Sacred Whores and Trick Hos - Part 2

When the client enters the upscale massage parlor for which i worked, he's greeted by a roomful of gorgeous ladies in very sexy attire. The hostesses are seated along couches and furniture, legs outstretched, backs arched. Straggling hos have to stand like dumb mannequins. We're introduced by our working names one at a time during which we have to convince the client that we each were the best bang for his bucks. It's a very daunting experience for most men. And it is even more so for the newbie ho. 

The women seated around her had muscle tone and high-maintenance tan lines. Their nails were impeccably filled and airbrushed. Their outfits each cost more than three bills and weighed less than three ounces. 

The newbie's nails were chewed up, her skin was blanched from stress and sleep deprivation, and she's sucking in her tummy in a "house dress". 

"House dress" refers to dresses that the owner kept on premises for newbies who needed to make some money before they can afford their own working clothes, or if a girl forgot her gear. There were also house robes, house lingerie and house shoes. 

"Break" means to make money. Some days, some girls didn't make any money. Some girls would spend the entire day on the couch never getting picked once for a session. It was highly competitive. And every girl goes through a slump. No matter what she'd do to her hair or her outfits, either she wouldn't get picked or she'd get all straights. Compound the stress with all the girls asking after she gets straighted, "Did you break yet?" 

It's not that we were nosey. We were peers. One time or another, we shared our clients. That was completely normal. But that kind of close intimacy leads to a great deal of honest talk. Prostitutes have very little patience for bullshit.

My sense of self-worth was nurtured to health in such an environment. It was true irony that it took me hooking to value my body. I wasn't the coveted buxom blonde with legs for miles, but a john will pay me just as much for my sweet-young-Asian-me-so-horny schtick. 

So my self esteem improved. And I was working on my nymphomania, too. The other girls that I worked with live by a professional code and they didn't appreciate bitches who kinked up their game. They'd talk amongst themselves, "I can't understand when girls say they like hooking? Those hos are really fucked up." Then they would vote on which newbie was the skankiest, discussing the noises they heard coming from her private room sessions or the gross things she performed during multiples. They would steal my gear, my money from my locker... er, her gear and shit. 

One of the things I didn't count on was how much my appeal changed after I lost thirty pounds. I was getting sessions as if I were ten years younger, but the quality of those sessions left much to be desired, namely, MONEY! Talk about Straight Central!

The thing with being a "big girl" is that I catered to a very niche group - johns who loved bigguns. When I was the biggest girl in the reception room, I stood out. But as soon as I started losing the weight, I was competing with the skinny girls and the johns who liked us big didn't look my way anymore.

When johns come to the parlor specifically for a big girl, he ain't coming to look. That chunky ho is gonna break. I lost my game and suffered a lot of straights.

But the parlor owner had big plans for her business and the parlor underwent dramatic aesthetic upgrades. When I first started, the parlor was very discreet with a plain black door and the benign neon sign. It was a corner building on a street internationally renown for nightclubs and bars, poolhalls and after-hours eateries, as well as the City's high-track.

We occupied the top floor of a plain brick building which we shared with a rubber stamp company on the first floor. That summer, our downstairs neighbor's lease was up and they could not renew at the price the parlor owner offered for the space. Construction began for two new private studios upstairs and a much grander reception lobby in our newly acquired street-level space.

The parlor was beautiful after all the renovations. The parlor owner really added her personal touch to areas like the clients' waiting lounge. We greeted only one client or one set of clients at a time. To whet the appetites of awaiting clients, the owner hung gorgeous 8x10s in the waiting lounge and in common hallways around the spa area, by the private studios - pictures of consenting ladies in various stages of undress.

The owner also invested over $30,000 to revamp her website. She wanted a picture gallery of working girls accessible by paying club members. I participated in the website project and the owner liked the bio I wrote for my character, Chyna, so much that she requested I help the other girls with their bios. She also asked me to proof the copy she had written for her website. Yes, I was writing advertising for prostitutes, and typical of any dumb writer, making absolutely no money from it.

Yet, I felt proud that my years of memoranda writing and minutes-taking did not go to waste. (Hmmm, did I metion I worked in banks between graduation and hooking? It was really boring and you can't fault me for not mentioning it 'til now.) The girls really liked how I rewrote their biographies. Some of them even started talking to me for the first time since I started working there.

