by Tracy Quan
My shrink’s comments about the true self dogged me all the way back to Seventy-ninth Street. Is the self just a lot of different aspects, all equally true? Or is there something basic with a lot of add-ons, like the Gucci watch I bought for myself when I was sixteen? It came with a set of colored rings that fit the dial so you could change its color at will. Is the true self the Gucci watch without the colored attachments? Is it more truthful to wear all the colors, even the ones you don’t like? Or is the true self the watch in your favorite color, and just as easy to like?
Or perhaps, like that Gucci watch, the true self is an outdated, and rather childish, novelty.
17
Provide, Provide
“Better to go down dignified/With boughten friendship at your side…”
—Robert Frost
THURSDAY, 6/21/01
This afternoon, a call from Liane, crowing about her new cell phone. At seventy-something, she’s the last madam in Manhattan to go cellular.
“These things are wonderful! Now I can go for lunch without the slightest trace of guilt. I was the first to have a remote control answering machine when those came out. I’ve been a dawdler about this, haven’t I? But now I can’t live without it!”
When I first came to New York, call girls had these boxy devices that seemed like the height of advanced technology. You placed the box against a telephone mouthpiece and pushed a black button to pick up your messages from a tape machine. Horribly indiscreet. The device made a whistling sound and was bigger than Liane’s new phone.
Touch tone remote was a vast improvement; you could pick up your messages without drawing attention. But answering machines—no matter how advanced—were never a replacement for sitting by the phone. Too many johns just hang up when they don’t hear a live voice.
“I have planted a seed,” Liane told me. “Remember Bernie and his college student fixation? It’s time for him to graduate. As I told him the other day, the college girls are growing up and getting married. I know a very attractive newlywed who likes to play when her husband’s away on business!”
“I hope you don’t mean me. I really don’t want…”
“Bernie’s married, too,” she pointed out. “He understands the need for discretion.”
“I’m beginning to wonder if my time is just over,” I said. “Perhaps you should tell Bernie I’ve retired.”
“Retired? Over? Your time is just beginning. We can reinvent you as a restless young wife. Don’t give this up until it gives you up!”
“You can’t imagine what’s going on! With all these websites and New Girls,” I said. “Things are changing out here.”
“Well, that’s probably true,” she laughed. “It’s 2001, after all. And I’m getting a computer next week. Bernie has promised to plug it in and show me the ropes. Tell me about these websites!”
Bernie’s probably buying the computer. No wonder she’s eager to supply him with a newlywed!
“All the New Girls are advertising,” I told her, “and they see nothing wrong with it! I just found out that someone I know has a website. I’m in a state of shock! You’re not going to like what you see when you go online.”
“It can’t be anything I haven’t seen before, dear. I worked for many years. And was a New Girl myself once,” Liane said. “At my age, nothing is very shocking. And Bernie would love to spice up your life now that you’re so married and respectable. And so easily shocked!”
“Let me think about it,” I said. “I’m a little stressed out right now.”
I can remember when marriage was something other people did. It seemed so foreign to me. Married people were almost another breed of humanity. Johns, of course, belonged to that breed, especially when I became a private call girl. The men who go to a girl’s apartment, the men who call Liane, are usually husbands.
But when I worked for Jeannie’s Dream Dates, it was different. I saw married men when I did hotel calls, but met lots of bachelors, widowers, divorced men…and married couples. To call an escort service, you had to have your own place, after all. So I met a lot of people who did.
As customers go, the opposite of a married man is a married couple. Married men are easy because they have to get home eventually, and they want to keep the encounter secret. With a married couple, it’s different. They are home. You’re not a secret.
My first “couple call”at the Dorset Hotel was a breeze. I remember tasting K-Y on her pussy while we were 69-ing. Later, another escort told me that they weren’t a real couple. The “wife” was a pro! To make the fantasy complete, her “husband” told each escort they were having a major breakthrough in their marriage: it was the first time his wife felt secure enough to let him come inside another woman. A harmless fantasy.
My second couple turned out to be the real thing, in a typical highrise apartment on East Fifty-fourth with lots of floor-to-ceiling mirrors. It was late when I arrived. The lady of the house answered the door in bare feet, wearing a black lace bra and matching panties. She ushered me into the master bedroom, holding a finger to her lips. “Someone’s sleeping in the other room,” she whispered. She had dark wavy hair, pale skin, and a slender well-managed body. Her face could have looked hard but something gentle in her attitude—toward me—made her pretty. Her husband was waiting on their king-size bed, a trim polite man with a tan and a gold chain around his neck.
I undressed and showered in the master bathroom, twice as concerned about being fresh and clean: as a working girl in bed with a wife, I felt self-conscious.
When I got into bed with them, her husband held back from touching me. I pressed my mouth against different parts of her body and hoped for the best. I was about half her age and very new to my job. Her body felt more foreign than his but I knew instinctively that it was safer to focus on the foreign—ignore the familiar. This session was supposed to be for her, not for him, even if it was officially for both.
