Sex Work Read online

  Triple Treat

  Rev. Kellie Everts

  Samara is twenty-six years old, and a veteran of live sex shows. Rev. Kellie Everts interviewed Samara about her life in the business.

  I started in this business at eighteen. I worked in a whorehouse, but not as a whore. I worked in the front office over on Forty-fifth Street, across from the Peppermint Lounge. I used to make five hundred dollars a week, but I got fired because of this lady who worked there and became jealous of me. I made a lot of money, but didn’t save any.

  After that I became a waitress, making seventy-five dollars every two weeks. But the welfare found out I had a job and took my money away. I simply could not support myself, my mother and my baby. This girl told me, “I know a job you can do, but you got to take off your clothes.” I’ve never had a hang up about my body, so I said, “Let’s go.” We both went. They hired us on the spot, at Peepland.

  I’ve worked in a lot of clubs. Once, I went to a bar to dance and the owner said he couldn’t give me a job unless I gave him a blow job once a week. I told him I was just there to work, and so he said he couldn’t use me. Some clubs did not want to hire me because I was black or because I looked young; I look like a baby, like I’m sixteen or seventeen. Some like black girls, but black girls who have either big tits or light skin, who tend to look more like Puerto Ricans.

  Then somebody told me about the Triple Treat, and the guy who auditioned me suggested simulated sex shows. My boyfriend didn’t like it, but I told him, “You’re not giving me any money; I’m going to do what I have to do.” I tried to keep a relationship with him because he was the baby’s father. I danced for a year and did lesbian shows. I worked with men, too, but I got busted three times. And we were only simulating. I got sick and tired of getting busted.

  I went to Show World and built up a pretty good name for myself. I had my name up there in lights. I did acts with black girls, white girls. People started to think I was a lesbian, but I wasn’t. Working with the girls is easier because you go up on stage and play. Some people go up there and do the real thing, but to me it is a game. Play with one tit, play with the other tit. She does the same thing to you. You can both dance, or take turns dancing. If you’re really into it, I guess you eat each other out.

  Working with men is a strain because you’ve got to get them hard, even if you don’t do the real thing. Nobody wants to sit there and see a man and a woman fumbling, because that’s what they do at home. They want to get ideas, go home and try new things. They think we’re getting quality money, but we’re only getting three hundred or four hundred dollars a week for forty-two shows, six shows a day, seven days a week.

  This business has been good to me. I have learned a lot since I was eighteen, and I’ve met a lot of nice people, all kinds of gay people, transsexuals, transvestites, and I look at everybody as normal. We’re all doing the same thing and we shouldn’t look down on one another.

  The only danger is getting into drugs. One of my girlfriends got into drugs. She was so beautiful, black, light skinned, big tits. She started to shoot up. I took her aside and talked to her, got her some help. I was the only person who tried to help her.

  I’ve never been raped though I’ve been around a lot alone since I was eighteen. I mean those places, like way out in Connecticut where if you don’t catch your train or bus you sit alone on a bench all night. I’ve been scared and carried mace and knives, but no one has ever bothered me.

  I’ve only had two boyfriends and I could never come with just their cock in me. The men climax almost every time. My first partner used to hold back at the beginning, but after a while he didn’t care. The one I go with now tries to hold back and tries to make me come. You know that thing about, “Are you coming, are you coming?” It gets to be a real strain. Me, I like to be kissed more, to be hugged. I like to be affectionate all day, kiss, hug, almost every minute. This to me is better than coming.

  At work, I don’t let myself get emotionally involved. I know that if I let myself get involved, I will have problems. I just do the job, get dressed and go home.

  When I go out there, I’m putting on an act. I’m not getting no rocks off, believe me. In all my years of working, I’ve never come on stage, with a girl, with a guy, or with myself. When I go out there, it’s just like putting on a business suit and going downtown to work.

  What Happens When You Are Arrested

  Gloria Lockett

  When I was working on the street in Hollywood, the Los Angeles Police Department would round up a group of prostitutes. Before they would put us in the police car, they would take our purses, dump them on the ground, and make us pick the things out of the gutter. When they decided who was going to jail, looks were a big factor. The police would take the hands of the women who were not going to jail, and they would burn them on the hood of the engine. The women who were going to jail were piled in the back seat, usually six, seven or eight women. The police would drive us around for an hour or so, handcuffed, with people sitting on us. One time, the car was so crowded, one officer made me sit on his lap, handcuffed.

  In Hollywood, the police arrested me for “obstructing justice” when I warned another prostitute of his presence. Both of my arms were almost broken when he picked me up by the handcuffs and threw me into the back of a pickup truck, which was the vehicle he and his partner used when trying to arrest prostitutes.

  The first time Deborah got arrested, she was handcuffed behind. The officer was drunk and tried to kiss her and fondled her breast and body in the elevator of the hotel.

  In San Jose, the police drive you around and leave you off in dark areas.

  In Las Vegas, the police almost broke Deborah’s arm when they arrested her.

  In Berkeley, when the police used to drive us around in their cars for hours, one officer pulled into a very dark alley and demanded a blow job.

