“Can you tell if people have a secret life?” I asked Andrea. We were
sitting on her spare, Bauhaus-inspired sofa amid the 40-something
partygoers, and I was watching Andrea’s boyfriend gamely working the room,
refilling glasses and chatting, being the consummate host.
When Andrea invited me to her and Greg’s housewarming party, I calmly
accepted. Inside I did a little jig of excitement and anticipation –
Whoopee! A chance to see Andrea’s former client and now
boyfriend! As Andrea gave me directions to their little bungalow in Los Feliz, near Hollywood, I envisioned a party straight out of “Boogie Nights” — women in halter tops sitting poolside, tan guys with handlebar mustaches snorting coke, sexual gyrations being performed on the kitchen counter, all while I hid behind a vinyl brown sofa scribbling down every last hilarious tidbit.
Of course I’d managed to overlook one small detail — this was 1998, not
1978, and Greg was a stockbroker, not a pornographer. The jocular
partygoers were perfectly pleasant: Polo-clad friends from Greg’s firm and
classical musicians, like Andrea. Slightly disappointed, I put my tape
recorder and reporter’s notebook aside and accepted a glass of Pouilly
Fuisse from the friendly, easygoing and exceedingly normal Greg.
“See that guy over there?” Andrea now said, gesturing with her wine glass.
“The one standing next to the CDs? I first met him at Greg’s Christmas
party last year. After talking to him for two minutes, I went up to Greg
and said, ‘Is Frankie gay?’ Greg laughs at me, ‘Frankie? Are you kidding
me? He’s got a wife and three kids. He hits on all the secretaries. No,
he’s not gay.’ And I said, ‘I think he is. I just know it.’”
I looked at this pot-bellied man with his red suspenders, who was reading
the back of a Kronos Quartet CD with a puzzled expression. “What made you
think that?”
Andrea frowned thoughtfully. “It’s something that I’ve picked up from doing
phone sex — I can tell from a guy’s voice exactly what they’re going to
ask me. And Frankie — well, he has a slightly high, breathy voice. It
sounds crazy, I know, but those guys always want a Dom 7, and want me to
tell them about taking a huge dick up their butt.”
“God,” I said, impressed. “All from a five-minute Christmas party
conversation over canapés.”
Andrea leaned over to grab the wine bottle from the steel coffee table
and nestled it between us. We watched a few of her friends who were admiring
Andrea’s ancient cello in the corner of the room. I whispered to her: “Does
everyone know about your secret life?”
As if prompted, Andrea pulled her black, long-sleeved velvet T-shirt down
farther around her wrists, so only a wisp of a blue-green tattoo was
visible. “Not Greg’s friends. And some of my friends do — well, most of
them. See, it was weird because Greg was living with his girlfriend when I
moved here to be with him. He’s got a 20-year-old son too, and it
wouldn’t have been good if the kid’s mother found out about me. So, yeah, I
gotta keep it under wraps a little.”
I looked at the door that Andrea had told me was her “office,” wondering
if it had a desk and a chair, or maybe a sofa, or an exercise mat. “Do men
ever call you, uh, wanting to chat?” I asked. “Like the cliché — ‘My wife
doesn’t understand me.’”
“What I get is a lot of ‘My wife doesn’t like to have sex.’ That comes up
all the time. And yeah, I have one or two regulars who just call to talk.
They know that I play the cello, that I live in L.A., that I’m 40, that
sort of thing. Greg was one of those. He was in this terrible relationship
with his girlfriend, and he’d call me to talk about it. We started talking
every day, and then we met, and well …” She gestured around at the friends
and the furniture. “The rest is history.”
I wondered if Andrea should be flitting about, playing hostess, but she
seemed perfectly content just to sit with me and discuss her unique life.
“Is there stuff you won’t do?” I asked.
“Absolutely.” Andrea sat up and poured some more wine into my glass. “I
absolutely do not do submissive. I just don’t get paid enough to be
screamed at and made to hear about how I’d be fucked so hard
that I’d squeal like a pig.”
“Squeal like a pig?” I said.
“That’s what the guy wanted. I mean, what are they thinking? That I live
in a mansion and can scream as loud as they want with no one hearing? Like
I said, I don’t get paid enough to take calls like that. Or to hear how
they’re going to molest their daughter. That kind of energy goes into the
phone, and it’s really negative and would make me feel very unhealthy.”
I stopped crunching a potato chip. “Please tell me that’s an exaggeration.
About the daughter stuff.”
Andrea frowned. “I wish it was. I had one call that really did it for me.
This guy was jacking off, I was talking to him and I could hear him huffing
and puffing and he was saying all this stuff and in the middle of it a
little kid came in the room. I mean, I could hear her — she was crying and
saying, ‘Daddy, don’t.’ She was about 5 years old, from the sound of it.
