PHOENIX

Phoenix sucked. I bet it still sucks. Major suckage. In Phoenix, the wind always blows into the city, sucked in, the oxygen leaching out along the way so all you’re left with is gritty air that never quite feels right.

Phoenix is what you have when you take every run down cheap ass 1970's strip mall in America and stitch them together and call it a city. Phoenix is all fucking concrete and asphalt, a place where even the little bits of grass looks like discount astroturf and the trees look like they’re all made in Korea in some cheap sweatshop with recycled green plastic. Everything in Phoenix is too bright, it’s all sun baked and harsh and has too many edges. Everything is cheap, cheap fucking wood paneling, and plastic, neon and sequins, and it’s falling apart even as they build it, but they don’t care, because its cheap.

Even the people are harsh and jagged and cheap and fake, and they have no more regard for each other than an anthill full of beetles, all crawling over each other, waving their cheap plastic mandibles, rushing to be somewhere else.

I sound so hostile, don’t I?

Actually, I didn’t really have a bad experience in Phoenix, except for the part about the armed robbery.

But still, I just don’t like it. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing wrong with Phoenix, Arizona, that scorching it off the face of the Earth wouldn’t fix.

I got off the bus. Phoenix was pretty much the first city I went into blind. I mean, Minneapolis, Lee had brought me there, and I’d fallen in with people. Chicago, a bunch of us had gone out together. Other places I’d been with Jules and the last place, Alice and Norman had looked out for me.

This time, all I had was a city map and a list of possible rooming houses. It was kind of scary, but sort of exciting.

The first boarding house I stayed in was okay. It was this clapboard thing run by this old gay man. I had a room on the top floor, I think it must have been a kids room. Like, basically, an attic converted to rooms, I had to go up these really narrow steep steps to get to it, practically a ladder, and half the ceiling was slanted, so I could only stand up on one side of the room. It was furnished, but that basically consisted of a single sized mattress and a dresser and closet that was basically built into the side of the room.

The other side of the attic was occupied by these two Hispanic brothers. They were actually second or third generation American citizens, but the were fluent in Spanish and English. Their room was nice, they had a little colour TV, a VCR, and they had this travelling cooler that they plugged in and used for a fridge.

The first time I saw them, or one of them, was a view from behind as he was going up our little stair/ladder. Ooh! I was in love. Or lust. They were exotic looking young men, men not boys, well muscled, lean. Their skin had a brown duskiness and they had these limpid eyes. I had trouble telling them apart at first, they looked so much alike, something which only fed my interest. I even liked the exotic way they talked, the almost musical accents and rhythm. I smiled at them, they smiled at me. Pretty soon, they had a crush on me. They’d climb over each other to talk to me, it was delicious.

The first one thought he seduced me, in their loft. The second, I had a day later in my loft. After that, I spent most of the time in their loft. It was nicer than mine. At first, they’d take turns, but I wanted more. I remember the first time they were each sucking on a nipple, their hands down between my legs and on my body. There’s a thing, like two different men's hands don’t feel at all like two hands on the same man. If it's one man groping with both hand's there’s always a dominant hand, and they tend to work together. With two men, it was sensory overload. Ooh. I liked it.

Their bodies were sweet. Their cocks, their semen actually tasted sweet. They ate a lot of fruit, they loved pineapple, and I’ve learned since then that really sweetens the taste of a man's semen. I guess the sugar content or something. Most men I’ve tasted have always been slightly sour, but these brothers were deliciously sweet.

It was like they’d been made just for me.

I wanted to explore double penetration. I hadn’t really gotten into that much, I think for a long time, I’d had this lingering bad feeling cause that was what I was playing with when I got caught by my parents. And really, it honestly isn’t the kind of thing that comes up a lot, unless you’re some sort of porn star. I mean, in real life, opportunities don’t come along that often, and most of the time, it just doesn’t seem like an appealing thing to do.

Part of it was the surroundings. The lofts were like a pair of whitewashed wombs, stuffy, claustrophobic, warm. It was about as safe a place as you could ever want to be. You had to climb up a steep narrow stair ladder and then practically crawl through the narrow doors up top, no landing. Like, nobody was ever ever going to accidentally walk in on you there. It was a good place to have a d.p.

Doesn’t that suck. D.p.? It should have a real name. I mean, apart from a technical description ‘double penetration.’ I think it should be called a ‘deep’ at least. I’m got deeped. I’m going to get a deep. We did her deep. I love deep. The art of deeping. I mean, it just sounds better.

But them... They seemed perfect, their cocks were long, they were the same size, and so much alike, that it just seemed natural. Frankly, the thought of an Eve sandwich, these two long muscular slabs of olive-toned meat. with me as the well buttered white bread between them... Well, it just made me wet. It took me a little while to get them into it. A lot of men don’t really go with that kind of intimacy. Sure, they love it in a porno. But in real life, the thought of their cock or their thigh even accidentally touching another man's, oh the horror! Sometimes they’re such babies.

Anyway, usually, what they wanted to do is one would do me while the other watched, then he’d finish and roll over, and the other would get on top of me. They only wanted missionary position. God forbid I should be on top.

