“Put your weapons on that table,” I said. He chuckled.
He removed his phone, lighter, keys, and wallet next to a Venus de Milo lamp. The room had white fluffy clouds painted on the blue walls. Then he plopped down on the sticky, black vinyl couch.
“Before we begin, I want a promise,” he said and handed me eighty bucks.
“Sounds serious.” I slid my sparkling bikini bottoms to the floor.
“You’re going to let me take you on a motorcycle ride to Santa Cruz to my favorite Italian restaurant.”
“Tonight?”
“No. Tomorrow.” I took his arms and slid his smooth hands over the surface of my chest, belly, and inner thighs. His hands were smoother than I expected. I unbuttoned his shirt and slid my hands inside and over his whole back. My thick hair fell onto his neck.
“Maybe,” I said and propped myself onto his lap so my face and boobs eclipsed everything else. My hands reached behind him and swiped the wallet from the table and the next second—I wished I hadn’t done that. I had to hurry. I counted his money behind his back as he buried his face in my chest.
“You feel really good,” Peter said. He was hard. I was disgusted with myself. I took three crisp twenties from his wallet and swiftly put the wallet back. He was hard.
“You feel good, too.” I unzipped his pants and reached inside his boxers to tickle his balls. I put my hand around his cock and squeezed. I undulated with my hips and kept rubbing his cock.
“Do you want to do another song?” I asked.
“How long have you worked here?” Peter removed my hand and held it, then zipped up his pants.
“Too long,” I said. I wanted to slip into the red black crack between the vinyl couch and the wall and hide there for the rest of the night.
“Dinner. Tomorrow.” He wrote down his number on a book of matches and handed it to me.
“You’re sweet,” I said.
“We’ll leave early, about five,” he said. I pictured myself on the back of his Ducati, with my arms clasped around him tight. My defenses melted for a moment and I felt my ribcage swell. I wanted to stop stealing, but not tonight. Not now. I stiffened as soon as he stood up to leave. I hoped Peter would walk out into the wet night and not forget about me in about ten seconds, like the others.
“I’ll call you at noon,” I said. I pictured him reaching for his wallet to pay the cab driver and noticing that he was missing sixty bucks. He would probably think he spent more on drinks than he’d planned, or that he left some money at home on his desk. He’d think about my tattoos and wide smile and wonder what my real name was. He would wonder if I meant it when I said I would definitely call him because I genuinely liked him. And, although hundreds of men would be wrong to think those things after having a lap dance with me in the VIP area at the MSC, Peter was right.
I called him. I got his answering machine. The man’s voice said I’d reached Brian.
21
I no longer had Jessa. I no longer had Marya. And the one person I’d met who I’d actually liked had lied to me about his name after I robbed him. I just couldn’t do this anymore.
Everyday I woke up in a panic and searched for job listings under the nonprofit section on Craigslist. I liked the sounds of “Peer Educator” and “Caregiver” but I had no qualifications. “Stripper” was not an occupation to list while seeking employment, even though the customer service skill set was applicable to any straight job.
On one of my strolls to the corner for coffee, taking a break from applying, I met a guy named Tom who resembled a young hippie version of Robin Williams. He was sipping on a latte while reading the San Francisco Bay Guardian and told me about a job opening where he was working as a case manager for homeless youth. He jabbered on about how he thought everyone was attracted to him—his boss, his co-workers, and his clients. His boss called me later that day to set up a meeting.
It was pouring rain the day of the job interview. I was so nervous that I asked my friend Jen to give me a ride. In the passenger’s seat of her SUV, I broke down.
“Why are you crying?” she asked.
“They’re going to know I give handjobs.” How do I tell them about the gap in my job history over the last few years?”
“Tell them you were in school,” she said.
“Do I look like a hooker?” I asked.
“No. You look like a classical musician. Don’t worry about it.” She dropped me off in the Tenderloin. The interview lasted over an hour because I was interviewed by two groups of people: the human resources staff and the Polk Inn staff. I picked at my fingernails underneath the table where they questioned me, but not my job history. The thing they were most worried about was my long-term jag in Alcoholics Anonymous.
