, I asked him for some life advice. And do you know what he told me? He leaned in close so that his blue eyes were about two inches from my face, and then he leaned around to my ear and whispered, “Some men never leave the ground floor, and some men rise to the top. Still other men, like myself, enable these penthouse executives to reach the pinnacle of their company. But I never carry on conversation in an elevator, or at a urinal, and I’d never install a urinal on an elevator, for fear that men would be more inclined to converse freely as they traveled and emptied their bladder.” And without hesitation I replied, “Mr. Pushkin, I never shake a man’s hand after he just got done pissing, or shake my penis more than three times after pissing, but I am certain that I could operate an elevator equipped with a urinal. I know how to keep both my mouth and my pants zipped shut.” That’s when he glanced down and noticed that my fly was down. I was so embarrassed until he reached his hand down to my crotch and zipped me up as he winked and said, “It happens to the best of us.” And that’s when I noticed that not only was his fly unzipped, but his penis had been hanging out the whole time he’d been talking to me.

Something diseased and furry had crawled into her mouth and expired while she slept. That was the only possible explanation as to why Neve had a rancid taste in her mouth and a heavy, viscous paste coating her teeth and tongue. ‘I think I’m dying,’ she groaned. The wretched state of her mouth was the least of it. There was a pounding in her head, echoed in the roiling of her gut, and her bones ached, her vital organs ached, her throat ached, even her hair follicles ached. ‘You’re not dying,’ said a voice in her ear, which sounded like nails scraping down a blackboard, even though Max’s voice had barely risen above a whisper. ‘You’ve got a hangover.’ Neve had had hangovers before and they just made her feel a tiny bit nauseous and grouchy. This felt like the bastard child of bubonic plague and the ebola virus. ‘Dying,’ she reiterated, and now she realised that she was in bed, which had been a very comfy bed the last time she’d slept in it, but now it felt as if she was lying on a pile of rocks, and even though she had the quilt and Max’s arm tucked around her, she was still cold and clammy. Neve tried to raise her head but her gaze collided with the stripy wallpaper and as well as searing her retinas, it was making her stomach heave. ‘Sick. Going to be sick.’ ‘Sweetheart, I don’t think so,’ Max said, stroking the back of her neck with feather-soft fingers. ‘You’ve already thrown up just about everything you’ve eaten in the last week.’ ‘Urgh …’ Had she? The night before was a big gaping hole in her memory. ‘What happened?’ ‘I don’t know what happened but I got a phone call from the Head of Hotel Security at three in the morning asking me if I could identify a raving madwoman in a silver dress who couldn’t remember her room number but insisted that someone called Max Pancake was sleeping there. They thought you might be a hack from the Sunday Mirror pretending to be absolutely spannered as a way of getting into the hotel.’ ‘Oh, no …’ ‘Yeah, apparently Ronaldo’s staying in one of the penthouse suites and I saw Wayne and Coleen in the bar last night. Anyway, as you were staggering down the corridor, you told me very proudly that you’d lost your phone and you’d just eaten two pieces of KFC and a bag of chips.’ ‘KFC? Oh, God …’ ‘But I wouldn’t worry about that because after you’d tried to persuade me to have my wicked way with you, you started throwing up and you didn’t stop, not for hours. I thought you were going to sleep curled around the toilet at one point.’ ‘Goodness …