Kept: A Comedy of Sex and Manners

by Y. Euny Hong

  On top of all that, aristo parents place restrictions on the kinds of friends their children are allowed to have: friends must be from the right sort of family, which means those families that engage in all the above prejudices. But a family that is snobby enough to pass muster is probably too snobby to let their child be friends with you.

  Most people envision aristos as being social butterflies and attending parties constantly. That may have been true at one point, but in the latter day, more often than not, old families without money are extremely antisocial, even agoraphobic. They are at once too proud and too ashamed to consort with outsiders.

  From the day you are born until the day you leave home for university, you never have a friend over at your house for dinner. Your parents’ absurd explanation is that they don’t have liability insurance. To avoid having to return invitations, they forbid you, on pain of thrashing, to eat or drink anything other than water at a friend’s house. Anyone who starts to become close to you is put off sooner or later by your coldness and your inability to give or receive hospitality. But no matter, because by early adolescence you have been fully indoctrinated in the belief that anyone outside your family is second-rate.

  Consequently, your kin become your best friends. You don’t spend too much time worrying about your future because you are too stupid to understand that while your family may be important, it is no longer influential. By the time you realize your mistake, it is too late. Which brings us to the present day: twenty-six, poor, congenitally incapable of holding down a job, and very lonely.

  Very few people can understand what that’s like. But now Madame Tartakov was giving me the opportunity to be surrounded by people who would understand me. At long, long last.

  Just as my two-week trial period at Madame Tartakov’s was drawing to a close, the Fates stepped in to seal the deal. The diabolical manager of my apartment building finally let the ax fall, and got me evicted. Never mind why. But it meant that I could never rent again in the city.

  I entered my apartment for one last time, packed the rest of my belongings, and left, but not before stuffing the toilet with rubbish and then flooding it.

  When I arrived at Madame Tartakov’s, she smiled, took my head into her perfumey bosom, and commanded, “CRY.” I affected sobbing noises, and then sneezed into her chest. I was allergic to her perfume. She yelled, “Merde!” and pushed me away.

  *“This is not a bordello.” Madame Tartakov had the Russian ballerina’s penchant for blabbing in French. My reasons for engaging in this same habit are my own.

  3

  The Anthology of Pros

  I AM TEN TIMES prettier than my intelligence would warrant, and ten times cleverer than such a lovely girl has any right to be. This has been the origin of all my life’s sorrows, for one attribute gets me only so far before the other undermines it.

  In particular, I have been victimized by men who like brainy girls. Of the manifold ways that a woman can be objectified, by far the worst is to be wanted for her mind.

  I am sick of nervy brain fetishists, mouth breathers whispering amorous effluvia into their pillows. Such men have the unmerited reputation of being gentle and deep, but in fact they are more narcissistic than any other type of male. Their pursuit of their intellectual equal is an exercise in self-congratulation. To wit, a Frankish boy once told me, “I find your correct use of the subjunctive to be highly erotic.”

  Why does this happen so often? We can draw answers from the Mozart opera The Magic Flute. One of the characters, named Papageno, wears a parrot costume and plays the glockenspiel. He spends the whole first act longing to find a lady-love with whom to share his nest. And when he does find her, it’s none other than Papagena, who, as the name suggests, is the mirror image of himself: a lady in a parrot costume who parrots him in her behavior. Love is inherently narcissistic. You fall in love most easily with yourself.

  But the dynamic between a courtesan and her companion is completely different. It has to be. It is a culture built upon the man’s adulation of the woman.

  I booked an appointment with Dr. Spero, snip-snip, and for six weeks my barren womb recuperated tranquilly at Madame Tartakov’s house.

  During this idyll, Heike undertook the task of educating me.

  “Repeat after me,” she said one day when she was walking me through the “Precious Modern Objects” unit of her lesson plan. She held up a large pink glass bowl decorated with green glass flowers, one of Madame’s tchotchkes. She said, with rolling Rs, “Reticello.”

  “Reticello,” I repeated.

