Working Sex

by Annie Oakley

  And you? Burt asked.

  Mary Elizabeth, I said. Someone gasped. That wasn’t my name at all.

  I don’t want you taking dates with him outside the house, Karen said sternly.

  Look! MaryLiz shook the heavy binder with its sheaf of schedule at the madam’s chubby cheeks. Three weeks he’s already scheduled with me.

  See? Karen scowled suspiciously. It’s not that I’m not happy for you . . .

  Uh-huh, MaryLiz cut in, her mouth thin.

  I am! Karen insisted. I just don’t want you breaking the house rules. House rules apply for everyone, even Burt Starr.

  That was the week there was a scandal at home. MaryLiz and her roommate, our roommate, had a wine party. They bought a bunch of bottles of wine and invited over friends, mostly men, all straight. The men were intrigued and delighted with MaryLiz’s new lesbianism. Most of them had fucked her. They teased, flirted, passed her joints they’d rolled nimbly, their eyes stuck on her cleavage. I lingered in the back, wished for cigarettes. Wished MaryLiz wasn’t such a hypocrite about vices. Pot was great to smoke, but cigarettes were poison. She’d caught me smoking one in the backyard once, pointed and laughed. Whoa you look really cool smoking your cigarette. I bet you feel really cool, do you feel real cool? What are you, thirteen? MaryLiz had a thing about alcohol, too, about beer, vodka, gin—the stuff I liked. Somehow, wine was different. Especially if you knew each bottle’s origin myth, especially if you’d really laid some cash down on it, blowing much of Burt Starr’s outrageous first tip. Especially if you got it at a Brookline wine shop, as opposed to a liquor store in Jamaica Plain.

  After the party, MaryLiz looked in the wooden box where we kept our cash and discovered five hundred dollars missing. She screeched and hollered. She rolled wine into a thin glass, poured it purple down her throat, slammed the delicate thing down on the table. She declared one friend, Tony, the thief. Tony had gone into the room where the box was.

  Everyone Did, I reminded her.

  No, it was Tony.

  The roommate was crestfallen. Tony was her good friend. Now she would have to hate him.

  Maybe You Just Spent It, And Forgot? I asked hesitantly.

  Fuck off, MaryLiz spat. Her cleavage was speckled with burgundy freckles, spilled wine.

  Tony was tall and gangly, Italian, his hair a thick dark wave on his head. As far as MaryLiz’s crew of straight dudes went, he wasn’t so bad. Better than her ex-boyfriend, the painter, whose hair was too long and who looked right through me. Better than her other ex-boyfriend with the grown-out Mohawk and the going-nowhere punk band. Better than the upwardly mobile city planner who talked down to everyone but spoke to MaryLiz in a hushed and confidential voice. Tony wasn’t so bad. He was the only one who hadn’t fucked MaryLiz, who didn’t hold it over me on some invisible thread. Now he was a thief and cut off. The next day MaryLiz returned with big shopping bags from Jordan Marsh, new boots, a new dress.

  Wow, I said, uncomfortable.

  What? she snapped. Do you know how much money I’m getting off Burt Starr?

  No, I said. She hadn’t told me.

  Exactly. She brought the dress from the shopping bag, shook it out.

  The roommate confronted Tony, who denied everything. Who was hurt and insulted and confused.

  “Maybe there was a mistake? The roommate suggested hopefully.

  “If I see him near this house I will call the fucking police on him, MaryLiz threatened. He didn’t just steal from me, he stole from Darlene, too.

  They both looked at me, expecting some emotion. The missing $500 had come from our communal fund, money we socked away for our shared, lesbian future. When we would move to someplace natural and grow food, have a baby, open an art gallery.

  i woke up anxious. My guts were my alarm clock. I sat on the toilet, groggy, heaving my self out from inside myself. The sink streamed loud water to drown out my miserable sounds. Something was wrong, something was wrong. The anxiety was an energy, an electrical current swirling in my belly and tickling up and down my limbs. Every morning it was the same.

