ME, COUSIN MARIE, and SEX WORKER LITERATI

This all started when my wife wanted our daughter to get a free Frisbee in college. To make a long story, short, well, even the short version is really long, so just take my word for it that this all started with my wife. And Mark Twain. He had something to do with it, too. I was a victim of circumstances (if such a thing exists), a small, innocent piece of inebriated flotsam buffeted about by the stormy seas of fate. That is, in a metaphorical nutshell, how Cousin Marie and I wound up at the KGB Bar in the East Village on a cold Friday night in February to be part of a Dutch documentary titled, “Sex Worker Literati”. (The Dutch translation is slightly different and impossible to pronounce.)

We were supposed to be at the KGB Bar on that particular night to hear three Columbia professors read segments of their fiction. (Yeah, well I thought it would be pretty cool.) They were, as it happens, scheduled for Thursday night. For want of a nail . . . I don’t know how interesting the aforementioned Ivy League intelligentsia were or weren’t, but if we would have sat in the audience for them instead of for David, Tracy, and Elizabeth (conventional spellings for all three), I would never have known about the intricate workings of the peep-show industry in Seattle, among other things.

After a delicious and artery-hardening meal at my favorite 150-year old ale house where we shared a scarred wooden table with two young men from Russian (who I mistook as two young men from Poland), we slowly ambled over to the KGB Bar and spent the better part of half an hour climbing the endless stairs. After arriving at the proper altitude, we found the door locked. We were too early. We waved to the people inside through the small square window in the door, but they pointed at their watches letting us know that we had to wait. We each used the poorly appointed facilities and stood in the hall and waited a while longer. Then David arrived.

David was the extremely funny (dare I say witty), gray-haired, middle-aged moderator for the evening. He stuck his head through the small, square, glass-deficient opening in the door and asked them to open up because he had to set up the microphone and camera. Realizing that the glass-less window scam only fooled the well educated (go ahead, say it – book smart), they unlocked the door. Since David was not only the moderator, but a speaker as well, Cousin Marie and I were officially the first two patrons to enter the poorly appointed bar/lounge/saloon/bistro. This entitled us to be the first two patrons of the night. Additionally, I was (as we found out later) the only person in the house with a hard hat. We were on a roll.

Being typical New Yorkers, we elbowed our way through the non-existent crowd to the best table in the house (of the six available), and planted ourselves down for a continuation of what was already a very lovely and interesting evening. We both agreed on Bloody Mary’s, but to our dismay, the fully stocked bar, did not have Bloody Mary mix. So beer it was.

The relatively small bar started filling up rather quickly and about 20 minutes after we sat down, there wasn’t a seat to be had. Early on, a young girl with some trade magazines asked if we could move to another table so she could place her wares close to the podium. (Yeah, right.) We offered to share the table with her and, having no reasonable alternative, she happily agreed. She put down about a dozen copies of $pread (no typo) magazine and walked away to get some other items. I mentioned to Cousin Marie that she had a fair resemblance to Cousin Louis’ daughter, Sarah. Upon her return, we introduced ourselves to the young promising writer and asked her name. “Sarah”, was the response. Not only that, but she was going for her Master’s degree in creative writing at Sarah Lawrence. I didn’t say anything at the time, but I was starting to get suspicious of her intentions. As I finished my beer (the third over my normal limit for sobriety), I was fairly certain that she was going to try and flabbergast us with coincidences and then have her friends take our seats in the confusion. Or something like that.

We thumbed through the pages of $pread and I was quickly bored seeing as how it was all articles and no good panoramic shots of landscapes and such. As the already crowded saloon got even more crowded, another young girl asked if she could have my chair. I asked her if her name was Sarah, and she said, “No”, sounding somewhat perplexed. Given her apparent honesty, I surrendered the chair and sat on the bench next to Cousin Marie. Then David stood at the podium and tapped the microphone to begin the readings and discussions.

