Pellet Guns and Protesters

I hadn’t seen Charlie, aka Gemini Ketamine Guy, since February, around the time I went to Brazil. We’d played phone tag for months. He’s an impulse shopper, which often means he’ll hit me up for a session late into the evening, sometimes at eleven or midnight. If you know me, then you know that I won’t leave my house for any reason after a certain hour unless we’ve scheduled ahead of time. I need time to prepare myself, mentally and bodily. I won’t feel confident if I’ve scarfed down an entire burrito an hour before you want to meet up. To do my work, I need to feel exceptionally confident and in control, otherwise the session just doesn’t live up to my expectations, and I’m a perfectionist.

This round per usual, Charlie didn’t schedule ahead of time; however, he managed to hit me up early enough that I was willing to put on my Selena costume and make the drive out to his home in Redondo. I’d just wrapped up a session with Lily. I had taken a week off to handle my life and mitigate my activism fatigue. Lately it’s like I can’t sleep enough. Not in the sense that I’m depressed and don’t have a desire to wake up, but in the sense that I wake up as exhausted as I was when I went to sleep. There are a number of reasons for this: my nocturnal sleep schedule; obsessive checking of social media late into the night for updates on the movement; trying to continue working under emotional duress; and my own skepticism about the way this moment will be leveraged by our political parties without any substantial actions toward defunding the police. I’ve been consciously lightening my work load for my mental health, even as I take on additional opportunities connecting with new organizations and allies.

I returned to my sessions with Lily on Saturday, feeling a bit more secure in our flow. The break had been helpful even if it had been the result of hitting my breaking point. I had a plan and executed the session well enough. I had to run out as soon as she came to make my appointment with Charlie. I continued talking to her through my drive down to Redondo. For a while when we’d first begun sessions, she used to cry every time after she came, but lately the crying had subsided. However that night she’d cried, and not silent tears. We were doing phone sex without video, so I couldn’t see her, I could just hear her crying, so I knew I needed to make sure she was stable before hanging up.

Every Saturday night before our sessions, she and her judo students watch a movie together. She had picked a movie she hadn’t seen in a while, in which time she had forgotten that a key plot point involves one of the main characters losing their partner to cancer. The whole class immediately knew they had to check on Lily. The oversight had been triggering, reopening a fresh wound. Every month Lily marks how long it’s been since Cassandra passed. This week was four months. She told me she was finishing the last spoonful of apricot jam after our session. I knew this would be a difficult turning point for her. But we turned the conversation to the present moment and her hope for new love. I talked to Lily until I pulled up to Charlie’s street, then hung up and took a moment to gather myself as I switched from gay to straight sex work.

Charlie lives on a hill in a well preserved mid century home with a view of the ocean in the distance. The kitchen and family room are open format with a wall of windows that face west toward the coast. His furniture is a mix of cozy utilitarian pieces with a splash of concrete minimalism. I enjoy visiting him because I love his home so much. Outside he has a yard with a firepit and in one corner a treehouse he had constructed by the same architect that remodeled the rest of the property. I’ve only been once before, back when he was still consulting his interior decorator about the final look and hadn’t fully assembled his daughters’ rooms. I wasn’t entirely sure if the house I was walking up to was his or if I’d misremembered the exact location in the time since we’d last connected. I timidly walked up to his door and texted him. If it wasn’t his house, it would be difficult to explain why I was dressed as I was. I clearly looked like a sex worker. Underneath my mini denim skirt and low-cut top I had on a turquoise lingerie set with a garter belt suspending my stockings. I suppose I could have played it off as me rolling up to a boyfriend’s house looking saucy. My client is rich enough and relatively well preserved for fifty-two that he could probably have a girlfriend my age who looks like me. Back two years ago when we had first met he had tried to convince me to date him seriously. Two years. I couldn’t believe it, and yet it was his fifty-second birthday only a few days ago and I vividly remembered meeting him shortly after his fiftieth birthday party. He still hasn’t shown me the video of him and his twin brother performing the Kid Rock tribute. But anyway, shortly after I texted him, the door opened and there he was, wearing a pristine pale pink shirt over similarly spotless ivory pants. Charlie looks like money. I think people often mistake what money looks like as someone flaunting labels and opulence, but that’s not what money looks like to me. Money is effortless and casual. It’s touching a material that’s surprisingly soft and seeing an article of clothing in a color that’s an uncommon yet incredibly flattering hue. Money for Charlie is this and health. He always glows and remains remarkably tan. His porcelain veneers are almost undetectable. Somehow he’s fifty, his skin doesn’t sag and he has consistent muscle definition. Money is happiness and confidence while the rest of the world agonizes about affording rent and grieves deaths of their loved ones. Charlie’s world is incredibly bright. I sense his ebullience as soon as he greets me at the door, pulling me into his arms. He smells the way he always does, like an androgynous boutique perfume he once told me the name of but that I’ve long forgotten.