  I walked back into the bedroom I shared with MaryLiz, our futon on the dusty floor. Nothing on the walls, not much in the way of furniture. Who was MaryLiz? You couldn’t form a guess by a glance at her room. You would think the person hadn’t fully moved in yet, that there were boxes stuffed with personality waiting to be unpacked. I crawled into bed, stirring her. What? Her eyes cracked open.

  Everything’s Okay? I asked. We’re Okay? Everything’s Okay?

  Everything’s fine. She rolled over, slinging an arm around me. Her voice was husky and affected, a comforting lilt and breathy tone infusing her words. Everything is totally okay. Okay?

  You Love Me? The electrical tingle became a fresh hot wave, molten and thick, shame.

  Of course I love you. I love you so much. Go back to sleep, okay? Stoned or half-asleep, MaryLiz could muster comfort. During the day it was different.

  Burt Starr was really starting to happen. He was talking the talk, the talk he was famous for in whorehouses throughout Boston. He wanted to save Veronica. She was too good, too pure and classy, to do this work. He had feelings, real feelings, for her. Did she have them, too? He thought maybe she felt the same. He could feel it, she thought he was different from the other men. They had a connection. He had a lot of money, he could help her. He would love to help her.

  MaryLiz responded in kind. She didn’t like this work, wanted to get out. She had dreams, she just needed love, and support. Financial support. She had feelings for Burt, too. Burt was classy, he was kind, generous, he wasn’t like the other men. She told him what he wanted to hear: The other men, they’re animals. Savage. Base. They tore at her precious body, they cared not for her. Burt Starr was not like these other men. He wasn’t a john, he wasn’t a trick. Never mind that he hadn’t had a relationship with a woman who wasn’t a prostitute in his entire life. That he went through this cycle with hundreds and hundreds of girls, his finances and his capacity to be taken in by whores unfathomably deep. Yes, Veronica said. Yes, I feel the connection, too. Yes. Yes yes yes, yes to everything. She would love to be helped by him.

  MaryLiz had a decision to make. Stick it out and bag the full potential of riches Burt Starr would offer. Or, play Burt Starr fast and hard and split town.

  Split Town? I was alarmed.

  I’m sick of Boston. Let’s go, she said. I’ll go first and you follow. You meet me.

  Meet You Where?

  Colorado. New Mexico. Arizona. I’ll let you know. Don’t force me to have a plan just because you can’t deal with freedom.

  I was stung. I could deal with freedom. I loved freedom. In fact, freedom was my favorite thing. I was so free when I had met MaryLiz—I was defending abortion clinics and getting drunk and playing Casanova with strangers in gay disco bathrooms. I was so devoted to freedom that I had become a hooker. It is, after all, just another word for nothing left to lose. Was that true? That was propaganda. What was freedom? The pulse of horrible energy that vibrated my body awake each morning? The push and clench that wrung me out, emptied me of everything.

  Despite the eventual promise of a car, MaryLiz decided to play Burt hard and fast. He would place a deposit on a gorgeous, Back Bay apartment. The kind of Newbury Street brownstone where a contemporary kept lady would reside, perpetually reclining, decadently idle, in a suspended state of awaiting her sugar daddy. The place was expensive. The deposit was first, last, and security. It was a bundle. She would meet Burt at a café in Back Bay and they would do it together, like a pair of giddy newlyweds. I wondered how many times he had done this with other girls, how the girls had acted. Was MaryLiz fundamentally different than any of them? Was she more sincere, more believable? Was there anything beside Burt’s own mental illness that encouraged him to believe that this time would be different?

  The night before the deposit date, MaryLiz and I drank cocktails at Club Cafe. A snobby, upscale gay boy video bar. Club A-Gay, my fag fr
iend called it. Before hooking up with MaryLiz, I would never have come to such a place. Or, rather, I would come to it for the express purpose of being obnoxious, getting kicked out. We would be underage, carrying fake IDs. We would smoke in the nonsmoking section and mock the clean gay boys in their designer clothes, we would tell them to fuck off when they stared at us too long. We would dance where there was no dancing and park it where boys were trying to get their groove going to the generic house music, standing stock-still and bored, smoking. Now I sat at a little table with MaryLiz, a plate of appetizers in the center of the brushed steel, wine for her and gin and tonic for me. I’d rather be at Jacques, the dive trans bar a few blocks away, playing Guns and Roses pinball and drinking bottles of Red Stripe while mean trans women insulted the audience in between lip-synchs of Mariah Carey. But MaryLiz hated the trans women. She thought they were misogynist and unnatural. I had persuaded her to come once, and one lady, a hefty redhead, sneered at us and called us fish. I’d lost. It was Club Cafe from now on.

