We met at the gentlemen’s club near Times Square with a dark, damp interior that imitated the color and heaviness of a black forest cake. I moved in a slow pull around the golden mini stage pole next to the V.I.P. lounge. I was there for the view of the man who had the entire section roped off. He sat, body like a soup dumpling, with dancers all around him, but his eyes were focused on me. As I stepped off the stage, he motioned for me, flicking the other girls off like gorged mosquitos. My stride was more confident than I felt, young and less experienced than the others who were home in this club. I knew no one yet. I sat down and turned my gaze to him.
“Feel my hand,” he said, thrusting out a puffy white palm. I traced his heart line. “Soft, isn’t it?” I nodded, unsure if that was what he wanted me to say. “That’s because, all my life, all I’ve ever touched was money and women.”
They call men like him whales. Bloated with money, and willing to part with it under certain conditions. The day I met him, I began living in a place somewhere between loathing and gratitude. He saw himself as a philanthropist for Beautiful, Lost Women in Big Cities. He was as cruel as he was generous. I knew my rent would always be paid, but only if I answered all his calls on the first ring, stayed within a specific body mass index, and never dared to set any kind of boundary.
He’d call for me on nights where I was studying for an exam to come see him while his wife was in New Jersey visiting her sister. By the time I arrived, he’d usually already have one or two of his other girls there, massaging his calves, pouring themselves shots of vodka. As he aged, knowing his health was declining, he made a list of the top 100 escorts on the East Coast, using the reviews from a magazine. I was not his prettiest, or sexiest, or even the best at the things most escorts are known for. He kept me coming back, he said, because he liked my stories, and he wanted me to finish school. I reminded him of one of his daughters, who was majoring in political science. I would tell him my perspective on the presidential race, he’d tell me hers and then a debate would ensue. If I won him to my side, he would make donations to the Audre Lorde Project or a struggling Planned Parenthood clinic in the Midwest.
I would leave with cash in my purse and a feeling of relief for that month. The next day he told me that I was getting cellulite on my thighs. I had two weeks to lose the weight, or he’d lose my number. He wanted me to get breast implants, dye my hair. But his attention was quickly redirected to the newest girl in the club, and he’d forget the demands he made. I would come back in a month, twenty pounds lighter, a new story to entertain him. I, Scheherazade, knew how to survive another round.
I left New York City after graduating but still called him, occasionally, for money, and sometimes, to see if he was still alive. I left voice messages for him on a phone he planned to have tossed into the Hudson River upon his death. I knew after a couple weeks of not answering, those calls were lost in the cold, muddy water. An online search brought me to his obituary. Something pleasant, quotes from his colleagues, memories of beach trips to the Hamptons shared by his family. A life and a death I did not participate in. When someone leads two separate lives, do they not get two separate deaths? The man who died was not the same one who I knew. That night I poured myself a shot of vodka, called another escort I used to see him with, and we made a toast, to soft hands, to the benefactor of Beautiful, Lost Girls in Big Cities, to the other man that died.
Eva R. is an emerging writer, primarily interested in creative non-fiction that centers her experiences in the adult industry, mental health, and growing up “in-between” many places at once. She also enjoys writing microfiction that engages with what it means to rebuild from damaged terrain. She was recently published in Decolonial Passage and has just completed her first science fiction novel. She is also a new mother, a full-time student, and a healthcare worker from Fresno, California.
Featured Artwork:
What Lurks In The Shadows
Andrea Damic (Sydney, Australia) is an amateur photographer and author of poetry and prose. She’s especially proud of having her visual art published on the covers of Door Is A Jar Literary Magazine and Rat’s Ass Review, as well as online Fusion Art and Light Space & Time Gallery exhibitions and multiple other journals such as Rejection Letters, Arkana, Welter, The Piker Press, Spillwords etc. Her literary art appears in The Ekphrastic Review, Roi Fainéant Press, The Dribble Drabble Review, Five on the Fifth, Your Impossible Voice, 50 Give or Take Anthologies and elsewhere. You can find her on damicandrea.wordpress.com.