Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl

by Tracy Quan

  But the music has returned.

  MONDAY. 4/17/00

  Etienne was late for his appointment today, and when he did show up, he looked unusually gloomy.

  “Tough day at the auction house?” I said in a light voice.

  He smiled—a tense, sour smile—and said, “Sometimes I despair for the entire race.”

  “The Gallic race? The human?”

  “Well, the humans in the art business, at any rate. My brother-in-law is a fool,” he muttered, referring to the man who is also his boss. “Perhaps—just this one time, I will consent to a small glass of something. Armagnac? No, no, just a thimbleful.”

  He sat brooding over his thimbleful of brandy while I attempted to cheer him up. He often complains about his business, and it doesn’t usually take long to get him over it.

  In bed, he was not his usual self at all. I took off the condom and began massaging his cock with oily fingers. Then I removed all the Astroglide with a hot towel and tried to stimulate his naked cock with my mouth. I don’t usually remove the condom for a blow job, but Etienne looked so miserable—and I was determined to make him come.

  “I must apologize,” he said, after I had exhausted my lips. He patted me affectionately and got up. “It’s the medication I’ve been taking for my knee,” he added. “If you do not hear from me,” he said in a heavy voice, “know that I will be thinking of you during my surgery. I may be out of commission for a few weeks, cocotte.”

  I nodded sympathetically. This is the first I’ve heard of his knee. I wonder if he was making it up. But when a guy makes an excuse for his nonperformance, you really don’t want to question that. And I was glad that he—not I—suggested the orgasmic rain check.

  LATER

  Etienne’s anticlimactic visit is still nagging at me. It’s not like him to make up a surgery story. He’s proud of his good health. His brother-in-law has always been a capricious boss and Etienne likes to complain about him, but it never affected his performance before. Still, he offered me a piece of advice that makes me question that knee operation. “Don’t ever work for relatives,” he advised me. And he didn’t try to kiss me! That’s not like Etienne at all. Is he about to get fired? Divorced, perhaps? That might explain his disenchantment with his in-laws. God, I hope not. Nobody wants a client who’s going through a divorce.

  11 Hetero Doxy

  WEDNESDAY. 4/19/00

  Last night I logged on for the first time in days and found a pile-up of e-mail, mostly from relatives. It’s hard to keep up with Mother’s family but equally hard to get free of the Layton legacy. For the first ten years of my life, I did not know how my mother’s Chinese family got to be called Layton. My Chinese grandmother once told me it was my grandfather’s anglicized Chinese name, and I believed her. Later, my uncle Gregory explained that Grandmummy likes to say this because she gave up a Chinese name for an English name. The first Chinese Layton was an indentured servant who adopted his employer’s name when he left Canton province to settle in Trinidad. Due to my grandfather’s hard work—his small shipping company dealt in soft drinks, condensed milk, and life insurance—Layton is now a name to be reckoned with throughout Trinidad. Layton Marketing Ltd. expanded rapidly while he was alive, then reached a kind of benign plateau under Uncle Gregory’s stewardship.

  Many Laytons are so proud of being Laytons that you have to look carefully at your e-mail to figure out which Layton is addressing you: gplayton is my cousin Gregory Jr., pglayton is another cousin, Paul; and glayton is Paul’s daughter. No other family (including the Chans) has ever really absorbed a Layton. Nominally a Chan, I’m really a Layton. I scrolled through four e-mails entitled “Layton anniversaries, birthdays, and christenings” and found that my birthday was included but my surname omitted because few Laytons can remember it. A birth announcement from my cousin in Calgary who just had twin boys. A recipe for hot-milk sponge cake. And another birth announcement from a Trinidad cousin: “Olivia Marie Layton, 6 pounds 2 oz. b. ten days ago!”

  Sandwiched between Olivia Marie’s birth and my great-aunt’s sponge cake recipe was a jarring subject header: LOOK FOR THE UNION LABIA! “Featured Guest Speaker from the Bay Area, Cozy Von Booty,” read Allie’s e-mail. “Cozy led the exotic dancers’ union drive at the Lusty Lady peep show in San Francisco last year. T&A—oops—Q&A to follow.” Signed with Allison’s unique emoticon :)-$->==.

