Calling Maggie May

by AnonYMous

  And even worse than the physical stuff is thinking about how I behaved last night. What got into me? I mean, besides a few shots of whiskey. I want to vomit again just thinking about that.

  I bet Miss Irma is so mad at me right now. I bet I was such a horrible embarrassment to her. To everyone. To myself.

  Oh my God. I didn’t even think about my parents. What must they think of me right now? What do they know? I honestly don’t remember coming home last night, and I have no idea if I saw them or not. I am so embarrassed and ashamed even thinking about them seeing me in that state. Presumably they would have murdered me on the spot if they had, and I seem to still be here in my bedroom, so . . . maybe somehow I snuck past them.

  I can’t worry about that now. I need to start by piecing together what actually happened last night. My first clue is the previous entry, which I don’t remember writing and I can barely read. That’s kind of funny, actually, though also a little disturbing. Wait. Did I smoke pot again last night too? I seem to vaguely remember that. That probably didn’t help matters.

  All right. Let’s start at the beginning.

  The party was at Miss Irma’s house, in those back rooms where Miss Irma had taken me the last time. She had added some holiday decorations here and there, but not that much, since the rooms were so ornate already.

  At first I was really nervous and uncomfortable and kind of clung to Ada. Then I realized I was probably annoying her, so I tried to hide out behind one of the big screens. Ada found me after a bit and laughed. She said as the night wore on, it would be a bad idea to sneak behind the screens, since other people would have that idea too. And from the way she said it, I got the sense that she didn’t mean they were shy like me.

  Anne came over after a minute and took our coats and pointed out the bar and stuff, with a reminder that we wouldn’t be served anything but soft drinks, so not to bother asking. Then she told us to make ourselves comfortable, because the clients would be arriving soon. I was confused by that, because there already were a few guys milling around the room, though they were younger and more attractive than the clients usually were. I thought maybe Irma was hiding a bunch of cute clients like Damon and fixing them up only with the more experienced girls.

  Ada offered to show me around and introduce me to everyone, but it was too overwhelming. I felt really bad for holding her back and tried to put on a brave face, but she seemed to get it intuitively. Instead of bringing me over to the big gossiping groups exchanging greetings, she found a spot on a bench in a dark corner and tugged me down next to her.

  “How about I give you all the dirt on everyone first?” she said in a whisper. “That way you’ll already know who everyone is when you actually meet them.”

  I almost sighed with relief, and Ada started to point people out and tell me their names and their life stories. I have to admit that some combination of awe and anxiety prevented me from absorbing everyone’s names, but almost everyone there had some pretty rough story in their past—violence or molestation or drugs or homelessness. They all seemed happy and okay now, but none of them were like me, with two parents who had plenty of money and didn’t hurt them or abuse them. It made me feel sort of bad, like I had wandered into the wrong party. Is there something wrong with me that I took to this life without any trauma pushing me into it?

  I did notice when Ada pointed out Jen, since she had mentioned her before. The one with the drug problem. Ada said that both her parents had died when she was little, and she wound up living with a distant relative who beat her, so she ran away and lived on the streets for a while, eating out of garbage cans. It was hard to believe that the person laughing and chatting right in front of me, wearing a designer dress and scarfing miniature quiches, could once have been so desperate. It gave me a newfound respect for Miss Irma, that she offered people like Jen and so many of the others a second chance at life.

  Jen’s roommate, Beth, was there too. Ada doesn’t like her much. I guess there’s some history there, but I didn’t get the whole story. At some point I asked Ada about the guys who were at the party and who were they if not clients. She laughed.

  “They’re talent. I can introduce you to them, if you like.”

  “Wait,” I said, resisting her attempt to tug me up by the hand. “What do you mean, talent? What kind of . . . ?”

  Ada gave me a funny look. “They work for Miss Irma,” she explained. “Just like us.” I must have still look confused, because she laughed again, then leaned a little closer to me. “They have sex with men for money,” she said slowly and clearly, like she was explaining it to a little kid.

