Night Town

by Cathi Bond

  “First warm it up.”

  A line of slimy lotion shot into the palm of my hand. It smelled of coconuts and pine needles. I tried not to focus on what was happening and think about girls.

  “Not too much. That stuff ain’t cheap.”

  It sure felt cheap to me. I slapped the lotion across his back and some squirted on the fitted white sheet.

  “You’re not greasing a pig here.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Rub the shoulders. Ah, that’s nice. Now take it down a bit. Trail your fingers over the skin, and it never hurts to talk. Guys like to hear a girl’s voice when she rubs him.”

  “What should I say?”

  “Not so loud. More like a purr and just don’t talk about yourself. Nobody cares about that.”

  That made sense. It was like being in one of Dad’s examining rooms, visiting with his patients. There were even red screens to change behind, only rather than slipping into a medical gown, I’d be taking off my top. Isabel never had to rub men to survive.

  “Not so rough.”

  “Sorry.”

  Ivan flipped over. I warmed more lotion in my hands and rubbed it onto his furry chest, pretending to work a stain out of a carpet.

  “Most of the guys will want you to rub their stomachs so they can stare at your tits.”

  “And if they try and touch them?”

  “Back up and tell ’em that you don’t do extras.”

  I nodded while I massaged, thinking about Dad playing ball on the lawn.

  “Don’t pull on the nipples. They’re sensitive.”

  “Really?”

  I thought men only cared about their penises.

  “You’ve got a way to go, but you’ve got good hands. Now let me rub those tits.”

  I put my hand out. “Five bucks.”

  Ivan slapped his gut and sat up. “You’ve got the job.”

  Ivan walked me back into the lounge. A girl with a huge red afro and hooped earrings sat in a puffy chair, jotting something into a ledger. Helen and Lily were talking about the newspaper boy, the one I used to know from The Steps, who’d recently been murdered. We all cried when we heard about it. His body had been found behind a dumpster at the back of another body rub parlour. The cops said he’d been sexually abused. How could anybody do something like that? He was only a kid.

  Helen looked up, flashing me one of her looks. “My, my, my. Look who’s here to rub old pervs.”

  “Shut up,” I replied.

  “Let’s keep it ladylike,” Ivan said, turning to the girl with the afro.

  “I’m Cindy,” she said, with a smile that revealed a golden tooth.

  Cindy went back to decoding her ledger while Helen and Lily explained the schedule. There were two shifts, noon to six and six to midnight, and depending on the day sometimes up to six girls working.

  “There’s more guaranteed action at night, but the creep potential’s higher,” Helen said.

  Lily advised me to get a steady roster of clients and service them during the day. Cindy looked up to make sure Ivan couldn’t hear.

  “Deal dope on the side,” she whispered.

  “What do you sell?”

  “Downers and junk. You want some?”

  “No, thank you.” I’d given that up.

  The rules were simple. The john –that’s what the customer was called –entered the lounge, looked at the ladies and selected one. The girl would slowly stand, smile seductively and take the john’s arm, walking him over to the manager’s wicket. From there Ivan would count the money and tell us what room was free.

  “And you go behind the screen and strip down,” Ivan added.

  “They’re about the titillation factor,” Helen said. “The longer it takes for you to take off your top, the more revved up they get.”

  Lily agreed. “It’s like a mini striptease.”

  “But you can’t hide back there. Remember, the clock is always ticking,” Helen said, looking over at Ivan. “’Cause if you do, he’ll dock your pay.”

  The girls were responsible for changing the bed after each rub. There was a laundry hamper in every room, usually situated near a lone straight-backed chair. Helen thought that Ivan had stolen the chairs from some restaurant and made the bed frames himself because they swayed whenever a fat john hopped up.

  “This is a topless rub. Don’t take off your panties,” Ivan said.

  “I don’t want to take off my underwear,” I replied, already more than a bit nervous about the idea of taking off my shirt.

