In the meantime, Luis was filling a lot more than my thoughts.
He was the perfect boyfriend. He sent me flowers. He called me just to hear my voice. He presumed that I had an extraordinarily high level of intelligence, knowledge, and wit; and I found myself stretching to live up to his expectations. Our sex life was sweet, friendly, pleasant. He wrote me a poem. In Spanish.
And, curiously enough, my working for Peach didn’t appear to have any impact on the relationship at all.
I’ve said it before, but it bears reiterating. In all of the time that I worked for the escort service, I never confused what I was doing with anything else. The words might have been the same, the acts and gestures might have been the same, but it was work. There are very few callgirls who are unable to make that differentiation; and those who cannot do not survive.
I think that it’s a lot easier for a woman to be clear about separating out sex for money and sex for love than it is for a man to do so. Mind you, men think that they’re good at differentiating. The husband caught in flagrant delicti will protest, “But, honey, it was just sex! It didn’t mean anything!”
Well, okay, maybe it didn’t, but that’s only because sex doesn’t have that much meaning for men, no matter who they’re doing it with.
For whatever reason – and the anthropologist in me can think of several excellent ones, though this is not the time or place to lecture on them – women have attached a feeling (love) to a physical activity (sex). Men have more or less bought into this notion, because doing so afforded them the opportunity to keep at least one woman around and available. But the old double standard invariably raises its ugly head, and while men are assumed to feel the need to go outside of the “love” relationship and have meaningless sex without it affecting the primary relationship, women do not have that option. For her, sex is only supposed to have one meaning: love. If a woman engages in the same meaningless sex that men claim as a birthright, then she’s considered a slut. Nice girls don’t.
But men aren’t that much better off. First of all, they have the whole prostitution thing pretty confused. Because most men have either employed a prostitute or considered employing one, it is already outside of the realm of business for them. Meaningless sex, as they might explain to their wives, but, guys, it didn’t just fall from heaven in a Glad Bag. They wanted it and pursued it and enjoyed it. That doesn’t sound all that meaningless to me.
So for most men, prostitution isn’t a profession, it’s part of Real Life. Something that they do. A rite of passage for a high school graduate, a last fling for a soon-to-be-husband, a change of pace from one’s usual routine.
And sex with a prostitute is great sex, because you get to pick the menu. She’s there exclusively for you, to do exactly what you want her to do. There’s no nonsense here about having to wait for her to have an orgasm or needing to engage in tiresome foreplay: she’s there, ready to do whatever you want her to. She has no needs, no desires, no demands. This is what sex should be like, damn it!
Prostitution plays right into all these fantasies. The callgirl is there to be seductive, to fulfill his wishes, to give him an hour of what he only imagined could be real: a beautiful woman with nothing but sex on her mind. Better, still: a beautiful woman with nothing but sex on her mind who is totally and completely focused on him. On what he wants. On giving him pleasure. All that matters to her is him, his pleasure, his needs, his desires. See, these girls really do exist! Why haven’t any of his dates, girlfriends, wives been like this?
Well… the short answer is, because they’re not getting paid to take care of him.
When you call a service, you can make requests. When the girl calls you to confirm, you can tell her how to dress, you can tell her how to act, hell – you can tell her that she has to act like Queen Elizabeth if that’s what gets you off, and she’ll do it. If she’s at all good, she’ll even convince you that she’s as turned on by whatever your thing is as you are. “I never thought that being Queen Elizabeth could be so erotic… such a turn-on… so sexual!” she’ll breathe.
And men are so naïve, so gullible. You do everything that you can to make them feel good, to make them feel princely. “You’re the best I’ve ever had. I never have orgasms with other men, but you made me come. If we had only met under different circumstances…” And they believe it. That’s the most amazing part. Men who are rapacious in the boardroom, men who could spot a securities fraud a mile away, these are the men who will believe anything that you tell them, as long as it’s positive, as long as it’s about their sexual performance. Many times – and I mean many times – a client has listened to me sing his praises and then comment that I was so hot for him, I probably should have paid him, instead of the other way around. And I would listen and wonder in utter astonishment how an intelligent person could fall for something that blatant.
The media, reflecting popular culture as it does, doesn’t help. I watched a television program that was portraying a prostitute as sympathetic, trying to show that she was not what she did for a living. And they did pretty well with it, too, until some asinine screenwriter had her open her mouth and say, “I work hard for my money! Well – sort of hard…” Great. Spectacular. It’s not really work, because it’s also fun.
Acting out those fantasies, fulfilling those desires – from the man’s point of view, that’s normal. Pleasant. It’s what you do. And if I’m having such a good time, she must be too, right? So it’s not really work for her.
Well, it sure as hell isn’t sex.
Most women expect sex to be composed of give and take, a more or less equal exchange in which both partners’ desires and needs and requests are met. It’s never just about one person. At best, it’s sharing; at worst, it’s taking turns.
What we do as prostitutes, therefore, does not constitute sex in our minds. The callgirl is catering completely to the client’s needs on a very one-way street. She gets about as much excitement out of a call as she does out of going to the supermarket. I often mentally composed to-do lists while moaning in apparent rapture, a little multi-tasking to help the time pass more quickly. I have faked more orgasms than I can count. Sorry, but that simply isn’t sex.
