Cesarean and Scoliosus
work the phones and bones
and go out late at night
to fuck the men
who call them on the phone to come over
And it’s hotels and motels and holiday inns
and they are always blond
because that’s what they want
the men who want the blond girls
And it’s babies at home
and grandmas and girlfriends
and boyfriends going to jail
There are all of us
under the downtown lights
exchanging currency we made up in our heads
Showing posts with label prostitution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prostitution. Show all posts
07 June 2009
25 May 2009
Driving Miss Lazy
Six and a half hours as an assistant pimp
It's a gray area of the sex industry. Listed in the Yellow Pages under "Escort Service -- Personal" (as opposed to "Escort Service -- Protective: see 'Guard & Patrol Service''"), emphasizing discretion in billing, fantasy fulfillment, weekend and afternoon specials, businesses with names like ~~Live Playmates, College Girls, Action Escorts, Gentlemen's Delights, AAAAAAAAAH ~~Entertainment, and She-Male Escorts offer "personalized service," "cuddles," "private sessions" and "no more disappointments." Presented in those direct-to-video movies shown on late-night Cinemax as little more than workfare for the conically augmented, the escort business purports to provide the client with companionship suitable for all business and personal affairs. The theory is that, for a fee, a discriminating gentleman may enjoy the temporary cachet of the service's arm-candy, a trophy-wife-for-a-day.
The reality of the escort business is all over the map. While some agencies surely must provide just such a service for the unattached business traveler (every myth has its roots in fact), others certainly offer much more to the client willing to negotiate behind closed doors for more intimate attentions. And, no matter where an individual business may be poised in legality and/or morality, the simple fact is that a large number of owners and support staff make their living off the charms of young women for rent. There's a word for that. To understand this aspect of the escort business, I sought the lowest of the low, the absolute last man on the daisy chain, the open-mouthed recipient of the last drops of trickle-down cash flow. I spoke to myself about my recent experience working for an escort agency as a driver and bodyguard for women on out-call service.
Question: First, if you could, please explain how you came to take ~~this job.
Answer: Call me Ishmael. Some years ago -- never mind how long ~~precisely -- having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would ...take a job driving prostitutes to their "dates." BR> I'm joking. That's the first two sentences of Moby Dick. And I shouldn't call those girls prostitutes. They were discreet escorts and models providing personal service to discriminating clientele. Whatever all that means, I don't know. But that's what they were. Really, I was working an office job, I can always use a little more money, and I thought this job sounded both easy and interesting. I answered an ad in the paper, went in for a brief interview, and was hired.
Question: What was the job description? What was the pay?
Answer: The job description was "driver." My duties were to convey the escort to the appointment, check out the premises, collect the up-front money due, wait outside for the escort to finish, keep an eye on the time, and watch out for trouble. I got paid a flat rate for expenses, $25 a night I think, and a percent of all fees and tips the girl collected and/or told me about.
I was given a company pager. I'll describe it to you like they described it to me -- by the numbers. When the pager flashed one, it meant the girl needed help. When two came up, it meant the girl was ready to leave. Three meant the call was canceled; four meant collect more money from the client. Five meant call into the office. Six meant the girl was with the police. Seven meant go in and check the client's room. There were a few guys in the abandoned storefront they were using as an office and waiting area. They had sort of scooped out an area in the general debris scattered around and put in a couple ~~of thrift store sofas and a television. That was where the girls, the other driver, and I hung out waiting for calls. My shift was from 9 p.m. until 5 a.m.
Question: So, a call came into the office and....
Answer: Right. OK. So a call comes into the office and a guy working the phones would answer. What was interesting about this was that there were about 25 lines coming into the office, each one for a different agency that was advertising in the Yellow Pages or the newspaper. So, really, even though there were all these different companies and agencies being advertised -- College Girls, Hot Bodies, Xtasy, Ashley 2nite, crap like that -- all the calls were being taken by the same guy for the same three girls.
Anyway, a call comes in and almost always it's a hang-up. If the client was talking at all, he was usually pretty shocked about the rates and hung up. A half hour with a girl cost $150 and an hour was $250. If they got someone to actually make an appointment, they got the address, phone number and method of payment. They'd call back to make sure it was a real phone number or that the client was really registered at that hotel or motel and in the room he said he was in. I really don't know why they asked about method of payment. Cash is always cash and they didn't have any way to take a credit card over the phone. That was part of my job. They showed me how to fill out a credit card slip and copy the card number by rubbing the carbon paper with a disposable lighter. They said they were waiting for delivery of a machine, but they were also waiting for delivery of a bathroom door.
Anyway, after everything got confirmed, I was supposed to wake up the girl. She'd be snoozing in front of the TV. She'd go get dressed and put her make-up on and off we'd go ~~into the night to spread joy.
Question: Tell us about the girls.
Answer: Well, it's not too complicated. They were young. I mean pretty damn young. The girls I worked with were 17 or 18. None of them had finished school, I mean high school. They were good looking girls but, you know, there was something...OK, well, like one of the girls, she had pretty bad acne. She just smeared on a bunch of foundation and she was ready to roll. Another girl, I don't know, she was just sort of...I don't know, sort of lost. It was like she didn't know where she was, didn't know how she got there, and didn't know how to leave. She'd stare at the TV, she'd get dressed, she'd sit in the car, and that was about it. I don't know how she acted with the client, but she wasn't doing much around the office or in the car. Maybe she was using drugs or something; maybe she was just ~~gritting her teeth to get through the night. They weren't ugly but they ~~weren't drop-dead gorgeous. They weren't stupid, they didn't seem stupid, but they didn't have any education and didn't seem to be in a rush to get some. It was kind of weird; for girls so young, they acted a lot older. I mean, they acted tired-and-sad older. I started talking to the girl with the acne when we were out driving. I asked her why she wasn't doing something else, something less intimate. I mean there are other jobs, even in the sex business, which would seem to be less stressful, less invasive, less emotional. She just got kind of vague on me, started talking about how easy this job was, how fucked ~~up her boyfriends were, how much money she could make doing this. I didn't quiz ~~her or anything, but she sure wasn't talking about future plans or doing anything else; she wasn't saying anything like, "Once I get enough money for junior college..." or "When I save enough for a ticket to Hollywood..." or even "Of course, I'm not doing this forever." It was all just in the moment for her. I asked her if she'd ever danced, you know, in a club, topless, or anything. I mean a good dancer could make just about the same money, maybe more, than she was making doing out-calls. She just sort of rambled about how she could if she wanted, how fucked-up her boyfriends were, how easy this job was. The same shit she'd said before. But, you know, she seemed different from the girls I've known who've been dancers. Strippers seem more, I don't know, focused than this girl. I mean they have to keep in really good shape just to dance. The dancing itself is a serious workout; it's hours of aerobic exercise. And the dancers I've known have always had some kind of goal. They may not achieve it, they may get lost in drugs or drinking or just being in "the life," but they all had some kind of goal. They were going to school, they were saving to start a business of their own, they were looking out and forward and beyond the clubs. This girl was just, I don't know, flat or something. Just stuck. Or too tired or too lazy or too paralyzed to do anything else. It didn't make too much sense to me; the things she said didn't seem to connect up too well, but...I mean, I was just her driver. But all three girls seemed to be nice girls. Seriously. They weren't mean or anything; they weren't bitches. They ~~were just sharp, you know, like looking for an edge. Like it was nothing personal, but they'd cheat you if they could. Even that girl who was sort of zoned out. She wasn't interacting much, wasn't talking or anything, but she wasn't mean about it. If I said something to her, she'd answer. But even she was always paying attention on the call. I mean, she didn't act like she was having fun, but she was keeping her eyes wide open all the time.
