Callgirl - Jenny Angell

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If you wear skirts that are too short, or blouses that are too low-cut, or too much make-up or jewelry, you’re not fitting the expectations, so you get punished, you get called names.”

      I looked at her. “What kinds of names?”

      A shrug. “You know. Whore. Slut. Bitch. Either you fit into their image of you, or you’re insulted for it.”

      “But you can’t win, because men want that, too! They want you to be a bitch at the same time that they call you names for being one!”

      Another student said, “That’s the real difference. We only get insulted for being different. Back then, they got incarcerated for it.”

      The voices continued as I looked off into the distance. I knew the truth of what they were saying, but I was hearing it as though for the first time. The first time that it applied to me, anyway. To call someone a prostitute, even now, was an insult. Even my students said it, so it must be true.

      I gave them a writing assignment, told them to capture their thoughts and anger and passion on paper, because I knew that I would get primal, angry, real words from the women and primal, defensive, real words from the men. I sat down behind the desk and frowned down at the blotter. I was still dressed in my teaching clothes – skirt, knit silk shirt, jacket, flat shoes. I didn’t plan to change anything but the underwear before signing on tonight. So I was safe from society; if I didn’t look like a hooker, then maybe at some level I was still a nice girl.

      Later, when I got to know some of the other women who worked for Peach, I would be surprised that no one would ever look at them and guess that they worked for an escort service. They didn’t look the part.

      What was “looking the part?” I wasn’t even sure, myself, anymore.

      * * * * * *

      Peach called me at seven-thirty. “How late are you going to be around tonight?”

      I hadn’t thought a great deal about that. “I don’t know, why?” It wasn’t like I had a lot of other things to do. My evenings, since the departure of the rat bastard, were fairly predictable.

      “I may have someone for you to see. You’ll like him, but he doesn’t want to see you until ten, is that okay with you?”

      “Sure.” I certainly could stay occupied until then; I was going to spend some time on the Internet. Because of the turn the afternoon’s discussion had taken, I needed to look into a few things that hadn’t originally been on the syllabus.

      Those were still early days, when I thought that I could get up from correcting exams and leave on a call. I didn’t understand, yet, that there needed to be a little transition time between the two.

      “Great. You don’t have to call him.” I raised my eyebrows. That was a pleasant surprise. No sales job required. “He’s at Bella Donna on Hanover Street, in the North End.”

      “Peach,” I said slowly, “that’s a restaurant.”

      “Oh, I know. He’s the owner. Just go to the bar and say you’re there to see Stefano. Be there at ten, and give me a call after you get there.”

      “Okay.” I had actually eaten there before, with the boyfriend who had preceded Peter the Rat Bastard. The restaurant was hard to forget. Northern Italian cooking, sauces that made you swear off Dolmio forever. The chef could do things with mushrooms that would make God himself jealous; he had a five-mushroom soup that I would be willing to live on for the rest of my life. This was going to be interesting.

      The challenge, as I saw it, was parking. I could take the train of course, but it would take over an hour to get there from Allston. On the other hand, the North End is notorious for having no parking spaces available, anytime, anywhere. So I went early and cruised around halfheartedly before settling for an exorbitantly expensive parking lot and walking up the hill to Hanover Street.

      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

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