I felt like a peeping tom, seeing a real married couple so up close and personal. As I teased her pussy with my tongue, I wasn’t sure I could satisfy her but she opened her thighs and seemed to welcome my overtures. I could hear him rolling around on the bed, rummaging in a bedside drawer. He rolled back toward us, holding a small red object the size of a large lipstick. An amyl nitrate inhaler. With a tender murmur, he offered his wife the inhaler.
“Oh, not now!” she sighed, as if they were on a long car trip arguing about directions. Whenever she spoke to her husband, there was a hint of petulance. With me, she was warm and affectionate, and rather concerned for my safety. As I prepared to leave, she reminded me to put the money in a secure place. It was past midnight, after all. She opened the bedroom door quietly. “There’s a baby sleeping in the other room,” she explained, and she smiled with playful delight because I looked rather shocked.
FRIDAY, 6/22/01
Charmaine was in the bedroom, unpacking, when I arrived at Seventh-ninth Street. She poked her head through the doorway and displayed her tweaked forehead.
“So far so good,” I said rather grimly. “Have you spoken to Trish?”
“She won’t take my calls,” Charmaine said. “Debbie called, though. Trisha may be a bitch but her bark is a lot worse than her bite. Debbie isn’t homeless, okay? And I told Debbie to tell Trish I’m out of the picture.”
“I keep my money here. And you’re letting all these strange guys come to my place? That is totally unfair!” I protested.
“Is any of your money missing?” Charmaine asked.
“That’s not the point. I deserve to know the risks!”
“I do not have strange guys coming here,” Charmaine said quietly. “You don’t know anything about how I work if you think I’m going to let some stranger come to this apartment. I live here. Do you think I want that?”
“Are you telling me the truth? How long have you been advertising?”
“Almost eight months! And I do know what I’m doing!” The manual I spotted when she was leaving for Florida was now s
itting on a pair of jeans: Java for Dummies. “I spent a year studying the escort sites. I hired photographers. And you know why I’m investing in my looks? I always felt pretty but I never photographed well. I take my website very seriously. The way you and Trish are carrying on, you’d think I put a hand-painted sign in your window offering discount blow jobs!”
“Nobody is saying anything of the sort! But I’ve seen some of those websites—”
“Well, I do not have one of those websites. Mine is very classy and I don’t attract creepy guys. And I screen these guys for weeks before I see them. I turn down a lot of business!”
“You screen for weeks? How many weeks?”
No escort service I worked for had that much patience.
“At least ten days. Sometimes two weeks. It depends. And I never introduced Debbie to a guy I hadn’t seen before.”
“What about the other girls you work with?”
“They’re part of the Provider Forum.” Charmaine looked exasperated. “It’s a website where the guys go to comment on the providers.”
“Providers?”
“We call ourselves ‘providers’! It’s just an expression! We’re living in 2001, Nancy! Where have you been? Anyway, we all met online and started trading our Bad Date lists. Then we started meeting up around town. On Tuesday nights, a few of us go to Nascimento for drinks. It’s a really nice circle of girls. I don’t know why you’re so hung up about it.”
“Do you know anyone who’s been arrested?” I asked her. “Not for turning tricks. I’m talking about getting charged with running a business. Every escort service I worked for got closed down by the police. People I worked for went to jail and lost everything they had. I’m not some irrational snob, okay? I have totally earned my hang-ups. And I’ve been through a lot more than you realize. You shouldn’t lie to me about the important things!”
Charmaine sat on the carpet with her back against the bed, staring out of the window, blinking furiously. The sunlight was bouncing off her pale red hair and when she looked back at me, there was a hint of remorse in her eyes. But only a hint.
“I’m sorry, but I didn’t lie,” she said. “I knew you wouldn’t like it, so I didn’t tell you about my website. I know how you and Trish work but New York has changed. The private girls are ten years older than me, sometimes more. They don’t want to exchange dates with a twenty-two-year-old and I can’t build a business on a few referrals from Liane and Trish. I need volume. The girls my age—the girls who want to work with me—all have websites. That’s the way it is,” she said. “I tried to buy someone’s book—a client list? I met a girl who wanted seven thousand for her book, but I don’t trust her and her guys are horrible!”
And I know as well as she does that buying or selling a client list can be dicey. God knows, I almost got into a lot of trouble trying to sell Allison’s book, two years ago. Am I really in a position to lecture Charmaine about risk management?
“Seven thousand’s a lot of money,” she said. “I don’t want to get ripped off. I’d rather invest in a website and cultivate my own people.”
On my way to the nail salon, I heard my phone chiming in my purse.
“Hey!” Allison, calling from her cell. “I’m at Zen Palate. With Roxana and Lucho! Want to join? The blueberry tofu cheesecake is yummy.”
“I have to be somewhere in five minutes. I can’t!”
“Barry Horowitz is negotiating with Fox about an appearance on The O’Reilly Factor, and 60 Minutes is definitely flying down for our press conference,” she said. “I’m going to be on national TV! So is Barbie. Lucho just confirmed the reservation. We got a great deal on the flight and the hotel.”
“National TV? When?”