Question: Tell us about going out.
Answer: Yeah, OK. I guess I got the full range of calls. We got a prank call. Someone from a hotel called in for a girl and we go there. It's late, like 1 a.m. and we come walking in a side entrance to the ~~hotel and I'm definitely not dressed for success that night, kind of scruffy, you know? And this girl dressed like...well, she's dressed like a hooker. Vinyl thigh boots, sort of cheap, mismatched clothes but tight and gaudy-sexy. We walk past the desk and the clerk, a young guy, sort of gives us the eye, you know, but I'm thinking of course he's going to give us the eye. I mean, here's some ratty looking old fart with a teenaged girl dressed up like Irme La Duce walking through their hotel lobby at one o'clock in the morning. If I was working the graveyard desk shift, I'd have looked at us kind of funny, too. Anyway, the call was for a suite on a restricted floor and, of course, we couldn't go up without a room key. So, we call the room from her cell phone and there's no answer. I'm starting to understand a little better. We go back downstairs and ask the desk to call up. Big surprise. Nobody's in that room and he won't tell us if anyone is really registered there.
Question: So, what happened?
Answer: What do you mean what happened? We leave. We can't say anything to the shit ball at the desk, even though it was probably him who called in because, remember, the office always calls back to confirm. We can't flip him off or call his boss or anything because we'll probably be coming back there someday for a real call. It was just, like, "oh, well" and back to the office. He was just a sadistic, bored jerk. The next call was at another hotel. Everything was set up nicely and we got there and I knocked on the door. The guy opens up and he's talking on a cell phone and we go in. He gets off the phone and says, "Sorry. Something has come up but here's a 20 for your time and trouble." I don't really know what to say; I don't know if it's even true. Maybe he just didn't like the way the girl looked or whatever. The girl snatches the bill and it disappears forever. She didn't tell the office she got it and she sure didn't give me my 10 percent, ~~but I wasn't going to bust her for $2. I just let it slide.
Question: So you're not making any money.
Answer: I am not making any money. We finally get a call and it is way out there, I mean it's about a 15-mile drive for a one-hour call. The girl gets ready, I get ready, and we go. It's a house in a nice, middle-class neighborhood; new houses, you know? All the trees are little. Go up, ring the bell, and this kid answers. Kid. I don't know. He looked about 25 years old. Not bad looking, but drunk off his ass. The girl's eyes light up, you know, like ka-ching! I cruise around the house checking to make sure nobody's hiding in the bathroom or something and run the guy's credit card ~~on his coffee table with my lighter. He's got ESPN on some big screen TV with the sound turned down. He's all bleary eyed and embarrassed and quiet, just sort of nodding when I explain the rules and get him to sign the contract. No touching the girl, no intimate contact, no lewd or sexual behavior. It's all bullshit, really, something for the cops. The girl is practically shoving me out the door. I go back out to the car and settle in. It's warm so I leave the window open, listening, you know, for what? I don't know; screaming, breaking glass, sirens... I get everything arranged real nice: the pager and my smokes on the dashboard, a cup of coffee from my thermos, and I'm reading a book with one of those battery-powered lights. And, bam, in like 20 minutes ~~the girl is back. The guy paid $250 on his credit card for an hour and she's out the door in 18.25 minutes. I asked her, "Is everything OK?" She says, "Everything is very OK" and we drive back to the office. I'm wondering if she maybe took some tips to, you know, go off the contract. I'm wondering if this drunk kid gave her some cash to...um...augment the agreement. I sort of try to ask her what happened but she doesn't really seem to be in a mood for sharing right then. If she got cash, if she got extra, the only way I'm going to find out is to pull over and strip-search her. And, you know, I just don't feel like doing that. I mean, I may be acting like a pimp, driving her around to have sex with some guy, but I don't have to, you know, act like a pimp. I can't visualize slapping her around, working on her with a coat hanger or something, saying things like "Where's my money?" My money. It's not my money. I suddenly discovered my heart just wasn't in it.
Question: So, you're going to get $25 from the call; 10 percent of $250 is $25.
Answer: Oh, yeah, that. I'll get $25 if the credit card clears and when the transfer from Visa or Mastercard or whatever comes in to the company account and whenever they decide to cut a check for me. That's like at least two months down the road. You have to keep your own records and, you know, trust the company. I just have to think, well, maybe that money's gone, too. Anyway, we sit around the office watching Nick at Nite. The girls conk out pretty much right away and the other driver wants to chat. It's about 2:30 in the morning and I just want to stare off into space for a while and this guy is wanting to talk about the job. I'm like, "Shut up." Luckily, another call comes in pretty soon and I grab it. It's another motel and we get there pretty quick. We find the room and knock on the door. The door sort of slams open, if you can do that...can you do that? Can a door slam open? Anyway, there's this little guy, about 5-foot-5 maybe, all buffed up like he works out, and we're inside. He's got his cash all ready and fanned out and he wants to get to it. I give him the contract, you know, no touching, no sex, no lewdness, and he sort of flips out. I mean, he's going, "What is this? What is this? What is this?" and I'm going "It's a standard business contract, sir." He's asking, "Well, just what do I get for my $150 and what if I want some more?" and then it sort of hits me. I catch a quick look around the room and the closet alcove is empty, the bag rack is empty. I look at the girl and we both know. [long pause]
Question: What?
