by Tracy Quan
Heroin. So that’s it. I was wondering how anyone with such a pronounced sweet tooth could be so skinny.
“Um—where is Hunts Point?” Allison humbly inquired.
“The Bronx,” Gretchen said with a knowing sneer.
I managed to introduce myself as “Um, Nancy, I’m a working girl.” That was all I wanted to say.
“Thank you so much for coming,” Roxana said to me. “We want you to think about joining this committee.”
“This committee?”
“This is the steering committee. We really feel the lack of your perspective around here.”
My perspective? Does that mean I should have worn my mink sweater after all?
Houston Street for a cab, I tried to give Allie moral support. “How can you be expected to know the geography of the Bronx? You have no reason to go there!” I carped. “Gretchen didn’t have to be so snotty about it.”
Ignoring my remarks, Allison gave me a curious look. “Why don’t you talk to her about your past?” she asked. “Didn’t you start working when you were fifteen?”
“That’s none of Gretchen’s business.” (Besides, I was still, technically, fourteen when I started hooking.)
“But you share a common experience as sex workers!”
“Gretchen and I have nothing in common. I never had to give a blow job to a cop, and I never worked on the street. And I’m beginning to wish I’d never told you anything about my life, because you obviously don’t understand it. Don’t you dare start talking to Gretchen about me! Do you hear?”
Allison blinked, hurt by my outburst, but not for long.
“You should reach out to her,” she said firmly. “I see a lot of potential for a mutually healing dialogue!”
“With Gretchen? She’s not interested in making friends with me. Or you, for that matter. Don’t kid yourself,” I snapped.
“NYCOT is committed to healing the divisions between sex workers. We Are All Bad Girls,” Allie intoned. “Roxana says we have to expect—embrace—our growing pains…The process of empowerment involves change, and change involves—” A vacant cab interrupted Allie’s train of thought, and we got in.
As we headed up First Avenue, Allison continued to chatter. “Change—sometimes even for the sake of change—can reveal our hidden strengths as agents of social change…” At Fifty-ninth Street, she ran out of steam and changed the subject. “I’m going to be interviewed next week. Did I tell you? The producer called today. Roxana has to go out of town that night, and she says I’m ready to represent NYCOT publicly—”
“You can’t go on TV! Have you lost your mind? Everybody in your building will recognize you! And nobody will ever work with you again! Do you think Liane would let you work for her if she saw you on—”
“Noooo, silly, I’m going to be on the radio—it’s a call-in show!” Allison reassured me. “Besides, Roxana takes all the TV calls. She says I’m not ready for TV.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. Roxana’s grabby sense of turf should keep Allison off TV for quite some time.
“What was that Roxana was saying about ‘my perspective’?” I asked. “I hope you haven’t been telling her about my past.”
“We don’t have a woman of color on the steering committee. NYCOT is facing the challenge of diversity. We need a committee that looks like New York.”
“Let’s see: You’ve got a dominatrix who’s a partisan Democrat. A heroin-addicted streetwalker with an attitude. And a blonde who’s always late with the rent,” I said. “If that isn’t a committee that looks like New York, I don’t know what is.”
Allie frowned and opened a small compact. She dabbed her nose. “Jack showed up again—I wasn’t expecting him! I was seeing someone, and my doorman buzzed. He said, ‘A gentleman wants to bring a plant upstairs.’ So I told him I would pick it up later. Then Jack started calling me”—she lowered her voice so the cabdriver wouldn’t hear—“while I was trying to get this guy off! And the phone wouldn’t stop ringing because Jack knew I was in the apartment. He left a bunch of messages, begging me to pick up the phone. Why do men say ‘pick up the phone’ when they know they’re already in voice mail? It’s crazy! My customer was really nervous. He took forever to come—all those interruptions!”
Recalling the interruptions, she looked flustered.
“He’s acting like a lovesick teenager!” I said. “An adult sends flowers—or brings them when he’s invited.”
“You’re right,” she said, with an odd smile. “He is.”
“And it’s not amusing when”—I dropped my voice, too—“a client does that. It’s a stalker thing. Completely unacceptable.”