  “Oh,” I said, trying not to look shocked. I don’t know why I was so shocked, though. Why should it be so surprising that boys make money from this just like girls do? Now that I think about it, it seems like the most obvious thing in the world.

  I couldn’t help staring at this one boy who was standing in a group of girls and talking very animatedly. He was one of the most gorgeous guys I had ever seen, with dark skin and almond eyes and a delicate, heart-shaped face. He was wearing eyeliner and maybe even mascara, but I could tell that even without that he would be almost as pretty as any girl I had ever seen. I asked Ada about him, and she said his name was Shawn. She didn’t tell me much about him, but I got the sense she didn’t like him very much.

  At that point there was a noise and the din in the room died down. Miss Irma was standing near the bar, tapping a glass for everyone’s attention. I almost didn’t recognize her in a flowing peacock-blue kimono. She had a drink in one hand and her phone in the other.

  “Thank you for your attention,” she said in her carefully clipped tone. “The clients will arrive in a minute or two. Some advice, if I may. Do not crowd them like a batch of hyenas. There will be plenty to go around. But do not spend the evening talking to one another as if this were a high school dance, either. Enjoy yourselves, but remember: The clients are our guests tonight. And last, alcohol is strictly forbidden to you, even if offered by a client. Is that understood?”

  While she was talking, I leaned over and asked Ada about some men I hadn’t noticed before in the room. Not ones like Shawn, but others that didn’t seem like clients either.

  “That’s Miss Irma’s security,” said Ada. “‘Goons’ is a better word. She’ll act like they’re here to protect us in case any of the clients try to take something they haven’t paid for, but don’t kid yourself. They work for her, not for us. And if she has a problem with any of us, they won’t hesitate to toss us out, or worse.”

  “Worse?”

  Ada gave me a significant look but didn’t elaborate.

  A few minutes later, the clients started showing up. Just as Miss Irma had suggested, it was a little hard to resist the urge to surge toward them, especially when I saw other people doing just that. It was hard not to feel like the first people out of the gate were “winners” in some sense, but I held back. It made sense to wait until there were more in the room so you could actually take your time and pick one who seemed appealing. But then, even when there were more, it kept happening that every time I spotted someone who looked like a good bet, I’d try to catch his eye from across the room only to notice some other girl sidling up to him and running a finger down his arm. Obviously, I needed to be a bit more aggressive.

  I did manage to give my cell phone number to a couple of guys, but they didn’t seem all that interested. I wondered if my cutesy Asian girl getup had been a bad idea. Maybe it was too niche, and I would have been better off dressing more normal sexy like the other girls.

  One guy did grab me as I walked toward the bar and pulled me down onto his lap, but he was pretty gross. He smelled awful and had a lot of hair on his knuckles. I was as pleasant with him as I could manage, and I did give him my number when he asked, but I was already thinking that if he contacted me, I would definitely pretend to be busy that day.

  Even
tually he let me up and I headed toward the bar, just hoping for a few moments of calm. I got a ginger ale and sipped it slowly, only gradually becoming aware that there was a man leaning against a bookshelf near me, sipping his drink and eyeing the room but not yet talking to anyone. He wasn’t exactly good-looking—with a weak chin and a lazy eye—but he seemed pleasant enough and a much better option than most of the other men in the room. I took a deep breath and sidled up to him, running a hand down his arm as I introduced myself, just as I’d seen the other kids do. It didn’t seem to work so well, though. He sort of twitched and shifted back a little.

  “Nervous?” I said in what I hoped was a flirtatious tone.

  He gave me an apologetic smile. “Maybe,” he said. “I’ve never been to a party like this before.”