Charlie: Hey! So good to see you! You look great!

Me: So good to see you too! Happy belated birthday!

Charlie: I always forget how beautiful you are. I mean, I know how pretty you are, but seeing you in person every time, I’m like wow!

Me: Aw. I love your outfit. Those colors are so summery.

Charlie: I know! It’s finally summertime. Come in! Make yourself at home. I forget, do you like white wine?

I stepped over to the counter and steadied myself as I unzipped my boots.

Me: I like both, but I prefer red if you have both.

Charlie has both, of course. His friend in Napa regularly sends him bottles from his vineyard, so he has quite a selection to choose from.

Charlie: Have you tried Prisoner? It’s one of my favorites.

Me: Um, maybe?

I peered down at the bottle in his hands, inspecting the label. I didn’t recognize it.

Me: Nope, I haven’t.

Charlie: It’s so good. I think you’ll enjoy it.

Maybe under different circumstances I would have enjoyed the wine, but I was hungover from the night before, drinking with Longshoreman Matt. I in no way wanted to ingest any additional alcohol. I’d brought K along to treat Charlie if he was feeling like he wanted to party, but I wasn’t about to introduce it into the mix without testing the vibe first. I don’t like to give away my drugs, but it was a special occasion and it was his namesake. Gemini Ketamine Man. I took the glass of wine. It was the only clean glass in his house at the moment.

Charlie: I’m living like such a bachelor. Next time I’ll have more glasses.

He poured himself sipping tequila into a plastic cup.

I’m out of practice as a sex worker. I say that in the sense of my immunity to touch and the various ways my customers say outlandish things that at other times wouldn’t bother me. Touch has gone back to being very intimate, and at the beginning of every outcall, I feel timid. This was always the case to some degree when I was dancing. The first dance of my shift was like jumping into a pool of cold water, but it’s even more so now that I’m only ever seeing one client at a time per day. And I see everyone infrequently, aside from Matt who I see every week now. A while back he’d asked if he could pay for a GFE with me, but at that time I’d been making too much money to set aside time for him. Now that my club is indefinitely closed, all I have is time for Matt, and he’s been thrilled. Friday he accidentally blurted out that he loves me, then backpedaled.

Matt: I mean, I don’t mean it that way-- You know what I meant!

Me: Yeah, of course.

This happens a lot. Many of my regulars capital “L” Love me. Sometimes it becomes a problem and they fade away because unrequited love is painful. Some make peace with the arrangement. They accept that the relationship is what it is. I’ve become very transparent with many of my clients. Most know about Hassan, some know about my girlfriend and boyfriend. Most know that my straight hair isn’t real, and they prefer seeing me with my hair in its natural state. It’s nice getting to be myself and get paid for it.

Charlie had a fire crackling in the living room. I took a seat on the couch beside his succulent garden.

Me: They’re still alive.

Charlie: You like that? It was a gift from my real estate agent.

Me: I remember it from last time. It’s really nice.

The little garden sits inside a hollowed piece of wood, smooth and sanded, stained with carved handles on either side.

Me: How have you been? I can’t believe it’s been since what, February, since we last got together?

Charlie: I know, it’s been so long. The last time I tried to get you I had been out at a party with a buddy and didn’t want to go to bed alone, but it was last minute. And Iike I always say, things work out exactly how they’re supposed to.

I was half confused since the last time he’d hit me up was only a month or so ago, which was peak quarantine. Where had he managed to go out with his friend?

