Blue Money

by Janet Capron

  “See that pile? That is for everyone. What you got there is for you. You’re way behind us. We’ve been doing this shit since...since when, Ginger?”

  “Try last week,” Ginger said.

  “Did I just die and go to heaven?” I asked, snorting up everything with the short straw someone had passed to me.

  They laughed.

  “You’re cute. My name is Ginger, and Mary Poppins over there is my partner.”

  “Hi, I’m Felicity, and this is Joey, our token jailbait,” Felicity said.

  “Who was that downstairs?” I asked.

  “Oh, Marcy.”

  “No wonder she looked so miserable,” I said.

  “Yeah, we take turns manning the door. OK, I guess you can see how we run things here. Loose. You and Joey and Marcy are working today, and sometimes me, if I feel like it. Ginger here is getting married so doesn’t get to turn tricks anymore. She keeps the guys amused if everyone is busy,” Felicity said.

  Ginger screwed up her face in disgust.

  “Meanwhile, there’s going to be work for you. Straight is fifty, half-and-half is seventy-five. If the john just wants a blow job, hit him up for fifty. Tell him you do deep-throat, it’s your specialty,” Felicity said.

  “Know how to do deep-throat?” Ginger asked.

  “I’ve never tried,” I said.

  “It’s easy as hell, a gimmick, that’s all. You let it in slowly and open your throat. Then, when you get used to it, just open and close your throat around his dick. He’ll come so fast, you won’t have a chance to gag,” Ginger said.

  “OK, the split is standard: sixty/forty. Sometimes I get a call from a hotel. I charge two hundred for that,” Felicity said.

  “Yeah, and lots of those calls are from famous rock ’n’ rollers, like Ridley Stokes, when he’s in town, or last week, we heard from Trip Oldman. We have fun with these guys. They like to get down. Plenty of good blow,” Ginger said.

  “Trip Oldman?” I asked.

  “What’s the matter, you sound bummed,” Felicity said, laughing.

  “Well, I mean, his politics. He’s so passionately to the left. And then those plaintive, innocent love songs...”

  “Oh, girl, you got a lot to learn,” Ginger said.

  “You Jewish?” Felicity asked me.

  “Yep,” I said, jumping at the chance to tell her, because it was obvious that she was Jewish, the first one I’d come across.

  Felicity had long streaked-blond hair and slightly protruding large blue eyes; she wore diamonds in her ears. She looked like every elegant princess you ever saw on the Upper East Side.

  “I could tell you were Jewish from your rap. You got a good rap. That might come in handy,” Felicity said.

  Ginger got up and stretched. She swiveled her hips and dry-humped the table. The oldest one there, in her thirties, she looked like she’d been around the block a few times. I couldn’t tell what she was—Irish, Jewish, Italian—because she had that generic ethnic face, skin faintly scarred from teenage acne, dark wavy hair cut short. But she had flash. I wondered about the decent man who was planning to marry her.

  “I’m bored,” Ginger said.

  “You’re going to do great out there on the North Shore. Some housewife you’re going to make,” Felicity said.

  “Don’t let’s talk about it. I still got a few months left. See my ring?” Ginger asked me, wriggling her fingers in my face.

  The ring was a big diamond-shaped diamond.

  “Who’s the guy?”

  “Oh, someone I met while I was filming Prostitution and Drugs: The Intimate Connection. His name’s Kenyon Edwards. He’s got a last first name and a first last name. Lots of class. He’s a few years older than I am, but don’t worry, he’s rich.”

  “And he adores Ginger,” Felicity said.

  “So you’re the one who got the Emmy,” I said, almost starstruck. I’d heard her story.

  “Yeah, I put the show together for PBS. Then I went to work for the mayor, helping him organize a task force to get rid of the pimps. I’m still on his payroll,” Ginger said.

  “Doesn’t the mayor mind that you’re here?” I asked. If I sounded naive, I was past caring.

  “Listen, honey, didn’t anyone ever tell you? Once in the Life, always in the Life,” she said.

  “But Ginger’s much slicker than she’s letting on. She’s leaving for good, moving to a big house on the Long Island Sound,” Felicity said.

