I never actually thought of myself as a prostitute. I knew girls who were, lots of them. They had sex in exchange for a prearranged mutually agreed upon amount of money.
the pickpocket ©2001 courtesy schmitt-hall studios
I, on the other hand, at various times took spontaneously offered cab fare from men I was having sex with. Granted, the cab fare in question was usually in the neighborhood of $300 to get from 47th Street to 7th Street, but still, we called it cab fare. The money came from the men of power and influence who made the rules in my little world: wise guys, bar owners, drug dealers. Ironically, while I wouldn’t have fucked any of them for fun, I would’ve fucked them all for free.
But I didn’t.
I fucked them each for somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred 1980 dollars, which is around a thousand of today’s dollars. Not a bad neighborhood no matter what I called myself.
I thought about making the official leap of faith and applied to a few outcall whore houses. If you’ve never done it, you can’t appreciate the irony involved in being interviewed for the job of “whore”. Each time, it started with call to an escort service listed in the back of the Village Voice. Followed by instructions to call again, this time from a particular pay phone within eyeball range of that particular House of the Rising Sun. From the pay phone, after passing the eyeball from the window test, I’d be given a specific address.
One shop liked me, but I didn’t like them. The “house” was depressing. A rundown apartment, stuffed with worn out furniture & threadbare girls sitting around waiting for a phone to ring. Not exactly what I had pictured after reading the Happy Hooker. But then, I wasn’t exactly Xaviera Hollander…
That point was driven home at Cachet, the creme de la creme, when Sidney Biddle Barrows declared me an exotic. I’m sure she meant to say ethnic, as in “Dear, you’ve got Jew-girl written all over that punim and we don’t like your kind around here”. She just had too much crust on her upper to actually say something like that out loud.
I did go on dates with strangers in exchange for prearranged mutually agreed upon amounts of money. I wouldn’t've had so much as a cup of coffee with a single one of them if they weren’t paying for my time. But while there was the implication of sex, the expectation of sex, sometimes even the anticipation and aroma of sex, there wasn’t ever any actual sex.
They always had a good time.
Even when I would rob them.
Most of the time they wouldn’t know they’d been robbed until later.
If I’d thought about it at the time, I’d have considered myself a thief
rather than a whore.
But,
I never thought about it
at all.
Not even
once.
| << michael | memories >> |
Posted October 26, 2009 at 9:20 am, filed under the diary and tagged johns, whores. Bookmark this post. Follow any comments @ RSS feed for this post.
get out of my head right now.
what a great post.
i felt, felt, felt each line, each sentiment.
especially:
But,
I never thought about it
at all.
Not even
once
Ahem. I often refer to ‘opportunistic’ sex work. Not professional, not well managed, conscious but not looking, just waiting for the appropriate situations to present themselves.
@Laura Agustín, Oh, not for one second was I saying I wasn’t working, don’t misunderstand. I simply had a way of rationalizing it. In retrospect, it’s odd I even felt the need to. I had been so intent on working for the pimp JJ that I took my name from that it strikes even me odd that called it something other than what it was.
I remember wanting to go “straight” at one point and buying all these conservative clothes. Standing looking at myself in the mirror at work one day, my best friend looked at me, laughed and said “You still look like a whore, ya know. You just look like a whore in someone else’s clothes.” Last time I wore that outfit.
@crystal, It’s amazing how we can manage not to think about the things we do. Sometimes I find, I had to give myself some distance before I could think about my own life.