Spent (16 page)

Part 5

“Come get me out of here.”

36

B
ack in my L.A.
apartment I was digging through Mom's photo albums, looking for a joyful memory of her to replace the image I had in my mind of her barfing up milk and wasting away on urine-soaked sheets.

One of her albums was from the seventies. It was half full and called “Baby's Milestones: Birth to Seven Years.” The empty half of it was full of illustrations of squiggly babies where pictures were supposed to go and blank lines for describing them. She had taped, cut, and pasted the photos with a fastidiousness that bordered on obsession. She even wound a creepy lock of my dishwater-blonde hair on a page titled “first haircut.” She added other notes about my budding personality in her poised, secretarial handwriting, like “Antonia is very sneaky.”

Evidently, I was born sneaky. It's right there, on my six months page.
What was I trying to sneak at six months old? My stuffed Miss Piggy? What did I want so badly that I had to attempt to fool my mom in order to get it?
On other pages, in cursive blue ink, she recorded my weight, height, and the shots that the doctors gave me every three months. She ripped and glued a ratty beige square from my baby blanket. She listed the ice cream I favored (chocolate) and my first word (Dada). She commented that I didn't cry much, even when she most expected me to, like at the doctor's, or on trips. By six months old I was a trooper, prepared for an emotional showdown.

Nine long months passed before I said “Mama,” according to her notes. On that page, Mom noted that I “cried very loudly when slapped.”

After one year, she stopped recording. Blank pages followed, as if I'd disappeared. But really, she probably just returned to work full time. She was a paralegal and in at least three women's organizations. She had shit to do.

Mom kept my wrinkled
report cards from Kindergarten, first, and second grades from the private Catholic school I attended, shoved in between the pages of the photo album. My gross baby hair spilled out. Seeing the report cards again revealed another theme—I had low self-regard and shaky confidence. “Needs encouragement,” one nun wrote. “Needs to gain self-confidence.” Math made me cry, but much of my bewilderment was religion. The bulk of my early education was singing songs about the blood of Christ. Clapping along with repeat phrases about lambs and blood and traitors. I enjoyed Mass with the blue and purple stained glass windows and the shiny deep brown pews. It was a giant place of sunlight and peacefulness. Sometimes, it was a little scary with the man in white holding that huge cup in the air and waving it in circles. Thing was, we weren't even Catholic. We belonged to a Baptist Church that was brown, chilly, and full of old people. We dropped in for tune-ups during the popular holidays. I attended bible school where I made wobbly structures out of yarn and Popsicle sticks with the other kids, and kissed my first boy, an older freckled ginger named Roger.

In the photo albums were pictures of a Hawaiian vacation we took when I was about twelve. The trip wasn't just a vacation: my svelte hunk of a big brother lived there at the time, working as a cook. He'd been happy while in Hawaii and was thrilled to see us all: aunts, uncles, and my pretty, valedictorian, cheerleading cousins. A clan. Years later, he'd be hooked on drugs and spend most of his adult life in prison or homeless in a van with his infant daughter. One night in Hawaii, when the adults were inside the rented house drinking, I plotted sneaking out. My plan was to meet the local blonde surfer guy I'd met on the beach and make out with him.

I crept out alone and was surprised to find him, sitting on a rock under the stars in bare feet, like he'd said he would be. I didn't know how old he was. He'd taught my cousin how to surf the day before. I kissed him for a long time but didn't know what came next. I got scared and ran back inside the house where my family was sleeping.

Here is the photograph. Mom is beautiful and tan and lounges on a chair, reading with a floppy, blue sun hat on her head and big, dark sunglasses. Her shapely, toned legs are strong. I want to be as smart and pretty as she is. I'm struck by the geography of her face: her strong jaw, her straight teeth and regal nose. We look alike: our long arms and slim hands. We tan the same deep brown, our pale Irish skin nuanced by Algonquin Indian gold tones. I don't have her beautiful legs. I have her eyes.

In the Hawaii pictures, I look exactly like my mom in the face, with one difference: I smiled to conceal my discomfort. She smiled when things were going well.