  “And why is it called that?” she said.

  “Because of the reticulum design on the glass,” I said with an air of tedium. “Heike, what man would care about my knowledge of Venetian glass?”

  “Say ‘Murano glass,’ and you’d be surprised how often you can slip it into conversation,” said Heike. “Um Gottes Willen, what are you doing? Stop that!”

  “What? I just scratched my nose. The side of my nose. It’s not like I was picking it.”

  “That’s not the point. You have to contain your movements, Judith. You can’t let it all just hang out. Like your laugh, for example. It’s too loud, and definitely don’t clap your hands together when you laugh; nothing is that funny.”

  Odd; my parents have been telling me the same thing for years. Little did they know how useful their comments would prove in a bordello.

  Heike continued, “Okay, now feel these ridges —”

  There was a crash. She had passed me the bowl without my expecting it, and it slipped out of my hands.

  “Verdammte Scheisse,” she said.* “You’d better let me say I dropped that or Madame will add it to your tab.”

  One day Heike showed me pictures of her family castle in Büdingen. “Oh, is this your sister’s wedding?” I asked, as some of the photos were of a wedding party.

  “I don’t know those people, actually,” she said. “We often let out the castle for weddings. You will get married there one day, yes? We’ll all be your bridesmaids.”

  The thought of a wedding party full of courtesans made me think of an old joke. “Have you heard this one?” I asked Heike. “Three professors working on the Oxford English Dictionary spot a group of women of ill repute. They argue over what such a group should be called. One professor suggested, ‘a jam of tarts.’ Another suggested, ‘a collection of trollopes.’ But they all agreed the third professor’s suggestion was best: ‘an anthology of pros.’”

  “Das ist ja Klasse!” exclaimed Heike.** “That is what we shall call ourselves. Madame Tartakov’s Anthology of Pros.”

  We lived in Arcadia, this Anthology of Pros, this International House of Prostitutes.

  DURING THIS TIME, I saw little of Madame. Occasionally she would pass me in the kitchen, slap my bottom, and say things like, “Stop eating all my fig jam.”

  Toward the end of my recovery, however, she began to take a deeper interest in my personal habits. Once we got into a little tiff, because she had thrown out my shampoo and replaced it with products of her own choosing.

  “IS BULLSHIT, YOUR SHAMPOO,” she yelled. I would soon learn that this was her natural speaking voice. “What for do you want to smell like eggnog?”

  “But it’s from Switzerland,” I said insistently.

  “In this house, only Kérastase product for hair,” she said.

  Then one Tuesday night in late July, she announced, “Is time. Tomorrow I auction off your maidenhood.”

  “My maidenhood?”

  “Is manner of speaking.”

  She spent all of the next day preparing me. She hollered, “On counter is very brown bananas. Peel and put in your bra. No only overnight, then you throw banana away; you don’t meet a man while you wear fruit in your bra, stupid girl. Will make the breasts float; is old trick of Gabor sisters. Then bath at three o’clock. Then I exfoliate your back, because you will wear Dolce & Gabbana dress tomorrow night, who is backless. Wear girdle.” She pinched my middle.


  “No way am I wearing a girdle,” I said, covering my waist protectively.

  “Aphrodite’s secret to seducing men was magic girdle. You are surprised I know this, but I know. Wear La Perla bra and panties.” The latter had set her back four hundred dollars, for which she was presumably expecting reimbursement at some later date.

  “Why the La Perla? I have to have sex with him tonight? The weather’s too hot.”

  “No, darling. Why you American girls always wear pretty dress, ugly underwear? Is bullshit. When bell rings, no coming down stairs like young hussy. You wait in room until I call you down to parlor.”

  At six I was summoned to the sitting room to meet a man bearing a Bacchic expression. He had fine facial bones tapering to a small chin, very full lips, and eyes so glistening they appeared almost to be dipped in glycerine. He wore a white Tolstoyan shirt with billowy sleeves and a wide collar that exposed part of his chest. Except for his slightly glam-rock effeminacy, he had the manner of the corsair about him. We were startled to see each other.

