And eventually I came to two decisions, ways that I could bring the two sides to my life somewhat closer together.
The first thing that I did was begin a proposal for the next summer’s curriculum, for a class on the history and sociology of prostitution. I’d get the minimum enrollment, I figured, just out of prurient interest. And it would be a way of integrating what I was doing with who I really was. Okay, so it’s justification, I’ll admit it. But we all do it… The other thing that I did was decide to tell a friend.
Chapter Seven
I decided that I had to talk to somebody about what I was doing.
I understand, now, why murderers feel driven to confess their crimes – at some level, every human action needs a witness. We don’t exist in a void, and we don’t think of ourselves outside of a context.
I was leading a completely dual life, teaching by day and being an escort by night, and never the twain shall meet.
It would help, I thought, if I could have just one person who knew both sides of me. Who respected my academic career while knowing about my being a callgirl.
I thought about Seth right away. Seth and I had been on-again, off-again friends for probably the longest of anyone I’d known. We met online before it was fashionable to meet online, had counseled each other via e-mails and the occasional visit through marriages and love affairs and degrees and disasters; and Seth, I knew, wouldn’t judge me. Seth cared.
So one night between calls I dialed his number long-distance from the cell phone in my car. Seth lived in Manhattan. What the hell: I could afford it, now.
“It’s just for a while, you know, until I can pay off the student loans.”
His voice was concerned. “Yeah, but listen, are you safe?”
I giggled. “Safer than I’ve ever been, sweetie. I make sure it’s on, believe me. You can count on that.”
“I didn’t mean that. You know what I mean.”
“Yeah… I know what you mean, and I really think it’s all right, Seth. Peach screens the clients pretty well, and so far the only ones I’m seeing are regulars, guys that she knows, guys who use her agency all the time. I insisted on that. I told her that I couldn’t afford to get arrested. It’s okay, really it is.”
“I just worry about you, that’s all.”
“I know.” Awave of affection washed over me. He was so sweet.
“And I’m glad you do. Besides, in a weird way it’s been really good for me.”
“How so?”
“Well, just imagine. After the Peter Rat Bastard fiasco, with him trying to convince me that I wasn’t worth anything – and think of all the other assholes I’ve dated and believed when they tried to unload their inadequacies on me. Well, news flash: there are a lot of men in this city willing to pay two hundred dollars just to be with me for an hour. They think I’m worth that kind of money. And I’m starting to believe that I am worth it. That’s a pretty big ego lift, I’ve got to tell you.”
“Yeah, but look at who they are.”
I pulled over into a loading zone as my temper flared. Can’t drive and tell someone off at the same time. “Yeah, Seth, you want to talk about who they are? Let’s see. Last night it was one of the string section of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. And after him, a guy in a townhouse on Beacon Hill; there was a Renoir on the wall. And I’m on my way over to MIT right now. Real losers, Seth. You’re right. I should have stayed with Peter the drug dealer. Now that was a class act. I’d much rather have his penis inside me.” I drew in a shaky breath.
“All right, all right, calm down, honey. That wasn’t what I meant.”
He wasn’t getting off the hook that easily. “The hell it wasn’t.”
Silence. Then: “Okay, so it was. So maybe I’m wrong about the kind of guy who sees a hooker.”
I could feel my blood pressure rising again. “Hooker? You haven’t been hearing anything, have you? What do you think, I’m cruising Kneeland Street in shorts and boots, walking up to cars and offering a good time in the back seat? Christ, Seth, I thought you were listening to me! I thought you’d understand!”
“Honey, all right, what you’re doing is cool, I don’t object, it’s just that I don’t want to see you hurt.” Yeah, the patronizing thing always works with me. I considered hanging up, and very nearly did, but Seth and I had been friends for a long time… “I thought you’d be the only man who wasn’t” – I floundered for the right words, I’m not as articulate when I’m angry – “stereotypical in his thinking. I thought you’d see that there’s class in doing this because I have class, and I wouldn’t do it unless I could respect myself. We’ve had that conversation so many times, Seth, especially after Peter. Remember? I swore that after him I’d make sure that I was always able to sleep at night, I’d never feel that way about myself again?”