Answer: C'mon. Little short guy, lots of muscles, no luggage, cash out in the open, wants sex?
Question: Enlighten us.
Answer: He's a cop. So, we're both like, "Sorry, sir. Good evening, sir. Complain to management, sir. You're on your own, sir." This transaction is terminated with extreme prejudice and, even if this guy isn't a cop, he's a weird little fucker and way too aggressive. We leave and go back to the office. I wait around until about 3:30 and the dispatcher says "go home" and I do and that's it. I don't go back. They called me up the next night wanting to know when I was coming in and I said, "I don't think so." I spent six and a half hours earning $25 base and maybe, in a couple of months, another $25 if I feel like even calling them back and I got ripped off by a teenager for $2. I figure that's enough.
Question: That's it?
Answer: Oh, yeah. That's it. Pretty glamorous, huh? Huggy Bear, Jr. That's me. And I drive a beat-up old Volvo, too.
Westchester County Weekly Copyright ©1999 New Mass. Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
It's a gray area of the sex industry. Listed in the Yellow Pages under "Escort Service -- Personal" (as opposed to "Escort Service -- Protective: see 'Guard & Patrol Service''"), emphasizing discretion in billing, fantasy fulfillment, weekend and afternoon specials, businesses with names like ~~Live Playmates, College Girls, Action Escorts, Gentlemen's Delights, AAAAAAAAAH ~~Entertainment, and She-Male Escorts offer "personalized service," "cuddles," "private sessions" and "no more disappointments." Presented in those direct-to-video movies shown on late-night Cinemax as little more than workfare for the conically augmented, the escort business purports to provide the client with companionship suitable for all business and personal affairs. The theory is that, for a fee, a discriminating gentleman may enjoy the temporary cachet of the service's arm-candy, a trophy-wife-for-a-day.
The reality of the escort business is all over the map. While some agencies surely must provide just such a service for the unattached business traveler (every myth has its roots in fact), others certainly offer much more to the client willing to negotiate behind closed doors for more intimate attentions. And, no matter where an individual business may be poised in legality and/or morality, the simple fact is that a large number of owners and support staff make their living off the charms of young women for rent. There's a word for that. To understand this aspect of the escort business, I sought the lowest of the low, the absolute last man on the daisy chain, the open-mouthed recipient of the last drops of trickle-down cash flow. I spoke to myself about my recent experience working for an escort agency as a driver and bodyguard for women on out-call service.
Question: First, if you could, please explain how you came to take ~~this job.
Answer: Call me Ishmael. Some years ago -- never mind how long ~~precisely -- having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would ...take a job driving prostitutes to their "dates." BR> I'm joking. That's the first two sentences of Moby Dick. And I shouldn't call those girls prostitutes. They were discreet escorts and models providing personal service to discriminating clientele. Whatever all that means, I don't know. But that's what they were. Really, I was working an office job, I can always use a little more money, and I thought this job sounded both easy and interesting. I answered an ad in the paper, went in for a brief interview, and was hired.
Question: What was the job description? What was the pay?
Answer: The job description was "driver." My duties were to convey the escort to the appointment, check out the premises, collect the up-front money due, wait outside for the escort to finish, keep an eye on the time, and watch out for trouble. I got paid a flat rate for expenses, $25 a night I think, and a percent of all fees and tips the girl collected and/or told me about.
I was given a company pager. I'll describe it to you like they described it to me -- by the numbers. When the pager flashed one, it meant the girl needed help. When two came up, it meant the girl was ready to leave. Three meant the call was canceled; four meant collect more money from the client. Five meant call into the office. Six meant the girl was with the police. Seven meant go in and check the client's room. There were a few guys in the abandoned storefront they were using as an office and waiting area. They had sort of scooped out an area in the general debris scattered around and put in a couple ~~of thrift store sofas and a television. That was where the girls, the other driver, and I hung out waiting for calls. My shift was from 9 p.m. until 5 a.m.
Question: So, a call came into the office and....
Answer: Right. OK. So a call comes into the office and a guy working the phones would answer. What was interesting about this was that there were about 25 lines coming into the office, each one for a different agency that was advertising in the Yellow Pages or the newspaper. So, really, even though there were all these different companies and agencies being advertised -- College Girls, Hot Bodies, Xtasy, Ashley 2nite, crap like that -- all the calls were being taken by the same guy for the same three girls.
Anyway, a call comes in and almost always it's a hang-up. If the client was talking at all, he was usually pretty shocked about the rates and hung up. A half hour with a girl cost $150 and an hour was $250. If they got someone to actually make an appointment, they got the address, phone number and method of payment. They'd call back to make sure it was a real phone number or that the client was really registered at that hotel or motel and in the room he said he was in. I really don't know why they asked about method of payment. Cash is always cash and they didn't have any way to take a credit card over the phone. That was part of my job. They showed me how to fill out a credit card slip and copy the card number by rubbing the carbon paper with a disposable lighter. They said they were waiting for delivery of a machine, but they were also waiting for delivery of a bathroom door.
Anyway, after everything got confirmed, I was supposed to wake up the girl. She'd be snoozing in front of the TV. She'd go get dressed and put her make-up on and off we'd go ~~into the night to spread joy.
Question: Tell us about the girls.
