I never even heard the hinges on the closet door screech as he forced it open.
I probably should have opened it myself, long before that. I probably should have told him. It would have been the moral, the ethical thing to do. It would have been far kinder than what actually happened. I can only imagine his feelings as he read that e-mail; I can only imagine him wondering what other doors there were to open, what other secrets left undiscovered, what other lies had been told.
No, I take that back. I can’t imagine. It must have been hell.
We survived it, in the end. We had each by then come to the conclusion that we were right for each other. It was… well, not to get too maudlin about it, but it was that we loved each other enough to get through it. And so my skeleton disappeared.
Still, I stand behind my earlier thoughts, there in Allston that day when I just got back from London and was feeling the ache for another person that wasn’t really to be assuaged for some time to come.
It’s an uneasy secret, one difficult to keep… and scary as hell to give away.
Chapter Twenty
And then it was fall again.
This time around, my spirits were perfectly in tune with the season. I’d always greeted autumn with an emotion approaching panic – another school year beginning, I still don’t have a real job, etc., etc. But this year, if I didn’t have a real job, I was getting close to it. I was invited to all the faculty parties. Professors with names I actually had heard of were calling me, writing me letters. The dean remembered who I was when he bumped into me one afternoon in the corridor outside his office.
The air felt cleaner, crisper. I had bought some new clothes and they felt soft and smart, as new clothes do. I had a plan, I was reaching my goals, I felt full of joy, full of anticipation. For the first time in years I, too, believed that this academic year would bring great things, great opportunities, great promises.
As though something marvelous just might be right around the corner.
I was working one evening a week now, sometimes two. Peach was not happy, but she was also fair: Peach never tried to coerce anyone into doing something that she didn’t want to do. I promised myself I was only going to work Fridays and Saturdays this semester.
Three weeks into classes, she called on a Friday night. “Got work,” she said, her voice brisk. “He’s down in Milton, though: do you know where that is?”
“I’m sure I can find it. What did you tell him about me?” I’d gained three pounds in England (the clotted cream, I suspected, was the culprit), and they hadn’t come off yet. This was by far the most nerve-wracking part of the job.
“Oh, relax, you’re gonna love this. He asked for the oldest person I have. I told him that he could see Tia, she’s thirty-nine, and he said are you sure you don’t have anybody older than that? I said no, and that I’m sure he’ll like Tia.”
“That sounds weird, Peach.” I’d never lied about my age in that direction before. In such an age-obsessed and age-biased profession, at thirty-six it was easy for me to always be the oldest person around. Maybe that wasn’t good enough. Maybe he had some sort of wrinkle fetish.
“No, really, Jen, he sounds very cool. I got a good feeling from him. Why don’t you call him and see what you think? I know you don’t like new clients, it’s your call, but I honestly think that this will work out fine.”
I didn’t get much feeling from him on the phone, one way or the other, but he seemed pleased enough about seeing me, and so I set off. “What would you like me to wear?” I asked, out of habit. He seemed surprised by the question. “Uh – whatever you want. That is, whatever you normally wear. That’s fine.”
I listened to Springsteen on the way down, the stereo turned as high as it would go, to hell with blowing out the speakers: “Mister, I ain’t a boy, no, I’m a man, and I believe in a promised land.” I sang along with him at the top of my lungs, and even as I sang, I wished I could enter even deeper into his words, into his pain, into his story.
It had been a long time since I had believed in a promised land.
Glenn met me at his apartment door. He was huge, and shaggy looking – unkempt hair, unkempt beard, a plaid flannel shirt over reasonably clean khakis. Lots of tattoos. I mean lots. “Hi, I’m Tia.”
“Hi, come on in.”
The place was filled with Harley Davidson – well, what do you call it? Equipment? Accessories? Paraphernalia? Stuff? Posters of motorcycles, framed photographs of people on motorcycles. Glenn was drinking a beer but didn’t offer me one. I sat down next to him on the couch. We talked, and eventually I put my hand on his knee, and a few minutes later I began kissing him. When I was new at all of this, I used to let the client set the pace, and I still did now when he knew what he wanted – or what he was doing. But one night I’d talked and talked with a nervous Indian until we had to jump on each other for a few breathless minutes before Peach called me out. After that, if it seemed that he was unsure of himself, I took the lead.
Glenn and I made out on the couch for a while, and then he suggested that we move into the bedroom, a fairly suave move hampered only by his need to drain his beer can before following me in.
His nervousness was increasing. I began to hope rather strenuously that he wasn’t doing drugs, or had a heart condition, or something that was going to cause him to come to grief here.
Then, in a rare moment of perfect clarity, I realized what was going on.
This Harley guy who owned his own business by day and raced motorcycles on the weekends was a virgin. Hence his request for an older (possibly more sympathetic?) escort. It was touching. It was sweet.
It was also a hell of a lot of work.
Although we experimented with various positions and rhythms, eventually Glenn found that what he really liked was the classic blowjob. And I’m reasonably good at it, even with a condom, and also unfortunately have some experience with lengthy oral encounters. But he was taking forever. I kept taking surreptitious glances at the neon Budweiser clock on his bedroom wall every time I came up for air, and I was astonished. And truly, truly tired.
