Callgirl: Confessions of a Double Life Read online

It is gaslights on corners and the quiet swish of traffic sounds coming up from Storrow Drive.

  You walk along those streets and you wonder about who lives behind the mullioned windows, behind the thick velvet draperies.

  You imagine that it must be people of culture, people who discuss Rimbaud and Verlaine – or Hofstadter and Minsky – over snifters of brandy on a winter’s night.

  And, to be honest, I did have some small margin of experience, at least with Beacon Street in the Back Bay. While I was still doing my doctoral coursework I had spent a couple of semesters as a teaching assistant for a professor who lived there, and it was to his apartment that I frequently delivered corrected term papers. The apartment was long and dark, the walls covered with huge dismal oil paintings framed in thick gold gilt frames, each frame nearly touching the next, so that you could barely discern the wallpaper behind them. The rugs were hand-made Orientals, the furniture heavy and mahogany, the books all bound in leather. He gave me tea sometimes, a delicate blend that I couldn’t identify, and that I have never tasted since.

  So when Peach sent me to Beacon Street, I felt nothing but a sense of mild anticipation. The guy wasn’t particularly pleasant on the telephone when I called to set it up, but by then I was amassing my own wisdom about such things. That wisdom said that in general the clients who were the most obnoxious on the telephone were the least so in person, and vice-versa.

  Well, so I was wrong about that, too.

  But I was still operating from that framework when I talked to him, so I was taking the whole conversation with a grain of salt.

  “So, what do you like?”

  In my short time in the business, I had already developed an aversion to that question. The point was never what I liked, but rather what the client liked, and sometimes this opening felt like an exam, a trick question, a way to get me to say something that he could then pick apart. I was starting to understand clients’ minds, you see.

  I cleared my throat. “I like lots of things. I’m sure that I’ll like you. Why don’t I come over, and we’ll see how it feels together?”

  It was a fourth-floor apartment, one of the apartments that directly overlook the Charles River, and as soon as I got there I moved toward the window with an exclamation of delight. Most guys appreciate that, you complimenting their place. And this was truly magnificent.

  All around me, below me, the darkness was punctuated by pinpoints of dazzling brightness, windows spilling out warm yellow light into the night, the flashing red lights on the roofs of the buildings across the river, sparkling unknown reflections in the dark water itself.

  The client – Barry by name – wasn’t paying me to enjoy the view. I know this to be true because he said so, even as he grasped my arm and pulled me away from the window and toward him, a grasp that was to leave clear deep imprints of his fingers on my bruised skin later.

  That first kiss bruised my mouth, too.

  He was pinning me against a brick wall and it was uneven, cutting into my back, and it hurt. And his hands hurt, too, pushing against me, squeezing my breasts – hard, too hard. I gasped and pulled away, as far as I could, told him to stop, and he laughed, he actually laughed. “You don’t tell me to do anything,” he said.

  “You’re just a whore. You hear that? You do what I say.”

  I probably should have left then. I had that option; Peach wouldn’t have been happy about it, although she would have supported me. I was still feeling my way in the profession, still in my heart of hearts wondering if I really could do it. I still had something to prove.

  So I thought, okay, I can handle this. It’s only an hour. I can do this for an hour.

  He pushed me through an arched doorway into an extremely small bedroom, the bed unmade, a slight undefinable unpleasant odor in the air. There was track lighting, all of it pointing to the bed. A class act, all the way.

  He hadn’t taken his hands off me once – squeezing, pinching, mauling. He was taking my clothes off and ripped two of the buttons at the neckline to the dress. When I tried to get a modicum of control back, saying that I’d take off my clothes, he grabbed a handful of my hair and shoved his face to within a half-inch of mine. “Shut up, whore!”

  Oddly enough, he took a moment to spread towels on the bed. With the mess that the room was already in, the gesture seemed a little ominous.