Maybe I can make sure Matt is safely occupied, or find some way to scramble the TV signal?
“Welllll, Barbie’s getting out of prison September fourth. Just after Labor Day. She’s going to spend some quality time with her parents. And then I’ll fly in on the tenth. And we do the press conference on the eleventh. We’re announcing the birth of Bad Girls Without Borders Nevada and exposing the conspiracy between the FBI and the licensed brothel owners!” she told me. “I don’t have air dates yet…but Renee’s talking to the mayor of Las Vegas. So far he’s kind of iffy about attending the press conference. Do you know what he told her? ‘I like the girls here too much to see you all legalized!’ but he agrees she was a victim of injustice, and he’s going to attend our panel discussion on the twelfth at the University of Nevada Women’s Studies Department! Lucho says there’s hope wherever there’s discourse. Are you sure you don’t want to join us?”
“Very sure,” I sighed. “I mean, I would if I could but I just can’t.”
MONDAY, 6/25/01
Last night, Matt brought home a few boxes from his “basement” apartment. I never knew about my husband’s comic book collection, a childhood project that apparently continued right through business school. But I should have noticed, when we moved in together, that a number of his favorite things had never made it into our new apartment. Like his battered copy of Catch-22 and a small collection of colored shot glasses.
This morning, after he left for work, I moved some of his boxes into his closet, cleaned the shot glasses, and found a prominent spot for them on our dresser. Then took a cab to Eighty-seventh Street.
Out of curiosity, I wandered into the vestibule of Matt’s old building. His name was still on the buzzer but I spotted some mangled-looking boxes and stray shelves on the sidewalk. Standing closer, I thought I detected a scent of rotten orange juice. The shelving had a familiar look. Then I spied the busted TV set. I think the Upper East Side is mine again, but I’ll never be quite so smug about what is or isn’t mine. Matt’s old apartment is perilously close to Allison’s building! And not far from Jasmine’s.
I walked down Eighty-seventh Street toward Carl Schurz Park.
Is Allison really going up against…the licensed brothel owners of Nevada? On national TV? It’s time to face the music, or the lack of music.
Our lives are on different tracks, though Allie’s taste in men is improving. She’s got what she needs—a boyfriend who can compensate for her shortcomings without trying to change her. Lucho is wiser, more sophisticated—and more in love—than I had expected. But I can’t see myself as the female half of a bohemian power couple, the way Allie can. The life she’s embarking on with Lucho doesn’t include me—or my marriage. I have to wind down our friendship before Allie achieves national prominence as the telegenic poster girl for borderless hookers.
Now is the time to start.
As I reached the Promenade, I considered Charmaine and her website: compared to Allison, she’s a beacon of sanity. And has rational goals—saving for her old age, not getting ripped off, and looking as good as she possibly can. Is it time to leave the field to brave new players like Charmaine?
I leaned over the railing, stared down at the East River, and opened my Bottega satchel. I found my ingenious container: my hidden supply of Loestrin masquerading as a homeopathic cureall. I checked the clock on my cell phone. Time to take my pill. Instead, I unscrewed the top and poured a three-month supply of pills into the river. Then I fastened the top and threw the container into my bag. I felt a sudden pang: should I believe all those stories about manmade estrogen polluting the waterways? Too late.
There are two ways of looking at life.
You can quit while you’re ahead: thirty-something passing for twenty-something; never arrested; successfully married. I’ve gotten away with it for this many years: I can afford to stop.
Or, as Liane says, don’t give up this business until it gives you up. I’ve been faithful to the business since my teens. And most of the lies I’ve told—to my family, to my husband, to countless boyfriends and, on one occasion, the police—have demonstrated unwavering fidelity. To my job.
I’ve been married to the business for much longer than I’ve known Matt. A marriage of convenience? Not necessarily.
I strolled back to York Avenue. At Seventy-ninth Street, I wandered into Duane Reade and picked up a small box of condoms, for my appointment with Bernie as a newly minted newlywed.
Original Titles from Mischief
Exposure: Those who Love to Watch and be Watched – Various
The first erotica collection of its kind: explicit sexual fantasies exploring the risks and thrills of showing it all. Written by the best erotica writers around.
How much of sex is participation and how much is exhibition and voyeurism? Is being adored and worshipped enough for her? Can intimate insights and being teased to distraction be as thrilling as the chase for him?
These no-holds-barred erotic stories part the curtains and taken an opportunistic peek into the blink-and-you’ll-miss it world of tantalising private shows that you won’t find in any strip-club.
Kelly offers a between-the-shelves service at the local library that only the very lucky receive…
Gina can’t stop offering an eyeful to Brad, the boy next door…
Charlotte and Rodney get nasty in the dunes even though they know they’re being watched…
ISBN: 978-0-00-747763-0
Published 16/02/2012
At Your Mercy: Tales of Domination – Various
Restraint, bondage, corporal punishment, domination and submission: thrilling encounters in the realm of the kinkiest pleasures. An original erotica collection.
Extraordinary and secret desires drive the characters in these explicit and daring stories of sensual punishment, kinky power games and fetish play.