"Birthday" by Joe Gilford

From TRUTH BE TOLD's June 10th, 2025 show ("First Love/First Lust") Joe Gilford's "Birthday" tells of the  eternal battle between love and fear... and about his very noisy first time in 1960's Greenwich Village.

Joe Gilford is a playwright and screenwriter living in Brooklyn. His play "Finks" was a Drama Desk nominee and his new screenplay "Chiaroscuro" is in pre-preparation, for filming in 2027. He teaches screenwriting at NYU and spends most days gazing out his window hoping for the best. More at joegilford.com 

TRUTH BE TOLD was created by Susan Kim and David Zellnik and each episode was produced and scored by Eric Svejcar. Logo designed by Joseph Zellnik.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hello and welcome to the podcast Truth Be Told, Season 1, Love and Monsters. Each of these 14 episodes will feature one story performed at Ensemble Studio Theater in New York City as part of the live event Truth Be Told. This story night was created by Susan Kim and David Zelnick and features members of EST and friends who tell heartbreaking, embarrassing, hilarious, true stories, all based on the theme. This seven-week season will draw from our first two sold-out evenings in 2025. The first being First Love, First Lust, and the second, Scary Monsters. Please note, our first night was not captured live, so this season's love stories were recorded and scored in a studio. And now, without further ado, a story on love and lust in 1960s Greenwich Village, written and performed by Joe Guilford.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

So much of what's happened to me in my life has to do with this war of hesitation, satisfaction, fear versus ecstasy. Like right now. Oh, one warning. This story contains loud moans. It's December 6, 1968, my 16th birthday. As I had for my past few birthdays, my parents took me to Trader Vic's, a famous, wonderful Polynesian-themed restaurant under the Plaza Hotel. Always special, I drank a virgin planter's punch served in a real pineapple. We got home to our Bank Street apartment around 8 30. That was it, I thought. Stretch out with some TV. I had plans to get together with some friends the next night, so it would be a quiet night at home. But then the phone rang. My mother, the Empress of the telephone, picked up. It's your cousin Robbie. My cousin Robbie and I were the same age. He was my second cousin on my father's side, and he also lived in the village. We had grown up together. We had been in the same class since kindergarten. We were getting through high school together too, smoking lots of weed and being village teenagers. Robbie was gay, had always been gay, and now he ran with quite a fast crowd of grown up people. I picked up the phone. Joe, happy birthday. Thanks, I said. Listen, I'm over at Danielle's. She wants to talk to you. Danielle was a woman who kept the company of gay men. There was a rhyming slang expression for it back then, which we can't say anymore. She was twenty two and lived with two nice gay guys who were Robbie's friends. I'd met her a few times when we were over there at her pad smoking weed, one hundred o nine Waverly Place, right next to Washington Square. She was a generously built bleach blonde from Biloxi, Mississippi, who worked as a waitress at some coffee shop on Fifth Avenue. She was funny and easygoing and very Mississippi. I held the phone thinking she just wanted to wish me a happy birthday. Joey, she said. Hi, I said. Happy birthday, Joey. Thanks. And I want you to come over here and fuck me right now. I hesitated just from the sheer shock of it, the amazing weight of it, the the mitzvah of it. Yes, fear. But with the promise of ecstasy. I have to add here that I was at that moment still a virgin. Please take my word for it. I had tried not to be a virgin as hard as I possibly could since I was about thirteen. I had been making out with Amy Lieberman pretty steadily in sixth grade, and after a succession of neighborhood girls, by the age of fourteen, I had developed a very steady relationship, actually more of an agreement with Stephanie Wilder, whenever we were at a makeout party. The agreement being that she and nobody else could pull me into a nearby closet to make out with absolutely no hesitation, and that I wouldn't do this with any other girl. She had rights to me. I agreed. We had lots of makeout parties, jiggling to the Beatles and Motown and the Stones, dancing and grinding to come softly by the fleetwoods, with someone by the record player making sure it never ended. Our parents weren't so much permissive as completely defeated in trying to control it. There was no way to stop us once we got going. And I remember on Martha's Vineyard, I was fifteen, a lost opportunity, a bunch of teenagers in unparented house peeling off into other rooms. I had my pants off. She had hers off. I couldn't believe that she wanted to do it. But I chickened out. I'd been lectured so much about getting a girl pregnant that the fear far outweighed the ecstasy. And let's just say that's a lot of fear against a decent promise of ecstasy. So there I was, holding the phone, hearing Danielle's invitation, and it took almost no time for me to say, okay, be right over. I don't remember walking over. It may have been the first use of a transporter machine in New York City. When I arrived, Robbie was still there, also one of Danielle's roommates. I was welcomed with happy birthdays, and a joint was lit in my honor. We made small talk, and after the joint had gone around a few times, Robbie and the roommate put on their coats and left. And now I was alone with Danielle. Nothing took very long. She got right on me, kissing me. We hit the sofa necking and touching. I'm doing everything I had learned up to this point, and Danielle showed no resistance, made no suggestions. She was all about progress. Our clothes were off, and we were just going at it on the sofa. The kissing, the touching, the physical adjustments were all going so well. I had never been completely naked with a woman before. So now I'm surprised and nervous, but still enjoying it, like doing anything important for the first time. The ecstasy is building, but so is the fear. She was fleshy and free. I touched her wherever I wanted. She reciprocated. This was really new. This was great. Sex is great. But I was scared. What were we actually doing? Did I really have to know? And then the magical, unfamiliar, irretrievable moment was about to arrive. And without aiming or intending to, very smoothly and easily I crossed the threshold in every way. Still scared, of course, not knowing exactly what to do, but who needs to really know? I start to do what I think is suspected. Pushing nicely, not too quickly, not too slowly, in and out, in and out. It's easier than I expected. And it's great. And suddenly a shriek of agony. Was it pain? Oh god! Oh god! At first I think I'm hurting her. Are you okay?