37

B
ack at Pleasures, I
grabbed the pole, hoisted myself upside down, and stared into my blue gray eyes in the mirror. They looked like my Mom's, except mine were wild with rage. I buzzed with grief inside Pleasures. I would never see Mom's legs again. Her voice did loops in my mind. It was always there, underneath the stripper music, daring me to go on without her.
Fuck everyone
, I thought, flinging my bra onto the stage.

In the distance all I could see were the blurred heads, necks, and shoulders of men slumped in their seats as if they'd been sitting there for weeks, nursing pints of beer and watching us. Their defeated faces soothed me. I inhaled the familiar stench of peach Victoria's Secret peach body spray and Lysol and lowered myself to the ground onto my black stilettos like balancing on two ballpoint pens. The grubby red carpet seemed to spin beneath me as I walked towards the few clients. It was dead inside Pleasures but, angry as I was, I felt at home there.

Then I caught him looking at me. He was a pasty blonde, chubby kid in tan shorts and a baggy white T-shirt. He didn't look old enough to be at Pleasures.
He's got a fake ID
. He sipped clear liquid from a rocks glass and said he was from Long Beach.

“How'd you get here?” I said.

“Train.” He showed me pictures of his two cats, told me about his mother's boyfriend, their arguments, and their pot smoking.

“Where's your dad?” I asked.

“Here in Pasadena.” He said his name was Shawn and, tipsy, slid his arm around my shoulders. Onstage, an Asian girl with thigh-high boots and fake reading glasses gyrated to “Bold as Love” by Jimi Hendrix. I watched her spin expertly around the pole. My thighs stuck to the seat. I scooted closer to him and crossed my legs.

“I'm a virgin,” he said.

“No, you're not.” I squeezed his knee. I believed him.

“I really am.” He was three vodka tonics brave. I imagined he ordered them because it seemed mature, like a drink Alec Baldwin would order in a romantic comedy.

“Can you show me?” he asked. “I'll pay you.”

“Yes.” It spilled out of my mouth before I could take it back. After a few more dances and a few more drinks Shawn was drunk. I gave him my phone number so we could set something up. He suggested we meet at my apartment where I would teach him how to kiss, show him how to fuck. And for this lesson, I'd be paid. It wasn't a lot of money, but this wasn't only about the money. It's about drying the dishes, emptying the garbage. It's about a childhood of digging through Mom's purse and chewing all of her skinny red sticks of Dentyne gum while we sang out loud to “The Tide is High” on the radio. It's about stomping through the last hospital when the power went out looking for warm sheets, a warm towel, enraged when I had to wait.
Fuck all of you
, I thought, with my arms crossed.

Mom raised me to believe I could do what I liked with my body. “Never feel like you have to have kids,” she had said between drags of her More menthols, staring into the green light before lunging forward. I never felt like I did, and wondered if she felt trapped and pressured by having me. She hadn't raised me to sell my body for money, but she hadn't raised me not to sell my body for money either.

Shawn showed up with
his bicycle, which he carried up my stairs and leaned against the wall in the hallway. He handed me a sealed white envelope. I tore it open and counted the stiff bills. Three hundred. I felt silly in a dress with red and green cherries on it and wished I would have worn something more severe and authoritative. I led him to my couch and French kissed him deeply

“Like this,” I said. The Black Keys played quietly in the background on NPR. I removed my bra and slid his hands along my bare hips. I kissed him for exactly three songs, and then I led him to my bedroom, where white tea-light candles burned softly. I tore open a condom and showed him how to put it on, careful not to seem like an airline attendant demonstrating a life vest. He was resting on clean white sheets, exactly like the ones on Mom's last hospital bed when she'd said, “no diapers” while she shivered and moaned. I fucked Shawn until I felt something and the thing I felt was fucked.

That afternoon, a giant bird-of-paradise outside my window reminded me of Mom's mighty rhubarb plant. It kept infiltrating her strawberries, no matter how many times she trimmed it back. Nothing could stop its spiky orange and purple blossoms, how it leaned into the afternoon sun, hungry for light.

Shawn couldn't come. He was nervous. Flesh was too scary. Squishy. Confrontational. “It's okay,” I said and used my mouth and hand to stroke him until he was hard again.

