by Tracy Quan
At the sight—and sound—of Jasmine, Charmaine gave Allison a frightened look, then turned and walked out of the apartment, almost as if she were being chased.
When I finally got home, I was emotionally exhausted. At three A.M., I woke, disoriented. I had fallen asleep on the couch, and I was haunted by the face of that girl. What was the word she’d used? Humiliated? I’ve heard about girls who get caught up in dark S&M games that get out of hand…Or is a sadistic cop taking advantage of her? I’ve also heard some gruesome stories about that.
TUESDAY. 5/2/00
Today Milt called from his car and proposed a late-morning quickie.
“I don’t have much time,” he warned me. “But we’ll manage! I need to see you. The last week has been hell!”
I pulled out a fresh sheet for Milton and opened my secret dildo drawer. Tasteful Lucite? Or garish “flesh-toned” rubber? I picked up a smaller sleeker black number, then put it away. Who am I kidding? The more outlandish and sleazy, the better. Milt gets plenty of tasteful sex at home; his wife is no slouch—I’ve seen the family photos—and I doubt that she’s a prude. It’s just that, with kids in the house, you can’t exactly come home, turn on a porn video, and get down to business in the middle of the day! People think it’s the repressed types who go for kink. Actually, the happier and healthier a client’s marriage is, the harder you have to work at keeping things sleazy.
I dusted off a monstrous-looking dildo and propped it against a pillow. I opened a tiny tube of K-Y, wrapped it loosely in a tissue, and slid that beneath the pillow for easy access. Then I rewound the video.
I was still brushing my teeth when the buzzer rang.
To speed things along, I encouraged Milt to watch while I fucked myself slowly with the head of the dildo. I don’t do this often for Milt—only when he’s in a hurry, when he hasn’t got time for more affectionate sex games. First of all, I don’t want to overdo it. I worry about the size of that thing (and always do a few extra Kegels afterward). Secondly, it’s important to do something different every time you see a regular. Make sure you don’t get into a rut.
After Milt had showered and paid, I got ready to see Bernie—at Liane’s. I really don’t need the extra money that I get from seeing Liane’s people; it’s less than I make seeing my own. But each appointment you keep gets you closer to meeting your weekly quota—and Bernie’s so easy.
In Liane’s spare room, where clients are entertained, I treated Bernie to some playful theatrics—looking into his eyes while I slowly unbuttoned my blouse, then lifting my skirt to remove my panties.
“Leave that on,” he suggested.
“My skirt?” I acted surprised, as if this was the kinkiest thing anyone had ever said to me.
“Just for a few moments.” Then he came over and slid his hand under the silk knit fabric. Fortunately, it was a rather slim skirt, and I was able to wriggle away from his finger. A professional could just ask him to go and wash his hands, but as a supposed amateur, I didn’t want to come off too clinical.
“I—um—really have to tinkle!” I finally said, pulling away and disappearing into the bathroom.
I washed up, hung my skirt on a hanger, and returned, naked but for my heels.
“Leave those on,” he insisted. “You look great like that!”
“Really? Should I wear them to bed?”
“Absolutely…And I want to spend some time pleasing you today.”
I slid onto the cool white sheet and into character, as the slightly promiscuous “coed” who’s never been with an experienced old rake before.
Bernie gave my hairless pussy a gentle kiss, then began to blow on it softly. Because I’d waxed so recently, every inch of my skin was tingling. Sometimes, though your head is thinking that the man you’re in bed with is a bit of a fool, your pussy seems to smile back at him with a mind and will of its own.
While Bernie licked me, I lifted my torso slightly—ostensibly to watch him. Actually, I was toning my abs and counting slowly as I raised and lowered myself, in a seemingly spontaneous series of movements. This morning’s dildo flitted through my mind, and I did ten more Kegels while he licked me. Then I “came.”
“Oh, my god,” I said in a wondrous tone. “You’re—you’re just amazing.”
After he left, I joined Liane in her sunlit living room, where she sat on the sofa, wearing a brown silk blouse with a pleated front and a straight brown skirt. Her Chanel slingbacks were brown and white.
