Diary of a Married Call Girl

by Tracy Quan

  Within weeks of our first meeting, Larry had begun to deteriorate. One night, he placed a chair against the door of his apartment in order to feel more secure. For some reason, that didn’t bother me, since he allowed me to remove the chair when it was time for me to leave.

  But one night, he tried to talk me into taking a check because he didn’t have enough cash to pay for my time. Like most underage hookers, I didn’t have a checking account. I was still living in a residential hotel, doing everything on a cash basis. When I balked, he offered to pay with cocaine. That was tempting, but it wasn’t kosher. Okay, so I didn’t have a bank account yet but I understood that a true professional gets paid in cash, not drugs. At heart, I was always a real hooker. Never a “coke whore.”

  When I saw the clock silently indicating the end of my first hour, I took out my beeper. I feigned a message from the escort service.

  “I have to call them,” I said. “Or they’ll think I’m working on the side.”

  This phony logic sounded good enough for Larry who was getting ready to light another pipe.

  After a briefly faked phone call, I told him, “I have to go. They’ll be upset with me if I don’t.”

  Larry was in the process of exhaling. The freebase was losing its power to enchant. He found it much easier to converse in the middle of a hit than he would have a month ago.

  “Can you come back later?” he asked.

  “Absolutely,” I lied. “I’ll call you.”

  “Have one more hit?”

  “Um…okay. Sure. Why not?”

  He had paid for my first hour and the pipe did seem very appealing. He called my beeper so many times after I left that night that I actually felt sorry for him, but I ignored his calls.

  A few weeks later, I began hearing stories about Larry. He called the escort service, requested a two-hour date with one of the newer girls, then refused to answer his intercom. Freebasing paranoia made it harder and harder for him to remove that chair from his side of the door. Soon he was blacklisted for not paying on the occasions when he did come to the door.

  I wish I could say that Larry was the first and last person I smoked freebase with. He wasn’t. But I started to notice a pattern. Freebasing clients were either addicted or on the way. The high was always starting to lose its glory. They all vainly attempted to recapture that first thrill. They were all paranoid, preoccupied with what lurked outside the apartment door, trying to get in. They heard things. They ran out of cash.

  And it was hard for me to perform in bed. After a hit of freebase, the last thing I wanted was a cock in my mouth demanding attention. I just wanted to sit back. Stay high for as long as possible. Which was never very long, unfortunately.

  One morning at six am, I started obsessing about what lurked on the other side of the door. I was in a room at the Vista Hotel with two other girls, entertaining a freebase addict from Bergen County. When I pressed my ear to the door of the room, convinced that I heard voices in the hall, the girls gave me a weird look. I stared back at them—confirmed freebasers—and thought: Omigod, the sun is coming up and these girls aren’t pretty anymore. Were they ever? When did this happen to them? Overnight? It was insane. The three of us, coked to the gills at dawn, passing judgment on each other for letting freebase get the better of us.

  Our half-naked customer remained oblivious. He was busy lighting the pipe.

  I disappeared into the bathroom, to examine my face in the mirror for signs of wear and tear. So far, my face appeared unscathed by the best (and worst) drug anyone has ever created. How long had those two coke hags been smoking it? Months? More than a year? Yikes. How long would it take before that happened to me?

  I had to make a choice. My looks or this drug. It was time to become ladylike! With the money earned from that last night of freebasing, I bought a $100 mud treatment for my entire body, a clarifying mask for my face, and a special serum for putting under my eyes. I spent the next week getting facials, drinking gallons of spring water to cleanse my system, reading genteel sonnets to improve my debased mind. I spent hours at a health food store, poring over the supplements. A lady takes her vitamins and minerals. My bedtime reading changed from poetry to nutrition. I kept the classical station on at all times, partly for the music but mostly for the subdued voices of the program hosts who made me feel instantly respectable.

  I went to Bergdorf Goodman and bought my first pair of seriously expensive quilted-suede flats. When I tried them on, I had an epiphany—like when I discovered my favorite drug, but in reverse. My ladylike feet were channeling Audrey Hepburn, not in Breakfast at Tiffany’s but in one of her sweet frothy comedies, like Charade.

