To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > Health & Body Nov. 1, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/health/sex/urge/1999/11/01/nancy33 Colliding worlds Matt is my intimate but knows nothing about me while Eileen the acquaintance knows everything. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Tracy Quan Nov. 1, 1999 Saturday afternoon, Sept. 11 Dessert with Matt was a romantic antidote to Eileen's troubling observations -- despite the question crossing my mind from time to time: "What would he say if he found out?" I couldn't quite shake it no matter how I tried. Like two naughty kids, Matt and I sat on my bed, sipping champagne and nibbling on pastries. I have about a dozen extra sheets -- I use them to protect my personal bedclothes when a client comes over -- and I had opened a fresh one to use as a kind of picnic blanket with Matt. So we were having our midnight snack on a clean sheet that I've used many times with various johns. Nervy maybe, but I had a strange thought: Even though I'm lying to my boyfriend about my work, this is my way of sharing my hidden life with him -- a private romantic gesture. "You're so organized," Matt remarked playfully. "Your bed's always perfectly made up." This brought me back to reality -- his reality. I was startled and made a mental note to look less organized -- perhaps I should unmake my bed, to appear more natural, more normal? "I just like to keep things neat," I said, unable to stop myself from picking up a stray pastry crumb. Could excessive tidiness give my game away? I've always noticed that people in the straight world aren't quite so fastidious as working girls. "So," he asked, toying with my bra strap and slipping it down against my shoulder. "What kind of trouble is your friend in? Which one of your mysterious girlfriends is it this time?" As we sat in the candlelight, it was Eileen's hypothetical comment (not her present problem with Tom Winters) that came back to me: What would Matt say if he knew what I really do? Would there be an ugly, insulting break-up with lots of name-calling? Or would he, like some guys, just go silent and brood for weeks on end? "Eileen's having a hard time," I told Matt, "and she swore me to secrecy." "Eileen -- I don't think you've mentioned her before." I tried to imagine how I would explain Eileen to Matt -- he would never understand how I came to know a girl so ... different from me. Eileen has exchanged johns with me over the years because we both have that Oriental look but all we have in common is our work. Her life revolves around her family in Queens, her baseball season tickets and bigger, better household gadgets. She looks and dresses like any other Manhattan call girl -- but when you get to know her, you start realizing that she hasn't completely made the transition. The only plays she sees are Broadway shows that tourists go to, like "Miss Saigon." Whenever I've been to her apartment, the mammoth TV set is on -- two stations at once -- and she thinks I'm odd because I never bother to upgrade my own TV. If I married Matt, I could find a way to stay friends with Jasmine and Allison, but how would I go about introducing Eileen to my straight friends? Everybody would ask: "How do you know her?" You can't mix girlfriends from the business with straight people unless they blend in easily. Eileen's too provincial -- I would have to "drop" her. In fact, she wouldn't even be interested in my straight friends. If one of us stopped working, she wouldn't bother to stay in touch, either. Picturing this for the first time, I felt very sad and quiet -- as if someone had died. I looked at Matt and pulled him toward me, explaining, "I'm sorry I had to stand you up but she was upset -- and she's my friend. I wish I could tell you --" But I felt sort of stifled, trying to explain the urgency of this thing that I couldn't risk saying. "It's OK," he said, gently removing my bra. "You can put it out of your mind for now." Matt has that slick ability with a bra hook that very few guys seem to have. Then, as he touched my breasts, I closed my eyes and remembered a trick I once turned with Eileen -- we were kneeling on either side of my bed, this bed, in our heels and stockings. Eileen's mouth was very busy. We were taking turns and her client was taking his time. We had used my apartment to see Eileen's date because hers was being painted that week. All these random details ran through my mind while I was kissing Matt: the way Eileen's mouth looked opening up around a man's cock, the color she was painting her walls (she had shown me a color sample), the thickness of her client's erection -- it challenged our jaws just a little -- and the way I had to keep adjusting my knees so my high heels wouldn't scuff the wall ... Matt has no idea how intimate I've been with this girl he's never met, even though Eileen and I don't think of it as intimate. We never discuss anything larger than business or boyfriends -- but maybe this is not a small thing: having men as our common medium. The idea of Matt observing my bestockinged self at work made my nipples hard. When Matt reached down to play with me, he mumbled, "God, you're wet," and I became extremely pliant. He couldn't know what I was thinking about, but he realized -- I felt it in the handling of my body -- that I was in a slutty, reckless mood. Monday September 13 First the good news -- Allison has enticed her subletter into leaving by using the money she had put aside to pay April. "I'm no longer a homeless hooker!" she said cheerfully, when I arrived at her 85th Street apartment. She was standing amid the clutter left behind by her tenant, an itinerant geek with a fondness for Mars Bars. Candy wrappers were everywhere. "He was very nice when I told him I needed the apartment back but -- well, you shouldn't rent to single guys," she said, staring ruefully at the computer manuals and comic books littering her carpet. "I just couldn't stay at Liane's anymore -- she's so controlling!" "It's going to take three days to make this place suitable for seeing johns," I said. "Who the hell was this guy? He stashed all your mail on top of the fridge!" "Mostly junk mail," Allie said, pulling down a stack of dusty envelopes. And that's when we both spied the envelope from the Treasury Department, hand-addressed in that familiar scrawl. "What's this?" she said, looking at the postmark -- "July! This must have arrived just after I moved out!" salon.com | Nov. 1, 1999