Floating City

by Sudhir Venkatesh

  The last straw? A supervisor who offered her a raise in exchange for sex, a smug and grubby powermonger who assumed the worst about her. But if she had offered sex in exchange for a raise, she’d have been labeled a whore. She’d probably have been fired. What a bunch of hypocrites!

  Instead, Margot drove up to Maine and took long walks in the woods. “I guess I owned up to who I was,” she told me. “I knew I didn’t want to work in an office. I knew I had a skill that men would pay a lot for. So the question was, could I do it in an intelligent way, without hurting myself, and maybe even save a little money?” Then she drove back to New York and returned to sex work with her eyes open. No booze, no meds. She started exercising, bought a computer and some financial planning software. She made sixty-five thousand dollars her first year. In time, she went from den mother to setting up dates and charging commissions. Business was booming. Madam Margot was born.

  • • •

  Margot’s work as a sex broker was opening up a whole new upscale world to me. I was seeing things I had never seen before. She was so strong, so confident. Unlike Angela, who also had these qualities, Margot had no need to sell sex herself. She could make money and earn a measure of social power just helping other women do so. She wasn’t abused or supporting a drug habit; she didn’t have the social or legal obstacles that kept Manjun and his friends trapped in the underground. She had a line of credit and some investments. In the eyes of outsiders, she was just another middle-class woman living the good life in New York City.

  Some people might ask, she said, Why suffer the risks and stigma of selling sex if you have other options? The way she looked at it, selling sex was her other option. “New York gave me a second chance. A lot of other places, I would have married again, had kids, been miserable. But here, I can reinvent myself. And you can judge me, you can put me down and call me names or whatever, but you can’t take away the fact that I am succeeding.”

  As an immigrant, I recognized her defiant ambition in my bones—it was the ringing sound of the American dream. Is that possible? I wondered. Can sex work become a theater of aspiration like any other job? Can a prostitute even have an American dream?

  • • •

  Shine was taking me deeper into his world too. After church services one Sunday, he invited me to his family’s place. They had the bay window apartment of a brownstone on a tree-lined street, a lovely location. Inside, I felt as if I was back in Chicago. Plastic covered the lone couch. A thick, dark blue shag carpet lay on all the floors. Religious pictures and symbols hung on all the walls; a few African prints and masks sat on side tables. Black-and-white family photos showed stern, hardened African-American faces in the middle of farmland. Everything seemed tied to the past.

  Shine seemed amused at my interest in the pictures. “Just a bunch of country folk, ain’t we?”

  A giant black man, built like a tractor and at least six foot five, appeared behind us. Shine grabbed him in an affectionate bear hug. This was Shine’s brother Michael, a former college basketball star turned real estate agent. The first time I met him, he put me through a hazing process that ranged from “Who do you know in Chicago?” to “How much do you know about black culture?” I still wasn’t sure whether I had passed, because he generally gave me a wide berth.

  “I’m going to get a plate of food,” Shine said. “Sudhir, want something?”

  “Coming,” I said, turning back to the photographs for a last look. One was particularly haunting: a large print of a tall black man with a brown suit and a smart beige hat, black briefcase in hand, New York City in the background. He stood on a sidewalk with brownstones on either side of him. A child was walking past him. A green bicycle lay on the sidewalk, forgotten.

  Michael was watching me. “Shine ever tell you about our father?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Came on a ship right before the war. Got drafted. Sixteen children—that we know about!”

  He laughed and continued speaking in an odd staccato style. “I’m the second youngest. Shine’s the youngest. Three in jail. Me and Shine never been. Poppa lost his mind after 1990. When he lost his job. Depressed, couldn’t get out of it. Drinking like you ain’t never seen. Killed himself one day. Just shot himself in the head. In the basement. Shine and I were upstairs. He started shaking, I’ll never forget it. We both knew what had happened. I got my blanket and wrapped my dad up. The bloodstain is still on the floor. Momma still ain’t been down there. Shine won’t go down. Ten years, and they still won’t go down there.”