Answer: Well, it's not too complicated. They were young. I mean pretty damn young. The girls I worked with were 17 or 18. None of them had finished school, I mean high school. They were good looking girls but, you know, there was something...OK, well, like one of the girls, she had pretty bad acne. She just smeared on a bunch of foundation and she was ready to roll. Another girl, I don't know, she was just sort of...I don't know, sort of lost. It was like she didn't know where she was, didn't know how she got there, and didn't know how to leave. She'd stare at the TV, she'd get dressed, she'd sit in the car, and that was about it. I don't know how she acted with the client, but she wasn't doing much around the office or in the car. Maybe she was using drugs or something; maybe she was just ~~gritting her teeth to get through the night. They weren't ugly but they ~~weren't drop-dead gorgeous. They weren't stupid, they didn't seem stupid, but they didn't have any education and didn't seem to be in a rush to get some. It was kind of weird; for girls so young, they acted a lot older. I mean, they acted tired-and-sad older. I started talking to the girl with the acne when we were out driving. I asked her why she wasn't doing something else, something less intimate. I mean there are other jobs, even in the sex business, which would seem to be less stressful, less invasive, less emotional. She just got kind of vague on me, started talking about how easy this job was, how fucked ~~up her boyfriends were, how much money she could make doing this. I didn't quiz ~~her or anything, but she sure wasn't talking about future plans or doing anything else; she wasn't saying anything like, "Once I get enough money for junior college..." or "When I save enough for a ticket to Hollywood..." or even "Of course, I'm not doing this forever." It was all just in the moment for her. I asked her if she'd ever danced, you know, in a club, topless, or anything. I mean a good dancer could make just about the same money, maybe more, than she was making doing out-calls. She just sort of rambled about how she could if she wanted, how fucked-up her boyfriends were, how easy this job was. The same shit she'd said before. But, you know, she seemed different from the girls I've known who've been dancers. Strippers seem more, I don't know, focused than this girl. I mean they have to keep in really good shape just to dance. The dancing itself is a serious workout; it's hours of aerobic exercise. And the dancers I've known have always had some kind of goal. They may not achieve it, they may get lost in drugs or drinking or just being in "the life," but they all had some kind of goal. They were going to school, they were saving to start a business of their own, they were looking out and forward and beyond the clubs. This girl was just, I don't know, flat or something. Just stuck. Or too tired or too lazy or too paralyzed to do anything else. It didn't make too much sense to me; the things she said didn't seem to connect up too well, but...I mean, I was just her driver. But all three girls seemed to be nice girls. Seriously. They weren't mean or anything; they weren't bitches. They ~~were just sharp, you know, like looking for an edge. Like it was nothing personal, but they'd cheat you if they could. Even that girl who was sort of zoned out. She wasn't interacting much, wasn't talking or anything, but she wasn't mean about it. If I said something to her, she'd answer. But even she was always paying attention on the call. I mean, she didn't act like she was having fun, but she was keeping her eyes wide open all the time.
Question: Tell us about going out.
Answer: Yeah, OK. I guess I got the full range of calls. We got a prank call. Someone from a hotel called in for a girl and we go there. It's late, like 1 a.m. and we come walking in a side entrance to the ~~hotel and I'm definitely not dressed for success that night, kind of scruffy, you know? And this girl dressed like...well, she's dressed like a hooker. Vinyl thigh boots, sort of cheap, mismatched clothes but tight and gaudy-sexy. We walk past the desk and the clerk, a young guy, sort of gives us the eye, you know, but I'm thinking of course he's going to give us the eye. I mean, here's some ratty looking old fart with a teenaged girl dressed up like Irme La Duce walking through their hotel lobby at one o'clock in the morning. If I was working the graveyard desk shift, I'd have looked at us kind of funny, too. Anyway, the call was for a suite on a restricted floor and, of course, we couldn't go up without a room key. So, we call the room from her cell phone and there's no answer. I'm starting to understand a little better. We go back downstairs and ask the desk to call up. Big surprise. Nobody's in that room and he won't tell us if anyone is really registered there.
Question: So, what happened?
Answer: What do you mean what happened? We leave. We can't say anything to the shit ball at the desk, even though it was probably him who called in because, remember, the office always calls back to confirm. We can't flip him off or call his boss or anything because we'll probably be coming back there someday for a real call. It was just, like, "oh, well" and back to the office. He was just a sadistic, bored jerk. The next call was at another hotel. Everything was set up nicely and we got there and I knocked on the door. The guy opens up and he's talking on a cell phone and we go in. He gets off the phone and says, "Sorry. Something has come up but here's a 20 for your time and trouble." I don't really know what to say; I don't know if it's even true. Maybe he just didn't like the way the girl looked or whatever. The girl snatches the bill and it disappears forever. She didn't tell the office she got it and she sure didn't give me my 10 percent, ~~but I wasn't going to bust her for $2. I just let it slide.
Question: So you're not making any money.
Answer: I am not making any money. We finally get a call and it is way out there, I mean it's about a 15-mile drive for a one-hour call. The girl gets ready, I get ready, and we go. It's a house in a nice, middle-class neighborhood; new houses, you know? All the trees are little. Go up, ring the bell, and this kid answers. Kid. I don't know. He looked about 25 years old. Not bad looking, but drunk off his ass. The girl's eyes light up, you know, like ka-ching! I cruise around the house checking to make sure nobody's hiding in the bathroom or something and run the guy's credit card ~~on his coffee table with my lighter. He's got ESPN on some big screen TV with the sound turned down. He's all bleary eyed and embarrassed and quiet, just sort of nodding when I explain the rules and get him to sign the contract. No touching the girl, no intimate contact, no lewd or sexual behavior. It's all bullshit, really, something for the cops. The girl is practically shoving me out the door. I go back out to the car and settle in. It's warm so I leave the window open, listening, you know, for what? I don't know; screaming, breaking glass, sirens... I get everything arranged real nice: the pager and my smokes on the dashboard, a cup of coffee from my thermos, and I'm reading a book with one of those battery-powered lights. And, bam, in like 20 minutes ~~the girl is back. The guy paid $250 on his credit card for an hour and she's out the door in 18.25 minutes. I asked her, "Is everything OK?" She says, "Everything is very OK" and we drive back to the office. I'm wondering if she maybe took some tips to, you know, go off the contract. I'm wondering if this drunk kid gave her some cash to...um...augment the agreement. I sort of try to ask her what happened but she doesn't really seem to be in a mood for sharing right then. If she got cash, if she got extra, the only way I'm going to find out is to pull over and strip-search her. And, you know, I just don't feel like doing that. I mean, I may be acting like a pimp, driving her around to have sex with some guy, but I don't have to, you know, act like a pimp. I can't visualize slapping her around, working on her with a coat hanger or something, saying things like "Where's my money?" My money. It's not my money. I suddenly discovered my heart just wasn't in it.
Question: So, you're going to get $25 from the call; 10 percent of $250 is $25.