It was horrible. I hung up immediately and called
back the service and said, ‘You gotta call the cops. That guy is molesting
his daughter. He’s sexually abusing her. Do something.’ And they were
really sorry but they said they just couldn’t do that. The most they could
do was to put a note on the number not to accept his calls anymore. But
they said they couldn’t set the cops on him.” She shuddered. “So — that’s
why I don’t do submissive.”
“Oh, God.” A silence fell between us. The rest of the party had
moved into the kitchen and we listened to their laughter. “What do you
actually do when you take calls? Are you sitting at a desk? What do you
wear?”
Andrea suppressed a burp, and then laughed. “That’s a big question from
the callers: ‘What are you wearing?’ I purr, ‘Oh, a corset that I just
bought from Victoria’s Secret.’ And I’m sitting in jeans and a T-shirt,
combat boots. Sometimes my hair’s in rollers. Drinking a beer out of the
bottle. One time I was cleaning my oven and I dropped the rack. The guy,
who luckily was a Dom 5, says, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘Oh, I’m preparing
the stretching rack for you. Shut up.’ Other times I’m reading a magazine,
turning the pages really quietly –”
“Or filing your nails?” I interrupted, looking at her perfectly manicured
hands.
A lot of filing of nails. It really depends. Sometimes they want to get into your head, and then you can’t sit there and read.”
I fidgeted a bit. “Does it ever make you feel, um — well, grossed out? Or
just down on men, since all these calls are men?”
She considered, peering into her empty glass. “I find that it’s made me a
bit jaded. So much infidelity, so much unhappiness with their sex lives. I
hear so many weird things. Also, what I hear a lot is, ‘I want to hear you
come, really loudly.’ Do they really think I can come 20 times a day? That’s just silly. American men have a very adolescent idea when it comes to sex — they’re really deluded when it comes to a woman’s libido, only seeing it in relation to them. They like big elaborate games, otherwise they get bored.”
I shook my head. “They can’t possibly believe you’re actually having an
orgasm.”
“Oh, they do,” she said vigorously. “But I have some good guys too — I
have one guy that I’ve talked to my whole career. He always ends the calls
with, ‘Have a good day.’”
This brightened me, and I ventured, “Has it made your sex life better?”
We both looked at Greg across the room, who was talking to Frankie.
“Actually, it probably has. It’s definitely made me more creative.” She
smiled. “Some of these guys have really good ideas.”
All the small round tables in the front of the cafe were taken, so Andrea and I migrated to the back garden. Andrea sipped her latte and we eyed the two women sitting at separate tables in the small space. “Maybe we should go back to the front, where it’s noisier,” Andrea whispered.
Andrea is a phone sex worker, or, as her W2 more accurately states, a “phone actress.” We’d met a few years ago through a mutual friend, and I saw her as a sexual Odysseus — navigating her way through the changing waters of the sex industry over the past two decades. I was always happy to see Andrea at parties or picnics since she was so down-to-earth and intelligent, and so perfectly willing to tell tales about her unique life.
I’d wanted to grill her in depth for a while now about what it was really like to be a phone sex worker, but somehow the context was never appropriate. Standing over a bowl of limp coleslaw, struggling to open a bottle of cheap red wine — even I couldn’t imagine myself striking up a conversation with “So Andrea, what’s the funniest phone sex request you’ve had?” She recently moved to Los Angeles, so on my last trip down there, I called to see if I could spirit her away for a morning coffee.
As always, she looked healthy and fresh-faced. Her cosmetic-free skin was glowing and her black hair was pulled back in a thick ponytail. We retired to the front of the buzzing cafe off Sunset Boulevard and sat behind a couple who were poring over the L.A. Times. I wondered if they would overhear, but Andrea now seemed unconcerned and began elaborating the distinction between pictures of sex on the Internet and phone sex. “I don’t think the callers really want to see me,” she said, stirring her coffee thoughtfully. “That way I can be whatever they want.”
Andrea didn’t have much time that morning, so I cut to the chase. “Can I ask some nuts and bolts questions?” I said, hoping I wasn’t being too abrupt. “Can you give me some history? How much do you make? Do you like doing phone sex? What is the funniest phone sex request you’ve had?”
She nodded cheerfully, as if I’d just asked about her favorite color, food and TV show. “OK. I started doing this a few years ago, because all you needed was a phone and you made your own schedule. I’m a musician, so that’s great. You get signed up with a service or two, and you can be on call an hour a day or 24 hours a day, but you have to answer the phone if you’re on. The calls cost $12 for 15 minutes, and I get $4 of that.”
“Is that all?” I squeaked. Somehow I’d thought they made a mint.
“Well, yes,” Andrea said. “But the average call is eight minutes. That’s how long it usually takes to get a guy off. And I get about 25 to 30 calls a day. Did you see ‘Short Cuts’?”
“Yes,” I said. “The few times I’ve had phone sex, I always think of it.”
