Chapter 5
John let me sleep late the next morning. When he brought me my breakfast, he sat on the edge of the bed and his hands trembled with excitement as he asked me about my first night at Grace's.
"Did the guys treat you O.K.?"
"Most of them," I shrugged my shoulders. "I had a couple of smart alecs who tried to give me a bad time."
"I guess most of the guys who go to the whorehouses are pretty nice guys," John said. He stuck a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and let it dangle. "For a lot of them, that's the only way they can lay a dame, you know it?"
"I guess so."
"Heck, it's not any worse for a girl to work in a whorehouse than it is a cafe. Anyhow, I don't think so," John explained.
"Do the guys ever ask you any questions-you know-about where you're from or if you're married, or anything?"
"Oh, some do. But most of them aren't that interested in me. Some of them will ask me why I'm a prostitute, then I tell them that I'm just lucky or that I need the money."
John threw back his head and laughed, but I couldn't see anything funny. He lit a cigarette and gave it to me.
"I had a couple of guys who wanted to stay all night with me," I said. "They offered me extra to stay in a hotel with them."
"Nothing doing!" John's face grew sober and anger sparkled in his eyes. "You ain't sleeping with no damn customer and I'd better not catch you taking on a man outside a whorehouse. If you know what's good for you, you won't do it either."
"What difference does it make?"
John stood up and stalked across the room. At the window, he turned to face me, his hands knotted into fists.
"It makes plenty of difference. Guys like that would like to steal the factory," John shook his fist at me. "Baby, if I ever catch you stepping out on me, I'll knock your teeth down your throat."
He was jealous and his rage scared me. He stood there glaring at me, his fists shaking.
"Maybe I ought to put you back in Blanche's," he snarled. "You didn't have time to get friendly with the customers there."
"Honey, I'm not getting friendly with anybody. You know me better than that. Honest, you're the only guy I care about."
Gradually, he cooled off and came slowly towards me. I felt my weight press against the pillow and I was scared. I expected him to hit me, but he sat down and put his arms around me, his head lying on my breast. I put my arm around him and patted his shoulder.
"I couldn't stand to lose you, Wanda."
"What about the other prostitutes you've lived with?" I whispered. He shook his head.
"They were chippies before I met them and they never meant anything to me." John looked up at me, an odd expression on his face. "You're the only one that I loved enough to marry. I couldn't stand it if you left me."
He lay there, his eyes closed and not saying anything. For that moment, it was as if I had never known any other man and there was only John. I loved him. I loved him as much as a woman could love any man. Perhaps more, because I loved him enough to swallow my pride and do what he had asked me to. I was a prostitute because he wanted me to be one and I loved him too much to say no.
On our way to Grace's, John drove with one hand. He kept his other arm around me and when we came to a stop light, he would bend over and kiss me.
"Don't take any wooden nickels," he said when he parked in front of Grace's.
He put his arms around me and kissed me again. It made me smile to see him out of his black mood and joking again. He had a way of teasing me about my customers and his remarks always made me giggle. I hopped out of the car and hurried inside. John drove around the block and parked in the vacant lot. There was another car there and the man got out of it and into ours. As I sat down, I wondered where the guys would wait in cold weather.
The mornings are slow and the houses pretty quiet. In the few days that followed, I learned the routine and a few things about Green street. Each morning, the laundry man would stop at each brothel. We rented the cloth hand towels that we used on customers and he charged us a buck apiece for them. I kept seven dozen on hand and generally I would take three dozen one morning and four the next. The towel racket was probably the best money-maker on the street and no other laundry trucks stopped at the houses.
This morning, two plainclothesmen from the vice squad visited each brothel. They shook hands with me and I left a twenty dollar bill in their palms. Grace had told me how much to give them. I saw them on their way back to the station; their pockets bulged with money.
Shirley and I generally hustled the same shift and we were becoming close friends. She was twenty-three and had been on the turf for two years. Shirley was hooked up with a big-time pimp and, as she jokingly put it, she was sister-in-law number three.
