Working Sex (15 page)

Attilio kept looking back, smiling. We were walking up some side street in the fifties from one hotel bar to another. Eventually he grabbed my hand and the two of us walked along. All of this was conducted in little English. He’d push his hand in his jacket and pull out his pack. Cigarette? I had the cigarette jammed in my mouth crooked and he had some fuel lighter that smelled. He kept going
plunk, plunk
and even opened his suit jacket and I jammed my head in to get it lit. For what? It was a very unsatisfying cigarette.

Rita reveled in her capacity to look normal. She was laughing gaily with Freddy. She might’ve been wearing his suit jacket by now and they were swinging their hands together, just a pair on a date. A traveling handbag salesman and a whore. They looked great. I remember as a kid looking in the window of a travel agency. There was a poster of a woman standing on a beach with flowers around her neck. It looked like Hawaii. I was never sure if it was the woman they were selling the vacation to, the woman who had succeeded, or if she was the woman you got if you bought this ticket. I was like a ticket Attilio found on the street on a trip to New York. Would I dust his ticket off. Good as new, I gleamed like a bellboy. Only a person who thinks like me can
sell her own her ass thinking she’s a cultural critic. Or even weirder feeling she’s a man. I would be a man if I wrote. And being a man would render these steps I’m taking towards a place called Tuesday’s—Tuesday’s in my masculine hands would be literature. Each little step was a coin. Ting, the door flung open. It was art.

We went to the hotel. By now I’d succumbed to only walking hand in hand. We had moved around each other all evening: Attilio and I. His green jacket shone and flickered. Constantly I looked at his shoes, pointed and I have to admit, a little scuffed. I stood with him and Rita and Frank in front of a row of brown elevators as if it were a rocket launch. Everybody here knows what’s going on except me. I mean I could say no to the story right now or I can obediently go along with it and when the door opens, walk on. It was an unbearable wait, with a substantial amount of human traffic in the yellow lobby. Rita was probably waiting to see if I would bolt. At this moment we were standing in a battle of nerves. She had probably already set her terms. I was the only outsider on this tour. I could say I think I need to go home. Sorry thank you for the lovely evening, all the drinks and the powdered scrambled eggs I guess it was a bagel the fakest bagel I ever had in my life. The four elevators a rusty reddish brown hung there like stone. I guess I’m just going to get on. No one seems to be saying anything. I guess they all
think I’m just going to go up. I’m just turning into a whore right at this moment. I’m just turning into a whore. Foom, the doors open and we got on. We rode up in silence and Rita smiled. I can’t believe my step-brother got me into this shit. Will I ever tell him. He will never know. The elevator stopped on the 16th floor. We’re getting off here. See you guys, Rita leaned in and pecked me a kiss cause we were friends. Foop. The doors closed. Attilio leaned back against the elevator. Oh my god, he’s ignoring me. He looked at me out of the corner of his eyes. It is okay he asked kindly. I really think he did. I said yes.

Are all hotel rooms grey. Or maybe it’s mauve. It’s a pale little color. And something is gold, maybe the drapes. And tall thunderous lampshades on, the light, to remember this is home. Big public globes of peace. You’d like another drink. He leaned back on the bed. By now he had thrown his jacket on the chair. Loosened his tie. I said yes. He lifted a bottle of vermouth from the night table. You like he asked. Sure I said, just like an American. He poured it in my glass and put his hand on my head and soon the light went out.