But the parlor owner had one more improvement to add - a 14x30 foot mural professionally airbrushed in the front display window. To emphasize her point, she commissioned the artist to put on a pseudo street performance at 8PM on a Friday night using high-volume projectors to create the scene of a boudoir setting with a dozen scantilly clad, busty, athletic-framed women. It was nothing like the City had ever seen. Most of us girls thought it was ugly. The parlor owner boasted that it was, "The best seven hundred bucks I ever spent!"

Yes, our daily sessions increased 100, sometimes 150 per cent. Before the mural, a 50 session day came a few times a year: during Indy weekend, Hallowe'en, and the first week of July when both Canada and the US celebrate their national holidays.

Post-mural, we averaged 80 sessions each and every day. Do the math. Each session costs the client $60-$85 an hour, all of which goes to the House. Just looking at the bottom line alone, then I would have to agree with the owner that the mural was the best seven bills she ever spent.

However, if I take into account the fact that the mural totally revealed our establishment for what it was, compromising the discretion it had enjoyed for over a decade, I think the mural was a downer for most of the girls. For example, a lot of the older regulars who were more particular about matters of discretion did not return to the parlor after the mural was up. I am certain they did not curtail their tricking; instead, they found other parlors (certainly on the seedier side, as ours was one of only two classy joints in town owned and operated by women) which didn't front the fact to the rest of the community that hos worked there.

These old-timers made the best benefactors. They were kind, rarely tried anything funny or gross, and they eloquently filled my sessions with lively conversation. Plus, they were generous.

Bye-bye, Sugar Grampies. Hello, collegiate straights. I slightly exaggerate; truth is, I made twice as much money after the mural went up. I just had to work five times as hard. Not all squares stay squares. It's very easy for men to get addicted to parlors and the club life. They're surrounded by gorgeous girls who wouldn't otherwise look in their direction and the expectations of one another are quite clear. Money talks. But I was interested in the male perspective.

When I was socially rejected by the girls, I turned my focus towards the johns. I wanted to know what made a normal looking guy on all other fronts want to spend his hard earned money frequenting parlors, going from square to live in no time. I started a new project to see how many first timers I can get to pick me from the couch just so I can study them and pick their brains. Yes, it was manipulative of me, but seriously, would the alternative have been any better?

My mission didn't end at observation and questioning. I made an effort to persuade the first-time johns not to come back, that they didn't need to be spending their money that way. I was ignored most of the time. 

My favorite client was Will. He was a Systems Administrator who did a lot of traveling. He was the most gentle, kindhearted man I'd met in years. He weighed over three hundred pounds when I met him, which totally didn't bother me. I was his first experience with a hooker. He had heard about my employer's parlor from a coworker who had passed along the business card saying he would not be disappointed. 

I was the fifth girl of seven on the couch introduced to Will when he walked in that ordinary rainy day. I flashed him my perfect smile and shimmied my shoulders back. Now, if he'd picked any of the other girls, I'd hate to imagine what would have happened to my dear Will. Don't get me wrong, I loved all the girls I worked alongside with yet their focus on the job was money - period. They did not join me on my crusade of God's Happy Hookers. (More on that in Part 3.) But Will picked me, we dated and we had a very nice time. I was not sure if he would come back. He was very easy with the money, not arguing or trying to haggle the exchange rate. I emptied his wallet of cash with his appetite for extra servings. Like I said, it was a nice date. 

The second time Will came to visit, he told me he'd fallen in love with me. I told him I loved him also... as a person, just as I love all living creatures, but I get paid to leave this part out of the conversation. This is the service johns pay for. The rest of it is up to the girl's discretion. 

I knew it would be a very delicate operation should I continue to investigate his feelings for me - a whore he met in another country. I recognized Will's low self esteem. I committed to doing what I had to do so that Will could see his true worth. 

A week later, a package arrived to the parlor addressed to my club name, ATTENTION: CHYNA. PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL. Inside, a gold chain with two gold charms and a stack of prepaid calling cards. It was the first time I had received gifts from a trick. 

Did I see Will as a trick? Of course, I did. That's how we met and no matter how hard Will tried to deny it, fact was fact. He'd get so frustrated when I refused to commit to more than just a professional relationship. Will no longer saw me as a hooker. He only saw what he needed to see to validate his feelings. I had to get him to a point where he would let me in his life and I did not intend to misuse my influence. 