Eventually, I got them to lose their fear of it, and we would do it. We got good at it, once they got over their guy-stuff, they could get this wonderful rhythm back and forth in me, oh my god, that was... I could do that all afternoon. Or they'd synch in and out pumping, that was exhausting, but when it was going... I'd just be breathless. We even did double vaginal a few times, which always made me sore, but it’s kind of a rush. My first time with two cocks in my cunt, we rode bareback, no condoms.

I think that was the only time I skipped condoms in Phoenix. I shouldn't have though, after that, they were always kind of hoping for bareback, sometimes they got whiny and I'd have to really put my foot down.

We experimented. Side by side worked, they liked that, I guess because neither of them was on bottom and it minimized their touching. You never see that in a porno, I wonder why. Maybe because its hard to get really intense fucking going on. But you know, a long gentle penetration, I don’t mind that at all.

The sandwich position, the one where I sort of start by having woman on top vaginal sex, and then crouch low and the second man slides up my ass, that’s not bad, it feels good, it works, it doesn’t put too much strain on anything, and I could move around. Not as much vaginal thrusting, but I could move up and down on top easily, and he could thrust from below.

You know that position where the girl sits on the guy, like for anal, and then the other guy gets on top for vaginal? That soooo doesn’t work, it’s awkward, it’ll hurt if you move wrong, and your motion is completely fucked up. I’ve watched porn stars do it like that, and I can’t imagine how. Some of them can actually move around, it’s like their abdominal muscles must be made of steel. Or maybe there’s some trick to it.

Anyway, that was my first few weeks in Phoenix, spending altogether too much time in this tiny loft, with two latins spending altogether too much time in me. Kind of lazy and luxurious, but oh so sweet sweet sweet.

Of course, it wasn’t all great. I’d get so distracted or busy playing with them, that it cost me work. I’d get a casual or a part time job. I was trying to get into catering, because that often looks for a lot of casual workers, but if you were good, you could work steadily and then you’d have something you could take to other more stable restaurant or hospitality places. But, they fucked that up for me. I’d be sleeping over, and they wouldn’t wake me, or they’d kind of distract me so I wouldn’t make it, or make it on time.

Thing with these kinds of things is that you have to be a good worker and most of all, you’d have to be reliable. Basically, I could get hired on a try out basis, and if I did well, then more shifts, more hours and more money. I was a hard worker and I was reliable. Most times I’ve had trouble with this was when I was juggling a few part time or casual gigs, because sooner or later, you’d have to be in two places at once, and when that happened, you’d basically have to think really hard about which job meant more and was better, because you were going to lose the other one. I mean, if you’re careful, you can make it work, but it’s tough sometimes.

But these guys really really screwed with my reliability, which in hindsight, I kind of regret. It made it harder for me to find a job, and keep it, or to go into certain areas. And that made money tighter. I don’t know what it was about Phoenix, but it was just miserable for work. I had a hard time finding jobs, and a hard time keeping them. It was worse than any other place I’d been.

Of course, if money was tight, I could just move in with them. Uh uh, no way Jose. I liked having my own place, even if it was an empty room with a mattress and I only spent ten per cent of my time there. Maybe it’s growing up an only child. I find I have this ‘territorial’ thing going on.

Yeppers, I’m spoiled, get over it.

Then one night, we were laying around naked, just swimming in the smell of fucking, with used condoms laying around (they never picked up after themselves), we were watching this Mexican film, something about cops and gangsters and hookers. I couldn’t really follow it, but every five minutes something would happen and they all seemed very earnest.

One of them started talking about how we could all make a lot of money. Doing what? Doing what was in the movie. Eve could work for us. As I started to understand what they were talking about, I was all ‘I don’t think so,’ but they were sort of running through what they might make, and how they’d do it and what were the risks.

I said fuck off.

Eventually, they agreed with me it was a bad idea. The pimps in Arizona were too scary. They didn’t like new girls on their territory. And that was it. The conversation sort of drifted around, talking about the movie mostly. I had sex with them one after the other, and we all went to sleep in a bundle of arms and legs. No blankets, it was always too hot and stuffy for blankets.

That sort of soured me on them a little, though. I mean, I was simply disturbed by the idea that for them, the big obstacle to pushing me into prostitution was the fact that they were afraid of the real pimps, and not necessarily how I might feel about things.

No, that wasn’t good at all.

I did meet a real pimp in Phoenix one time. He was this black guy with corn rows and tattoos at a nightclub. He had a diamond in one tooth, he was really well dressed and smooth. He got interested in me, I politely excused myself to go to the bathroom, then I was out the back door and not looking back. Maybe my time with Jules made me more cautious. I didn’t take a lot of chances in that city. But then again, it wasn’t the kind of place you ought to take chances.

I have this theory that I’m not unusual. Not unusual in my basic promiscuity, I mean, like in my foundation of who I am. Basically, I think any woman, is potentially willing to consider sleeping with just about any man. Until she gets to know him. Like, I’ve found, the more I’ve gotten to know most men the less appealing they get. Like, show me a face, you know, and if he’s not like oozing open sores, I’ll consider it, he’s a possible.