  Ivan turned on the downstairs speaker so the guys could be lured upstairs by “Brown Sugar” or “Angie.” He said the Rolling Stones were an aphrodisiac.

  “It’s your job to show up clean and presentable,” he said, leaning out of the wicket. “I don’t want no whores working my place. I’ve got a reputation to think of. And wear something that shows off your titties.”

  We’d been working for four hours and only Cindy and Lily had been busy. Lily was up at Ivan’s wicket with another john.

  “If the rub costs twenty and I get five, that means I do six rubs a day at five bucks a rub and I’ll bring home thirty dollars. I’ll bank the money and retire after a couple of months.”

  “I haven’t retired yet,” Helen said, looking into a compact and applying a thick layer of eyeliner. Her green eyes locked on mine. The red thunderbolts she’d hennaed onto the sides of her blue hair reminded me of Zeus. “The only way you do that is if you do extras,” she added, glancing towards Lily.

  Lily was pulling the john by his tie, leading him out the door and down the hall.

  “What are extras?”

  Helen looked at me through a veil of false eyelashes. “Are you serious?”

  I hated it when Helen acted as if she had all the experience in the world. “Yes –”

  She crossed her legs –time for a lesson. “There’s hand jobs –that’s five bucks.”

  That’s what I’d done to Kenneth.

  Helen mimicked peeling a banana, opened her mouth and slowly brought her lips down over her thumb. “A blow job’s ten.”

  “Gross.”

  “A full out fuck is twenty and around the world is forty.”

  “What’s around the world?”

  “That’s the whole works. Plus,” she said, pointing at her bum.

  “No way!”

  I opened a worn copy of Hustler to look at the centrefold. I’d never let anybody put anything up there. The Playboy girls reminded me of naked cheerleaders, but the Hustler women had boobs that looked as if they’d been pinched too often. I shifted towards Helen.

  “So when are we going to the gay bars?”

  When she didn’t answer I moved even closer, fingers creeping across the back of the sofa until my arm settled around her shoulder. Helen looked at my hand, picked it up and flicked it off.

  “You said you’d take me out for my birthday but you didn’t,” I complained.

  I’d recently turned seventeen, and Helen bought a yummy chocolate cake and everyone sang. The downstairs door jangled, followed by a tentative shuffle of feet. Springing back from Helen, I held my breath as footsteps padded up the stairs. A tall, bone thin man wearing a beat-up black fedora poked his head around the door.

  “Come on in,” Ivan waved from the wicket. “We won’t bite. Will we, girls?”

  I sat up straight and tried to look welcoming but my legs kept squeezing themselves shut. Helen stretched out like a lazy tabby. The man stood in the doorway as if suspended in a magnetic field while Ivan ran out from behind the wicket.

  “Why don’t you meet the ladies?” Ivan asked, guiding the man in. Reluctantly, he allowed himself to be steered. “This is Mercedes,” Ivan said, indicating Helen, “and this is…”

  “Isabel,” I replied, remembering that you needed a fake name to protect your true identity.

  The tall, thin man suddenly realized he still had his hat on. Embarrassed, he snatched the fedora from his head and bowed. At least he ha
d good manners.

  “Who would you like?” Ivan asked.

  “What?”

  He was as new to this as I was –a virgin customer.

  “Which one of our lovely ladies would you like to give you a relaxing massage?”

  Helen readjusted herself on the sofa to look appealing, which was easy because she was incredibly sexy. I just sat there in my red cowboy shirt looking like a dog. Smiling as sweetly as I could, I asked the man how he was. That’s what Dad always did to break the ice. He smiled nervously at both of us and then took Ivan aside to wrangle over the price.

  “How much?” the man mumbled.

  “Twenty.”

  “What do I get?”

  “You get a slow sensual rub from one of these lovely young ladies.”

  “Are they naked?”