“That was pretty damn accurate. Remember Jennifer Jason Leigh’s expression when they’d hang up on her? She’d just replace the phone and say, ‘Oh, good, another one gone.’ Obviously the shorter the call, the better. I have one guy who’s great — he’ll tell me to wear stiletto heels and put the phone on the floor. I’ll walk around a few times, then pick up the phone and bzzzzzz … dial tone. He’ll have hung up within minutes.”
“God,” I said, and we both began to laugh. “Is that your funniest?”
“No, that’s not my funniest. I’ll tell you about that in a minute.” She sipped her latte and laughed again. “Most of my calls are S/M. I do dominant really well, I think because I read up on it and you have to be pretty well educated to know what to do. There is a huge demand for dominants. And I can vent a lot of anger that way, you know, just through subtle insults.” Andrea gazed into her coffee, as if she were thinking about what she needed to buy at the grocery store. “There are a ton of calls for Dom 1 through Dom 10 –”
“What’s that?” I interrupted.
“Well, Dom 1 would be like Scarlett O’Hara. You know — bitchy, sassy, independent-minded, the kind of woman who would blow smoke in their face. Dom 5 would be subtle insults and cross-dressing, telling them to do things. Dom 10 is just out and out screaming at them, with a lot of profanity and extreme insults. I get a lot of Dom 5. It’s gotten to the point where I’ll be standing in a store and I’ll look at a guy and think, ‘I just know he’s a Dom 5.’”
“What did you read to know all this?” I asked.
“‘The Leatherman’s Handbook,’” Andrea said immediately. “The gay guys really know the S/M fantasies — I get a lot of ideas from that. And ‘The Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices’ — that’s an essential.”
“And you know the other most popular thing?” she continued. “The mommy calls. That’s when I’m the mommy, and I come in the room and see that he’s masturbating. ‘What are you doing?’ I say in a mean tone. ‘That’s a bad boy!’ And then on to: ‘Can Mommy touch your penis?’ And then it goes into ‘Can Mommy give you a blow job?’ and on to putting the penis inside of Mommy.”
“And they say Freud is dead.”
“It’s a really popular fantasy,” she said, shrugging.
“How do they ask for that?” I said. “Do they say, I want the Mommy Fantasy No. 207?”
“Well, if I know them — if they’re regulars, then yes. This one guy, he calls up in character, as a baby, and says, ‘Goo goo goo, Mommy, m-m-my ditty is durrrr-ty.’ And I respond to that in a mommy voice. That call’s a little difficult because I always start to laugh.”
I must have looked shocked because Andrea patted my hand, and we both started to giggle. “I know, I know. It’s so funny. See — that’s how it works: They’ll tell you their fantasy, and you have to narrate it back to them.”
“What other regulars do you have?” I asked, wondering if anything could top that one.
“There’s the Panty Guy, and I know him so well that he doesn’t even say anything anymore. That involves me going into a shoe store wearing no stockings and a linen business suit, and he tries about six different pairs of shoes on me, and each time I flash him a little more panty, and a little more, so then he can see my pubic hair, and then he can start to smell me, and then I go in the back and get up on the ladder to get some more shoes, and he starts to slowly, slowly pull down my panties, while I’m saying, ‘No, no!’” — Andrea, in character, paused to look mock-outraged — “until he tears them off and suddenly plunges his face into them!” She laughed and dropped her voice down to a normal tone again. “There’s a few variations on that, like how many pairs of shoes I try on, but it’s essentially the same.” She looked at her sports watch.
“Oh, no,” I said. “Can I meet you tomorrow? I still have so many more things to ask.”
“OK,” she said cheerfully. “God, this is nothing, just the tip of the iceberg. But what other stuff do you want to know, so I can think about it?”
“Well, what trends you’re spotting,” I said. “What you do around the house when you’re on a call. Calls you won’t do, fantasies you won’t narrate. Bad things.”
“Oh, there’s a lot of bad things,” she said airily, picking up her gym bag. “It’s like that with any job. But hey — I do like it. And it is very creative.”
(To be continued.)
I lay in the dentist’s chair, craning my neck and trying to see the light board behind me. One by one the dental hygienists padded in, stared at the ghostly images of my teeth, murmured and walked out again. Finally, the dentist himself arrived, swathed head to toe in protective surgical garb, grabbed the X-rays and sat down on the stool.
I looked at him fearfully. “What is it? Do I have cancer?”
“You have very short roots,” he informed me. “Some of the shortest we’ve ever seen.”
“Is that all?” I breathed a sigh of relief. “You guys tell me every single time I come in.”
“You could have bone loss,” he said severely. “Do you grind your teeth?”
“Uh, only when I’m annoyed.” I looked up at him. “Oh, and when I’m biking. Going up a hill. And sometimes when I’m running. Maybe sleeping too.”
“Oh, you’re a cyclist?” His eyes brightened and he took off his mask.
“Well, that would be putting it a little strongly –”
“So am I! Where do you go? What kind of bike do you have?”
