Phlebotomy was supposed to be my transitional career out of the sex industry, but it became my gateway back in.
Ian hit his bong each morning and sold pot out of a yellow seventies Tupperware container he kept in our closet. When he was asleep I snagged five dollar bills from that container for gas or lunch money. We were scary broke. He cut hair twice a week and had band practice three nights per week. While he was at band practice, I collected our change and poured it into the machine at Vons that made a sound like slot machines in Vegas. It spat out a coupon for money that I used to buy four-dollar turkey meat I stretched into meatballs in an effort to make it last. I would squirt ketchup into the leftover meat to make spaghetti sauce. Once, a famous drummer I had a crush on raised his eyebrow at me as my change clanked through the machine at Vons. I’d forgotten what it was like to be this broke. I glared at him the way my Russian neighbors glared at me.
At an interview for a bartending gig in Beverly Hills, standing in line with about eighty people who’d also seen the post on Craigslist, a guy a hundred years younger than me with fake blue contact lenses asked me about my work history.
“What about the ten-year gap here in your work history?”
“I was a nanny” or “I was in school” or “I lived with a well-off boyfriend,” were my answers. One of the porn actors I befriended gave me a list of catering companies that he worked for when he was between movies. The catering company was in San Gabriel.
They didn’t ask many questions, they just told me to show up in black pants and a white tuxedo shirt to bartend a wedding. When I wasn’t drawing the blood of porn stars, I bartended Bar Mitzvahs, baby showers, birthday parties, and weddings all of which were intrinsically sad to me. I’d settled into a life of crab cakes and chicken skewers and mini cupcakes that I passed around on brown plastic trays. My boss didn’t allow us to accept tips directly, so I shoved dollars into my tube socks and counted them in my lap during my drive back to Hollywood.
My radio was often drowned out by the flashing sirens and helicopters that are everywhere in L.A. and especially near my apartment. It felt like there was always something horrible happening in Los Angeles.
First, there were fires. Thousands of acres were swallowed in orange flames that reached the sky, scorched the hills of L.A., and leveled homes. I was hypnotized by the destruction. Children were abducted; men dressed in Santa suits shot ex-wives in the face. Night stalkers and grim sleepers rose to kill again, and abandoned babies were found in trash cans behind Del Taco. People held signs and begged for money near freeway entrances while gang wars raged.
A couple of months later, on the way to bartend a baby shower in San Gabriel, the Nova died on the 210 Freeway. I called Ian.
“I’ve got to get to work and the car just died.”
“Good luck with that,” he said, and hung up. Sitting there on the freeway, at that moment I knew that it was over. I would end it before we’d ever really begun—he had done for me what the orchid breeder had. He had helped me escape something—but he couldn’t help me do more than that.
27
Dancers always want to quit, but we never do. We’re ghosts, dragging our chains from club to club. We appear in the window of your cab when you’re on the way to a power lunch. You think you recognize the angle of our jaw. We come and go, but we never disappear for good. We dye our hair, get weaves, gain weight, lose it, get breast implants, butt implants, colored contact lenses, and track marks. We get laugh lines and stretch marks and eye-lifts and hide it all with makeup and glitter. Then we change our name from Candy to Taylor and move to another club across town.
The important thing is to remain in perpetual motion—even if it means a constant red rash on my butt from high-friction lap dances. There were a hundred reasons to retire my Lucite heels. There’s no glory in stripping at forty, and I was getting very close.
Maybe, I thought, I could avoid razor burn and whiplash and make more money if I just saw one or two clients privately. But I also thought about the adage about alcoholics—how they never should have taken that first drink.
I was asked to do a mobile draw for the HIV clinic, which meant I had to drive to a porn producer’s set, deep in the valley, on a street called Zelzah. The Nova chugged and clicked along until I found the address. I rang the doorbell and was greeted by a guy in pajamas and a white T-shirt. He was in his fifties. “She’s in there.” He pointed to a room where a girl named Bunny sat on a stool, memorizing her lines, naked to her shoes. She looked lazily toxic as she drooped beneath a pink cowboy hat and looked me in the eye while I drew her blood. I’d brought her most recent test so she’d be covered for the day’s shoot.