“Okay, okay. You’re right. I was totally out of line there.”
Impossible to tell why he was backing down, but I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. “You’re right, hon, okay? It’s the stereotype that comes to mind, not the reality. I’m a product of the culture that produces the stereotypes. So educate me, but don’t kill me. I was just reacting like a guy, like any guy would. You’re like a sister to me, you know that.”
“I’m not a hooker.” Even to my own ears, it sounded sullen, like I was pouting. Good thing he was long-distance, I could blame it on distortion in the ether, or whatever it was that was carrying our voices.
“Of course you’re not. You use the term callgirl? Okay, I will too, it sounds better. Listen, Jen, I didn’t mean anything bad…” I let him grovel for a little while longer, but I needed to check in with Peach, see what the prospects were for the MIT guy. So I let Seth off the hook, he had squirmed long enough. Maybe he even understood as much as he was saying that he did.
But the conversation replayed itself later that evening as I stretched over the professor’s desk and watched the fish swim around in his aquarium while he took me from behind. (Actually, that was one fantasy I thought was pretty cool, a boring meeting with a student the next day and the secret thought that he had been having sex on that very desk the night before, I could get into that one.
As I was to find out, several of my clients thought along the same lines, fucking me in places that would later bring a secret sexual frisson – the table in the boardroom, the desk in the front of the lecture-hall, the examining-table in the doctor’s office, that sort of thing. I wondered if they could still hear my screams echoing off the walls the next day. ) Seth’s words intruded into my feeling good about the professor’s pleasure. I have to say that some people are so delighted with you and what you do for them, it’s hard not to get caught up in their happiness. This guy was like a kid at Christmas, exclaiming happily over my breasts, transported by joy when I touched him, chuckling wickedly as he cleared space on his desk. His orgasms were the closest thing to complete delight I think I’ve ever observed. Does it matter that it was a callgirl who got him there? Hell, no: joy is rare enough in our world, you’ve got to grab it and feel it and love it whenever you can. A woman had done that for him. It didn’t matter who she was, only that he felt it.
But tonight I had Seth on my mind. The problem was that I had never thought of him in sexual terms, and here he had reacted, as he said, “like a guy.” Well, he had the right, didn’t he? He was a guy, after all… Except that for me he had never really been either male or female – he was just Seth. Sex didn’t enter into it. When I was going through my I-think-I’m-a-lesbian phase we checked out the same women, but that was just a game. I didn’t want him to be like everybody else. I wanted him to stay just Seth – safe, different. I didn’t want to fight the same fights with him that I had to fight out there, every day, with everybody else.
So after that first night when I told him what I was doing, we went on with the e-mails and the occasional calls, and every time he asked me if I was still working, and when I said yes, he just said, “Be careful, honey. Just be careful.”
And I liked that. Liked that he knew, and accepted, and cared.
Just after Christmas he sent me an e-mail: “Company’s sending me to Boston! Woo hoo! What do you say to drinks at the Ritz and dinner at Morton’s, their treat?”
I wrote back: “What do you think I say? I can’t wait to see you! They’re getting stingy, though, last year when you came, didn’t they book you at the Four Seasons? Which is fancier?”
My inbox beeped a few minutes later. “Who cares? So long as there’s room service, that’s all I care about. The Globe and eggs and bacon delivered in the morning. My needs are simple. Besides, I got a suite this time. Meet me there next Thursday, seven o’clock, I’ll have them chill some champagne for you.”
I couldn’t resist: “Which one?”
The e-mails were flying today. Beep. “You tell me, I’ll order it. When did I ever settle for second best?”
I typed a quick response. “Well, there was your ex-wife….”
Beep. “You would have to remind me. See you next Thursday. Be careful.”
