"Let me get this straight." I sat up. "You sit with a guy. You're wearing a sexy dress. He's buying you drinks --"

"Maybe. Mostly I just have one drink a night. Otherwise you start losing money, because you lose track of time and you have to keep moving."

"OK. So you sit with your cranberry juice, and he eats dinner. And you just ... talk? And then he tips you?" I was trying to figure out where the sex came into this. "Do you talk about, um, the weather? Or is it sexy talk? Or lewd?"

"We talk about everything. Books. Politics. His family. Sometimes his business. Sometimes my studies. But no, it never gets lewd. If it does, fuck it -- I just get up and walk away. I don't need that. All my regulars are gentlemen, and they're very respectful. I mean, sure, I get marriage proposals all the time, gifts, and yeah, they say how attractive I am and how they could make it worth my while -- but most of the time they're just lonely. They really just have this fantasy -- they just want a beautiful woman to be nice to them."

"Good Lord." For some reason, a vision of how much Q owed in taxes popped in my head. I thought about my water bill. "Talk is not cheap with you, I guess."

The cat jumped off her lap and Vickie winced. "It's all a fantasy, Courtney. I like my regulars, but I'm doing it for the money and they know that. They know me as 'Pansy,' and we chat and I do a little dance sometimes, and then they tip me, oh, $200 or so for about an hour. It varies. I had one guy, this beautiful black man in an incredible Armani suit, come up and ask me if I would drink Cristal with him. 'Of course,' I said. And we went through 4 bottles of Cristal -- I was hammered off my ass -- but we had a great old time. And at the end of the night, he kissed my hand -- normally they can't touch you, but I allowed that -- and gave me $1,000. Another night I sat with this very attractive gentleman, did a private dance which was actually a real turn-on for us both, which sometimes happens. We talked about his family, and I walked with $3,000 that night."

"Sheesh." Vickie was starting to sound more like a geisha than anything else. "Who are the best tippers?"

"Pro athletes are the best. [Here she names a famous basketball coach and a movie star, calling them great guys.] I mean, these famous people can't go out to a club and just hang out -- they'd be mobbed. Doctors are the absolute worst. Cheap, arrogant sons-of-bitches."

"Somehow that doesn't surprise me." We sipped our tea.

Vickie tugged on the spaghetti strap of her shirt. "I don't want you to get the wrong idea. I'm still a hustler -- the girls, we all call each other hookers, you know the way black people will call each other nigger or gay people faggots to each other. And us chicks -- we talk about the most raw, raunchy stuff with each other, way worse than anything I've ever heard from a guy. I have seen some shitty things -- women getting fingered by clients, guys saying stuff like, 'Show me your pussy,' girls letting guys kiss their breasts. I get infuriated if a girl lets that happen, because then those assholes come back and expect that from me. I will just stand up and tell him to fuck off, and get them thrown out." She looked at me apologetically. "I have to go back to studying now."

There was a lot more I wanted to interrogate Vickie about, but it seemed it would have to wait. When I got back to Q's apartment, he was poring over a pile of bills in the kitchen. Some fruit flies that I hadn't noticed before were lazily circling around in a shaft of sunlight. I narrowed my eyes and studied him. "Hey, I've got an idea," I said. "Aren't you Celts known for the gift of the gab?"
SALON | April 15, 1998

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