Ms. Elizabeth was up first. She had been a dancer in a peep show in Seattle. She appeared to be in her late-twenties or early-thirties and now wrote financial articles for a financial magazine. Her stage name was Layla and I hoped her current writing style was somewhat more creative. She explained the inner workings of the peep show industry including the very elaborate and intricate behind-the-scenes procedures. It is not just about walking, scantily clad, into a glass-enclosed booth and shaking your money-maker. No my friends. She first had to change her clothes and put her civilian belongings into a locker. Then she had to clock in and make sure that the operator of the money boxes had cleared the proceeds from the previous performer. Then she had to enter some sort of an air lock before entering the booth itself. Once inside the booth, she had to arrange her props, check her headset, perform some preliminary stretching, and use the hand sanitizer and window cleaner as needed. (It seems scabies is a constant industry problem.) Once all this was satisfactorily completed, the shutters went up and the show was on.

The patrons could talk to the dancer via phones in their little compartments through her headset. This way they could instruct her on the most current or desired dance moves, or other less cultured displays. There were also some devices within the dancer’s portion of the booth that the patrons could control via the remote controls in their little compartment. It sounded very high-tech. Some of the low-tech aspects of the establishment were the cartoon drawings on the doors of the patron’s compartments giving them a visual clue of what they could expect. There was also a small display case that contained Polaroid pictures of the dancer currently on duty. I guess there are some patrons of peep shows that have standards.

Once her shift was over, she had to pick up her props, use the hand sanitizer and window cleaner as needed, re-enter the air lock, and check the schedule on the way out to make sure that she was aware of her upcoming shifts so that her fans would not miss her. The whole process sounds very business-like and somewhat complicated.

In addition to the dancing girls in the booths, the establishment had an erotic artwork display. That sounds like such an elegant touch.

Although she said that she never developed personal relationships with the patrons outside of the booth, she did confess to developing a fondness for some of her regulars. One in particular was a poet (or so he said) going by the name of “Excalibur”. I would love to read some of his poetry. I mean, “Excalibur”. Jeez Louise. She also said that the worst customers were the good-looking guys who felt that their presence in the little compartment was tip enough. Thank you Elizabeth.

David was up next, but before I get into his portion of the night, I want to talk about this Dutch documentary a little bit. It seems that Cousin Marie and I, by pure happenstance, positioned ourselves in a direct line between the podium and the camera used by the Dutch documentary workers. Our geography alone would probably give us a fair amount of face-time in the documentary, but I don’t like to rely on my memory so I always take notes when I want to remember something. There were more than a few somethings that I wanted to remember so I was taking a lot of notes. I’m not sure if I remember this part correctly because I didn’t take any notes about it, but I distinctly remember the lights from the camera hitting the left side of my face whenever I went into a scribbling frenzy. So if you ever watch a Dutch documentary on sex workers, please keep a sharp eye out for us. I was the one in the denim shirt taking notes.

Onto David who had been a male hustler in his teens. He referred to himself as an Industrial Sex Technician (IST). The next time somebody refers to themselves or someone else as a “Techie”, it will make you pause and wonder. He informed us that he had only been involved in that business for six months, but that it left him with, until recently, unresolved emotional issues. He knew he needed help when he woke up one morning and realized that, after being recently divorced, he was engaged to a woman he really couldn’t stand. Therapy led him to write about his past and that turned into a book titled, “Chicken”. The book in turn is turning into a Showtime series of the same name.

I don’t know how good a writer David is, but he is an excellent performer. He had the whole packed room in stitches. He related the father-son sex talk given to him by his very British dad. I was laughing so much that I didn’t take many notes. The few readable notations I have from this story are “engorged with blood” and “thrusting”. You can draw your own conclusions.

The other story he told was about his employment as the tuxedo-wearing, roller-skating emcee at a Chippendales show. He had some very colorful and eye-opening insights about the previously unknown aspects and desires of soccer moms. We heard about one dancer (performing under the moniker of “Prince Charming”) who had teeth marks on his buttocks. My favorite memory of this bit was the story about a very intense and excited patron who he described as a “large, mule-toothed bleached blonde”. What a colorful choice of adjectives.