But then, he starts talking. And whoops, he’s a self absorbed, conceited jerk. Oh oh, a bit of racism there. Hmmm, and some baggage about women. A couple of kids, oh that’s attractive. Career trajectory is definitely downward. Toxic sense of humour. Votes Republican. How charming, he talks to my breasts, perhaps because they’re as intelligent and perceptive as he is. Oh wow, I am so turned on by his condescending attitudes towards the kind of work I happen to be doing, and his contempt for poor people, of which I am one, and his attitude to women and life in general....

I mean, you’d be surprised how often men just turn into their own worst enemies, and suddenly, it’s like they're giving me this crash course in why I shouldn’t sleep with you. I don’t know why that is.

Men have it on women too. I used to know a guy, he told me he was really interested in this girl, until he started talking to her. That made me laugh out loud, because I knew exactly what he was saying. We spent an evening telling stories and laughing.

Him I fucked. I don't remember the sex much. But I remember laughing together. And having this really terrible breakfast together. That was in Windsor, a lot later.

Still, I get the impression that either men have a lot lower standards, or we aren’t shooting ourselves in the foot nearly as thoroughly or quickly as men do.

I’m not sure what’s going on. Maybe men try too hard. Or maybe they’re too self absorbed to pay attention. That may be a good thing, because frankly, I don’t think our lives would be improved if more men were better liars.

Maybe we’re just too picky.

I just showed this passage to my cousin Melissa. She’s being very diplomatic.

I don’t know. I only swim in this gene pool, I didn’t build it.

Anyway, back to Phoenix and the twins. Cousins really, but they were twins to me. And their 'great idea!' If that was all there was to it, that one conversation, I wouldn’t have worried too much. I’d have been quite happy to let things develop, with the three of us forming a happy little unit, and long lazy sessions of threesomes and double penetrations and being just pampered totally up in our mutual loft.

I mean, after all the shit, I wanted something idyllic and sweet and unthreatening and totally totally all about making me feel good.

And they were very very sweet to me.

It’s just, they kept bringing it up. I shit on the idea the next time, and they went, ‘oh, of course, you are right, Eve.’

But it came up again. And again. Never serious, no. Never aggressive, no. I couldn’t imagine them being aggressive to me. Or could I. It was just talk.

They bought me a sequined dress. A very very short, low cut sequin dress, I swear, I could wrap it and carry it in my purse. A very sexy dress for a very sexy woman. Thanks guys! Wonder where I’m supposed to wear something like this?

We could make a lot of money, Eve. It wasn’t always hooking. Sometimes it was Hustler magazine, or pornos, sometimes it was polaroids, or stripping. They had this one idea, they would take close up polaroid pictures of me sucking one of their cocks, and then they’d just go around to bars and sell the pictures of me at twenty dollars a shot. Fuck that.

But we'll split the money! No.

I was seriously wondering why they kept using the word ‘we’, when these plans seemed to revolve around my body and my doing all the work.

They were poisoning my nice juicy apple, and I was losing my taste.

So, one day I started to phone around from Norman’s list, and look at a few other places. I found a decent room with its own lock, where I could stand up all over the place in. No furniture, but I could buy an air mattress pretty cheap. Anyway, it wouldn’t be the first floor I slept on.

A few days later, I told them I had to leave. They wanted to know where. I said I wasn’t sure. The landlord was kicking me out, he didn’t like me carrying on with them. Actually, he didn’t care at all, but I had spoken to him and said they were creeping me out so I had to move. They offered to help me find a new place. I said no, I promised to get in touch later in the day, maybe tomorrow, or the next few days for sure.

The whole conversation was like five minutes.

Then I was gone, left them behind totally. Never even thought about wanting to get in touch with them.

Sometimes, I think I did the wrong thing. Maybe I was a bitch? Cold hearted? Fucking Canadian, eh, we're the ice-people. They were sweet and they whetted my appetite fiercely. I think I would have loved to have explored with them for a while.

Did I freak? Did I run when I didn’t need to? Was I still freaked from Jules? Was it a screw up? I dunno.

I get a little wistful, it hardly started before it was gone.

On the other hand, maybe I was better off leaving before it had a chance to go sour. Maybe I shouldn’t have bothered to nibble the fruit at all.

I just read this over, and you know something. I had one of those moments of self realization. It occurred to me, that I never really thought about what they must have been thinking, about how they looked at things. I mean, I bet most of their experiences came from prostitutes, maybe they’d even done trains with hookers. And here’s this exotic pale freckled redhead who wants them to do the wickedest things, who urges them into the wickedest things. What he hell did they make of all that?

I can see them basically taking me for a prostitute on some level, if that's all they knew, or simply assuming that I’d go into prostitution. But still, what must they have thought of me? Did they have any sense of me as a person at all? Or was I some sort of human porn cartoon?

I think I basically saw them as sex toys, satisfaction plus, and they seemed okay with that. But I don’t think I really was into much more. I think on some levels we were just failing human contact.

I dunno, it just makes me think, that’s all.

It’s all your fault anyway. You guys are always doing that inscrutable male thing all the time. After a while, cause we can’t tell, we just stop caring what you think.

I just wish they’d shut their fucking mouths. But then again, maybe its good that they didn’t. At least it was up front, they weren’t talking themselves into something behind my back.

Their fucking loss.

