• • •
Toward the end of that summer, I decided to take Analise’s advice and check in on Junebug—in my mind, that’s what I still called him. I had seen him a few times since the night at the hospital, once at a screening and once in his production offices, when he was a completely different person—much more at ease and in control. He even got me to suggest some “urban” story lines for his next movie. Now that he was in production on a legitimate film, I was curious to see how he was managing the transition.
I dropped by his new office a few days later. The scale of his operation surprised me. At least ten production people were drinking coffee amid legal pads and laptops, a pair of whiteboards were covered with scheduling details, props and costumes awaited final touches. “Sorry, Sudhir,” he said. “We’re running a little late.” Then he turned to his crew, all business. “The new pages won’t be here until Monday, but everything is the same in terms of the schedule. So let’s try to get the casting done—which means you, Jimmy. Try to focus on the job instead of chatting up the hotties.”
When they were finished, J.B. asked me to step outside on the roof to smoke a cigarette. “Never go into business with friends. My dad keeps telling me that.”
“Those guys are your friends?”
“I went to boarding school with them.”
“Lost any yet?” I joked.
J.B. smirked. “I’m not sure I ever had any to lose.”
They were all part of an investors circle, he explained. They had money but no experience, and they all wanted to get into movies, so they’d each put up a half million bucks for a shot at the glory of cinema. “Which means that everybody gets to give their input,” he said with another cynical laugh.
They had been doing this for a few films now, starting with student films and then porn and now this. I asked how much money they’d spent so far.
“A lot.”
“Lost much?”
J.B. laughed. “I put fifteen grand into dot-com stocks just before the crash of 2000. I’m never playing the market again.”
I understood the lure of films, I said. You could reach such a wide audience. But I couldn’t conceive of gambling away thousands of dollars.
“That’s the difference between you and us,” he said, shaking his head as if in pity. “We know you have to get in the game and stay in the game. Because once you’re in the game, you’re in the game.”
Back inside, I handed J.B. an outline I had written for him—Carla’s story, basically, starting with the beating and then her push into the escort business. I expected him to put it aside and read it later, or not read it at all. Instead he asked me to sit down and leaned back in his desk chair like a mogul, holding the pages in front of his face. A few minutes later he tilted forward and slapped the pages on his desk. “These are great,” he said. “Let me pay you for this.”
“I’d rather get to know your rich investor friends,” I said.
He laughed. “Never going to happen.”
“I don’t want to poach them.”
He knew what I was after. He cocked his head and gave me an appraising look. “What do you make of this tribe, Mr. Anthropologist? Figured it out yet?”
With that, I knew I could eventually get him to cooperate. Despite his cloak of cynicism and the standoffishness that seemed to be part of having money, he was as susceptible as most of us are to Carl Jung’s great maxim: The desire to reveal is greater than the desire to conceal.
“I have a few theories,” I said.
One theory, in fact, was that my initial assumption about the remoteness of the rich was wrong. I had a hunch that Analise’s newfound commitment to life as a madam and J.B.’s playful resistance to my interest both shared the same eager motive. Analise wanted to prove that her skills and savvy outweighed her wealth, and J.B. wanted me to see him as something more than a category (preferably, as the next Samuel Goldwyn). Both wanted me to see them as making it on their own. They wanted me to recognize them as authentic themselves rather than mere products of their gilded environment—which struck me as bitterly ironic, since poor people, authentic almost by definition, rarely seemed to give a damn about whether they made it by pulling up their own bootstraps. Those who had so little were only too happy to take help from anyone willing to give it.
But J.B. just laughed and slapped his hand down on my pages again. “Don’t waste your time, Sudhir. This is the real stuff—real poignant human shit. We could make money with this!”
• • •
The next time I heard from Analise, she was calling to ask for advice. Her frustrations with Brittany had put her on a roller coaster. One day she loved her, the next day she wished they had never gone into business together. Today she was ready to get rid of Brittany forever but wasn’t sure how to do it. The parallels to Shine and Juan struck me again. Brittany was feeling the same kind of cocksure rebellion as Juan: Look how great I’m doing! I can make it on my own! Why do I need to carry this guy?
Having Tito arrange a beatdown didn’t seem appropriate, so I had to tell Analise that I had no great ideas to offer. But, of course, I’d be thrilled for an opportunity to observe as she fired her.
“We’re going to meet at the gallery space on Thursday,” Analise told me. “Bring your brass knuckles.”
When I arrived, Kate and her staff were in the front of the gallery preparing a photographic exhibit on street life in New York City. Pictures of crowds crossing Times Square were interspersed with shots of small family businesses in Canarsie, East New York, Astoria, and other communities in the city’s outer boroughs. The pictures were simple and beautiful. Most were taken by European photographers because a prominent European car company had underwritten the exhibition.
I went straight to Analise’s office. She looked good, elegant as always and perfect for a gallery. The first words out of her mouth were: “To be honest, I’m not sure I ever imagined doing this without her. That’s my fear. Not that I couldn’t do it, but we’re kind of joined at the hip.”