SPEAKER_02 7:38

Oh god, yes, yes, fuck me, oh god, fuck me, please, Joey, fuck me.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

I'm only quoting.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

Oh God, fuck me, fuck me, please, fuck me, yes, fuck me.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

And so I keep going. And she keeps going. And then from the apartment above, the sound of pounding. Oh God! Oh god! And then from the next apartment, pounding on the wall, keep it down in there!

SPEAKER_02 8:04

Oh God, fuck me, please, fuck me!

SPEAKER_01 8:07

And I'm sorry, but I don't have the allotted time to continue for as long as it did. But it did for a respectable amount of time. And like the end of a roller coaster ride, things slowed to a stop. Two sated people panting to each other. It was quiet again. We laughed a little. We smoked a cigarette, of course. I'm sorry, she said, about the noise. You got me excited. We jumped into the shower together, another first for me. It was so sixties. It was my first time, I told her. I know. I wanted your birthday to be special. Thank you, I said. Thanks a lot. We dressed. She said she had to get up early. That was okay. I floated home, a cigarette dangling from my teenage mouth, going into full Belmond for about 15 lonely minutes. Next day I called Robbie and thanked him. Danielle was very happy, he said. Wow. My first good review. Within a couple of weeks, though, I was ready to see her again. But I heard soon after that she'd gone back to Biloxi. I don't think I was in love with her, but a rematch would have been nice. And actually, Stephanie Wilder presented that to me bluntly and wonderfully about five months later. It was her first time. I was honored and I was grateful to Danielle. And that was real teen love. That lasted a while. Many years later, when I was involved with a woman with, let's say, similar levels of expression, I was again grateful to Danielle. I'd been seasoned, anointed. I was ready. It was a hot summer night. I must have left the window open, the fifth floor, and in the midst of our enjoyment, a voice came from the street. Hey, keep it down up there! I wanted to go to that window and shout, hey pal, what noise would you prefer? We're up here celebrating the joy of our human bodies. That's the sound of fear being crushed by ecstasy. So just shut up and listen. I thought for a moment and realized, we probably scared him. We frightened him with our ecstasy.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

Joe Guilford is a playwright and screenwriter living in Brooklyn. His play Finks was a drama desk nominee, and his new screenplay, Caroscuro, is in pre-preparation for filming in 2027. He teaches screenwriting at NYU and spends most days gazing out of his window, hoping for the best. More at joe guilford.com. Truth Be Told was created by Susan Kim and David Zelnick, and each episode was produced and scored by Eric Svakar. If you enjoyed this, please tell your friends and keep listening. More stories of love and lust will be released every Monday, and scary monsters every Thursday. And do hit like and subscribe, it really helps. Till next time, remember truth wants to be known. Yours too.