  You probably won’t believe this, but the truth is that I don’t really remember exactly what happened next. Everything happened so fast, everything became such a blur of pain and fear, that I cannot fashion the experience into words, into a coherent narrative.

  Here’s what I remember. I remember being pushed down onto the bed, with him on top of me, pinning my hands up above my head, his weight pushing down on my lungs and making me struggle for breath. I remember his voice, over and over: “You’re just a whore, aren’t you? You’re just a dirty little whore. Say it! Say you’re a whore! Say you love it!”

  I remember being terrified about having no control over what was happening, terrified he wouldn’t use a condom and I wouldn’t be able to stop him. I remember the moment of relief when he put one on and the immediate fear again as he started to tie my wrists together with a pillowcase. I screamed, then. I knew that once I was tied up, there would be no control at all, and I struggled and flailed until he gave up. After that, he was even nastier in what he had to say.

  I remember him fucking me, hard, slamming into me with a force that had more to do with rage than anything else, ramming so hard that I thought I couldn’t take another stroke, the pain was so intense. He was hitting my cervix, he was ramming it so hard that I was convinced he was ripping my flesh, ripping my insides. I remember him pulling back and pushing me onto my stomach, and I remember the horror I felt as I realized that he was trying to push his way into my ass.

  I’m not a prude; far from it. I’ve had anal sex many times and have enjoyed it. I’ve role-played all sorts of things that involved submission and dominance, and, with the requisite safe words in place, felt free to explore all sorts of facets of my sexuality.

  But there was nothing that felt safe or free about this transaction, and I reacted intensely.

  Barry was not pleased. “Hookers take it in the ass,” he snarled.

  “Not this one,” I said.

  Most people would have left it there. Most people, even people with only a modicum of social skills, would have accepted that it wasn’t going to happen and would have moved on as gracefully as possible. Some might even have apologized. Later, I learned that many of Peach’s girls shared my fear of having anal sex with a stranger – and particularly one who has already inflicted pain – so Barry, who had a long history with Peach, might well have known that I would refuse. He might have requested it during our brief telephone conversation. It seemed clear, now, why he hadn’t. If you don’t ask, no one can say no. And he just might be able to trick or force me into doing it… So, as I said, most people would have moved on.

  Barry was not most people.

  If I hadn’t been so irritated, and so frightened, what ensued 39 might have almost been comical. An adult man, hairy and naked, whining as though he were a five-year-old boy being denied an ice cream cone. “Oh, come on, do it, just this once.”

  “No, I don’t want to.” Okay, so I was sounding a little childish myself.

  “Come on.” His voice was wheedling, as though he might be able to wear me down through insistence alone. “Just for a minute. I promise when you say stop I’ll stop. You’ll like it, you’ll see how much you’ll like it. I’ll listen to you. Whatever you want.”

  Yeah, I thought, like you’ve done so far. “No. Why don’t we…”

  “I don’t want to do anything else!” He was explosive now, and really scaring me. “You bitch, this is what you’re here for, and this is what you’re gonna do!”

  I struggled away from him and crouched, naked, next to the headboard. I think that I was shaking, and it was partly out of fear and partly out of anger. �
��Barry, I’ve said no. You should have told Peach that was what you wanted. I don’t do it and I won’t do it.” And especially not with you.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, considering his options. Apparently he decided to turn to Plan B, because he reached out and gently stroked my shoulder. “Okay, okay. It’s okay. Come on over here. I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to.”

  Thinking that the hour had to be close to being up, please God, I crawled tentatively toward him. This sudden switch from aggression and insults to gentleness and sympathy was disconcerting. So what’s the story here? I’m supposed to get in an affectionate mood now? And the other voice in my head answered, Yes, you are, it’s what you’re being paid to do.

  In any event, I didn’t need to. As soon as I was within comfortable reach, Barry grabbed me and threw me down on the bed again and got on top of me. My face was pressed down into the pillow and for a few terrifying seconds I thought that I was going to suffocate. To die. My world had disappeared. There was nothing but red, pulsing blood-red, beating rhythmically against my eyelids, and I struggled upward, backward – anything to be able to breathe again. That was all I wanted. Just to breathe again.

