Sex Work Read online

  Conversely, a desire for celibacy is laughed off as “frigidity” rather than respected as a choice; lesbians are ridiculed as weird creatures unable to “get a man.” It’s no accident that the number one male fantasy is of a woman dying to suck his cock. The penis is man’s symbol of his power and superiority, the one proof that he is different from woman, and his justification for dominating her.

  But he’s insecure about this supposedly God-given superiority; he knows he needs women, at very least, for the survival of the species. In order to survive this conflict, he splits women into two kinds: Good Women, who don’t desire sex for themselves, who, at the extreme, only submit to his desires when absolutely necessary for procreation; and Bad Girls, whores, whose function is to reassure him, through worshipping his penis, that he really is superior.

  This may seem like an extreme description of male-female relations in this day and age. We may argue that we have nice, comfortable, equal relationships with our men, or that, by virtue of being lesbian, we’ve escaped those dynamics entirely. But think of the way successful women are accused of “sleeping their way to the top”; or how independent women are branded either “loose” or “man-hating dykes.” We’ve so internalized these messages that we still see the body as a sacred temple, untouchable and pure and divorced from the mind; and the flip side, seeing strippers and prostitutes as out of control of their sexuality, mere yardsticks to measure our own normalcy against. Thus we still live the Good Woman/Bad Girl split.

  We’re really out of control of our sexuality when we see our desires as dirty and troublesome, keeping them hidden and separate from the rest of our lives. This leaves us open to being controlled from the outside — letting others (especially men) convince us that we really want what they want us to want.

  In January of 1986, I helped produce and performed in a lesbian-only strip show in Boston. For me, that was the culmination of several months of openly playing with sexuality: wearing leather or lacy, revealing clothes to parties, sleeping with a number of different women — and a couple of men (friends, not tricks!) — and exploring butch/femme roles. There were consequences. Some women couldn’t get past seeing me as The Stripper or the blonde bombshell. Others projected their own ambivalences about sexuality onto me, intimating that I was carrying this too far.

  The night of the strip show, a lot of issues that had been on my mind for years came together. Women of all different sizes, from quite small to quite large, performed. Rather than having the acts restricted to the high-heels-and-make-up monotony of straight male porn, the shows included everything from tough leather butch to wholesome body-building poses to lacy feminine cross-dressing. Above all, while we were performing and playing with parts of our sexualities, we were still being ourselves. We were there for one reason only: to have fun, sexy fun, on our own terms, and so was the audience. Unlike the Combat Zone, where men come primarily to reassure themselves that they are still men, rulers of the universe, the women in the audience were warm and supportive, and really got into it, without losing sight of the fact that we were whole people and not just bodies on display. Even feminism has told us to be wary and not trust images that turn us on, so it was wonderful to take stripping, or at least what I like about it, out of the context of work and do it in a safe, friendly atmosphere where I could be myself.

  That night I got a sense of what it would be like if we all really had the freedom to be sexual as we chose, unhampered by proscriptions, expectations, or the economic need to pretend other than what we feel.

  Peggy Morgan is not my real name. I don’t have the luxury of using my real name, given the source of my livelihood for the past five and a half years. I’m not so naive as to think that I wouldn’t have future troubles with jobs, housing, or if I chose to have children. There are enough closed-minded zealots, threatened by my existence, who’d be only too glad to use it against me.

  I am not ashamed of who I am and what I do — lesbian and stripper — and can’t wait until the day when it will be safe to use my real name. In the words of the tune I’ve adopted as my theme song at work, the theme from La Cage aux Folles, “I am what I am”:

  “I am what I am, and what I am needs no excuses,

  I deal my own deck, sometimes the ace, sometimes the deuces

  It’s one life and there’s no return and no deposit

  One life so it’s time to open up the closet

  Life’s not worth a damn till you can shout out

  ‘I am what I am.’”

  Out in the Cold

  Jean Johnston

  It is cold, a bare barren cold. The street is empty except for the fire and us “girls.” We are the women waiting for work on the fringe of the park. Waiting near the fire which we built. Waiting for the warmth of a car, or maybe half an hour in a hotel room. Arctic air slices through my tight jeans and burns. I want to reach down and touch my legs so I can feel them, but it’s too cold to take my gloved hands from my pockets.