  Madame said, “Judith, please meet Mr. Yevgeny Slivovitz. Is classical violinist, but not faggot. And you, Slivovitz, this is Judith.” I would later learn that in such situations, it is customary for the man to be introduced by his full name, and a courtesan only by her first name.

  Madame Tartakov continued, “Princeton graduate!”

  “Yale, damn it,” I corrected indignantly.

  She barreled on. “Very knowledgeable for opera and classical music, also literature, art. Is next to line for Korean throne.”

  “It’s not quite like that,” I tried to explain, but she cut me off.

  “Is cheeky,” she continued, “but virtuous, more or less. And she likes to eat.” She pinched my middle.

  “That’s okay, so do I,” said Yevgeny. I was always very susceptible to voices, and Yevgeny’s captured my heart instantly. Voice teachers will always tell you to sing not from the throat but from the diaphragm; Yevgeny’s voice seemed to come from someplace deeper still. It resonated from his whole body like the sound of a flamenco guitar.

  “Ah, see, Slivovitz, she blushes!” spat Madame into Yevgeny’s face. “Is first time for both of you, this arrangement. This girl satisfactory for you, Yevgeny? Lovely, no? If she loses some weight.”

  “She is the very picture of good health,” he said, winking at me rakishly.

  *[Common expletive.]

  **“Cool.”

  4

  The Widening of One of Her Parts

  Comment une fille peut-elle être assez simple pour croire que la vertu puisse dépendre d’un peu plus ou d’un peu moins de largeur dans une des parties de son corps?

  How could a maiden be so naïve as to believe that her virtue depends upon the widening or narrowing of one of her body parts?

  — MARQUIS DE SADE, JUSTINE

  YEVGENY was not so much handsome as irresistible. For our first meeting, on a midsummer night, Yevgeny and I dined at Pantagruel. To my great discomfort, we were seated at a table in the center of the room. We were surrounded by a circumference of eyes, all fixed on Yevgeny. The waiter who took our aperitif order looked triumphant as he approached us, as if he’d just won the rock-paper-scissors contest to determine who would have the privilege of waiting on Yevgeny. He actually giggled as he announced the specials, ignored my remark that it was too early in the year for Elbe truffles, and took only Yevgeny’s drink order. Yevgeny had to call him back to the table to order my Kir Royal, at which point the waiter apologized only to Yevgeny. When the drinks arrived, the tray shook and the waiter mumbled, “I’m so stupid.” When Yevgeny said, “Not to worry,” I really thought the waiter was going to faint. Being with Yevgeny was ten times worse than being with Jung.

  But I could express no discomfort; I had to remain insouciant and desirable. Not sure how to achieve this, I sat dumbly while Yevgeny told me about his background. His father was once a great professor in Yugoslavia; now he owns several Internet cafés. His mother was a Hungarian, from the noble Esterhazy clan.

  After another waiter arrived to take our dinner order (this one behaved himself), I found my tongue. “Madame tells me you have an apartment in Paris; on the Île St. Louis,” I said.

  “That’s my friend’s flat,” he said. “I stay there sometimes.”

  “By ‘friend’ I assume you mean ‘wife.’”

  He shrugged.

  “Is your wife beautiful?” I asked.

  “Very,” he said.

  I choked on my water. “My fault for asking, really. In that case, why did you enter a courtesanal contract?”

  “She keeps a cold bed.”

  “A what? Oh.”

  I delicately dabbed the water I had dribbled on my face and changed the subject. “Do you do concerts often?”

  “Just twice a year or so,” he said.

  “So seldom?” I said.

  “It’s hard,” he said. “I’m not gay.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “My God, everything! Why do you think J — B — gets bookings all over the place? You can’t play with an orchestra these days unless you’re willing to sleep with the conductor.”

  My brow furrowed. I said, “I thought…I read somewhere that most of these orchestras do blind auditions, behind a screen.”