“This is a harm reduction program so we don’t talk about abstinence from drugs or alcohol.” Tom hired me, regardless of my career as a lap dancer. It was my first job in years that didn’t involve being naked. Every time I showed up for work I was afraid that I was going to be fired for being a hooker in AA. Everyday that I walked through the doors of the Polk Inn and wasn’t, I won a tiny victory.
22
The Polk Inn stood out in the Tenderloin because of all the beige and glass, a contrast to junkies out front selling stolen bicycles and gizmos. Winos waved their lotto tickets in my face brushing past its elegant modern angles. Tranny hookers stopped to check their weaves in the windows as they strutted by. Everyone was holding.
I was hired as an RA, residential assistant, an entry-level counselor position that required no actual counseling, but my duties ran the gamut. I was a nurse, babysitter, DJ, watchdog, secretary, and cook. I distributed meds and dinner for a half-dozen seventeen to twenty-four-year-old HIV-positive, mentally unstable, drug addicted clients. Then, I encouraged them to dispose of their hypodermic needles in bright orange Sharps containers that were attached to the walls. During my shift, I recorded the clients’ notable behavior in a big black plastic binder that was kept in a locked drawer upstairs.
For the first couple of months at Polk Inn, I hardly recognized myself—the role, the people, even the small talk. But I grew with it and found myself looking forward to every day. I was helping people who needed it, and that felt good.
Our clients at Polk Inn participated in street economy, meaning most of them turned tricks, hustled drugs, or smoked dope with the ghetto blaster guy who bounced up and down the sidewalk, nodding his head to the rhythm of Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” while singing “the ones we hurt are you and me.” Polk Street was their terrain. My job as an RA was to enforce the house rules. Clients weren’t allowed to bring their swag into Polk Inn and we reserved the right to rifle through their backpacks and purses. I never did. We buzzed clients into the front door and they willingly held out their hands to show the things they carried: a wrinkled brown paper sack from the liquor store full of cigarettes, candy, and beer. My manager said their world was small and that they stayed within a four-block radius of the Polk, but that wasn’t all true. Some clients wandered—like Charlie, a gorgeous, blonde, crack-smoking tranny. They had rules and they had chores; they had to keep their rooms clean and show up for their meetings with their case managers in order to remain there.
I sometimes helped write cover letters, or hung around in the reception area handing out sack lunches to clients and making sure they included a turkey sandwich, a Capri Sun, chocolate chip cookies, and a mealy red apple. When the clients were really good, I got to give them a movie pass.
At five, the case managers went home, the fog wiped away the sun, and we RAs took over the Polk Inn.
Armando was short and thin, a five-foot-tall Latino with loose khaki shorts and a studded black belt. He smeared grease on his slick black curls and wore a chunky silver rope chain around his fragile neck that seemed uncharacteristically butch. Armando had been a resident for a few months and was twenty-two.
/>
“He’s a cutter,” Phil, the other RA, warned me. I’d already liked him. Now, I really wanted to help him.
One afternoon, Armando was sitting in a chair in the courtyard, slumped over a black journal with a set of skinny pens, drawing. Once in a while he wiped a shiny ringlet aside with his right hand, then picked up another pen and shaded.
“Want a snack?” I asked him. He shook his head and tore another piece of coarse white paper from his journal, drawing in loopy, magnificent detail. I looked over his shoulder at his drawing of a giant menacing orchid overtaking an angel wielding a sword.
“That is so good,” I said.
“I’m going to the Academy of Art.” He stood up, eyeing his work from another angle, then sat back down. His forehead was creased.
“Can you play some music? Phil always plays music.”
“Sure.” I saw a Radiohead and a Jill Scott CD that another RA left behind; I popped in the Jill Scott.
“Thanks,” he said.