  “Dammit. I told you, don’t remind me. I don’t want to hear it,” Ginger said, banging the table. The cocaine jumped in its dish.

  “Watch it,” Joey said.

  “Oh, Joey, you really got my nose open, you know that? You are the sweetest little flower bud. Come here, baby, come to Mama,” Ginger said. She went over to where Joey was sitting, leaned over the young woman’s back and put her hands on her breasts. “Only seventeen, oh, honey, how’d you get so wise?”

  “Quit it,” Joey said, shaking off Ginger.

  “Sassy, isn’t she? But you should see her slit. It’s perfect,” Ginger said.

  “Stop trying to shock Janet. You don’t shock that easy, do you?” Felicity said.

  “Well, for starters, I’m a whore, aren’t I?” I said.

  “Yeah, right, we’re all hos,” Felicity said.

  There were men’s voices on the stairs.

  “Quick, hide the dope. We don’t want these clowns dipping into our stash,” Ginger said.

  Felicity took the dish into a little kitchen across the way.

  But the two men had brought their own mountain. They dumped a spoon of it onto a magazine. One of them started cutting lines.

  The usual johns, a little younger and spiffier than my ambulance chasers and real estate salesmen, these were Wall Streeters, but basically the same. They threw off their jackets and loosened their ties like they were in danger of choking any minute.

  “Joey baby, I came here just for you,” one of them said. He sat down and pulled her onto his lap. “I dream of you. Did you know that?”

  “No, I didn’t know that,” Joey said, her long brown hair falling over one eye. She sounded completely blasé, unflappable.

  The john started bouncing her up and down as if she were a little kid. “Do you dream of me?” he asked her.

  “Yeah, Henry, every night,” Joey said.

  “Who’s the new girl?” the other one said.

  “Want her?” Felicity asked.

  “She’ll do. Like sex?” he asked me.

  “It’s my life’s work,” I said.

  “Come on, then, snort some of this,” he said, handing me a little silver spoon.

  After they had some scotch over ice that Felicity brought back from the kitchen, the two of them grabbed Joey and me like a couple of dashing pirates and pulled us downstairs.

  Inside the bedroom, my john peeled off four twenties. He flopped onto the bed, still in his clothes, waving the bills in the air.

  I snatched the money from his hand and stuck it on the mantelpiece. Then he closed his eyes and let his body go limp, like a puppy on its back waiting to have its belly stroked.

  “An extra five for you, just between us. So do me good,” he said.

  The Gentleman Player

  “Don’t bother to take off your coat. We’re going somewhere,” Felicity said as soon as I got inside the front door.

  “Where?”

  “To the radio studio WWRN. You and me are going to do the talk show Black Tells It Like It Is. Know it?”

  “No, never heard of it. What are we supposed to talk about?”

  “There are a couple of issues we’ve got to cover. First and foremost is ‘Off the Pimp.’ That’s the crux of what HONY is all about. I’ve even been known to cooperate with vice.”

  As it turned out, along with Ginger, Felicity was also an activist, the founder and leader of HONY, Hookers’ Organization of New York. I hadn’t realized it actually existed until she told me I was a member.

  “Yo
u wouldn’t believe what those thugs do. Last month, one of them sewed up his ho’s pussy with a leather string. Can you imagine? And worse.

  “We want to get the word out, let working girls know they can be independent. Also, decriminalization—not legalization, we don’t want the government running things—just decriminalization. Prostitution is victimless, right? It’s the oldest profession. Leave us alone.

  “I picked you to come with me ’cause you can rap,” Felicity said as she locked the door behind us.

  “But couldn’t you’ve maybe mentioned this a little sooner?” I asked her. My palms were sweating. I rummaged in my bag for a Dexamyl and swallowed it dry.

  “It’s better this way. You got less time to think. Also, I didn’t want you to say no.”

  “What’s your name?” Felicity asked me in the cab.

  “Janet,” I said.

  “Yeah, but you gotta have a working name,” she said.

  “OK, how about ‘Janet DeVille, Lady of the Evening,’” I said.

  “‘Janet DeVille, Lady of the Evening.’ Good, sounds good—no, no, not that way, driver, through the Park. We want to go through the Park. OK?” Felicity said, yelling at the thick plastic wall in front of us.