  He wasn’t concerned with my head; he was still trying to force his cock into my ass. And coming close to succeeding, despite the resistance that I was putting up. I gasped for air, my face up against his headboard, and I could hear him at it again. “You fucking whore, you fucking bitch, take it, fucking take it…”

  No amount of money was worth this. I took another deep breath and screamed. And did it again.

  Barry was suddenly struggling with me, trying to get me to stop. When he put his hand over my mouth, I bit it, hard, and he swore and pulled it away. I took advantage of his distraction to scramble out from under him, to get off the bed and stand in the beautiful arched doorway, my arms ineffectually covering my breasts. As though it were a moment for modesty. I guess that my mother taught me well, after all.

  He was furious, that was clear. He was shaking, and there was a tiny globule of spit at the edge of his mouth. “You fucking cunt!” he yelled. “No whore does that to me!”

  I didn’t dare take my eyes off him. “If you hurt me, Peach will never send anyone to you again,” I said, not knowing if it was true or not. I was thinking that I was really glad that I had gotten the money up front, because I was going to be doing well to get out of here with my clothes. Maybe the fact that Peach had said to collect the money right away should have told me something; with regulars, we usually got paid when the hour was over. “I’m leaving.”

  The threat, idle or not, worked. Later on, I learned how whipped Peach kept her regular clients, little boys who tried to push their luck with the callgirls, but who whimpered and apologized when confronted by Mummy on their bad behavior. Barry sat down on the bed, the fury draining from him, and said, merely, “Shit.”

  It seemed an apt commentary. I reached down to the floor and picked up my clothes, pulling the dress hurriedly over my head, not bothering to look for the missing buttons, stuffing underwear into my purse, not wanting to stay in that place a millisecond longer than I had to.

  He walked past me as I was slipping into my shoes and stalked over to the bathroom. “Don’t slam the door on your way out,” he said, coldly. “I’m taking a shower. You made me feel dirty, you lousy motherfucker cunt.”

  I had made him feel dirty.

  I called Peach immediately as soon as I hit the street. I had just bought a cell phone, and was grateful for the anonymity it provided as I unlocked my car and slipped inside. “It was pretty awful,” I told her, a little angry, a little tearful.

  “I know, honey,” Peach said, and in her voice I heard such a depth of understanding and compassion and caring that it suddenly didn’t matter anymore. “You don’t ever have to see him again if you don’t want to.” And I felt a rush of gratitude toward her that was as deep as the ocean.

  It wasn’t until months later that I remembered that conversation, and realized that she had known exactly what she was sending me into, and she hadn’t warned me. True, I probably wouldn’t have gone. And the bottom line was to make the money. But, still… she should have told me. And all the compassion and understanding and kindness that followed was calculated, too. But by then I knew all that.

  Later that year, I met a woman named Margot who also worked for the agency. We did a double together, then over drinks at Jillian’s we began sharing client experiences. Barry, it transpired, was one of Margot’s regulars. I stared at her, transfixed and a little shocked.

  “How can you stand him?” I wanted to know.

  “Well, see, I have this theory.” Margot took a liberal swallow of her Manhattan. I always thought I should be more creative in my choice of cocktails; she was inspiring me. Her breath was sweet, smelling of warm vermouth. “Guys like Barry, they have so much rage against women, you know?”

  “No shit,” I muttered. “So do about eighty percent of men.” I was remembering my class on insanity, and the fears that made men lock women away for life.

  “Granted. But with Barry, it’s a lot closer to the surface.”

  “Granted, “ I echoed, fascinated at where this might be going.

  “Okay. So he keeps pacing around that little apartment of his and muttering about women being whores. Maybe he watches them through his windows, pretty women down on the Esplanade or Memorial Drive, sunning themselves or doing inline skating or something, and all the while it’s stoking up his feelings of insecurity and inadequacy – well, eventually there will be too much pressure, and it’ll blow.” She sipped her drink, demurely, before delivering the punch line. “And you probably know that I’ve just described a textbook rapist, by the way.”

