Floating City (23 page)

Instead, Margot started yelling at me. “I can't believe you spoke to Darlene's girls! Why would you do that without talking to me? Didn't I
tell
you I didn't think it was a good idea? And then you go and do it
behind my back
?”

Taken completely by surprise, I felt my voice get shaky. “I—I'm sorry. I thought Darlene was going to tell you.”

How could this have happened between her message and my call? It couldn't have been twenty minutes.

“She did tell me! She told me
she's really pissed
because that girl Cathy told you all this shit she shouldn't have told you!”

I wheedled and pleaded, insisting Cathy hadn't told me anything confidential or damaging. But Margot wouldn't yield. She'd trusted me and I took advantage of her and now this little twit Cathy was telling all her friends that I was going to help them organize for better pay and better working conditions and maybe even make them famous with my documentary.

“
What?”
I said.

“
Yeah, you're like Cesar Chavez for these women. Darlene thinks you're trying to poach her girls.”

“Poach her girls? That's absolutely insane.”

“That's what I was trying to tell you, genius. When these psychotic ladies find someone who listens to their sob stories, they think he's Prince Charming. And suddenly it's Professor Venkatesh this and Sudhir that and I have Darlene screaming in my ear.”

She went on for some time, telling me I should have listened to her and my judgment was suspect and thanks but no thanks for the offer of help with Carla but there was real life involved here, it wasn't some kind of
research project . . .

When she hung up, I felt horrible. I had made my fair share of fumbles in my work, but this was on another level. I knew that doors opened only a few times before they closed forever. I had finally gained enough access to carry out a study of sex across the entire region if I wanted—I was ready to make appointments with strip club managers, hotel clerks, bartenders—and I had blown it all by becoming too eager. My dreams of success were falling like a mist.

The worst part was, Margot was right. I should have anticipated this kind of problem. In nearly every study I'd done of illegal worlds, I had experienced the shocking speed of rumor. That's why I was usually so patient, waiting months to ensure that people knew exactly what my intentions and research questions were. This was all because of the divorce, because of my impatience and my hunger. I should have gone more slowly. I got greedy. And I really should have kept Margot in the loop. She was the one who was speaking up for me, opening doors for me. What would I do now? Was there any way to win back her trust? Or was it hopeless and broken like every other goddamn thing in my miserable life?

•   •   •

T
he answering machine taketh away, but the answering machine giveth also. After Margot's message there was a second one, from Martin. With great excitement in his voice, he said he
wanted me to meet him for a drink. He named a private club on Forty-fourth Street.

I said I'd come right down.

On the way, I thought about telling Martin what had just happened with Margot. If anyone knew how difficult “easy women” could be, he would be the guy. And we'd bond and I'd get the access I needed and write the study and make the documentary and all would be glorious again. But as I got closer to the club, walking past the elegant hotels of Midtown, the idea began to disturb instead of comfort me. This was the portal to the high-end sex trade. The doormen I passed were actually middlemen. The valet could put you in a cab to a brothel. Looking through Martin's eyes, I saw a glutton's feast. But when I looked through my own eyes, even though I was after information instead of sex, I also saw a glutton's feast—and
I didn't want to have anything in common with Martin.

Inside the bar, Martin was sitting with two other well-dressed businessmen. They were loud and happy, well into their first drink at just past three in the afternoon. They greeted me as if they'd known me for a lifetime. “Sit, sit,” one of the men said, pushing a chair into a more welcoming angle.

Martin was grinning. “I told you there'd be interest in this,” he said.

The men shot out their hands. “I'm Jonathan,” one said. “This is Nate.”

I ordered a drink as Jonathan continued with the story he was telling, something about a fight at the office. When my drink came, Nate cut him off. “Enough about the office. Let's talk about sex.”

They all looked at me. I looked back at them. Nobody wanted to start.

Finally, Nate laughed. “Let's start with this—what do you think about us?”

I didn't know what to say. First I had to get to know them, I said.

“It's not a crime,” Nate said. “What we're doing is not a crime.”

“Actually, paying for sex is a crime,” I said. It felt cleaner that way. But oddly, that seemed to spark them.

“Paying for a good time is not a crime,” Nate said.

“You're writing a book?” Jonathan asked.

“Not sure. I've been moving to documentaries lately.”

Jonathan studied me for a moment. “No faces, right?”

“Yeah,” Nate said. “You gotta put us behind a screen and disguise us with those Darth Vader voices.”

The last thing I wanted to do was expose them as individuals, I explained. I was going to add that using false names to protect privacy was actually part of the university rules, but that just reminded me that I had no interest in studying them. I started to get anxious. I wanted to get out of the world of johns.

But Jonathan took a breath and made up his mind. “Ask me anything. I have no shame.”

Again, I wasn't sure what to ask. Jonathan helped me. “You're looking for the Big Reason. The Big Why. Why do we do it? Why put our marriages at risk? Why risk the scandal? But it's really not that complicated.”

Nate shook his head in violent disagreement. “It
is
complicated. I mean, it sure can
get
complicated. That's why you have to keep seeing different women. Don't get attached.”

“And what if they get attached to you?”

Nate looked glum. Clearly, attachment was a big issue that I'd never considered.

Jonathan leaned closer and confided, “Nate just went through this. What was her name? The one who rented an apartment on your block because she thought you loved her!”

Nate put his head in his hands, theatrically ashamed. “I should never have taken her to the fucking Caribbean.”

“One ride in first class and she's yours forever,” Jonathan said with an evil laugh.

Nate began telling the story, his voice ranging between comedy act and confession. Then Jonathan jumped in with a story of his own, the prison of his marriage to a woman he married too young.

