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Nancy’s the name I now use when I want to be taken for a New Girl. I’ve used lots of names on the job, but never my own. In this case, Nancy’s a newbie who prefers girls to men—or so I was told, last night. I unhooked my bra and began stroking Allie’s clitoris with my nipple while she made all the right sounds and movements. My panties were staying put, to discourage any masculine exploration of the contents. Something a girl-who’s-only-into-girls would surely insist upon, even if she’s getting paid.
But Allie’s customer was excited about getting those panties off. If a guy thinks he’s having sex with someone who’s not into men, I suppose there are two ways to play it. Grit your teeth like you hate every second of it (that’s awfully dark and edgy but there’s probably a market). Or act like you’re in the throes of being converted to cock. I chose the latter. A sensible move. Allie’s client was trying not to come too fast—but the whole idea of Nancy, enthusiastic lesbian about town, losing her cool while getting fucked on her hands and knees, was too much for him.
He departed in a good mood, never hinting that he recognized me as Suzy.
While I stood in Allison’s bathtub, rinsing Astroglide from my inner thighs, she wandered in, to give me a boyfriend bulletin.
“I just got a text from Lucho!” she announced. “I’ve been accepted by the Colloquium Committee. He nominated me last week because one of the members had to resign. They all voted for me because I’m a sex worker. And a member of NYCOT.”
“That’s nice,” I said, but my mind was really on other things.
Like checking to see if the lube was really gone from my inner lips. If you don’t remove it all, it’s a magnet for germs and you can get a UTI. At the same time, I was trying not to rinse all the moisturizer off my legs! A tricky balancing act: avoiding cystitis and maintaining silky skin are both crucial to a call girl’s survival.
“So! I’m helping to plan the Colloquium on Informal Economies and Human Rights! It’s going to be at Cornell,” Allie was saying. “And my job is to represent NYCOT on the Colloquium Committee. I spoke to Roxana about it. We’re going to need your help.”
I turned off the water.
“My help? Roxana knows I don’t want to be involved with NYCOT,” I told Allie. “Much less this new committee you’re joining.”
Roxana Blair is the founder of the New York Council of Trollops which is—in theory—leaderless. But she’s also chief spokeswoman, keeper of the e-mail list, and, for almost ten years, the engine that runs NYCOT. All their meetings are held at her apartment in the East Village. I wish Roxana weren’t so keen on grooming my best friend for a leadership role but there’s nothing I can do to stop her. Why, oh why, doesn’t she want to sit on that Colloquium Committee? Roxana must be getting burned out.
“I understand that you do worthwhile things,” I said, “but this—all this activism isn’t for me. This is a job, not a cause.”
“It’s a job and a cause. We have to get people to recognize it as a job. That’s a cause.”
“Each to her own,” I said as Allie handed me a towel. “As long as I know it’s a job, I don’t care what people think.”
And the less people are thinking about my job, the better!
“Tell Roxana to forget she ever met me and to stop talking about me. Did she bring this up at one of your meetings? I don’t want all those NYCOT members to have me on their radar,” I added.
“Don’t worry!” Allie said in a tense voice. “Roxana doesn’t have your number. Or your e-mail.”
“She’d better not.”
In the living room, a pot of ginger tea was brewing and Allison had organized a plate of odd-looking munchies.
“No cookies,” I insisted. “I’m trying to lose six pounds.”
Allison was wearing just her camisole and panties again—with a pair of huge white terry cloth slippers that no client has ever seen.
“Try these! They’re made with soya protein and sugar alcohols. I made them myself! From a recipe on the low-carb vegan site.”
They were like dried sweetened glue.
“Very nice,” I said, midnibble. I washed the cookie down with some ginger tea. “And they’re so filling,” I said strategically.
“Now,” she said, counting our money out. “I have to explain. We aren’t asking you to come to any NYCOT meetings. Roxana knows you can’t come to meetings.”
“Good. But I don’t want her to know why. I want you to promise you won’t discuss my marriage with her.”
Allie looked hurt. “I already promised. Why don’t you trust me?”
“Of course I trust you!” I lied. “I’m just reminding you.”
Bits of soya cookie were lodged in my molars. It was maddening.
“We want you to help us find a lawyer,” she told me. “Roxana—”
“After all these years of running a hookers’ union, Roxana doesn’t have her own lawyer?”
