Working Sex (22 page)

“This is my favorite,” he said, turning and winking at me. “If you know what I mean.” I didn’t. The wall tiles, carpet, wicker wash basket, and soap were all shades of black. The only things in the room that weren’t black were the red plastic marble-effect bath and some off-white socks and underpants on the floor by the wash basket.

“Check out the sexy ceiling,” he slurred, trying to gesture but sloshing his drink and falling against the doorframe. I looked up, seeing my reflection and behind me, a hand with a glass in it. I smiled at myself. “We’ll get in there later . . . ″ he said, referring to the bath. I glanced over at it and noticed several brown marks where the plastic had melted. Cigarette burns, I guessed. “I’ll soap you up.”

“That’ll be great,” I said, my eyes flicking to the soap. It hung from the faucet by a black piece of rope. Again he took
my arm, more as support for himself than as a guide for me. He pointed haphazardly to a chrome and glass coffee table.

“There’s some coke there if you want it.”

“Thanks.” I knelt down to do some, but was distracted by a bowl of chocolates in colorful, shiny wrapping on top of the table, then, through the glass, at things under the table. There was a slipper upside down with a foil milk bottle top stuck to the sole. Also there was some mail that hadn’t been opened. I couldn’t remember the john’s name, but I knew it didn’t correspond to the one on the mail.

“Don’t worry there’s plenty more,” he said, presumably thinking I was staring at the coke.

“Right!”

“Help yourself to chocolate too. Sit down. Let me get you a drink. Whiskey okay?”

“Great!” He went to the kitchen.

I couldn’t see a cat, but the couch was covered in hairs. I realized there was an animal smell to the whole place. It was only a minute or two before he returned. The curtains were dark green, made from a synthetic velvety fabric. The TV was probably the biggest you could get, five years ago. It already looked dated. There were birthday cards on top. Most had cartoon characters or beautiful naked men on them. It must be his birthday. I looked around for more evidence of this, but there wasn’t any. The TV might have been the
designated area for birthday. Every other surface was covereded with something. A figurine, a photo in Perspex frame, a cuddly toy, or glass something.

“So what did you have in mind?” I asked, with innuendo in my voice and the best sexy expression I could muster. He must have been anticipating my question because he threw a black Adidas sports bag at my feet. Perhaps he thought things were moving too slowly. I opened it and looked in.

“Help yourself,” he said nonchalantly. “It might be easier if you empty it.”

“Where?”

“On the floor.”

I tipped the gear out onto the carpet and started sifting through it. It was mostly leather, rubber, and metal, with an occasional dick pump or handkerchief. There was nothing surprising in the whole mess, but it looked dramatic against the red carpet, like props for a horror film. “Put that cock ring on,” he said, “and leave your boots on.” He asked me to walk around the room and lean against walls. I kept checking out the room. The curtains were hemmed in a mismatched thread and held together with a pin where they met.

“I like that,” he said, referring to my facial expression. I must have been frowning.

I had the idea of getting us into the bedroom to make him cum. I headed toward it and said, “Come in here.”

“I like that,” he said again. “Tell me what to do.” He collected his cigarettes, whiskey, and poppers, squinted his eyes, and said once more, “I like that.” He scurried into the bedroom and onto the bed. Ash dropped onto the sheet from the cigarette in his hand. I lay on top of him, focusing on the sheet. Like the couch it was coated with cat hair. I turned my head to the side, facing an ashtray full of cigarette butts. I turned the other way. Now I faced a red plastic foldout chair with a cup of cold tea or coffee on it. Mold floated on top. I closed my eyes and pretended I was somewhere else, in my lovely home, with my lovely baby. This worked long enough to get the job done. He came. I left.

I
lost a lot of my old buttery popcorn in my mid-twenties and my buzzers got pretty death defying. My fun house had always been filled with mounds and mounds of buttery popcorn, so now there was all this empty space where the popcorn had been. Everything sagged and swayed. My buzzers looked like used condoms tied off and thrown in the street. Ugly stripey-stripes cut big gashes all over them. They looked like they’d been in an accident with a badly trained tiger. Who’d want to slam their hands down on my deflated buzzers now?