I liked it at Grace's; it was so much better than Blanche's had been. The beds were softer and I didn't have broken springs poking me in the back. At Blanche's, I had a bare cubbyhole with plain unpainted walls that seemed to glare at me. I like a room that is tastefully decorated, but I guess the real difference between a five and ten dollar joint is the amount of time you spend with the men. Here, we could give them time to take off their shoes and that made it a lot easier on my shins and really saved on nylons.
I divided my customers into three groups and I could tell by the way a man talked, his actions, and what he said, just what group he was in.
The first group was the "steadies." The guys who visit brothels frequently, but don't always pick the same girl. They're the easiest to do business with. They know the score and in the bedroom, it's all business. They're only interested in getting a kick and many of the "steadies" don't even bother to ask my name. They have a set pattern of sex, and they seldom change or ask to do it another way. Some of these guys like to abuse a chippy and they can get pretty rough. There were plenty of times that I had to grit my teeth against the pain.
The second group is the "straying husbands" brand of patrons. In a lot of ways, it's hard to do business with them. Many of them are just out for a fling and they haven't visited many brothels. They are used to their wives or girl friends and they try to make us like their women are. Most of the guys are a lot more curious about chippies than in going to bed with us.
They ask all kinds of questions and try to get acquainted with us. This is the hard part for me because I don't want my customers to know very much about me and it's pretty dangerous for me to get too friendly with a customer, especially with John watching the brothel. He can see into the parlor and time my dates. If I stayed in my room too long with a guy, he would ask me about it.
I'm ashamed to have customers find out anything about me, like where I came from, what my father does for a living, or how long I've been hustling. At Blanche's, I learned to keep quiet about being married. Guys would always look at me so funny when I told them I had a husband. I try to keep aloof from my customers and fend off their questions with a joke, a quip, or a shrug of my shoulders.
I learned to be careful about telling a customer how many dates I've had or the most men I've ever taken on in one night. If a guy asks, I tell him thirty or forty or whatever number pops into my head. He gets a kick out of hearing it and thinks he's doing me a favor. But if a guy asks me this after he's through with me, I won't tell him. I made that mistake a couple of times and the disgusted look on their faces wasn't easy to take.
Some guys think it's funny for a girl to be in a whorehouse. They never stop to think that we're here for their benefit and not ours. Depending on the guy, I either tell him I'm in business for the fun of it or that I need the money.
"I'm just like lunch meat-always ready," I'll tell some of my customers and they'll laugh. It makes them feel better and enjoy me more.
In secret, I envy the men who come to me. I've often wished that I was a man so I could go to a whorehouse, show a chippy a rough time, and enjoy sex every time I did it.
Most guys believe me when I tell them I'm a chippy because I enjoy sex or that I need the money, but neither answer is true. The money isn't as important to me as men think it it. I gave every dime I earned to John. If I needed or wanted something, even down to a pack of cigarettes, I'd ask him to buy it for me. Somehow, I felt that the money wasn't mine and it rightfully belonged to John. If I spent any of it without asking him first, it would be like stealing.
The third group that we have to deal with is the "sex perverts,"
"the degenerates" and so on; men who can't obtain sexual satisfaction from normal sexual relations. It would be impossible to tell the different ways they have used me for their thrills. So many of them are "flaggists" and they love to beat a woman or have her beat them. At Grace's, we had one or two calls a week for a "spanking" and Beverly generally took them.
I broke my rule about getting friendly with customers. I had a real swell guy date me. He was about fifty and his wife had passed away a few months before. He was really a lost soul and I could see the silent misery in his eyes. He looked at me with surprise when I undressed and lay down on the bed. He wasn't used to being with a chippy and he didn't know that here there was no love-making or no build-up to the sex act.
"Take off your bra," his voice was kind. "Please."
"No."
"O.K." he answered and he had a funny expression on his face.
He wanted to take his time and make it last as long as possible, and I let him hold back on me as long as I dared. I didn't want to hurt his feelings by telling him to hurry up. When he finished, he lay still, not moving or saying anything, just holding me close. I could hear his breathing in my ear.
"Get up, Honey," I whispered. "There's others waiting for me."
He got up slowly and started putting on his clothes. He wanted to talk to me in the worst way. I put on my slip and sat down on the bed. He was sitting on the chair, lacing his shoes.
"May I ask you a question?" he asked. "Why wouldn't you take your bra off?"