I looked forward to my shift on Sundays because I cooked an early dinner and it was movie night. My usual dish was chicken smothered in olive oil and wild rice with almond slivers. A red key dangled by an elastic cord from my wrist. It opened every door in the building, and while I cooked it jangled against the refrigerator and pantry with a loud, tinny clank. I found garlic, butter, and carrots in the fridge. I rifled through the dishwasher for cooking pans. I chopped an onion and tossed chicken and vegetables in the oven. The smell of my cooking helped kill the antiseptic institutional smell of frozen French fries and stale fish sticks. The kitchen had sliding glass doors that opened onto a patio where clients smoked on aluminum chairs in the chilly, afternoon sun. White plastic ashtrays were filled with rainwater, butts afloat in the soot.
Miss Congeniality played loudly on the big flat-screened television in the community room—the movie they’d voted for unanimously.
A woman I didn’t recognize showed up on the security camera in the front office and rang the bell. She held what appeared to be hundreds of white lilies wrapped in Saran wrap and said they were from a wedding. Could she donate them?
Armando put down his pen and smiled huge.
“Lilies! My favorite!” he said. “Can we decorate?” We spent the next hour cutting the tops off of water bottles and filling them with water from the sink. I unlocked the case managers’ offices and Armando pranced into the room, cleared space on each desk, and placed the flowers. Then he sauntered off with jerky dance moves, threw his hands in the air as if to say, “Ta da!”
“Can I have some in my room?” he asked, knowing I would allow it, knowing that I was a pushover. He didn’t wait for my permission. I watched him carry two bottles of flowers up to his room on the second floor, right next to the RA office.
I didn’t see him for the rest of my shift, until I knocked on his door to give him meds. When I did, he showed me two small, framed pictures of his mother and sister. Their faces were round and hazy like from an eighties after-school special. They hadn’t spoken to him since finding out he was a gay hooker. My entry for him read: Armando was social, helpful, and productive. He worked on his beautiful drawings and helped me decorate.
23
At Polk Inn there was no such thing as a normal shift. There were times that “normal” included all hell breaking loose. I clocked in one Thursday to learn that Allesandra had been killed in a knife fight, out in the street, and Revo had disappeared. Luca had OD’d, and Heather was in the hospital in labor. Sometimes life and death would cozy up beside each other. This all during the same day I was reprimanded for allowing Armando to get anywhere near scissors. “They could cut themselves on the edges of those water bottles,” my manager said. He was right, but I didn’t feel remorse. I thought it was good for Armando to do something thoughtful, and we shared a love of lilies.
I walked into the kitchen, which is the first thing I do when I need a reset. I stood in the chilly glow of the fridge and considered my options. I swiped a Capri Sun and sucked the wet sugar from the spindly straw. It was eerily quiet under the florescent kitchen lights. Charlie rushed out the front door in a denim miniskirt and spike heels with a little wave. I ordered Domino’s pizza in case some clients showed up for dinner. I heard loud music blaring from upstairs. It was Armando’s room, so I grabbed his meds from the office and knocked on his door.
“Can you turn that down?” He opened his door a couple inches.
“Why? No one’s here.”
“I’m trying to order us pizza.” His eyes were two black holes.
“I’m not hungry.” I handed him his meds. He shook his head then shut the door in my face. I ducked into the RA office and wrote in the binder:
“Armando was asked to turn his music down. Refused his HIV and psych meds.”
Downstairs, I gorged on three pieces of drippy pepperoni pizza and replayed the night with the client I’d decided to meet. I was shocked at how easily I’d crossed the line from dancer to hooker. I grasped for excuses but was disgusted with myself. Had the street economy invaded my skin? Why lunge deeper into sex work while trying to distance myself from it?
I used my red key to open an empty client apartment and locked myself in the bathroom. I stuck my finger down my throat and puked. I wanted to sit in the dark and blast music, rock back and forth in my own emptiness. Rock my emptiness to sleep.
Armando’s music played louder and louder.
“Goddamn it,” I mumbled. I walked down the hall and banged on his door. He didn’t open it.
“Armando!” I kept knocking. Louder.