“Well, I …” And off we went on a 20-minute discussion of road bikes, trails and chain rings. Short roots, bone loss and grinding molars were all but forgotten.
“So if you ever want to go training sometime,” he said finally, as I was paying my bill at the front desk.
“Sure,” I said, a little uncertainly. I walked out of the office, feeling like I’d just sat through a foreign movie and completely misunderstood the ending.
“Did my dentist just ask me out?” I asked Harriet in our nightly phone session. “Or was that just a friendly innocent offer? Am I being egotistical?”
“That was fishing,” said Harriet authoritatively. “He doesn’t feel really strongly about it. He threw out a line to see if he got a bottom feeder or an old shoe or maybe nothing at all.”
“Oh, well.” Somewhere in there was a compliment, I was sure, but I didn’t feel very flattered.
“This seems to be an epidemic lately,” she continued. “The other day, I was standing in the post office and this guy I see around starts chatting with me. Then he says, ‘So, do you want to go have a drink?’ And all of a sudden I realize that it’s not a neighborly chat to him — it’s a segue to a date.”
“Well, I don’t blame you for feeling trepidatious,” I said. “Dating and the U.S. Postal Service don’t exactly make a tantalizing combination. But, is there something wrong with him asking?”
“Not really,” she said. “Except that nine times out of 10, the strangers you meet who ask you out are nobody you would ever consider going out with. I mean, a friendly chat is fine, but why can’t they just leave at that? Why is it that men feel compelled to take it one step further every time they meet a woman with a common interest?”
That befuddled me, so I began some calling around. “I was standing in line at Starbuck’s yesterday,” said Hailey, “and I started to complain to the guy in front of me about the long line. We started chatting back and forth, just in a nice, friendly, urban-village kind of way. He said: ‘So, do you work around here? What’s your name?’ I started feeling a little uncomfortable, and started waving my wedding ring around. I moved to the front to the counter and just put out those little unspoken signals that I wasn’t interested. As I was leaving, he said ‘Well, goodbye Hailey!’ in this peeved way. And I just thought: Sheesh — can’t women ever just be friendly without it having to mean something?”
“Oh, come on,” said an impatient Renee. “Attractive women are usually so bitchy and non-talkative that when they are actually outgoing or friendly, of course they’re going to get asked out. It’s flattering!” But when I pressed her a bit further, she did admit to feeling annoyed when a geeky guy assumed she’d want to go on a date with him, all because she was more verbal than the average gal.
“So it comes down to how attractive the man is,” I said. “So, beautiful people can ask people out, but the rest of us slobs have to just hope that a love connection can be made in some unspoken way. Is that what you’re saying?”
“I guess so,” she said doubtfully.
“There is no such thing as the innocent chat for men,” said my friend Kevin. “Let me qualify that: for urban American men, because we just aren’t very chatty as, say, the Italians would be. There is always, always something underneath when you’re talking to a strange, attractive female. You wait for the signs, see if she’s going to be open to being asked out, and then you throw out a line. If they don’t bite, then fine. You’re no worse off. And admit it — isn’t it flattering to be asked out?”
Kevin had a point, though flattery hardly expressed my usual response to such encounters. Most of the time, I was too oblivious to realize what had happened until after the fact. Other times, the guy was a toad and I felt a little outraged. Still other times, I felt irritated that I can’t be friendly without it being taken the wrong way. But one thing was clear: This was one area where the communication gap between men and women couldn’t be wider.
“I have a great rapport with my car mechanic,” said Sydney, who lives in a small town in upstate New York. “I love seeing him. We talk on and on about my little Fiat, about what a terrible car it is. We flirt and flirt — he’s married, I’m married — so it means nothing. I love flirting with Antonio — it makes my entire day.”
“He’s Italian?” I asked. “According to my sources, he may be chatting away to you, but it means nothing else. Or — he could be priming you, waiting for the right non-verbal clue before he moves in for the kill.”
ny confusion between men and women — that’s what life’s about. Besides, it’s not as if he’s my dentist. A guy who’s rooting around in my mouth, scraping my gums, who then asks me out — now that is truly weird.”
“I couldn’t care less,” said Sydney airily. “All this funny confusion
between men and women — that’s what life’s about. Besides, it’s not as if he’s my dentist. A guy who’s rooting around in my mouth, scraping my gums, who then asks me out — now that is truly weird.”
Sometimes I wonder if people like Renee are merely plants –
dropped into my life for the express purpose of exposing me to some aspect
of sexuality that I hadn’t considered in any great detail. Renee was part
of the Bored Cat Women clique: impossibly beautiful, sexually courageous females who slunk around my social periphery and batted my questions
around with impassive amusement.