Answer: Oh, yeah, that. I'll get $25 if the credit card clears and when the transfer from Visa or Mastercard or whatever comes in to the company account and whenever they decide to cut a check for me. That's like at least two months down the road. You have to keep your own records and, you know, trust the company. I just have to think, well, maybe that money's gone, too. Anyway, we sit around the office watching Nick at Nite. The girls conk out pretty much right away and the other driver wants to chat. It's about 2:30 in the morning and I just want to stare off into space for a while and this guy is wanting to talk about the job. I'm like, "Shut up." Luckily, another call comes in pretty soon and I grab it. It's another motel and we get there pretty quick. We find the room and knock on the door. The door sort of slams open, if you can do that...can you do that? Can a door slam open? Anyway, there's this little guy, about 5-foot-5 maybe, all buffed up like he works out, and we're inside. He's got his cash all ready and fanned out and he wants to get to it. I give him the contract, you know, no touching, no sex, no lewdness, and he sort of flips out. I mean, he's going, "What is this? What is this? What is this?" and I'm going "It's a standard business contract, sir." He's asking, "Well, just what do I get for my $150 and what if I want some more?" and then it sort of hits me. I catch a quick look around the room and the closet alcove is empty, the bag rack is empty. I look at the girl and we both know. [long pause]
Question: What?
Answer: C'mon. Little short guy, lots of muscles, no luggage, cash out in the open, wants sex?
Question: Enlighten us.
Answer: He's a cop. So, we're both like, "Sorry, sir. Good evening, sir. Complain to management, sir. You're on your own, sir." This transaction is terminated with extreme prejudice and, even if this guy isn't a cop, he's a weird little fucker and way too aggressive. We leave and go back to the office. I wait around until about 3:30 and the dispatcher says "go home" and I do and that's it. I don't go back. They called me up the next night wanting to know when I was coming in and I said, "I don't think so." I spent six and a half hours earning $25 base and maybe, in a couple of months, another $25 if I feel like even calling them back and I got ripped off by a teenager for $2. I figure that's enough.
Question: That's it?
Answer: Oh, yeah. That's it. Pretty glamorous, huh? Huggy Bear, Jr. That's me. And I drive a beat-up old Volvo, too.
Westchester County Weekly Copyright ©1999 New Mass. Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
10 May 2009
The Whore is on the Beach Again
She lets her monkey,
to the limits of its slender chain,
play in the ragged ends of the surf.
The boys who could don't
make fun at her.
No, instead they taste the sweet rotten fruit of her mouth
and the monkey's sweet moan when he finds a perfect shell.
to the limits of its slender chain,
play in the ragged ends of the surf.
The boys who could don't
make fun at her.
No, instead they taste the sweet rotten fruit of her mouth
and the monkey's sweet moan when he finds a perfect shell.
24 April 2009
True Life Animal Stories
“Oh! Best Beloved....”
Number One
I sat in the bathtub with my poor sister's lame Valentine ribbon making smooth arcs around and across my legs. The hairs on them, my legs, were black and looked like underwater weeds. My mother still knock knock knocked and had begun to sound concerned. I licked the washcloth. I enjoyed the waxy thickness of the soap foam.
After my bath was over, after I knew my mother had drifted away from the door, I decided to wear my oldest swimsuit to bed because it was much, much more comfortable than my pajamas.
Any of them.
Number Two
I was coming out of the Pussy Cat Palace and I had changed all my money into quarters for the arcades when I saw her. She was in the doorway of one of those donut shops. She was one of those whores. She was one of those whores but she had a scar running through her eye and across her cheek. She didn't see me or even notice me for a while so I got to look at her before I had to pay attention to her. She was reasonably pretty but the scar, twisting down her face and accentuating the lines of the bones beneath her face and echoing the sweep of her shoulders and drawing me with it under the collar of her blouse, made her beautiful. She looked at me and noticed me staring at her after I had left her no other choice. She stared back and she sucked deep on her cigarette. The donut shop's flashing sign made her scar appear to pulse, to appear first convex and then concave and then convex again. When I stood next to her after she noticed me, I could see that she was much closer to my own age than I had expected, much closer to a normal age than the usual typical eighteen or nineteen going-on-two-hundred-year-old whore I usually saw outside that kind of donut shop.
"Hi," I said.
"Hi. Baby," she said and dropped her cigarette on the pavement, making no move to grind it out and not even attempting to say anything else. I stepped on the smoldering thing for her.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Angelique," she answered and pronounced it "angel eek." "Do you like to party? Do you want to date?"
"Yeah. Sure. I guess so. Don't you?"
"Well?"
"Where'd you get that scar there? On your face there?"
"Where do you think I got it?"
"I think you got it when the car went out of control and crashed over the barrier and landed upside down in the lake. That's what I think."
She looked at me with her head tilted to one side, a kind of schoolgirl gesture of puzzlement that also happened to cover the scarred half of her face with her hair.
"Close enough," she said. She hooked my arm into hers to drag me into the donut shop. I nearly blew the whole deal there arguing with her pimp while three policemen were looking at us. Her pimp could tell I wanted her badly and assumed I was a freak. We sat together in his booth in the donut shop while Angelique was in the toilet. He finally settled on forty dollars but then he nearly walked away with her, fresh from the rest room, when he found out that it was going to be in quarters. He made me feel small and made me walk up to the cashier to change coins back into paper money. The cops laughed at me the whole time.
Driving up to the hills, I tried to talk to my new whore.
"What's your name?" I asked her again.
"I already told you," she told me. "Angelique [angel eek]."
"I mean what's your real name?"
She didn't say anything.
"I will give you an extra twenty dollars that you may keep for yourself above and beyond what that pimp back there may or may not give you if you tell me what your real name is."
"Give me the twenty dollars."
I had to really arch my back to get into my jacket pocket and drive at the same time. I gave her two rolls of quarters. She snickered at the change but did not refuse it like her pimp had.
"Been saving up?" she asked me. "Out of your allowance?"
I said, "What is your real real name?"
"What do you think my real real name is?" she giggled while she stuffed the rolls of silver into her scrappy, crappy little clutch bag thing. The weight of the quarters made it heavy, made it bulge as if it were ripe.
"Well, you know, I think your real real name is...I think it is...Jane."
She held her swollen purse between her legs and pretended to be so surprised that her mouth actually fell open.
"You're absolutely right!" she exclaimed. "Why! That is absolutely amazing! I can't believe it! You must be fucking psychic or something!"
I thought, for a fraction of an instant only, of ripping that trashy little bag out from between her legs and just throwing it out the car window. I didn't.
"Isn't it? Just?" I said that exactly the way it sounds.