  Cherry is standing close by, staring at the fire. I put my arm in hers and pull her closer to the fire and to me. I don’t have to worry that her man will see. He’s sitting on the other side of the park in his green Cadillac. His car is probably turned on to keep him warm. Cherry once told me she met Tredwell when she was sixteen. “He had a yellow Cadillac then. And he had on a yellow suit with matching shoes.” She comes from a small town in Ohio and when she looked out the window and saw Tredwell for the first time she said, “Mama, a movie star. There’s a movie star downstairs!” Well, her mama knew all about Tredwell, but that didn’t stop her baby from running off with him. Another time Cherry told me that she asked him what he was going to do when she got too old to work. He said he’d buy her a candy store or something like that. Maybe in Queens, that’s where they live.

  The fire starts to die down. Kim and Desi go into the park looking for some firewood. Cherry and I cross the street as winds whip into our flesh, through to the bone. On top of some garbage cans we find the Sunday News. I hear a clanging sound and we grab the paper fast, running to the other side of the street. Behind us I hear rats scatter, but tell myself it’s only the wind.

  Desi runs down the street toward us, pavement hitting high heels. She has a table leg and throws it into the fire. I feel my face burning.

  “Where’s Kim?”

  “She gotta date.”

  From under a brown suede cowboy hat Desi stares into the rising flames. Desi doesn’t have a man. She’s thinking about Lana, her woman. Desi doesn’t want Lana working out here. One time Lana got stabbed by a trick on 12th Avenue. He stabbed her all over her arms and chest, then left her by the Hudson River to die. She almost did. So, now Desi works here to support Lana’s kid who lives with her aunt in Brooklyn.

  She throws more paper into the fire and I push it with a broomstick. The winds are blowing the fire toward her. She moves closer to Cherry and me.

  A car turns the corner and Kim gets out of a tan Toyota. She’s five months pregnant, but it doesn’t show yet.

  “How’d ya do?”

  “Shit. There ain’t no money out here tonight baby. It’s too cold.”

  “Yeah, only ho’s and fools out tonight.”

  Kim is nineteen. Her mother turned her out, five years ago, when she was fourteen. Her mother used to work out here, too, until she O.D.’ed on junk last year. They had the same man, Ronnie. He has an after hours club uptown. I go there sometimes after a good night, blow some coke and dance.

  Another car is coming down the street. It slows up when it reaches the spot where we’re standing.

  “Wanna date honey?”

  “You goin’ out?”

  Without even opening his window to answer, the guy in the black Impala nods and motions for me. I get in the car and he pulls off. He doesn’t want to spring for a hotel, and parks under the Manhattan Bridge. The radio is playing. It’s 4:00 a.m. The wind chill is 30 degrees below zero. This guy’s going to get his money’s worth because I’m not in any hurry
to get back outside.

  He comes.

  Back on the street Cherry is alone crying by the spot where the fire has been.

  “What’s the matter, honey?”

  “I’m freezing and Tredwell says I can’t go home until I get a hundred dollars more.”

  “You wanna come home with me?” Wiping away her tears she shakes her head.

  I took her home with me once, but Tredwell came looking for her. He told me, “You think you’s a man, bitch. Running off with my ho like this.” Then he took Cherry home and gave her a beating.

  “Cherry, honey, I’m gonna go. You sure you won t come with me?” She shakes her head again.

  Downstairs, the subway platform is as barren as the street above, but it’s warmer. I think about Cherry, still out there in the cold. I feel helpless. The feeling fades as I count the money from under my wig. I put fifty dollars into my pocket and slip the rest back under my wig.

  I ride the F train for two stops, reaching the street as dawn is breaking. I meet my man — the only man I really have — he’s selling little cellophane bags of white powder fastened with red tape. I hand him fifty bucks for five bags, and tucking them into my glove, I walk away.