She put down her New York Times and smiled.
“Bernie is enchanted!” she said, patting the sofa. “Have some peppermint tea. According to the Times…” She poured my tea. “Ladylike is coming back into fashion this fall! I’m rather excited!”
“Oh? In what sense?” I wondered. One nose ring instead of three?
“‘Covered buttons,’” she read out loud. “I hope that includes belly buttons!” she added. “The other day I had lunch at La Goulue with my friend and the hostess was wearing a pantsuit that showed off her belly button! Or should I say navel? Pantsuits are one thing, belly buttons are another.”
Liane still remembers when call girls didn’t wear pantsuits to hotels and restaurants because ladies just didn’t.
I glanced at the paper. “‘Three Generations of Ladylike…Can one be ladylike in a tube top?’” Absolutely, said one young blonde who looked like a sixteen-year-old version of Allison. Nan Kempner was quoted, holding forth on the great pantsuit rebellion of ’65.
I’m surprised to read about a teenager who Enjoys Being a Lady. I didn’t care about being a lady until I started working. My desire to turn tricks was actually a tomboy’s notion; I thought I could just get out there and start collecting scalps, like a guy. But I soon discovered that I had to learn how to behave like a lady.
A lady may let a client perform around the world but she doesn’t reciprocate; it’s ladylike, after all, to let guys worship you. (Jasmine, who knows how to fake that as well, thinks you can pretend to do it and still remain a lady. I’m not so sure! Ladies care about sexual appearances.)
Another thing that distinguishes a ladylike working girl is her groomed and tidy muff. Clients know you make money with your pussy, but a freshly waxed, beautifully maintained pussy sends a message: You spend money on your pussy. The word pussy is ladylike; cunt is not. Muff is somewhere in between. It’s okay to tell clients you have a steady boyfriend, but it’s not ladylike to give them sexual details! It’s unladylike to count money in front of a john, but ladylike to count the money openly (as Liane does) when two girls are dividing it. As for drugs, cocaine is more ladylike than heroin; snorting coke is more ladylike than smoking crack. Ladies only do small amounts, anyway. And it’s unladylike to admit to a client that you went without sleep last night but staggered out of bed in order to see him (which has been known to happen). A lady is more decadent in the daytime than she is at night.
“Last month, I had a new girl up here to see one of the fellows, and I discovered that she was covered in tattoos!” Liane was saying. “She had a nipple ring—it was shocking! I think we’re all looking forward to a ladylike autumn.” Liane would have fainted if she had seen the motley crowd at the last NYCOT meeting. “I should have asked her to undress when I met her. But I stopped doing that years ago, when things slowed down around here.”
Some madams insist on seeing what their customers will be getting. Bianca, who ran that house around the corner from Sutton Place, always examined a new girl to make sure there were no surgical scars or signs of drug use. Jeannie, who ran the Dream Date service, made new girls undress—to see if we were wired. Now, it seems, madams also have to be on the lookout for tattoos and labia piercings.
“When my business was very active,” Liane was saying, “I needed lots of different girls. I had to branch out so, naturally, I met more girls. Which meant I had to be more careful about who worked here. I was a lot more demanding.” She sighed. “That was before the airlines ruined my business! A man had to spend the n
ight in New York if he wanted to get to Chicago,” she reminded me. “Everyone”—meaning the guys—“came through New York! So everyone”—meaning the girls—“had to undress first.”
By the time I started working for Liane, her business was beginning to slow down. Her busiest decade was the seventies—the era of the Happy Hooker, whose “public carrying-on” Liane still recalls with horror and disapproval.
“These days I meet so few girls,” Liane said. “I don’t think I’ve asked a new girl to undress in twenty years, dear! Did I ask you to undress? I can’t remember.”
Neither could I.
12 Origins Again: The Sex of Money
BEFORE SHE LEFT FOR HER VACATION, DR. WENDY SAID, “Think about the nature, not the content, of your secrets. Including your earliest secrets.”
