Tracy Quan - Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl

forMike Godwin

All professions are conspiracies against the laity.

—GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Everything is more glamorous when you do it in bed…

—ANDY WARHOL

Cover Page

Title Page Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl Tracy Quan

Epigraph All professions are conspiracies against the laity. —GEORGE BERNARD SHAW Everything is more glamorous when you do it in bed… —ANDY WARHOL

1 Ménage à Quoi?

2 Through the Hooking Glass

3 Mau-Mauing the Flatbackers

4 Origin of My Species

5 The Folks Who Live on the Hill

6 As Above, So Below

7 Johns and Lovers

8 One of the Girls

9 A Hooker’s Home Is Her Castle

10 Only Collect

11 Hetero Doxy

12 Origins Again: The Sex of Money

13 The Bad Seed

14 In-Laws and Outlaws

15 Turn of the Century

Diary of a Married Call Girl

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Praise

Copyright

About the Publisher

Dear Diary,

Today I had the most embarrassing experience—with one of my regulars. Howard was flat on his back enjoying our threesome with Allison when I decided to straddle him backward—something I’ve done hundreds of times. So I carefully lowered my body, confident that my acrobatics looked like zero effort.

Howard stood firm inside of me, but I threw in a just-in-case moan for good measure. With my shoulder blades resting against his chest, all he could see was the back of my neck. Lying still in that position is more work than bouncing up and down, but it’s usually the perfect strategy when you’re doing a session with another girl. Howard can’t check to see whether her tongue is really where it’s supposed to be. And besides, it’s his favorite position.

I felt serene. Supple. At the top of my game. Allie slithered down to the edge of my bed, placing her head somewhere between my legs—and his. I felt her long blond hair tickling my thighs. My cue to start moaning louder: “She’s soooo good at that…she’s licking my clit! Tell her not to stop! Oh, please don’t stop…”

Unfortunately, when I thought Allison was pretending to do me, she was really doing Howard.

“Hey!” she whispered, when he had disappeared into the shower. “When you were telling him all that stuff, I was tickling his balls with my tongue!”

“You were?” I was indignant. “We’re supposed to pretend you’re eating my pussy! If you’re going to change the routine, you have to tell me,” I hissed. “You know I can’t see what you’re doing from that angle!”

“ He seemed to like what I was doing!”

“Well,” I was forced to concede, “I suppose that’s what really matters.” But still. How annoying.

Turning my attention to the bedroom phone, I quickly checked my voice mail. Jasmine’s crisp clarity—“Thursday. Don’t be late. Harry at five P.M.!”—was a welcome distraction. Then voice mail from Eileen: “I gave your number to Steven G. He’s dying to meet another Oriental. But he’s kind of kinky, so call me first. It’s for today!” Eileen Wong’s clients tend to be impulse buyers with a hundred strange quirks. And a message from Steven himself, sounding bashful but eager: “Hi, uh, well, I’ll have to call you back. Hello? Are you there? I’m on my way to an ATM. I’ll call back in ten minutes.” There was street noise in the background. Car phone? Pay phone? Hard to tell. He sounds like the type of guy who’s cautious enough to use a pay phone when he calls a working girl. Probably married. Or maybe just self-conscious and paranoid about whatever it is that turns him on.

Allison mumbled apologetically into her cashmere sweater as she pulled it over her face: “Honestly, I thought you could see me, Nancy! I didn’t know…” As her pale shoulders disappeared into the sweater, her silly ingratiating grimace almost made me back down.

“How can I possibly see you if I’m staring at the ceiling?” I retorted crossly.

Howard returned, a towel wrapped around his soft damp middle, smirking with satisfaction. I was furious with myself for revealing a trade secret. To a John I’ve been seeing for more than five years! But I brazened it out with professional blitheness. As I bade him farewell, he winked and said, “See you next Monday—I’ll bring two Oscars. You both earned them!” I flashed him a cool smile.

Allison followed me into the bathroom, pondering her latest dilemma out loud. “Guess who called? Jack! He’s trying to make an appointment with me!”

This is so typical. Whenever I’m annoyed with Allison, she tries to distract me with her problems.

Jack can still find new girls through the back pages of New York magazine, but he’s barred from the beds of girls like us who trade customers privately. Shouldn’t Allie know better than to contemplate seeing Jack?

From behind the shower door, I reminded her, “We blacklisted him! Nobody wants to see Jack after what he did. And neither do you.”

“Well, maybe I do, ” she said petulantly. “He misses me and he’s offering me a lot of money. Maybe I should reconsider this—this blacklist thing.”

We blacklisted him because of what he did last year—and Allie was the first girl to experience the terrible fallout of Jack’s behavior. How can she forget? Much less forgive?

I pointed the handheld showerhead between my thighs, then aimed it cautiously at my breasts, to avoid splattering my hair. It’s an occupational hazard, showering four times a day: My hair has to look great for work, yet I’m constantly in danger of wrecking it…Catch-22!

“He offered me a thousand!” Allie was saying. “Just to see me for—you know, the usual.”

His normal rate is three hundred dollars. A grand for half an hour! That’s hard to turn down. But Allison doesn’t need to hear that. She needs to learn how to say no and mean it.

“After what he did to us, I think it would be a major betrayal for any girl to make an exception,” I told her.

“But I have—I mean, Jack and I had —a different kind of…” Her voice grew squeaky and faint. “Well, anyway, I’d like to hear his side of the story.”

Yeah, I’ll bet she would! For a thousand dollars, who wouldn’t? But the point is, your word’s not worth much if you say yes to everything that looks financially appealing. Or easy.

“His side? He has no side. I don’t care how much he pays, dealing with him is just too risky.”

“He’s so easy,” Allie pointed out. “And he wears a condom for everything .”

“We’re not talking about that kind of risk! And you have to stop thinking in the short term! He gives you a grand today and that’s great. What happens later? What if you lose all your contacts with the other girls? Jack’s generosity won’t make up for that. Ever.”

As I slid the shower door open, Allison handed me a towel. That childish pleading look again! Even though we’re the same size—we can trade bras—I suddenly felt like the huge clumsy playmate of a delicate fine-boned little girl. I stared into the bathroom mirror and saw, reflected back, a surprisingly graceful neck. Not the awkward galumphing outcast—a ghost from early puberty—that I sometimes imagine myself to be. And my hair had kept its shape.