LITMIR.BIZ

       FIVE

      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.

      We had dinner at the Cedars Steak House, in a section of the casino styled to look like the town in It’s a Wonderful Life or someplace equally perfect and equally fictional. “You can order anything on the menu,” Jerry told me expansively. “Even the most expensive stuff. That’s the lobster, I think. So, yeah, go ahead, order the lobster! It’s free, I have a Wampum card.”

      I ordered the lobster. I didn’t get into a debate over whether the possession of a Wampum card, earned through hours of losing at the gaming tables, truly constituted a free meal. I had a far more immediate problem.

      I was seriously overdressed.

      All right, so laugh at my naïveté. Or use another word. Innocent. Gullible. Romantic. They

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