I imagined her in the kind of movie I could have made if I could have made the kind of movie she should be in. I was then, suddenly, and I remain, certain that it is possible to recreate the kind of beauty that pulses beneath any sequence of flesh and noise and that flickered in the disfigured whore that slumped next to me. The scar reclined with her; that alone was worth at least twenty-five cents.
"Angel...Jane," I called from the front door of the house I parked at. She emerged from my car, propelled herself from my car, and followed the sound of my voice inside the house through the door I had opened for both of us. I was surprised that she was actually there, that I had brought her to that house, and that she was actually following me into it. I was surprised that she allowed me to rent part of her self and surprised at my self that I had.
Hours later, after she had fucked me, when the lock on the front door turned just loudly enough to pull me back from sleep and the clicking of high-heeled footsteps approached the bed in the room where we lay, I was not at all surprised. I did not try to awaken Angel Eek/Jane or to conceal her. I was a little surprised, though, to notice that I was reaching for my trousers when the light was snapped brilliantly on.
Number Three
Where had the moon been that night?
I had know exactly where the moon had been that night because I was able to see where the stars were not. There were more stars in the sky that night than I have ever seen before or since. They actually glazed the sky.
Though it did not reflect, though it did not even dimly return the visual noise of our dying sun, I knew where that idiotic new moon was hung because it left a perfect hole in the sky and the crowd of stars, a hole in an otherwise perfect scattering of light.
That's how I had known where the moon was though I still wonder how I knew where to find a shotgun. What is important is that I found it. I had just known that when I reached for it, a shotgun would fall into my arms.
I had just known. That's all. And I had known enough to pump a shell into its chamber and I had also known enough to hold it up and point it out and assume an easy kind of crouch to catch the recoil should I have need to pull its trigger. Again. And again.
I had known enough to keep it pointed at Tom. I had known enough to know that no matter how much blood may have been coming out of his head, there would always be quite a lot left and that the best idea would be to keep that shotgun pointed at what he had become and what I had only been able to wound if even that. I saw blood but I didn’t see any pain on his face.
The hole in the sky had been where the moon would have been had I been able to see the moon. It was like damage in the sky, like I had really shot a clean, clear hole in the sky. I kept thinking to myself that I had gotten myself into a real situation and that I had been stupid to get myself there and that if I could have redone or done over the last thousand things I had done to lead me to such a position that I would have done anything, given anything, to have been able to have them redone or done over. I had wished for something to take my finger from that trigger and to stop that blood from moving down Tom's cheek, across Tom's jaw, and underneath Tom's shirt.
I was not able to feel thoughtful for long. I began to feel tired and I grew anxious, as if what I had been able to do with the shotgun had become more and more than merely possible. As if that, because I had curled my finger around that rigger, I had become required to pull it. Again. I would have rather jerked the barrel up to the moon that was not there and just shouted "bang." I could have looked down at Tom and said, "Whoa. Too weird, huh?" I would rather have given that weapon to him, apologized for acting so dumb and frightened like a little kid, and been forgiven by him. I would rather have held the hand he had that wanted to curl around his head but couldn't. I would rather have done all sorts of goddamn things but I was afraid and, instead, I waited and waited and waited for some kind of space to be filled with something that meant something. I waited until my arms just couldn’t hold the shotgun up any longer. Again.
Number Four
I think I must be psychic or something because I couldn't even seem to help myself, I couldn't even stop myself from twisting the wheel and putting the Datsun into a dangerous power slide to get into the parking lot of a deserted motel on a twilight highway. Something washed over me there that came from inside my head but hadn't been there before. It was something like wave after wave of big dead people's feelings.
"That there's Jane Mansfield. No shit," lurched out of Bill's mouth.
"What?" was all that Tobe could manage to say and he spilled his peanuts when he stood up, too.
It was, indeed, Jane Mansfield and she removed herself from her convertible automobile like a diamond dragging itself through a slaughterhouse. She was crying. And she wobbled on her high high-heels. Tobe and Bill watched her wobble and they watched the exquisite moisture from her eyes trace her exquisite cheekbones and then they watched her wobble again. They separately wondered if they were really so lucky.
"He's not here yet. He won't be here for years," Jane Mansfield sobbed but the boys couldn't hear her. They were bumping against the inside of the window with the flies.
"She's crying," whispered Tobe though not to Bill.
By that time, Jane Mansfield had entered the motel office and stood leaning against the Tom's Snacks vending machine.
"Do you know him?" she asked them. "Do you know where he live? Robert Masterson?"
The boys could only barely look at each other and then only just barely back at her.
"Do you know him? Robert Masterson? I have to find him. Does he live near here? Has he been here yet?"
Tobe relocated his forgotten throat, his recently petrified vocal chords.
"What?" he managed.
"We don't know no Mastersons. There's a fellow named Matthews down near Nokesville," Bill offered. "Are you Jane Mansfield? I mean, are you really her?"
"Yes. No. So what?" said Jane Mansfield. "Robert Masterson. Is he here yet? Is he going to come? He drives a brownish Datsun."
"What?" Tobe asked her and Bill at the same time. He felt certain that one of them was bound to know what everybody was talking about.
"I don't know," Jane Mansfield said. "It's a kind of car, I think, and it's called a Datsun. Or a thing that sounds like Datsun. I don't know." And then she slid down the side of the Tom's Snacks vending machine and sat on the floor of the motel office and they could see the tops of her nylon stockings dark against the skin of her thigh. They could see the strap of her garter leading up underneath her skirt. The little dog that she had left in her automobile started to bark in a squeaky kind of way.
"Oh. Missy," said Tobe but he was afraid to do anything more than that, afraid that whatever he did more than that would be the wrong thing. He remembered that it usually was.
"Could I get you a cold drink>" Bill asked Jane Mansfield and found his hand already in his pocket searching out the change he would need if she wanted him to buy a soft drink for her.
"No, thank you. It doesn't matter. Yes. He won't be here for a long time. I just know it. A 7-Up would be nice. He won't be here for years and years. No, I think I'd like a Crush. A nice, cold Orange Crush. Do you have a straw?" Jane Mansfield seemed to be rambling. "It's going to be a long, long time before he gets here. It's going to be too late."
"Would you like to leave a message?" Tobe asked her. "We ain't got no straws."
*
I shifted back into first gear not quite believing I had driven into that dead motel's parking lot in the first place and struggling to sort out or understand the vision that had accosted me there. I was also grateful that I was late because I don't think I could ever have standed to have a girlfriend like that who got her and her little dog's heads cut off.