  “Topless,” Ivan replied. “And as you can tell, they’re both very well endowed.”

  The tall thin man snuck another peek. I grinned like an idiot, while Helen swung her boobs around. It reminded me of a song Aunt Anne used to sing: “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” The man pointed.

  “I’ll take Isabel.”

  My breath shot out in short anxious blasts when we reached the top of the stairs and walked down the long, narrow hallway. The red walls were covered with faded pin-ups, and some of the loose floor planks bounced when we stepped on them. The tall, thin man was close behind me, clutching his hat like a bouquet of flowers. I pushed open the door and saw the screen, the lotion and the bed.

  “Take your clothes off, hop up on the bed. And cover yourself with a towel.”

  The tall, thin man sat down, hat firmly clenched in both hands. “I don’t want to get undressed.”

  We looked at one another for a moment.

  “I don’t do extras.”

  “I don’t want you to.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  Was he a creep? My heart thumped.

  “There’s nothing I appreciate more than a healthy young body.” The hat bobbed up and down, shifting from hand to hand. “I want to watch you take your top off.”

  He stood up, removed a ten dollar bill from his wallet and set it on top of the sheet.

  “And I want you to make it nice and slow.”

  He bowed his head and sat back down, waiting for my answer. How did this fit into hand job, blow job, straight screw, or around the world? Helen didn’t say anything about this.

  “You can’t touch me.”

  “I don’t want to touch. I want to watch.”

  “But I’m supposed to rub you.”

  “Do you want to?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then why not just take the money?”

  Looking at the bill on the cot I considered the deal. I really didn’t want to touch him and this way I wouldn’t have to. We’d already spent nearly five minutes and that meant I only had fifteen to go. What was worse? Touching his body or showing him my boobs? If I rubbed him he’d see my boobs anyway so I was actually making ten dollars for free. Fifteen, when I counted in my commission.

  “Okay.” I snatched up the money and stuffed it into my pocket. “But you have to stay right there,” I added, backing up a wee bit. “You can’t move a muscle.”

  “Do you have any music?” he asked.

  I turned on the speaker from downstairs and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” rolled into the room. Slowly I undid the white snaps on Cope’s old red shirt while Mick growled. Thinking of Ginnie, I leisurely slid the fabric down over my shoulders, remembering the times we kissed in her bedroom as the sun came up. The red cotton teased over my back, slipping down and sliding over my breasts as the man set his hat on the floor and grabbed his knees. Looking down, I lightly touched my nipple and it sprang up. The tall thin man was breathing like Kenneth in the trunk of the car.

  As I swung my tits, he began to submit to the spell. I felt like Fernando the Amazing Hypnotist at the Sterling Fall Fair. Fernando swung a golden pocket watch and the subjects slipped into a hypnotic state. This was about power, and mine was absolute. Earlier I’d been really scared, wondering if I could take my top off in front of strange horny men, worried that they might attack me or maybe I’d turn into a pillar of salt like Lot’s wife. But this was different. My body was the boss in this room, not the men, and as long as I didn’t think about what was happening, everything would be fine. My body performed in this secret world, but my heart and soul were locked away like the ballerina in my music box where I’d crank the brass key, open the lid, and as the music played the dancer spun around. When the music finished I pushed the ballerina down, shut the lid and put the box away.

  The music ended and my cowboy shirt lay around my ankles –a pond of red fabric on the floor. I stood there in the middle of the dimly lit room, my breasts exposed to a faint breeze from the open window, while the tall, thin man stared at me.

  “Thank you,” he said and got up, crossed the room and walked out, shutting the door behind him.

  “You’re a whore,” said Helen, queen of the universe.

  “I am not. I’m trying to save some money just like you.”

  I tugged at the neck of my new Crime of the Century tee-shirt, looking for Hermann, now more a habit than anything else. Gabe had watched the streets for nearly two months and never saw him, so gradually I’d come out of hiding.