The week passed, and I took the Thursday night off. I tried to work on a new syllabus until about three and gave up and went down to the river for a brisk walk, ending up at the new Galleria Mall afterward. God, it was cold. I sincerely hoped that Seth would spring for a taxi to take us from the hotel to the restaurant. Five years now he’d been coming up to Boston, five years I’d been meeting him for drinks in whatever hotel he was staying at, followed by the inevitable dinner at Morton’s. “There are one or two other restaurants in Boston, you know.”
“Not in my opinion.”
One last faint protest. “What if I become vegetarian?” At Morton’s, they bring the cuts of meat to your table and you choose off the cart instead of the menu. The meat, needless to say, is at that stage uncooked. Vegan hell.
Seth was heartless. “Then you can watch me eat.”
Thursday night I put on my universally acceptable little black cocktail dress and the pearls that were the only thing I’d salvaged from my disastrous relationship with the rat bastard. I did the usual quick makeup job that had become second nature to me since starting to work for Peach, then put on my absolutely warmest winter coat and drove to the Ritz-Carlton. The company must be doing well, I thought. Rooms at the Ritz are around three hundred ninety-five dollars a night.
I parked in the underground lot beneath the Common, because I didn’t want Seth having any awkwardness about a woman visitor charging her parking to his room. I collected the book I’d bought him that week as a present at the Avenue Victor Hugo – a first edition Swinbourne, no less – and headed up to his suite.
He was on the phone, and waved me in. “Okay, Dean, we’ll have to get into it in the morning. Yeah. Yeah, okay. No, I’m on my way out for dinner now. Yeah, I’ve got that covered. Yeah, I’ll talk to you then. Bye.”
I raised my eyebrows. “The scintillating conversation of the movers and shakers never ceases to amaze me. I hear that Bill Gates can even construct full sentences when he tries.”
”Doubtful,” he said. “Nobody who’s anybody majored in English, honey; you’re a dying breed.” Seth hugged me, then pulled back to inspect me. “How the hell are you? You look great.”
“I’m freezing,” I said. “And I didn’t major in English, I just happen to be one of the few people who uses it correctly. It’s a dismal day when one has to major in English in order to speak it.” I cleared my throat dramatically. “And it looks like I’ve got to be the one to tell you, that tie has to go. Who picked it out, anyway?”
He made a face. “Catherine.” Catherine was the new girlfriend, a semi-serious contender for the newly-available (since the past spring) position of Wife Number Three.
“I see.” I raised my hands in mock defeat. “Far be it from me to second-guess Catherine.” I took off my coat and sat down. I felt good, relaxed, so totally at home with him, despite the time and distance since we’d last been in the same room together. “However, it has to be said, her talents aren’t exactly sartorial.”
“Well,” he said, sitting on the sofa across from me, “she may be the first woman I’ve dated who would actually know what that means, so I must be making some progress, right?”
I laughed. “God, Seth, it’s good to see you.”
“You, too, Tia Maria.” The old nickname slipped out, and it jolted me out of my relaxation. “What’s the matter?”
I picked at a nonexistent fiber on the cushion next to me. “Nothing, really. It’s just that nobody calls me that anymore.” Not since my college drinking days, when I preferred getting sick on Tia Maria to getting sick on any other alcohol. In those days, Seth sent me witty e-mails making fun of my inability to drink, and used the nickname on occasions where he wanted to either taunt or comfort me. It was with that thought in mind that I’d chosen Tia as my working name, when Peach asked me for one. “And, so, anyway, when I was thinking about a name to use for the business, I wanted something that was – oh, you know, connected to me in some way. So I use Tia. That’s why it just seems weird hearing it here, out of that context.” I felt like I was babbling. I didn’t need to explain myself so much, right? Not to Seth.