  Michael paused. He wiped his upper lip, which had a few beads of perspiration. “After that, ain’t nothing been the same. Ain’t starving or nothing, doing fine as far as that goes. But something is gone that ain’t ever gonna come back.”

  I had met Shine’s mother a few times, but she said very little except to welcome me and then walk to her bedroom.

  “We moved Momma into a new house,” Michael continued. “We fixed it up, bought the upstairs for my auntie. But she wanted to come back here. And the top floor, that’s where my other brother stay.”

  “Shine never talks about it,” I said.

  “And he never will,” Michael said.

  It all made so much sense. Like his father, Shine was withdrawn and focused on an inner goal. Like his mother, he was a bit of a ghost in the world. This is what I was thinking when he called from the kitchen. “Sudhir, get your ass in here and try this mac ’n’ cheese.”

  Country food. Feeling moved by Michael’s story and the comforting family atmosphere, I walked into the kitchen to take a plate of gooey orange happiness from Shine’s hand—a hand that was swollen and cut, yellow-black bruises flaring from a couple of red gashes. I couldn’t help staring at it.

  “This fucking kid Juan,” Shine said, spitting out the name. “He’s selling downtown. Can you believe that? I fire him because I’m selling downtown, so he decides to take me on. He found out which clubs and bars I work and now he’s in there trying to sell his own shit!”

  I knew Juan. He was barely nineteen. I didn’t think he could get into bars and clubs, much less take on a well-connected gangster like Shine. Nor did I know he was a well-connected thug himself. What muscle did he have to ensure that he could withstand Shine’s retaliation—which was assuredly coming?

  It had started innocently enough, Shine explained. Juan wanted to be more than a runner and started recruiting a few customers, always giving Shine his cut. I remembered hearing Shine express some concern about this a few months earlier, only because he didn’t think Juan had good people skills, but he shrugged it off because he had so much else on his mind. Then, apparently, Juan started making friends with some downtown bartenders. He told Shine he was just being a friendly guy. But Shine suspected he was slipping them money to compete with Evalina, and that’s when the confrontation began. Now he couldn’t even get the punk to meet with him.

  Retaliation had to come quickly and decisively or else Juan would detect weakness in Shine. But Shine and I both knew that this was no longer a ghetto dispute. A downtown bar was involved, which meant white people were involved, so the old rules didn’t apply. Now Shine had to figure out how to deal with a dispute in the new world he was trying to conquer. Characteristically, he said he would be patient. Taking a deep breath as if trying to gather that patience on the spot, he said he would catch up with Juan at church.

  “But his parents will be there,” I said, shocked that he would transgress boundaries in this almost sacrilegious way. Even for drug dealers, churches were off-limits.

  “That’s exactly why I’m doing it there,” Shine says. “If he runs, everyone will think he’s guilty.”

  • • •

  Pieces were starting to fall into place. The story about punishing Juan gave me an important glimpse of the perils of Shine’s downtown experiment. At the same time, Margot was bringing me into her world, and soon I would be interviewing more of the elite white sex workers in her network. And even if Angela�
�s efforts at marketing innovation and product development had failed, they’d brought me out of the ghetto and across many boundaries.

  Then there was Analise, the ultimate insider. Around the time Shine gave Juan his beatdown, she started calling me and asking if I wanted to catch up. Of course, the answer was yes. I genuinely liked her as a person, but I was downright fascinated by everything she represented—beautiful and young and rich, she and her careless young friends were the end of all the striving, the focal point that organized the world. If you had told me at the time that Analise was secretly running an elite escort service, I would have laughed in your face. But that was the period when she was just getting started in the business, which might have been one of the reasons she reached out to me.

  Our schedules clashed until one day she called and invited me to join her gang for a screening of her boyfriend’s first movie, an NYU student film he had financed with about three hundred thousand dollars that he’d raised from family and friends. She had contributed a hefty sum herself, so she was listed as a producer. They held the event at her aunt’s luxurious apartment on East Eighty-fourth, a Xanadu of mahogany and marble. Due to a last-minute crisis, I arrived very late. The doorman called, then hung up the phone and told me the party would be coming down.