The last time I’d talked to Renee, she’d breezily related a tangle
with a penile pierce and a pair of scissors. Now I’d
heard from the other Bored Cat Women that she was in love, had changed jobs
and had moved — all in the space of nine months. After a few weeks of
phone tag, we made a plan to meet late one evening at Farallon — a beautiful and thoroughly expensive restaurant in
downtown San Francisco. That was typical of Renee, who was known to
match her surroundings to her appearance. I tried to imagine her downing
shots of whiskey with Harriet and me in one of the old-man bars we
frequent when in New York, and I shuddered at the thought.
“I’m late. I know, I know.” I practically steamrolled into
her. She was sitting at the bar by herself, calmly deconstructing a
sculpture of seared ahi tuna and crispy lotus root with a heavy silver
fork, and merely leaned over and kissed me on the lips.
“It’s OK, sweetheart,” she said, and with Renee, it actually was.
It was rare to see Renee upset about anything. “Do you know Rick?” she
said, as a GQ-type bartender began pouring me a glass of red wine. “He and
I used to work together at Plump Jack’s. Thanks, Rick.”
“So,” I began, feeling flustered and blown around next to these
creatures of cool. I tugged on my cardigan, opened a few buttons, then
buttoned it right up underneath my chin. “You’ve moved. You have a new job.
And I hear you’ve met The One. Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” she said dreamily.
“No more pierces and tangles for you then.”
“Nope,” she said.
“No more pioneering of your body by some sexual woodsman.”
“Uh-uh. Well, there has been some pioneering –”
“So it’s just same old, same old, from here on in.” I patted her
hand. “Welcome to the real world, where sex isn’t nearly as fun as what
you’re probably used to. But that’s OK — because you’re in love!
Seriously, I am happy for you.” I clinked her glass.
“I am in love,” she said, with a disgustingly happy gleam in her
round eyes. “I bought a strap-on the other day for us,” she continued. “Did
I tell you about that? It really got me thinking.”
I should have known. “It got you — thinking? I wouldn’t say that
would be the purpose of a strap-on, but please, do share.”
“Well,” she said, carefully pushing some strands behind her ears,
“I have had many, many boyfriends who seem to have an anal fixation. And
depending on how open they are, which they usually aren’t, I’ve kind of
dabbled around with it. You know — a finger in there, stuff like that. But
never, never a strap-on. I didn’t think that would really be a turn-on for
me. But anal stuff is such a turn-on for Mark that I thought, what the
hell. I’ll go shopping for one. I’d considered one before, when I was going
out with Nick, but then — oh, I bagged it.”
“That’s not like you,” I observed.
She took a large sip of wine. “Nick was too desperate. He really,
really wanted to be fucked in the ass. And just the way he asked me — I
don’t know, it made me feel too, um, dominant. It didn’t turn me on. But I
went shopping one time, and would you believe they cost $75? It pissed me off. Hey — poor people like to have fun too, right? Anyway, I didn’t buy it then. But the other day, Mark and I were going at it, and I just slipped two fingers in. I didn’t even do anything, just sort of moved them around — a little prostate massage — and boom! That was it. He came in a second. And this is a guy who can control his orgasm down to the last possible second. So this is what got me thinking.”
“More wine?” asked the bartender.
“Yes, absolutely,” I said.
“So — I went back down to look at the strap-ons again,” continued
Renee. “And since Mark is a triathlete, I thought, well he won’t mind the
sporty-looking one. He might even prefer it, since it looks like something
you’d take on a camping trip, maybe without the dildo part, I guess. It was
the cheaper version with the buckles and nylon strap, and a little Velcro
strip to put the dildo in. I think I should have gotten the fancy, S&M kind
in leather, though, because it feels a little flimsy. Plus I have to hold
the dildo when we’re doing it.” She returned to eating, lifting her fork
calmly to her mouth. “Do you want a bite? It’s really amazing — I was just
so starving that I had to order something.”
“No, thank you,” I told her. “What does this thing look like?”
“It doesn’t look like a real dick, if that’s what you mean,” she
said. “In fact, it’s all so fake anyway, I don’t
want to pretend that it’s a real thing. I thought I should just get it in a color I like. And I wear a lot of black clothes, so I just got it in
black — like I’d buy a black handbag.”
The bartender poured some wine in both our glasses and stood back,
ready to join in the conversation.
“And then,” Renee continued, “I put it on when I got home and
looked in the mirror and thought, this is such a joke — I mean, how
am I going to be bossy in bed when I can’t take myself seriously? But I got
over that. Because Mark is so into it — I mean, he really likes being
fucked in the ass. A lot of men I know really like to have their
asses played with, or I suspect that they like it, but they can’t bring
themselves to ask because of the whole gay connotation. But I think if they felt it was socially acceptable, they would ask their girlfriends to anally stimulate them a lot more often.”
The bartender turned and began cleaning a small part of the mirror
at the opposite end of the bar.
“I think it’s the penetration thing,” said Renee thoughtfully.
“Also — look what happened with Nick. He did ask me, but I didn’t like the
way he asked me. It was a turn-off. I guess you can’t blame them for being
fearful.”