“Well, I do have a doorman to protect me from stuff like that.”
“Great. Jack’s making a spectacle of himself in front of your doorman. And screwing up your existing business! You’re going to be sorry you took that money.”
“I know what I’m doing,” she proclaimed.
“That thing Gretchen said. Were you a cheerleader?”
In a stiff voice, she said, “That’s completely irrelevant. It has nothing to do with any of this. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Sorry! I didn’t know it was such a sensitive subject.”
She feels perfectly okay about barging into my past and bringing up my teen hooker years, yet she’s hung up about…being a cheerleader? I guess she’s embarrassed. Being a former cheerleader won’t help her—or might even hurt her chances—in a popularity contest that puts so much store in a girl’s street cred. She may have changed, but she hasn’t exactly grown. In fact, she’s still a cheerleader; Allie hopes I’ll reveal my history to Gretchen because it will make her look better for having brought me to the meeting. Trying to use me to increase her own credibility as a hooker! You’ve gotta watch these cheerleaders—they’re an exploitive breed. Even when they think they’re being avant-garde, they’re really trying to be popular.
Anyway, home sweet home—where I’m greeted by my boyfriend’s amorous voice mail. He’s working late at the office, he misses me, he’ll be finished at…just about now. But I’m not in the mood for an impromptu sleepover! Being stuck in Roxana’s living room for two hours, surrounded by the reek of incense and badly dressed girls, has completely turned me off to all forms of lovemaking, paid or unpaid. And besides, I’m saving myself. For an early-morning date at the Carlyle with Jasmine. Do I call him back? Pretend I’m not around to get the message? What is the etiquette when a working girl becomes engaged?
Lately, I’m paranoid about having him in my apartment. I worry about Matt finding things while I’m fast asleep. Like those over-the-top black crotchless panties I wear for Milton. With the red frilly opening. Yikes.
FRIDAY. 2/18/00
Well, I opted for an impromptu sleepover—at Matt’s place—after hinting that I “just want to cuddle.” In preparation for a night of sexless bonding, I showered and changed into a pair of white cotton panties. My Not Tonight Gear is actually more expensive than some of my workwear. Sexy understuff is as rare as bottled water these days. And there’s always a special at Bloomingdale’s or the local lingerie boutique. But you hardly ever see good seamless Swiss panties on sale. Good-girl undies, like the girls they were designed for, get harder to find every day. One of my millennium resolutions was to pamper my lower body in all its moods and phases, so I’ve invested in high-quality off-duty cotton panties. In white, of course. It’s a mistake to stint. You don’t spend a whole lot of time in your work panties—they’re off before you know it—but your off-duty unders have to stay on, sometimes overnight. The sixty-dollar panties I wore last night are comfy and loose but properly fitted. With a demure embroidered flower on the right hip.
I arrived at my boyfriend’s bachelor pad wearing my pristine waist-high armor. You know how they always say “Wear something risque under your business suit—even if you are the only one who knows about it, you will feel like a sex kitten.” Well, same thing here.
Having dope
d myself up with melatonin, I took to Matt’s bed feeling very much like a neutered being. As I was drifting off in one of his T-shirts, I heard him showering, then setting the clock. Then I felt his hands making experimental advances. He slid the T-shirt up to my waist and ran his fingertip beneath one leg of my panties.
“So…where were you when I called?” he asked in a friendly voice. “What did you do tonight?”
How could I begin to explain my night? Roxana’s incense-filled den of activism, a bitchy encounter with a former street kid, that aging dominatrix with her ad in Screw, and his girlfriend being asked to join the Council of Trollops steering committee because she’s…a Call Girl of Color?
“I was hanging out with Allison,” I said in a sleepy voice.
His hands delved deeper, and I pulled my lower body out of reach. As I drifted off into chaste slumber, or tried to, he whispered a dirty endearment into my ear. My response was lukewarm. Then I heard him saying, in that hushed reverent tone that boyfriends reserve for pastel-colored underwear: “You should wear these panties more often. They’re…so soft.”