Charlie: I must have gotten Covid right after I saw you. My brother and his wife came back from Spain and I think he passed it on to me, and then I was sick for about a month.

Me: Wow! That’s wild. You were sick for a whole month?

Charlie: Well, it was worse during the first two weeks. At first I thought it was something I ate because I came home and my stomach was upset and I felt dizzy. I called my mom and told her I was coming over, and then I ended up staying at her house for the next two weeks, completely incapacitated. I finally began the recovery after those two weeks, but it was still another two weeks before I felt like I was back to normal again.

Me: Wow, did you get tested?

Charlie: Yeah, I tested positive for coronavirus and tested positive for the antibodies. Now I feel all better, but I’ve been running a lot just to get my lungs back into shape. I’m in great shape now, but I tell you, that was the hardest fight of my life.

Me: I’m glad you’re alright.

Charlie: Me too. Oh! You remember how we used to have a raccoon problem? I got rid of all of them.

Me: Even the smart one?

Last time I visited he had told me about one brave alpha male raccoon who had managed to evade all of the traps. He had found the alpha sitting on top of one of the traps one day, and when Charlie had appeared, the raccoon didn’t move. The raccoon wasn’t scared of Charlie.

Charlie: Wow, can’t believe you remembered that! You’ve got a great memory. Yeah, we caught him too. One day he wandered into one of the traps and we got him, and it wasn’t too long after that we caught the rest of them.

For those of y’all worried about these raccoons, Charlie uses humane traps and releases the raccoons back into nature away from his property after trapping them.

Me: Wow. So, no more raccoons.

Charlie: No more raccoons! I actually bought some pellet guns and bb guns to scare them away. Also for the protesters, just in case. We had to board up all of my shops.

It was a jarring image. Pellet guns often look like regular guns or like much worse weapons. As much as I like Charlie, I was glad he was scared, but his response was not well considered. If he really wanted to be safe from looters, the best choice would have been posting some BLM posters on the fronts of his stores. It’s like the equivalent of lamb’s blood on door frames during Passover. Mark your house and you’ll be safe. But of course, white men run to guns rather than common sense for protection.

Charlie: These pellet guns can kill a bear. Pellets are no joke.

Sometimes I wonder if my customers have managed to completely forget that they’re voicing these things to a black woman. Knowing anything about me, literally anything, you would know I am not the audience for this conversation.

Me: They aren’t.

In the background, Charlie was playing U2. I don’t know what it is about U2 that so captured the hearts of a specific demographic of middle aged white men, but somehow they’re all jocking Bono. Hard.

Charlie: Let me put on something else… Let me think, what should I play…

Charlie pulled up a playlist of Prince. I didn’t know if he was trying to pander to me, or if he was just in the mood for Prince. Charlie has strange music taste. In the few years we’ve known each other, we’ve talked about Kid Rock, U2, and Taylor Swift. The first time I had come by he was playing a T-Swift playlist, which was a confusing mood selection to say the least. Let’s make out to some Swift. I hijacked the remote and switched to Ethiopian jazz, per usual. We watched a live Prince concert for a moment. He was dancing around the stage in an all white outfit with a long fringed white poncho. I enjoy Prince, and Prince’s music doesn’t have so much sexual undertones as explicitly sexual overtones. And yet somehow it’s just not sexy music to me. We tried settling into Prince, but I knew it would bother me if we continued the session with a live concert going on in the background.

Me: May I?

I gestured to the remote.

Charlie: Of course! Go ahead.

I selected some bedroom pop and breathed a sigh of relief.

Charlie sat beside me and pulled me close. I was glad he did because lately I’ve felt touch shy. In my past life of only a few months ago I was always on top. It’s the way lap dances are set up and it’s useful way to be in control of sex work interactions. Plus straight men are clumsy and often don’t know what the fuck they’re doing topping. While I tended to top Charlie in the club, I knew it wasn’t his typical position in relationship or erotic dynamics. He likes to be in control and lead, and at that moment I didn’t want to have to map out every move.

As I’ve mentioned in the past few Patreon entries, I’ve been utterly exhausted lately, depleted of all energy, including creative energy. Charlie is a gentleman, as much as that sentiment is dated and descriptive of a certain degree of paternalism and adherence to toxic masculinity. But in this case, I mean that Charlie checks in to make sure he has my consent at all times. He doesn’t push me beyond any of my limits. He didn’t try to pull off my shirt, even though it was clearly going to come off. He, like many of my regulars, is very concerned with my pleasure and enjoyment.

