Fifty-five steps. At the hand job place, I climb fifty-five steps carrying heavy bags of shit: towels, sheets and pillow cases bulge out of a leather bag on one shoulder; on the other hangs my computer, gym clothes, lunch and my organic grape seed oil that costs fifteen bucks a bottle. I lug the loot in my hand job getup: a soft pink and black blouse, leopard print leggings, flip flops; a uniform that suggests comfort and allure; the cotton promise of bare shoulders, yoga poses and soft hair. I smell like coconut and vanilla sweat. I’ve eaten my egg whites. Guzzled way too much coffee. I’ve run my five happy miles in the dirt and I head from the blazing LA sun into to dark rooms where there are feathers, flower arrangements, dead flowers, and remnants of come.

            On the last wooden step I set the bags down. Breathe hard. I remind the writer me that I do the hand job gig to pay my expenses so I can write my book. It’s almost over, I tell myself. The mileage between almost and actual can be vast or it can be as small as a six foot fence separating two neighbors. A fence I could hop over quick in the right shoes. 

by Kent Geib

 In the stripper world, I’m the queen of Ziploc bags. Folded, clean costumes are separated in color-coordinated plastic bags: the animal prints go together, pink and white go in one bag, black is bulky so it has its own bag. My Mom, who labeled every single drawer by color, passed down this organization technique genetically. Ziploc Bags contain certain rhinestone ropes and bracelets; the fishnet shirts to cover tattoos are separated from the pack because not all clubs require tattoo camouflage.  The stripper uniform varies from club to club depending on what body parts you can show, but really it comes down to a version of sleazy Barbie.

          In the hot sticky room where I work, It’s my job to dispose of dead flowers when they fall on the floor. It’s a priority to keep the alters clean; like church. The women here are not Barbie sexy but Yoga sexy. They invest time shuffling tarot cards and collecting long milky white crystals that look like swords tied with suede ribbons. There are dozens of candles that I have to replace.  The candles are always lit during sessions for prayer and energy and breathing. Shit like that, the goddess-y thing.  I’m amused and curious about eye gazing but I’m more concerned about dirty hair and remnants of come.

            Of course, I fetishize ritual. There were years of Catholic school where I’d kneel on cool wooden pews and look up at the stained glass in awe, sing songs about blood and lambs and watch the adults in pressed slacks take communion (I wasn’t allowed to take communion. My family was not Catholic; we were Baptists). I memorized the Our Father and clapped to the songs not knowing what they meant. Except for the word Forgiveness. Forgive us our trespasses.

            Inside the hand job room, a familiar knot throbs on the left side of my neck from lugging the heavy bags up fifty-five stairs. By the end of my shift, the knot will have moved to my right side, finally settling into the middle.  Part of my job involves cleaning. Here at the hand job place, I’m the keeper of towels.

            Washing off remnants of come is important and towels are paramount. After the hand jobs, the towels go into soggy piles: beige, brown, blue or white. I place them in pillowcases until later. Sometimes I wash them twice, to be sure. 

            There is Comet. There are Clorox wipes. But I’m never clean here. There’s a thick film of organic grape seed coconut oil on my skin at all times, reminding me of slippery cocks and pendulous balls.

            My mind is clogged with conversational hairballs about weekends, commutes and baseball games. The fifty-five steps slip into conversation and the knot in my neck wakes up. I briefly dig my fingers into it which helps for a half second. I know the nomenclature of teasing gestures, the compliance of a smile and nodding in the face of paid touch.  As we forgive those who trespass against us.

            I remove my underwear patiently, like in the movies.  My skin and wrist know the trade by Braille but my brain knows other things, like when I’m giving hand jobs, I’m not writing. And lead us not into temptation.           

            My client arrives. He looks like President Obama: a svelte salt and pepper professional black man with a face that could be considered beautiful and a voice that could be called eloquent. He’s shy and says little.  He’s an attorney, like my Father. He unbuttons his white oxford shirt and I notice that he has more than one set of nipples. Consequently, they are called accessory nipples: an additional set of nipples right below his real nipples.

         At first, I politely ignore them and imagine the fun he could have with nipple clamps.  Would Obama pierce his accessory nipples and how would he sneak his nipple clamps through security? I’m terribly curious so after a few moments of massaging Obama’s smooth skin, I squeeze them.

               “Do you have sensation in these?”  But deliver us from Evil.

              “Yes, but not as much,” he said. He explains they are a birth defect.

               “You could have a lot of fun with these,” I said. The nipples are discussed but the towels are never mentioned, even though they’re the most important things in the room. They are everywhere, waiting to be held, squeezed and wringed out. 

