by Tracy Quan
Re: Committee Protocol
Upon my return, I discovered that one member of the Colloquium Committee, who is also our sex industry liaison, was not present at the last meeting. This is a regrettable oversight, and the NYCOT members are angry. Allison is their voice on our committee, very committed to representing her community. She did not find out about the meeting until yesterday—more than an oversight, this is a malicious omission. The chair tells me she was ALSO unaware of the omission. So who is responsible for sending announcements? It is not appropriate to use the BCC function for committee meetings. Please correct this error and let the entire committee know who is invited and who not. The Colloquium Committee must operate in a forthright and transparent manner, especially when dealing with sexual minorities who are very familiar with the politics of exclusion.
“I didn’t know Lucho was so chivalrous,” I admitted.
“Of course he’s chivalrous!” Allie blushed like a schoolgirl, shuffled her printouts nervously, then became more composed. “But look at this.” She flipped past a nasty message from the stalker and showed me Noi’s terse update:
Re: your mail
have new zealand passport!
solidarity for now, NOI
“How can a person just change passports overnight?” Allie looked puzzled. “She never said anything about this and suddenly she’s a citizen of New Zealand instead of Thailand. She wants me to redo all the visa forms!”
“Is it the first time you discussed her nationality?”
“Of course not! She sent all kinds of documentation in April. Now she’s asking me to change everything. With no explanation or warning? Is that—is that normal?”
“How do you know it’s really from Noi?” I asked.
Allie sipped her espresso.
“I guess I don’t. We’ve never spoken. And when I asked for her number, she said she has no phone for now. So I e-mailed all my numbers and told her she could call collect.”
“All your numbers? Don’t write to her again until you talk to Barry Horowitz,” I told her. “And don’t talk about this to anyone else.”
“What am I going to tell Lucho? What about the Colloquium Committee?”
“Before you say one word to your boyfriend or anyone on that committee, you’d better consult your lawyer.”
14
My Apprenticeships
“By means of an image we are often able to hold on to our lost belongings.”
—Colette
SUNDAY, 6/10/01
Have been waiting all day for Matt to go to the gym so I can log on. Just got a reminder from Miranda about Ian Pritchard’s visit to New York. He’s getting some kind of academic award for Dualism and Mass Consumption in Trinidad:
Don’t forget Thursday! Ian’s party at Borgia Antico. Is Matt coming? I hope so. Have appt with dentist, about five blocks south of the French Institute. Want to meet up/cab down together?
Not really! But I don’t want to provoke questions about my alibi, either. My brief e-ply:
Bien sur! Let’s coordinate by cell.
Lots of anxious e-mail from Allie this weekend:
Noi wrote again and wants to come sooner, stay at my place! What should I tell her? I still have to talk to Barry about her visa. Don’t worry! I’m sitting tight til I see Barry but I hate to be unfriendly. Doesn’t she understand that I see guys in my apartment? I can’t really have a houseguest AND make a living. Don’t the girls in Patpong work out of their apartments?
I typed back quickly:
Discuss ZILCH with Noi—especially NOT your work habits for god’s sake.
While Allison tries to untangle the mystery of Noi’s nationality, the stalker continues to rattle her by cc-ing key members of the Colloquium Committee:
Re: A SECRETIVE SEX TRAFFICKING MACHINE WITH TENTACLES IN EVERY COUNTRY, INSIDIOUS RECRUITMENT TECHNIQUES
an amoral figurehead who advocates the importation of Prostituted Exotica from a Bangkok Sleazepit…
And so on and so forth. Insidious recruitment techniques? Now that takes me back.
I began hearing about these techniques when I was eleven, visiting France with my mother. Madame Ducharne was an unlikely friend for Mother: a beautician with two kids who lived in Notre Dame de Bondeville on the Route de Dieppe. The two mothers met through the French Immersion Network, an agency for pairing Anglophone children with French families. Before dropping me off for the rest of the summer, Mother spent a week with the Ducharnes practicing her language skills.
