Whore

By Zelda Getz

One guy wouldn’t stop talking about his 14-year-old daughter, how pretty she was, and how she looked like me. He’s the one who’d said he could’ve come just eating me. I wished he would have.

But that’s not what he paid for. And in the end, they always got what they paid for.
Looking back on it, I’m floored at having been so heartbreakingly naïve, but in a way, astounded by my courage, my sense of adventure. I’m only just coming to terms with the fact that I can count prostitution among the myriad sins of my youth.

The ad, seeking “attractive young women, with or without transportation, quick money” appeared in the back of the college newspaper. I think, to me, that leant it a certain degree of safety. I mean, the school paper – it couldn’t be a sinister thing.

Stumbling upon that ad couldn’t have come at a worse time in my life. I was a college freshman, new in the big city. I had been badly raped about three weeks into school, bent over a 34th floor bathroom window. The money that relatives had given me for high school graduation had almost all gone to support my raging binge-and-purge habit. Men paying money for my body seemed like the ultimate stamp of approval, which I craved desperately.

So I arranged to meet Shabir, owner, CEO and product tester for Starr Escorts. I hopped a bus Downtown, and he picked me up in a sleek black sports car. The “interview” was in his shitty little storefront in the Strip District – three private rooms had curtains across the door, and a stereo that got turned up to drown out itinerant moans.

I met the other “girls”: a thirty-five year old single mother with a broken toilet at home and a fading bruise high on her cheek, and a mean, pretty, clever girl of about 20 whose high ponytail would have looked about right on a cheerleader. They showed me where the extra sheets were, and how to work the washer and dryer after every client.

They asked what I was doing there, and when I said I just really liked sex, they laughed at me, coldly and without pity. I thought they were laughing with me, because it was such a precocious thing to say.

Shabir told me I was beautiful, but in his wolf’s eyes, I was a commodity because I looked like a child. Hell, I was a child; a skinny little girl with jutting hipbones, tiny breasts and no idea what was going on.

Shabir told me I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want. There was a pricing scale, and full intercourse would net me $75 and would net Shabir $225. He said I had to bring my own condoms if I was planning to fuck. I said I wasn’t.

Of course, I did, eventually.

My first customer was a regular – a fat guy named Glen who liked having his nipples licked. In a sense I felt sorry for him, for the way he smelled of nervous sweat and Ivory soap and wanted to fuck me more than anything, but couldn’t afford it. His hatred was a shy, fearful kind. He wanted love, and would never, ever get it. Instead, he paid to eat my ass.

Another John wanted anal sex. I’d done that once or twice before with a boyfriend and lots of lube. I didn’t want to. He kept insisting, and told me he’d give me a tip. For $100 extra, he plunged into me, tearing me. I cried so much he finally stopped, and threw the bill on the bed and left – but only after he came in my pussy. I had to scramble and hide the bill, because Shabir forbade tipping.

The other girls in my dorm wanted to know what the hell I was up to, getting myself dressed up like it was Saturday, leaving late on weeknights and coming home with giddy amounts of cash.
I lied, and said it was like dancing. I think I believed myself. I had a denim wallet in a drawer in my desk that just kept getting fatter and fatter.

Finally I sort of cracked. I confessed, rather hysterically and breathlessly, what I was up to to the guy I was seeing. I hadn’t fooled him, as it turns out. We rehearsed the phone call I knew I had to make.

I called Shabir, terrified, to tell him I was through. He told me I had an appointment that night at a hotel party, and that the payout would be phenomenal. I somehow stood firm. He let me go, but called my dorm a few times in the ensuing weeks to offer to take me back.

The money tormented me – the physical presence of all that cash was a palpable indictment, quantifiable proof of my filth. I purged it, buying extravagant gifts for my friends – I only bought one thing for myself, and always hated it. It’s gone now.

Seven years have come and gone since then, bringing many addictions, lovers and shrinks. I’ve come a long way. I have an acceptance of my body that I never thought would be mine. It’s peaceful not to hate the flesh you inhabit.

But there is no erasing the past. I could enter into a convent, but there it would still be, branded onto me with a permanence that my tattoos would envy. There are things I’ve done that I am more ashamed of, but none of them carry with them the weight of that single word:

Whore.