It is for him; but while he’s having sex, I’m at work.
It is highly unlikely that a woman will confuse the two experiences. Men, on the other hand, very well might.
So I continued to work for Peach, doing three or four calls a week; and when I wasn’t working for Peach, I was seeing Luis. I kept the two completely separated. When I did it with my clients it was work; when I did it with Luis it was sex. And the only drawback to this new situation was that Luis kept me awake as far into the night as most of my calls did. The fact that Luis and I were playing Scrabble and drinking and doing lines with a sprinkling of sex at the end of the evening, as opposed to my exerting myself for a client, really didn’t matter at the end of the day. The clock was the final arbiter.
Which is not good at all for being bright and patient and enlightening at eight o’clock the following morning.
Not that things weren’t going well for my long-term day job prospects. The prostitution class was new, it was sexy, it was cutting-edge; and it was inevitable that news of it would leak out. I got a call from somebody in Alberta, for heaven’s sake, wanting me to post the class syllabus on the Internet so that his students could follow along with the readings for extra credit. The college where I was currently teaching assured me that I could continue basically unendingly with this particular elective.
The dean himself had even invited me in for tea and a chat. “And you could teach some other classes as well, or maybe two different sections of the prostitution one. We realize that to keep good talent like yourself, we need to offer some incentives. This college likes to think of itself as a caring institution. So we’re proposing to raise your base pay rate and make sure you have as many sections as you want to teach.”
I sat there and smiled stupidly, wondered where he h
ad been last year, when I couldn’t make rent and was living on freeze-dried ramen noodles and ended up becoming a prostitute myself because his benign and caring institution hadn’t seen fit to give me more sections to teach.
I received a number of invitations to go to various places and do a single guest-lecture spot on the topic, sometimes to a group of board members or alumni, sometimes to sociology, anthropology, or history classes. I tried to do as many of these as possible: the money was reasonable, but more importantly, it was giving me name recognition. And that’s one of the most precious commodities in academia.
All the while, I was feeling absurdly pleased with myself. I was going to make it – no, I was making it – and on my own terms, not theirs. I was going to get what I wanted, and I was going to do it without destroying anyone else along the way.
I remember a lecture that I received during my orientation, back when I started my doctoral program. Another dean was speaking then. “What you will have to develop, ladies and gentlemen, and develop quickly, is a pit bull mentality. You cannot afford to help each other out. Look around you. Half of the people in this room will not be here for graduation. If you want to be in the half that stays, then it is up to you to get there. Don’t think about who you’re stepping on to get there, because you can be sure that they wouldn’t think of you if your roles were reversed.”
I hated hearing that, and I am absolutely sure that my less-than-meteoric rise in the ranks of academia is entirely due to my refusal to play that game. It was the right decision. I want to be able to sleep at night, and I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror. What they were asking us to do was ethically wrong. Becoming a callgirl, in response, was a far more ethical decision.
But now, as Steve Winwood would say, I was apparently “back in the high life again.”
I went up to the North Shore to present a guest lecture at Salem State College, and ended up spending the day, even though it was freezing, walking down along the harbor. Luis had wanted to come along, but had a study group. I was just as happy being alone.
Peach called as I was driving back down Route One from Salem. “Are you anywhere near the Chisolm?” she wanted to know.
“About ten minutes,” I answered. Peach thinks in minutes, not miles.
“Great. How do you feel about doing a call with another girl? You’ll have to fool around with her some.”
“Not a problem.” I’d spent most of my undergraduate career vacillating on the topic of whether I was straight or a lesbian. My conclusion had been – and still is, for that matter, if anyone wants to know – that both men and women are in fact bisexual and that limiting yourself to only one half of the population is – well, limiting. Yeah, I could handle a double.
The Chisolm is a motel just north of Boston that advertises whirlpool bathtubs and available X-rated cable. No one glances at you, not even casually. You park outside the room you’re going to, and the walls are made of the same faux wood that used to be on the sides of station wagons before everybody decided that they needed four-wheel drive vehicles to negotiate the speed bumps in suburban parking lots.
The client’s name was Vinnie. He was an overweight Italian-American with a gold crucifix nestled in his abundant chest hair and few social graces.
My partner – who had driven down from New Hampshire to make this call, according to Peach – was already seated on the room’s only double bed, wearing a set of matching flowered bra and panties. Her name du jour was Stacy, and as Vinnie didn’t seem to be into small talk, I took the initiative and stripped down to my lingerie, slowly, trying to get a feel for the room. Just to get things started, I sat on the bed and caressed Stacy’s shoulder, while remarking to Vinnie, “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” I had learned long ago – before Peach, even before the rat bastard boyfriend – that guys like it when you seem to be into the other woman. Not a problem.
There was, however, a different problem. As soon as I had touched her, I felt Stacy stiffen and almost imperceptibly pull away from me. Oh, shit.
Too bad Peach hadn’t quizzed Stacy on her feelings about “fooling around with another girl.” Or maybe Stacy defined it differently.