“My friend Rex says the same thing: Men have a secret penchant for
prostate massage but are deathly afraid to ask. Because then maybe the
woman will think he wants the real thing in his butt. But he says there’s
nothing that gets him off faster, or better.”
Renee returned to her tuna and said, “I think you have to really be
comfortable with your sexuality to ask for things like that. For men, it’s
incredibly difficult because they have all these roles to live up to. Now,
the thing is, I like to be dominated too. So we switch roles. We have
amazing sex — it’s never just kiss, kiss, now you go down on me, now I’ll go
down on you and then we’ll do it and it’s over. Every time it’s different
– and I think the strap-on really opened us up that way.” She sat up on
the stool. “Where did Rick go? He looked like he was going to join us.”
I leaned over the bar to see Rick at the opposite end, bending down
and rearranging bottles with a look of heavy concentration. “I think he was
afraid to ask,” I said.
At the behest of its elected despot, Rudy Giuliani, New York City is
experiencing a serious sexual cleansing. From sex shops and porn theaters
to strip clubs and adult bookstores, red-light
venues are closing daily, creating a sex-free Big Apple. I figure it’s only
a matter of time before this
trend sweeps westward, so when my friend Jonathan said he was going
to a sex club, I felt it was my civic duty to tag along.
“Really?” he said incredulously, then shrugged his shoulders. “Well, great. But you can’t go upstairs, where I’m going. Women aren’t allowed.”
That was fine, I assured him. Although the upstairs did sound rather intriguing — with its little tents and mattresses and clean sheets just like a giant Boy Scout sleepover — I had little interest in scoping out a gay sex scene. Downstairs was the straight sex club, which he informed me, rather apocryphally, was the “only legal straight sex club in California.” Naturally, I should attend.
We met outside on a recent cold, foggy Saturday night. It was midnight, and already I was starting to feel sleepy. “How long are you going to stay?” I asked, following him inside a narrow foyer decorated with little fluorescent stars and planets. “Are you sure I don’t pay anything?”
“Not a red cent,” he said. He pointed to the sign, which said that it was free for women and transgender, 20 bucks for men and half that if they came with a woman. “How come women don’t have to pay?” I asked.
“Oh, you’ll see,” he said cheerfully. “I’m going upstairs. I’ll meet you in the snack bar in oh, an hour? Have fun.” And with that, he floated off into the night.
Great, I thought. Now that I was here, on my own, I wondered what in the hell I’d been thinking. I felt like Nancy Drew, stumbling into some dark alleyway — “The Case of the Missing Jism.” I read some of the posted rules: No Fucking Without a Condom. No Drugs. No Propositioning for Drugs or Sex. This all sounded reasonable, and the man at the counter in a tight leather vest smiled at me encouragingly. I tried to arrange my face in what I hoped would read “open-minded,” and ventured downstairs in the black lights to the basement.
It was a huge room, with many false walls that came up to eye-level, topped with industrial cyclone fence. Once my eyes adjusted, I could see the various pods and rooms throughout the space — all equipped with some sort of rack or chair or bench or what looked to be a leather swing set. Techno music crashed through the cavernous area; strobes and black lights and spotlights flooded different sections. There seemed to be some medico-dental-gynecological theme, with several dentist’s chairs bolted down and tile on one side of the long wall.
Jonathan had told me there was a heavy S/M presence, so I wasn’t surprised to see that all the little pods were taken up by couples in leather enacting “scenes,” — one gently flogging another with multi-tailed whips or riding crops. In the center of the room a blindfolded woman in a leather thong and bra was being patiently slapped on the butt by a Jesus look-alike in leather chaps. An enormously obese woman in a leather G-string was patting her partner’s small mushroom penis with a riding crop. Another naked man, lying stomach down on a mattress, was screaming “yellow, Mistress!” with great drama and pathos as Mistress (a hugely fat man in a G-string and pierced nipples) tapped the back of his thighs. Then both of them would giggle, and Mistress would start again.
The room was teeming with people: spectators, that is. Dressed in baseball caps, jeans and T-shirts, they would stare at the floggee with a blank-eyed expression before moving to the next exhibit, as if they were on a field trip to the Met. Some stood with their arms crossed, some were wearing variations on the S/M theme — a token Goth here, a poser punk there — but one thing they all had in common was that they were all men.
I threaded my way through the crowd. For 20 minutes, I stood at the doorway of a little room to watch a woman in a latex teddy being tied up, with a series of intricate knots, by a shirtless blond man in black jeans. He was so focused, so intent on getting the exact amount of tension and balance to each side of the knot that I was fascinated.
But mostly, what I felt was slightly uncomfortable, and not a little defiant. After all, why weren’t there more women on their own here? In addition to the sea of spectators, there was a very strong security presence: official-looking rovers with flashlights that scanned the crowd. Obviously, nothing untoward was going to happen — there would be no leaping out of dark corners, no sex being forced on an unwilling partner. I looked down at my clothes: a long-sleeved peacock blue sweater with neon stripes across the chest, black jeans and dark green suede shoes, men’s style. Hardly come hither.
While I stood watching the knot show, a crowd began forming toward the center of the room. It was getting later, and a few women were now wandering around — mostly terrified, preppy-looking girls hanging on for dear life to the arm of their frat-boy boyfriends. I pushed my way through the sea of men to see what all the fuss was about. A naked Asian woman, lying horizontally on what looked to be a version of a medieval stretching rack, with wrists tied and legs spread-eagled, was being eaten out by a guy with a Paul Bunyan-like beard. Shirtless and somewhat fat, stomach hanging over his blue jeans, the man looked as deliberate and nonchalant as a grazing cow. I watched for a minute, got bored and went back to the knot work. On the way, my butt was fondled, but with some hesitation, as if the fondler wasn’t quite sure where he stood on the matter.
Back by the wheelchair that was barring the entrance to the room (what is with this medico-dental theme, I wondered) I observed the knot work again. The knotmaker had started at her shoulders and had now reached her knees, so she looked for all the world like a nice, trussed Thanksgiving turkey, albeit a blindfolded one. It was a small area, this little spectator’s gangway, and a tall man with glasses on the left of me was crunching something. I glanced in his direction.
He held out a metal box. “Would you like an Altoid?”
I regarded the little white mints, all nestled cozily in their white paper as if they were tucked in for the night. “No, thank you,” I said.
“Would you like to take a walk with me?” the man asked politely.
“No, thank you,” I said, equally polite. That transaction settled, we turned back to the knot scene.
After an hour, I wandered back upstairs to the lounge. I felt a little dizzy, and had a familiar sugar craving, as if I’d just been running. There was no alcohol for sale, but an amazing array of candy. I was deliberating on the licorice whips when Jonathan came up and said brightly, “So!”
He looked refreshed and happy, as if he’d just awoken from a nap.
“Were you waiting for me?” he asked. “I’ll have a diet lemon Snapple, please,” he told a mohawked Japanese person of indeterminate gender.
“A ruby red grapefruit Juice Squeeze,” I told him/her. “And a Twix.” I turned back to Jonathan. “Actually, no, I wasn’t waiting. It was interesting. But I can go now.”
He looked at me closely. “See now why you didn’t have to pay? You’re a rare commodity.”
“Yes,” I said, “I was. And it did make me feel a little uncomfortable, I admit. But then I got used to it.”
“Kind of like seeing a porn film, huh?” He cracked open his Snapple and drank half of it immediately.
“Yeah. The shock, the titillation and, ultimately, the tedium.” But there was something else that was different, and I suddenly realized what it was. “The strangest thing was, I didn’t feel I could make any eye contact the entire night. You know how you go to a bar, and maybe you see someone that you’re attracted to? You’ll flirt with them, look at them, it’s a game. Here, you look at someone, and it’s not like you’re fishing for a bit of conversation.”
“You’re fishing to get fucked,” Jonathan said.
“Yup,” I said. “Not that I saw any so-called normal fucking going on, anyway.” Jonathan took a sip of my Juice Squeeze and I
continued. “Mostly what I thought was that it’s really refreshing, that these places exist at all.”
We sat down on one of the foam sofas, and a couple happily moved over, making room. She was a scrawny woman in fishnets and a leather skirt and he was red-haired and fat, wearing a black latex body suit.
We all smiled at each other and I felt a sudden swell of civic pride.
For most women, hair salons are the modern-day version of the confessional. The wet-haired penitent sits in the chair, confronting the reflection of herself and her scissors-wielding confessor, happy to spill all her guilty secrets in return for some snappy advice and a newly clipped do. I’ve heard many a tortured love saga at Marie’s salon, while ostensibly leafing through the latest issue of Marie Claire or Hair Now. If Freud had really been serious about understanding female desire, he need only have spent an afternoon at the local Viennese hair salon.
But is it the same for male clients?
I heard Cookie and Carrie before I met them. Every day, their salon, which was located across from my office, jangled with the clatter of their profession: the whine of hair dryers, the clanging bell of their extra-loud phone and then the hoots and laughter of Cookie and Carrie themselves. These sounds confirmed it was indeed a hair salon, because I’d had my suspicions. A steady stream of men — mostly in suits, over the age of 40 — came and went in 30-minute intervals. I’d run into them in the elevator, and those who were leaving all seemed happier and more relaxed than those who were arriving. When I finally poked my head in the salon to introduce myself, I was almost disappointed to see the two barber’s chairs facing the floor-to-ceiling mirror, the shampoo sinks in the back and the magazine racks filled to bursting with Playboy, Penthouse, George and Sports Illustrated.
