Sex Work

by Frédérique Delacoste

  “Keep your hands off her, turkey tail!” she shouted.

  The man straightened himself and readjusted his tie. Embarrassed and proud, he cursed Collette too, but seeing the doorman standing over him, he left, slamming the door behind him. Inside, the girls broke into fits of laughter.

  It was the final rush before the bars closed. The conventioneers were ducking in and out of bars, looking for some final action. Taxis came down from Broadway, delivering customers to special places where hotel doormen had said there would be women and booze. The other inhabitants of the street were also coming back to life. Leather jackets and rubber soles walked by the parlor, glancing in quickly, then turning their eyes on the street ahead. A four-door followed them down to the corner.

  Men started coming into the parlor, looking for girls to take back to their hotels. It was the best time of the night; money poured in. Men were willing to pay anything so they could go home to wherever they came from with tales of their exploits to tell at the corner bar. Collette knew what she was doing with this crowd; she could figure out exactly how much every man was willing to pay and asked them for it without blinking an eye. And if, when they pulled out their wallets, she saw that she had figured wrong, she told the girl, so both knew how much more they could expect.

  Dawn and Candy had gone out on calls to the Hilton. In the back, Kathy and Chrissy had customers. The rest of the girls were sitting out front.

  “What’s that guy Kathy’s with? Every time he’s supposed to go, she brings me more money,” Collette asked, puzzled. New girls weren’t supposed to have such luck.

  “Probably got him to fall in love with her,” Anna said, taking the stool.

  “Collette, let me go in there and see what’s happening. I want some of that money,” Jeri said, rubbing her hands together.

  “Go ahead,” Collette said. “But you tell her she’d better get done quick.” One thing about Jeri, if there was money to be had, she would get it or throw the guy out.

  Collette stepped outside to talk with Doorman and check out the street. “You hear anything about cops tonight?”

  “Only seen some pass by here a while ago. Ain’t heard nothin’ Hey, hey, sir, why not come in and check it out? This lady right here will tell you all about it.”

  Collette said hi. The man looked at her, and hitched up his pants to meet his waist.

  “Right this way,” Collette led the man. “In here.” She glanced around the lobby. Sunny looked indifferent and Anna was putting on more mascara. As Collette was talking to the man, trying hard to get him to stay, Anna interrupted her. “Hold on,” Collette said to the man, giving his knee a little squeeze, “I’ll be right back.”

  Collette stepped into the lobby with Anna. “They got a squad car on the corner, they’re rounding everyone up,” Anna said, pressing her hands together.

  “Fuck,” Collette swore. Although they tried to talk quietly, the fear in their voices filtered through to the man in the salesroom. He came out fast, almost knocking them down.

  “I’m getting out of here. I don’t want my name in the papers,” he said, seeing the police lights flash in the window. “No sir, no way.”

  Collette tried to stop him, to assure him that the police wouldn’t come in the parlor, but then let him leave. No need to make things worse with an angry customer.

  “Go turn down that juke box,” Collette said to Anna, and then turned to yell time at the customers still left. The girls came out of their sessions confused and angry at being interrupted.

  “Collette, what you mean calling us out? I was just getting some money from that tight-fisted bastard and then you go calling time like your life depended on it,” Jeri yelled at her.

  “Hold it Jeri, we got cops down there,” Collette said.

  “Cops? I thought places like this didn’t get raided,” the man who had been with Kathy said as he threw his tie around his neck. “Bye Sweetheart — I’d like to stay, but not like this.”

  The other man also came out partially undressed and said, “I knew it, that’s all I need. I’ll be back for my money later.”

  “Like hell you will,” Chrissy said as he left.

  Collette watched them go, then looked at the girls again. “None of you had better have anything on you or else you’re gonna end up down at Bryant Street with em.”

  Sunny ran to the bathroom and the water started running. Collette, looking out the door, watched the street. At the end of the block, the police van’s lights were going, and everyone on the street was watching. Most of the girls were going along peacefully enough, but some, to the excitement of the gathered pedestrians, screamed and ran the other way. Inside, the girls were tense, straightening their clothes and checking their lips. Usually if the vice squad was after street action, they’d leave those who worked inside alone. Doorman, standing by the side, quiet, let some doctors walk by. He looked at Collette and both knew it was too risky to try anything.