My neighbors in the new house were this couple next door with a screaming one year old. They were nice enough, he was missing all his front teeth, so it was weird when he smiled. They were waiting for his brother to get out of jail in a year's time. The baby was his brother's. Okay, I wasn’t sure what that was supposed to be all about, but what the hell, it’s a big world. Downstairs were two teenage girls, but I never clicked with them. And the others were Mexican men who kept to themselves.

The couple next door lent me a blanket, which was nice of them. I’d visit, and I’d even help babysit, just to return the favours. ‘No teeth’ found a gym was throwing out its old exercise matts one day, so he ran and found a shopping cart and brought back as many as he could carry. I watched the baby, and he and his brother's girlfriend (or maybe his girlfriend by that time, I wasn’t clear and wasn’t asking) actually got to make a few trips, so their room was full of matts for a while. They were light canvas, all torn at the seems, and you could smell the foam rubber rotting in them. I bought a couple for twenty dollars, so I could sleep on something. Eventually, he sold them all, mostly to the Mexicans, so it was actually a good deal of his.

I had the impression that between him and his brother, ‘no teeth’ was the catch in the family. He really worked hard to look after them. I hope he did all right.

One thing about this place was that there was no one, absolutely no one, I could ever imagine thinking about wanting to have sex with.

Well, at the house next door, there was a charming friendly mutt... But no.

The Mexicans I never got to know. And ‘no teeth,’ well, I didn’t find that attractive. As I got to know them, I got to like him, but his or his brother’s girlfriend was really clingy and possessive and insecure, and frankly, whatever dynamic was going on, every instinct I had said don’t get involved.

It wasn’t claustrophobically stuffy, like the loft. But the days were stifling hot, and the nights were chattering cold, even with my blanket and my matts. There was one bathroom, which frankly, was way too nasty for me ever to go into. There was a sink upstairs though, so I’d use that for washing and to pee. Hey, I wasn’t the only one. I usually shit at the garage around the corner. It was supposed to be for customers only, but I got to know the guys who worked the gas pumps, and I’d try and buy a chip or pack of gum or something, just to justify it most times.

Anyway, I got an old clock radio to listen to music, and some old folding chairs, some plastic packing crates and a hotplate and some odds and ends. After a while, the place was even kind of livable. I took a leaf from the boys, and bought one of those electric travelling coolers from a pawn shop. It still had the cigarette lighter attachment, so I cut that off and spliced a plug on, so I could plug it into the wall. It worked fairly well.

It wasn’t the best place to live. Actually, it was pretty crappy. But I’d slept on floors in Minneapolis and Chicago, so I figured I could hack it for a while. Basically, my plan was to get some money together and find a better place, or find some people to move in with. No problem.

I only had sex once in my room. Some guy I met at a bar. He insisted on coming to my place instead of going to his. I was a little tipsy, or I’d have taken that as a sign. We had quick sex, he had to leave. I could see from the way he looked around that the poverty of my room repulsed him. He offered me some money, I told him to go to hell.

The better you get to know them, the less you want them around.

It left a sour taste, yes. Basically, it made sex in Phoenix with anyone a lot less appealing.

Which is too bad. I didn’t get laid much in Phoenix after I moved out of the loft. I masturbated a lot, a few one night stands, guys from nightclubs or bars, basically, mostly sleeping over at their places. I still loved bars. The drinks were free, and when I was in them, I was someone else. I was older, more confident, more assured. I was sophisticated and stronger.

The rest of the time, I was waking up on a gymnasium mat smelling of decaying foam rubber, doing sponge baths in a tiny sink in a closet, waiting for buses and chasing after shit jobs.

But in a bar, I could be a whole different person. I wanted to get laid a lot more than I actually did. Which might have said something about me being more cautious, or it may have been a reflection on the men I talked to. Probably a bit of both, but more of the latter.

I didn’t think of it this way at the time, but in Phoenix, women were either prostitutes or they were bitches, no middle ground, no in-between, no third choices.

I remember being at a bus stop and this guy hitting on me, and he just exploded in this torrent of obscenities when I wasn’t interested. Just screaming ‘fuck you, filthy cunt’ and other stuff at the top of his lungs. Misogyny wasn’t just a word there, it was part of the air.

The horrible thing was that women seemed to buy into this and play to it themselves. The whole time I was there, I wasn’t ever friends with any women. We were all on guard against each other. I mean, I’d had that in Hamilton, but that had just been my situation. Here, it was a way of life. Women were afraid of each other, distrusted each other. There was a careful wariness and a disturbing willingness to strike if an opportunity presented itself. And there was a willingness, I think, to switch roles.

“Every whore is a bitch, and every bitch is a whore.” I read that on a bathroom in Chicago, but my god, I think it applied here.

It’s not a friendly city to get around in when you’re poor. It was really spread out, but not well organized. It would take me over an hour to get to work, or to get back. Even for groceries, I had to take the bus. But bus service was awful, they never came on time, the spacing was long, the bus stops always seemed to be in some fucked up place. It was just miserable. I think I spent most of my time there waiting for buses. It took five times as long to get around Phoenix as anywhere else, and most of that time, you spent waiting for rides, even if you were hitchhiking. That made any kind of job search, or even job keeping hell. Twice, I got screwed on part time jobs because the buses were so bad.

Basically, if you weren’t driving a car in Phoenix, you were in big trouble.

There was just so many ways that the city was generally unpleasant to be in, and so many little incidents that were unpleasant all by themselves.

