Sex Work

by Frédérique Delacoste

  * * *

  Well, you did take a long time. . .almost an hour and fifteen minutes. What did he give you? Four hundred. . . that’s good, he can afford it. He likes to eat pussy until he wears it out. . Well, relax now. I brought us some good sandwiches with bean sprouts today. My soap is about to come on — John’s about to catch his wife. She’s been cheating on him. Have an olive.

  The Continuing Saga of Scarlot Harlot IX

  Carol Leigh

  ...The pressure is on. When we last left Scarlot, she was emerging from her nest of cash and condoms to heed the call of duty and help organize a Hookers’ Convention just before the Democratic Convention.

  “I’m afraid,” she confessed. “Our potential astounds me, but the fact that prostitution is illegal almost paralyzes me. Am I allowed to organize with other prostitutes? I don’t think I’m allowed to talk to another prostitute. That might be conspiracy.”

  But here I am, in the midst of it. Two or three times a week I descend from my brothel-pad to meet with a variety of outlaws and deviants. (Deviants? No, we are the norm.) We band together to share our secrets of survival, celebrate our triumphs and exorcise abuse. We are the whores. We are the dykes. We are the working class women. We are the black women. We are big fat women. We are the incest survivors. We are the academics. We are the experts. We are the activists. We toss our tales into the circles. I squirm in my seat at the potential.

  Will we affect the world? Is this the birth of a movement? Scarlot pleads for vows of faith and solidarity. “This is the revolution!” she cries, lurching to the edge of her metal folding chair. Fat women smile. Black women smile. Some women nod their heads. Other women stare into the center absorbed in private dramas. I wonder what will come of this puddle. I extract metaphors of frogs from tadpoles. I’m impatient.

  Do you want to join an organization? You can buy t-shirts and carry a membership card. We’ll call it FLOP — Friends and Lovers of Prostitutes. Good idea, huh? I bet all my pals would be proud to wear that on their chests.

  Destroying Condoms

  Gloria Lockett

  In 1977, we were working on the street in Berkeley. I had just come from the drug store where I had purchased six dozen condoms to use in our work. The police stopped me and searched my car. They found the condoms. They said, “Oh, what have we here?” They took each condom out of its package, and using their penknives, cut holes in each one. They laughed, and one officer said, “Now go use these.”

  Another time, in San Jose, I had just purchased twelve dozen condoms. I was stopped by the police and they did something very similar. After they made holes in every condom and gave them back to me, useless, they said “Happy hunting!”

  Prostitutes use condoms for various reasons, including a desire to retain a sense of privacy. We used condoms because we were trying to protect ourselves and our customers from venereal diseases. With AIDS, it is even more important, and yet police continue to do things like this. Sometimes, if they can’t find condoms in your purse, they will search socks, coat pockets, pants pockets, bras and wigs to see if you have any, and if they find them, they destroy them. If they arrest you, however, they often will just confiscate them, supposedly to use as evidence in the trial. However, since few women arrested for prostitution ever go to trial, they are not needed as evidence. The police never return the condoms. As a result, most women only buy a few condoms at a time, at inflated prices. If they are arrested and released after the drug stores are closed, sometimes they can t get any more. If they need to continue working to make up for lost time, say if they desperately need the money, they then have to work without condoms, which is dangerous, especially with AIDS.

  A Most Useful Tool

  Sunny Carter

  For five days my infant son lay in an oxygen tent flushed with fever. He was not responding to antibiotics. His pneumonia seemed determined to not go away. A nurse hurried briskly into our room carrying yet another tray holding several syringes. She squirted them into Brennan’s tiny mouth one by one. Too weak to resist, he swallowed the medicines, his baby face wrinkling at the bad taste. Then he turned his little head wearily and vomited the stuff back up, the pinkish mixture puddling on the white hospital sheet.

  The nurse clicked her tongue in exasperation. “Now look what you ve done. We’ll have to take these all over again.” Brennan began to cry. I pulled back the plastic tent and picked him up, rocking him against my breast.