  “Hello, listeners. Thanks for tuning in on this cold Sunday afternoon, a good time to stay at home and listen to No-Jive Jocko here bringing you Black Tells It Like It Is. For the next two hours we’ll be talking to Felicity Freed, the head of HONY, Hookers’ Organization of New York, and another member of HONY, Janet DeVille, ‘Lady of the Evening.’ The issue we’ll be dealing with today is ‘Off the Pimp.’ The two ladies will be glad to answer your questions live on the air. Just dial 727-WWRN. But first, let’s hear what Felicity and Janet have to say. You are both active working girls is that right?”

  Two hours? I frowned and looked at Felicity. I was trapped inside a glass booth for the next two hours, during which time I would be expected to sound off knowledgeably on a subject that I suddenly decided, in the grip of stage fright, I knew next to nothing about.

  No-Jive Jocko peered at us over his half-glasses, waiting. He had a long and lustrous ponytail that made him look like an unreconstructed sixties hippie.

  “Yes, we’re working girls, and proud of it. We are independent businesswomen supplying a need, the oldest need in the book. We don’t answer to anyone. We’re free agents, and we’re here to tell all the other working girls out there that it’s high time you belonged to yourself, yourself alone...” Felicity went on and on, eloquent as hell, I thought. She inspired me.

  “I turn tricks out of my own house, also the houses of friends of mine, madams. But whatever money I get, I keep. I don’t have to have a man taking from me to make me feel all right about myself. My conscience is clear,” I heard myself saying.

  “WWRN. You’re on the air,” No-Jive Jocko said into the mike, his voice deep and sonorous, like a low, mellow horn.

  “Girl, you, white girl, Janet: Your mama know what you doin’? Your white sisters know what you do? Ain’t you got no shame?”

  “Yes, but that’s just it—that’s why we’re here, don’t you see? To try and make you understand we’ve got no reason to be ashamed.”

  “Oh no,” I thought, “do I sound patronizing?”

  “Tell me your name, caller.”

  “Never mind my name...You’re a fornicator...”

  “Just your Christian name?”

  “Regina.”

  “All right, Regina. You brought up shame, and I’m glad you did. Shame is the strychnine, the bitter strychnine, that causes working girls to give their money away, that makes them think they deserve to get beat. We have to get rid of the shame. That’s the real enemy—the old double standard.”

  The phones outside the booth lit up. Jocko gave Felicity and me the thumbs-up sign.

  “Janet DeVille, you got some powerful opinions. So let’s hear from you out there. Should whores feel ashamed? This is No-Jive Jocko. You’re on the air...”

  “I’m a marine, just come back from ’Nam. I think Janet makes sense in what she’s saying. Where would we have been without them sweet Saigon girls? Listen, you always got to pay for a good piece of ass, one way or the other.”

  That did it, a little encouragement, and I was off, ranting now.

  “Here’s the thing. You men can go away to kill each other, then come home and resume domestic life. But if I choose to be a mercenary, I am told I must never try to cross back.

  “Well, fucking strangers is certainly not as bad as killing them as far as I’m concerned, and yet you’re telling me I’m supposed to feel ashamed. No, no, if anything, I think they should pin medals on us for a change...”

  Felicity smiled and nodded at me, perfectly happy to let me do all the talking now.

  “WWRN. No-Jive Jocko at your beck and call...You’re on the air...”

  “Hello, my name is Lois,” a tiny, halting voice said.

  “Yes, Lois, what would you like to ask Felicity and Janet?” Jocko said.

  “When I was twelve, my pimp pulled me out of my mama’s house onto the street. He put me on the stroll. He say, ‘You gonna work for me now. You don’, I kill you.’ I knew he was serious, ’cause he done killed my cousin Karen a month before. Shot her right up in the head. So I went to work, been his ho ever since. Now you two mean to tell me you don’ gotta have a man? That mus’ be some downtown thing. How you do that?” she asked.

  After the show, Felicity took me down to a loft in Chelsea. In the big open living room, about six or seven very well-dressed African American men were sitting on a couple of big leather sofas. When they saw Felicity and me, they started to clap and cheer.