  MaryLiz’s beeper beeped. It was Burt Starr. It had been Burt Starr beeping her all night long. And she had to respond, every time. It was the Eve Of. The night before the Big Day. He was feeling insecure. It had suddenly occurred to him that MaryLiz might be playing him. That MaryLiz maybe did not love him after all. I have to, MaryLiz shrugged, flashing me the screen of her beeper with its string of now-familiar digits.

  We were on a date. MaryLiz would be leaving soon, very soon, for the Southwest, some indeterminate, dusty location. She would take the entirety of the money we’d saved together, in addition to whatever she got off Burt Starr. She would use it to secure a house for us, a quaint adobe with a wide porch strewn with dried chilis. At the end of the month, I would move into the whorehouse. It was temporary. We repeated these words, MaryLiz and me, Karen and me. Temporary. Just until MaryLiz found our desert dream house, and then I would be gone. I would join MaryLiz and the savings we kept in the wooden box.

  Come with me, MaryLiz said. She was adequately stoned, it kept her soft. There was something in her eyes, perhaps it was love. I didn’t dare ask. Nothing kills your chances for getting love like acting like you need it. I remembered who I’d been when MaryLiz had found me. A rogue in the handicapped stall, a femme girl’s opera glove balled in my mouth, her hand up my cunt. MaryLiz had walked in on us, stared a second too long, and left. It was the first incident of lesbiana she’d ever witnessed. Her gay boyfriend had brought her to the club. The femme girl left first, and I stayed behind, cleaning myself up. When I left the stall there was MaryLiz, leaning up against the tampon machine. I want to do that to you, too.

  I followed MaryLiz to the bank of pay phones in the hallway. She punched Burt Starr’s numbers with her fingernails. They’d grown in when she’d stopped fucking me, like weeds overtaking a neglected lot.

  Hi, she breathed into the receiver. The hallway was quieter, but still loud. The roar of gay boys talking and laughing, the relentless thump of their music. Burt, it’s me, hi. I miss you, too. She paused, listening, a finger plugged in her other ear. Everything’s fine. Her voice was husky and affected, a comforting lilt and breathy tone infusing her words. Everything is totally okay. Okay? The electricity in my body, there beneath the numb of the gin, froze. A freezing spread down my limbs and through my arms, an ice age. A glacial advance, thick and frozen and terrible, ice scraping the softness away. Of course I love you, she continued. I felt dizzy. Was she talking to me? Those were my words, my tone. I love you so much, Burt. Go back to sleep, okay?

  To meet Burt Starr MaryLiz wore her wig out into the world, with a long flowered dress and her pumps. The wig looked so wiggy to me; I didn’t understand how Burt believed it. Didn’t he touch her head? Couldn’t he see the bobby pins stabbing into the woven scalp? MaryLiz met Burt at a popular Back Bay café, and sat, for twenty nerve-wracked minutes, across from Tony the accused thief, who was having a coffee with a couple other guys MaryLiz knew. Again and again their eyes scanned over her, and looked away. Again and again they failed to recognize her, and she sat, clenched in fear of their next glance, the eventual MaryLiz? Is that you? They would laugh at her wig and make to pull it off. They would gesture at Burt and ask, Is this your father? MaryLiz was so nervous, Burt had to inquire.

  Just excited, she said weakly, with a smile. They left the café unrecognized. Burt paid in cash, put the flat in Veronica’s name. MaryLiz froze. Would that be a problem? It was too late now to tell Burt Starr she’d lied about her name. She had assured him she was the rare whore who kept her real name. I don’t like to lie, she’d said, swelling his heart with love. It would have to be Veronica. He gave her the receipt, a gesture of trust.