  That remark clearly made him uncomfortable. This was not going well. He began to focus on the nosegay arrangement on the table.

  The waiter arrived with our food. We both sprang on the poor man, so grateful were we that he relieved us from having to interact with each other. He placed a plate of steamed mussels before Yevgeny and a terrine de canard before me.

  “Fuckin’ A,” I said, distractedly. “I just realized I ordered a duck dish for both my appetizer and the main course.” Covering my mouth in horror, I said, “I’m so sorry about the swearing. That’s not very decorous. It just came out. I guess Madame’s spit and polish didn’t quite work.”

  Yevgeny laughed, a beautiful low, throaty laugh. “You needn’t feel so guarded,” he said. The ice had been broken at last.

  Feeling I could reveal a little more, I said, “I was a classically trained pianist, you know.”

  “What happened?”

  “When I was thirteen, I entered a competition sponsored by this big bank in Seoul. The Pathétique Sonata was my entry. After an uninterrupted winning streak in the qualifying rounds, I didn’t even place in the top five. My parents were so humiliated they made me quit.”

  “At least you were trained properly. I find it astonishing how many people are so accomplished in other ways but cannot play an instrument. It’s a dead giveaway that someone is nouveau riche — if they have a good, expensive education, travel extensively, speak several languages, but don’t have a classical-music education. It’s irrecoverable.”

  I heard the bright clarion of recognition, signaling a kindred spirit. “Yes,” I said. “I have always thought so.”

  He used one mussel shell as tweezers to pull out the flesh of another mussel, Belgian-style. This gesture endeared him to me; one can surely make a great many assumptions about a man who knows how to eat mussels.

  He said, “Maybe we shouldn’t rush into things. Maybe we’ll just do this kind of thing, meeting up for dinner, just casually, okay?” But his voice dripped with innuendo.

  Over coffee, he told me he had gotten us a room at the Mark.

  IN OUR HOTEL ROOM, Yevgeny walked over to the chair where I sat, and said with that hypnotic voice, “Don’t be nervous,” and leaned down to kiss my forehead. He did this so gingerly that I was unprepared for the violence with which he grabbed my shoulders and pulled me off my chair. I continued to clutch my champagne glass, though its contents had spilled.

  Yevgeny said, “Put down the glass.”

  “I’m not ready,” I said, flushed with panic.

  He then leaned toward me and bit down hard on the back of my hand, forcing me to release the glass onto the carpet.

&
nbsp; I cried out. My hand throbbed, the pain centering around two rows of white indentations that formed a small ellipse under my knuckles. He pushed me onto the thick carpet, which was wet with champagne. In a disingenuous gesture to fend him off, I gently kicked at his entrejambe. But where I expected to feel cloth, there was none; at some point or other, he had stealthily undone his Ermenegildo Zegna trousers.

  He sank to his knees over me. That was how Yevgeny and I first had commerce.

  Afterward, we moved to the bed, where I lay on my tummy smoking, propped up on my elbows. When you’re a paid companion, you can smoke in bed.

  He lay next to me, using the hotel stationery to blot the champagne stain on the knee area of his trousers. Then he turned to face me and said, “What makes two people from decent families do this sort of thing?”

  I said, “Everyone should have the companionship they feel they deserve, even if they have to go through a woman like Madame Tartakov to find it.”

  “I suppose,” he said. He lay flat on his back and rested his head in his palms so that his elbows jutted sideways. “I hope you’re not offended by my question. This is delightful. But I admit I’m kind of disappointed.”

  “Why?” I thought I might cry.

  “Don’t look at me like that. All I meant was that in bed, you feel like any other woman. Well, except for a few things, I guess. Your skin is almost powdery. He looked at my backside with detachment. “It looks like a sculpture.”

  “A Michelangelo or a deformed Henry Moore head?” I asked.

  He said, “Your skin is very…taut.”

  “Taut.”

  “Yeah, I mean, there’s just the right amount of skin for the body you have.”

  “Why? Do other girls have large patches of their innards exposed?”