Should I bite the bullet and invest in some actively unattractive panties? Stop discarding the old pairs? Life is so unfair! I can’t bring myself to wear anything that makes me look bad. Even on nights like this.
This morning, I crawled out of an empty bed. Disoriented, I realized that my boyfriend had forgotten to reset the alarm. Could I have OD’d on melatonin? I dashed home in my hugest face-saving eight A.M. sunglasses so I could linger over freshly brewed aged Sumatra in my oxygen mask. Then I lost track of the time and was almost late for my ten-thirty at the Carlyle.
While Jasmine’s client, Roberto, took a business call—naked—in the living room of his suite, we sprawled out on his bed, gossiping in our garter belts. It was a bit early for both of us, but more so for me, what with the melatonin hangover. Jasmine snickered with undisguised satisfaction when I told her about the NYCOT meeting.
“It was awful,” I complained. “Between Roxana’s pubic hair and the cheap incense, I was completely disoriented.”
“No kidding!” she said in a low voice. “That feminazi doesn’t bother to wax her muff, yet she has the nerve to pass herself off as a spokeswoman for hookers? What’s up with that? You should have come to that benefit with me,” Jasmine added. “The room was crawling with money. I picked up five business cards! And I met this dot-com grillionaire…and got a good night’s sleep.”
A night of drumming up new business would have put me in the mood for Matt, I suddenly realized. I looked up at Roberto. He was standing in the doorway, and the sight of him, fully erect, massaging his cock absentmindedly, made me touch the front of my panties. A conscientious-working-girl reflex; I was doing it because it was my job, the way some secretaries absentmindedly tidy up their desks. But a pleasant sensation ran through my body. Jasmine rose to her knees. She began fondling a nipple through my bra, telling Roberto how hot this made me. Of course, she was exaggerating wildly and, as far as she was concerned, we were pretending. But I quietly enjoyed the attention she gave my breasts and let her assume I was faking it. (Jasmine’s one of those stalwart pros who never comes when she’s working—“That’s the customer’s job!”—and gets irate if she suspects that a co-hooker is really getting into her.)
Warmed up by my colleague, I turned to face Roberto and wriggled closer, so he could rub his cock against my breasts. He stood at the edge of the sheets, entranced by Jasmine’s hungry-sounding moans. I couldn’t see her, but I knew she was fingering herself for his amusement, as he watched her watching us. Jasmine’s climactic sound effects grew louder, and Roberto joined in. A white liquid arc collapsed into a small pool between my breasts. I smiled the satisfied smile of a girl who has made $400 before noon without even showing her pussy.
The scent of his fresh come disappeared under a pile of tissues. Roberto was summoned back to the living room by a ringing phone. When he returned to pay us, we were half-dressed, debating a late breakfast at the Mark (across the street) or at E.J.’s, closer to home. The Gallery, downstairs, would be lovely but, given all the business we do at the Carlyle, the public areas there are mostly off-limits. Can’t afford to be conspicuous. And Roberto would be very turned off if he ran into us downstairs. It wouldn’t look right.
MONDAY. 2/21/00
This afternoon, a call from Eileen complaining about Jack’s continuing harassment: “He’s saying these weird things—about you, about Allison, about his blood pressure. When I told him to leave me alone, he called back and left a really insulting message on my voice mail.”
“What did he say?”
“He called me—” She paused, caught her breath, then said, “You know what? I am not going to stoop to his level, repeating such a stupid disgusting thing.” She was outraged. “That fucking creep! I might have to change my number if this keeps up! But you know what? I can’t change my number, I’ve worked too hard to build this!”
“Of course you can’t change your number. Nobody can—you’d lose half your guys. Don’t do anything impulsive,” I told her.
I called Allison’s cell phone. “Where are you? Can you talk?”
“I’m at Duane Reade,” she said cheerfully.
“We have to talk about Jack. He’s becoming a problem, and I think you’ve made it worse by taking that money. You really shouldn’t have done that.”
“Oh, really!” Allie sighed impatiently. “I wish you’d stop! You are soooo paranoid, Nancy! He wanted to give it to me. He practically begged me to take it!”