The cops were mean in Phoenix. From where I worked, I could see them hassling drunks or prostitutes. They weren’t nice and they weren’t gentle. Being a cop in Phoenix basically seemed to mean stopping people and fucking them over. It was like they were all on a quota: You had to abuse a certain number of people a day or they’d take your police-hat or something.

I never had any problems with cops myself. But I always dressed carefully, not anything like a hooker, not anything sexy. Basically, if the cops had even half an idea that you might be a hooker, it was open season. Still, I got stopped a few times anyway. They were always rude, it was ‘Who are you? What are you doing here? Why are you hanging around?'

One of those times, I was at a bus stop. I was dressed normally, wearing jeans and a sweater and jacket with high tops, standing at a bus stop waiting for the frigging bus, but it was right near the hooker territory, so they fucked around with me anyway, just in case I was a stealth hooker or something. That made me so angry. I didn’t wait at that bus stop any more after that.

Still, my encounters with them and what I saw of cops was trivial compared to the stuff I would hear about. I mean, if you believed rumours, basically, some of the cops out there were running half the crime, or they were allowing it. Drugs, prostitution, whatever, and people would get beaten up by the cops, hookers would be raped, some people would just disappear. These were probably just stories, but you know, it was in the back of your mind every time you saw a patrol car. I never wanted to end up in the back of a patrol car. No matter where the ride was going, you didn't want to arrive at that destination.

Even if the cops were okay, there were lots of mean people in town. Practically everyone was mean. It was a lot more violent than any place I’d lived before, especially down where I was working. Maybe it was the heat, but there was a crazy feel to the place. And hey, I'd lived in Chicago!

The bottom line was being poor in Phoenix really sucked.

I looked hard for a job. Strip clubs were hiring, but I wasn’t really interested in that. Years later, a girlfriend who was an exotic dancer would tell me that Phoenix was a bad place to be a stripper. All the clubs were mob run and the working conditions were complete shit and they all basically followed each others leads, so if you were in trouble at one club, you were in trouble with all of them. There were a lot of bad stories out of Phoenix, girls getting beaten up by management, or pushed into addiction to drugs, or even forced into prostitution. It just goes to show you.

I’d go through the want ads in the paper, sharing them with ‘no teeth’ and his girl. They didn’t read so well, like me, they were dropouts. But I think they dropped out in elementary school. Then I’d spend the day phoning from the pay phone at the garage and trying to get around from place to place in the city. I went through quarters like you wouldn’t believe.

Not having a phone, or even a place to take messages hurt a lot. A lot of the employers I was hitting were looking for casual, call-in labour. Sometimes admitting I didn’t have a phone number for them to call when they wanted me meant the end of the interview.

I was actually a lot better off than ‘no teeth.’ I mean, I was young and pretty, well spoken, friendly, and female. And of course, I had all my teeth. I think he eventually found something with a landscaping company. But basically, I had it a lot easier looking for work than he did. As for the Mexicans, well they were Mexicans, and in this part of the U.S. people had a hard time deciding whether they despised Blacks or Hispanics more, so they had a hard time. I always tried to be nice to them so that they liked me back. I wasn't interested in fucking any of them, well I thought about it, but no - sex was a bad idea. Sometimes you can tell, open that door, its not going to lead anywhere good. Or maybe I was growing up.

I had lots of bitty shitty jobs. Basically, there’s always part time stuff somewhere, if you look hard enough, or casual, or something, a way to scratch out something.

I got a job for extra money handing out leaflets for strip clubs in the evening. That lasted three whole evenings. Basically, it was just a slimy job, I got ripped off every time I turned around by the guy who was supposed to be running things, and finally, I just said fuck it. I was supposed to make fifty dollars a night, but I think I only cleared thirty-five the whole time.

Jobs like that are basically scams. They promise you money to get you to work for them, it’s all big cash up front no questions. Then for some reason, they can’t pay you right away, times are tight, or you made some mistakes, yadda yadda yadda. Finally, you get tired and just fuck off and they’re reeling in the next suckers. I mean, some people could do that and make money, but they’d be the ‘favored’ ones. The teacher's pets.

I worked part time at a bowling alley for a while. I was the girl who sprayed shoes for odour and fungus and stuff like that.

And then there was evening work as a phone slut. Not sexy though. Basically, I was one of a bunch of girls going through computerized lists asking if people needed their carpets cleaned, or their oil changed, and stuff like that. The supervisor was this little Hitler, it seems they always are in places like that. It was fairly steady work, for as long as I could stand it.

And there was a lot of phoning up about ads, going through quarters at the gas station pay phone, or walking or busing around looking. I remember being on the bus and seeing a help wanted sign at a dry cleaner. I pulled the cord, the bus stopped so far away I had to walk six blocks to get there. I was turned down in three minutes flat, no experience and not big enough for the heavy machines. It took over an hour for the next bus to come. Basically, a whole afternoon fucked for nothing.

I got a job at a convenience store. It was downtown, in the nasty part of town. But it was a dollar over minimum wage, and I had a day shift, which meant I didn’t have to work late nights. Not something I wanted to do in that part of town.

