Call Girl

Part of Bella Donna was a small bar, a place frequented mostly by locals, men of a certain age, the pals and cronies of the owner. I went in and hesitated, a nice girl a little out of her league, until the bartender approached me with a wide smile. “I’m here to see Stefano,” I told him, cursing myself for not having gotten the man’s last name from Peach. It would have sounded a little less awkward, I thought.

If I wanted to be discreet, however, Stefano obviously didn’t particularly care. As soon as I asked for him, there was a ripple of winks, nudges, and nods all around the bar. They all knew what I was there for.

The client himself, emerging from a back room, was not unattractive. He was dark-haired with the beginnings of a belly overlapping his belt, white teeth, and very hairy fingers. Well, you can’t have everything.

He kissed my hand, which was really nice of him under the circumstances, and offered me a cocktail. We sipped wine and made polite conversation about the weather, the cronies hanging on every word as though waiting for the punch line from a joke. I said that I had once visited Italy. He said something in Italian that had the cronies gasping for breath through their laughter.

We sipped some more, and then Stefano said something long and graceful to the men sitting around the bar, and slid me off my stool. He led me downstairs, where, next to the wine cellar, it turned out that he had a room that was – how can I best say this? – outfitted for his needs.

He explained the situation to me: no embarrassment there. Sometimes these needs involved women; sometimes they involved a special card game or two. People stayed there from time to time. The room also served as his own home away from home on the occasions his wife Giannetta got fed up with him and kicked him out of the house, occasions that appeared to occur with some frequency.

In any case, it held a table and chairs, a sofa and two or three armchairs, and a small single bed in a corner.

He locked the door carefully behind us, and we sat on the narrow bed and made out for a few minutes. It was fun. The stale air and his eager hands reminded me of summer camps in years gone by. I had a vague memory of a boat house filled with old detritus from beach days, half-inflated rubber swimming-rings, abandoned badminton racquets, and two passionate teenagers finding temporary refuge there in the stillness of a hot summer evening. His lips were rough, and I was again an adolescent kissing a teen-aged boy, a boy unsure of his own needs, unsure of his own power, unsure of what was expected of him.

Stefano pulled away at length, and gestured for me to stand up. “Take off your clothes,” he urged. As I started, slipping my jacket off my shoulders, taking off the silk shirt, he unbuckled his belt, unzipped his fly, and pulled out his cock.

By the time I got through the layers to the new camisole, he was already – so to speak – there. Orgasm attained. Tissues employed.

Later, I learned that this was in fact the sum of Stefano’s sexuality, though at the time I was a little disconcerted. This was supposed to be work, after all, wasn’t it? I hadn’t really done a whole lot. I wasn’t even naked.

I saw Stefano quite a lot after that, and the scenario never changed. It was always a toss-up as to which of us would finish first, whether I would get my clothes off or whether Stefano would have an orgasm. We never made it as far as actual physical contact. It was not expected.

He did, however, have a reputation to maintain, and his friends in the bar knew that he was downstairs with a lady. So I got dressed while he washed up at the small sink in the opposite corner of the room, and then, magically exactly on time, there was a discreet tap on the door and one of the dishwashers (never a waiter) from the restaurant arrived with a tray of food and wine.

We sat at the table and drank Chianti or chilled Valpolicella and ate veal scaloppini. Or some sort of marvelous seafood stew. Or (after I requested it) that incredible five-mushroom soup. We spoke, sometimes; often we did not.

After the requisite time had passed – it wasn’t the full hour – he stood up, kissed one of my hands as he slipped the money into the other, and back upstairs we went.

Waiting for me at the bar was a shopping bag filled with take-out cartons of delicacies. He gave me this gift with a flourish, the bar broke into applause, and that was that.

I heard, later, that if the girl seeing Stefano had a driver, he’d find out where the unfortunate person was waiting and either invite him or her in for a dinner on the house, or send still more of his incredible take-out to the car. He was generous, and open, and kind.

That night, after seeing Stefano, I called Peach once I got home. “Does he ever actually have sex with anybody?”

“Don’t think he can,” she said, cheerfully. “What did you have for dinner?”

I giggled in spite of myself. “Veal. It was incredible.”

“Thought you’d like him. Do you want anything else tonight?”

It was eleven-thirty, and I had On Death and Dying at eleven in the morning. “I don’t think so, Peach, but I’ll work tomorrow night.”

“Okay, you got it, honey. Sleep tight.”

I did. I had enough dinners to last me for the next two nights, a sixty-dollar tip, and I hadn’t even taken off all my clothes. This, I thought as I slipped between my sheets with Scuzzy kneading the pillow beside me, is easy. Nothing to it. Amazing that more women don’t do it. I’m carrying it off without a problem.

Well, anybody can be wrong.