  “No, goddammit, just leave him alone.” Exhausted from worry and very little sleep, I began to cry, too. “Why can’t you just leave him alone?”

  She stared at me with cold indignity and turned on her heel to leave the room. Dr. Dannon stood in the doorway. “Never mind the oral medicines,” he said. “We’re starting him on IV’s. That will be all.”

  She hurried past him, leaving us alone.

  “You look worn out,” he said.

  “Yeah. So do you,” I replied, seeing his drawn, kind face.

  “I have some bad news. Brennan has cystic fibrosis.”

  I was a medical technician. I remembered vaguely studying the various genetic illnesses of children. Cystic fibrosis. Cystic fibrosis. “My God,” I said, the knowledge dawning. “That’s fatal.”

  He nodded, sorrow in his eyes. “He won’t die now. Now that we know what’s going on, he’ll respond to the IV drugs. The average life expectancy is twelve years. Some live longer. I’m sorry.”

  I held my baby against me, numb with fear and exhaustion. I couldn’t believe it. My son was going to die.

  Later, after I had slept and eaten, Dr. Dannon came back. Calmer now, I had many questions, and I turned to him for answers.

  Cystic fibrosis is a disease which primarily affects the lungs and the digestive system. Pneumonia occurs frequently. CF children produce copious amount of thick, sticky mucus which clogs the tiny airways in the lungs, creating a perfect breeding ground for invading bacteria.

  “This is a very expensive disease,” Dr. Dannon said. “During the years when he’s relatively well, the average cost per child per year is ten thousand dollars. Can you come up with that kind of money?”

  My yearly salary in 1976 was nine thousand dollars. Now I would need another ten thousand each year to keep my son alive. How in God’s name was I going to get that money?

  “Sure I can,” I replied.

  * * *

  Brennan was released from the hospital a week later. I learned to do the chest percussion treatments he would need three times daily for the rest of his life. Every day I turned him head down on my lap and literally pounded the mucus loose so that he could cough it up and out of his lungs. How could I go back to work and still be there to give him treatments? How could I be at work during the times when he would be hospitalized? And how the hell was I going to come up with ten thousand extra dollars a year?

  While Brennan slept, my mind raced. I could sell drugs. No, that wouldn’t work. Drug dealers get arrested, then who would take care of my boy? I could rob banks or 7-11 stores. No, they get busted sooner or later, too. Well, I thought, I could learn to be a hooker. Even if they get busted, they usually just pay a fine. Hmmmm. Yeah, that was it. I’d learn to hook.

  The decision made, I wondered exactly how one went about becoming a prostitute. I had two friends who were cab drivers. Didn’t cab drivers traditionally know where to find whores?

  I asked.

  Sure enough, Norman knew a working girl named Linda whom he occasionally drove to her various assignments. He said he’d have her call me.

  She did. We met for lunch and she answered my questions. She’d met her clients through a woman who had once been a centerfold model. The model’s name was Marty, and she ran ads in the local newspaper advertising herself as a photographic model. For fifty dollars you could to to Marty’s house and take nude pictures of her for an hour. At some point, the client might ask if she would have sex with him for money. Marty would explain that she only modeled, however, she had a few friends who mi
ght be interested. She would give the john three phone numbers, explaining that the first time he saw these ladies, the fee would be seventy-five dollars, twenty-five of which would go to Marty. After the first visit, the fee would be fifty bucks. Not a bad deal in those days. Fifty dollars an hour was top of the line stuff. . .

  So, after a phone call and a meeting with Marty, I became one of her “friends.”

  I went shopping for what I imagined to be proper “hooker clothes”: a long, flowing dressing gown, garter belts and stockings, ridiculously high heels. I practiced walking the length of my apartment until I felt confident that I could wear the damn things without falling down. I felt I had to call attention to my only good feature — my legs. The rest of me was twenty pounds overweight, I had no waist at all, my breasts were big, but droopy. My face was passing, but nothing to write home about. Still, nobody had ever kicked me out of bed, so, as I waited for my very first client, a fellow named Harold, I walked back and forth to make sure I had the shoes down pat, smoked one cigarette after another and made several trips to the john to check my make-up and hair.

