Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (19 page)

“I was teaching school at the same time. I used
Alice in Wonderland
as the text in my English class. During the day I tutored English for fifth-and sixth-grade kids. In the evening, I worked in the call house.

She quit shooting dope the moment she was slugged, brutally beaten by a dealer who wanted her. This was her revelatory experience. “It was the final indignity. I’d had tricks pulling broken bottles on me, I’d been in razor fights, but nobody had ever
hit me.”
It was a threat to her status. “I was strong. I could handle myself. A tough broad. This was threatened, so . . . ”

 

I can’t talk for women who were involved with pimps. That was where I always drew the line. I always thought pimps were lower than pregnant cockroaches. I didn’t want anything to do with them. I was involved from time to time with some men. They were either selling dope or stealing, but they were not depending on my income. Nor were they telling me to get my ass out on the street. I never supported a man.

As a call girl I got satisfaction, an unbelievable joy—perhaps perverted —in knowing what these reputable folks were really like. Being able to open a newspaper every morning, read about this pillar of society, and know what a pig he really was. The tremendous kick in knowing that I didn’t feel anything, that I was acting and they weren’t. It’s sick, but no sicker than what every woman is taught, all right?

I was in
control
with every one of those relationships. You’re vulnerable if you allow yourself to be involved sexually. I wasn’t. They were. I called it. Being able to manipulate somebody sexually, I could determine when I wanted that particular transaction to end. ’Cause I could make the guy come. I could play all kinds of games. See? It was a tremendous sense of power.

What I did was no different from what ninety-nine percent of American women are taught to do. I took the money from under the lamp instead of in Arpege. What would I do with 150 bottles of Arpege a week?

You become your job. I became what I did. I became a hustler. I became cold, I became hard, I became turned off, I became numb. Even when I wasn’t hustling, I was a hustler. I don’t think it’s terribly different from somebody who works on the assembly line forty hours a week and comes home cut off, numb, dehumanized. People aren’t built to switch on and off like water faucets.

What was really horrifying about jail is that it really isn’t horrifying. You adjust very easily. The same thing with hustling. It became my life. It was too much of an effort to try to make contact with another human being, to force myself to care, to feel.

I didn’t care about me. It didn’t matter whether I got up or didn’t get up. I got high as soon as I awoke. The first thing I’d reach for, with my eyes half-closed, was my dope. I didn’t like my work. It was messy. That was the biggest feeling about it. Here’s all these guys slobbering over you all night long. I’m lying there, doing math or conjugations or Spanish poetry in my head. (Laughs.) And they’re slobbering. God! God! What enabled me to do it was being high—high and numb.

The overt hustling society is the microcosm of the rest of the society. The power relationships are the same and the games are the same. Only this one I was in control of. The greater one I wasn’t. In the outside society, if I tried to be me, I wasn’t in control of anything. As a bright, assertive woman, I had no power. As a cold, manipulative hustler, I had a lot. I knew I was playing a role. Most women are taught to
become
what they act. All I did was act out the reality of American womanhood.

 

Men in my office doing similar work were being promoted, given raises and titles. Since I had done the bulk of the work, I made a stand and was promoted too. I needed the title, because clients figured that I’m just a face-man.

A face-man is a person who looks good, speaks well, and presents the work. I look well, I speak well, and I’m pleasant to have around after the business is over with—if they acknowledge me in business. We go to the lounge and have drinks. I can drink with the men but remain a lady. (Laughs.)

That’s sort of my tacit business responsibility, although this has never been said to me directly. I know this is why I travel alone for the company a great deal. They don’t anticipate any problems with my behavior. I equate it with being the good nigger.

On first meeting, I’m frequently taken for the secretary, you know, traveling with the boss. I’m here to keep somebody happy. Then I’m introduced as the writer. One said to me after the meeting was over and the drinking had started, “When I first saw you, I figured you were a—you know. I never knew you were the person
writing
this all the time.” (Laughs.) Is it a married woman working for extra money? Is it a lesbian? Is it some higher-up’s mistress?

I’m probably one of the ten highest paid people in the agency. It would cause tremendous hard feelings if, say, I work with a man who’s paid less. If a remark is made at a bar—“You make so much money, you could buy and sell me”—I toss it off, right? He’s trying to find out. He can’t equate me as a rival. They wonder where to put me, they wonder what my salary is.

Buy and sell me—yeah, there are a lot of phrases that show the reversal of roles. What comes to mind is swearing at a meeting. New clients are often very uptight. They feel they can’t make any innuendoes that might be suggestive. They don’t know how to treat me. They don’t know whether to acknowledge me as a woman or as another neuter person who’s doing a job for them.

The first time, they don’t look at me. At the first three meetings of this one client, if I would ask a direction question, they would answer and look at my boss or another man in the room. Even around the conference table. I don’t attempt to be—the glasses, the bun, and totally asexual. That isn’t the way I am. It’s obvious that I’m a woman and enjoy being a woman. I’m not overly provocative either. It’s the thin, good nigger line that I have to toe.

I’ve developed a sixth sense about this. If a client will say, “Are you married?” I will often say yes, because that’s the easiest way to deal with him if he needs that category for me. If it’s more acceptable to him to have a young, attractive married woman in a business position comparable to his, terrific. It doesn’t bother me. It makes me safer. He’ll never be challenged. He can say, “She’d be sensational. I’d love to get her. I could show her what a real man is, but she’s married.” It’s a way out for him.