“How many copies do you want?” Her Gucci suede purple boots reminded me of my old life: the dark circles under my eyes from seeing too many 4:00 a.m.s, the fine lines around my lips, the calluses on my heels, corns on the balls of my feet, the lower back pain, the neck ache, the frantic white highs and the sad, dull crashes.
“Hey, do you want to do a job with me Friday? It’s for a couple and it pays pretty good.” The fucking money. The fast motherfucking money. Rent, paid. Groceries, bought. I felt my neck turn red and warm like being complimented by a hot, random stranger. My heart raced, my body’s automatic rush response to doing a show.
“Yeah. I do.”
I told Ian I had a catering gig in Simi Valley and brought my bar kit and tuxedo shirt to work at the clinic. I’d tossed out my costumes when I left San Francisco—at the time it felt like a statement, now it just felt dumb. Bunny said she’d bring me something to wear. I figured our show couldn’t be much different than the choreographed bachelor parties I’d done in San Francisco with girls I’d worked with in the strip clubs. How different could it be than giving handjobs in the private rooms of the Market Street Cinema? This was my fault. Ian was used to my cash flow. I spent money as if I still had it and resented him for not contributing more. I festered, propelled by frustration. Ian wasn’t a man who liked to work, and I was a woman who grew up with eighties-specific optimism that promised success if I worked towards my dreams. Both my parents reinforced their “You’ve got to get up everyday and hit that ball hard.” I rose early and always showed up for class. I believed that higher education guaranteed upward mobility and job security, apple scented hair and expensive jeans. That house in the Hollywood Hills was totally doable as long as I was willing to “wake up with the roosters so I could soar with the eagles.”
28
Bunny pulled up to the clinic on Friday at closing time with her liquid smile dripping down at the corners. We headed towards the bathroom to change clothes. Off came the baggy, shabby scrubs and on with the pink g-string and the white, shiny, tiny shorts. On top, a tight white tank top with a plastic heart and patent leather red cha-cha heels.
You never know when you’ll need a sharp, spiked heel.
Bunny fastened the shiny black buckle on her baggy red and white Santa suit, complete with red faux fur pom-pom hat. The whole thing stunk of mildew. The top was tight and had two big gold buttons that were bells. The skirt hung loosely on her hips and had a big fuzzy white border along the bottom. She popped a small white pill then slowly applied cherry red lip gloss in the mirror. It occurred to me that our outfits were color coordinated, which put me at ease.
“So what should I call you when we get there?” she asked.
I’d used a million names over the years: Stevie, Rhonda, Violet, Candy, Lolita, Angelique, Alexis…
“How about Rosebud?” She handed me a small white pill.
“I like that,” I said, and put the pill in my makeup bag for later or never. I was trying to stay sober—that was something I wasn’t giving up on. I clenched my teeth.
Bunny and I carried our things out to her car, which had a bumper sticker that read “Question Reality.” I got in on the passenger side next to her Carl’s Jr. bags and cans of Diet Coke.
“So, the wife, Kay, is an ejaculator. It gets all over the place. We eat her out. Use toys on her. Fred mostly just watches.”
“It’s about the wife?” I asked.
Bunny looked at me and laughed. “No, I wouldn’t say that. He won’t touch you much. You don’t have to touch him. He might kiss you. Depends how high they get,” she said between drags.
“How long does this take? An hour?”
I looked at my watch. I was losing a little of myself with each passing moment. I drifted away and stared at the blood orange sun. I thought of the pill I took from Bunny earlier. The pill was oval. Smaller than Vicodin but with an “x” on the top. Maybe it’s Ambien. I never favored pills except to sleep after a powders bender.
“A little bit longer.” She nodded and fidgeted with something in her purse.
The sun was falling fast and we were still on the freeway, heading North. The more Bunny explained, the more my stomach churned. I looked for an escape, but there was no turning back now. The more nonchalant Bunny was, the more I felt like I was watching a movie of myself.