  It had felt like rape, what had happened that night. I shivered at the flash of memory, my face in his pillow, suffocating, his weight on my spine, pushing my buttocks apart… Margot didn’t notice. “So if the pressure gets eased, sometimes, then maybe he won’t blow. Maybe if he can play out his sick little fantasy with one of us from time to time, with someone who can handle it, you know, then he won’t walk down Beacon Street one night and follow some innocent woman home. Maybe he won’t hurt her.” She looked around her at the flashing lights, marshalling her thoughts, and then turned back to me. “You see, Jen, I’m in control, even if he doesn’t think I am. I have power over him. I can always call Peach. She’s the only service he uses, I don’t know why, but if she cuts him off he’s got nothing, and he knows it. And I think that in his heart of hearts he knows how much he needs it.”

  “So by playing into his shit you’re keeping women from being molested?” I was still working that one out.

  “Sure, why not?” Margot shrugged. “Besides, Jen, look at it this way. I don’t have a lot of competition for him as a client. So you can either call it altruism or you can call it enlightened self-interest. Either way works.”

  But I liked Margot’s theory. I thought about it a lot. Everything that I’d been reading about prostitution and the sex trade was talking about how it contributed to the oppression of women, how it perpetuated men’s fantasies of control and power. And here was this woman, gorgeous, smart, calmly sipping her Manhattan and telling me that in the midst of this profession she was considering the needs of other women.

  I liked the thought. I liked the thought of that anonymous woman walking down Beacon Street at night, the streetlamps misting and her footsteps echoing on the pavement. I liked thinking that she was safe because, somewhere four stories up, Margot was there, sleeping with the enemy.

  Chapter Four

  After the Back Bay call, I definitely needed my fitness club. I went and worked out, sweating and pushing myself past my usual limit, then stood under the shower and scrubbed my body nearly raw. And then I sat for nearly an hour in the whirlpool, getting up every ten minutes to reset the timer. If they hadn’t had a closing time, I would have stayed in there all night.

  The fact that this was what I ha
d anticipated before I started working, that I had actually imagined feeling soiled and used and unclean, didn’t help much. The fact was that I had gotten spoiled.

  “It’s a crap shoot,” Peach once said.

  Yeah. And sometimes, it seemed, you didn’t exactly roll a winner.

  But the feeling passed. There were enough neutral or good experiences to balance out my time with Barry; there was no obligation for me to ever see him again. And eventually, as one does, I pushed him into the back recesses of my consciousness and concentrated on what was essential. The money.

  The money was essential because by that time – by the time I’d been working for Peach for merely a few weeks – I was beginning to see my way out of my financial problems. Oh, I wasn’t there, not yet, not by a long shot; but I could see that it was going to happen.

  I was able to pay my rent on time, for one thing. No small accomplishment. I almost wanted to e-mail the rat bastard in California to tell him how well I was surviving.

  Well, on second thought, perhaps not.

  On the Sunday night after my first week of working for Peach, I sat in my apartment with Scuzzy contentedly purring nearby, and I wrote checks to help pay off debts that had been hanging over my head seemingly forever. I’d already spent some of my money on what I was already thinking of as professional expenses, smart little suits at Next and the Express, lingerie from Cacique. Even with those extravagances, I made bill payments. I was going to be able to start answering the telephone again, instead of ignoring it so I could avoid potential creditors. I was going to stop feeling that tight fist of panic in my stomach when I opened my mailbox, wondering who was threatening to shut me off today.

  To say that I was feeling good would have been the understatement of the century.

  It showed, too. There was a new confidence about me. It may have been due to my new employment; or it may have just been the fact that I finally wasn’t slinking around avoiding bill collectors anymore. Whatever was happening, people were noticing.