Working Sex

by Annie Oakley

  There’s about twenty-four of us, and I’m proud to say that some people have been here as long as ten years. We hire ex-prostitutes, ex-IV drug users. We hire people other people wouldn’t hire or feel they can’t hire. We do outreach in the real sense; we go to where the people are: the street, crack houses. We feel the people on the street are us, so we look like, act like, and walk like the people we serve. We don’t discriminate on the basis of gender. We reach out to everybody: transgendered, drug users, prostitutes, lesbians, and gays.

  We also do support groups and offer support groups for HIV-positive African American people and their families. We have made a video—called Blood Sisters: Breaking the Silence—about HIV-AIDS, which features eight African American women who touch on every aspect of living with the AIDS virus.

  It’s easier for us to work with hard-to-reach people. We do not think prostitutes are the carriers of AIDS. In fact, I have not known one woman who was HIV positive only because of prostitution. Other factors, like drug use or being a partner of someone who’s HIV positive, always play a part in their HIV status. Prostitutes have been tested in brothels in Nevada since 1988. They are tested every three months, and they have not found one woman who was positive. It’s a myth that prostitutes spread AIDS. Prostitutes are actually the people who have been using condoms for years.

  SIOBHAN: What do you think makes it hard for prostitutes of color to seek information about AIDS?

  GLORIA: I think there is a lot of denial among the African American community and other communities of color when it comes to AIDS. We don’t think it is our problem. I’m real concerned about women and men in heterosexual relationships getting it [HIV] from each other. I’m concerned because many people have multiple sex partners. People think that because in the ‘70s they had multiple sex partners, they can still do that. I’m scared that a lot of people who think they’re okay will come down with AIDS. Many [black] people still think AIDS is a white gay male problem, that we’re being brainwashed by the white man, and that it’s a form of genocide. Many prostitutes feel that they should use condoms with tricks, but not with their intimate partners. Women can be just as bad as men can when it comes to not using condoms. I’m much more concerned with women getting HIV from their intimate partners than from their clients. My fear is also with women on crack who are in denial that they are prostitutes because they’re in it for the drugs, not the money. Sometimes they turn tricks without condoms because they don’t consider the man to be a trick. We do a lot of education with crack users, and give them condoms to use.

  SIOBHAN: Do you feel like a sex workers’ movement is happening, and what are your thoughts about the feminist movement of the ‘70s?

  GLORIA: I’ve always felt that I was a feminist, but what a feminist is to me is not what a feminist is to some people. I love being a woman and I think it’s my right to do whatever I want with my body and mind. Many people think that if you’re a prostitute you couldn’t be a feminist because you’re letting people use you. I always felt that I was certainly using them [the customers] as much as they were using me. So who’s using whom? That’s the art of the game. It has always irritated me when people asked me, “How could you be a feminist and do this?” How could I not be? Women are breadwinners for the most part, and very strong and powerful. Women basically call the shots, and sometimes we let men think that they’re calling them.

  Hopefully, women in the sex industry will come together more; I see this with the white women, I’m hoping that the black women and women of color will start coming together, as well.

  boys stink

  Blake Nemec

  Mmmmm, I’m very excited to have a wad of cash in my pocket and a hot boy next to me. My pants fit right, and I know how to work what’s inside of them.

  He looks cute as usual with a red-and-white checkered pair of loafer Vans, stretchy black Levis that snug loose his hot flat Jewish ass, and a tight T-shirt that grabs his big manhandleable lower back fat. He’s my boy and I’m holding his thigh.

  “You smell weird,” he says.

  “What?”

  “You smell like shower-box soap.”

  “That’s weird, I dunno.” I say, but I’m jumping out of my skin now—feeling disgusting and a shower box-soap drool.

  “Cleo bought this weird soap,” I say. “Do you hate it?”

  “No, I don’t care.” But he takes a sip of beverage when he says it, how he says a lie.

  Fuck, I shouldn’t have come over right after my trick at the hot tubs. Fuck fuck, I want to leave. I go to the bathroom and wash with his soap. I go and sit back down. I’m sweating. A sweaty linoleum boy.

  Oh god, I’m freaking out, but not leaving. We’re watching, I should say he’s watching elimiDATE and I’m watching the bubbles advertising the dumb date’s actions. It’s too much—he’s laughing.