Eventually, Martin stepped in. “Sudhir, the thing all men ask themselves”—he always used my name before he said what was really on his mind, I noticed—“is a very simple question. Do you want to do it again? Knowing what you know, risking what you risk, do you still want to meet the next lithe young woman in the next expensive hotel?”

Jonathan rubbed his hand over his jaw. “I have to get out of my fucking marriage.”

Nate asked if I was married. I nodded.

“So you know what it's like.”

I nodded again, not sure how far I wanted to go with this.

“You just stop listening to each other,” Nate continued.

“You stop doing a lot of things,” Martin said.

“I know,” I said. “I'm separated.”

As if I had said the secret password, the three men exchanged glances that turned into smiles. “I knew it,” Nate said. “I knew there was a reason you were so interested!”

I glared at Martin. He knew damn well he'd all but forced me into this meeting. What had he been telling them?

“What's it like to be separated?” Jonathan asked.

“Separation is
hard
,” Nate said.

This led to a discussion of comfort, which they viewed in a surprisingly straightforward way. Because women had wounded us, each in our own way, all men need comfort. And because women had wounded us, each in our own way, there was only one way to heal that wound. And only when the wound healed a little could we go back to our normal lives and our normal wives.

By the end of 2004, after nearly fifteen years of research, I could count on two hands the number of conversations I had had with johns. But every single conversation had one feature in common:
they all wanted to confess, to be heard, to create
community
around their desire. None of them wanted to believe they were doing anything harmful. They all wanted a way out of the isolation of their secrecy. In fact, while my mind wandered, Nate began arguing that the need for comfort somehow made prostitution legal—or, at least, “not a real crime.”

All the men grinned. In fact, there was a big poker game coming up at the end of the week, right here at the club.
You should come! It would be great!
“Just come and meet everyone. You'll learn everything you want. They're great guys.”

“Let me think about it,” I said, mumbling something about objectivity and detachment. But after we'd said good-bye and I began walking back to the subway, I asked myself what I was doing with these men. I felt bad because it was so obvious they wanted to talk, to share, to escape their isolation. But in sociology there's a rule of thumb: just because something is interesting, that doesn't make it relevant. I was studying the experiences of sex workers at the higher end of the income scale. Did I really need the views of johns?

I walked on past the fancy hotels, past the doormen and valets and clerks who all played a role in this vast interconnected web of sexual commerce. Musing about a documentary was one thing, I told myself, and the idea that I might break ground on a hidden world excited my ego. But on a scientific level, I had to stay more focused.

Or was I just afraid?

The truth was, these men were
exactly
the kind of thing I was looking for, another connection between high and low. But they were also a mirror. Their loneliness was my loneliness, their need for comfort identical to my own. And looking in that mirror was not something I wanted to do.

As I walked past another hotel, under an old-fashioned gold marquee, the doorman gave me a welcoming nod. I ducked my head and hurried for the subway.

•   •   •

O
nce again, the phone broke the gloom inside my apartment. Margot was calling again, this time from somewhere on the street. The lively sounds of cars and construction came forward whenever her voice stopped. “You gotta come help me, Sudhir. I need to find Carla right away. Things are messed up, I don't know what's going on, and I can't find her.”

Margot sounded confused. This was not like her.

“I'm on my way—but what happened?”

“
Carla
got beat. I had it backwards. I just found out. I feel like a real asshole, Sudhir. That guy was talking at me and I don't know Carla all that well and I just—I fucked up. I should have trusted her.”

The new story was that the client had a penchant for a type of sexual role play that involved physical abuse—actual slapping and hitting. When Carla refused to continue without a lot more money and the eager client went to get some, she called a friend for help.

I could picture the scene. Carla wouldn't want to fail. She probably thought,
Just stay put and solve the problem or else Margot will fire me
.

But Margot thought it was her fault. She felt terrible about it. “I've seen this happen before,” she said. “These young women, they get beat, they go through a bad stretch, they don't trust anyone. I should have worked with her more. She just seemed so strong. And then this guy beats her too.”

Now Margot was worried that Carla would give up and go running back to the projects—where, ironically, she probably faced a much greater likelihood of violence.

This was definitely a possibility. I thought of Shine. In his world, violence was routine, practically a requirement. Years of bitter experience had taught them there was no other way to enforce their unwritten laws. But for people like Carla and especially Mar
got, violence was still shocking. In a way, on a professional level, this actually
helped
Margot by giving her a market for her conflict resolution services. But it also meant that she needed to prove and re-prove the utility of her soft approach. Taking on the Carlas of the world made it difficult since they were likely to ratchet things up by taking disputes and inflaming them. And looking at it from Carla's point of view, that was another reason moving up was so scary. When you exist between worlds, the rules are in flux and you don't know how to handle things. Soft or hard? The old way or the new way? Which do you choose when your life might depend on it?

There was yet another ugly complication. The john had hired a private detective to find Carla. This was surprising because he was a prominent lawyer from Washington D.C., and usually people like that fade into the woodwork when things get dicey. But he was so furious at being “cheated” he actually seemed willing to risk his reputation, or perhaps he felt this was a necessary preemptive strike to save his reputation. So despite her distress over Carla's pain and suffering, Margot really needed to find her and talk her into giving back the money. It wasn't fair, it wasn't right, but it would really be better for all of them.

This was way out of my pay grade. “Maybe we should talk to a friendly police officer,” I suggested.

“I told Michael already. There's nothing he can do.”

“Margot, just to be clear, I cannot be involved in anything criminal,” I said. I enunciated each word.

Then I said to hell with it and went out looking for Carla. The Lower East Side was her home neighborhood, so I headed there. It didn't take long to find out that she'd been living with a friend and working out of a local bar. And in that bar I found her. “Margot's looking for you,” I said. “She knows that bastard beat you up and she's sorry.”