The Ducharnes lived “above the shop.” To enter the salon from inside, you had to pass through the kitchen where Madame cooked all the meals. Monsieur Ducharne, a big beefy man, spent the weekdays in Paris working for the sanitation department and came home on weekends. He spent those two days in a snit, because all of Madame’s attention was now given to their four-year-old son—who, in turn, became cranky when forced to share some of that with his father.
Every morning, little Philippe would begin to shriek or moan from his upstairs bedroom while the rest of us were downstairs in the dining room—the only common room in the house—having our breakfast. “MaMAAAN!” he would scream repeatedly and, if it was the weekend, Monsieur would begin mumbling, “Oh la LA la LA” under his breath, steadily growing more incensed until his son was silenced. On weekdays, Monsieur Ducharne’s exasperation was not a factor and Philippe was much louder. His twelve-year-old sister, Gabrielle, was as good-natured and self-contained as he was hysterical.
A devoted businesswoman, Madame Ducharne wouldn’t have understood Take Your Daughter to Work Day. We children were never permitted in the shop, and there was a separate entrance in the back. Even Philippe stayed away from his mother when she was working. His needy antics were only permitted before the salon opened, perhaps during lunch, then at night after closing time: the antisocial contract writ small.
One morning, I came downstairs for breakfast and found Gabrielle sitting at the table next to a wicker baby carriage. When I peeked inside, there were two dolls dressed to the nines, in white bonnets and frilly dresses, looking like candidates for a double-baptism. There was even a toy bottle and a rattle. Gabrielle finished her bowl of hot milk, got up, and wheeled the carriage out of the room with a real sense of purpose.
I was dumbfounded. We both had breasts, of almost the same size, and she was older than me. I had not seen anyone my age playing with dolls for many years. It was a stage of life I had forgotten. While it might be acceptable for a twelve-year-old in Ottawa to collect dolls for display, wheeling them around in a pram was unheard of. I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend six weeks alone with this family, when my only age-appropriate companion was still dressing and feeding her dolls. It’s hopeless when another child is older yet more babyish. At eleven, that’s a profound disappointment.
The night before my mother returned to Ottawa, Madame made Coquilles St. Jacques. She always served an appetizer first, followed by a main course. Very different from my mother’s style, which was to place everything on the table at the same time. During the cheese course, I overheard the two mothers discussing Modern French Life. My own saw no reason not to translate since I was there, after all, to learn about another culture—its language and its ideas.
I still remember Madame explaining to Mother why French families had to be so protective. She would not be sending her own children abroad anytime soon. In Marseilles, she explained, a young girl in a clothing store, trying on a pair of jeans, was likely to be kidnapped by Arabs. Flesh traffickers hid in the dressing rooms. As my mother translated all this for me, I glanced around the table. Gabrielle and Phillipe just kept eating. Conversations between adults did not appear to interest them. Their father was lost in his own world.
Madame Ducharne believed beyond doubt in the perils of white slavery. My mother attributed this quirk to the fact that Madame had “never really traveled.” Before I went to sleep that night, Mother quietly explained that Madame Ducharne had rarely been to Paris, that Rouen was t
he nearest city and Madame hardly ever went there. I was not to condemn or pity her but simply to reflect on my greater fortune, for we were in a different league: world travelers. Mother had a point. Parisians wouldn’t believe fantastic stories about dressing room traffickers, nor would people in Ottawa. And god knows, Ottawans do like to travel.
But now I realize that Madame Ducharne was viscerally aware of something my mother wasn’t willing to entertain. While there probably weren’t any lustful Turks hiding behind false mirrors in the dressing rooms, you might have reason to be grateful if your twelve-year-old daughter still played with dolls. The world was too big. Something—some opportunity or impulse—could steal your daughter away when she outgrew her dolls. And it would feel as if she’d been kidnapped by invisible traffickers. If you let your daughter roam free and try on different things at will—not just clothes, but ideas or friends, the way my parents did—she might not stay virginal. She might become profane. A scenario my granola-minded forward-looking mother never considered. Profanity. Chastity. White slavers! Such quaint ideas.