  The Continuing Saga of Scarlot Harlot I

  Carol Leigh

  Are you one of the insatiable millions — those who are curious about most aspects of the prostitute’s existence: our loves, our traumas, our sexual habits and our finances?

  Perhaps you’ve imagined yourself a sex professional, offering the most exotic pleasures to a wealthy, mysterious and sex-starved clientele. Have you envisioned dinners atop the Saint Francis, or in the dungeons of L’Etoile, dressed in a sexy elegance fit for the Academy Awards? Well, that describes my life.

  (Just kidding.)

  Perhaps you’ve envisioned yourself poised tough in the Tenderloin amidst needles and panties, a fate you strive to avoid by paying your rent on time, and your telephone bill, and by moderate use of the plastic. The abuse of plastic credit cards has been the ruin of many a poor girl. God, I know.

  And you, sir?

  Unloved and unlaid in weeks, months, even years? You may have imagined yourself “taking a walk and buying some,” or procuring the services of an elegant courtesan, fresh off the pages of Hustler.

  “But how will I get her phone number?” you ask. Will she lay like a lump, give me a disease? Will she steal my money? Will she fake it?

  Wonder and worry no more! Here it is! All the information you probably want about the fille de joie, snuggling up to your eyeballs in the persona of Scarlot Harlot. That’s me. Of course, I am a prostitute.

  If you’ve been following my saga, you know that, though I strive to divorce myself from the stereotype of the Sorry Slut, that image insinuates itself into my life like a commercial for my oppression.

  * * *

  When last we left Scarlot, she was recuperating from a short affair with a poet/actor who stole her savings, then began threatening her on the telephone, demanding more money and sex.

  “He wanted to be my pimp,” she explained. “My girlfriends said they’d beat me up and never talk to me again if I went along with him. Of course, I told him where to shove it and in what position. And I know plenty of them because of my experience.”

  “Prostitution is a crash course in assertiveness training,” says A. I’m learning, and A, the toughest of the prostitutes, is a fine teacher.

  Memories of rape. Fear of rape. Frightened and haunted, Scarlot raved, “How can we protect ourselves from the pimps and rapists when we’re so busy protecting ourselves from the police? I give up. I hate this fate.”

  Scarlot withdrew. Agoraphobia, fear of the marketplace, possessed her.

  She vowed to remain in her luxurious cell, depending only on her telephone for business and companionship. No more personal lovers. Clients must present solid references. Scarlot became one of the vast number of ivory tower prostitutes; these serious women who pass their time painting, writing, watching television, reading best-sellers and pop psychology and waiting, waiting, waiting for the phone to ring...

  Brrrring. . . Brrrring. . . Brrrring.

  This better be money.

  “Hi, Scarlot. Listen, I need your help.” It was N, a friend and member of Scarlot’s sex workers’ support group. Her voice was plaintive.

  N was only twenty-four. She’d worked as a prostitute for several years. Recently, she decided to go straight. Now she’s a secretary. She plans to get married and pregnant. “I’m entering the Big Beautiful Women Beauty Contest. They want me to send in a list of my accomplishments. What can I say? I’m an expert in fellatio? I worked the streets and now I. . .”

  “You worked the streets? I didn’t know you worked the streets.” I was impressed. And, yes, this did sound like a job for Scarlot Harlot.

  “Yeah, well, I only did it a couple times. Last time was when me and T went down to the ‘Loin. It was T’s first time. ‘Ya gotta get in the car with the guy,’ I told her. ‘How else are ya gonna do it?’ But T was too stupid. This dude pointed her out, but she ran away. So I climbed in his van. I don’t think he was into it. I had to force him. He got off okay. After that, I had it with the streets. It was too rugged. I moved my ass back into a massage parlor.”

  “That was an accomplishment,” I said, trying to be helpful.

  “Yeah, but not for a beauty contest,” she moaned.

  “I guess not, but you were a great whore.”

  “Thanks, Scarlot.”

  “Well, it isn’t fair! We should be proud! No one understands or respects us. I hate this secrecy and isolation.”

  “That’s the way it blows, honey. Hey, I’ll just say I’m a social worker.”