  The apartment was spotlessly clean, fresh sheets on my bed. I lit the candles I had bought, figuring the less he could see, the better off we both would be. Incense? Should I light incense? What the hell...

  God, the whole place stank of cigarette smoke. Didn’t I have some Lysol spray somewhere? In the john? No, under the kitchen sink. Where was Harold? What if he didn’t show up? Can of Lysol in one hand, a cigarette in the other, my dressing gown flapping behind me, I dashed through the place spraying madly.

  My goddamned feet were killing me and the son of a bitch was twenty minutes late. I kicked off my shoes. He wasn’t coming. I collapsed to the couch, a frenzy of nerves, excitement, disappointment.

  It was just as well. He probably would have hated me on the spot. Better for him not to come at all than take one look at me and leave. It was a stupid idea in the first place and I should have known better than to think I could really. . .

  The doorbell.

  My God, he was here. What to do with the Lysol? Under the couch. Where were my shoes? Oh, Jesus, there, in the middle of the floor, get them on, quick... the doorbell again, Jesus, don’t wake the baby up, that’s all I need, “Just a minute! I’m coming. . .”

  I drew a breath, pulled my face into a smile. I opened the door.

  There stood Harold Wong. All five feet three inches of him. All one-hundred-twenty-pounds of him. At five-feet-nine, not to mention four more inches of high heels, I towered over him as we stood in the doorway. I had a good thirty-five pounds on him. Stricken suddenly with the ludicrous picture we made, I began to laugh. Harold’s face broke into a broad smile.

  “Ah! So glad to see you so happy! And so big! I love big blonde woman!”

  It was over before I knew it.

  Twenty minutes had passed from the time he walked in until the moment he left, bowing and thanking me for a lovely time.

  I sat on my bed, holding the hundred-dollar bill. He had actually tipped me. It was that easy. He had literally come and gone, and I was one hundred dollars richer in just twenty minutes.

  I went into the bathroom and looked and looked at my reflection. I didn’t look different, just happier. And I felt. . .well. . .just fine. No pangs of guilt, no remorse, no shame. What I felt was smug, joyous elation. By God, I was on to something here and I knew it.

  Over the next few weeks I saw many of Marty’s clients. Brennan was very well, and the future looked rosy enough to use some of the incredible money that was stacking up to move to a better, more centrally located apartment. I found a place that actually had a nursery right on the block. I could schedule several appointments in the afternoon and drop my son off at the nursery, come home and deal with my clients, then pick him up by dinner time.

  I loved it. I made a solemn vow that I would save half of every dollar I earned toward the day Brennan would need to be hospitalized again. I also started a hobby — some people collect stamps, some model airplanes. I began to collect fifty- and one-hundred dollar bills. Every time someone gave me a bill, into an envelope it would go. In no time my “hobby” had mounted to four thousand dollars.

  One afternoon my mother came to visit. There was no way to hide the fact that I no longer worked in a doctor’s office, so I figured I might as well let her in on my new-found occupation. I handed her the envelope. She looked inside, amazed, then horror spread across her face.

  “My God, honey, there’s more than four thousand dollars in here! You didn’t steal this, or do something...”

  “Mom, I guess you could say I’ve become something of a, well, professional mistress to a couple of very well off, very nice people. . .It’s really not too bad, and I don’t want you to worry or. . .”

  “How long have you been doing this?”

  “A couple of months.”

  She began to re-count the money, her eyes wide.

  “A couple of months?”

  “Yeah.”

  “My God, I wish I had thought of doing this when / was your age.” That’s my mom.

  As the months rolled on, I started to advertise in a local newspaper, in the personals column. Every week my post office box was stuffed with mail. Many of the letters went directly into my trash basket; those poorly-written with bad spelling on lined paper didn’t have a chance. But a well-written letter on good linen paper, or better yet, typed with a company letterhead, got my immediate response.