  A few minutes later, ten people tumbled through the front door, first men bearing bottles of champagne and then women in their slinky dresses and heels. Analise was crying and two women were comforting her. “Just ignore that asshole,” said one. “You don’t deserve that shit.”

  That was my first glimpse of Brittany, who looked as beautiful and dangerous as a Greek goddess. Analise reached her hand out to me and whispered, “Sorry. Just come along. I’ll explain later.”

  Then J.B. came out. He was hunched into a dark plaid coat and looked like he shouldn’t be leaving his bed, much less the building. He pointed at us. “You fucking bitch! All of you fucking bitches! You have no fucking idea what I fucking do!”

  J.B. wiped his mouth and staggered out underneath the green awning that extended over the sidewalk. He grabbed my shoulder and held on for balance, glaring at Analise. “You want the money? Is that what you want?”

  Brittany stepped forward. “Why don’t you just shut up?”

  “It’s none of your damn business,” J.B. sneered.

  “Yes it is, asshole. You’re not getting into this car.”

  “Fuck that shit. I’m walking.”

  At this point, J.B. steered me toward Fifth Avenue. His friends followed.

  “J.B.—get back here!” Analise yelled. “You’re being ridiculous. We’re all sorry. Let’s just move on.”

  “Fuck you!” J.B. yelled back.

  J.B. led us down Fifth Avenue, alongside Central Park. A guy named Michael came up to walk with us. “Don’t worry about her,” he said.

  “It’s her money.”

  “You can raise money, man. It’s all about the material.”

  “See, she doesn’t even get that. She’s so fucking out of touch. I’ve got the material, man.”

  J.B. stopped at a bench, looking across Fifth Avenue to some millionaire’s apartment building. One of his friends popped open a champagne bottle and handed it to J.B.

  I took the moment to whisper to one of the guys. “What happened?”

  “Sundance rejected his movie.”

  Meanwhile, J.B. was chugging. Then he burped and put his head in his hands. “All of you can fuck off and die for all I care,” he said.

  Then he stood up and swept his arm forward like a Shakespearean actor, gave a slight bow—and retched. It came out like a tube of chicken broth, one long projectile that nearly reached the street.

  Michael just kept smoking and talking and so did the others, completely ignoring this bizarre outburst. “You should go out to LA,” one said. “This is the wrong town for what you’re doing.”

  “It was my first film,” J.B. said. “First film. Does anyone get that? You know what my uncle Frank said? ’Better get a job, kid. Go work for your dad.’ Fucking lowlife who steals from his own company.”

  Again, J.B. opened his mouth and let loose a stream of vomit. This time it was less perfectly columnar and some sprinkles hit his shoes.

  “My fucking brain is going to explode,” J.B. said, dropping his head back into his hands.

  Some of the other guys began to drift away, heading back toward the limo. They didn’t seem disgusted, just bored. I was the opposite, rooted to the spot, completely mesmerized by this strangely nonchalant behavior. I’d seen friends vomit, but they usually moaned and groaned and promised not to do it again. I’d seen fraternity brothers vomit, but that was usually in the context of a wild bacchanal. I’d seen heroin addicts vomit, but that was like a medical event. I’d seen nothing like this matter-of-fact display anywhere else.

  A few weeks later, I saw it again. This time it was Brittany. We were just outside the Plaza Hotel, walking north. She took two steps into the park, threw up in the bushes right next to the gate, and came back to finish her sentence. “She should go out there and try to find a place, and see how crazy it is!” We walked along fairly steadily with only a little weaving, listening to Brittany denounce her mother for the horribly unmaternal act of kicking Brittany out of the family’s penthouse apartment. Then she darted into the bushes and threw up again.