  “I’m gonna go.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. I mean, I don’t want to stay if I smell like shit.”

  “Blake. I don’t care, come here with your bad smelling soap skin.” And he pulls me toward him. I’m in hell.

  “No, I gotta go.” Pause. I stand up. Stare. Turn around. Just standing there looking at him, then looking at all his toys all shiny and colorful, looking at me without cum or awful smelling soap stuck to them. Shiny plastic faggot cowboys, horses, and the vacuuming tranny girl that I gave him. And then back to him, who must now know that I turned a trick, I mean he knows my trick clothes but trick clothes become your street clothes because you get paid good cash money in them and then you’re like, hey, these are my clothes. Not my trick clothes, I mean, I wore them for a trick because they are hot so here I am. Hot. Right?

  “Yeah, I gotta go.”

  We’re at his door now.

  “Don’t worry, I’m just feeling introspective, I have to go.” I say.

  He slumps, and shakes his head slowly and around with wide open eyes, his I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m smart enough to not say anything look. Great, he doesn’t know what’s going on yet. Leave, leave fast, before you break down and tell the truth and are still there in your hot-tub scent with the psychic toys staring at you.

  “Okay,” I sigh, and shrug my shoulders like shit, just when I thought I wanted to be next to someone here I am feeling the need to be alone.

  “Bye. Don’t worry about me.”

  “Okay Blake, okay.” He really really sweetly says with more wide-eyed wonder. Which is sick, and I want to stay and fuck him. I look back at him with my mouth open.

  “Yeah, okay, bye,” I say quickly. Mousy. And grab the door getting stuck with my bike and feel my angst rushing out with me—a mob of shameful hooker energy like a suction and then the door closes but I don’t remember pulling it closed.

  meeting rita

  Eileen Myles

  I didn’t want to think about this. Now she was making me nervous. She said the nice guy from the hotel bar went home to California or someplace after his work was done, but he did something funny. He gave me four hundred and fifty dollars. You’re kidding, I gasped. For what. That was exactly my question, she whooped. She really did whoop, and she knocked over her drink then. Maybe we should go. Yeah, I nodded. A skinny really hip-looking girl in a dancer top put the check down in a brown plastic tray. We were a couple of losers. My pleasure the girl said, when Rita plopped a couple more twenties down. Are you hungry. Her name was Rita. When she said my name is Rita she drooped her long hand towards me like she’d been in business thirty years. We were walking down 8th Street now.

  He told me I might need it, she said. Meaning the money, I asked. And I did need it, she said. Of course, I shrugged. So I got my own room in the Carlyle that night and next day I returned to the bar. Another guy sat down. Blond with a crewcut, she explained. He was just a guy from New Jersey, but he preferred to spend his work nights in the city. I told him I just arrived, he said let me show you around. He brought me to the local. Locale, I corrected. She just loo
ked in my eyes, she had very pale blue eyes, and all they said was you are so completely missing the point. I’m sure I was.

  She didn’t care about the poetry field at all. The second guy wanted to fuck all night. That’s cool, she interjected, but in the morning he said, you’re a hooker, right.

  I just lost my bag, she explained to me like I was him. And what are you going to do about that, he said and he shoves two fifty in my hand. I put it in my purse, she shrugged.

  The bartender who was a very nice man told me that if I stayed around much longer that I would probably get in trouble. I told the people at the front desk you’re my niece. He smiled putting another drink in front of her. And they don’t believe me.

  I checked into the Warwick she said. It’s not as nice. The Carlyle was old-style. By now I’m thinking she’s as bad as me. But, a man staying there, a very nice man she nods to me, has a business associate who is coming into town tomorrow—an Italian, well actually two Italians. Italian handbag salesmen. And I have a date with both of them, but I have to bring a friend. She smiled so sweetly at me, just with her lips. Just a little tug of sweetness occurred, almost a hum. She was a little crazy, but god she was good. I think she wants me to be a whore.

  It’s just a date she said. I don’t know anyone. We don’t have to do anything—these guys, they’re just lonely. We can have dinner, you can see for yourself. Go to a discotheque. But I don’t want to meet them alone. Now she looked a little scared and desperate. She was working me. When your brother—

  My stepbrother.

