Crave you

I’m constantly on the edge, between shoes off and shoes on. I’m always barefoot when I walk outside to take out the trash. My feet track muddy footprints through freshly mopped homes that are not my own.  I ask to use the bathroom, and then go into their closets instead, tracing a finger around the lining of my friend’s underwear drawer.

“Why are you stressed?”- my friends ask as if all my paychecks checks aren't bouncing. As if my next rent payment won’t max out my credit card. As if I have any amount of control.

I crave disobedience.

I am late to work. Everyday. It matters to me to not be on time.   I like to see my boss’s weary eyes as they demand I be here.

My boss is always on time.

“You can leave earlier; you know that might help.” My boss is empathetic, but it’s starting to wane, and fold into her, taking all her good parts with it.

I crave control, but I can never get it.

A punishment in this office is worn with a smile, the disciplinary yolk worn without shame. Our office is a brothel - I am an employee. Employees are supposed to get paid. It’s been Three. Fucking. Weeks.

Sunlight beams through a skylight in the rubs the light into me, putting me out like a cigarette…

If someone else were trapped here in the closet in my mind, they would see my many faces , me in the middle, struggling to pull an identity off. Clawing at my old face, trying to tear it off until it returns to its hanger too. But it won’t —-

I am stuck.

“Who was your first?” My boss had asked one night when she was still nice. It was a slow Tuesday night, so I lingered and she let me. 

- James -

I was 17. He was 48, a grocery store clerk. I was 17, a highschool athlete on summer break. He was 48, a grocery store clerk. I met him while shopping for bananas -- he said he knew where to find some that were bigger. I‘d laughed nervous around his obscenity -- he asked for my number.

On the days I had practice, I would stop into his store to find him sitting behind the counter., He’d look at me, a slight smile playing on his lips. His gaze made me feel weak in the knees and aroused in a way that was uncomfortable. The bright fluorescent lighting in the store played its way along his aging features, emphasizing them, warning me. I felt nauseous.

But were parts of him that attracted me; his height, the slight curve at the top of his back, his oddly shaped fingers.

The sex was alright, but because I was young, I called it delicious -- he satisfied me in a way that was new, different than what I was used to. None of the high school boys could do what he did. So, it was easy to ignore how he said “I love you” as he came or how his hugs felt like hugs from an old man.

“I love you back,.” I said. The phrase felt uncomfortable and caused a sick grayness to crawl into my heart and clutch.

Off, off, off! I have been tugging for a day and a half, but I’m too boxed in to this identity, so held onto by my life,and I can’t get it off.

 I’m scared, sexy girl is too draining.

I charged him $44. 

My boss had laughed hugely the first time I told her that story.

What’s so funny? I’d asked but she just took a rattling inhale and kept on laughing. 

“It’s just your not getting enough capital! How do you even expect to generate an income?”

Her disgust with how I saw my own value, instead of with my career, shocked me. 

“You need to be adding a k to every amount you give.”

I must’ve looked shocked because she added, “cmon you’re hot. You know that. Now demand something for it!”

Before my Boss, my clients were my family, my world, the men who raised me. These people were the ones I had to rely on -- they put me through college, through the mental hospital, through Art School. 

They encouraged the profit of my body - my boss is just the latest iteration of an idea of me. Although now there’s no profit.

But their ideas of me are just some of many. Although that is all I am. I exist within an idea I’ve had, different for everyone. A constant guessing game, checkered squares.

“They will come back if they have questions.”

That’s the motto I live by. If they like your idea, they’ll come again. If they come again, they’ll pay more. Guidelines to govern my world.

I am a privileged prostitute, not quite high class, but privileged in my clientele and the respect I am able to demand from them. 

My boss, Sam is my first mistress, and I’m still getting used to being in the subordinate role. it’s hard to give up control after years of being in charge.

I existed in limbo before I met her, {sexy girl] stuck inside a closet of hang men. Their eye sockets waiting for my eyes to fill them. She taught me the system, showed me how to catalog it, understand what was happening. She kept me from changing.

I have mixed feelings about the company I keep — the jobs I take -- the family structures I violate. I am painfully aware of how I see myself. I hold myself in contempt in the name of a Lord. In the name of Sam, my mistress. 

I used to have clients! Lots of clients, fathers of should be clients. Their fathers…their……fatherssss. How they woud caress me with their want, their need, their helplessness, for I (too) could be their daughter. 

I used to have dinners with the dads, sometimes one on one, sometimes all together. Me always available. I like being fucked by one Dad while the rest watch, then another. All together now!

My first hangman was bad. A bad girl, to-be-ashamed-of-me girl. Stress furrowed her brow and badness came through.

Her Dad left when she was bad, and that made Mommy cry. Bad girl only ever yelled, and made Mommy cry. 