  Lily, Helen and I were at the Zanzibar playing Pong and drinking Zombies while a gorgeous girl swung around a brass pole, her long brown hair sweeping the stage floor. Lily twirled the little pink parasol while a white computerized ball bounced across the lime green screen.

  “What do you say, Lily?”

  “I think as long as you get paid it’s good.”

  Lily took a furtive sip. “Tell me if you see Gabe.”

  If Gabe knew she’d been drinking he’d start chirping, “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

  George arrived and set down another round of brightly coloured Zombies. He was the same waiter Vic and Cope had introduced me to.

  “Hey, George, if you do hand jobs are you a whore?” I asked.

  “Do you like it? Does it turn you on?”

  “No way.”

  He switched the ashtrays, placing a clean one in the centre of the table. “You’re only a whore if you like it. There was a girl where I grew up who you could find out in the bushes by the Esso station any Saturday night with her toes in her ears. Now that’s a whore.”

  “Does that mean I’m not a whore either?” Lily asked. “Even if I go a little bit further?”

  “Same rules. If you enjoy it, you’re a whore. If you’re not, you’re a businesswoman.”

  Lily slapped the table. “See?”

  Helen was wrong.

  George placed a Zombie and napkin in front of each of us. “The drinks are from the gentleman by the stage.”

  The tall, thin man sat alone. He was a tool and die maker from St. Catherine’s who lived with his mother, and he had become one of my regulars. After the first time with him I’d made a secret deal with myself. I’d never blow the guys or have sex with them, but what was wrong with helping Mother Nature fulfill a man’s natural urges? Sometimes when I was jerking a man off my head sent down alarming thought bubbles, but my body said, “Stop worrying, think of the money.” I chugged the Zombie and told my mind to shut up.

  Lily waved to him. “That’s the way to make good money.”

  “That’s the way to become thoroughly fucked up,” Helen said, taking a sip. “There are some things you just can’t justify. No matter how hard you try.”

  “Is that why you went asexual?” I asked. “I don’t get how you could just turn yourself off.”

  “I’m asexual because I can’t sell my body for money and then go home to someone I love.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it will fuck up the love and fuck up your head.”

  “But love’s supposed to be free,” I said. “And if so, why not share it?
”

  “If you share your body, you’re making love a commodity.”

  “You’re sharing your precious tits,” Lily said, javelining her pink parasol into the ashtray. “You’re no better than the rest of us. You just think you are.”

  “I’m not sucking them off.”

  Lily stared back. “We’re just trying to get ahead Helen. Why do you always have to run us down?”

  Now Lily’s feelings were hurt and Helen’s back was up. I dropped a tip on the table for George.

  “Let’s go,” I said. “Ivan’s going to wonder where we are.”

  Helen had to be wrong. I was just jerking the men off to save for a better life and Lily wanted to buy a house. How could that be bad?

  The tall, thin man pulled the door shut behind him. With winter here, it was chilly in the rub room, time for cheap Ivan to turn up the heat.

  “How’s your mother?” I asked.

  “She’s got arthritis in her toes.”

  “Make sure she elevates her feet.”

  The tall, thin man didn’t take his usual seat. Instead he shoved the bed across the room.

  “Is there anybody downstairs?”

  Warning crawled across my stomach as he started jumping up and down on the floor.

  “No.”

  Ivan was dragging trash to the dumpster and the other girls were busy with customers. If he tried to kill me nobody would hear.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, trying to calm down.

  The tall thin man had always been nice to me. He took off his jacket, folded it and set it on the floor, then off came his shoes, pants, shirt, socks and underwear. One by one, they were neatly folded, and added to the pile of clothing. Next he removed a twenty dollar bill from his wallet, placed it on the bed and sat down in the chair, stark naked, staring at me while I stared at the money. A police siren screamed in the distance.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want you to do jumping jacks with no bra, and no panties.”

  “That’s all?”