  A later e-mail pleaded with me to attend the meeting:

  I’m facilitating, you know. Gee, it would be reassuring to have you there. Nervous! xxxxx Bring Jasmine if you feel like it! In sex-worker solidarity, Allison. Power to the $isters—but please don’t mention to the other sexworking members that I’m now a Kept Woman. They might get the wrong idea and try to prevent me from chairing.

  The wrong idea? I guess Allie needs all the street cred she can possibly project with this crowd. What would they do if they found out how totally unbusinesslike Allison can be? Expel her? Demote her to envelope stuffing?

  TUESDAY. 4/25/00

  Just got a surprising call from Jasmine. “So, are you coming to this crazy meeting? Allison’s playing chairhooker tonight!”

  “Well, I might pop in for a short while. If I’m not working. Why are you going?” I asked.

  “She wants to see a familiar face. She’s nervous about whether she can handle her new role. I told her: Calm down, it’s just like being a madam—but that made her more nervous. Ha!”

  Hard to imagine Allison as a madam! Jasmine would also make a terrible madam if she actually had to make her living that way, because she barely gets along with other women—and a madam has to. But Jasmine lacks Allison’s humility. She really imagines that she should be one.

  WEDNESDAY. 4/26/00

  Last night’s meeting was larger than the last one—about twenty people crammed into Roxana’s living room, inhaling the heady aroma of burning sage. Apparently, Cozy Von Booty is quite a draw on the East Coast. And she makes Gretchen’s nose rings and spiky hair look almost preppy.

  Cozy’s red rubber outfit was composed of one-inch strips fashioned into a dress, so you could see her numerous tattoos—front and sides—peeping through the rubber “slats.” Like pictures behind a venetian blind. Her Louise Brooks bob was dyed lime green, the same color as her fetish pumps. She was selling buttons that promised (rather, threatened): NO JUSTICE, NO PIECE. When she stretched her arm out to make change for one of her disciples, you could see that she had allowed her underarm hair to grow—it was dyed to match the green bob. And the shoes.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Jasmine asked in a low voice.

  “Well, the New York Times says matching accessories are coming back this fall.”

  “Maybe her pubic hair matches her shoes. It must take three hours to get into that outfit! The exhibitionists are definitely in a majority here,” she groused.

  A girl dressed in a conservative version of Cozy’s outfit—leather instead of rubber—walked in, and Roxana, who was wearing a SAFE SEX SLUT T-shirt, greeted her with a politically righteous hug. A number of members wore buttons that read LIPSTICK LESBIANS AGAINST GLOBALIZATION. Jasmine and I, in our simpler garb, felt a bit conspicuous. As, I think, did Allie.

  “Why do lipstick lesbians always have such bad taste in lipstick?” Jasmine muttered under her breath.

  Before Cozy got started, Allison announced, “I would like each person in this room to share something positive about her experience as a sex worker. But please keep your comments under a minute, so that Cozy will have time to speak.”

  Roxana interrupted, unable to completely give up her customary role as chair. “Or we could share a positive action we’ve taken to improve the lives of all sex workers.”

  “And future generations of sex workers,” Belinda, the gray-haired dominatrix, added.

  “Why not previous generations, too, while we’re at it?” Jasmine asked me. “Some of these chicks are waaaay past their prime.”

  Allison caught some of this an
d looked nervously in our direction.

  “Try to be nice,” I muttered to Jasmine. “This is her first time chairing. And she’s feeling kind of outnumbered by all this…leather.” And rubber!

  Cozy Von Booty was the highlight of the evening. She sat on a high wooden stool, legs strategically crossed, arching her back just enough to show off her hourglass shape.

  “Lisa and I have started a new e-mail project,” Cozy announced. A few people, including me, looked puzzled. “For those of you who aren’t familiar with the sex-positive actions of the adult industry’s role model, Lisa Marquis…”

  The Lisa Marquis? Of X-rated fame? Cozy, proud of her intimate connection to a well-known porn star, made a point of referring to “Lisa’s upcoming tour” and “Lisa’s commitment to whores’ rights.”