Pushed up in their forced fanfare, they looked fine. I’d roll
them up like a hot sticky bun and push them into promotional soda cups. It was when they unfurled that I had problems.

But they weren’t as death defying when I was twenty years old and my fun house was full of buttery popcorn. Back then I was shakin’ my clam at the amusement park for wall-eyed pickpockets, reading their palms. Everyone always told me that no paying customer likes to enter a fun house stuffed with buttery popcorn, but they were wrong. With my loud, flashy, puffed-up buzzers, I lured all kinds of returning champs into my palm-reading booth at the amusement park for wall-eyed pickpockets. But even stuffed full of buttery popcorn, my buzzers weren’t very loud or flashy after I let them loose. Once I got one inside my booth and showed him how to drop his coins into the money catcher, I’d lift one buzzer out and prop it up on the padded forced fanfare. I’d squeeze the “sold” button and pet my pantaloons with one finger, then sneak the buzzer back into its forced fanfare while I distracted the champ by making risk-it-all moves with my tongue near a fake rubber nose on my window. Then, slowly, mesmerized, the champ would offer his sweaty palm, and I’d read it for him. I wouldn’t touch the hand; I’d read his fake fortune through bulletproof glass. I’d read it so slowly and so meaningfully, he’d forget all about my hidden buzzers, and drop more coins into the money catcher. We both knew I was lying about his promising future, but
that was the scam. I was the unrivalled palm-reading queen of the amusement park for wall-eyed pickpockets, but after two years of conjuring fabulous stories about the lackluster champs’ future love, success, and money, I lost my competitive edge. I had no desire to wow. My emu feathers sagged. I poked at myself in the mirror, threw back toxic shots, and grimaced instead of smiling, like there was chicken blood on my teeth. I stood in front of the wavy mirror and could only see the lumpy buttery popcorn filling my fun house. I hated the champs for returning. I hated the whole damn park.

The returning champs watched me get drunker and puffier and meaner at the amusement park for wall-eyed pickpockets, and they stopped coming to get their palms read. Nobody but the foulest suggested an after-hours puppy washing. They couldn’t even look at me, let alone beg to slam their hands down on my buzzers for a chance to win it all. I had to leave the razzle-dazzle show. Once I cleared out some of the buttery popcorn from my fun house, I’d go back into business. Maybe I’d start my own puppy-washing gig. I’d be grand. But the truth was I’d always hated crowds and forced cheer. The wall-eyed pickpockets in their embarrassing clown shoes. I’d always hated a parade.

I entered the temporary protection field because I could type. I became an arranger of important white rectangles. I started using an adding machine and a professional tone. I
ran in place for half an hour at lunchtime. I covered my fun house with unfreaky costumes from mannequin stores, and I unratted my hair until it looked beaten. I told my buzzers to fuck off between nine and five; they could take a nap or whatever they wanted, but they couldn’t flash or make noise.

Once a year, because I became middle class in the temporary protection field, I took my mandatory vacation at a Museum of Survivor Specimens. I became one of those nouveaux, credit-card lesbians who experiments with foreign diversions in survivor museums, because museums turn lesbians into paying spectators, which is highly uncomfortable. We find ourselves craving familiar awe-inspiring tricks. If only those little plastic deer eyes had cameras behind them.

I ended up in the back of a diorama with one of the museum’s persistent but creepy diversions. He was a catchy jingle-writer for rip-off tourist attractions. He took me to the hidden part of the dancing bear exhibit, and I hissed but watched myself follow. He kept talking about “the beauty”—the beauty of a dancing bear in a tutu with sleek ankles, the beauty of a good jingle; they were the same thing, he said. I hated the jingle-writer, but there I was behind the taxidermic bear in her dusty crinolines, stuffing his dumb little rubber nose down my throat, gagging, trying to have a cultural experience. Trying to have a familiar awe-inspiring trick. When I took off my forced fanfare, he gasped.

“What happened to you?” He said, pointing at my heart.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

I knew what he meant, but I’d had the same lovely assistant for years and had almost forgotten my buzzers looked broken.

“All those lines, those stripey-stripes?”

“I got attacked by tigers,” I said. “At work.”