I think that’s something people don’t often associate with paid sex. People don’t realize how many of our customers are relentlessly agonizing over whether or not their practitioners are enjoying erotic experiences with them in tandem. None of my regulars can get off and many can’t even get hard unless I’m in some way conveying that I’m also aroused, whether that’s through moans; words of encouragement; wetness, or erect nipples-- they need to know that we’re in this together. Even when I’m fondling cocks, it’s seldom about the physical stimulation alone. It’s mostly about the emotional and the fact that it’s Me and Him. Not anybody else. I’m not a fungible part of the equation. Men are picky especially when it comes to purchasing time with a practitioner. They won’t just shell out for anyone available. I’ve even tried to share regulars with friends. I’ve connected customers with friends of mine when I’ve been sick or out of town, and they don’t bite, even when my friends are gorgeous and engaging in their own ways. Sex work is deeply personal.

Charlie began kissing me. Kissing is his favorite thing. He approaches it with vigor, sucking my lips. I know this is one of those things people assume escorts don’t do. In all the movies we see sex workers say there’s a “no kissing” rule. Everything else is on the table except kissing. But I kiss because I don’t do PiV ninety-five percent of the time.

Kissing is complicated, moving your lips in harmony, avoiding too much saliva. That night it was particularly overwhelming. Before my period, my senses become particularly acute. Every touch, taste, and smell floods my senses and if I’m able to, I try to take space to avoid being overwhelmed. I hoped the wine might dull everything, but instead it made my head spin. After a while, Charlie was too in my face, trying to take control and I decided it was time to switch to Selena On Top mode. I straddled his lap and took off my shirt, shoving my tits in his face to give myself a break. In all honesty, I’ve never been especially into kissing, even with people I actually have crushes on. It’s something I can get into but in the end I like it about as much as most cats enjoy being pet: to some degree it can be pleasant but after a while I need to distance myself. And I’m very particular about kissing. I don’t like my kisses to be particularly wet, but also not dry; and I don’t want much tongue, just barely any tongue; and I don’t want to make out after eating or smoking because I’m hypersensitive to smells and tastes and I will make an ick face. Charlie wanted to pull my breasts out of my bra, but hesitated. He didn’t want to push me beyond my comfort, so I removed the bra for myself and donated a nipple.

I joked with my friend Chi Chi, that how a person licks nipples is the greatest indicator for how well they’ll handle oral sex. Every body is different, every nipple, every vulva, every penis is different, and personally, I can only get into a more aggressive touch. Some people are all about that *angel soft* action, but I’m on the other end of the spectrum. Charlie is actually good at stimulating me. If I hadn’t been feeling like shit, I probably would have let him get me off. And while I was doing everything mentally to dull my senses and disassociate a bit, he had managed to latch on in a way that was pleasurable and broke through my mental barriers. If my other customers knew, they would be so jealous. This is the holy grail of experiences with a sex worker: actually witnessing a real, honest to god, orgasm.

When I’m at the club I purposely try not to come because it depletes my resolve. I feel vulnerable and exposed afterwards, and of course it’s transactional, so after I come and the session concludes, my customer sneaks away and we often don’t even hug it out. I at least hug people after they’ve nutted in their pants. Nobody wants to be shamed or abandoned in those moments following something like an orgasm. Of course, assholes don’t get hugs, but normal respectful customers who communicate and who negotiate a higher tip for an orgasm get a hug at an angle where I don’t get wet.

I was a little worried Charlie would push me to do more since we were meeting for an outcall, but thankfully he didn’t. I did all of the things I might normally do during a lap dance, plus kissing. I didn’t have to see his penis or figure out how I would dodge it if it came to that point. I value my time and the experience of me, but sometimes I’m amazed that I’m providing what my customers are looking for. They clearly don’t come to me looking for full service, because it’s not on my menu. And I’ve known most of my regulars for a year or two now. Yet for whatever reason, they keep coming back and enjoy whatever itch I’m scratching. And I suppose that itch is simply my presence: my gaze meeting theirs, my body against their bodies.

