Kindle Notes & Highlights
Roxana tried to befriend me by ordering twenty different kinds of wheat gluten followed by tofu for dessert. She was under the mistaken impression that because I look Chinese, I must be a vegan Buddhist. I haven’t had the heart to tell her that, where I come from, Chinese people are Catholic or Anglican—and carnivorous.)
“This is a sugar-free dwelling, Gretchen.”
“Well, we’re going to discuss inclusiveness,” the girl replied. “If we want to do outreach to the entire sex industry, we have to acknowledge different kinds of cultural norms.”
“I think we should limit ourselves to ourselves,” Roxana interrupted again. “Wait until Nancy has spoken.” Her gentle New Age manners were beginning to wear off.
So much for limiting our introductions to ourselves! Do I detect a double standard?
Roxana and Belinda seemed to enjoy Gretchen’s tongue-lashing. “I want you to know that I feel privileged to be having this dialogue with you,”
long. “You should reach out to her,” she said firmly. “I
“NYCOT is committed to healing the divisions between sex workers. We Are All Bad Girls,” Allie intoned. “Roxana says we have to expect—embrace—our growing pains. . . . The process of empowerment involves change, and change involves—” A vacant cab interrupted Allie’s train of thought, and we got in.
Did I tell you? The producer called today. Roxana has to go out of town that night, and she says I’m ready to represent NYCOT publicly—”
“Noooo, silly, I’m going to be on the radio—it’s a call-in show!” Allison reassured me. “Besides, Roxana takes all the TV calls. She says I’m not ready for TV.”
“Let’s see: You’ve got a dominatrix who’s a partisan Democrat. A heroin-addicted streetwalker with an attitude. And a blonde who’s always late with the rent,” I said. “If that isn’t a committee that looks like New York, I don’t know what is.”
“Great. Jack’s making a spectacle of himself in front of your doorman. And screwing up your existing business! You’re going to be sorry you took that money.”
Being a former cheerleader won’t help her—or might even hurt her chances—in a popularity contest
that puts so much store in a girl’s street cred.
Allie hopes I’ll reveal my history to Gretchen because it will make her look better for having brought me to the meeting. Trying to use me to increase her own credibility as a hooker!
What is the etiquette when a working girl becomes engaged?
But you hardly ever see good seamless Swiss panties on sale. Good-girl undies, like the girls they were designed for, get harder to find every day.
I arrived at my boyfriend’s bachelor pad wearing my pristine waist-high armor. You know how they always say “Wear something risqué under your business suit—even if you are the only one who knows about it, you will feel like a sex kitten.” Well, same thing here.
How could I begin to explain my night? Roxana’s incensefilled den of activism, a bitchy encounter with a former street kid, that aging dominatrix with her ad in Screw, and his girlfriend being asked to join the Council of Trollops steering committee because she’s . . . a Call Girl of Color?
Could I have OD’d on melatonin?
A night of drumming up new business would have put me in the mood for Matt, I suddenly realized.
(Jasmine’s one of those stalwart pros who never comes when she’s working—“That’s the customer’s job!”—and gets irate if she suspects that a co-hooker is really getting into her.)
I smiled the satisfied smile of a girl who has made $400 before noon without even showing her pussy.
“Of course you can’t change your number. Nobody can—you’d lose half your guys. Don’t do anything impulsive,” I told her.
Caller ID is lethal. It leaves a numeric trail for boyfriends and other visitors to decipher. Private clients dislike it. Caller ID is for girls who advertise, for people who consort with
the public.
“I have a regular at three o’clock and a bikini wax at noon. Some of us have business to conduct.” In other words, Fuck you—but I’m too ladylike to put it that way.
Aside from that coke addict with the gun, there were a few others. And all they did was scare me. But that was enough for me.
After he came, he apologized for scaring me—and untied me right away. His apology spooks me to this day.
was lucky he didn’t do any of the things he talked about doing while I was lying there, immobile and frozen with fear.
Customers are not supposed to plan “surprises.”
But a customer who disrespects the whole concept of calling first—that guy is already flirting with the dark side of being a john.
It’s too easy for customers to get away with mistreating hookers; you can’t afford to have guys around who are just barely acceptable.
She walked right into being a private call girl, that’s how. Without ever working for an escort agency. Without paying her dues.
I tried to distract him by pretending to be impressed with his Central Park view. It worked for about a minute.
Though she made me feel like some sort of Jurassic tart—I was a veteran by then—I recognized a kindred spirit. Or thought I did.
And I knew they’d be horrified if they found out what he had done with me.
I wasn’t a virgin, but I was ridiculously innocent. I
So when I looked at his cock, I must have appeared more curious than appreciative.
I understand that summer has changed, that thirteen-year-olds now spend those months imprisoned in summer school and self-improvement day camps. Not then! I had lots of time on my hands.
But later, money became a necessity: it was food, freedom, the ability to control my life, to stay afloat and hold my head up without admitting defeat to my parents.
Had they known that this person who roasted the occasional chicken, watered the hedges, cashed checks for their son, picked up his antidepressants, and ordered supplies from the milkman— and had time to explore the hotel bars at night—was actually fourteen, perhaps they wouldn’t have been so quick to label his girlfriend “understandably immature.” In other words, he couldn’t expect to attract a mature nineteen-year-old.
I accepted the slight as a compliment to my camouflage.
now that I had no curfew. So he became the first lover I really needed to fuck.
In his own way, he took care of me.
The first time Ned locked himself in the bedroom, he locked me in there with him, too. When he refused to let me out, I became completely hysterical.
Some part of me thought this was romantic.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, sulking. “I’ll never do it again.” “But—but—you have to talk about it!”
Only a runaway would tolerate such a housemate, let alone boyfriend. Only a boyfriend on a steady diet of MAO inhibitors would be so easy to snow.
And since he was sleeping off a headachy fit half the time, it was easy to sneak in and out of the flat.
