LITMIR.BIZ

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nose ring took the floor. “I’m Gretchen. Today I run a needle exchange program in Hunts Point and I have a master’s in public health, but I worked on the street for eight years.” When everyone sat up, she began to vent. “The hookers’ movement is always talking about changing the laws, but what are you doing for IV-using street workers?” she asked. “Nothing! You’re all just talking to yourselves! You can’t go to Hunts Point and expect to reach women on the street by telling them how fulfilling your life is,” she told Allie. “You’re out of touch with reality. I was out there at the age of fifteen—whoring! And what were you? A fucking cheerleader?”

      Allie went rigid—and looked rather startled. Like the proverbial creature caught in the headlights.

      “If there’s a goddess, why would she allow cops to lean on teenage girls for blow jobs? Without condoms!” Gretchen added.

      Roxana cleared her throat but didn’t scold Gretchen for veering off-topic. Or for impugning Allison’s high school career. So much for limiting our introductions to ourselves! Do I detect a double standard? Unbridled, Gretchen began to berate Roxana’s elitist attachment to sugar-free beverages.

      “You can’t have a policy like that at group meetings,” Gretchen told her. “You’re excluding people like me. You can’t do outreach in Hunts Point with sugar-free beverages!”

      Roxana and Belinda seemed to enjoy Gretchen’s tongue-lashing.

      “I want you to know that I feel privileged to be having this dialogue with you,” Roxana mooed. “I wasn’t aware of the classist assumptions I was making.”

      Belinda, the dominatrix, chimed in. “Heroin should be legalized,” she said, in a rather submissive tone.

      Heroin. So that’s it. I was wondering how anyone with such a pronounced sweet tooth could be so skinny.

      “Um—where is Hunts Point?” Allison humbly inquired.

      “The Bronx,” Gretchen said with a knowing sneer.

      I managed to introduce myself as “Um, Nancy, I’m a working girl.” That was all I wanted to say.

      “Thank you so much for coming,” Roxana said to me. “We want you to think about joining this committee.”

      “This committee?”

      “This is the steering committee. We really feel the lack of your perspective around here.”

      My perspective? Does that mean I should have worn my mink sweater after all?

      Houston Street for a cab, I tried to give Allie moral support. “How can you be expected to know the geography of the Bronx? You have no reason to go there!” I carped. “Gretchen didn’t have to be so snotty about it.”

      Ignoring my remarks, Allison gave me a curious look. “Why don’t you talk to her about your past?” she asked. “Didn’t you start working when you were fifteen?”

      “That’s none of Gretchen’s business.” (Besides, I was still, technically, fourteen when I started hooking.)

      “But you share a common experience as sex workers!”

      “Gretchen and I have nothing in common. I never had to give a blow job to a cop, and I never worked on the street. And I’m beginning to wish I’d never told you anything about my life, because you obviously don’t understand it. Don’t you dare start talking to Gretchen about me! Do you hear?”

      Allison blinked, hurt by my outburst, but not for long.

      “You should reach out to her,” she said firmly. “I see a lot of potential for a mutually healing dialogue!”

      “With Gretchen? She’s not interested in making friends with me. Or you, for that matter. Don’t kid yourself,” I snapped.

      “NYCOT is committed to healing the divisions between sex workers. We Are All Bad Girls,” Allie intoned. “Roxana says we have to expect—embrace—our growing pains…The process of empowerment involves change, and change involves—” A vacant cab interrupted Allie’s train of thought, and we got in.

      As we headed up First Avenue, Allison continued to chatter. “Change—sometimes even for the sake of change—can reveal our hidden strengths as agents of social change…” At Fifty-ninth Street, she ran out of steam and changed the subject. “I’m going to be interviewed next week. Did I tell you? The producer called today. Roxana has to go out of town that night, and she says I’m ready to represent NYCOT publicly—”

      “You can’t go on TV! Have you lost your mind? Everybody in your building will recognize you! And nobody will ever work with you again! Do you think Liane would let you work for her if she saw you on—”

      “Noooo, silly, I’m going to be on the radio—it’s a call-in show!” Allison reassured me. “Besides, Roxana takes all the TV calls. She says I’m not ready for TV.”

      I breathed a sigh of relief. Roxana’s grabby sense of turf should keep Allison off TV for quite some time.

      “What was that Roxana was saying about ‘my perspective’?” I asked. “I hope you haven’t been telling her about my past.”

      “We don’t have a woman of color on the steering committee. NYCOT is facing the challenge of diversity. We need a committee that looks like New York.”

      “Let’s see: You’ve got a dominatrix who’s a partisan Democrat. A heroin-addicted streetwalker with an attitude. And a blonde who’s always late with the rent,” I said. “If that isn’t a committee that looks like New York, I don’t know what is.”

      Allie frowned and opened a small compact. She dabbed her nose. “Jack showed up again—I wasn’t expecting him! I was seeing someone, and my doorman buzzed. He said, ‘A gentleman wants to bring a plant upstairs.’ So I told him I would pick it up later. Then Jack started calling me”—she lowered her voice so the cabdriver wouldn’t hear—“while I was trying to get this guy off! And the phone wouldn’t stop ringing because Jack knew I was in the apartment. He left a bunch of messages, begging me to pick up the phone. Why do men say ‘pick up the phone’ when they know they’re already in voice mail? It’s crazy! My customer was really nervous. He took forever to come—all those interruptions!”

      Recalling the interruptions, she looked flustered.

      “He’s acting like a lovesick teenager!” I said. “An adult sends flowers—or brings them when he’s invited.”

      “You’re right,” she said, with an odd smile. “He is.”

      “And it’s not amusing when”—I dropped my voice, too—“a client does that. It’s a stalker thing. Completely unacceptable.”

      “Well, I do have a doorman to protect me from stuff like that.”

      “Great. Jack’s making a spectacle of himself in front of your doorman. And screwing up your existing business! You’re going to be sorry you took that money.”

      “I know what I’m doing,” she proclaimed.

      “That thing Gretchen said. Were you a cheerleader?”

      In a stiff voice, she said, “That’s completely irrelevant. It has nothing to do with any of this. I don’t want to talk about it.”

      “Sorry! I didn’t know it was such a sensitive subject.”

      She feels perfectly okay about barging into my past and bringing up my teen hooker years, yet she’s hung up about…being a cheerleader? I guess she’s embarrassed. Being a former cheerleader won’t help her—or might even hurt her chances—in a popularity contest that puts so much store in a girl’s street cred. She may have changed, but she hasn’t exactly grown. In fact, she’s still a cheerleader;

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