  When your stepbrother, forgive me, told me he had a sister who lived downtown who’s a poet—

  You just figured I was broke.

  Well, yeah.

  In the massage parlor the woman doing reception was a blonde who I assumed to be Swedish and she kind of looked like Faye Dunaway. I had already put on a bathing suit and I was wearing some kind of heels with straps across the toes. I felt white and gross, but still you know how you know you are young. Guys would come in and sit down in their suits. Pairs of guys. Twice they pointed at me to the woman at the desk. Can we have her? How do you look at a person who says that. It’s like you don’t get embarrassed. You’re kind of hiding in yourself. That’s exactly what I was doing. No, she’s getting trained. I am? They were lead into other rooms off the side of the lobby, then she said come on. She took my hand. She had this black dress on, and her blonde hair was swept back and she looked like a lady. We got into this little room. Eileen this is Don. He was lying on the bed, really like a surgical table. Hi Eileen he said, grasping for my fingers. She pitched her head to the right. Why don’t you go in there and get comfortable. I looked down. I was standing in my maroon bathing suit. It was basically a dancer thing. It was called a maillot. Lots of people had lofts then in New York, and those people were two kinds, painters and dancers. It was like girls were walking around looking like dancers, and they took classes and that’s what they were waitressing for. I understood this idea and I dressed like these girls for a while. I just think fashion is invisibility. If you want to go over there, or stay here, you just slip on the uniform and slip off into the crowd.

  Rita said we were getting drinks. There’s a place called Fridays she said in another hotel. They have a disco. In a hotel? My feet felt like lead, but I was being a girl so I kept kicking them forward, smiling.

  In the massage parlor I was standing alone in a tiny room with my towel around me. I can’t go out. What am I going to do, walk out and go hi. I always hear about men feeling humiliated by the army, or something. They should try being female. I went in holding my towel. She goes, okay dear, but her eyes were flashing like she was scared. I was taking too long. Don was on the bed and she opened his towel. His eyes gleamed too, but I bet he was excited. Eileen’s new Don, so we’re showing her the ropes. She gave him a little peck on the cheek like he was an old friend. Hope you don’t mind. Hi Eileen he said again, to say he approved.

  He had this little sprout of a dick. I think most of them are small. She put her strong white hand around it and then said Eileen, put your hand on top of mine. We were jerking him off together. Ahh he groaned that’s good, I guess pretending he was getting a massage. Soon the woman and I were in a rhythm. I was her little nurse standing to her left. We were hip to hip, pumping away. Oh yes, yes, he went. Then she went down on him. Oh no, I thought. It was like the contents of my brain turned inside out. I can’t give blow jobs for a living. I can’t do this. I’ve got to go, I said.

  Hold on, Don, she said. Is something wrong. She had me pinned between the little door to the other room and this room. I’m okay, I just have to go, I can’t do this. She said oh Baby, and put her arms around me. I’m standing there in a towel. Do you like girls, she said, holding me close. I did.

  Attilio kept looking back, smiling. We were walking up some side street in the fifties from one hotel bar to another. Eventually he grabbed my hand and the two of us walked along. All of this was conducted in little English. He’d push his hand in his jacket and pull out his pack. Cigarette? I had the cigarette jammed in my mouth crooked and he had some fuel lighter that smelled. He kept going plunk, plunk and even opened his suit jacket and I jammed my head in to get it lit. For what? It was a very unsatisfying cigarette.

  Rita reveled in her capacity to look normal. She was laughing gaily with Freddy. She might’ve been wearing his suit jacket by now and they were swinging their hands together, just a pair on a date. A traveling handbag salesman and a whore. They looked great. I remember as a kid looking in the window of a travel agency. There was a poster of a woman standing on a beach with flowers around her neck. It looked like Hawaii. I was never sure if it was the woman they were selling the vacation to, the woman who had succeeded, or if she was the woman you got if you bought this ticket. I was like a ticket Attilio found on the street on a trip to New York. Would I dust his ticket off. Good as new, I gleamed like a bellboy. Only a person who thinks like me can sell her own her ass thinking she’s a cultural critic. Or even weirder feeling she’s a man. I would be a man if I wrote. And being a man would render these steps I’m taking towards a place called Tuesday’s—Tuesday’s in my masculine hands would be literature. Each little step was a coin. Ting, the door flung open. It was art.