A few weeks after that, I sat on one of their ’70s-style brown armchairs, under a fern, leafing through a year-old issue of Playboy. “What do you think?” I unfolded the centerfold, pointing “Penny” and her breasts in Cookie’s direction. “Is it real or is it Memorex?”
Cookie was readjusting her multicolored turban, tucking in braids here and there. She stopped and squinted. “Real,” she said. “See how they flop over? That’s how you can tell.”
“I never can tell,” I said, examining Penny’s breasts. “Then again, I can never tell if a man’s wearing a toupee.”
“Oh, God,” Carrie said. She was sweeping up some gray bits of hair and leaned on her broom. “Ask Cookie about doing toupees for men.” She shouted with laughter, “Ask her!”
“We had a little velvet-curtained area set up,” Cookie said. “Like a private room. You put Saran Wrap on the man’s head, and you tape it down, under his chin. Then you take a black marker and draw where the hairpiece is going to be, so you make a template, and cut it out! It is so funny. Then you send it off to the company, and when it comes back you have to style it and dye the real hair to match.” She laughed again. “You can make a lot of money doing hairpieces for men.”
“Do you cut hair for any women at all?” I asked.
Both women let out a phheeewww at the same time. “A few,” said Carrie, the more discreet of the two. “But –” she wrinkled her nose.
“Women are a pain in the ass,” said Cookie loudly. “They are so damn moody. Give me a man any day of the week.”
I stretched out on the comfy armchair and propped my head on my elbow. “So — what do men talk about when they’re in the chair?”
Carrie nodded over to Cookie. “She gets the ones that talk about personal things.”
Cookie groaned. “And I get the ones who still live with their mother. And Jews. All the Jewish clients come to me, I think because I’m black. Jews and blacks have this understanding, you know? Because we’re both oppressed groups I guess.”
Carrie, who’s Korean-American, nodded. “I get the young guys. ‘The new men,’ I call them. The ones that are sensitive. They seem like they really want to understand women. The ones that cook and clean and stuff. But my clients won’t tell me anything really personal –”
“Because you don’t ask!” Cookie yelled. “I come right out and say, ‘What do you feel about that?’ I had one client who was going on about his secretary. About how he was having an affair with his secretary, and his wife almost caught him one night in the boardroom. I just glared at him and, holding my scissors up, said, ‘Uh huh. You’re lucky I’m not no Lorena Bobbitt.’ He stopped talking about his affairs after that.”
Carrie giggled. “Tell her about Irene.”
Cookie barked, “That idiot!” She turned to me. “She was our manicurist. This guy used to come in to have his nails done and he said he’d take her on a trip, take her out to dinner, all this crap. She goes out with him once and — boom! He’s gone. Doesn’t ask her out again. She quits soon after that. Then he comes in here recently and asks, ‘How’s that Irish girl?’ He says he had a good time with her. Took her out for dinner, and then he goes, ‘Afterwards, she brought me back here.’ He’s pointing to my chair. ‘She gave me a blow job right in this seat.’”
Carrie chuckled and Cookie rolled her eyes.
“And then,” Cookie continued, “there was the guy who used to rub my ass while I was working on his hairpiece.”
“Did you slap him?” I asked.
“Ah, no! I let’m.” She shook her head. “The poor guy was 80 or something. He was so cute! He lived with his mother. I could have gotten upset, but oh, it just gave him such a thrill. And I didn’t really care, he just sort of had his hands on me. It wasn’t a big deal.”
“That happened to me too, with Mr. Watson,” said Carrie, and Cookie nodded. “I was shampooing him, and he started putting his hand on my butt. I said, ‘You know, I don’t really like that, Mr. Watson.’ He says, ‘Well, Patty’ — that’s our shampooist from about five years ago — ‘used to let me do it.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m not Patty.’ So he stopped. I could never figure out why Patty used to have so much money. Then she told me that she’d go hang out in bars in the Financial District and slip her card into men’s pockets — you know, put her hand right down the front of their trousers — and say, ‘Come and let us cut your hair.’”
“Patty really believed in marketing herself,” Cookie said dryly. Both women chortled, and Carrie leaned over to press the Brew button on the coffee machine.
“Does Mr. Watson still come here?”
“Oh, sure,” Carrie said, “he’s been coming for 10 years or so. His son is a client now, too.”
“We pretty much love all our guys,” Cookie said.
As if on cue, a man in a wrinkled suit and a worried expression suddenly opened the door. “Mr. Robertson!” Cookie shrieked. “Robb-ey! Come over here. I’ve been looking forward to this all day. Is that a tan I see?” She grabbed his hand and led him across the room to the sink as I stood up and gathered my things.
“I’ve been in Bermuda with my wife and daughter and son-in-law,” I heard Mr. Robertson say as I waved to Carrie and left them to their version of BoysTown. “It was, oh, not so great. I don’t know what I think about that son-in-law.”
“I’m glad you’re back,” Cookie shouted.
“Oh, so am I,” he said, with great relief. “You have no idea.”