He finally came with one hand on his cock and the other resting on my belly. Moments later, I sprung up and brought him a clean white towel signaling the end of our first lesson. “I'll make you a CD with rock music you'll like,” he said. I gave him a tentative hug and he left. I locked my doors and turned up the radio. Loud. PJ Harvey sang on the radio in the other room. Little fish, big fish, swimming in the water, and I thought about all of us dancing in the cloudy, cracked mirrors at Pleasures, the daughters of mothers who taught us the value of a cheap underwire bra holding our 36Cs in place, and how to slide on our fishnet stockings so the seam climbed straight up our legs—how to smile when impossibly sad.

38

P
asadena is afraid of
nipples and their nipple phobia is how they succeeded closing down Pleasures when I stripped there. At first, they made us cover our nipples at all times, so we cut heart shapes from flowered wallpaper and glued them to our nipples before dancing onstage. A couple weeks later, they enforced the red line rule: we couldn't be topless beyond a line of red tape marking the legal yardage between our nipples and the customers seated at the stage. Finally, we couldn't take our tops off anywhere in the club—in effect making Pleasures a non-strip club. No longer could Marines, drug dealers, and felons enjoy the privilege of beer, shooting pool, eating an overcooked steak, and getting a table dance under one roof. They had to go to Vegas for that.

By the time Pasadena won their nipple war, Mom had been dead several months. I was at a loss for what to do. “Do you want some of my sensual massage clients?” Kara asked me. “It's the best blue-collar gig out there.” Since Mom died, I couldn't get myself together to audition at any more clubs. The blinding migraines were back. I couldn't remember to buy toothpaste no matter how many times I wrote it on my hand with a black Sharpie. My socks didn't match. Kara showed me how to place some ads online in the adult services section and handed me some coconut oil. We set some appointments up.

After Dennis and Steve, one of the appointments I made was with a guy named Joe, who wanted to meet me in a hotel lobby in Little Tokyo. I was scrambling for rent, cat-sitter cash, and a little spending dough when Joe said, “Will you meet me for a drink in the lobby first?”

Be agreeable, never desperate, Kara had coached.

“Sure. I'll be wearing a black dress with a jacket.”

At 9:20
p.m.
I pulled into the parking lot of the lobby and walked in. I'd emailed Joe a picture so he had no problem recognizing me. A tall Latino man wearing a black motorcycle jacket waved me over to a table where he sat in front of a green bottle of beer and a dish full of wasabi peas. He was thirty-something. He reached in with thick fingers and popped two in his mouth.

“Want one?” He swished the last of his Becks around in the bottle before swallowing the final sip.

“No, thanks.” Everything about Joe was thick.

“I'm married,” he held up his giant hand to show me his ring. I shrugged.

“Lots of people are,” I said.

“This could be a regular thing,” he said.

“Great.” His cell phone sat on the table in front of him. He glanced at it. I did too.

“So, you do fetishes?” He asked.

“I have some clients who enjoy that. I have a lot of equipment: ropes, cuffs, titty-clamps, a blow-up butt plug—you name it,” I said. I wished he would've hinted he wanted kink when he called.

“I don't want anything up my butt.” This was supposed to make me laugh, so I chuckled and instantly regretted calling Joe a couple of times to confirm—something I never ever do. Never chase a client down. Always be the one chased.

“Okay. Nothing up your butt.” I looked around for a clock but didn't see one. My phone was in my purse. He was probably one of those guys who resented hiring women so he wanted to fuck with me and make wise cracks. A time waster.

“So, you're going to give me a massage?”

“Mmhmm,” I said.

“And you're going to give me a handjob?”

“Yeah.”

“I have two hundred for you, but there's more for the taking.”

“Okay.” More meant more time, which meant we should hurry so I could make another appointment downtown.

“Shall we get out of here?” I asked.

“Let's do that.”

Outside, in the parking lot, there were two guys hanging out in front of a van. One was bald and the other was short with lots of brown curly hair and glasses.

“These guys want to talk to you,” Joe said.

“What?”

The bald guy told me to turn around, then cuffed me and shoved me in the back of a van. “Is this real?” I asked. He showed me the badge pinned to his chest. “This is real.”