He had gotten up and opened the champagne the right way, absorbing the pressure of the cork into his hand. Those among my clients who serve champagne seem to enjoy a thunderous popping sound followed by the cork ricocheting around the room. It’s pretty adolescent. Yeah, I know, so my point is…? And, besides that, we mostly cater to the nouveau riche, and Seth was anything but. His name, still inexplicably retained by Wives Number One and Two, is Seth Niven Bradford III. “Champagne for my lady?”
I took the flute he offered. Chilled slightly, correctly. I shivered. “Thank you.”
He poured his own and sat down again. It would have been gauche to offer a toast, and he didn’t. “Speaking of that, are you doing all right? I worry about you. Sometimes there’s stuff I read in the papers…”
I sipped the champagne and smiled at him. “That’s your hometown, Seth. You’ve got a lot more crazies in New York, and a lot more tabloids. I told you, it’s okay. And let’s not talk about work, okay?”
He dropped it. That was the other thing I was loving about Seth: even the most disinterested man became absolutely and idiotically fascinated when the subject came up, and Seth could just stop talking about it.
It’s an interesting phenomenon. Try it. I’m serious. The next time you’re out for beers with some of your guy buddies, just mention to them that you know an escort. Or a madam. They’ll drool all over you, guaranteed.
Of course, you also won’t be able to move off the subject. But it’s still an interesting experiment, if you have an evening to kill.
At a stifling faculty wine and cheese party I once said casually (and recklessly, but what the hell, it was Harvard, I was a mere teaching assistant, they weren’t going to offer me tenure anyway, and I was bored and already had three glasses of really bad port under my belt) that I had an acquaintance who was a madam. I was immediately besieged.
I found myself strenuously wishing that they could be as fascinated with my dissertation research. Obvious prurient interest was couched in suitably detached and almost academic questions.
I didn’t look (well, after all, I did still want the occasional course they threw my way), but if I had, I’d bet anything on them all having hard-ons at the mere mention of prostitution. There’s something about the subject that men find absolutely riveting. “But isn’t it true that most of the women involved in the industry are in fact nymphomaniacs fulfilling their own sexual needs?” A goatee wobbling over a glass of stale sherry.
In your fantasies, jerk-off.
And it’s equal-opportunity fascination, equally enthralling to the liberals who want to legalize prostitution as the fundamentalists who want to preach against it.
But it didn’t matter. I had a safe haven, an island in the sea of predictable and offensive male interest. The goatees could drool to t
heir hearts’ content: I had Seth.
Seth didn’t want to know who, or where, or how many. He didn’t want to ask about orgasms or prices or whether the girls doing doubles really were lesbians (“Isn’t it true that…?”). He just wanted to be sure that I was safe.
I loved Seth.
We drank wonderful champagne and didn’t talk about my work – well, after all, it was a fairly dismal subject, since it looked like another fall of sporadic community college courses. We didn’t talk about his work, either. Seth was very high up in a company that plans to take over the world once Microsoft, as all empires must, eventually falls. Most of what he did was classified as “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
We just talked. About a mutual friend who was billed third in a current major motion picture (and am I the only person in this country waiting for the announcement, “Soon to be a minor motion picture?” I’d actually go see that one), and who we both snidely and jealously dismissed as a mere Flavor of the Month. “No staying power,” Seth said, and I nodded wisely, being by then on my second glass of champagne.
We talked about Catherine’s work on her doctorate, at which point I darkly and bleakly pointed out that she’d do better getting some sort of technical certification: look at all the good my degree did me. A little cynicism here and there never hurts, and I could feel safely superior since she was still working toward the Holy Grail, whereas I had already attained it. We talked about Catherine asking Seth to open up more to her, to trust her, and his knee-jerk response to her questions. “So what am I supposed to say? She asks me what I’m thinking, right now, and I’m sitting there wondering what time the game starts.” We talked – briefly – about my current lack of a love interest. “It’s hard with working for Peach, Seth. I mean, I’m not available a whole lot of evenings, and where would I tell him I was?”
Callgirl: Confessions of a Double Life Page 9