In her suspicious small-town way, Madame was perversely open-minded. She was able to picture her daughter—under the wrong circumstances—ending up as a prostitute. She was more provincial than my mother yet less naive.
Was she trying to warn her about the problems of having a precocious daughter? Or was she just expressing the everyday concerns of Notre Dame de Bondeville—repeating local gossip?
During my six weeks immersion, I spent more time conversing with Madame Ducharne than with Gabrielle. But every evening, just before dinner, I had a thimbleful of something sharp, reddish brown, and alcoholic. Even Philippe was permitted his halfthimble of the mysterious aperitif. Following that, a glass of red wine mixed with water, to go with our meal. This more than made up for the lack of any viable adolescent culture in the Ducharne household.
Just a few years later, I became the embodiment of Madame Ducharne’s anxieties. I hadn’t been kidnapped but, at fifteen, I was confirming the predictions that plague old-fashioned, carnally obsessed parents. Despite the fact that I ran away from home at fourteen to live with my twenty-something boyfriend, Mother retained her modern innocence. When I wrote and told her I was working as a waitress, she chose to believe me.
Before finding my niche at the Kontinental, a small nightclub just off Oxford Street, my juvenile imagination led me to a Mayfair escort agency. Ultima had a full-page ad in one of the local tourist magazines, which I found encouraging, and their secondfloor office across from the Heywood Hill bookstore did not disappoint. I took a minicab every evening to Curzon Street dressed in whatever I thought was appropriate, and sat in a closed waiting room with eight or nine other girls. Customers would visit the reception area outside where they could flip through a photo album of glamorous head shots.
In those days, the pictures were quite genteel—nobody was posing in her underwear the way girls do today. If a chosen escort was in the waiting room, she left the agency with him. If not, she would get a phone call. Sometimes, all the girls in the waiting room were invited to the reception area, one by one. I was the youngest and rarely got picked on these occasions because I had no idea what I was doing—how to dress, how to relate to a customer. My head shot was enticing but, in person, I was too much of a girl. Others had the ability to be both girl and woman simultaneously, and they were the pros. I could afford to flounder and stay off the street—I was living with Ned, my boyfriend in Highgate who paid the rent and turned a blind eye to my nocturnal habits.
One night, as I left the agency to go home, I noticed a small green car parked across the street. It was after midnight and the street was fairly quiet, but I managed to find a cab. As I got into the cab, the green car began moving. When I looked out the back window, the car was right behind us. We turned left, and I looked again. The car was still there. I didn’t know how to be an escort but I knew how not to get caught. And all the cabbies knew exactly what a girl like me was doing on Curzon Street in the middle of the night.
“I think that car is following us,” I told the driver. He was old enough to be my father. “Can you lose them?”
“Want me to?” he said with great aplomb. “All right. Just wait.” He drove down another street at a normal speed, the car continued to follow. Suddenly, we made a perfect breakneck Uturn and we were speeding around another corner. I looked behind me. “Still there?” he asked.
“Gone,” I said. “Thank you.” When we got to the bottom of Highgate West Hill, I gave him an extra tip.
The next evening, when I showed up at the agency, I was full of my news. Everybody, especially Henry, the owner, laughed at me for thinking I was in a Hollywood movie.
“Lose that car!” Henry kept repeating. “Priceless!”
I insisted that I’d been followed but nobody believed the warning of an awkward wannabe call girl.
Two weeks later, Henry was on the front page of The Sun, described as the owner of Ultima Escorts, “a Curzon Street operation catering to wealthy sheiks and other well-connected men.” Henry was a good-looking guy of thirty-four with a small mustache and dark hair just below his ears. It was a personal snapshot. Who had given it to them? He was up on charges of living off immoral earnings, facing jail time. I felt sorry for him but began to have more confidence in my future. My frightening “Hollywood fantasy” had turned out to be horribly true, so perhaps I should have more faith in my hopes as well as my fears. I decided to try the hostess clubs.