Before I was a hooker, I was a baby-sitter—which is (or was) more like being a call girl than people realize. And, for me, filled with secrecy.
I had my regulars: Mr. and Mrs. Hersch with their baby boy; Emily’s mom, a thirty-three-year-old divorcée who lived with her two kids and dated a guy ten years her junior. (She was big on informalities; I called her Liz.) One evening, Liz came home to find her kitchen covered in cookie batter—her four-year-old daughter and six-year-old son had conned me into believing they could bake. Since I was on the precocious side myself, I had been easily persuaded by their ruse. Emily’s mom hit the roof when she saw the mess her kids had created on my watch—but she forgave the mistake and allowed me to learn from it.
These were my bread-and-butter gigs. But I was always on the lookout for new business. I scoured the want ads—nothing there, but why not give it a shot? I never passed a bulletin board at a grocery store without reading every single notice—and I got some extra business that way. If somebody was seeking a baby-sitter, I was generally the first passerby to tear off any phone number on a strip and make the call.
I loved making my own money. My mother had been trying to teach me basic budgeting skills. She gave me a monthly allowance for sanitary pads, bus tickets, acne soap, school supplies, and shampoo. A regular amount of $1.40 was allocated for Frivolities, and I remember being overwhelmed by how small this was compared to the total monthly sum. The temptation to spend the whole thing on Frivolities was unavoidable. At the end of each month, my accounts reflected unrealistic quantities of Kotex and Clearasil. Where did all that money go?
But I had a reputation in the neighborhood—for being levelheaded and mature. I was allowed to start baby-sitting at eleven, and the local parents thought I was wonderful! My baby-sitting gigs were all within walking or biking distance. I took my responsibilities seriously and enjoyed having them. But money was another matter. I frittered away my baby-sitting money on boarding-school stories and ice-cream cones, on Richie Rich and Millie the Model comics, then—as my tastes evolved—on magazines, French pastries, little tubs of flaky halvah from the Lebanese bakery, handmade Turkish delight, and the occasional schoolyard mandrax. No matter how much I spent on these delicacies, there was always another baby-sitting gig. I searched for out-of-print boarding-school stories in secondhand bookstores and bought foreign fashion magazines.
There were lots of books at home but not enough magazines. I liked sinking into the sophisticated ephemeral universe of a monthly fashion magazine; it was nothing like the permanence of a book, and it gave me access to a world that was so much bigger and more complex than the one we lived in. Since we didn’t have a TV, this was my independent and private bond with pop culture that nobody could interfere with. There were frequent attempts to undermine this bond—magazines were frowned upon because there were so many ads—but I found that I could tolerate my parents’ hang-ups now that I had my own money. Sweets were another forbidden pleasure in my mother’s household, but now I bought them whenever I felt like it.
If my monthly allowance ran out, I got an extra babysitting job to avoid having to ask my mother for bus fare. When I discovered that I could circumvent her scoldings—simply by working—it must have been one of the happiest days of my life. I discussed this with nobody; it was a quiet kind of satisfaction, and I didn’t want to draw attention to my spending problem. My job was no secret: a baby-sitter has to publicize her work if she wants to stay in business. But the reasons for my working—those were secret. I didn’t even mention these money problems to Liz. She was my adult “friend” who liked to be on a first-name basis, but she, like Mom, was still an adult. I sensed that I should not discuss my money matters with adults, period. Money was quite personal. And since adults did not discuss their money openly, I knew that keeping my money problems and issues private would give me some adult freedoms.
By the time I started baby-sitting, I was also planning to be a hooker. Ever since I had heard the word prostitute and looked it up in a dictionary, I had fixed upon this as my ambition. But if you had asked me why, I couldn’t have told you—nor did I feel any need to explain or defend it. I told a classmate what I was planning to do “when I grew up” and she was horrified.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” she yelped.
“Neither do you,” I said.