  In Hollywood, a police officer who had responded to an ad in the paper (by that time we had stopped working on the street) came to our house in a car without a license plate. He pulled out his handcuffs so he could handcuff me to the bed and have intercourse with me. Luckily, I ran away.

  I have been arrested thirty or forty times, who’s keeping count? I’ve never done any time, but I have had to take cases all the way to jury trial at least nine times. In California, there is a mandatory thirty-day sentence for the second arrest, forty-five days for the third. The police make you think you will lose if you go to trial, so most women plead guilty and do the time.

  The Continuing Saga of Scarlot Harlot II

  Carol Leigh

  I provide sexual service to a handful of clients, most of whom I’ve known for at least a year. I trust these married businessmen. I know their real names and I have their phone numbers at work. They tell me they love me or like me so much. They pay what I ask and they leave when their time is up. I trust them. I need to trust them.

  “You’re crazy, girl! Don’t let your guard down. Men have a bad attitude towards women. Especially working girls. Fucking us over is a game for them. Why do you think they call ’em tricks?”

  “No, no, no! I can’t be that suspicious!”

  But it’s worth it. I only have to work a couple hours a week. The rest of my time I spend at the typewriter, complaining and bragging about my life. I stay home a lot. I entertain myself. At night I pick up my guitar and sing:

  “My life was so boring, Til I started whoring. .”

  Pretty funny, huh? Oh, forget it! I’m being facetious, sarcastic, sardonic. I’m miserable. I hate this fate. I made those changes in my life, but I can’t go on living in fear and isolation. I can’t. If only. . .If only the streets were safe. . .If only women were not haunted by submissive images. I remain home and depend on my telephone.

  And what of telephones? Oh, those twisted umbilical cords! I have three obscene phone callers — two of whom don’t seem to know that I’m a prostitute because they don’t mention it. Many women are plagued by this phenomenon. We re
strict ourselves to listing first initials in the phone book rather than our full names, because there is an army of men out there who use the telephone book as a map. They choose their targets, call and attack.

  If only we weren’t haunted by these invasions... If only we could protect ourselves. If only we could choose to be sexual whenever and with whomever we want. . .if only. . .

  . . .I give up. Wait a minute. . .what a great idea! Yes, I will stay home. So far I have rearranged my life to protect myself from the evils of this world. What I should do is formulate a plan to rearrange the world and make it safe and fair. Perfect! I can t wait. This useful endeavor will certainly keep me occupied as I pass the time in my luxurious cell.

  The Birth of Scarlot Harlotism

  I will begin by reorganizing our nations economic structure.

  1. Prostitution is too rampant. Most of us are forced by economic need to share this deep intimacy. About half the prostitutes I know are mothers who support their families. My solution: Ronald Reagan and Congress will arrange to pay mothers decent salaries for child-raising. This will eliminate about half the prostitution. The remaining prostitutes will make more money. Everyone will be happy.

  2. In general, all the boring, dangerous and unpopular jobs will pay more than the interesting, popular jobs. That will improve most peoples lives.

  I have a lot of ideas. I’ll write them down and organize a comprehensive plan. And when I’ve completed this manifesto, then I will. . .

  Hong Kong Massage

  Emma Marcus

  A well dressed Frenchman in his fifties came in. He wore a hand tailored linen suit and sported a handkerchief in his lapel. He said he was a physician so I thought he was going to be worth a lot, but after paying the twenty he had only fifty dollars left. I offered him a hand job and then a blow job, but he insisted that he only wanted sex, which meant fucking. It was getting late in the day and fifty was better than nothing. He counted out the money and had four extra dollars, so I took that, too.

  I undressed and he grabbed my breasts and kissed me. Our lips locked, his hands were working away and we knelt down on the mattress. I offered him a rubber, but he brushed it away in contempt.

  “Are you clean?” he asked.

  “Yes, are you?”

  “Of course,” he replied indignantly.

  I lay back and he pulled my ankles up. He lifted one of my legs over his shoulder and put it in. He stroked a few times, rotating his hips in little circles.

  “Lick me here,” he demanded, gesturing under his arm.

  “Under your arm?” I asked incredulously.

  “My nipple,” he said crossly. “Bite it. Hard. Harder!”

  I bit his nipple as hard as I could and as he came he let out a little cry.

  “Did you come?” he asked.

  “No, of course not. Women don’t come like that.” I got up and began to dress.

  “What’s this?” he asked. He was staring at his cock with alarm.

  “Probably blood. I’m menstruating.”

  “But you shouldn’t have! How could you? I’ll get a disease,” he shrieked.

  “What? No, it’s just menstrual blood. Listen,” I said, getting angry, “you were the one who didn’t want to use a rubber.”

  He was holding his cock away from his body as though it were a bomb that might explode. “The microbes, they travel through the blood,” he said. “I must wash immediately. Where’s the bathroom?”

  “Down the hall on the right. Really, it’s nothing.”