We were approaching the forty-eight minute mark and I had about decided to give up at fifty and try my hand alone instead, when it finally happened. Given the fact that he was incredibly sweet afterwards, talking and cuddling with me, then adding an extra twenty dollars on to the fee, I was inclined to minimize in my mind the amount of work that he had required.
He called the following Friday, and asked for me again. A regular, which was a nice bonus going into the fall semester. Besides, I figured, surely it’ll be quicker now. After all, last time was the first time, who knows what role his nervousness had played in his inability to ejaculate? This time will be fine.
This time wasn’t. I did end up switching off between my hands and my mouth simply from fatigue. It was an odd little dilemma: he was one of the nicest clients I’d ever been with, and one of the most tedious.
Peach and I agreed that seeing Glenn every other Friday was probably a good idea for our collective sanity.
Most of that fall is a blur, to be honest, from the escort agency point of view. I was really becoming more and more focused on my professional life, on researching the classes I was teaching and others that I might teach someday. So the weekends sort of blended in to each other.
Certain clients stand out from that time. I remember the guy in Nahant who wanted to have sex on his home gym equipment while watching himself in the mirror. And then there were the students on Comm. Ave. who wanted to share me, just to see what a threesome was like (and were astonished to learn that they would have to pay double. “Price is on a per person basis,” Peach said in her best no-nonsense voice; but her rule made sense. Two clients were, after all, more work than one).
There were a few decidedly jarring experiences. I went to see a new client up on the North Shore who could only have sex on the same sofa where his wife had died. He fortunately didn’t tell me about that particular facet to our encoun
ter until it was over. Just as well. I found in conversation with another client that he was a good friend of my dissertation advisor, and while he was just as likely to keep the secret of our time together as was I, it still made me a little nervous.
To be honest, I was starting to feel more and more as though there were a clock ticking somewhere in my brain, and that it was measuring the time that I had left. The late nights weren’t as frequent anymore, and certainly not as much fun. I was getting up in time to do espresso instead of cocaine for my morning pick-me-up; and when I wasn’t working for Peach, I wasn’t even staying awake through the eleven o’clock news anymore.
It wasn’t cerebral. It was emotional. More than anything, I was feeling the job, with all of its uncertainties and stresses, slowly slipping off my shoulders like an old, worn-out coat that has served its purpose well and is ready to be retired.
I went to Peach’s place for a Halloween party. I hadn’t been there in a long time, having finally gotten my act together enough to realize that I could not stay up and drink until five in the morning and then expect to function well the following day. It had taken me a few times and a few near-fiascoes to grasp that seemingly obvious fact, but I had done so at last. I had more or less forgotten what they were like, these all-night parties of hers.
Her big apartment – it was an architect’s dream, that apartment – was filled with people, talking, laughing, drinking. I was doing the Morticia Addams thing – I had thought of going as Catwoman, but those three extra pounds were still between me and that catsuit, so I settled for Morticia.
I knew some of the people there, maybe about a third of them. I wandered around and talked and ate and drank, and eventually ended up on the roof deck, surrounded by glittering fairy lights, with some-one putting lines of cocaine out on a slab of marble in front of me.
It just suddenly all felt really old. Not bad, not negative, not even sad – just old.
Or maybe it was me who was feeling old.
Whatever the reason, I knew as I sat on that deck that I didn’t want to still be awake when the sun came up. I didn’t want to bring somebody home with me that I’d later regret having to tiptoe around because he was sleeping until noon. I didn’t want the hangover and the Excedrin and the immediate need to tell myself that it was all right to feel so sick, because, after all, I was cool.
What sounded really cool from where I was sitting was the thought of a bowl of Healthy Choice pecan praline ice cream, a comfortable sofa and my cat next to me, with the television tuned to something like Agatha Christie or Colin Dexter on Mystery!
I don’t know if Peach saw me go. If she did, there was no reason for her to think that that night was the beginning of the end.
I’m not even sure that I knew, then, that it was.
Chapter Twenty-One
I was getting close to making a decision about leaving the business when the disaster happened. It hadn’t looked like a disaster, not at first; but it became one all the same. At first, it was just a call.
It was cold; that’s one of the things I remember about that night.
When I thought about it later – and I thought a lot about it later – I remembered the bitter sharp biting wind that cut through you, and the snow heaped everywhere that made driving and parking such an irritating process. It was really cold.
So I wasn’t especially delighted when Peach called and said she had a client for me in Cambridge.
Parking in Cambridge can be rough at the best of times, and this wasn’t the best of times. That’s another thing I don’t get about this city, by the way. Every winter, it snows, and everybody is taken by surprise when it does, as though they didn’t really believe it was going to happen again.
And they drive like they’ve never seen the stuff before.
The parking situation was getting really ugly. After each significant snowfall, people would shovel the snow off their cars that were parked on the street, and then they figured that their effort had earned them ownership rights over that little piece of street. So they would bring out those old kitchen chairs, the ones made of aluminum with shiny plastic seats and backs, and they would put the chairs in the middle of the space they’d cleared, to reserve it for them.