“I’m coming in, Armando.” I unlocked his door and, noticing my key chain still had some puke on it, wiped it on my jeans. The door was heavy because he’d used a bookshelf to blockade it. I pushed my whole body against it, sliding the bookshelf towards the wall. Armando stood holding a wooden bat in his arms. His head was cut and blood dripped down into his perfectly tweezed black eyebrows. Blood was splattered on his hands and shirt. His eyes were fierce and lacked any of the softness from the day we’d arranged the lilies. His gaze was ecstatic and free, like an angel floating in cool moonlight.
“I’m okay,” he said.
He let the bloody bat drop, and it landed with a thunk. Both of us froze, standing in the dark room with his blood under our feet. White lilies drooped pitifully on a wooden bedside table. My manager had confiscated the water bottle.
“I’m okay,” he said again in a raspy whisper. We glowed in the dark. I backed away, stepped into the hall, and called my manager. Armando’s door slammed shut.
“Call nine-one-one,” my manager said. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want Armando to go anywhere. I wanted to throw a blanket over him and pat him on the head and hand him a sack lunch and a movie pass. Within a few moments that could’ve been thirty seconds or a half-hour, the door buzzed.
Outside, the ghetto blaster guy was still swaying to rap music. Behind him were six men in black helmets and kneepads. I’d never seen them before: the SWAT team. They wrapped Armando up and carried him away on a stretcher. His expression seemed to ask me, Why?
24
Red past-due notices piled up as my bills went unpaid. I was behind on rent and had exhausted my list of people to touch for a loan. So it wasn’t long—in fact it was soon—before I was back moonlighting in the Tenderloin clubs, trying to make some dough, to get my head above water, to breathe. I reasoned with myself, told myself that I was adding something to my clients’ lives in both places. Or at least that I wasn’t causing them more harm. I told myself that I catered to the needs of somewhat helpless people. Call it denial, call it a girl making a living, or trying to. I hadn’t completely separated myself from sex work, and I was used to the sexual validation. Without it, I didn’t know myself. I wondered what it would take to disentangle, to totally leave sex work behind.
A few weeks after Armando cut himself, I rode my
motorcycle a couple blocks up to O’Farrell on the wet cold night where I was stripping at New Century Theater till 4:00 a.m.
New Century was empty except for a few coked up firemen. They weren’t supposed to be there, but everyone knew they bought their powders from Carla. They did blow in the bathroom and leaned against the walls of the club. Sometimes I’d talk to one of them, but I couldn’t waste too much time flirting—I needed money to pour, not trickle, in. When the DJ called my name to dance onstage I was about to give up and go home. “I’m leaving after this set,” I told him as my first song by Danzig started. A tall, fat guy in a suit and tie walked up to the stage with a pink drink in one hand and a twenty spot in the other. He threw it onstage and staggered away. I removed my bikini top and tossed it onto the floor. After my third song, I walked over to him and his friends.
“All dressed up and nowhere to go,” I said.
“I wouldn’t call that dressed up,” he said pointing to his lap. I sat down there, and his friends roared.
“I’m Stevie,” I said. My lips touched his ear lobe. The music was so loud I felt the bass vibrate my tailbone.
“Do you want to make some money tonight or what?” He flashed a tennis ball-sized chunk of hundreds—enough to pay my rent, buy groceries, gas, maybe some new lingerie. “I’m Rob,” he said, then told me he was one of the founders of one of the biggest magazines in the country. I talked him into a dance, and the suits egged him on with high fives. He took my hand and they patted him on the back—universal reactions when a guy agrees to a dance, at least in any club I ever worked in. Rob followed me down a glowing hallway that led to a private room with an Egyptian theme, paintings of scarabs and pyramids reminded me of lost civilizations and strong women like Nefertiti and Cleopatra. I was sweaty from my stage show. I sat down on the black vinyl couch seat. My thighs stuck to it. The song started so I draped over him in slow motion. “I’ve been looking for someone to pay,” he said.
Spent Page 8