Will was an ill man when we met. No one knew how critical his condition was. At first, a dry cough would come in spells causing him to carry a few handkerchiefs on his twenty-eight year old person. Then, he started coughing up blood. Will had never smoked a cigarette in his life. He never drank to excess and the only time he ever "experimented" was when we took some herbal ecstasy during an IMAX film he took me to. Will's disease: overwork. 

The next weeks would mean tests and more tests and further tests. Will kept in touch by phone as he no longer was healthy enough to travel. The news from all the tests just got worse and worse. Then, as suddenly as his cough-ups turned from bloody phlegm to bloody chunks, Will underwent surgery to remove a tumor in his lung the size of a tennis ball. With his weight surpassing 300 pounds, Will was not an ideal candidate for major surgery. 

It was the most demanding thing Will had every gone through. He kept a journal where he wrote poems he'd dedicate to Chyna. He sketched scenery he imagined we would one day visit when he recovered. He cried a lot. He told me months later that he had waited for me to come to his bedside every day. No matter how much he suffered, he told himself that tomorrow, Chyna would come. He told me if he didn't think he would ever see me again, he would have just given up. But he hoped everyday, through all his pain, he hoped. 

I knew in my heart that the worst thing I could have done to this man was to visit him at the hospital. One of our phone calls I had mentioned the book, A Course In Miracles. Will asked his sister to find a copy for him and he devoured the entire book in a little less than the eleven weeks he spent in the hospital. It is recommended that the book be read over the course of a year. 

When Will went home (the same home he grew up in, with his Chinese immigrant parents and twenty-two year old brother) I decided it was time to visit him. 

He looked amazing. He'd lost at least one hundred fifty pounds. His face lit up like a smiling young buddha at the sight of me at his front door. 

We spent the day together, holding hands. He told me all about the hospital, operation, how great the doctors were, how understanding his employer was to give him as much time off with full pay as his doctor advised. He shared his journal, his sketches, his hopes with me. I knew our relationship would soon come to an end. It was not time yet for Will to know. He was just getting back to health and making a new start for himself. It was not the time to, um, dump him. 

I saw Will one more time. As fate would have it, I got fired from the parlor the same day that Will was well enough to travel to the City again. He'd called that afternoon before my employer came into work and booked an appointment with me. Unfortunately, I didn't call him to cancel our session. 

When Will showed up that evening asking for me and my ex-employer told him that I no longer worked there, at first, he thought they were lying to him. When she further apologized for my unprofessionalism, not calling him to let him know I was fired, and she suggested he have a session with one of the twenty other hostesses there that time, Will lost it. 

"I don't want to see anybody else but Chyna!" he shouted. "Chyna is nothing like you! She's sweet and never belonged here. I'm glad she got fired. I hope she gets as far away from this place as possible!" he'd cried, running past a rowdy quartet of U-Dub seniors as he exited through the Enter door, gripping the leather-bound copy of Alice In Wonderland he had wrapped in fancy paper for his girlfriend. 

In the rainy night, Will walked the streets hoping to run into me. 

I learned all of this the next morning when I met him at his hotel lobby. He'd left a message on my calling card voice mail. 

This time, there was no smile to greet me. He gave me the beautifully wrapped present asking me not to open it until he left. He didn't want to know what I felt. He didn't know what I felt anymore and he didn't care anymore. 

"Why are you treating me like this?" he asked, his eyelids bloated like babies' arms. 

I took his hand in mine. "Will, I am not the person you love. My role was to help you through the last three months so that I can tell you the one you truly love is close. You may even know her already. She already loves you and is waiting for you to see her just as I see you, Will." Tears freely flowed from us both as we sat in the leather furnished atrium. "I didn't come to see you when you needed me most," I reminded him. "The woman you are meant to be with would have." 

Nearby, a Taiwanese couple in Italian business attire shared The Sun (him, Business; her, Front Page). Will and I helped ourselves to tissue on the coffee table. I leaned into him, hugging him tight. 

"Go to her," I whispered. "Do it as fast as you can." 

I know I've hurt people. I also know that I have destroyed no one. I've always suffered alongside those who have been wronged, allowing them to vent their anger and disgust in my direction if only so they could feel better about their situation. And then there were the glimpses to God's Great Plan for me when I helped save a life.


[continued in Part 3./tba]