All that I knew for sure was that if she didn’t like me touching her shoulder, she sure as hell was going to hate where I touched her next.
Her eyes weren’t telling me anything; they were fixed on Vinnie, waiting to see what he wanted. She was probably okay on her own, the kind of helpless sweet thing that some of the guys liked – no personality, ready to serve. The opposite of what was needed here. We were in big trouble.
I moistened my lips. “Why don’t you join us?” I invited him. Maybe if he wasn’t just standing there watching us, she’d relax a little.
Vinnie didn’t need a second invitation. He stripped quickly and lay down on the bed, stretching out an arm toward where we were sitting. “Come here,” he said.
It wasn’t clear who he was addressing, so we both slithered over to where he was lying, one of us on either side. This was better. Stacy started kissing him while I moved my hands down his chest, down lightly over his stomach, then encircled the root of his cock. He was stiffening, getting bigger under my touch, and I encouraged him, my fingers caressing, my hand stroking. He grunted and broke away from Stacy, gesturing toward himself. “Lick me,” he instructed. “Both of youse.”
Stacey slid down until her head was even with mine. I held his cock while she ran her tongue up its whole length. I licked the other side, and, inevitably, our tongues touched. “Close your eyes and kiss me,” I whispered to her, pretending to kiss her cheek and ear as I did.
“It’ll be okay, it’ll get him off faster.”
I drew away again to play with the tip of his cock with my tongue, then turned my face toward her again. She seemed resolute, her eyes closed, but as we kissed I could feel her relax slightly.
Great. I was doing most of the work here, but at least we’d make it through most of the hour with another satisfied customer.
We ended the embrace and I immediately slid up to kiss Vinnie, my tongue moving inside his mouth. “She’s so hot,” I whispered to him, then leaned over and caressed the top of her head. Stacey had gotten into the rhythm of a blowjob and seemed oblivious to me at the moment. In twenty minutes I’ll not have to deal with this ever again.
We muddled through the hour somehow. That’s one of the great things about this job: no matter how awful things get, you can glance at your watch and tell yourself: in thirty minutes this guy is history.
Vinnie wasn’t awful, and it was hardly his fault that Peach had sent someone who wasn’t comfortable with threesomes. Stacey really needed to work on that, I thought as I slipped my key into the ignition and drove away. We got a lot of calls for them.
It’s no secret that a nearly universal fantasy shared by men is to have a sexual encounter with two women at the same time. All you have to do, really, is read the Letters to Penthouse, any volume, any story, and you’re right in the middle of that particular male sexual fantasy. I used to think that the stories were something of a joke – I read quite a lot of them at one time, because erotica was always a huge turn-on for me; I often used to masturbate while reading pornographic stories or descriptions of scenes. I was never able to suspend reality, however, the way that the writers (and presumably readers) of these letters could. “My wife is petite, blonde, sexy and wild. One day I was home with the flu when the TV repairman arrived to fix our cable reception. I got out of bed and peeked through the crack in the door. There he was, this big, hairy-chested stud, ramming his thick cock into my wife’s juicy pussy…” Yeah, that could happen. Or your girlfriend’s two roommates will start kissing each other in the kitchen while you’re visiting, treating you to a view of new and creative ways of using cold fruit and vegetables. Or… Let’s say you’re a man, a fairly average, ordinary man. There’s this part of you that gets off on imagining two perfect, beautiful, desirable women together, turning each other on, really into havi
ng sex with each other. But the bigger thrill is that you’re in the picture. Ultimately (your fantasy informs you), their sex with each other cannot satisfy them, not fully, not completely. Only you can do that.
The adoration that a callgirl gives you is multiplied when there are two women there. Your fantasy may be that they were lesbians who needed a real man to make them straight; or that you’re just too much man for one woman to handle; or that you like a lot of stimulation at the same time. Your fantasy may be that they fight over you, or that they share you; that they love each other, or that you’re the one who brings them together. To tell you the truth, whatever is going on in your head and exciting your cock is your own business, and it is the center of attention. There is no competition, no other male body parts in sight, just yours, and these two gorgeous women who are begging to touch, to lick, to suck, to bite, to perform, to fuck, to offer, to give you anything you want: it’s all about you. Any insecurities that you had are gone: you’re a stud, you’ve got two chicks. Two tongues on your cock. So many breasts…. You don’t even know where to begin, you’re a kid in a candy shop, mouths and hands and pussies and asses, all there for you.
If you don’t believe me… well, if you don’t believe me, then you’re a woman, because every man reading this got a shiver of arousal thinking about that scene, and every man reading this knows exactly what I’m talking about. But, ladies, if you don’t believe me, check it out with any heterosexual man you know – your partner, brother, friend, office-buddy. They’ll tell you: they’re fairly sure that it’s a “normal” thing to do, think about threesomes, watch football on TV, part of a man’s way of life. When pressed for details (and if you’re interested, they’ll be more open than you perhaps want them to be), they’ll even tell you specifically who they imagine to be with in this threesome. Men don’t imagine the shadowy sexy stranger: they think about real women. Women they know. Women they see at the market, the health club, the office.
Callgirl: Confessions of a Double Life Page 19