Number Five
We climbed over the fence, my mother's sister's daughter and me. We were not allowed to swim in that particular pool at any time, but because the night was dark enough and because there was going to be no moon we decided to swim in it. The chain-link fence was a bitch.
Terri stripped off her clothing quickly with an ease and grace of unselfconscious selfabsorbtion that I wished I could emulate. I was struggling with my jockey shorts when she was already cutting through the neon night water.
I only briefly noticed the ribbon of opaque red that trailed her, that hung in the water behind her to mark where she had been. When the white white skin of her back floated above the skin of the water, there was a dark wonderful flower growing around her in the pool and it was beautiful even as its outline spread and dissolved. I was making a noise that would have been screaming if I could have made that noise. I noticed that I had stepped free of my shorts but was still wearing my socks.
She was dead before I could do anything other than notice she was dead.
I was fumbling for phone booth change in the place where the pocket of my jeans would have been if I had remembered to wear my jeans. My hands made crab movements all their own against the bare skin of my tight and I was standing in front of a Quik-Stop pay phone wearing only socks and trying to think how I could explain that my cousin was floating dead in the country club pool and how the worst days of my life were just starting.
Number One
I sat in the bathtub with my poor sister's lame Valentine ribbon making smooth arcs around and across my legs. The hairs on them, my legs, were black and looked like underwater weeds. My mother still knock knock knocked and had begun to sound concerned. I licked the washcloth. I enjoyed the waxy thickness of the soap foam.
After my bath was over, after I knew my mother had drifted away from the door, I decided to wear my oldest swimsuit to bed because it was much, much more comfortable than my pajamas.
Any of them.
Number Two
I was coming out of the Pussy Cat Palace and I had changed all my money into quarters for the arcades when I saw her. She was in the doorway of one of those donut shops. She was one of those whores. She was one of those whores but she had a scar running through her eye and across her cheek. She didn't see me or even notice me for a while so I got to look at her before I had to pay attention to her. She was reasonably pretty but the scar, twisting down her face and accentuating the lines of the bones beneath her face and echoing the sweep of her shoulders and drawing me with it under the collar of her blouse, made her beautiful. She looked at me and noticed me staring at her after I had left her no other choice. She stared back and she sucked deep on her cigarette. The donut shop's flashing sign made her scar appear to pulse, to appear first convex and then concave and then convex again. When I stood next to her after she noticed me, I could see that she was much closer to my own age than I had expected, much closer to a normal age than the usual typical eighteen or nineteen going-on-two-hundred-year-old whore I usually saw outside that kind of donut shop.
"Hi," I said.
"Hi. Baby," she said and dropped her cigarette on the pavement, making no move to grind it out and not even attempting to say anything else. I stepped on the smoldering thing for her.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Angelique," she answered and pronounced it "angel eek." "Do you like to party? Do you want to date?"
"Yeah. Sure. I guess so. Don't you?"
"Well?"
"Where'd you get that scar there? On your face there?"
"Where do you think I got it?"
"I think you got it when the car went out of control and crashed over the barrier and landed upside down in the lake. That's what I think."
She looked at me with her head tilted to one side, a kind of schoolgirl gesture of puzzlement that also happened to cover the scarred half of her face with her hair.
"Close enough," she said. She hooked my arm into hers to drag me into the donut shop. I nearly blew the whole deal there arguing with her pimp while three policemen were looking at us. Her pimp could tell I wanted her badly and assumed I was a freak. We sat together in his booth in the donut shop while Angelique was in the toilet. He finally settled on forty dollars but then he nearly walked away with her, fresh from the rest room, when he found out that it was going to be in quarters. He made me feel small and made me walk up to the cashier to change coins back into paper money. The cops laughed at me the whole time.
Driving up to the hills, I tried to talk to my new whore.
"What's your name?" I asked her again.
"I already told you," she told me. "Angelique [angel eek]."
"I mean what's your real name?"
She didn't say anything.
"I will give you an extra twenty dollars that you may keep for yourself above and beyond what that pimp back there may or may not give you if you tell me what your real name is."
"Give me the twenty dollars."
I had to really arch my back to get into my jacket pocket and drive at the same time. I gave her two rolls of quarters. She snickered at the change but did not refuse it like her pimp had.
"Been saving up?" she asked me. "Out of your allowance?"
I said, "What is your real real name?"
"What do you think my real real name is?" she giggled while she stuffed the rolls of silver into her scrappy, crappy little clutch bag thing. The weight of the quarters made it heavy, made it bulge as if it were ripe.
"Well, you know, I think your real real name is...I think it is...Jane."
She held her swollen purse between her legs and pretended to be so surprised that her mouth actually fell open.
"You're absolutely right!" she exclaimed. "Why! That is absolutely amazing! I can't believe it! You must be fucking psychic or something!"
I thought, for a fraction of an instant only, of ripping that trashy little bag out from between her legs and just throwing it out the car window. I didn't.
"Isn't it? Just?" I said that exactly the way it sounds.
I imagined her in the kind of movie I could have made if I could have made the kind of movie she should be in. I was then, suddenly, and I remain, certain that it is possible to recreate the kind of beauty that pulses beneath any sequence of flesh and noise and that flickered in the disfigured whore that slumped next to me. The scar reclined with her; that alone was worth at least twenty-five cents.
"Angel...Jane," I called from the front door of the house I parked at. She emerged from my car, propelled herself from my car, and followed the sound of my voice inside the house through the door I had opened for both of us. I was surprised that she was actually there, that I had brought her to that house, and that she was actually following me into it. I was surprised that she allowed me to rent part of her self and surprised at my self that I had.
Hours later, after she had fucked me, when the lock on the front door turned just loudly enough to pull me back from sleep and the clicking of high-heeled footsteps approached the bed in the room where we lay, I was not at all surprised. I did not try to awaken Angel Eek/Jane or to conceal her. I was a little surprised, though, to notice that I was reaching for my trousers when the light was snapped brilliantly on.
Number Three
Where had the moon been that night?
I had know exactly where the moon had been that night because I was able to see where the stars were not. There were more stars in the sky that night than I have ever seen before or since. They actually glazed the sky.
Though it did not reflect, though it did not even dimly return the visual noise of our dying sun, I knew where that idiotic new moon was hung because it left a perfect hole in the sky and the crowd of stars, a hole in an otherwise perfect scattering of light.