Or there’s the mistress thing: well, she’s sleeping with the boss. That’s acceptable to them. Or she’s a frustrated, compulsive castrator. That’s a category. Or lesbian. If I had short hair, wore suits, and talked in a gruff voice, that would be more acceptable than I am. It’s when I transcend their labels, they don’t quite know what to do. If someone wants a quick label and says, “I’ll bet you’re a big women’s libber, aren’t you?” I say, “Yeah, yeah.” They have to place me.

I travel a lot. That’s what gets very funny. We had a meeting in Montreal. It was one of those bride’s magazines, honeymoon-type resorts, with heart-shaped beds and the heated pool. I was there for three days with nine men. All day long we were enclosed in this conference room. The agency account man went with me. I was to talk about the new products, using slides and movies. There were about sixty men in the conference room. I had to leave in such a hurry, I still had my gaucho pants and boots on.

The presentation went on for an hour and a half. There was tittering and giggling for about forty minutes. Then you’d hear the shift in the audience. They got interested in what I was saying. Afterwards they had lunch sent up. Some of them never did talk to me. Others were interested in my life. They would say things like, “Have you read
The Sensuous Woman?
” (Laughs.) They didn’t really want to know. If they were even more obvious, they probably would have said, “Say, did you hear the one about the farmer’s daughter?” I’d have replied, “Of course, I’m one myself.”

The night before, there was a rehearsal. Afterwards the account man suggested we go back to the hotel, have a nightcap, and get to bed early. It was a 9:00 A.M. meeting. We were sitting at the bar and he said, “Of course, you’ll be staying in my room.” I said, “What? I have a room.” He said, “I just assumed. You’re here and I’m here and we’re both grown up.” I said, “You assumed? You never even asked me whether I wanted to.” My feelings obviously meant nothing to him. Apparently it was what you
did
if you’re out of town and the woman is anything but a harelip and you’re ready to go. His assumption was incredible.

We used to joke about him in the office. We’d call him Mr. Straight, because he was Mr. Straight. Very short hair, never grew sideburns, never wore wide ties, never, never swore, never would pick up an innuendo, super-super-conservative. No one would know, you see?

Mr. Straight is a man who’d never invite me to have a drink after work. He would never invite me to lunch alone. Would never, never make an overture to me. It was simply the fact that we were out of town and who would know? That poor son of a bitch had no notion what he was doing to my ego. I didn’t want to destroy his. We had to work together the next day and continue to work together.

The excuse I gave is one I use many times. “Once when I was much younger and innocent, I slept with an account man. The guy turned out to be a bastard. I got a big reputation and he made my life miserable because he had a loose mouth. And even though you’re a terrifically nice guy and I’d like to sleep with you, I feel I can’t. It’s my policy. I’m older and wiser now. I don’t do it. You have to understand that.” It worked. I could never say to him, “You don’t even understand how you insulted me.”

It’s the always-having-to-please conditioning. I don’t want to make any enemies. Only of late, because I’m getting more secure and I’m valued by the agency, am I able to get mad at men and say, “Fuck off!” But still I have to keep egos unruffled, smooth things over . . . I still work with him and he never mentioned it again.

He’ll occasionally touch my arm or catch my eye: We’re really sympatico, aren’t we baby? There may be twelve men and me sitting at a meeting and they can’t call on one of the girls or the receptionist, he’d say, “Let’s have some coffee, Barbara. Make mine black.” I’m the waitress. I go do it because it’s easier than to protest. If he’d known my salary is more than his I doubt that he’d have acted that way in Denver—or here.

Part of the resentment toward me and my salary is that I don’t have a mortgage on a home in the Valley and three kids who have to go to private schools and a wife who spends at Saks, and you never know when you’re going to lose your job in this business. Say, we’re having a convivial drink among peers and we start grousing. I’m not allowed to grouse with the best of them. They say, “Oh, you? What do you need money for? You’re a single woman. You’ve got the world by the balls.” I hear that all the time.

If I’m being paid a lot of attention to, say by someone to whom I’m attracted, and we’ve done a job and we’re in New York together for a week’s stretch, we’re in the same hotel, suppose I want to sleep with him? Why not? Here’s my great double standard. You never hear it said about a man in my capacity—“He sleeps around.” It would only be to his glory. It’s expected, if he’s there with a model, starlet, or secretary. In my case, I constantly worry about that. If I want to, I must be very careful. That’s what I’m railing against.

This last shoot, it was an exasperating shot. It took hours. We were there all day. It was exhausting, frustrating. Between takes, the camera man, a darling man, would come back to where I was standing and put his arms around me. I didn’t think anything of it. We’re hardly fucking on the set. It was his way of relaxing. I heard a comment later that night from the director: “You ought to watch your behavior on the set with the camera man.” I said, “
Me
watch it? Fuck that! Let
him
watch it.” He was hired by me. I could fire him if I didn’t like him. Why
me
, you see? I have to watch.

Clients. I get calls in my hotel room: “I want to discuss something about production today that didn’t go right.” I know what that means. I try to fend it off. I’m on this tightrope. I don’t want to get into a drunken scene ever with a client and to literally shove him away. That’s not going to do me any good. The only smart thing I can do is avoid that sort of scene. The way I avoid it is by suggesting an early morning breakfast meeting. I always have to make excuses: “I drank too much and my stomach is really upset, so I couldn’t do it right now. We’ll do it in the morning.” Sometimes I’d like to say, “Fuck off, I know what you want.”