When I decided, at ten, that I wanted to be a prostitute, I had never even heard of an orgasm. I knew that I wanted sex to be my career, the source of my independence, what I spent my days doing—when I grew up. It was a decision I made before I had even begun to contemplate having sex, and I assumed I would not become a hooker until I could also vote. Ten-year-olds may dream big dreams, but their perspective tends to be somewhat narrow; I didn’t know about underage prostitution.
At eleven, I discovered a porno paperback called Little Girls for Sale in the back of a poster shop that also sold used books. On the cover was an illustration of a doll-faced child with big round eyes wearing a babyish dress. She looked about eight. But the girls in the story were twelve and fourteen—not little girls at all, I remember thinking. The imaginary and rather infantile cover child was a hoax. Nobody over the age of nine dressed like that! As one who was no longer a “little” girl, I had a stake in these issues. But the title itself gave me hope.
The not-so-little girls were temptresses, instigators. They had secret sexual encounters in public places. A man in a supermarket was lured by a twelve-year-old girl who made her small breasts available to him by leaning over the frozen food section. He touched her tentatively, while nobody was looking. But before all this happened, she had bewitched him in the soap aisle. He had followed her all over the store.
As I flipped through the book, my body surprised and embarrassed me. I was standing in the back of the poster shop, quietly aroused, but it was totally unexpected. I swelled up, my whole body seemed to be more alive, my face felt flushed, and my heart was beating faster. Warily, I looked around. As the feeling subsided, I realized that I was getting away with something. Nobody was paying any attention to me, thank god. I read further. If the little girls were really for sale, where were the passages describing all the things they bought with their forbidden loot? There was no mention of money changing hands, and I grew impatient. I resigned myself to the thought that there were no real opportunities out there for a girl my age, and life went on.
The opportunity to break in at the part-time level came sooner than I expected—when I was thirteen.
My first trick, at thirteen, was the easiest trick I ever turned. Professor Andrews wasn’t my first professional trick—that happened later at the Cumberland Hotel. I think of this as my first emotional trick, the first time I experienced what it felt like to have sex for money. If things had gone wrong, if I had been mistreated or injured, I think I would have been scared off. If it had been hard to do in any way, I might never have done it again.
I was the kind of thirteen-year-old who stubbornly refused to do anything that wasn’t easy. In the ninth grade, I had the option, finally, to trade gym for another academic subject. Running, jumping, and climbing were boring, stupid, and hard. (Riding a bike was something else—it got
you somewhere on your own, without an adult.) It was easy to fill in the form and add another academic subject, but that didn’t mean I cared about getting good marks.
“You think you don’t have to be good at science because you’re a girl!” my mother said to me one day in frustration. Actually, I thought I had as much right to be bad at science and math as any boy had. I only cared about being good at the subjects I liked. Though I was the youngest in my class, having skipped a year, I had this notion that I was too smart to care about school. I was developing a quiet stubborn will. Their hours? Their days? Their rules? I was just going to do what I pleased. So I didn’t show up for a week. I hung out at libraries and bookstores. I was surprised when they didn’t notice or report me to my mother. I didn’t show up for another week. Eventually the computer noted my huge block of absences and recorded it on a report card. It was a point of pride with me that I had gotten away with this for the good part of a school term. While I was viewed as a nerd by my friends—awkward, insufficiently glib, a tame drug user—I was admired for my will. Maybe they thought I was doing something ingenious, but I wasn’t. I was just doing what I wanted. And it was not hard; I would have gone to school on those days if skipping school had been harder to do.
As for sex, it wasn’t lust but curiosity, a desire for worldly experience, that made me impatient. I was not a passionate teenager. There was never a boy who got me too turned on to turn back, who persuaded me to prove that I loved him. I was never a candidate for pregnancy. I planned my defloration down to the last detail, read up on every method of birth control for an entire year before deciding to have sex. I read about the different phases of the female orgasm and wondered when I would actually have one.
That incident in the bookstore, my experiments with a pillow between my thighs—what bothered me about all this was that I couldn’t just make it happen more naturally. I read about masturbation in books and tried to figure out how to use my own fingers.