  I tried to think of something flirty and suggestive to say, but I drew a blank, so I wound up saying, “Neither have I.” Surprisingly, this wasn’t such a bad move, since it did give us something to talk about. Though that was awkward too. He kept starting in with questions like, “How did you get into this business?” but then cutting himself off as if maybe he didn’t want to know. Still, it wasn’t a bad conversation and I was proud of myself for holding up my end and not letting it descend into horrifying awkwardness.

  The only problem was, I didn’t seem to be making much progress with him. He still startled at all my little touches and still backed farther away every time I moved closer to him, until it looked as though he was trying to squeeze himself into the bookshelf.

  I was starting to feel a little bad about it when I noticed someone standing at my elbow.

  “Introduce me,” said a voice near my ear. I turned and saw Shawn, the pretty boy I’d noticed earlier.

  “What?” I said, caught off guard.

  Shawn smiled at the client, then leaned in to me. “Introduce me,” he said again.

  “Oh,” I said, and I made the introductions, feeling slightly annoyed that Shawn was distracting me from my awkward attempts to get this guy interested. That’s when I noticed the guy’s face. He was looking at Shawn with an intensity that I hadn’t seen during our whole conversation. And when Shawn laid a hand on the man’s forearm, he gave a slight shiver and leaned into it.

  Ada’s patient explanations popped back into my head. Oh, I thought. Ohhhh. Shawn gave me a quick grin, which I returned before coming up with some excuse to leave the two of them alone together.

  I wasn’t sure what to do with myself after that. I glanced around the room, but everyone appeared to be engrossed in conversations. I couldn’t see any clients standing alone. Before long, though, I felt a hand at my waist. At first I thought it must be a client, but the cloud of expensive perfume gave Miss Irma away.

  She whispered in my ear.

  “Come,” she said. “No prizes for standing about. You have to talk to people.” I started to protest that there was no one to talk to, but she ignored me as her hand guided me toward an adjacent room I hadn’t been in yet. A man standing alone was calmly surveying the snack table with his back to the room.

  “Damon,” said Miss Irma, “where have you been hiding? I want to introduce someone to you.”

  I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me that he would be there, but I couldn’t have been more surprised. My brain froze in that moment, torn between trying to figure out an appropriate reaction to being suddenly confronted with the man I lost my virginity to and haven’t seen since and the flaring memory of Ada reminding me that Miss Irma must never learn what happened between us. I stared up at him and said nothing.

  He looked down at me, surprised but not half as dumbstruck as I was. “Oh,” he said. “Yeah, we’ve met.”

  I felt more than saw Miss Irma’s eyes narrow next to me as she processed this information. “You’ve met? But I don’t remember . . .”

  “It wasn’t through . . . ,” I said quickly.

  “No,” he agreed. “It was . . .”

  But neither of us had a very good end to our sentences.

  “I see,” said Miss Irma, though she still sounded confused and, to my horror, more than a little suspicious. Luckily, I was saved from trying to dig myself out of this hole by Ada, who shrieked from across the room and then barreled toward our little group at full speed.

  “Damon!” she cried, launching herself into his arms.

  “Ada,” he said with a laugh as she burrowed into his chest and squeezed him in a mighty hug. He kissed her forehead and mussed her hair a little. “Long time no see. What’ve you been up to, kiddo?”

  A glance over at Irma revealed a bemused and not entirely pleased expression, but I didn’t stick around to see how it played out. I took the opportunity of her distraction to get myself out of there.

  That left me wandering the room with nothing to do again, and I was feeling awkward and sort of watching Ada out of the corner of my eye with a weird feeling as she talked with Damon. I don’t know why. It’s true that I had slept with Damon, but Ada had known him much longer and more intimately than I had, and I had hardly thought of him since that night. I’m not sure why seeing them together bothered me so much. In any case, I didn’t have much time to consider the question because I was startled by a touch on my elbow. I tensed up, thinking it was probably Miss Irma about to lecture me again for not flirting with enough guys, but it was Shawn.

