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PIMPS AND HO'S | PAGE 1, 2
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It was quite a scene. Most of the men were dressed more or less like me; none of the women were dressed anything like Cassandra. I was issued a bottle of malt liquor by someone sporting a mesh dress and a leash around her neck. Trying to flirt and generally to get what I believe is called "my groove" on, I looked her up and down as seedily as I knew how and said, "I would definitely pay $25 for that." "Three hundred to get in the door," she replied dismissively, and turned to speak with someone else.

Moralizing definitely follows rejection, and I would have started to think about real prostitution in a new light again if I hadn't been distracted by a loud knot of people near the refrigerator.

A guy from another school was talking to Cassandra, convinced that her pregnancy was real, and remonstrating with her about the drink in her hand. He was obviously kind, concerned, insistent and a little bit befuddled -- whether by alcohol, the surreal context or some combination of the two, I have no idea. He looked askance at Cassandra's bruises, and then at me when she explained I was her pimp and had created them when I found out she'd conceived. I said it wasn't true, then agreed with another bystander when I was contradicted, laughing all the time. We were certainly unfair to this man in his confusion, and he looked horrified when Cassandra offered to remove the T-shirts-cum-fetus and demonstrate that her condition was only part of the costume.

The party was a success. The hostess appeared as a madam in an astonishing kimono. Athletes tore away their tear-away running suits to great applause. More people arrived; the stairway and eventually even the bathrooms were converted into social areas.

We finally left, and Cassandra filled me in on the details of her interlocutor's behavior. He apparently followed her around the house for some time, trying to protect the health of her child and to find out in some noninvasive way if it was really real. I thought of the quick shifts between truth and imagination in the conversation around him all night, and of his bewilderment; I remembered my own shuttling between prostitution's "image" and "reality" all week. There was a kind of kinship between these phenomena, and there in that man but for the grace of God went I. I felt glad to have abandoned my inadequate and partially formed scruples at the door.
SALON | March 17, 1999

Isaac Zaur is a senior at Haverford College.