“With what kind of understanding? What does he expect in return?”
“How would I know?” she squeaked. “Maybe nothing. Hold on. I have to pick up a prescription…Diflucan,” her voice rang out. (Why not just tell the whole store you have a yeast infection?) “Allison Rogers. R-O-G…”
“Listen, if you want to play dumb with Jack, that’s one thing. But don’t play dumb with me,” I said. “When you take money from a guy, you should know what his expectations are. It’s business. Even if you don’t come through for him, you should know what you’re depriving him of—what he expects and what you plan to do about it. You can’t just wing it. And if a guy knows you’re a working girl, you can’t suddenly act like a dumb little party girl.”
“These patriarchal categories—” Allie began.
“Shut up and listen!” I implored her. “Your phone’s starting to break up! Guys don’t like it when they feel they’ve been taken for a ride by a hooker.” I thought of the cantankerous cokehead, many years ago, who was so affronted when his hour ended that he grabbed his gun. “And he’s pestering Eileen, making ugly annoying phone calls, and she knows it’s him. Do you know if he has a drinking problem?”
“I don’t think so. I’m getting another call—I’ll call you when I get home!”
I hung up and started to punch in Eileen’s number. I was furious, ready to spill the beans on Allie, ready to talk—about the money, the stupid flowers, Allie’s lunch with Jack. Then I stopped, slammed the phone down, and thought: Bad idea. Telling Eileen about Allison’s behavior won’t solve a thing. Eileen would tell the other girls about that brainless, destructive floozy—Allison—and it would certainly teach Allie a lesson. But it wouldn’t make Jack go away. Then I started dialing Jasmine’s number. Maybe she could come up with a game plan to—Oh, hell. I hung up after the first ring.
I ran myself a hot bath, into which I poured a liberal helping of lavender oil. It’s the real thing, purchased in a teensy Provencal village the last time I was in France, and inhaling the intense yet soothing aroma, I could feel my frayed boundaries recovering. Immersed in the scented water with my hair tucked high on the rubber pillow, I heard the phone ringing at the other end of my apartment. Probably Allison. I let it ring.
TUESDAY. 2/22/00
Around eleven last night, I got a totally strange call from Jack—he never calls girls at that hour! That’s when he’s supposed to be contained—in the twenty-r
oom cond-op with his rich wife and their perpetually dependent adult son. But last night, he sounded dangerously free. Perhaps his wife’s out of town? Sirens in the background made me think he could be roaming the city streets. Or standing on the balcony in his slippers with a cell phone. It was a cold night for either.
There was little hope of detecting Jack’s whereabouts because I don’t have Caller ID on my landline. Caller ID is lethal. It leaves a numeric trail for boyfriends and other visitors to decipher. Private clients dislike it. Caller ID is for girls who advertise, for people who consort with the public. No one in our safe little circle has Caller ID at home. We all have our numbers blocked, as do a number of clients. If a private girl tried to prevent blocked numbers from coming through, her phone might simply stop ringing. But Caller ID was starting to have some appeal last night. Jack’s phone calls are downright creepy.
“Listen,” Jack said, in a pushy urgent voice. “I really have to talk to you. It’s about Allison. I’ll make it worth your while! I want to surprise her. Can you set it up?”
“Set what up?”
“The three of us, at your place. You can get her over there, can’t you? She says you’re her best friend. And besides, she’s—” His voice lowered to a desperate lust-filled whisper. “She’s really hot for you. I know it. She likes it when you take control.”
Good god, is he jerking off? I felt like blowing the whistle on our feigned lesbianism, right then and there. Listening cautiously, I tried to detect some telltale heavy breathing.
“Look,” he said, rather testily. “If you’re not interested, there are plenty of other girls. But I’d rather do this with you. So would she!”
“Um, how do you know this?”
“She was telling me how much she likes partying with you.”
“Really? When?”
“The other day. Come on. Help me out here. You’re not being fair to me!”
Did Allie spin this two-girl tale while they were having lunch? That’s really annoying, if true. She has no business using me as bait.