"It helps protect me. Some guys like to treat me pretty rough and twist my breasts-a bra gives me a little protection."
"It's hard to believe," he shook his head. "I can't imagine any man wanting to hurt a woman."
"Plenty of them do," I shrugged my shoulders. "Some guys ride me like I was a tractor back on the farm."
The guy chuckled.
"Honey, you don't know the half of it," I continued and pointed towards the door. "Notice there's no latch on the door knob? That's in case I need help, I can yell. The guy can't block the door from the inside and the Madame can get in here fast."
The guy looked at me with interest, only it was a different kind of interest than most men have. I felt he understood me.
"That's also why I don't take off my shoes-a spike heel is an effective weapon. If I'm flat on my back, I can twist my leg around and get my shoe. You can really bang a man on the head with a spike heel."
"Does-does this happen very often?"
"Too often," I shrugged my shoulders.
"Why are you a chippy? You don't enjoy sex."
"What makes you think I don't?" I felt the crimson rise to my face and I grinned at him.
"You were pretending. I could tell."
"I guess I never have enjoyed it. I've done it with a lot of guys and I never have enjoyed it. There are guys I hate doing it with and there are guys I like to do business with. You know what I mean?" I made a motion with my hands. "I mean I like them and I want them to have a good time."
"What about me?"
"I like you and I hope you'll visit me again," I paused. I was sticking my neck out. "If you come early in the morning, we can spend more time together-talking."
He looked at me for a moment and my eyes dropped to the floor.
"You must be awful lonely," he said. He patted me on the leg and went out. I put on my dress and returned to the parlor. Grace looked up from her sewing. "What in blazes did you two do-go out for coffee?"
"We-we were just talking."
"Well, do your visiting someplace else. You're here for one thing only and I'm not keeping you just to stand and visit with one guy."
"I-I was just trying to be nice to him."
"Just get rid of them as fast as you can so you'll be available for the next guy," Grace snapped. "It costs money to keep this place open and I can't afford to let you waste a half hour with just one customer!"
I didn't answer back because I knew I would only catch more hell. I sat beside the window, watching the street. Pretty soon, I looked over at Grace and said: "I'm sorry. I didn't stop to think."
"Just keep your loving on a cash basis and you'll be all right," Grace answered. "I'm telling you that for your own good. The less you say to a man the better off you are. You don't know these men or anything about them, so it's best not to take any chances."
She was right and besides, I wasn't being fair to her. She couldn't make any money off of me if I let some guy tie me up for very long.
Two days later, the same guy came back to see me. But he came early in the morning when I wasn't very busy. Just Shirley, Grace, and I were there.
"Knock if you need me," I told Grace when I took my friend into my room.
He paid me for a date, but we didn't do anything except to sit on the bed and talk. We had seen the same movies, liked the same kind of music, and had a lot of things in common. The one subject we avoided was sex. That was one of the things that I liked about him. I heard a man in the parlor ask for "Wanda."
"Wait in the kitchen for me," I told my friend, then I pulled off my dress and slip so it wouldn't look funny.
I let him out of my room and motioned for the second one to come in. He had visited me a couple of times before and told me his name but I couldn't remember it.
"Did I interrupt anything?" he asked.
"No, Honey, he just put me in the mood. I'm glad you came along."
I could hardly wait until he was through and had left. I wanted to talk to my friend again, and when he returned to my room, he had a sheepish expression on his face.
"We'd better do it while we've got the chance," I told him.
"Do you want to?" he asked. "I mean if you don't, it'll be O.K. with me."
I gave him a funny look. If he didn't go to bed with me, it would hurt my feelings, make me feel that he thought he was too good for me, but I didn't know how to tell him this.
"Honey, you paid for the date, so you might as well take it," I said. "Come on, let's get it done before I get another call. I'll even take off my bra for you."
I stripped off everything.
"Is this how you want me?" I asked. I put my arms around his neck and pressed my body close to his. I whispered, "I like doing it with you, you're real nice to me."
Afterwards, we sat in the parlor and talked. When a customer turned up the walk, my friend slipped out the kitchen door. Somehow, he didn't like to see me take another man into my room. I didn't think anything about it, but he did.