He left in his teeny-tiny car while I was sleeping against a paw-shaped ballet slipper. I had to find my own way out of the carefully organized Museum of Survivor Specimens, without getting caught there and put on display.

When I got back home, I knew it was time to get my buzzers fixed—maybe I could win a brand new washer and dryer set. Then I could start a new puppy-washing business and leave the temporary protection field. A hands-on puppy wash and palm-reading session. I’d encourage my paying spectator to slam his hands down on my buzzers, and we’d stick our fingers in the mouth of the lion. We could risk it all, do everything. No more amusement parks with their safe little bulletproof booths. But first I needed to win the appliances on a game show for the dispossessed, where they’d give me a public repair job.

At the game show for the dispossessed, I met a buzzer repair specialist who was a blood-and-grease wrestler. She gave me a cotton candy blob and made me watch a
dynamic training video about the repair job. Full financing was available at 9.8 percent.

I was making $12 an hour in the temporary protection field, but if I could win my brand new washer and dryer set, I’d make some real money, I told her, not just the chump change I got reading palms at the amusement park for wall-eyed pickpockets. I’d pay the loan back presto. I wanted my buzzers sliced, diced, and shiny, ready to work. I wanted to fling off my forced fanfare, to run my fingers over my emu feathers and feel my booby prizes tighten up and shiver like little ballerinas. I’d make the returning champions pay $200 an hour to slam their hands down on my new puffy, fastsinging red alarms and get their puppies washed superclean. The blood-and-grease wrestler said, “That’s awe-inspiring.”

The video taught me that the blood-and-grease wrestler would carefully cut all the way around my “sold” button and lift it off with special tongs. Then she would stretch the extra stripey tent material out into the air, cut off the extra tent, and sew the “sold” button back on to the newly fitted stripey tent. Presto! Loud flashy buzzers galore! I liked the idea of my “sold” button sitting on a pile of ice in a promotional soda cup, like a fresh pink clam.

They show these repair jobs on afternoon game shows. You can see the dentist tools pulling the stripey-striped tent in weird directions, lifting it off the meat, more like moviemonster
mask than living flesh. The buzzer-repair techs give the puppy-washer something hilarious in her IV, and she starts widening then squinching her eyes and smiling like Miss America a little, but stupidly, like she’s on a rickety roller-coaster ride toward financial freedom. They cover the puppy-washer’s face with a sheet. The stripey tent seems to cut easily, like a canned clam. The sheet over her face is made of pockmarked paper.

The puppy-washer is under there breathing shallowly. If she’s awake, like I was at first, she’ll try to see the blood-and-grease wrestler’s shadow through the dimpled light blue paper but the paper will be opaque. She’ll try to make out the sharp tools’ strange shapes as the wrestler holds them up to the colored lights. She’ll feel the laser cutting around her large affirmation trigger, and she’ll smell her stripey tent burning. She’ll say, if she can, “I can still feel that.”

The blood-and-grease wrestler will say to the blue paper, “You couldn’t possibly.”

“I do,” she’ll say, and the paper shroud will jump a little from the force of her breath.

The blood-and-grease wrestler will then lift a giant mallet from her instrument table and ask the puppy-washer, in a parlor tone, “One lump, or two?” The greedy puppy-washer will ask for two lumps of sugar in her make-believe tea. The blood-and-grease wrestler will slam the mallet
down twice. The blue paper sheet will quiver, as two elbowsize lumps rise up from the top of the puppy-washer’s head, like bald volcanoes.

That’s what happened to me, at least. When I got my lumps, I fell backwards down an animal hole and landed in my high school auditorium. A big, hat-wearing cougar was painted in a serenading posture inside an orange circle on the wall behind a basketball hoop. Around the circle, Killer Cougars was painted in jagged, bloody script. The floor of the gym where I landed was wood, high shine. I was unconscious, on a rickety roller-coaster ride to financial independence. Soon the assembly would start.

At the assembly, I was going to win my brand new washer and dryer set so I could make more money as a classy puppy-washer, and all the high school students would watch my buzzer repair. But it wouldn’t be a regular game show; it’d be a musical too. It would be an absurdist Brechtian musical about poverty, humiliation, and winning a shiny new job. I’d sing, and the blood-and-grease wrestler would sing too. We’d address the audience directly: