The Downside Of Entering A Penthouse Letters Version Of Disneyland
I'm not Sicilian. I'm no Bradd Pitt. And I definately didn't grow up in a big city. Nothing in my background prepared me for a life of psychological crime, except maybe for my military stint and a year of civil service.
Eighteen months and a near nervous breakdown later, I would be amazed by the things I'd seen and done and at the subtlety of my 'gradual' descent into the inevitable ugliness of prostitution.
The job seemed fun at first. It was like playing hide and seek in a Penthouse Letters version of Disneyland. But then you realize the cops aren't keystone and the screams coming from the Matahorn are real. Then you notice people are going into Space Mountain but they're not coming out, can't get out.
Your soul gets dirty in this profession, even if you work on the farthest outskirts of it. Your car becomes a mobile confessional booth and the unsolicited revelations a burden. You become more and more isolated from your normal friends because of the hours and the content of the job.
"My boss wanted me to refile 40 depositions yesterday," your friend might complain. If you're an escort driver and you're trying to keep this fact from becoming general knowledge, you can't very well join in with, "Well my boss wanted me to slap some poor little 18 year-old girl around and take money out of her purse because she didn't want to give a warty old geezer head at the Beverly Regency."
My normal friends watch 'The X Files." I lived The X Files, meeting a new monster or conspiracy every week.
The Four Mantras Of Inculpability
At first I consoled myself with the idea that I was just a driver. A delivery boy. What the customers did with the meat pies I was delivering was none of my business, but the Dragon Lady was having none of that. She wanted accomplices, not choirboys.
So I tried the Al Capone rationalization: I am only providing a service to a service that the people want. Hell, I'm twice removed from the actual wet work.
That didn't quite cut it so I graduated to the brown shirt "I am just following orders" excuse. But I was called upon time and again to improvise, to creatively find new ways to get the product to market, to increase market share in the skin delivery biz, to peddle more flesh than any other driver in town. I was, after all, working on commission. Sort of.
Finally, I went to the G Gordon Liddy, "Mea Culpa and what are you going to do about it?" mode of thinking. The Dragon Lady held my brain over a burning candle and I said "Can I have more heat, drill serpent?" as I listened to the crackling sound of my mind frying.
Hi, I'm James And I'll Be Your Tour Scum For Tonight
The girls forked with my head and stole my teeth. They burned cigarette holes into my dashboard and offered me money to marry them. They showed me their hidden tattoos and read me poetry they'd written. I am still amazed at the depth of friendship I came to have with some of the girls; girls who are treated like vulgar cartoon characters, mere locker room jokes, by everyone I knew.
Yes, the friendships were mostly pretense, a way of easing the tension between lizard feedings, but I genuinely liked most of them It's an occupational hazard that most of them came to see men as weak, twisted creatures. Just like cops, they tend to see mostly criminals and the scum of the earth on the job.
I am a man, therefore their friendship to me was one of working girl to scum. I am an overweight, chain-smoking, toothless, middle-aged single scum, so I take female friendship in whatever form I can get it.
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