  Some people need to get scared straight. I was scared pretty—terrified of becoming a coke hag, an aesthetic has-been.

  Sometimes—at the nail salon, in a restaurant—my nose picks up a tantalizing aroma. That hybrid of rum, lemon juice, fire, cocaine. There are a few things that smell like that. I don’t know what they are, but I know they’re out there. It happened the other day, while I was walking down the street. Mysterious fumes, a briefly delicious memory. And then it was gone.

  11

  Crisis Management

  MONDAY, 5/14/01

  Today, a call from Aaron F., one of whimsy’s perviest creatures. He runs a hedge fund in Aspen and comes to town about four times a year.

  “I’ll be checking in late Wednesday,” he said. “Can we get together at eight?”

  I tried for Thursday morning—impossible—and finally agreed to Wednesday night. I never work at night anymore, but Aaron’s a tempting exception: $1,200.

  I headed straight to Gristedes to prepare for his arrival, picked up six cans of Reddi-wip, and dropped them off uptown while Charmaine was taking a shower. Then I popped around the corner for plastic drop cloths.

  In the hardware store, my phone began chiming. A call from Allie. Tony, our neighborhood locksmith, stood a little too close by for comfort, so I stepped outside to hear her latest tale of woe.

  “That stalker sent an e-mail to the chair of the Colloquium Committee. She’s using a different name with them, but I’m sure it’s the same person. Saying that the Colloquium on Human Rights is endorsing a human rights violation by letting a NYCOT member sit on their committee! And she keeps talking about sex slaves. International sex slaves. She accused me of being a shill for sex traffickers!”

  The door of the hardware store swung open, and I started walking to the corner, away from prying ears.

  “I sent you a copy of her e-mail,” Allie said. “Did you get it? And the e-mail from the Colloquium Committee! They say she could bring negative attention to the entire conference by going to the media.”

  “I can’t get to my e-mail now, but I don’t think you should be sending me these things. You’re creating an e-mail trail,” I said in a low voice. “I don’t want to be part of some investigation into a sex slave ring, thank you very much. Even if it’s the sex slave ring of a deranged stalker’s warped imagination. What with you being the media maven of NYCOT and this maniac—”

  “Well, I can’t unsend my e-mails! And I think you should read them. I’m preparing a response from NYCOT to the Colloquium Committee. Sex work is not slavery, it’s an informal economic activity. There’s a big difference. These abolitionists want to put girls like Noi behind sewing machines and make them work for peanuts!”

  “You don’t have to practice your spiel on me, Allie. I’m not even part of your debate.”

  “Just because nobody ever made you work at a sewing machine. But girls like Noi are fighting to stay out of the garment factories of Asia!”

  “And girls like Noi will always find a way to do that,” I said. “I think you should disentangle yourself from this mess yesterday. It is okay to walk away from a train wreck.”

  “Well, there’s a meeting tonight and I have to go. I can’t let this stalker poison everything that I’ve been working for. And I want to tell my side of the story. In fact,” said Al
lie, “I’m going to use my talk at the Open Society Institute to take her on! I just called the NY1 producer. And if the Colloquium Committee doesn’t support me, I’ll address these accusations on TV!”

  “You’ll what? I want you to remove my e-mail from your archives. Erase me from your cell phone. And stop calling me!” I said. “You should be talking to your lawyer. Call Barry Horowitz and make an appointment with him. And tell him what I said. I don’t want to see any more e-mail about this stalker!”

  “I can’t believe that you, of all people, are being so unsupportive. I am under attack! And you’re telling me to crawl away and die! After everything we’ve been through together! Is that all our friendship means to you?”

  I was shaking when I returned to the store for my drop cloths.

  LATER

  Finally got up the nerve to read Allie’s e-mails.