At the Kontinental, I came into my own. The Kontinental was neither a scary clip joint nor a class act, but the atmosphere was cozy. It was safer than picking up men in hotel bars, more lucrative than trying to work as an escort.
The men here were not as sophisticated as the rich playboys, oil sheiks, and jaded travelers who were drawn to Ultima’s Mayfair shtick. These were ordinary English executives who found me both exotic and wholesome. In this slightly seedy downstairs club, I could shine. I now had a customer every night, and all I had to do was show up.
Ultima had been designed for girls who knew how to create atmosphere, size up a punter, set a price. At the Kontinental, those details were taken care of. There was a dress code, so I no longer had to think much about my outfit. Like everybody else, I wore a long dress—sexy on top, demure below the waist—with a pair of heels. I started with one dress, a low-cut wraparound purchased at Top Shop, and bought another—the same dress in a different color—during my second week. I was not the only girl in the club who found that particular Top Shop dress convenient. By the third week, I felt ready for Harrods, where I found something more original. (I still have it, squirreled away at Seventy-ninth Street, in a plastic garment bag!)
The atmosphere was festive but structured. In my flowing polyester, I watched the same floor show six nights a week. There were no grinding lap dancers or flashing pussies. The performers had siliconed breasts—which they displayed at the end of each act—but these were small by today’s standards.
My £40 hostess fee—for sitting at a man’s table—was arranged by the club. If we left together, it was never discussed with the owners but there was a £100 understanding among the girls. At Ultima, where the rates varied wildly, it was every escort for herself.
The manager was nervous about getting busted for procuring. He made all his money off the champagne and never touched our earnings. Still, each hostess had to fill out a Membership Form to protect him from the law. The Kontinental was supposed to be a “private club” and we, the hostesses, were its only members. Of course, it was the police that really protected him from the police, not this legalistic ritual.
For the first few weeks, I had no idea that the performers were lip synching. And I actually drank the champagne. While it was good champagne, this was not a good idea. Each customer had to purchase two bottles to sit with me, and I lost track of how much I imbibed. I eventually learned to pour champagne discreetly onto the floor, into the strategically placed rubber plants, and to be alway
s knocking my glass over. Whenever possible, I would pour from the bottle with a shaky hand. When we left the club, it was our responsibility to make sure each doorman, coatcheck girl, and waitress got tipped. The Kontinental was a cozy personable machine of a clip joint, not one of those vicious enterprises hellbent on scaring the tourists. Our punters were cheerful about paying, not terrified.
I still feel a fondness for that place, whenever I remember the dim pinkish light in that small room, the nightly music that never changed, the layout of the tables. After trying to make it as an escort, after discovering the pitfalls of picking up men in hotel bars and failing to get noticed at the slicker hostess clubs, I at last became a real working girl who had found her calling and her clientele.
15
Harm Reduction
TUESDAY MORNING, 6/12/01
Yesterday afternoon, on the way to Jasmine’s for a quickie, I popped into Seventy-ninth Street. I found Charmaine on the living room floor, sitting next to an open suitcase. Half its contents were on the carpet, the other half tightly folded in her case.
“I always overpack,” she said. “But I hate having to shop in Florida. I’ll need all the downtime and rest I can get. After my procedure.”
“What do you do?” I asked. “After a procedure? Just lie in bed all day popping vitamins?”
“Oh, it depends. This time I’ll stay in my room and catch up on my reading.” I noticed a manual of some kind tucked into her suitcase but couldn’t catch the complete title. Charmaine covered it quickly with a pair of slippers. “Dr. Fielding’s doing an endoscopic brow lift. It’ll reduce the side effects of the Botox,” she said. I tried to detect the side effects without being too obvious. “My forehead’s…can you tell?” She swept her hair back. “It’s a factor for Botox-users. Sometimes, your forehead starts drooping because the muscles aren’t working. I’ll be less dependent on Botox after the brow lift.”
