The madam, however, stood out against the backdrop of her beige-carpeted, brown-laminated living room.
“You’re chicken pussy,” she said, “am I right?”
“Excuse me, I’m what?”
“You know, fresh. Take off your clothes. I want to be sure, have to check you for needle marks, sores, that stuff. My clients don’t want junkies, and they don’t get junkies. Capiche?”
Evelyn had a nose and a chin that looked like they were going to get closer as the years went by, but those eyes were like shots from the soul, and her body was out of this world, slim and curvy like something out of a jerk-off magazine. She was wearing a tiny, fringed vest that just covered her breasts and silk hip huggers. Her straight brown hair hung down below her shoulders suspiciously like a hippie’s, I thought.
As I stripped before the madam, who scrutinized the inside of my arms and the cheeks of my behind, I continued to look around. Finally, I couldn’t hold back anymore.
“But I don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“I don’t know. I expected somehow something more, you know, sexy. This is strictly dentist-office decor.”
“Rented. Everything in the joint. Rented. By the month,” Evelyn said.
“Well, how’s a guy even supposed to get it up in an atmosphere like this?”
“Put your clothes back on and sit down. We’ve got a client coming any minute,” she said.
I did as I was told. “Sorry, it’s none of my business.”
“No, no. I’m not offended. OK, let’s put it this way. Janet—that is your name, right?”
“Yes, Janet.”
“OK,” she said, sitting down next to me and poking her face into mine. “OK, Janet. Here’s the point: you got a lot to learn about men, girl, a lot. That’s obvious.” She leaned back, crossed her legs and stretched both arms out along the back of the rough brown plaid sofa.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because,” she said, pulling her arms down and putting her hands on her knees after uncrossing her legs until they hung wide open, “a stiff prick don’t need atmosphere. That’s the last thing a hard-on wants is atmosphere.”
After she spoke, Evelyn paused for what seemed like a long time and trained her eyes on me as if she were looking for signs of life on the moon.
“This is a whorehouse, honey. A whorehouse is no different than a men’s room, and we whores are the toilets. Capiche?”
“I see. Toilets. Uh-huh.”
“OK, I’m crude. But you might as well know what it is you’re getting into. Illusions don’t make life any easier. We’re douche bags, baby, that’s all. Still, it’s a quick buck, can’t take that away.”
“I guess I never thought of it quite like that,” I said.
“Nah, not too many girls in the Life do. The truth is tough to take.” She patted my knee, stood up, and stretched. “Ten to one you didn’t get into this on account of your high self-esteem.”
“The hell with self-esteem. OK, maybe I don’t have any, but I don’t want any either. I don’t estimate myself at all. Maybe I’m great; maybe I’m shit. What measure would I use? It always comes down to what other people think, other people’s opinions. I’m not interested,” I said, glad to vent one of my pet theories.
“Good, that’s a good trait for a ho to have,” Evelyn said, glancing at the electric clock on the wall. “OK, sixty-forty split. Blow job is fifty, straight is seventy-five, half ‘n’ half, a hundred. Up front. That covers it. Nothing fancy—my clients don’t go in for it. They’re meat ‘n’ potatoes, salt-of-the-earth, happily married, two kids, two cars, Long Island, New Jersey kind of guys. You’ll sail through this week. All my girls love it here.”
Evelyn’s little no-frills whorehouse was an ideal introduction to the Life. If I’d had to compete with other comely young things, as I later would, or if I’d been expected to cater to those kinky, hard-to-please types (those idle, jaded whoremongers, usually remission men, who haunt the fancier cathouses around town where they spend hours sizing you up before they finally pounce on you), then I’m sure I would have bolted. But as it was, I could ease into it. In fact, hooking at Evelyn’s with her benign, singularly unimaginative clientele was less of a challenge than my own private love life had been for a long time.
The first john of the day’s name was Frank. A mild, curly-haired Jewish fellow from the Five Towns, he sold appliances wholesale, lived happily, just as Evelyn had said, with his goyisha wife, Marion, and three kids somewhere out there on the flat moraine.
He shared this information proudly (as so often was the case with these men, he was exceedingly proud of his domestic life) within the first fifteen minutes in the living room, where we three sat while he drank his highball, after politely requesting a coaster from the hostess. I don’t know why he thought I needed to know all this about him, but meanwhile, I was afraid he might be stalling because he wasn’t attracted to me. Finally, when he sensed he must get to it—time is money after all—he smiled shyly at me and stood up, offering his hand. It was the first intimation I had that he liked me. Probably too eagerly, I took it and waltzed off with him through the beaded curtains into the simulated motel-chain bedroom.
I indiscriminately loved hard-ons. This made whoring a lot easier. I told myself freedom is loving the opposite sex—or, if you’re gay, your own sex, same difference—freedom is loving the whole thing because you love desire itself. Why is it women still aren’t free to love desire itself? I believed that I had dodged societal repression, that I was breaking out into a wild zone beyond male jurisdiction. In fact, my lust did act to save me. Only the palpable feel of a man, his very foreignness, could literally and otherwise penetrate my bad-dream state. Drugs and booze fixed it, too, but sex most of all.
This was perhaps why my first inclination was to make love to the stranger, allowing him to undress me, as I never would later on. He got more than his money’s worth that lunch hour, tousling my funny hair, which was growing out in all directions, and playing with my clitoris until I came. I was still just a lover then, a sweetheart of a girl, no more sophisticated than the local high school slut when it came to sex. I wanted to be loved; some part of me wanted Frank and every other man to take me home to meet his mother.
Evelyn was quick to set me straight. “You spent too long in there. I heard you moaning, too. What the hell is that all about?”
I blushed with shame.
“Janet, Janet, honey,” she said, pushing her face up against mine again, “you don’t make love to these clowns. That’s why they call it a ‘trick.’ Capiche?
“Listen, now, to what I’m going to say. It’s the best piece of information you’re ever going to get. Lay the chump down and squat on him. Push your tits up, hold ’em there all squished tight, show him your cleavage, and make him come. The sooner the better. Save your juice for the pimp or whoever. But come on, kid. Get with it. You’re a whore now. You’re a pro. Act like it. OK?”
To illustrate her point, Evelyn had grabbed her own large breasts and shoved them together while she talked. They were staring at me accusingly.
“Yeah, OK,” I said, still weak with shame, remembering how Frank had actually hugged me there in the pitch-dark, and I had hugged him back.
One thing I did get for my trouble was that he took my number. Frank was my first whorehouse trick and the first entry into what would become my own sizable book of clients, a valuable commodity that retiring whores sell to other whores, sometimes for thousands