I’d lived in Boston long enough to swear at the practice, but I also knew enough to respect it. You don’t want to fuck with somebody who just risked a coronary to remove all that snow, somebody crazy enough to feel entitled to personal ownership of a section of public property. Besides, you’d be going off and leaving your car in the disputed space: do you really think that’s such a good idea?
So I was less than thrilled about Cambridge.
“You’ll like him,” Peach said, her voice reassuring on the telephone. Easy for her to say; she was curled up in a very deep sofa in a well-heated room, no doubt reading an engrossing novel and drinking some exotic coffee drink. “You might be able to hook him as a regular. He said he wants someone smart.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere,” I grumbled, secretly pleased with the compliment; and then I bundled a big padded coat over my little black-nothing dress and set out. I parked about six blocks from the apartment building on Broadway and cursed the client as I walked back to his address, my Nine West shoes undoubtedly getting ruined in the snow, great piles of which I had to skirt periodically.
No one, of course, had bothered to clear the sidewalk. What for? Can’t leave a kitchen chair there.
The temperature was in the twenties and the wind chill brought it way down into the single digits. Must be terrific, I muttered under my breath, to be able to stay in your nice warm apartment and put in an order for sex. The ultimate in take-out. That night, it was just me and the pizza delivery guy out there in the cold.
The client had sounded all right on the telephone. Young. Pakistani. Intelligent. He asked me what kind of brandy I preferred – not a question I get every day. I liked that.
His apartment, it has to be said, was gorgeous. Antique polished furniture, gilt-edged paintings on one wall, floor-to-ceiling books on another. APersian rug in the living room with vibrant colors. Abrass samovar on a sideboard. Indonesian ceremonial marionettes hanging over the desk. He had traveled, and traveled well.
He suggested that we sit, and he brought over the Hine Antique that he had already poured into snifters. He swirled his constantly while we talked.
His name was Kai. He read a lot; there was a whole shelf of Rushdie novels right beside us. I was forgetting that I was supposed to be seducing him. “What did you think of the death sentence they passed on Rushdie?” I asked, genuinely curious. The man was Pakistani, so he was supposed to be Muslim. But that didn’t fit in with the brandy; and surely if he supported the edict he would not be reading the man’s books.
He shook his head. “One should not try and make the Koran bend to one’s will,” he said, his voice gentle and troubled. “It is not the true way of Islam.”
There was a pause. I sipped my brandy, and felt the warmth spreading physically through my chest and stomach. I was liking the feeling, and liking being next to him.
That was the first warning signal, of course. It appeared, sailed right by me, and continued unnoticed out into the ether. I should have caught the thought there, and re-adjusted my persona, my level of involvement. This was work.
But I was longing to touch him, to make love with him, to hold that dark beautiful head in my hands and taste his mouth. I was sure that something exciting and unique could happen between us; I could feel the excitement and anticipation building inside me, hot and seductive as the brandy.
My last remaining functioning brain cell roused itself then to remind me that this was a client and my thoughts should be more professional, but I had had time to prepare the other side of the argument. Yeah, yeah, so this is work, so what? There’s nothing wrong with enjoying what you do for a living, is there?
The light of reason flickered a final time, and went out. The last wavering voice of rational thought gav
e up. It knew when it had lost.
“I don’t have time to meet women,” Kai was saying, explaining why he had called an escort service. A lot of clients do that, feel a need to rationalize why they have to – or choose to – pay for sex. But as Kai was telling me why he used a service for intimacy, instead of finding his explanations superficial or pathetic, the two conclusions I usually drew whenever other clients attempted to justify their use of the agency, I thought it was sort of endearing.
As if my opinion of him mattered.
He was still talking, making a segue from the subject of his busyness to its cause. “I’m at Harvard. I’m carrying a dual major, computer science and business. It’s difficult, and I am doing it only because I have a limited amount of time to stay in this country. So I am always working, and to meet and court someone – well, I don’t have that kind of time.” He shrugged lightly. “I wish I could be close to a woman, but it is impossible at this stage of my life.”
I bought it, of course. I didn’t point out that if it was a relationship he wanted, LunchDates or match.com would probably suit his needs better than an escort service. I didn’t say any of it. I wanted to think that I was the woman he was looking for.
“I understand,” I said. Harvard was, of course, the clincher. I’ve always been sexually aroused by brilliance – well, everyone knows that competence is a turn-on – and the fact that he was at Harvard, combined with his very non-macho, non-Islamic respect for my opinions, my personhood…
It felt natural and mutual when he turned, pulled me gently toward him, and kissed me. It was a long kiss, deep, exploring the newness, the foreign taste of the other person.
When we did go into his darkened bedroom and embraced, when we pulled off each other’s clothes, it was impossible to say who wanted to be there more. He was gentle and generous in bed, his long slender fingers in my hair, on my breasts, around my pussy; and when he entered me that, too, felt natural and right and perfect.
Callgirl: Confessions of a Double Life Page 27