The owner, Mister Levene, a short middle aged guy, came across really nice and friendly. Ingratiatingly so. I didn’t mind at first, but I really got to dislike it. He stared down my top a lot, which again, I didn’t mind at first. Just because he was paying me so well, he seemed to have this thing about talking to my breasts.

This convenience store was different than what I was used to in Canada. I basically put it down to that it was an inner city place in a crime area. Essentially, the entire store was walled off, it was a big glass L. You came in through the door, and you saw the store's wares through the glass wall, and you just pointed out what you wanted, the clerk (me) would get it, pass it through the slot, and you’d pay your money and get your change through another slot. Absolutely minimum human contact. Sort of creepy, but I dunno, I’d seen stuff like that before in the States. Just not this extreme. It wasn’t a really big place, either, which I wondered about. But man, we were busy.

Basically, there were three other people I worked with. Chris, some goth punk chick with tattoos all up and down her bare arms, and Mickey, who was kind of a slacker. There was also Lenny, a middle aged black guy, who pulled a lot of the weekends. They were all nice enough, but what I found was, they were all pretty late. I always tried to show up on time, and so did Lenny. But Chris was an hour and a half late once. I was really pissed off at that, but she never cared. Once in a while, Mister Levene would be there, or someone I wouldn’t know would be working. Once a complete stranger came in to relieve me and I had to phone Mister Levene to make sure he was who he said he was.

Mostly, we were working alone. I only saw the others when the shift was supposed to change. Sometimes we’d talk, sometimes we wouldn’t. Let’s face it, it wasn’t really some place where you bonded with your co-workers.

I did go to a few raves with Chris. My official rave outfit was the little sequinned dress, I finally found a place to show it off, that I wore over a fishnet body stocking. Alone, the sequin dress was crap, but over the body stocking, it was funky. I did a lot of ecstasy. One night, I got fucked against a back wall by this big punk cowboy who just reached down and ripped the crotch out of my body stocking. It was like only five minutes, but afterwards, I went straight back to dancing with these rips in the fishnet down my thighs. It was hot. No condom. I was really high.

I managed to move again, this time to a better boarding house. It was women only, I think a couple of the girls were pregnant. So it might have been one of those places they sent girls away too, to wait on their babies instead of being in their buttfuck towns. The woman who ran it was good for taking messages. My new room was the smallest yet, but it was clean, no bugs, and furnished. I gave away my matt and my electric cooler to ‘no teeth.’ By this time, I’d been letting them keep the baby’s milk in the cooler, so I figured they needed it.

And once in a while, I’d splurge and buy one of those twenty dollar long distance phone cards and just run it right out, calling Missy or Gran, or just calling around trying to keep in touch with people.

It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t great. But at least it wasn’t boring, and I had some kind of sense that things were happening. I was getting somewhere.

But, the job...

I was selling hair spray and aftershaves, a lot of that, to some of the scuzziest fucked up people you’d ever seen. Actually, that was pretty much all we sold. We had pop and chips and toilet paper, but they hardly moved. Things like hair spray and aftershaves were like half our shelf space and three fourths of our sales.

I mean, my god, I didn’t understand it at first, then I had it explained to me. They drank it. You take like an aftershave and you mixed it six to one with water, and you could, if you were a hard core alky, get a decent buzz off it. Like, it would kill a normal human being, but it got them going.

So, basically, I was working in a liquor store catering to sub-winos. People so poor and fucked up and degenerate that real wine or liquor was out of their range. I mean, for these poor bastards, skid row would have been social climbing.

That’s so unbelievably fucked up.

Someone would pass me these nickles and dimes and pennies, a couple of rumpled dollar bills, I could smell them through the glass, and they’d be like looking forty but probably twenty, totally rags, dirty, their hair like stiff and sticking out, eyes not even focusing right. I’d pass them like pink panther hairspray, and then they’d go off with it.

How did people get that way? How long could you live like that? I couldn’t imagine it. It frightened and horrified me. And it disgusted me a little that I was a part of it in some way.

I got to look forward to Welfare day. When the welfare cheques came out, they all would go to real booze and partying, and the store wouldn’t do any business. Mr. Levene always fretted about that. I think he’d have liked to close the store those days.

One time, a kid came in, like this dirty skinny little boy, about ten years old. Maybe hispanic, he had this breathy wheeze that could have been an accent, or it could have been a lung condition. I don’t know. He asked if he could have some money for something to eat.

He just broke my heart. I passed him five dollars from the till and some chocolate bars that no one ever bought anyway.

Ten minutes later, this woman came in, and she bought some listerine. She passed me a five dollar bill. I looked at it twice, it was the same bill I’d given the boy.

After that, I never gave money. When the boy came back, I’d just give him a chocolate bar. Other kids came in, and I’d give them chocolate bars too, it started to get to be a thing. But after a while, I just started to feel like I didn’t want children coming into this place at all, so I stopped.

I didn’t feel good about that. What if that chocolate bar was the only thing they’d get to eat that day?

But what if they were selling them? No, that’s too fucked up, I won’t believe that.

But I just couldn’t stand them coming in. I felt guilty. I was working in what was basically a crack house, or the alcohol equivalent of a crack house. It was sickening.

Anyway, basically, the longer I worked there the more unbearable it got. I just couldn’t stand it. I would have quit, even without the robbery. I think I will always regret having worked there, to me it feels a lot worse than many of the things others might judge me harshly for.