  “Or an actress. We need status as actresses!”

  “Thanks, Scarlot.”

  Not Huarachas in Paris

  Phyllis Luman Metal

  I met him under the Eiffel tower at noon. We had planned it that way. He was tall, high yellow, a great jazz musician with a somber intensity about him. I had helped him escape to Paris to re-do his life, find appreciation for his music, and forget the insults America had heaped upon him and his people. I was in love with him, so much so that I had left my family behind — feeling guilty, knowing I would return, but grabbing these few delicious moments in Paris. It was June. I was a middle aged hippy wearing huarachas, a long Indian skirt and an embroidered Mexican blouse. “Not huarachas in Paris!” he had exclaimed when he saw me. “Couldn’t you just glance at a Vogue to see what was a la mode?” We laughed. “How much money did you bring?” I said three hundred dollars. “Oh my God. That is what we have to live on in the most expensive city in the world, and I will die on these cobblestones before I go back to America.”

  It had taken all my money to get us both there. I was a potter, and I had sold every pot I had. We both sat down and laughed.

  Needless to say the three hundred went very fast, even living on the top floor of a hotel where all the young backpackers visiting Europe stayed. I started going to the Krishna temple to eat and to bring food home for him. We moved to a less expensive hotel in the Arab quarter. On the street were the “girls,” still as statues wearing minis up to their crotches. And then at last we had no money to pay the concierge. She said, “. . . argent? argent?” as we ducked past her. My love went every night to sit with the French jazz musicians at the River Bop. I went along to hear him play. But finally we knew the day had come. Something had to be done or we would be walking the streets and sleeping by the Seine.

  Every afternoon when I came out of the Krishna temple off Avenue Foche, cars would pull along side me and stop and I would quickly walk on. It finally dawned on me what the well-dressed women on the corners and strolling up and down Avenue Foch were doing. When the limousines pulled alongside they climbed in and were driven away. And so, on an afternoon when the concierge had threatened to call the police, I decided. I would enter one of those limousines and take my chances. And I did. The driver s
poke no English but my French had come back to me by now...

  I explained to Monsieur that I was an American. He looked amused. He was bald and I was fifty-five. I was still wearing my Indian skirt, peasant blouse and huarachas. I looked like no other hooker he had ever seen. He drove to a small building with an inconspicuous sign in front, hotel. He assisted me out of the car and we entered. A madame was seated behind a Dutch door. She asked, “Pour la nuit or pour un moment?” And it was for a moment. Monsieur paid her, and a maid in uniform led us upstairs. She opened a door and ushered us into a room with a red carpet and mirrors on all the walls and ceiling and a crystal chandelier. She turned down the bed, checked the bathroom to be sure there was mouthwash, deodorant and cologne. Monsieur tipped her and she left. He opened his briefcase, which I assumed was filled with important papers. Instead, he pulled out a black lacy garter belt, black silk stockings and a black bra. “For me?” I asked. He shook his head. He undressed and put them on. “Don’t laugh,” he said. “Oh, no, I think you look adorable,” I said. He handed me a French porno comic book and told me to read, and then he ate me up, and fucked me. We had a very good time. We played like two children. Finally, he checked his watch and said it was time to go home for dinner and a romp with the children. He laid three hundred francs on the bureau and said he would look for me next week. I found out the girls at Saint Denis in the Arab quarter only made twenty-five francs per trick.

  I was working where all the millionaires looked for girls. I took the money back to the City Hotel on Rue Meslay where my love was practicing. I told him what had happened. He said, “Oh my God, you didn’t!” But I did, I said. “Well I was a pimp once upon a time so I will educate you.” And he did. “We have gone full circle,” he said, “from friends to lovers, to now whore and pimp. We have done it all.” And the next afternoon found me on the stroll on Avenue Foch in front of Onassis’ mansion, and another monsieur opened his limousine door for me. From then on I had a regular job. My love went down beside the River Seine to practice his jazz flute and I went to Avenue Foch to find a gentleman with a limousine who would take me to a maison de rendezvous, as the little buildings discreetly marked hotel were called.