  “Lisa and I are reclaiming the concept of the ‘media whore.’ As whores, we need to monitor the way we’re depicted in dominant discourses—in the news, in Hollywood movies, on TV…”

  Allison glowed earnestly at Cozy, causing Jasmine to narrow her eyes strangely and causing me to fidget. Every time Cozy rhapsodized about “being a whore,” I cringed. The antiglobalization lipstick lesbians seemed to love it, though.

  “So we created an e-mail list of whores who will be alerted whenever there’s a negative depiction of a whore in the media, and we’ll be able to respond as a unified movement of whores. We need to attack—in a sex-positive way—patriarchal movies like Eyes Wide Shut that exploit the theme of the dead whore—”

  Without bothering to introduce herself, Jasmine exploded.

  “Lisa says? Since when is some airhead porn actress an expert on what happens to hookers in real life or in the movies? Are you telling me a porn star’s going to decide whether a Hollywood movie’s acceptable or unacceptable to me? That’s unacceptable right there.”

  Caught off guard, Cozy blinked and sputtered.

  “Hello?!” Jasmine railed. “Porn stars perform anal sex onscreen for a couple of thousand bucks! Lisa’s mom and dad can walk into Champagne video and rent a video of their little girl sticking beads up her ass for money! It’s, like, since when do porn actors have any idea what should be portrayed on-screen—when they’re doing stuff in front of a camera that no self-respecting hooker does in private? Lisa Marquis is not exactly equipped, mentally speaking, to evaluate a Stanley Kubrick movie. Maybe she thinks she can make a better one?”

  “You don’t even know Lisa!” Cozy interrupted. I was beginning to sense that the feminist porn star and the peep-show activist were girlfriend-and-girlfriend. Jasmine should really shut up!

  “That’s right!” someone else agreed. “Who do you think you are?”

  “One at a time—please!” Allison bleated. Her plaintive tone cut right through the hubbub. Everyone, including Jasmine, fell silent.

  “There are divisions between sex workers,” Allie intoned. “We are here to overcome these differences.”

  “I’m not,” Jasmine said firmly. “I’m just here to see what lunacy is being cooked up in the name of hookers’ rights. By porn stars, no less!”

  Do I really want Jasmine to be a bridesmaid at my wedding?

  “I don’t think Jasmine introduced herself,” Roxana interrupted. “Jasmine, why don’t you tell the room how you arrived at this point of view? I think we need to have a dialogue here—articulate our differences if we’re going to, uh, work through them.”

  “Well, first of all,” Jasmine began, “I’ve paid my dues as a working girl. I have my own business and I have nothing in common with some half-wit who can’t keep her clothes on. Why is Lisa Marquis claiming to represent people like me! I don’t claim to represent her. Porn is ruining a good thing. The guys see all this disgusting stuff on video, and it gives them ideas.”

  “This is our common struggle,” Allison began to explain. “We’re all stigmatized by our work—”

  “Porn stars might be,” Jasmine said. “But that’s because they haven’t got the discipline to make it as call girls. Look, there’s no way—Some chick who thinks it’s okay to get fucked in the ass is going to defend my rights? She’s gonna decide whether I’m being degraded? By a movie that I’m not even in? I don’t think so!”

  “Anal sex is part of the erotic mosaic—” Roxana began.

  “It’s a personal choice!” Cozy proclaimed.

  “It’s disgusting!” Jasmine retorted. “And it’s even more disgusting to do it for money!”

  I was gesturing to Allie with frantic eye movements—could someone please get Jasmine to stop dialoguing?

  “Why can’t we all agree to disagree on this topic?” Allie asked. “I really don’t like this! It’s making me…” Her voice trailed off and she looked as uncomfortable as I was feeling. In fact I was getting a headache.

  “Well, we didn’t bring it up,” Belinda said. “Your elitist friend started it. And now we have to change the subject because you can’t handle it?”