She said, “Fred might try to shove his tongue down your throat while he jerks off.” I pinched my leg. Dug my nail in deep. Maybe the pill was morphine. “Kay will want to diddle us both and squirt in your face.”
I chewed my lip. I tasted blood. Her voice sounded like it came from behind us—like there was an answering machine of her voice in the trunk. Klonopin. It could be Klonopin—the king of benzos. She said, “I’m on my period so don’t go too crazy down there.” I reached for the warm can of Diet Coke from the floor. I couldn’t feel the fingers of my right hand.
We pulled up to a white security gate with two burly guys standing in a glass booth. “Bunny for number nine Mustang Lane.” They nodded with raised eyebrows but let us through the gate. We continued up a mountain road with cowboy movie street names like Trigger and Gunsmoke. We kept going up and around and two rights and a stop. Generic looking but very recently built mansions were tucked into the desolate canyon; each had the same SUVs parked in their driveway. We got out, and it smelled like horses. She pushed buzzer number nine and another white metal gate lifted.
A graying guy wrapped in a white, terry cloth towel skirt answered the door—the kind with Velcro at the waist for easy access. He said, “Hi Bunny” in a low near whisper but reached for me instead. A sluggish, wet tongue slid into my mouth before I could pull away. He tasted like burnt coffee and blue cheese. His skin was a rough, fuzzy kiwi. He kissed Bunny, too, and we followed him up some wide stairs with white banisters. They led to a dark hallway with brown walls that hinted of smoke.
“How’s business, Fred?” Bunny made easy chit chat. Fred was her regular. That’s job security for girls like us.
I thought of all the ways I’d tried to get by in Los Angeles. I’d cleaned the houses of swimsuit models, drew blood and siphoned piss, counseled porn stars, bartended baby showers and Bar Mitzvahs, organized storage units and closets. And then there was this. I’d tried to stay away from this. Only when money’s tight, I told myself. But money was always tight. I had bills to pay, something I needed, stuff I had to have. I couldn’t resist. I could collect a few clients and make more than what my five part-time jobs paid all week. I’d find another topless club with a sorry buffet and slim, gold poles. I’d find more coke dealers, ex-cons, and geezers to dance for; more soldiers with PTSD and government checks—for just enough cash to get me through one more day.
For the first time since moving from San Francisco, I felt hopeful.
“See you two cuties in a couple minutes.” He dropped us off in the bathroom and walked down the hallway.
Pot smoke hung in the air like an omen. I heard the clanking of glasses.
We are in the middle of nowhere and Bunny is the only person who knows I’m here.
We got things ready. Bunny opened a duffel bag and displayed her impressive collection of dildos: long and black, fleshy pink, swirly purple, and one that was the shape of an arm with a fist; some of them vibrated, and one had a little dolphin on top (it was turquoise), but they smelled like an outhouse on a hot day.
“Jesus Christ, Bunny. Didn’t you disinfect these?”
“Sure, usually, but I just came from seeing someone,” she said.
“So I smell.”
I reached for the faucet in the bathtub and ran hot water, squeezed some orange liquid soap from a plastic bottle and threw the rank dongs into the bubbling brew, angry with myself for not grabbing condoms at the clinic earlier.
“Are you trying to get hepatitis?” I said. I knew better. She rolled her eyes. I heard a knock at the door and Fred’s voice: “Girls, are you taking a bath in there or are we going to have some fun?”
I grabbed the black prick and whispered to Bunny. “Clean this one so we can get this over with.”
“Take it easy,” she said, like I was a buzzkill.
“We’re coming!” I cooed. Bunny wrapped a peach towel lovingly around our wet schlong, grabbed some tangerine flavored lube and opened the door.
We were wet with the soapy suds.
“Ho ho ho,” Bunny sang at Fred and slipped on the slimy linoleum floor.