Before closing his portion of the evening, he gave out a DVD that contained a short movie about a humorous, Chippendale-related, murder mystery. I haven’t watched it yet, but I will follow-up with a review once I have.

There was a break before the next reader so I got up and made my way to the beer recycling center. Upon my return, I started talking to a guy with a beard who had sat down near us. I introduced him to Cousin Marie as “Ben from Alaska”. I was partially correct in that his name was Ben, but imagine my surprise when he told us that he was not from Alaska, but from northern Virginia. I was shocked. I wasn’t even close. After a few minutes of blah, blah, blah, the next and last speaker went up to the podium. This was Tracy.

Tracy was a short, thin, Asian woman who appeared to be in her early thirties. Like David, she was a former IST, although she spent more time in the industry than David and only recently retired (or so I understood). Also like David, she has since become an author with three published books under her belt – “Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl”, Diary of a Married Call Girl”, and “Diary of a Jet-Setting Call Girl”. (Sense the trend here?) Also like David, her story will also become a series on cable television, but on HBO instead of Showtime. I’d tell you the name of the series, but I guess you can figure that out for yourselves.

Tracy told us that she is currently involved with P.O.N.Y. (Prostitutes of New York) working with them to help make business and life in general, better and safer for IST’s. She also told us that the sex industry works on the “trickle down” theory of economics and that IST’s are being hard hit by the recession. Given that the career life of an IST is measured in something akin to dog-years, one year of a slow economy could spell financial ruin. Due to the slowing economy and increase in indicted politicians, Tracy told us that many IST’s are now starting to “chase work”. Man, tell me about that.

(SIDE NOTE: I am trying to write this while sitting in an upscale coffee shop that I’ll call Starbucks. Ordinarily, the shop is quiet and the patrons are typically respectful of each other. Today is different, however. Sitting next to me is one of those ubiquitous “loud talkers” who insist on sharing their side of a cell phone conversation with anyone within 100 feet. I really want to tell her that I, for one, have no interest in the pelvic pain that she experienced after the same medical procedure that her unseen friend has just had. That’s not really true, though. What I really want to do is shoot her, cut off her head, and place it on a spike outside the door of the upscale coffee shop as a warning to other “loud talkers”, but I don’t have a gun, an axe, or the balls. I’m also not keen on that whole prison thing. Plus, most “loud talkers” are so self-absorbed that they probably wouldn’t notice the spiked-head warning anyway. So I’ll just let my anger simmer inside until my intestines tie themselves into a Gordian knot of pelvic pain. Sometimes I think I overreact.)

Unbeknownst to me, it seems that Craig’s List contains many solicitation sites that IST’s, and/or their manager’s (read that as pimps), and their customers (read that as John’s) use to arrange mutually beneficial service and financial transactions. Contrary to popular belief, all cash income to IST’s is not profit. Typically, they have to rent a well-appointed room in a hotel (or a Motel 6 as the case may be) where the services are provided and the financial transaction is transacted. Imagine how many transactions it takes to cover a nut like that.

Tracy’s lecture continued to be interesting and informative. It seems the preferred hourly rate of an IST is $300/hour. Given the difficult economic times, many IST’s are willing to break that down into 30-minute or 15-minute segments. One down-on-her-luck entrepreneur (whose professional name I believe is “Mocha Love”; no doubt a reference to her favorite beverage) was even advertising 5-minute increments. And you thought I was kidding about the difficulty in making that Motel 6 nut.

According to Tracy, IST’s directly involved in intimate contact with their clients (as opposed to peep-show dancers) are not only the highest paid of the various types of IST’s, but also the most conservative, relatively speaking. (It is doubtful that John McCain garnered any of the IST vote despite his industry-friendly first name.) Dancers, exotic and otherwise, are at the lower end of the economic scale and are, assumedly, the most liberal, relatively speaking. Regardless of their position in the sex worker’s universe, IST’s have to fend for themselves. There will be no government bailout for IST’s even though politicians, in general, are not only their biggest clients, but are considered by a large majority of the population (including yours truly) to be IST’s themselves.