I pictured Juan’s face, that stubborn refusal to accept how things had changed. “I thought your mind was all made up,” I said.
Analise hesitated, biting her lip, and I could see how deep the problem went. Underneath all the confidence she was trying to exude, she was deeply anxious about the unknowns ahead. Brittany and J.B. weren’t just employees or business partners. They were a part of her foundational network, and I was beginning to understand that the business of border crossing was more complicated than just mustering the courage to explore new worlds. It also meant leaving old worlds, or negotiating a new relationship to the old worlds. The poor ghetto entrepreneurs who feared leaving their own little fishbowls weren’t just afraid they’d be eaten by bigger fish; they were also afraid of being greeted as outsiders when they tried to return home. Even Analise, with all her entitled individualism, still needed the comfort of a network. Crossing boundaries didn’t mean leaving your friends, family, and former business partners in the dust; it meant trying to keep the old while finding the new—not so much developing new networks as extending the networks you already had. Margot was the exception—her friends and family had shunned her. But for Analise, Brittany wasn’t just a friend and contractor but also a reminder of who she was and where she belonged. Shine could have just moved to another bar and left Juan behind, but that would have left him a little more alone. The underlying challenge was existential: if in a world so big Juan was just a loose end, wasn’t Shine kind of a loose end too?
“Yeah, but anyone can say those things!” Analise laughed. “You have to do it.” Then she sighed and shrugged and let out a small laugh. “I guess the problem is, the men she brings in are the most steady—it’s never just a date here and there. It’s the guy who wants to come back. And that’s all Brittany. She gets them to return, like, several times a month! No one else is that good.”
Brittany arrived at the gallery an hour early. We were both surprised. She walked into the back room,
where we were sitting, and immediately lit a cigarette.
Smoking wasn’t allowed in the gallery. Analise was about to tell her to put out the cigarette, but Brittany read her mind. “I don’t care! This is not my greatest day, Analise. But you wanted to talk so here I am.”
Analise didn’t seem to know how to start. I sat silently, trying to disappear.
“Well, are we going to talk or not?” Brittany said. She was obviously high, no doubt on cocaine.
Analise took a deep breath. “You’re screwing up,” she said. “A lot.”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s the other way of—?”
Analise stopped herself in midsentence. She tried to calm down.
“You don’t do what I do,” Brittany continued. “That’s the fucking problem, Analise. So unless you know how to make it out there, I’d try to be less fucking bossy. You’ve been a real fucking pain in the ass lately and I’m tired of it.”
That got Analise going again. “You’re pissing people off,” she said. “Showing up late, not showing up, showing up wasted out of your fucking mind. You can’t piss everyone off, Brittany, and just think it’s okay and nothing will happen.”
Brittany just puffed on her cigarette, as if she was alone at a bus stop.
“The hotel, Brittany,” Analise continued. “You really think it was okay to yell at the bartenders, to trash the room, and then just leave the guy sitting there like that? He has a wife, Brittany. You can’t just … expose people like that.”
“Fuck you, Analise. Really. I mean, I can’t take it anymore.”
Analise stared into her hands. She took out a cigarette and started walking toward the door.
“That’s it?” Brittany yelled. “We’re done?”
“I don’t know anymore, Brittany. You’re such a fucking pain to work with. You don’t seem to want to work with me, and to tell you the truth, I’m finding it hard to work with you.”
“You know what, Analise? I’ll make it easier for you. I’m done. That’s it. How about that? Does that solve your problems?”
“Yeah, it kind of does,” Analise said, her lips pursed in anger.
Brittany got up and stormed out, which left Analise looking stunned. She walked slowly out of the office and toward the back of the gallery into the garden.
Analise had broken up with Brittany many times, but they always forgave and forgot, or almost did. This dated back to their school days, but it was actually not an unusual pattern in the escort world, where sex workers frequently quit on a manager or agency only to come crawling back a few months later. Economists call this “sunk costs.” It was hard for Analise or Shine to get rid of people because they had already invested so much time and effort trying to make it work. Friends just call it loyalty.
But this time, it was different. After storming out of the gallery, Brittany started making moves on some of the other girls who were working with Analise. She was better at finding customers, she told them. They could make more money working for her. This betrayal Analise took hard. The next time I dropped by the gallery to find out how things were going, she excused herself for a quick trip to the bathroom that left her sniffing and starry-eyed. She fell back into her chair and let out a big sigh. “I have to do something, or else I’m finished.”
“What do you mean, ’finished’?”
Brittany had poached five of her best clients, she said. “I can’t risk having a catfight, you understand? I would rather just get out, just stop everything, than let the news get out that I’m fighting with her. Can you imagine what would happen? I mean, she’s got such a big mouth.”
“Well, maybe it’s a sign,” I said. “I mean, is this really what you want to be doing your whole life?”