  “Hey,” he said gently. “I’m sorry about earlier. I hope you didn’t mind that I jumped in on your conversation.”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said. “Obviously I was wasting my time with him.” I looked down at my shoes, suddenly abashed. “Mostly I’m just a little embarrassed that I couldn’t tell after talking to him for fifteen minutes, while you spotted it from across the room.”

  Shawn shrugged lightly. “It’s kind of a sixth sense. You pick it up with experience. Hey,” he said. “Keep an eye out for Miss Irma for a second, will you?”

  I was confused, but I checked around for her. She seemed to be in the other room, so Shawn brought a silver flask up to his lips and took a swig, then pressed the flask toward me wordlessly, raising his eyebrows as if in offer. I was nervous, but I couldn’t help a little thrilled shiver from going up my spine. Here I was, at a party, and someone was offering me a sip from their flask! As if he really believed I was one of the cool kids.

  I giggled a little and took it from him.

  “I’ll keep an eye out for the Dragon Lady,” said Shawn, “but try to keep your head down just in case. Don’t draw attention to it.”

  I nodded and unscrewed the cap, but it’s harder than you might think to keep your head down while at the same time tipping it back so liquid can slide down into your mouth. Plus, since the bottle was opaque, I couldn’t really judge how much was in it, so it was really hard to figure out the best angle. I did my best, but wound up misjudging and sent a big mouthful of the stuff right down my throat. I was prepared for it not to taste too good, but the burning sensation it left in my throat took me by surprise. I tried to choke it back, but it was too late. . . . I choked and coughed and the stuff came right back up and all over Shawn’s shirt.

  I don’t know if I’ve ever been more embarrassed in my entire life. This is why I can’t have nice things! Because I spit up on them. So basically I wanted to die and was so close to just bolting for the nearest exit or screen or potted plant, but Shawn was really nice about it. He just laughed and said, “Guess you’re not too experienced with whiskey, either.” I blushed really hard at that, because I get tired of always being the innocent one, but he just rubbed my lower back gently, which made me feel a lot better, and said that it reminded him of his first time drinking whiskey.

  He told me he was small as a kid, bullied by older boys, and didn’t get any respect. He noticed that the older kids drank alcohol, and he thought if he did too, it would make him seem tough and cool and he wouldn’t get picked on anymore. Well, there was this guy,
a neighbor and an old friend of the family, who used to have him over all the time when his mom wasn’t home, like, to babysit him. They played video games together, talked about school and stuff.

  Then one day, the guy offered him some whiskey, so he took a small sip and it almost made him gag. The guy offered him more, and Shawn didn’t want to seem like a wimp, so he kept accepting it. At first he tried to take really small sips, but even that made his eyes water. So finally he just took a swig and held it in his mouth, looking for an opportunity to spit it out. The guy kept offering him more, so he took a couple more swigs. Then the guy snuggled up and tried to kiss him, and Shawn spat whiskey all over him.

  Shawn laughed at this point. “The dude was so pissed,” he said. “I felt like an idiot.”

  I couldn’t help laughing too, even though, now that I think about it, that’s a pretty horrible story. But I guess, based on what Ada was telling me earlier in the night, pretty much everyone has a story like that. Maybe it’s not such a big deal. I don’t know. I always feel so sheltered around these people! Like I don’t know a thing about the world. But then I think about all my old friends sitting around the geek table, and most of what they know of the world was compiled from newspaper articles in preparation for debate-team meets. I guess maybe it’s not so bad to occupy the middle ground.

  Shawn offered me another swig of whiskey, but I really didn’t even want to try it again. I could still feel that awful burning in my throat. Shawn noticed my cup of ginger ale on the table behind me and he said, “Here, try it this way. You’ll like it better.” And he poured some in. I was nervous to try it again, but it did taste better with the pop. I could still feel the burning in my throat a little, but it didn’t instantly make me want to gag. And the flavor on my tongue wasn’t bad at all. The whiskey cut the sweetness of the pop in a good way.

  “Better?” he said.