LITMIR.BIZ

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was not most people.

      If I hadn’t been so irritated, and so frightened, what ensued might have almost been comical. An adult man, hairy and naked, whining as though he were a five-year-old boy being denied an ice cream cone. “Oh, come on, do it, just this once.”

      “No, I don’t want to.” Okay, so I was sounding a little childish myself.

      “Come on.” His voice was wheedling, as though he might be able to wear me down through insistence alone. “Just for a minute. I promise when you say stop I’ll stop. You’ll like it, you’ll see how much you’ll like it. I’ll listen to you. Whatever you want.”

      Yeah, I thought, like you’ve done so far. “No. Why don’t we…”

      “I don’t want to do anything else!” He was explosive now, and really scaring me. “You bitch, this is what you’re here for, and this is what you’re gonna do!”

      I struggled away from him and crouched, naked, next to the headboard. I think that I was shaking, and it was partly out of fear and partly out of anger. “Barry, I’ve said no. You should have told Peach that was what you wanted. I don’t do it and I won’t do it.” And especially not with you.

      He sat on the edge of the bed, considering his options. Apparently he decided to turn to Plan B, because he reached out and gently stroked my shoulder. “Okay, okay. It’s okay. Come on over here. I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to.”

      Thinking that the hour had to be close to being up, please God, I crawled tentatively toward him. This sudden switch from aggression and insults to gentleness and sympathy was disconcerting. So what’s the story here? I’m supposed to get in an affectionate mood now? And the other voice in my head answered, Yes, you are, it’s what you’re being paid to do.

      In any event, I didn’t need to. As soon as I was within comfortable reach, Barry grabbed me and threw me down on the bed again and got on top of me. My face was pressed down into the pillow and for a few terrifying seconds I thought that I was going to suffocate. To die. My world had disappeared. There was nothing but red, pulsing blood-red, beating rhythmically against my eyelids, and I struggled upward, backward – anything to be able to breathe again. That was all I wanted. Just to breathe again.

      He wasn’t concerned with my head; he was still trying to force his cock into my ass. And coming close to succeeding, despite the resistance that I was putting up. I gasped for air, my face up against his headboard, and I could hear him at it again. “You fucking whore, you fucking bitch, take it, fucking take it…”

      No amount of money was worth this. I took another deep breath and screamed. And did it again.

      Barry was suddenly struggling with me, trying to get me to stop. When he put his hand over my mouth, I bit it, hard, and he swore and pulled it away. I took advantage of his distraction to scramble out from under him, to get off the bed and stand in the beautiful arched doorway, my arms ineffectually covering my breasts. As though it were a moment for modesty. I guess that my mother taught me well, after all.

      He was furious, that was clear. He was shaking, and there was a tiny globule of spit at the edge of his mouth. “You fucking cunt!” he yelled. “No whore does that to me!”

      I didn’t dare take my eyes off him. “If you hurt me, Peach will never send anyone to you again,” I said, not knowing if it was true or not. I was thinking that I was really glad that I had gotten the money up front, because I was going to be doing well to get out of here with my clothes. Maybe the fact that Peach had said to collect the money right away should have told me something; with regulars, we usually got paid when the hour was over. “I’m leaving.”

      The threat, idle or not, worked. Later on, I learned how whipped Peach kept her regular clients, little boys who tried to push their luck with the callgirls, but who whimpered and apologized when confronted by Mummy on their bad behavior. Barry sat down on the bed, the fury draining from him, and said, merely, “Shit.”

      It seemed an apt commentary. I reached down to the floor and picked up my clothes, pulling the dress hurriedly over my head, not bothering to look for the missing buttons, stuffing underwear into my purse, not wanting to stay in that place a millisecond longer than I had to.

      He walked past me as I was slipping into my shoes and stalked over to the bathroom. “Don’t slam the door on your way out,” he said, coldly. “I’m taking a shower. You made me feel dirty, you lousy motherfucker cunt.”

      I had made him feel dirty.

      I called Peach immediately as soon as I hit the street. I had just bought a cell phone, and was grateful for the anonymity it provided as I unlocked my car and slipped inside. “It was pretty awful,” I told her, a little angry, a little tearful.

      “I know, honey,” Peach said, and in her voice I heard such a depth of understanding and compassion and caring that it suddenly didn’t matter anymore. “You don’t ever have to see him again if you don’t want to.” And I felt a rush of gratitude toward her that was as deep as the ocean.

      It wasn’t until months later that I remembered that conversation, and realized that she had known exactly what she was sending me into, and she hadn’t warned me. True, I probably wouldn’t have gone. And the bottom line was to make the money. But, still… she should have told me. And all the compassion and understanding and kindness that followed was calculated, too. But by then I knew all that.

      Later that year, I met a woman named Margot who also worked for the agency. We did a double together, then over drinks at Jillian’s we began sharing client experiences. Barry, it transpired, was one of Margot’s regulars. I stared at her, transfixed and a little shocked. “How can you stand him?” I wanted to know.

      “Well, see, I have this theory.” Margot took a liberal swallow of her Manhattan. I always thought I should be more creative in my choice of cocktails; she was inspiring me. Her breath was sweet, smelling of warm vermouth. “Guys like Barry, they have so much rage against women, you know?”

      “No shit,” I muttered. “So do about eighty percent of men.” I was remembering my class on insanity, and the fears that made men lock women away for life.

      “Granted. But with Barry, it’s a lot closer to the surface.”

      “Granted,” I echoed, fascinated at where this might be going.

      “Okay. So he keeps pacing around that little apartment of his and muttering about women being whores. Maybe he watches them through his windows, pretty women down on the Esplanade or Memorial Drive, sunning themselves or doing inline skating or something, and all the while it’s stoking up his feelings of insecurity and inadequacy – well, eventually there will be too much pressure, and it’ll blow.” She sipped her drink, demurely, before delivering the punch line. “And you probably know that I’ve just described a textbook rapist, by the way.”

      It had felt like rape, what had happened that night. I shivered at the flash of memory, my face in his pillow, suffocating, his weight on my spine, pushing my buttocks apart…

      Margot didn’t notice. “So if the pressure gets eased, sometimes, then maybe he won’t blow. Maybe if he can play out his sick little fantasy with one of us from time to time, with someone who can handle it, you know, then he won’t walk down Beacon Street one night and follow some innocent woman home. Maybe he won’t hurt her.” She looked around her at the flashing lights, marshalling her thoughts, and then turned back to me. “You see, Jen, I’m in control, even if he doesn’t think I am. I have power over him. I can always call Peach. She’s the only service he uses, I don’t know why, but if she cuts him off he’s got nothing, and he knows it. And I think that in his heart of hearts he knows how much he needs it.”

      “So by playing into his shit you’re keeping women from being molested?” I was still working that one out.

      “Sure, why not?” Margot shrugged. “Besides, Jen, look at it this way. I don’t have a lot of competition

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