Anyway...

One day, I’m working at the store. Basically, there wasn’t anything to do but wait for a customer, so I was reading this Steven King novel that got left behind. Someone came in. I looked up, and they were wearing a balaclava.

The first thing I thought was, ‘that’s a strange thing to wear in this weather.’ Then the second, really incredibly fleeting thing that went through my head was that he was some sort of S&M fetish guy. Then I saw the shotgun. I froze, I went totally all deer in the headlights.

He just rushed up and pointed the shotgun straight at me. It looked like a cannon. It was huge, absolutely fucking huge. I wondered for a split second if the glass was bulletproof, I remember, the thought just whizzed right through my head. He was screaming at me. I was just screaming and kind of cowering and crouching. Get down, stay there, come out of there, give me all your money. He kept shouting out these orders that made no sense, they all contradicted themselves. I’m going, please don’t kill me. I grabbed everything that was in the till, all the bills, and shoved them at him. He wanted more money. I grabbed fistfuls of quarters and shoved them through. He grabbed them and threw them back at the glass, and I shrieked and ducked, but they just bounced off the glass. He kept yelling at me to stop holding out on him. I held up the till drawer to show it was empty. It was just nonstop yelling. He said he was going to shoot me. I said no no don’t, I’ll write you a cheque. I don’t know why I said that.

Then he ran away.

It was like, suddenly there was utter silence. And it was loud. You hear that phrase ‘silence was deafening.’ It was like that. I swear, the quiet after he left, it was like a physical presence.

At first, I had no idea what to do. I was terrified he would come back. Then, just in case he came back, I ran out and locked the door. I was shaking a bit. I got a piece of paper, and scooped up the change he’d flung at the window, and tucked it in an envelope. I had this idea he might have left fingerprints. I dunno, it seems really irrational now.

Finally, I called Mister Levene and asked if the glass was bulletproof. I don’t know why I just didn’t start telling him about the robbery. It just seemed really important to me to know whether it was bulletproof or not, now that it was over.

You got robbed?

Yes.

First robbery?

(????)

All right, call the police, tell them the robbers got $500 and they’ll be right over. I’ll come down right away.

He only got $50.

Yes, but if you say $50, the police won’t come. They only come for $500.

Looking back, I think that’s just complete bullshit. They have to show up for an armed robbery, don’t they? I think he was inflating for insurance or something, I don’t know what. But it was a scam.

I said I didn’t think I could keep on working, could he send someone to replace me.

He said he’d come over himself, just keep the shop open.

I asked how, I didn’t have a float.

He said get exact change.

I asked him how long. He said fifteen minutes.

Fuck that, he was just unreal. I went and checked that the door was still locked and sat down to wait. I was shaking like a leaf. Someone came and tried the door. They knocked. They kept on knocking. I saw it was one of the regulars. I made signs for him to go away, but he wouldn’t.

Finally, I opened the door. I explained that I’d just been robbed. He was sorry to hear that. Could he buy something anyway?

All right. I let him in and went back behind the glass. He bought hair spray and paid with exact change. So, I was back in business.

The police showed up about an hour later. I’m pretty sure if I’d been shot, or there was a gun battle or something going on, they would have shown up more quickly. But I guess, the robber had left the building, so they figured they had time for donuts.

The cops, for once, were nice, and they acted professional I think it was cause I seemed so upset, and obviously, I wasn’t the perpetrator of an armed robbery. They were dealing with me on the basis of my being a civilian and not a potential criminal. One of them gave me his card. They said that this place should really spring for an alarm system. And maybe, I should think about working somewhere else. Apart from that though, I got the feeling they were going through the motions. This was more part of keeping statistics on armed robberies than crime solving. They gave me a receipt, or a sheet or something, and an incident number.

I gave them the quarters that I thought he might have left fingerprints on, but I think that only amused them. I could see them exchanging glances as one of the officers pocketed the envelope.

Mr. Levene showed up about two hours later, at the end of my shift. I was so pissed off at him. He said sorry, he got delayed, things came up, yadda fucking yadda. But I think, he just didn’t bother at all.

Anyway, I was mad, so I told him I was quitting.

“You forfeit your pay,” he said. “I’m entitled to two weeks notice.”

Fuck!

So of course, I had to run after him and beg for the job back. He graciously allowed that I’d been upset by the robbery. He let me come back.

I talked to Chris a couple of days later, she was following me on my shift, so she would have been the one he would have called in early. He never called. He was waiting when she showed up for her shift, late as usual, and he’d just told her I’d had to go home sick. Never mentioned the robbery. We all agreed he was just such a complete asshole.

So, I finished out til payday. I got half the regular amount on my paycheque.

“Don’t you remember? You quit. I hired you back.”

Asshole, what a complete motherfucking asshole. He was such a totally despicable human being, a human cockroach.

I cashed the cheque. I didn’t show up for my next shift. I don’t think he expected me to either. We both knew I was only waiting around to get my paycheque, so he just took it as an opportunity to screw me over.

That kind of thing happens all the time, or at least, it does on those levels. I can’t imagine that high powered lawyers and bankers ever get screwed over. But bottom wage earners, us part timers, casuals, hell, bending us over was like America's national sport. Well, actually maybe once in a while, but the thing was, we had no protection. It happened before that, it happened afterwards, and it always pissed me off.