(ANOTHER SIDE NOTE: “Loud Talker” is now telling her unforeseen friend that she went to the gym early this morning. It is beyond my comprehension that this corpulent sow has expended a single calorie in a gym in the past decade. Then she starts doing a terrible rendition of James Brown’s classic, “I Feel Good”, into the phone. And before I can even finish this rant, another “loud talker” comes in talking about consumer fraud like she’s the female version of Arnold Diaz. Unbelievably, they then greet each other and burst into loud, extremely phony laughing that can only mean that they hate each other. My God! Does the madness ever end?)

Aside from these very technical, financial, and social discussions, Tracy also told some very humorous stories that made you realize that IST’s can be just regular folks who, like the rest of us, can act like jerks every now and then. One particular tale was about a friend of hers who attended an international IST convention in Europe. (Please note that I think Tracy said that this was a true story, but it could be a piece of fiction. I’m not positive. I was really drunk at this point. It doesn’t matter though; it was still a good story.) A statement of some sort was being prepared regarding the rights of IST’s. The statement was to be issued under the semi-original name of “Bad Girls Without Borders”. As catchy a name as this was, it neglected the minority of IST’s at the convention – namely males. They couldn’t come up with an equally catchy name, so a stalemate ensued. (“Bad People Without Borders” was bandied about, but this didn’t have the same panache and, quite frankly, sounded stupid.)

That evening a theft occurred in the friend’s hotel room. It seems that a moderately valuable work-related instrument to which her friend had become somewhat attached, was snatched. The friend was convinced that this was not an ordinary run-of-the-mill burglary, but a political statement. Sounds like every Little League meeting I’ve ever attended.

That wrapped up the organized portion of the evening and what ensued was a general free-for-all to talk to and kibitz with the three star attractions. I wanted to talk to Tracy to get her opinion on an idea that an unnamed relative floated past me regarding retirement programs for IST’s. As usual, my timing was impeccable. I approached Tracy just as a young and way too enthusiastic fan was trying to convert his stalking into a relationship. She jumped at the chance to converse with a serious, slightly balding (when you write something you can use your own adjectives), middle-aged, bon vivant, wearing a denim shirt emblazoned with his company logo. She sat down with me and Cousin Marie, listened patiently, and then politely and respectfully told me that it was not a very good idea.

In return for her honesty, graciousness, and time, I bought one of her books, “Diary of a Married Call Girl”. I started reading it and found it is almost devoid of gratuitous sex and very funny. Unfortunately, due to the subject matter, I won’t be able to pass off some of her stories as my own. Well, that was $16 down the tubes.

It was finally time for us to end what turned out to be a very interesting and enjoyable evening. With my little goody-bag in hand (don’t ask), I made one last stop at the poorly appointed men’s room and while I was completing a transaction with the porcelain depository, I vaguely heard a woman screaming, “Die! Die! Die!” (Exclamation points courtesy of my wife.) The poorly appointed ladies room was right next door and I hoped that Cousin Marie was not on the receiving end of these murderous threats for a breach of toilet room etiquette or some other innocent faux pas. As it turned out, she wasn’t. The screams undoubtedly emanated from the theater on the ground floor either as part of the show or from one of the actresses upset with her agent. Whatever.

We descended the endless stairs, went past a sixty-ish woman holding birthday balloons, past the theater, out the door, down more steps, and finally onto the sidewalk. We walked back to Cousin Marie’s car, just two wild and crazy guys enjoying some of the stuff that life has to offer. Before she drove away, we promised to do this again, and this will be a promise that will be kept.

In closing, I hope you enjoyed this little tale. Everything you read was true, or at least true to the best of my recollection. If anyone wants to join us in our next foray into the literary world, get back to me and I’ll check to see if your name is on the “A” list.

See you later, Sweet Potato.

Cousin Robert

Aka Robert Femenella

Aka Bob Femenella

Aka Coach Bob

Aka Connor Fleming III

Aka Oz The Great and Powerful

Aka Bert Allene