  “Hey you all, come in for a real good time tonight! Hey you! With the money! Give me some of that!” Sunny’s voice seemed to fill the street.

  Everyone froze, while Sunny waved her hand at the doctors. The cops, running by after an escaped street girl, slowed down, hearing her. Collette knew they were itching to bust anything out of line tonight. Chief Gaines was getting rough since it was election time. Doorman stared at the darkened antiques store across the street. The cops, perhaps because they didn’t want to lose the whore they were already chasing, ran on.

  Collette jerked Sunny out of the door. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Do you want to get us all busted? Well, we’re doing just fine without your help. The cops were going to pass us by tonight and then you go shooting off your trap like everything’s above-board and legal here, you bitch. What the fuck you on? Think you’re so good no one’s going to bust your ass? Or what? Answer me!” Collette slapped Sunny across the mouth. Her eyes glassy and her movements slow, Sunny fell to the floor sobbing.

  “Fuck this shit,” she said. “Get my ass busted once more and go up to the county for a time, don’t care.”

  “And what? Get this place closed down and your license pulled, your ass back out on the street, like the whore out there. You been around here longer than most of us and you talking that shit? The old man wouldn’t even hire you to work in his bar with that kind of record, whore. Get in back.” Collette grabbed a cigarette and lit it, her hand shaking. She coughed when the smoke hit her throat.

  Kathy, terrified by these events, followed Sunny to the back. She hated Collette for what she had done to Sunny. It wasn’t fair. This place was no better than the home she was running away from. Coming back up front, Kathy grabbed her coat and ran out the door. The girls in front watched her go, shaking their heads.

  “Girl, it’s prime time tonight. Street’s hot, tricks hot, and the tem-pers. .” Jeri said.

  “Collette, the cops are busy, they’ve gone on down to Bryant Street and it’s too late for them to come back now,” Anna said.

  “Come on, it’s 2:30, the bars are out and we got to make up this hour. We ain’t moved much from the last time,” Chrissy said.

  “Yeah, the rush’ll be over if we don’t get to work,” Anna continued, practical as always.

  “Sunny didn’t mean nothing, she’s just fucked up. And that new girl’s just a fool. It’s hard, you know that,” Jeri threw in.

  “Oh yeah? How’d Sunny get it then? You letting in shit when I told you not to?” Collette turned on Doorman now.

  “Hey, hey, not me. She asked for it, ran up the alley while you were in back,” Doorman said.

  “And what you doing letting her go out? You know you’re not supposed to let her do that.” Now all of Collette’s anger was on Doorman, who turned coolly back to the street, to a man passing by.

  Maluda had been able to escape the police because of Sunny’s recklessness. She had slipped into the alley when the cops’ attention was focused on the massage parlor, and eluded the round-up. Whe
n the man walked by, Maluda came out to the sidewalk. Safe, she looked at the doorman and then in the window. Collette stepped out and looked down the street, Maluda’s eyes following hers. Another bunch of doctors got out of a taxi a little further down.

  Maluda looked at Collette, at her waist-length hair and long skirt swirling in the night wind. Collette’s eyes watched the conventioneers, figuring they’d come in, with their money. Maluda looked at Collette’s strapped sandals and into her eyes. She had heard Collette lash out at Sunny, had heard the scorn in her voice when she’d ridiculed street girls; she’d also seen the new girl run out crying. They measured each other. Collette frowned, then turned on her heel and went inside.

  “Hey, hey men. Seems like you need what we got. Step-on-inside and take-a-look. . take-your-pick. This is what you came here for!” Doorman held the door open and ushered some men inside.

  Maluda walked on down the street and turned into the parking lot. The men came out, not wanting what the parlor had to offer. One of them started toward Maluda, but stopped. The men turned the other way, back to their hotel.