But for some reason, this was the one that pissed me off the most. It still pisses me off.

It really screwed me over too. I wasn’t close to enough money to get me out of here. I wanted to go back to Minneapolis. Fuck all this ‘shining cities on hills’ crap, I wanted to go back to someplace that I’d been happy in, where I knew it was decent. Probably, Minneapolis was looking better than it was, cause you know, it softened in the glow of fond memory.

Phoenix sucked. The city was this endless wasteland of pavement and strip malls. It was like, if you took every run down seventies strip mall in the world and pasted them all together, you’d have Phoenix. There was nothing I liked here. The only good things I’d ever come across in Phoenix were absolutely generic, I could have had them, could have found them anywhere.

It was time to leave.

Except, I had to hang around a few more weeks, looking for anything, part time, casual, whatever. The drill is always the same, you buy the newspaper and a map, and then you go through the list, trying to find where everything is. Then you phone around, trying to find information and make appointments. I probably went through a hundred dollars in quarters when I was there, probably more. Then you hit the street, and if there’s a ‘help wanted’ sign you see along the way that’s not on your list, you go in and ask.

I was in a rooming house, basically the next best thing to homeless, no phone, no family, no references. I didn’t even bother applying at the chain places like McDonalds, cause they just want all their paperwork to fit. After that, it was basically the small marginal places, and those were always always hit and miss.

I sold flowers in bars, going around to couples or singles. For some reason, my best sales were in gay bars. For some reason, gay men just liked me. I made a lot of money doing that, I was good and I worked hard. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to keep that much of it. The guy who supplied flowers charged me like crazy, and then I discovered that I had to kick back to the bartenders if I wanted to sell flowers in their bar. Some of them had arrangements with other flower people, so they wouldn’t even let me in. There was one prick who took twenty bucks and then kicked me out anyway.

Restaurants were dead. It’s like that, sometimes restaurant jobs are like growing on trees. Sometimes there’s nothing. The joys of service industry. I got work in a car wash for a while, part time, mornings. That sort of helped keep me going.

Finally, one of the strip clubs was looking for waitresses. I applied. Basically, it was a dance club that served meals. So the original idea was some girl would grind around a pole for half an hour, then she’d serve you your shrimp and lobster. The trouble is, strippers didn’t make good waitresses, I guess. And like, the feature dancers didn’t like doing it. I guess if you’ve invested five grand in a set of artificial breasts, its sort of demeaning to have to get coffee for these shmucks. What it wound up with was you’d order at the bar, and then the bouncers or the bar girls would bring your food.

They gave me a hard time. They didn’t need a stripper, and I wasn’t their type (real breasts). I didn’t want to strip, I wanted to waitress. How old was I? Old enough. Was I on drugs? Fuck off, no. We don’t need waitresses. What about the sign? Its an old sign. Well, its still up there. You’ll have to wait topless. Fine, tips? Fifty fifty (actually, turned out more like 70/30 a lot of guys tipped off their credit card and I never saw those). You don’t really look like our type. I just got mad and started reeling off places I’d waitressed in Minneapolis and Chicago, and I even threw in Des Moines, and finally, I got a try out for the afternoon. I wouldn’t have even done it, except I was mad. Basically, the height of my ambition wasn’t to work in some nude bar, no thanks.

Oh yeah, that’s another thing I loved about Phoenix. Everyone was so fucking rude, it was like you couldn’t be civil about anything with anyone.

So, I waited tables in a G string. It was okay, once I got over the self consciousness, and I was actually a better waitress than anyone else they had. Mostly, waiting tables in a G string, I noticed the drafts a lot more. Air is just a lot more mobile and cool when you’re walking around without clothes in a place like that. Oddly, I thought I’d have more problem with nudity. But practically all the girls were naked or half naked, so being bare breasted became almost an unconscious thing, it was like I was just wearing the house uniform, I didn’t even think about it after a while. It was a lot different there, than being naked or partly naked in other situations. I just didn’t feel nude. That’s weird, isn’t it.

That job lasted only a couple of days. They had the worst food you’ve ever seen, and half the time, the cook was coked up. It was so badly run that often, instead of cooking, we’d just get take out from down the street. It was probably the worst restaurant I’d ever been in. Frankly, if I was running it, I’d have fired the cook and kitchen staff, and gone 100% take out. I mean, there were restaurants all over, I’d have just made arrangements, incorporated their menus, picked a few items that could be done fast but would last under a heat lamp, and set up a delivery system. Get the food in, put it on the house plates, and serve topless. Instead, they just seemed to choose the most fucked up way to do anything.

But one of the bouncers who moonlighted as a muscle dancer put me on to this other place. From there, I wound up serving food and drinks in a gay bar, and the tips there really were fifty fifty. I was a short timer, I was just covering someone’s vacation, so it was actually less than two weeks. I also got on with a maid service, basically, part time daily, but its hours matched up, I was the only white girl in the service. And I got about 10 or 12 hours a week bagging groceries at this supermarket.

A few weeks later, I was riding the greyhound. I had just enough money to cover it, but I didn’t care. By that time, even if I’d been flat broke, I’d have just started hitchhiking.

So much for Phoenix.