  After a quick perusal of the Sex Slave diatribes, I deleted quickly—as if virtual contact with Allie’s current problems might result in a transmittable disease. The stalker claims that the INS “has the authority” to investigate everyone on the Colloquium Committee! Even if that’s a wild exaggeration, no wonder they’re getting cold feet about Allie’s involvement.

  One e-mail, sent before our blowup, is so anguished that I feel ashamed of myself for telling her not to call me:

  STILL have not heard from Lucho. I’m beginning to wonder if his ex went with him to Bogotá. She is actually FROM Colombia. So this is not just my imagination. Well I mean, it’s not such a crazy thing to imagine. He always says they are “such good friends.” Is she trying to get back with him? They knew each other in high school! She can speak to him in THE LANGUAGE OF HIS CHILDHOOD and I can’t speak a word of Spanish. I keep remembering what he said before he left. I am the love of his life?! Why did he say that. If he did go to Bogotá with his ex, then he said that for a reason. But what reason? I wish he were here. I still want to believe he’s my soul mate. Even if he’s with another woman, this should not prevent him from e-mailing ME.

  Out of habit, I began a compassionate soothing e-ply but quickly closed my e-mail window. With any luck, Lucho has contacted her by now. But then again, isn’t Lucho partly to blame for all the recent uproar? He encouraged her to get involved with that Colloquium Committee in the first place!

  WEDNESDAY, POSTTHERAPY

  Today, I tried to put into words the true reasons for my nagging shame. Allie and I haven’t spoken since Monday afternoon, but her accusations have been echoing in my head for two days.

  “Okay,” Wendy said. “What does the friendship mean?”

  “Allison’s like my bad conscience. Around when I started dating Matt, Allie met a guy called Zack who was also the love of her life. Just like Lucho,” I said. “Except, Zack hated the fact that she was hooking, and she quit the business for him! She joined Prostitutes Anonymous and started telling everybody she was powerless to control her sexual addictions.”

  “Everybody?”

  “Just her closest friends,” I explained. “Not random people on the street! But she stopped hooking. She left New York, and she stopped talking to her friends in the business. Including me.”

  “I see,” said Wendy. “So Allison’s an activist with a past.”

  “Yes. She avoided me for weeks. I accused her of treating me like a leper! When a friend in the Life snubs you, it’s worse than being snubbed by someone else,” I explained. “And I hadn’t done anything to provoke that! She had no reason to snub me.”

  “From your point of view.”

  “Well, now I want to protect my marriage, and I want to stay friends with her, but I can’t stay friends with a call girl who’s challenging an obsessed stalker to a fucking media duel! All in the name of hookers’ liberation! And I’m wondering what will happen if Matt sees her on TV,” I said. “He might recognize her and ask me a lot of questions.”

  “Sometimes people aren’t recognizable because they’re out of context,” Wendy said. “It depends on the eye of the beholder. And who the beholder is. Allison’s not as central in Matt’s life as she is in yours.”

  “But why does she have to go to such extremes?” I wondered. “That summer when she joined Prostitutes Anonymous, it was, like, relentless. She tried to convince me that I was a sexaholic! Her ‘enabler’! And now she’s part of this—this worldwide sex workers’ revolution.”

  “Allison sounds like a truth-seeker. But is that really the issue?” Wendy asked. “How did you respond when she snubbed you?”

  “I was there for her! I hid her book for her and almost got into a lot of trouble for that.”

  “Her book?”

  “Her client list. She asked me to burn it! But I couldn’t destroy something so valuable. And then she asked me to help her sell it. Anyway,” I said. “That was then. I was single. I took a lot of risks. I had less to lose. I wouldn’t do anything like that now.”

  “You’re taking a risk with your other apartment, though. With your roommate.”

  “But Charmaine isn’t like Allie,” I explained. “She grew up in a crummy part of Pittsburgh. I can trust her. She had a terrible experience when she started hooking, and she takes everything very seriously. Her mind is always on her business. Allie had it easy in the beginning, she’s had it easy all her life, and that’s why she’s never been able to concentrate on business. Going on TV is just another distraction so Allie won’t have to grow up!”