“Her contacts are with Legal Aid. And there’s Reverend Moody at Judson Church—he knows a few people at the Urban Justice Center. But this is different. And it might cost money.”
“I can donate. Anonymously.”
“That’s not it. I have to find a lawyer who can help me get a visa.”
Uh-oh. What is Allie getting into now? She was standing near the window, bent over the computer station. Her camisole slid north and a patch of smooth, fat-free midriff peeked out above her panties.
“Noi is going to be the keynote speaker at the Colloquium on Informal Economies. She’s the Bangkok coordinator of Bad Girls Without Borders.” Allie fiddled with her trackball on a mouse pad that proclaimed safe sex slut in white block letters. “We need a visa so she can attend the conference and we need to find a place for her to stay. If she really has to, she can stay here. But she needs a lawyer. The Legal Aid people can’t help because she’s in Bangkok. They don’t do visas…and this is the BGWB website!”
Against a pistachio-colored background, a series of magenta greetings—Hola…Bonjour…$awadee Kha—wiggled slowly across the screen. When Allie clicked on the dollar sign, hot pink condoms tumbled forth, followed by a montage of dancing girls with long black hair and light brown skin in bikinis and heels. In another picture, a banner was held high on a crowded street: entertainment workers sans frontieres. I could see two slim black-haired girls in sunglasses, T-shirts, and jeans carrying the banner.
“That’s Noi at the International Women’s Day march. And her friend Ying. The bar girls had their own banner!” she explained. “They have a branch in Phuket. And a sister group in Cambodia. But anyway, Noi lives in Bangkok. And I need to find a lawyer who can help her apply for a visa.”
“Can’t Lucho help?”
Allie blushed.
“I can’t ask Lucho.”
“But he must know somebody. These exotic college professors deal with visas and forms all the time.”
“Maybe, but”—Allie’s voice was getting a little squeaky, she looked away from me—“he nominated me for the Colloquium Committee because he thinks I can locate a lawyer. He thinks NYCOT has more resources than we really do and he…he sort of thinks I’ve done this before. When the girls from Ecuador came to that conference in Berkeley.”
“You lied to him? About your activist credentials?”
“No.” Allie looked down at her Safe Sex mouse pad. She tugged nervously on a strand of her long blond hair. “I just—when I realized what he was thinking, I didn’t, you know, say anything different.”
“Allie, it’s good to let a guy think what he needs to think but you’re taking it to extremes. Why don’t you let him help you? Instead of acting so accomplished, let him be the rescuer! Guys love that!”
“It’s too late! And if I did that, I wouldn’t be on all these committees and panels! I’d just be—I want to be on the Colloquium Committee. I don’t want him to save me or have to do things for me. Or feel sorry for me! I’m an activist now and I think Lucho and I could be a power couple. But I have to get more, you know, successful at my activism.”
“A power couple?”
“I told him I would raise the money for Noi’s legal fees and he thinks I’m already interviewing lawyers.”
“How much do you need? I can afford—”
“I want you to help me find a lawyer. What about Jason? Your brother-in-law? He’s a lawyer.”
Allison’s passive-aggressive idealism tries my patience. Is she out of her mind?
“We cannot go there,” I said. “And you know it.”
As I glared at her, she bit her lip, averting her eyes.
“You could say you have a friend from Thailand who—”
“There’s no way! I don’t want my in-laws to start wondering how I know someone who’s in this business.”
“But this isn’t business. It’s about social justice. And it’s my chance to make a difference. For a Bangkok bar girl to be a keynote speaker at an Ivy League school? Do you realize how huge this is?”
Allie was staring at a close-up of Noi. Then she clicked on something and brought up a street scene: working girls in long colorful saris, carrying yellow placards. Three dark brown girls in their twenties appeared to be dancing in the street, in front of a purple banner. The letters, in gold, were in a language I don’t recognize.
“These are the girls in Bangladesh. Last year, a judge ruled they couldn’t be evicted from the red-light district and they had a huge celebration.”
Allie looked radiant. As if she herself had been threatened with eviction. From a red-light district in South Asia rather than a doorman building on the Upper East Side.
She moved on to a chubby pink-skinned redhead in a leopardprint bustier holding up a sign: u.s. out of our underwear…free the nevada three! A group of protestors in leopard T-shirts, nighties, shorts, and much less were gathered around the redhead.