  “Here they come, Felicity and Janet, the lady of the evening,” one of them said.

  “Step right over here, Miss Lady of the Evening, what will be your pleasure?” a handsome young man said.

  I grabbed hold of Felicity. “Where are we? Who are these guys?” I asked.

  “Pimps. I told ’em to listen,” Felicity said.

  “You what?” I recoiled in terror.

  “Yep, all the players are here,” Felicity said, smiling, calling out to several of them by name.

  “This is like the lions and the jackals drinking at the same watering hole,” I said to her, but she was already gone, locked in a circle of admirers.

  “What’ll it be?” the good-looking young man asked me, still holding on to my arm.

  “Dewar’s and soda, thanks,” I said.

  I had never actually come face-to-face with a pimp before, let alone a whole roomful of them. And after all those words I had just spoken so glibly for everyone and anyone to hear! What had I done? I was so scared, I was thrilled.

  “Have a seat,” he said, pointing to a long leather couch.

  We both sat. I drank the scotch down in one gulp.

  He smiled at me like an indulgent papa. “You were thirsty,” he said.

  “Listen, there’s something I have to ask you,” I said.

  “Anything I know, you should know, too,” he said.

  What a beautiful, curving mouth. His hair was a full Afro framing his face. He was dressed in a flowing dark gray silk shirt, well-cut English trousers, and elegant Italian loafers. On his wrist, a thin gold bracelet dangled.

  “OK, what I’m wondering is how come you’re not mad at me, after all those things I said about pimps and offing the pimps?”

  He sipped his brandy and looked me deep in the eyes. “Girl, those were brave things you said, righteous things. Felicity, she’s a hell of a woman. I got nothing but respect for her. But I can see that you need to understand what I’m about, me and my confreres,” he said, nodding in the direction of the other guys. “We are what you call gentlemen players. We are a dying breed, but we have a long history and a tradition. We don’t pull hos, no, no, not interested. A woman’s got to come to me, got to love me, beg me, even, to take her on. There’s no shame in that. And the way I treat her—managing her career, never g
etting greedy—I can’t turn her loose even when I want to sometimes.

  “We are the lovers of this world, darlin’,” he said.

  The tone of his low voice was so intimate, I almost forgot to listen to what he said.

  “I think I understand. You don’t want me if I don’t want you, right?”

  “You got it, darlin’,” he said, laughing.

  I sighed with relief. I was convinced that no matter how great a man was in bed, even if he swooped down from the rooftops disguised as a swan and carried me off in the middle of the night, I would never be tempted to part with my hard-earned dough of my own free will. So I was safe.

  As the bleak December sun fell outside, so early now, a party of sorts was starting to happen. Cool jazz, Pharoah Sanders, came over large speakers suspended on the wall. Tiny spotlights in the ceiling went dim. I felt self-conscious in my bell-bottom jeans, a sweater, and my platform shoes and socks, because the men were all dressed up. I sank back into a corner of the sofa. But my new friend, the gentleman player, brought me another drink, and we continued to talk. I found out that he was the son of a grade-school principal somewhere near Oakland, that he had graduated from college out there and then come to New York. He was a nice middle-class boy once, a dutiful son. It was an older woman, he claimed, who got him into the Life.

  After this brief conversation, the gentleman player took me by the hand and led me up a narrow, winding staircase to one of the bedrooms where the men had thrown their overcoats. We did some blow from his dainty silver spoon, what they call a “one-on-one,” after which he started to undress me.

  “What’s this about?” I asked.

  “We’re free. This is recreational,” he said, unbuckling my platform sandal.

  We snorted more big breakfast lines of cocaine off the surface of a magazine. Then suddenly we were sticking together, as if the friction were magnetizing our flesh. The scent of his Eau Sauvage poured off him now. He had no hair on his chest, only his lower belly. In that lullaby-soft deep voice, he whispered generic compliments in my ear (“Oh, baby, baby, fine, fine...”). He was smooth. Not one ungainly move during all the time we spent there—close to an hour. He was too smooth. I felt alone, thinking it had been a little over two years now since I had seen Michael.