  “We can’t control the universe,” said Dr. Wendy, “but we can make choices about how we spend our time. If you know when Allison is scheduled to appear, there are many things you could be doing with Matt that will not bring you near a TV.”

  “That would involve talking to Allie, though. To find out when.” I paused and remembered the damning words. “She said something the other day that still bugs me.”

  I was thinking about Allison’s furious retort: Just because nobody ever made you work at a sewing machine! So? My impoverished ancestors left Asia before the factories were built. Allie doesn’t get it. I have no interest in helping her solve the problems my ancestors escaped from! They indentured themselves so I wouldn’t have to worry about such things.

  “Something you haven’t mentioned?” Wendy asked.

  “Well, not explicitly.” I groped for the right phrase. “Am I too, um, self-centered?”

  LATER

  Yikes. Just realized. I forgot to pick up the Styrofoam plates for my appointment with Aaron. His real wish is to be surprised by a cream-pie-wielding bitch who viciously “pies” him and, many cream pies later, takes pity on him. A hooker carrying that many pies into the Peninsula would be very noticeable. Instead, we craft ersatz pies on the spot out of Styrofoam plates and Reddi-wip. I wish I could say I thought of this myself, but it’s Aaron’s idea. Styrofoam plates make for Safer Pie Throwing because paper plates have sharp edges. It’s my job to create the cream pies while he waits, in his Speedos, on the plastic drop cloths. And it’s my job to supply the materials.

  Back to Gristedes for plates…

  THURSDAY MORNING

  Last night was both delicate and messy. Delicate because Matt was home while I was out working—a role reversal that makes me quite nervous. Messy because of the whipped cream.

  Under my navy suit, I wore a white lace body suit and pale pink stockings to complement the abundance of cream. I carried some $29 open-toed shoes with pink ankle straps and white heels in my tote bag. Good shoes would be a mistake! And pastel scenery seemed to fit the situation.

  Aaron ducked as I threw the first cream pie in the general direction of his face. After the fifth creamy assault, Aaron gasped and clutched at his brow.

  “You hit me in the eye,” he said in a sulky voice.

  “Oh no.” I rushed over to the drop cloth, where I knelt in a pile of cream. “Did I hurt you? I’m sorry.”

  After some anxious fussing on my end, he snickered with satisfaction.

  “Fooled you, didn’t I?”

  “Oh for chr
ist’s sake,” I muttered, returning to my piethrowing duties.

  Men!

  After the tossing was over and the teasing had begun, my shoes and feet were covered in canned cream. I stood amid the wreckage with my legs on either side of Aaron’s face, providing a flash of pussy while he gazed thighward, a stunned defeated look in his big brown eyes.

  He persuaded me to bring my pussy closer for a more intimate peek. We had gone through four cans of Reddi-wip, and I was more worried than usual about getting it in my hair, but it was time to start writhing around on the plastic sheet. I hate rushing with a good client like Aaron, but I wasn’t in a position to dawdle.

  Matt thinks I’m sampling a new exercise class. And I want to get home earlier than promised. Not later.

  Aaron’s cock was growing under his tight black Speedos. He pressed against my thigh and I wriggled aggressively, staying as close to his bulging Speedos as possible. My hand slid beneath them to finish the job.

  After showering, I stuffed my cream-soaked underthings and shoes into hotel laundry bags along with the rolled up drop cloths. I hailed a cab on Fifth and managed to arrive at Seventyninth Street before nine-thirty. Charmaine sat hunched over her computer screen, wearing a towel, her face covered with a white mask. She waved and mumbled. The Biologique Magic Mask pulls your skin so tight it’s hard to talk or move your eyelids.

  “You should really lie down when you do that mask. That’s how you get the best results,” I told her.

  She made a noise that sounded like “I know.” She can’t talk under the mask, but she can IM. In fact, she had two different IM windows open and seemed to be going back and forth between them. I caught a glimpse of her user id, FoxxiiCharm and had a feeling she wasn’t talking to her mother. Is she IM-ing two different guys at the same time??