  Another time, outside a Chelsea art gallery, I saw one of the rich kids vomit into a trash can and turn to welcome friends while wiping his mouth. Then there was another J.B. episode. It began to seem as though every evening would end with some preppie youth stopping the cab or limo and taking a few minutes to launch the half-processed remains of the evening’s booze and food onto the side of the street. They did it theatrically, turning the sidewalk into a stage, transforming themselves into the aggrieved and tragic protagonists of some great imaginary drama. I was aware of the risks of sociological voyeurism and the impulse to treat them like animals in a zoo, but I still couldn’t help wondering: Was a certain style of drunkenness an aspect of class distinction? Was this some kind of socioeconomic marker, perhaps even a form of personal expression? Were they throwing up all the expectations they’d been forced to swallow?

  One thing was clear: like Shine and Angela and Carla, these rich kids sure believed in the possibility of renewal. But theirs followed an existential purging so violent it seemed like a bid for redemption. Then they would pop another champagne cork and swallow some more renewal in a bottle. And the price of the bottle seemed to matter, as if it elevated their behavior above mere squalor. I wasn’t sure whether to be disgusted or impressed. Was this the dark secret at the heart of the American dream? A Roman level of thirst and self-loathing? My colleagues in the history and literature departments talked breezily about the end of the American empire—I felt I now had some data points for their argument.

  As I watched this play unfold I couldn’t help but wonder about Carla’s and Shine’s respective strivings. If they were going to navigate these worlds, I hoped they wouldn’t be required to show their excellence at purging. I started to have my doubts that they could survive it. I was invisible, but they, as blacks and Latinos, would inspire animus. Maybe Carla was right: animus was just the other side of sexual desire. Maybe Shine was right: you could simultaneously look down at blacks while wanting to party with them. But the people who seemed even less fit for life in this ruthless version of America—Angela and Vonnie and Manjun and Joshi and all the others—how long could they last?

  How long could I last?

  • • •

  A few weeks after Angela and Vonnie moved out of their Brooklyn apartment, a spring thunderstorm hit New York. With the rain falling in great drifting sheets, Carla and I could barely see the sidewalk in front of us. We dashed from one awning to another. Fortunately, it was a quiet Sunday morning and we had the sidewalk to ourselves.

  I hadn’t expected Carla to be moving so quickly, but she was determined not to waste time. Maybe it was the specter of Angel
a and the fear of suddenly turning from the hot young thing into the cleaning lady. As we approached our destination, she stopped and looked straight into my eyes. “Can you tell I’m high?” she demanded. “The truth. Can you tell?”

  Her last client liked to give “skiing lessons,” and Carla was nothing if not a willing student. But the shadow of a store awning obscured her face. “I think you’re okay,” I said, trying to sound encouraging. In fact, though, the cocaine hangover was making her look shaky.

  “That shit was really speedy,” she said. “I hope I can do this.”

  “Just focus. And remember, you have something she wants.”

  Carla nodded and took a deep breath, trying her best to relax.

  A police officer named Terry Wallace told Carla she should get off the streets and go to work for Margot Kerry. I had nothing to do with it. But as soon as I heard Wallace’s idea, I thought it was brilliant. Since her beating, Carla had lost her swagger. Angela and Vonnie had replaced her. She was on antidepressants. Everything seemed bleak to her. She was so nervous, she asked if I would go along for comfort.

  “My last job interview,” she said in a doom-ridden voice, “a lousy cashier gig at a Target out on Long Island. I fucked the guy and still didn’t get the job.”

  I saw Margot in the restaurant window and she waved. As I opened the door for Carla, I heard her take a few deep breaths and calm herself before crossing to shake Margot’s hand.

  Margot was now my perfect source. Slowly, as we got to know each other better and trust developed, she grew interested in my research questions and even offered to set up my next study, an in-depth look into the lives of elite women who had come to New York to work in the upper reaches of the sex trade. I was already dreaming about the publications our alliance could generate. No one had managed to gather systematic, scientific information on this segment of the underground before.