  Nonrefundable after this weekend, the property manager said. MaryLiz slid the paper into her purse. They lunched at the Ritz Carlton and made plans to shop for furniture. He handed her money for the meantime, for odds and ends she might need. It went in the purse with the receipt.

  The next day MaryLiz wore the same blonde wig and a different floral dress back to the apartment. She got the money back. The property manager didn’t want to give it, but he did. She wore him down with sweetness and threats. MaryLiz was high with it, mania shot from her face. She loaded the car. Together we lugged a trunk, heavy with all her clothes, into the street. The wooden box with our savings went into the glove box. MaryLiz was regretful. She looked at me, her lip caught in her teeth. I should’ve waited for the car, she said. He bought that girl that Tanya knows a Ferrari. She lunged at me, hitting my cheek with a sudden kiss. Come on, she said. Snap out of it. I’ll call you from the road. Okay? I nodded. Who knows where we’ll live. It’s exciting, isn’t it? Her car left the street, its backside heavy with the weight of all her things.

  That night I packed up the rest of the room, what was left over, my things. There wasn’t much. It fit in a mediumsized duffel bag. My records, mostly new-wave British and goth-core bands from the last decade, would be left in the basement. The Vietnam vet who lived upstairs would eventually find them and sell them, same with the books I left behind. I ate oatmeal for dinner and flipped through the roommate’s staticky television. I settled on Oprah. Her guests were two women who had been swindled by men they’d dated, professional con men.

  How did it feel to learn that he was wanted by the law for having done this to other women? Oprah asked.

  Horrible, the woman sputtered. Oprah handed her a tissue. I shut off the TV.

  At work Burt Starr was ringing the phone off the hook. Apparently, MaryLiz had called him from the road. She had told him she was a lesbian and told him to fuck off. Burt was crazed; it had happened again. A lesbian! he howled into the phone. He was outraged. He wanted to report us to someone, but there was no one who could help him. He’d been swindled by a prostitute. Again. She should not even have been allowed to work there! He screamed in my ear. Lesbians should not be allowed to work there! That’s unethical! You are misleading your clients! I laughed at him. It shut him right up. Are you laughing? He puffed. Are you laughing at me?

  You’re deluded, I told him. The girls in the room with me gaped.

  Pardon me?

  Delusional, I said. You’re delusional. They would tell Karen, and she would be furious. She would fire me and not let me sleep in the rooms at night, but I didn’t care. MaryLiz would be calling for me any minute. I would meet her in the desert, and we would sit on our long clay porch and drink wine. The chili peppers would rattle in the gentle wind, and the sun would set orange and purple above our heads.

  devices: a short play

  Naima Lowe

  Characters

  JOE: middle-aged, hairy, fat, with a husky voice and a great love for marijuana

  MARILYN: twenties, soft, fat, smooth brown skin, with a sultry young voice and hips that swing for effect

  Scenes

  PROLOGUE: The space between then and now, made from voices

  THE BEGINNING: Along a hotel hallway, anticipatory anxiety

  THE MIDD
LE: In a cheap hotel room, a space inhabited by very little emotion

  THE END: In a cheap hotel room, a space inhabited by an uncommon type of desire

  EPILOGUE: The space between now and then, made from voices

  Prologue

  (In a blackout, a recorded message on a cell phone is heard.)

  JOE. Marilyn, this is Joe. I’m here. It’s the Bayside Inn, 135 Bayside Drive, Chelmsford, MA, Room 150. One, five, zero. The name is Joe Trillo.

  MARILYN. (Still in darkness.) Fuck, what was that? (Buttons are pushed and the recording is heard again.)

  The Beginning

  (In darkness, the sound of footsteps along a very long carpeted corridor)

  MARILYN. 112, 113 . . . Uhhh, no, the other way. 123, 124 . . . (more footsteps, first going faster, and then slowing down.) 147, 148, 149 . . . Well . . . (She takes deep breaths, and then knocks on the door. The sounds of the door opening.) Hi, I’m Marilyn.

  JOE. I’m Joe, good to finally meet you.

  The Middle

  (Lights up on Marilyn and Joe naked in a motel room bed. Joe looks tired, sweating and breathing hard a little bit. He starts rolling a joint.)