That's how I had known where the moon was though I still wonder how I knew where to find a shotgun. What is important is that I found it. I had just known that when I reached for it, a shotgun would fall into my arms.
I had just known. That's all. And I had known enough to pump a shell into its chamber and I had also known enough to hold it up and point it out and assume an easy kind of crouch to catch the recoil should I have need to pull its trigger. Again. And again.
I had known enough to keep it pointed at Tom. I had known enough to know that no matter how much blood may have been coming out of his head, there would always be quite a lot left and that the best idea would be to keep that shotgun pointed at what he had become and what I had only been able to wound if even that. I saw blood but I didn’t see any pain on his face.
The hole in the sky had been where the moon would have been had I been able to see the moon. It was like damage in the sky, like I had really shot a clean, clear hole in the sky. I kept thinking to myself that I had gotten myself into a real situation and that I had been stupid to get myself there and that if I could have redone or done over the last thousand things I had done to lead me to such a position that I would have done anything, given anything, to have been able to have them redone or done over. I had wished for something to take my finger from that trigger and to stop that blood from moving down Tom's cheek, across Tom's jaw, and underneath Tom's shirt.
I was not able to feel thoughtful for long. I began to feel tired and I grew anxious, as if what I had been able to do with the shotgun had become more and more than merely possible. As if that, because I had curled my finger around that rigger, I had become required to pull it. Again. I would have rather jerked the barrel up to the moon that was not there and just shouted "bang." I could have looked down at Tom and said, "Whoa. Too weird, huh?" I would rather have given that weapon to him, apologized for acting so dumb and frightened like a little kid, and been forgiven by him. I would rather have held the hand he had that wanted to curl around his head but couldn't. I would rather have done all sorts of goddamn things but I was afraid and, instead, I waited and waited and waited for some kind of space to be filled with something that meant something. I waited until my arms just couldn’t hold the shotgun up any longer. Again.
Number Four
I think I must be psychic or something because I couldn't even seem to help myself, I couldn't even stop myself from twisting the wheel and putting the Datsun into a dangerous power slide to get into the parking lot of a deserted motel on a twilight highway. Something washed over me there that came from inside my head but hadn't been there before. It was something like wave after wave of big dead people's feelings.
*
"That there's Jane Mansfield. No shit," lurched out of Bill's mouth.
"What?" was all that Tobe could manage to say and he spilled his peanuts when he stood up, too.
It was, indeed, Jane Mansfield and she removed herself from her convertible automobile like a diamond dragging itself through a slaughterhouse. She was crying. And she wobbled on her high high-heels. Tobe and Bill watched her wobble and they watched the exquisite moisture from her eyes trace her exquisite cheekbones and then they watched her wobble again. They separately wondered if they were really so lucky.
"He's not here yet. He won't be here for years," Jane Mansfield sobbed but the boys couldn't hear her. They were bumping against the inside of the window with the flies.
"She's crying," whispered Tobe though not to Bill.
By that time, Jane Mansfield had entered the motel office and stood leaning against the Tom's Snacks vending machine.
"Do you know him?" she asked them. "Do you know where he live? Robert Masterson?"
The boys could only barely look at each other and then only just barely back at her.
"Do you know him? Robert Masterson? I have to find him. Does he live near here? Has he been here yet?"
Tobe relocated his forgotten throat, his recently petrified vocal chords.
"What?" he managed.
"We don't know no Mastersons. There's a fellow named Matthews down near Nokesville," Bill offered. "Are you Jane Mansfield? I mean, are you really her?"
"Yes. No. So what?" said Jane Mansfield. "Robert Masterson. Is he here yet? Is he going to come? He drives a brownish Datsun."
"What?" Tobe asked her and Bill at the same time. He felt certain that one of them was bound to know what everybody was talking about.
"I don't know," Jane Mansfield said. "It's a kind of car, I think, and it's called a Datsun. Or a thing that sounds like Datsun. I don't know." And then she slid down the side of the Tom's Snacks vending machine and sat on the floor of the motel office and they could see the tops of her nylon stockings dark against the skin of her thigh. They could see the strap of her garter leading up underneath her skirt. The little dog that she had left in her automobile started to bark in a squeaky kind of way.
"Oh. Missy," said Tobe but he was afraid to do anything more than that, afraid that whatever he did more than that would be the wrong thing. He remembered that it usually was.
"Could I get you a cold drink>" Bill asked Jane Mansfield and found his hand already in his pocket searching out the change he would need if she wanted him to buy a soft drink for her.
"No, thank you. It doesn't matter. Yes. He won't be here for a long time. I just know it. A 7-Up would be nice. He won't be here for years and years. No, I think I'd like a Crush. A nice, cold Orange Crush. Do you have a straw?" Jane Mansfield seemed to be rambling. "It's going to be a long, long time before he gets here. It's going to be too late."
"Would you like to leave a message?" Tobe asked her. "We ain't got no straws."
*
I shifted back into first gear not quite believing I had driven into that dead motel's parking lot in the first place and struggling to sort out or understand the vision that had accosted me there. I was also grateful that I was late because I don't think I could ever have standed to have a girlfriend like that who got her and her little dog's heads cut off.
Number Five
We climbed over the fence, my mother's sister's daughter and me. We were not allowed to swim in that particular pool at any time, but because the night was dark enough and because there was going to be no moon we decided to swim in it. The chain-link fence was a bitch.
Terri stripped off her clothing quickly with an ease and grace of unselfconscious selfabsorbtion that I wished I could emulate. I was struggling with my jockey shorts when she was already cutting through the neon night water.
I only briefly noticed the ribbon of opaque red that trailed her, that hung in the water behind her to mark where she had been. When the white white skin of her back floated above the skin of the water, there was a dark wonderful flower growing around her in the pool and it was beautiful even as its outline spread and dissolved. I was making a noise that would have been screaming if I could have made that noise. I noticed that I had stepped free of my shorts but was still wearing my socks.
She was dead before I could do anything other than notice she was dead.
I was fumbling for phone booth change in the place where the pocket of my jeans would have been if I had remembered to wear my jeans. My hands made crab movements all their own against the bare skin of my tight and I was standing in front of a Quik-Stop pay phone wearing only socks and trying to think how I could explain that my cousin was floating dead in the country club pool and how the worst days of my life were just starting.
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