  He was still holding his cock away from his body. With his free hand he grabbed a towel and held it in front of himself like a shield. I opened the door for him and he ran absurdly down the hall.

  I finished dressing and hoped that he wasn’t going to make a scene when he came back. I didn’t want the other women to know that I’d fucked him without a rubber. “You must never do that again,” he announced as he stepped back into the room. “Never, never! I’m going back to the hotel now. I have some penicillin ointment in my suitcase and I’ll put it on immediately. I’m a physician and I know about these things, so I’m sure it will be all right. But you must never do that again,” he said. “Never, never. Do you understand?”

  “Okay, yes,” I agreed, to pacify him.

  “It’s very dangerous.”

  I doubted it, but I wasn’t going to argue with this relic of archaic science. “I hope you don’t get too bad a case of it,” I said, pulling the sheet off the mattress. “The penicillin will probably take care of it if you put it on soon. Just make sure you put a lot of it on.” His eyes, registering alarm, suddenly disappeared behind the hugely billowing white sheet I had snapped into the air.

  * * *

  Candy and I were playing Scrabble on Friday morning while Lili and Susie watched television. Kim was with one of her regulars, who’d brought her two dozen pink roses, as well as paying her, I imagined, a good tip. “How does Kim do it?” I asked. “They’re all crazy about her.”

  “It’s because she hates sex,” Candy answered. “It turns them on.” Kim was always complaining about how this one was too big for her or that one took too long.

  “She does have beautiful breasts, though,” I said.

  “She had an operation on them,” Susie said. “I did a guy who said her boobs were hard, like a shoe. A facelift, too. You know she’s thirty-nine years old and all that stuff about just doing this to make money for her mother. . .it’s bullshit. She’s been doing it for years, since she was a teenager in Korea.”

  It was Candy’s turn to answer the door and the guy, a heavy set man with a cruel face, said he wanted her, but she wouldn’t do him. She was sick of the work, she’d told me. And she’d been refusing to do anybody she didn’t like. Consequently, she wasn’t making very much money. And what she did make she’d spend immediately after work, buying clothes that she’d later discover didn’t fit right. I’d gone shopping with her one day after work and she’d bought an expensive and beautiful Chinese lamp for her bedroom and then had accidentally left it on the bus going home. It seemed like a symptom of something.

  The man didn’t look so bad to me so I smiled a big one at him. “Would you like a massage today,” I cooed.

  “Well, I’d like her,” he said, gesturing at Candy.

  “I’m busy,” she said, not looking up from the letters she was rearranging.

  “I’ll give you a real nice massage,” I told him.

  “Okay, I’ll take you,” he said, pointing at me. I asked him for the twenty and he went to take a shower.

  “I don’t like him,” Lili said.

  “Why not? What’s wrong with him?” I asked.

  “He’ll want you to talk dirty,” Candy said, still not looking up from her letters.

  “Oh, that sounds all right. Sort of interesting. Lili, what do I say?” I asked.

  “Cunt, pussy, dick, cock.”

  “Fuck me with your huge dick,” Susie sighed and pretended to swoon.

  “I want that hot throbbing dick in my mouth,” Candy said, laughing a little hysterically.

  “He pay good though,” Lili said.

  “How much?”

  “Eighty. And then he’ll want someone else. He always does. He want two girls.”

  “Do a bad job,” Susie said. “He’ll want you to suck his cock, but just jerk him off. ‘Oh, yeah, in a minute, in a minute,’ you say, ‘I’ll suck it real good for you.’ But just do this,” she said, gesturing like a bartender shaking a drink. “You’ll have your eighty anyway. Just make sure you get the money first.”

  “Yeah, I always do,” I told her. Susie was known for being a good hustler, which meant that she could get a lot of money out of them without giving them very much sex. Carol had done a double with her once and described to me how Susie had put on a performance like she was really hot for the guy, but insisted, “Oh, sweetheart, if you want to see my other breast it’s got to be thirty dollars more.” Hustling wasn’t my style, though. I liked i
t when they appreciated the good job I did for them.

  He was sitting naked on the massage table when I walked in. His chest was covered in dark, fur-like hair and he was swinging his legs back and forth. “I want a real light massage,” he told me, “like something crawling on me.”

  I tickled him back and front and he arched his back in excitement and slid his buttocks back and forth. He reached his hand around my head and pulled it towards him to kiss me, but I turned my head so he caught me on the ear. He let go of my head. “Do you suck cock?” he sneered at me.

  “Well, we have some business to take care of first.”

  “Okay, how much?”

  “Eighty.”

  “I want to come in your mouth.”

  “Not for eighty.”

  “How much then?”

  “Forty more.”

  “I’ll give you forty more. I don’t care about the money. But after I come in your mouth, I’m going to kiss you and drink it.”

  “Okay,” I said. He drew several bills out of his pocket and I noticed that one of his hands was deformed, a paw with only two stubby fingers and a thumb. With it he handed me six twenties, spread out like a small green fan.

  “Do you like to talk dirty?”

  “Sure,” I ventured. “But I don’t know what to say.”

  “You like to suck cock?”