  I screened new clients by insisting that they give me their work phone number. Sometime in the next few days, I called that number and asked for Mr. Jones, or whoever. If the secretary connected me, I knew I had the man’s real name and place of employment, so I felt fairly sure he was neither a knife-wielding psycho or a cop.

  I soon learned not to deal with very young men. They want to impress you with their prowess, then usually try to talk you out of taking the money.

  Still, on one occasion, I broke my rule.

  He sounded so sweet, and he passed my clearance tests, so I gave him my address and waited for him to come.

  Twenty-four years old, blonde and blue eyed, he sat, perched, on the edge of my couch as we chatted. I always made it a point to chat for a while, using all my senses to ascertain the safety of the situation before getting to the business at hand. I never saw a person more nervous, more afraid to look me in the eyes than this kid.

  He excused himself to go to the bathroom, and I, thinking if I had ever seen a potential psycho this was it, went to the kitchen and got my hammer. Holding it close to my side, hidden in the folds of my dressing gown, I tried to sneak past the bathroom door to hide it close to the bed. Just as I approached the bathroom door, he came out, startled to see me there.

  I was just as startled, and for a moment we stared at each other, both of us in shock.

  “Oh my God, where are you going with that hammer!” He was pale with fright.

  “Uh, nowhere. . . that is, you see, it was in there, and it belongs in there, so I was just moving it. . .”

  “Oh, God. For a minute I thought you were some kind of crazy and you were going to kill me with the hammer. Look, I might as well just tell you... I’m a virgin.”

  His sweet face flamed with shame. “I know you’ve never met anyone as old as me who’s still a virgin, but I just get so nervous every time I get close to sex with a real girl, not that you’re not a real girl, I mean, but, but.. .”

  I put my hand on his arm. “Yes I have,” I said. “Almost every week I get a letter from someone, some even older than you, who are still virgins. It’s okay, really. It’s okay.”

  I led him gently by the hand into my room, and very gently, very slowly, we made love. I taught him how to touch me, how to handle a woman’s body.

  Some months later, he called to tell me he was engaged.

  Once a psychologist called me. He was treating a young man who had a particular fetish. He couldn’t maintain an erection unless he was wearing women�
��s panties. And they had to be pink, no less.

  The first time I saw “Pinky,” we had sex while he wore his panties. The second time, I had him pull them down to his knees. The third time, I had him leave them around one knee, and imagine he was actually wearing them. Finally he was able to have sex with the panties lying on the bed beside me, where he could see and touch them.

  Then, one day I put the panties under my pillow. He had to imagine them, see them in his mind. Within a short time, he was able to just think about his lovely panties to achieve an erection and orgasm. He still had his fetish, but at least he didn’t have to be embarrassed by the presence of his little lacy drawers.

  By and large, my clients became my friends. I refused to deal with men who held me in low regard, those who wanted my services, yet still looked down on hookers. I didn’t need them. There seemed to be an endless supply of very nice men whose company I enjoyed, men who enriched my life (as well as my pocketbook) in many ways.

  Prostitution, in itself, is neither good nor bad. Each woman brings to it what she will. How else can a woman without the years of education necessary to become a doctor or lawyer still earn the kind of money a lawyer or doctor earns? In fewer hours? How else could I have had so much time to spend with my son, when time was so precious?

  My earnings enabled us to travel, gave him an opportunity to see more than would have otherwise been possible. By the time my son was seven, he had flown in an airplane more than many people do in a lifetime. We lived in New York for a year, where he saw dinosaurs and whales at the Natural History museum. We lived on an island in the U.S. Virgin Islands for several years, where he learned to snorkel the incredible coral reef, seeing the splendor of the underwater world. He collected hundreds of hermit crabs and built them an intricate home in an aquarium which he called Crab Condo. He learned to strip the outer edge of coconut fronds away, leaving only the long, fibrous center which he tied into a slip knot, the perfect way to sneak up on a fat lizard, slip the loose not around its neck and with a flick of his wrist, capture it. Together we caught whole jars full of lizards, picked a favorite, then let them go from the center of a huge chalk-drawn circle, cheering for our favorite as the lizards raced away.