Analise shook her head. She had a better idea, apparently. “Shine is going to help me.”
So there it was, the arcs of my story connecting. I wasn’t too surprised. After Shine and Analise met in the art gallery, I had a sense their lives would intertwine. Of course, I hated the idea. They would have met at the party anyway, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was responsible. And I was jealous too, I have to admit. But the scientist in me—thank God for him!—was excited. The connection Analise and Shine had made was precisely the point I was trying to make with my work. The global city was bringing together people of varying classes, ethnicities, and backgrounds, and here was une liaison dangereuse as poignant and lucrative as any other. The novelty wasn’t necessarily the upstairs-downstairs quality. That was as old as the city itself, or older—you could reach back to Mesopotamia to see slaves and nobles courting. But here was a business venture that blurred all the ready-made distinctions between legal and illegal commerce, that required the collaboration of two brokers to translate the languages and codes of two different worlds. Shine provided the coke, Analise provided the clients. Shine provided the muscle, Analise identified the parameters of the conflicts. As much as I didn’t really want to see this play out, it made complete sense. The question was, how long would it last? Could they survive the inherent tensions that had sunk Angela?
The truth was, the change in Analise depressed me. When I was a kid in college, the idea of entropy struck me hard: all that is solid melts into air, creative destruction, and so on. A factory is always one innovation away from becoming obsolete. Everything is always in the process of falling apart. The bourgeois succeeded because they didn’t cling to tradition. Instinctively, despite all their protestations to the contrary, they embraced entropy.
Entropy rang true to me because I was going through so many personal changes. It rang true in New York’s underground too. Everyone was constantly on the precipice of change. You had to learn how to get out, change your focus, accept losses, fail quickly, and move on. Success required self-awareness.
This was the theory. But in practice, I hated to see Analise going through this particular episode of creative destruction. Shine too. They both were failing, but their ambition and nerve wouldn’t let them quit. It was heartbreaking. Maybe their resilience would help them solve each other’s problems, or maybe they’d drag each other down to destruction, exposure, and arrest. There were dangers I knew all too well, dangers that could sink them. One was obvious. The police are all about patrolling social boundaries, and many of them hate the sight of “salt and pepper” mixing in the same shaker. But police actually arrest few black marketers. There are simply too many of them, and an arrest could spark violence from newbies fighting for market share. The real hazards would be linked to the inner demons that fueled their ambitions—greed, jealousy, reckless behavior, an inflated sense of their capacities. Selling drugs or running an escort service isn’t what usually lands you in jail, after all. It’s the inability to approach your involvement in a moderate way. Too many people want to be a kingpin. The handful who grow slowly and never deal with strangers are rarely caught. That’s why crossing boundaries screams “Danger!”
Examined with colder eyes, the adventures of Shine and Analise could be a fascinating experiment. Two very different people with very different cultural assets, both were struggling to thrive in the invisible economy. Which assets would be most useful? Which would be most destructive?
From what I’d seen so far, I would have to conclude that the low side of this particular high-and-low equation had more power. Shine understood the black market and didn’t shy away from the messiness. He had a better sense of when to push forward and when to pull back. He was protected by his ghetto cool, his mask of indifference. Like other drug kingpins I’d seen, he knew that today’s failure could be tomorrow’s success, and slowing down or taking a loss could be the key to staying in the game for the long haul. But Analise didn’t seem to have those instincts. Her ambition and elite recklessness clouded her judgment. She wanted to be in control of everything and also wanted to throw all caution away. Maybe this too was an aspect of her elite culture code, a privileged person’s refusal to scale back to a more modest
operation that would let her scrape by without the glamour of a big success. But there was danger in the way she kept talking about some happy place in the future when the dirt of her illegal enterprise would be magically washed away. She thought that people like her made the rules and could break them too. But dreamers don’t thrive in the world of crime. The underground is perfectly suited for the self-aware business manager who knows her limits, and what the market (and the cops) will bear.
The whole thing was like watching a car crash in slow motion: you’re helpless to stop the inevitable and wincing with every crunch of metal. But too close for comfort also meant that I couldn’t turn away. For better or worse, I had to see what would happen next.
CHAPTER 8
EXIT STRATEGIES
Margot called, asking if I’d like to come watch some of her missionary work—lately, she had been helping her “contractors” organize their financial lives, teaching them basic investment principles, persuading landlords to give leases without background checks, even cosigning loans. She was becoming more and more obsessed with the idea of exit strategies. “We all exit,” she told me more than once. “You can do it at thirty or fifty, but one day you’re going to stop—and then what? These girls have got to learn to think.”
Obviously, she was talking to herself.
This was a subject scholars of sex work rarely explored. Many of the women at Margot’s level of the industry had high school diplomas and college degrees. They certainly had acquired experience as skilled hosts and conversationalists. They had learned to navigate complex social situations and negotiate with a wide variety of people. But they couldn’t exactly put their skills on a résumé. How did they make the transition to a normal life?
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