  We went to the hotel. By now I’d succumbed to only walking hand in hand. We had moved around each other all evening: Attilio and I. His green jacket shone and flickered. Constantly I looked at his shoes, pointed and I have to admit, a little scuffed. I stood with him and Rita and Frank in front of a row of brown elevators as if it were a rocket launch. Everybody here knows what’s going on except me. I mean I could say no to the story right now or I can obediently go along with it and when the door opens, walk on. It was an unbearable wait, with a substantial amount of human traffic in the yellow lobby. Rita was probably waiting to see if I would bolt. At this moment we were standing in a battle of nerves. She had probably already set her terms. I was the only outsider on this tour. I could say I think I need to go home. Sorry thank you for the lovely evening, all the drinks and the powdered scrambled eggs I guess it was a bagel the fakest bagel I ever had in my life. The four elevators a rusty reddish brown hung there like stone. I guess I’m just going to get on. No one seems to be saying anything. I guess they all think I’m just going to go up. I’m just turning into a whore right at this moment. I’m just turning into a whore. Foom, the doors open and we got on. We rode up in silence and Rita smiled. I can’t believe my step-brother got me into this shit. Will I ever tell him. He will never know. The elevator stopped on the 16th floor. We’re getting off here. See you guys, Rita leaned in and pecked me a kiss cause we were friends. Foop. The doors closed. Attilio leaned back against the elevator. Oh my god, he’s ignoring me. He looked at me out of the corner of his eyes. It is okay he asked kindly. I really think he did. I said yes.

  Are all hotel rooms grey. Or maybe it’s mauve. It’s a pale little color. And something is gold, maybe the drapes. And tall thu
nderous lampshades on, the light, to remember this is home. Big public globes of peace. You’d like another drink. He leaned back on the bed. By now he had thrown his jacket on the chair. Loosened his tie. I said yes. He lifted a bottle of vermouth from the night table. You like he asked. Sure I said, just like an American. He poured it in my glass and put his hand on my head and soon the light went out.

  the first time I ever kissed was outside in a park in my town and it was in the fall and the kid was about a year younger than me and kind of cute but he had pimples and I generally felt that his family was poor. He came from a whole family of brothers and many of the girls who were in my gang, mostly sisters and then Franny the girl next door, they all were, all these girls went steady with all these boys and that meant simply that you kissed and some small bit of metal, a tie clip, a ring was exchanged. And all of this was alien to me but I was part of this group and wanted what had happened to them to happen to me so when it was pointed out that I could have Wayne I took him so I could have the experiences I seemed to need to be a girl in my gang. I mention all of this to describe the kiss, my first. My first I could own as mine. He meant to kiss me, and would do it again. But why. Probably also because he could. Our little lips met to no purchase. I mean no revulsion, or storm, or revelation. Just warm dry adolescent skin in the cold fall, just before supper. A couple of duck bills, smack. He shoved something at me, which did make me ill, perhaps a tie clip, but it meant that the deal was sealed. And I got out of it as quickly as I could; going steady was something I had done. With Wayne. Oh yeah.

  Attilio was kissing any girl on the bed and it seemed that this would pass. The unevent of sex with an adult stranger, putting his soft drunken tongue in my mouth. Somehow we got our clothes off and actually think got under the covers. In retrospect it was like married sex. The ribbony silk that trimmed the blanket and the hard dryness of the clean hotel sheets were my friends. His hands moved aimlessly along my body, touching my ordinary female chest. My breasts weren’t large, but I never had wished they were. I had no sympathy for his possible disappointment. I was the body he’d been paying for all night. It wasn’t like he bought me. He rented me. Each drink was the accomplishment of another forty minutes or an hour in which I agreed to stay with him who was perhaps eleven years older than me and probably married. I think I asked him if he was and he said he was married. I asked him if he had any kids and he said yes. I think he went down on me. I sort of remember it. My legs being boringly open on that bed. It really was a different experience of being a body. That I had maybe overtly agreed with Rita to do all this and silently conspired with Attilio, but mostly it reminded me of Wayne and years later of a performing; making out in a movie: the smells of a woman I didn’t want. Not one I didn’t want either. But like Wayne we were inscribed together on a piece of graph paper like ducks drawn on a table cloth for later embroidering which I guess is now.