  Girls Girls Girls went off. The Sugar Shop’s doors shut. Doorman watched Maluda drive off alone.

  Bohemia Ho. . . Ho Ho Ho

  Phyllis Luman Metal

  The Bohemian Club in San Francisco is the most prestigious men’s club in California. The summer encampment at the Bohemian Grove near Monte Rio on the Russian River is a two-week, three-weekend gathering of the internationally rich and famous. The private jets land in Santa Rosa and the limousines pour through the gates of the Grove mid-July each year. Approximately two thousand men, divided into different camps, such as Mandalay and Derelicts, gather on Friday with approximately two thousand employees to serve them. After dinner, the opening ceremony is held in a clearing surrounded by giant redwood trees. A flickering campfire creates the mood of an ancient Druid ritual. With great solemnity, “Dull Care” is abolished. The ordinary affairs of the world are then forgotten, and the festivities begin. For some it is a quiet, restful time of meeting old friends and listening to serious lectures. For others, it is a carousing time. And for George Crandall (pseudonym), it is a time to encounter the “girls” at the Hexagon bar just outside of Guerneville.

  For nine years I was the mistress of George Crandall, Hillsborough resident, who married an heiress and inherited seventy-five million dollars. I had my I. Magnin charge account, my rent, telephone and utilities paid, a thousand dollar a month allowance, and my children educated in Europe. He gave each one of them five hundred dollars a month for four years to study, in addition to their air fare back and forth to the United States. I saw George once a week on Thursdays when the Bohemian Club had its weekly meetings. His wife wanted him to stay in town because she knew he would have too many drinks to drive safely, so we spent the night at the Fairmont. I went on trips with him to New York, Mexico and Phoenix. I got the trips his wife did not want. He did not take me for cruises on the QE II because, of course, that was what she wanted. And he sent me to Europe.

  Now why in the world would a man as attractive and charming as he, with a very attractive wife, need a mistress? Why had he been going to the apartment of a madam in San Francisco for fifteen years? Every Monday he showed up with champagne for lunch and for the girl of the week — until he met me at the madam’s apartment when I went there with a friend, a student in graduate school in anthropology at UC Berkeley, who worked for her. She went to return a book George had loaned her. We all had lunch together, and George asked me out to dinner. He never went back to the madam’s. I am sure she never forgave me.

  Well, the answer was really very simple. He and his wife put on the facade of the very happy couple, but they had not slept together for years. George was impotent. He simply could not get it up. And that meant oral sex. His wife would never do it. In fact, she was such a lady he would never dream of asking her. She was an alchoholic who went on serious binges, and then had to go to the hospital to get cleaned up. George loved oral sex and had a very educated tongue, and this was his his secret.

  He took me on hunting trips with his Bohemian buddies and they all got the impression that he was a hell of a stud who couldn’t live without it. That was his posture. The first summer after I met him, he rented a cottage at the Hexagon house while the Bohemian Grove was in session at Monte Rio. He also invited a prostitute from Los Angeles, whom he had seen every summer for twenty years, to share the cabin with me. He wanted me to see how things were done during the Grove Encampment. Frenchy would take me to the bar and introduce me to the Bo’s and then we would entertain all of his friends, me in one bedroom, she in the one adjoining. He bought us cases of booze, and we bartended for the “boys” and then took them one by one into our respective bedrooms. Everybody was loaded and having a very good time. They had tossed aside Dull Care in the opening ceremony, and for the next two weeks, and particularly for the three weekends, the atmosphere was carnival. Frenchy knew not only all the “boys,” but the girls as well. They came up every summer to make a lot of money. By the time the next summer rolled around, George’s and my relationship had changed. He wanted me all to himself. I had a cabin alone at the Hexagon House and entertained nobody but him. He had his moment of playing at pimping and pandering the summer before. After each encounter, he would say, “Did he pay you? How much?” It was part of his kicks. It might have occurred to him that what he had done was a felony and worth several years in a state prison. But he would have brushed the thought aside. He knew that with his money, prestige, social position and connections it could never be a problem. For George there were no problems. . he had enough money to take care of everything.