“This is Leopard-Look Solidarity in Vegas! When the Nevada Three got arrested they were at a bachelor party wearing leopardprint thongs.…Everyone went to the courthouse to protest the sentencing. In leopard print. To show solidarity. Oops. Except for David—he’s wearing a zebra hat. He might be coming to the Cornell colloquium.”
So these are Allie’s new friends! A global in-crowd of signwaving, sari-clad, zebra-hatted card-carrying “sex workers.”
“Well, I don’t think Jason can help you with this. And I certainly can’t ask him,” I said.
As she clicked and surfed, Allie didn’t seem to be listening. She returned to some snapshots of Noi. Lithe and gutsy, in a pair of capri-style jeans, platforms, and a tank top, holding a bullhorn on a busy street corner. “From Soi Cowboy with love and condoms, Noi.” Standing at a podium in front of yet another banner in yet another language. I noticed a poster decorating the podium: a sewing machine in a big red circle with a diagonal line crossing out the machine.
Allie turned to face me. In a quiet voice, she asked, “Are you absolutely sure?”
Something had changed. The expression on her face—I’d never seen it before—made me realize, If I ignore this, it’s not going away.
But what does a girl like Allie know about visas? Her determination and ignorance could get a lot of people in trouble. Including me, perhaps. The safest course is to placate her for now. Even if I have no intention of asking Jason for anything.
“I have to think about it,” I said carefully. “He’s not the only lawyer in this town…maybe I can ask him for a referral. But you need to give me a few days. It’s a bad time to ask Jason for a favor. And I have to figure out how—without, you know, saying what it’s for.”
Indeed, I’m not quite sure what it is for. To help a righteous bar girl? Or to save Allie from looking like a silly East Side princess in the eyes of her West Side intellectual boyfriend? Maybe Jasmine’s right, and never the twain should date. But now it’s too late.
5 Fluff and Aft (#ulink_45b199f5-6e3a-5e63-9b8c-8b2a118725c3)
WEDNESDAY, 3/28/01
Today, while picking up the rent, I got my first glimpse of Char
maine post-Florida.
“It’s…rather natural,” I said. “Like you went to a spa.”
“You see?” Looking pleased with herself, she tilted her face slightly. “More fluff and loft. Dr. Fielding is the best. Actually I did go to a spa. Just—a really good spa.”
There’s something different about her cheeks. And what about her mouth? Is it the shape of her lips? Or the color?
“I did some A.F.T. And I’m all recovered from the liposuction.”
“A.F.T.?”
“Autologous Fat Transplantation. I’m not waiting for God to give me cheekbones.”
With a pang of guilt, I suddenly realized that I’ve always taken my cheekbones for granted. But Charmaine’s already used to the way she looks now, even if I’m not, and what she really wanted to show off was our new thigh-high state-of-the-art…shredder.
“You’re gonna thank me for this!” she enthused. “I had it delivered this morning.”
A sleek gray object with a black switch and a small green light stood in the corner of the living room.
“It matches the carpet,” I said. “But why do we need such a powerful shredder? It’s not like we generate a lot of paperwork!”
“That’s what you think.”
Charmaine disappeared into the bedroom and returned with a small stack of cardboard. She’s been hoarding the condom boxes, storing them flat, and waiting for a chance to get rid of them. We both want to make sure the landlord doesn’t find anything incriminating in our trash.
“How many of these things have you got?” I asked.
“No idea. Better safe than sorry.” She held the stack of red, white, and black boxes. “The problem is…”
Our eyes met.
“I know. The different sizes. It’s a total tip-off,” I agreed.
“Totally.”
It’s not safe to take them outside to the corner where a neighbor might see you. Charmaine flipped a switch and started feeding condom boxes into the shredder.
“It’s built for volume. Turns everything into confetti. Even a Trojan Magnum box.”
She tipped open the receiving bin and showed me a small pile of black confetti. The answer to our nightmares.
“Oh—and if we really need to,” she added, “you can destroy the video boxes. But some guys like to look at those. What do you think?”
“The Bells of Saint Clemens” started chiming madly in my handbag, and I scrambled to answer.
“What a happy occasion,” said the voice of Barry Horowitz. “I tried to call you back twice, but I didn’t leave a message.”
“I think we should talk in person,” I told him. “Do you remember my friend Allison?”
“How could I forget?”
Barry’s the kind of lawyer who takes a perverse delight in solving the personal problems of hookers.