 

t
he first time I ever kissed was outside in a park in my town and it was in the fall and the kid was about a year younger than me and kind of cute but he had pimples and I generally felt that his family was poor. He came from
a whole family of brothers and many of the girls who were in my gang, mostly sisters and then Franny the girl next door, they all were, all these girls went steady with all these boys and that meant simply that you kissed and some small bit of metal, a tie clip, a ring was exchanged. And all of this was alien to me but I was part of this group and wanted what had happened to them to happen to me so when it was pointed out that I could have Wayne I took him so I could have the experiences I seemed to need to be a girl in my gang. I mention all of this to describe the kiss, my first. My first I could own as mine. He meant to kiss me, and would do it again. But why. Probably also because he could. Our little lips met to no purchase. I mean no revulsion, or storm, or revelation. Just warm dry adolescent skin in the cold fall, just before supper. A couple of duck bills, smack. He shoved something at me, which did make me ill, perhaps a tie clip, but it meant that the deal was sealed. And I got out of it as quickly as I could; going steady was something I had done. With Wayne. Oh yeah.

Attilio was kissing any girl on the bed and it seemed that this would pass. The unevent of sex with an adult stranger, putting his soft drunken tongue in my mouth. Somehow we got our clothes off and actually think got under the covers. In retrospect it was like married sex. The ribbony silk that trimmed the blanket and the hard dryness of the clean hotel
sheets were my friends. His hands moved aimlessly along my body, touching my ordinary female chest. My breasts weren’t large, but I never had wished they were. I had no sympathy for his possible disappointment. I was the body he’d been paying for all night. It wasn’t like he bought me. He rented me. Each drink was the accomplishment of another forty minutes or an hour in which I agreed to stay with him who was perhaps eleven years older than me and probably married. I think I asked him if he was and he said he was married. I asked him if he had any kids and he said yes. I think he went down on me. I sort of remember it. My legs being boringly open on that bed. It really was a different experience of being a body. That I had maybe overtly agreed with Rita to do all this and silently conspired with Attilio, but mostly it reminded me of Wayne and years later of a performing; making out in a movie: the smells of a woman I didn’t want. Not one I
didn’t want
either. But like Wayne we were inscribed together on a piece of graph paper like ducks drawn on a table cloth for later embroidering which I guess is now.

In the dark, the dark of that bed I think of grey, more colorless than childhood, we actually did it. I think of his penis which I believe was small but I thought of as Italian, kind of shapely and uncircumcised, is that possible? I’ve seen hundreds of penises yet I still don’t think I can tell the difference,
but that makes me more of a lesbian than a whore, or someone congenitally disinterested in stepping up to the mike. He pushed his not so hard part into my not so defined part. I thought of this sexual experience occurring in folds. It was like sex between two flowers. Not beautiful, but not unfriendly, occurring in slow weighty cascading silk. Which was our lethargic drunken inevitable sex. We grunted and plunged I think, not for long, I think I allowed and even enjoyed it in that I was a witness to my body taking part in an animal unknown having made a deal as if I were my father and I had sold my daughter in exchange for some furs and a bottle of wine. I wasn’t so much in season as drifting through the yard, and the thought grew bright in my father’s head, why not her. I am that one.

 

i
was in bed alone. You know how you can kick your legs to the left and the right in a huge hotel bed, but still you feel a little lost. I looked at the clock, 5:30. It was summer so it was already light. Now there was blue a huge square of pale morning blue and Attilio Viola was sitting on a chair in front of it having a cigarette. There was a balcony and he had the door shoved open and his smoke was blowing out. He didn’t know if I was watching him and he didn’t care. His leg was folded over his knee. You could tell he just enjoyed being a man in a body. Probably went to the beach.
With his family. Maybe he had a girlfriend in Italy. Sort of a cream-coloured guy. He was just sitting there smoking in his cotton briefs and a sleeveless T-shirt. A thin gold chain around his neck with a tiny gold medal. Not quite getting old, but he will. Soft rounded shoulders. He’s looking out at New York. What a great city with its plunging skyline and secret roofs and signs and cars already on their way. I suspected it was a melancholy moment for him. We had all drunk a lot. He probably does this all the time, picks up girls in strange cities and pays for them. He said he’s going to London next. I looked at him and I thought about that, the paying, and I couldn’t imagine how I would bring it around. Hey can you give me—I don’t know, three hundred bucks would feel right. Rent and some stuff. What am I worth.