It was Thanksgiving, that’s when it happened, the fallout. It was a small gathering, my small gathering. Only 7 Dads, only my favorites. All lined up, dressed, ready, wating for me. They stood stock still for me in a row, greeting me with perfect silence as I opened my apartment door. 

The smell coming from them was heavenly, filled with potatoes, mash,  butter, cologne. I wanted to wrap them up in a hot dog bun and choke on them…choke .. choke …choke on them as they slid all the way down. 

“Hello mistress;” they trilled, in that lovely way, and I turned on my heel, allowing them to follow me through the entryway, and into the kitchen. 

There wasn’t enough work to get done to avoid the bad girl in the house.

Bad girl is met with stares and whispers, and snickers. She left her hair uncombed, and they had heard her yelling (at her mom) from the car, before the two of them got in. 

“You can put the mashed potatoes down here.” I pointed to a small, section of counter top, and looked at them dissaprovingly. I had asked them to bring mashed potatoes, but they want me to be disappointed in them, to disapprove of what they are doing to this holiday, to this kitchen, to me. 

They also want me to eat all the mashed potatoes, slowly, and painstakingly until the first one came and got dragged off to be dealt with. 

But that never happened. Instead, My Boss showed up, and the Dads found out, all of them, all at once. And so the Dads were disappointed in me, all of them, all at once.

Bad girl is bad, doesn’t that make her a bad girl? Sad girl is sad, doesn’t that make her a sad girl? Sexy girl is sexy, doesn’t that make her a bad girl? If sexy girl is sad, does that make the world mad at her? 

Bad girl has no father. Sad girl has no father. Sexy girl makes every man her father. Sexy girl always has enough -- puts food on the table, showers the self, keeps the self safe. Sexy girl is a provider. 

Last night, my neighbor convinced me to buy a gaudy red and white landline from the 1920s on ebay because I have so much money to spend. The phone arrives today, and I walk it up to my room, feigning for a bagel or coffee or a little treat from the coffee shop, anything other than the cold leftovers from the food I bought three weeks ago — the last time I was paid. 

I thought about reaching out to Gregory, my 8th favorite Dad.

They are all just hanged men, waiting on their hangers, waiting for me to wear them.

He used to buy me expensive new pens and spank me with the paddle his friends had gotten him as a joke. The paddle was heavy with “Board of Education” engraved at the top, which was funny, because Gregory was a truly phenomenal teacher. He was a phenomenal spanker too, hard and curt, not much pullback to deliver a short, painfuly thwack. My back curves slightly as I remember the feeling of his paddle, and straightens again as I remember he hasn’t replied to any of the 4 texts I have sent him over the past 2 months. 

But it’s been like that with all of them; Thomas, Gregory, Curt, Tucker, Bob. Jim, Max, Darcy. Each one has slowly disappeared as if they were never with me, in my home, around the Thanksgiving table. I feel discarded, and the acrid taste of alone creeps up into my throat, making me gag. 

There’s no more costume for me to wear this time. Sexy girl is being torn to smithereens, and the other faces are too big or too small, or something sort of in between.

. My mental health is deteriorating.

I am the office entertainment. 

The hanged men chuckle at me on their hangers, immobile on their hangers, but much more free than I.

Naked in my mind - I’m naked everywhere.

My schedule varies week to week, but mostly it looks like this:

• Monday 

  • My boss (6 am)

  • Work (9-7)

  • My boss (9 pm)

• Tuesday

  • My boos (7:30am) 

  • Work (9-7) 

  • My boss (11 pm)

• Wednesday

  • My boss (6 am)

  • Work (9-7)

  • My boss (9 pm)

• Thursday

  • Work (9-7)

  • My boss (8pm) 

• Friday

  • Work (9am-10pm)

• Saturday

  • My boss (all day)

• Sunday

  • My boss (all day)

Every day is a workday, and there’s no more time for dads.

Only me, only Pearl.

My boss opens the door of her office and I jump, my insides feel frayed. 

Her tense shiloutte makes its way to the front of my desk. It runs a finger along the grime and filth left from years of disrepair. 

“I can’t believe you haven’t cleaned this yet.” 

“It’s not my job.”

“It is, you should have asked.”

“I do what I’m told, I was told I am nothing. I am paid like I am nothing.”

My boss looks back in response, her lips are a line and I can feel her energy pull back as if readying for a smack, but I do not flinch. 

“Can’t you be friendly to me today? Like old times.”

Mistress stares at me with a distant, hardened gaze. 

“Old times?” 

“When you woud give me advice?”

My boss still stares, like she does not remember. 

She does not remember?

The face of my  mother quickly overtakes the face of my my boss, and then leaves again. 

“Mom?” 

{darkness}

When I come to, hours later, I am lying on the floor. Dried blood sits next to me on the floor, and I feel my nose to find I broke it in the fall. . 

The memory of disappointment sits still in my stomach.