“Shit,” Fred helped her up and led her down the dark hallway. I guess he was used to this. I followed them into the candlelit room where blonde Kay was waiting, cross-legged, smoking a joint in a tan velvet chair in the corner. Her cheeks sagged with age, but her breasts were two perky plastic oranges in her chest. She wore a Victoria Secret catalogue negligee that wasn’t cheap. Her quick smile reminded me just a little of Mom’s even grin. She wore open-toed cork seventies wedge shoes and was sipping on white wine. She left a pink lipstick stain on the rim of the glass. She had straight white teeth, whiter than bone.
“Hey cutie pies. Wanna party?” Kay’s voice was high and fake. She beckoned us to move closer. She offered us wine from a bottle on a round glass table. “Yeah,” Bunny said matter-of-fact. I shook my head. Kay’s eyes were like aqua blue birds darting around the room. She was thin, fleshy, not firm. The long blonde hair wasn’t hers.
The room was spacious but windowless. It had a fireplace on one wall with some pillows and blankets thrown down in front of it. Dozens of white candles burned, filling the air with a sickening sweet floral cloud. This will help with our fecal predicament, I thought. There was a soft California King-sized bed with stuffed animals on top of it. Were there children around or were these Kay’s friends? Framed pictures on the walls near the fireplace showed an eleven or twelve-year-old girl who looked like she’d had an accident with a can of hairspray.
Fred plopped down on the bed and leaned on his side, watching us. He was tan and maybe sixty. I looked around the room for a clock but the one by the bed was turned around facing the wall, hidden from my view on purpose. Fred’s skin was a leathery hide: rough and wrinkled.
A strange porn played on a thin screened television: a woman painted blue licked another woman in full tiger regalia; ears, tail, and black and gold stripes covered her body. They chased each other through a fake jungle then had sex with an orchid. I looked for porn actors I knew from the clinic, but the body paint and costumes made it impossible. Two blondes performed oral sex on each other in a tropical setting. This must be what Fred expects, I thought. The sound was muted.
“Make love to her now, ” Fred commanded. Bunny crawled on the floor and growled like a tiger. When she was in front of Kay’s knees, she lowered her face, head, and Santa hat between her long, tanned, shiny legs. Kay giggled. I removed Kay’s négligée and reached for her brownish nipples. They tasted like Jergens lotion. Fred stroked himself beneath the terry cloth towel skirt.
/> “Yeah. Girls. That’s it. That’s it,” he mumbled. He sped up his jerking animal motion.
After a while, Bunny removed my shorts and g-string and pulled me to the floor over by the fireplace on top of some blankets. I helped Bunny wriggle out of her Santa skirt and panties. Bunny got chatty.
“Your body’s creamy and sexy,” Bunny told Kay while rubbing her thighs with almond scented oil. Kay’s eyes were closed and she was on her back. I took over with the almond oil. Bunny lubed up our long black friend with the tangerine slime and approached Kay’s crotch. She let it dangle in the air for Fred to see. Fred had removed his terry cloth number and was rubbing his cock with greasy, calloused hands. He nodded and moaned and I could see cracks in his leather skin in the dim light.
“That’s it, baby, relax.” He was talking to Kay.
Bunny set down the dildo then licked her fingers and rubbed Kay’s clit. She transformed into a gifted fondler before my eyes. Tongue, fingers, tongue, fingers, tongue, fingers and then Kay cried out like a sick cat and squirted all over Bunny’s face. My turn. Enter black dildo. Kay started wiggling and moaning and I started to drift, pretending I was watching myself from the wall where the pictures hung. I imagined Kay’s pussy as a large hot pepperoni pizza with black olives, mushrooms, and extra cheese. It was a greasy affair, half Canadian bacon and pineapple, sweet, tangy, and hot. It was within reach and I could smell its magic, and I would devour it in a half-second. I bit into my lip while Kay released all over me. Her eyes were closed, and she had soaked the towels beneath her. Bunny’s baby voice woke me from the pizza dream.
“Kay looks like a Christmas present tonight, right Fred?” She had fitted the Santa hat onto Kay’s head. Kay laughed. I was soaked with foreign fluids; smelling of the ocean, salt water, and almond oil. I wanted to go to the bathroom and wash it off. I wanted to be dry. I wanted to slap Bunny. I wanted to take her white pills.
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