But he just looked sad looking out over this city that wasn’t his. He was northern Italian. It was so far away. He looked back at me for a moment and gave me a little pirate grin. Hey he said in his quick Italian and then he returned to his smoke. I began to get dressed. I didn’t ask for it. I said, hey. And got dressed. I left him in the window just like that. I left him alone with his view.

I
wake up and I’ve wet my bed, one of my socks is filled with piss, the bathroom floor is soaked. I almost pass out on the bus, come home and sleep for twenty hours. All because of this trick who brought tequila. And I don’t even drink tequila. He came over and started chopping limes. I said I’m only gonna have a shot or two, put down that knife. He said I’d never hurt you—you know that, don’t you? I said I’m just afraid of knives. He said you can tell by the eyes, look me in the eyes. His eyes were practically glazed over. He poured me a shot, handed me a lime
and asked if I had any sea salt. Before I knew it, the bottle was close to empty, I was on the ceiling licking salt off my hand and chewing limes. He tried to stick a hundred dollar bill up my ass, and I went to the bathroom. Came back and the money was gone. I said did you just put that hundred back in your pocket? He said what hundred? At some point he gave back the money, like it hadn’t been in my asshole or anything. Then he said I’ll give you another hundred if you get hard again. I’d just come in his mouth, and I hate having my dick touched after I come, but for an extra hundred, whatever. I said pour me another shot, and then he was sucking my dick again, before I knew it I was hard. He wanted me to fuck him. I tried, but couldn’t stay hard: no big shock. We took a break, he asked me if I’d go to Mexico with him. We’d sit on the beach and drink margaritas all day. I said first you’ll have to give me that other hundred. He said you’re not charging me by the hour. I said I just got hard. He said yeah, but you didn’t fuck me. I looked him in the eyes. He looked away. That’s when I got dramatic. I said look me in the eyes, and I stared right at him, right at his eyes. He couldn’t hold my gaze. I said the eyes don’t lie, and I kept staring right at him. He got all nervous, kept repeating that I hadn’t fucked him, he’d already given me a hundred. I was through. I said listen bitch, you better take out that hundred or I’m not calling you again. He said I don’t
have another hundred. I said do you think you can work me? I said honey I’ve been turning tricks since I was fourteen, and I went into the kitchen for effect. Or water. Then I came back, picked up that tequila and took one big swig. I said you and I both know, and I looked him right in the eyes, you and I both know that it’s not about the money. He reached for the bottle and I pulled it away. I was swinging the bottle in the air, if he’d taken out the money right then, I would have ripped it to shreds.

d
ear jimmy, where are you? i’ve been back on with the service for a week and a half and you haven’t called yet. i know i was gone for a while but i guess i just thought you would always be there. i know it was complicated, but you have to admit there was a genuine feeling in there. i wonder how you are. i feel like i’m betraying your confidence, telling all these people about you. but we never promised each other anything.

S
ometimes I think about him, walking around in the world in his business suit. I wonder if I would recognize him if I saw him. Would I be able to tell? Other people might guess that there is something churning hard under the surface. They would probably never guess what it was, mostly because they wouldn’t want to know. But I know. And there is still a part of me that thinks that it matters. All the nights he would call me from the middle of his escapades so I could encourage, prompt, humiliate, degrade, pass the phone around to my friends so they could laugh at him. Make him cum.

Why would he need me, if he has his mistresses, his roommate, his dogs, his snake, his conferences, his cucumbers? But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let me introduce him.

The phone rings. I answer it and hear a mechanical chime. Press one. The dispatcher comes on, “I have a request for you, it’s James Roberts, he can go as long as he wants.” The phone chimes again and we are connected.

“Hey Jimmy,” I say. “How’s it going?”

“Mmmm,” he says. “oh, oh, oh.”

“What are you doing?”

“Playing,” he says. I hear it. Unevenness of voice and breath. Something being done to him.

“That sounds fun,” I say in my girly voice. “Tell me about it.”