FIVE (#ua3872847-c971-5477-862b-b837564bbf1b)

In the end, I took a few nights off after that. Stefano had been fun, most of my calls had been okay, but the experience with the guy in Back Bay had shaken me up more than I liked to admit.

So instead of working I sat in my apartment, sipped red wine, and wondered if I hadn’t made a mistake, after all. Maybe the world of prostitution was, in fact, as terrible as it had been portrayed in movies, in books. Maybe it would end up making me feel bad about myself. Maybe I needed to decide if the Stefanos made up for the Barrys.

What I really needed, I decided, was to get away from it, to get some perspective. I needed a dose of “real life” – whatever that is – to feel like I was really myself again.

So I spent a lot of time working on enhancing my classes. I arranged a field trip to a funeral home, and I followed up some leads I had heard concerning possible full-time faculty openings.

I also spent some time tracking down people I’d promised to get together with socially, but had neglected. I thought that I didn’t need a social life. I was wrong.

Friends had fallen out of touch, and I had done nothing about it. That happens a lot when a relationship ends: people who knew you as a couple feel awkward around you once you’re single, and I hadn’t exactly been active in pursuing anybody. So I tried to make up for it.

I had lunch with my friend Irene, who had been my study-partner at school. We ate at Jae’s on Tremont Street and talked over pad thai and sushi about our inability to secure tenure-track positions, and we both admitted that we had nothing even approaching a love life. We promised that we’d try to see each other more often.

I went to the Silhouette Lounge in Allston with my gay friend Roger, who certainly, according to his conversation, made up for Irene’s and my lack of a love life with his busy nocturnal agenda. We drank blue drinks and he provided a running commentary on every man who entered the room. We promised on parting that we’d try to see each other more often.

I even invited my next-door neighbor over for Indian food (delivered) and a rerun of Rear Window on cable, which was fun; but we didn’t promise to see each other more often. She got up early most mornings to take the train to the financial district, where she did something with stocks; my invitation appeared to be an opportunity for her to mention (which she did, several times) that sometimes she could hear my music playing after ten.

Peach obviously felt the lull and wanted to make things up to me. “I’ve got something special for you,” she said brightly on the following Wednesday.

“What is it?” Okay, so I was ready for a break from trying to convince myself that I really did have a social life.

“Not what, honey: who.”

Who was a client called Jerry Fulcher, and he wanted to go gamble at Foxwoods, a super-casino. He wanted me to go with him. Three days, two nights, an Earth, Wind and Fire show, and a massage and spa treatment if I wanted them. Just be my date, he said.

Peach had already negotiated a flat fee – you really can’t charge by the hour for a whole weekend – and it was looking good to go. Three days away from the city at the world’s largest resort casino and a thousand-dollar paycheck. I didn’t think it over for too long. I could use a vacation.

So, that weekend, off we went to Foxwoods.

We drove down together, Jerry’s plan, which I accepted without thinking much about it. Another mistake; but who knew? This was uncharted territory for me.

To get to Foxwoods, you drive on uninspired highways and then on back roads that look like you’re going nowhere in particular, and then suddenly there it is. Parking lot after parking lot ringing it like a concrete moat, and shuttle buses in pastel colors bustling in and out of them. And there, on top of the hill, is The Place itself.

It looks, and not unintentionally I suspect, very much like Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, the Disney version – only on steroids. The place just doesn’t know when to stop: towers and balconies and turrets and acres of glass reflecting back the green of the surrounding trees (we’re still working the Sleeping Beauty analogy here, in case you weren’t paying attention). Everything is clean and everyone is happy. The staff is all so perky, they have to be rejects from the Mouse Machine itself.

But hell, I was here for work, too. Perky, sexy, whatever it takes.

There were fresh flowers waiting in our room with a card that said “Tia,” which I have to admit was a classy touch. Jerry unfortunately also thought it was a classy touch, and said so, over and over. Nothing like a man who needs to keep telling you how subtle he is.

I was up for a shower and a walk to stretch my legs after the drive, but first we had to try out the bed, and that took longer than expected. Jerry was distracted, and distracted doesn’t really work well in this line of work. After a lengthy session involving a fair workout on my part, he finally came. He immediately sat up and explained his distraction. “I’ve been thinking. I don’t think they gave me all the credits I’m supposed to have on my Wampum loyalty card,” he said briskly, as he hustled us both into our clothes and out the door. “Gotta get this straightened out.”

I stood next to him as he spent ten minutes arguing with one of the Mouseketeers (who, to her credit, remained perky the whole time) over what turned out to be a difference of twenty dollars, and about which he was ultimately wrong, but which they gave to him anyway to make him go away. I was, even with only Mouseketeers and a couple of middle-aged gamblers for an audience, slightly embarrassed.

As it turned out, I had only just begun to be embarrassed.

After that weekend, I understood the girls whose policy was to only see clients in private venues. No restaurants, no concerts, no trips. They had a point. A lot of these guys need additional training in social skills before they can be taken out in public.