  “We have to listen to this insulting, divisive tirade from one call girl and then we have to kill the topic because of another call girl,” someone complained. “What I see happening is an attempt by the call girls to exercise control of the discourse! Anal sex is just a red herring. You’re both pursuing the same agenda! Because you have more of a stake in your own shared status as call girls than you have in this movement!”

  “That’s just not fair!” Allison cried. “If you want a peep-show dancer to chair this meeting, I’ll step down. Go right ahead!” She was on the verge of tears. “I didn’t ask to chair this meeting!”

  Roxana brought the meeting to order. “Allison’s right. Let’s agree to disagree. Some women find anal sex degrading and some find it empowering,” she mooed. “Every sex worker must have the Right to Choose.”

  “Please,” Jasmine grumbled. “Anyone who chooses to is deranged.”

  “Have you ever done a porn shoot?” Cozy asked.

  There was silence as Jasmine met her gaze.

  “No,” Jasmine finally said. “Why?”

  “Until you’ve walked a mile in another girl’s G-string, I suggest you withhold your judgments. By the way, Lisa has produced a very woman-friendly video for couples on how to enjoy anal sex—it’s very egalitarian. I don’t think you understand anal sex, and when it comes to human sexuality, people are afraid of what they don’t understand.”

  “You don’t know who you’re talking to. Listen, I know how to fake anal sex, and I happen to be one of the best! I’ll bet there’s nothing in her video about that.”

  Suddenly the meeting, which had been turning against Jasmine, began to change course.

  “You do?” Gretchen piped up. “That’s an important skill! Maybe you could teach a workshop at the harm reduction conference in Seattle. I’m facilitating the safe-sex workshop. I promised them three authentic sex workers, and so far I haven’t been able to find more than one—me.” Gretchen confessed, “I’m starting to forget some of the tricks I learned on the street. Sometimes I have to fake the workshop!”

  Jasmine, unprepared for the sudden shift in temperature, looked flinty and suspicious. “Seattle? You want me to fly to Seattle and do what, exactly? Who, may I ask, is paying for this? And who’s going to be in the audience? Do you think I’m crazy?”

  “There’s grant money from the Soros Foundation,” Roxana explained. “Outreach workers and peer counselors will benefit from your knowledge and share it with working prostitutes. Think of all the disenfranchised prostitutes who need your advice!”

  “Must I?”

  As the meeting came to a close, Cozy was giving Jasmine icicle eyes. She wasn’t happy about sharing the spotlight, but what can you expect from a nude dancer?

  A small coterie encircled Jasmine, and I could hear snatches of her invective: “This business of being dictated to by San Francisco—I don’t think you should stand for that!” The Cozy Von Booty wannabes, wearing leather dresses and U-shaped nose rings, clustered together at the other end of Roxana’s living ro
om.

  I was standing against a bookshelf, recovering from the sheer embarrassment of it all, when a slim freckled girl with delicate features and strawberry blond hair rushed past me. She had slipped into the meeting while Jasmine was bickering with Cozy Von Booty about anal sex. Dressed in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, she looked about seventeen. But could have been twenty-five. It was hard to tell.

  She confronted Allie, a wild worried look on her small face. “I’m Charmaine,” the girl said in a half whisper. “I sent you that e-mail about, you know…after I heard you on the radio.” She looked around warily. “I can’t talk about this here! You told me this was a small confidential gathering!”

  “You’re among friends!” Allie assured her. “We had more people than we expected. But you don’t have to be afraid anymore. This is a safe space! We support you in your—”

  “Listen, these people scare me—especially that loudmouthed brunette. Who is she?”

  “Isolation will disempower us!” Allie told her in an urgent voice. “We’re here to help you!”

  “I need a lawyer! I don’t need to share my problems with all these people.” The girl looked miserable. “Here.” She handed Allison a small piece of paper. “You can call me on this number. It’s my cell. I have to meet him at Carl Schurz Park tomorrow at four, it’s—” Her voice broke. “Humiliating…I don’t know what to do…I’m scared…but I told you because I trust you.”

  Charmaine’s quivering words were drowned out by Jasmine, who suddenly appeared at my side.

  “Those zealots are babbling about globalization and red-light zones—can we please get out of here?” Jasmine begged. “I need a drink!”