  The Continuing Saga of Scarlot Harlot IV

  Carol Leigh

  Everyone wonders about the mysterious prostitutes who entertain the Bohemians who “travel across the river.” Well, I am one of those prostitutes. I call myself Big Red, like the logo on the Wrigley’s gum wrapper, which I paste on card stock and use for business cards. I try to amuse myself. “I’m Big Red! See, here’s my card. Only there is no gum. You’ll have to come back to my room if you wanna chew. . .”

  We enter the bar at eight or nine at night. The festivities at The Grove are over at nine-thirty or ten, but if we’re lucky, we can catch an early bird. Plus, we’re bored. There’s nothing else to do. We enter the bar, fresh from about an hour in front of the mirror. We look our best. We sit with our girlfriends who immediately begin raving about our appearances. We discuss each woman’s good qualities and assure her that she will make a lot of money that night. To be sure, we are very beautiful, though ridiculously out-of-place at the informal golf club bar. We know it and flaunt it, yet we are disturbed that there are so many townies at the bar. They stare at us and snicker; when the town boys get drunk they insult us. We look around and wonder, who are the cops and who are the reporters? We discuss it...

  We recall the old days at Hex, a casually elegant hotel bar. During the period of the “encampment,” we had the bar to ourselves. The gay clientele went elsewhere and the call girls and Bohemians could proposition each other with delightful abandon. I had a reputation for being particularly “sex positive.” I used any excuse to show the prospective clients a split-wet picture of my cunt. Another woman came dressed like a bird in a bikini top made of feathers...

  Wealthy men pay only a little more than middle class men. We make less up here per hour than we might make at a massage parlor. Sometimes we feel cheated. We say they’re cheap. Bohemians tell me that a man is less of a man if he pays more than his friends for a whore. For some of them, swindling us is a sport. Others are gentle and kind. They leave the bar with us as soon as we ask, or they ask us — they ask how much we charge and pay what we want — in bed they are gentle and fast. They flatter us. Many promise to return to us and don’t. Others come back and give us more money than we expected. . .

  I moaned, “I haven’t been out once tonight. I’m getting depressed.” During a good evening
a woman might see three or four men.

  “Oh, don’t worry about it, Red. No one’s caught tonight. The guys are all window shopping.” Jamie’s always supportive. She’s also very beautiful. If she didn’t catch, no one did. “Keep your spirits up, sweetheart,” she says with a sympathetic pout.

  “Oh, I’m never gonna make any money!” I like to complain.

  “You think you got problems?” Martha’s a mountain woman and very colorful, but she’s new in the business so she doesn’t make very much money. “Last jerk I did only paid me half a’ what he said.”

  “You gotta get the money up front, darling,” Jamie reminded her. “You can’t trust anyone ‘cause there are some creeps around here who’ll want to rip you off. I hate men,” Jamie giggles.

  “What about more money? I wanna get more money from these guys. I mean, somebody should pay for all the time we’ve been sitting here. How do you do it, Jamie?” I’m always asking.

  “Just tell ’em you’re worth it, Red,” Martha offered, proud to be of help.

  “Tell them that your specialty is oral sex and that you’re the best,” Jamie confided. “That’s what I always say.”

  “Great idea, Jamie. But if you’re supposed to be the best, I’ll hafta be the second best. I’ll tell ’em I try harder. . .” I grinned, trying to amuse myself.

  “Peg, what do you do to get more?”

  “I ask for it. If that doesn’t work, I beg.” Sweet, shy Peg is an accountant and an embezzler as well as a part-time prostitute. Later that evening, I tell a man that I give the second best head. I introduce him to Jamie and tell him she’s the best. He sees me that night and sees Jamie the next. We try to help each other out. . .

  One year we organized a union. We had one meeting in which we heatedly discussed whether or not we should make a pact to turn anything under two hundred down. We talked about “appropriate” versus “slut” behavior at the bar. Some of the women claimed to be embarassed by the behavior of others. We talked about approaching men only when they were unaccompanied by a woman. We didn’t agree on anything. I was proud that we met like that. . .