Saturday, May 17, 2008
Three of my regulars from Jeannie's Dream Dates had given me their cards. I decided to call them. Last in a series.
Aug 2, 2001 | Wayne lived in Michigan and offered to fly me out to the suburbs of Detroit to spend the night with him at an airport hotel. I hedged. The idea of flying to Detroit was daunting. And I wasn't sure about this overnight thing! Would he try to have sex all night? In New York, I could get up and take a cab home if he became too demanding. In Detroit ... well, god only knows. I made an excuse and he promised -- in a rejected-guy voice -- to call on his next trip to the city. And never did.
Jeff was a mild-mannered middle manager at Citibank, wore bangs and a beige suit, always smoked a joint beforehand, and liked to go twice. He wasn't a big spender, but he was reliable.
Marvin, in his 60s, lived alone in a high-rise on Whitestone Boulevard and paid extra for the cab. He also gave me a nominal "tip" for letting him take close-up Polaroids of my pussy. I wasn't ashamed of my profession by any means, but when people say that "every woman has fantasized about being a hooker" -- well, I knew this wasn't what they meant. A middle manager who goes twice and a retired bachelor in Queens who collects homemade beaver shots.
Desperate to find a reliable escort service, I began combing the ads and discovered that the other agencies were even tackier than Jeannie's.
At one agency, I went on a call with two escorts who invited me to live with them. They both shared a large apartment with someone whom they described as their "old man." They had two Siamese kittens, a weekend place in the Hamptons, and dressed like fashion-conscious secretaries. Pretty but not hyperchic.
"Thanks," I said, "but I don't think I could live with cats."
Back at the agency, the owner -- marveling at my naiveté -- spelled out the scenario when I told her about their generosity.
"He's their pimp, Nancy! Get it?"
"Really? I thought ... I thought that sort of thing only happened in the movies."
The owner was a tired-looking, gray-haired woman in her 50s who did not suffer the naive gladly. "If that's what you girls are looking for in life, be my guest, but don't come crying to me when you want to get out! If you can't stand on your own two feet, you have no business working. Where did you say you were from?"
And from that moment on, she seemed to dislike me. In fact, she stopped giving me calls. In her mind, a working girl either lived with a pimp or despised anyone connected to the pimp scene. My neutral puzzlement struck her as snooty, and she didn't like snooty hookers.
I couldn't understand why the two girls who had tried to recruit me seemed so content and normal. It was obvious that they were free to come and go -- for good, if they wished. I was intrigued by their general aura of stability, though I couldn't imagine living with them. The owner was one of those people who hates anyone she can't understand. She understood pimps. She understood those two girls. But she didn't understand my curiosity, and this made her hate me. My two-week stint with that agency had yielded very little, and the two girls who'd tried to recruit me -- well, I wasn't about to ask them for business now that I knew the score.
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