We took a pause after a while. We had migrated from the living room to his bedroom. It felt more like a hotel room than a room where a person might actually live. His bed was covered in pristine white sheets. We laid side by side, taking a moment. It was nearly two in the morning and Charlie had a meeting at ten with his staff.

Charlie: I wake up around 8:30, go for a short run, then go to the meeting.

Me: Is it a Zoom meeting? Can you do it without video?

Charlie: I was thinking about doing that tomorrow. No, we all meet in person at a coworking space.

My mind was a little blown. What did he mean he had his employees meeting in person during a pandemic.

Charlie: I try to make it fun. I bring everyone food. I even got a buddy of mine who owns a restaurant in Long Beach to let us have a party there last week.

Me: Are they letting people dine in?

Charlie: Well, not yet, but they let us have a private thing there. It was just us. They’ve been doing that a lot around here: lots of secret covid parties. But they’re starting to open around Redondo and Hermosa. Hopefully we’ll get back to everything pretty soon.

I wasn’t going to argue with him even though the idea of people breaking quarantine all over the South Bay was infuriating. Why was he putting his employees at risk?

Me: Yeah… Your sheets are so white.

I wasn’t going down that wormhole. I didn’t have any fight left within me.

Charlie: Thanks! I finally found a great housekeeper. I pay her $120 a week and I tell her, “Listen, you treat me well, I’ll treat you well,” and boy did she! She cleans the whole house from top to bottom and leaves the place smelling like a hospital, in a good way-- like bleach and other cleaning chemicals. So now I gotta keep her around forever, because it’s so hard to find someone who does it right. I told her, I was like, “Griselda, I’m keeping you around as long as I can,” and she’s so cute, she’s like, “Yes, Meester Charlie, thank you Meester Charlie.”

He used a Spanish accent to mimic her speech and for a moment I reflected upon how I managed to do my job with men who talk this way. I felt extremely uncomfortable. I made a mental note to write about the moment to avoid getting caught up in the immediate discomfort. The weird thing about racism is that often it doesn’t blatantly slap you in the face. It’s a bunch of little words and actions that convey fear and othering. And racist people aren’t hateful, mean people most of the time. They’re just racist rather than being anti racist.

Charlie is a nice person. He is respectful and generous with me, and I like him, but there is a lot of the world that he’s ignorant to. I am many ignorant men’s Magical Negress helping them navigate the evolving cultural narrative without feeling too judged. I explain the world to them as they’ve never seen it before. It feels a bit like explaining things to children: they know nothing and I have to be gentle and encouraging of growth rather than chastising as they make daft errors. Men are fragile. They clam up and DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim and offender), when they realize for a moment that they might not actually be the good guys, that being a good guy requires more than just being “nice”. I’m not always up for this conversation. That night I wasn’t. I wasn’t going to explain how imitating an accent involves creating racist caricatures. I just let it pass.

Me: It’s almost two. I need to head out in a bit.

Charlie: Give me one last hug for the road.

He pulled me in for another hug, then I rolled out of his bed. In the living room I gathered my clothes and dressed in a hurry.

Charlie: Thank you so much for this! I’ve been so touch starved lately! I haven’t really seen anyone since the quarantine started. You always spoil me.

He handed me a neatly pressed stack of hundreds. Having the cash in hand I felt a little less on edge. The worst is whenever clients hold the money over my head, trying to milk additional time fumbling around having “misplaced” it, or struggling to access their digital wallets.

Me: Thanks! It was great seeing you. Always a pleasure getting together.

I left shortly after.

I felt guilty I hadn’t brought my best self to the outcall. I mean sure, I looked like a dream, but I wasn’t feeling it at all, and customers sense this. Well, sometimes they do. I hoped Charlie hadn’t noticed Shadow Selena had taken over. PMS makes my work incredibly difficult, and my work is already quite difficult. That augmented by the current Race Relations 101 we’re witnessing white people process across America has made these past few weeks some of the most trying I’ve ever experienced. But I’m grateful I have customers willing to hire me consistently. I know a lot of sex workers don’t have a safety net and are scrambling for resources. Things could be better, but things could also be much much worse.