Richard Sharon - Diary of a Lover

Then we heard Lew and Rita arguing about money. Lew wanted the girls to come across for just the group we had, sixty bucks each. Rita was adamant, eighty or nothing. They decided to cool it for another ten minutes and started the movies, old silents which kept breaking where the film had been respliced a thousand times. The guys all were getting pretty loaded. The bar, full of liquor bottles and mix, spilled liquid and crumpled dishtowels, was a mess.

After more frantic calls it became apparent that the other two guys weren't going to show. When Rita motioned Terry that she should start to get dressed, Lew just about nipped. He reached into his pocket, came up with another twenty, and I suddenly found seven threatening sets of eyes staring at me. It was a simple decision; if I didn't kick in twenty for a screw I didn't want, the girls would split and nobody would get laid. I sighed and dug out my wallet, to the accompaniment of cheers, a hero and hating myself for it. I didn't have many principles, but this was definitely against one of them.

Bud was too drunk to write, so Lew put the numbers one through seven on separate pieces of paper and mixed them in an empty ice bucket. Bud, being our host, was accorded the courtesy of first choice, leaving the rest of us to pick for position. I was the last to pick, and because number one hadn't been taken yet I knew that I had it even before I stuck my hand into the bucket.

Bud was very short, so he chose tall Rita to take to the back bedroom and I chose Terry for the center bedroom, with a plan beginning to form somewhere in the back of my head.

Terry looked almost grateful as she took my hand and led me through the bedroom door, which I closed and then discovered that I couldn't lock. She put her eighty dollars into a small purse and stripped off her bra and panties. Her breasts were small and high, with dark brown nipples that jutted straight out. I sat on the bed with my clothes on. As much as I instinctively liked her, I was beginning to feel that I really couldn't do it like this, not this way, like a John.

She looked at me, sitting on the bed. "Are you bashful?" she asked.

I ignored the question. "You haven't been hustling very long, have you, baby?"

"How do you know?" she asked defensively.

"By the way you panicked out there and because you still look fresh and pretty, and not all beat out, like Rita."

She liked that and smiled. "About two weeks, now."

"What did you do before?"

"I was a hostess in a restaurant on O'Farrell Street."

I stretched out on the bed. "I like you," I said. She sat next to me but didn't answer. "Do you think I'm just another trick?" I asked.

She hesitated.

"Yes."

"Bullshit."

"What?"

"You heard me. I said bullshit. You kept looking at me the whole fucking time we were in the other room."

"Do you want your twenty dollars back?" she asked sarcastically. Then, switching moods, she asked my name-having-forgotten it. I told her.

"Did Rita tell you about talkers, guys that pay just to talk, and get their jollies that way?"

"Yes," she said, surprise evident on her face. She hadn't figured me for a "timid John."

"Well, I'm not a talker, or a weirdo, or a special trick. As a matter of fact, I'm not a trick at all."

Now she really looked puzzled. She had an air of quality about her, and in spite of her puzzlement at my behavior her eyes reflected intelligence.

I took her hand, "Do you like being a call girl, after a whole two weeks in The Life?"

"Oh, sure, it's great. I get to meet a lot of interesting men and go places and make a lot of money." Only her eyes, hurt at the audacity of the question, told me that she was lying.

"And, of course, you really dig sex, right? I mean, all those Johns, out-of-town businessmen, fat politicians, and greasy Daddy Warbucks types, it must be great making it with them, huh?"

That made her belligerent. "What the hell kind of a nut are you, anyway? You come in here to get laid, flop on the bed without even taking off your shoes, and start asking me all these questions that are none of your goddamn business. Now do you want to or not? I have other clients waiting."

The madder Terry became, the more I liked her. I laughed and pulled on her hand. "Come lie with me, baby. I'm gonna tell you a story you'll never forget."

I told her about hustling queers, about knowing every whore in town and about those whom I had lived with, and what eventually happened to most of them. Fascinated, she put her arms around me and pulled close, like a little girl getting a bedtime story from her father.

Every five minutes the door would pound, and Jack, who was next in line for Terry, would yell, "Hey, -what're you cats doin' in there? F'Chrissake, hurry up."

And Terry and I would yell, "Not yet, still busy!"

I told her about the whores' pecking order and how a big percentage of them end up on drugs or sauce, walking the streets. Then I asked her, "I bet you're going to just stay in a couple of years, till you can save enough to open a dress shop of your own, or make a killing in the blue chips, right?"

Terry gasped. "How did you know that? Did Rita tell you?"

I had to explain that she was suffering from the same useless dream that tens of thousands of broken-down old whores all over the country had dreamed at one time or another, that her chances of ever seeing it come true were practically zilch because The Life got to you after a while. The money you made just seemed to disappear and somehow it was always "next year" that you were going to do it, until it was too late. I told her to look at Rita carefully, because she was about ready to slip down the ladder to the- bars. Terry, amazed again, said that sometimes when things were slow for Rita she did go to some of the better bars to work.

Jack banged on the door again.

"Goddamnit," I yelled, "keep the hell away until we come out."

I heard some drunken grumbling as he faded down the hall.

There was a wetness on my shirt -and when I looted down I saw that Terry was crying silently. I held her closer and stroked her hair. She was so little and cute, cuddled into me. I wanted her; not as a whore, but as my woman. I wanted to live with her and take care of her because I had just uncovered somewhere within me, a fatherly bent to which Terry appealed. I didn't want a cat or a dog; I wanted Terry for a pet, and the idea that I knew I could drag her out of The Life appealed to my ego.

"Our lives 'Sometimes take strange twists, and yours

She looked up at me. "What do you mean?" took one today, honey."

"I mean you're through, finished. Your big two weeks as a call girl are over and you're all washed up, unless you're looking forward to those plastered slobs out there bouncing all over your belly and puking on you."

"What am I going to do?" She tried to dry her eyes on my shirtsleeve.

I put my hand under her chin and lifted her face slowly to mine. "You're coming home with me, right now," I said firmly. "That is, if you want to. I've got a real nice apartment, and we're going to find you a decent job with a decent salary, and you're going to stay with me as long as you want to, no strings attached. You take the bedroom and I'll take the couch. What do you say?"

Terry looked into my eyes long and hard for hidden motives, chicanery, perfidy. Finally she nodded her head up and down slowly and got up to get dressed. "God! And to think that when you walked in here I thought you were a bashful cutie who had never been with a girl before. I thought I'd have to coax you to get undressed, and now here I am going home with you and changing my whole life and I'm not even sure why."

"Don't worry," I said. "You would have made a lousy whore, anyway. Some girls just aren't cut out for it, and you're one of them!"