            They’re offered like treasures, clean and soft and pure; they’re plopped into warm water doused with eucalyptus oil. They’re stacked counters and rolled into baskets, they’re folded over towel racks. They soften the corners of this dark room.

            While I do the do, I worry about hair and lint, burnt candles and stale incense. Light barely enters this room of oil, skin and hot water because the window is draped with burgundy scarves and long dripping beads. Steel grey doors slide shut and lock. I am trapped here for hours. I don’t want to be here, but I settle in. I convince myself I’m not trapped here. I want to read Lorrie Moore and rewrite the chapter about the Lusty Lady Peepshow. Finish my fucking revisions.

            I forgive myself for being here, even though I know there is hair falling on the floor. I will sweep it, vacuum and sponge it up. I’ll miss a strand or two. There’s the lingering smell of beer and bleach and it gets stuck in my hair.

           I’m still nude when I tell Obama, “I’m going to take a shower. Lie there and breathe.” The room seems smaller. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever.

           I ring a soft bell and the sound reminds me of India where there’s a call to prayer at dusk. Bells rings and bats fill the sky and vendors drop blankets in the street then fall on their bellies in front of their Gods.  

            My friend and running partner has wild curly hair that shoots out from a scrunchie on top of her head like swarming butterflies. She swears by the Swiffer, but I don’t have one of those. I wonder if her stray hairs collect in her corners and if she has enough towels for the job. 

In the shower, I get on my knees and wash and wash. I see hairs and scoot them into the drain with my foot.I hope I’m forgiven, even in this dark room with remnants of come.  

(1991 Humboldt-SF)

*I’m thick into revisions for the book and this is a section I’m working on, from the old days)

    The woman I left sleeping wore cowboy boots. The night before, I’d followed around a pale redhead film chick in a short black cape and tall boots and ended up with her girlfriend instead.

    “I know you’re following me,” the film chick said. “Why don’t you come inside and hang out?” The only thing I remember is the blonde I left sleeping was a biter and I was terribly awake. I left the biter’s bed to find my stupid car so I could get to work. Her cowboy boots poked out of the quilt when I left the shabby Victorian building with old pink chipped paint. The redhead was on the porch drinking coffee. She didn’t look up when I left. 

   It was too early and the sun was already shining onto the abandoned, chipped Victorian buildings that used to be whorehouses with secret nooks and staircases and slave quarters and balconies that the local businessmen bought and turned into law offices.

            I found my white Ford Tempo parked near the Carson Mansion, a famous green Victorian men’s club that only recently admitted women. On the sidewalk, a scraggly guy bummed a cigarette from the punk kids who dumped soap into the gazebo at graduation causing a wall of bubbles to reach the sky. My memory is fuzzy around the time I was introduced to meth and the married man. But he’s how I moved to San Francisco.

            I met him at the coffee shop where I worked in Old Towne Eureka. It was one of my jobs, which led to another side job. The clientele at the coffee shop was artists-heavy and they needed models. So I’d pose nude for them for under the table cash. Sometimes it was for a class and they’d all pool together to pay me. Sometimes I met them in homes, attics or gardens. A tense customer with stiff posture like he’d just had a prostate exam ten minutes before asked for coffee.

             “You’re fetching,” he said.

            “Thanks.” I handed him his latte. He handed me a business card. I went on a pee break and noticed the biter’s strawberry colored chew marks on my thighs.

             “God Damn” I said out loud. The business card the tense guy gave me read: Orchid Breeder. Painter. Accountant. The punk kid outside the bathroom door gave me a look.

            “God Damn what?” he said. I made a hissing sound and shook my head. Walked behind the counter. Punk kids camped out for hours playing chess and bought one refill every two hours. Still, I liked having them there because they’d help me carry the trash out and take all the day-old bread. 

            Behind the counter, I poured coffee grounds in the trash, wiped counters and cut up samples of black current scone samples. I popped one in my mouth. On my break I called the Orchid breeder’s number. He wanted me to model for his paintings for ten bucks an hour.

           A couple days later, I met him in an attic workspace in Old Town with Redwood beams and light spilling through the windows. I was twenty. He was thirty-five and married with green lizard eyes. He smoked cigars. “Have you tried acid?” he asked. “Nope,” I said.

            “How is that possible? A fetching girl like you?”

           He opened and shut his freezer and handed me a tiny square piece of paper, which dissolved on my tongue. We spent the next several hours touching and kissing. I got lost standing up. I lost track of time and place. And I loved it. That was how the affair started. Not with mutual attraction or interests. The married man had the yummy drugs. And he had the drug that made everything perfect. Not acid. He bought our powdered perfect drug by the quarter baggies at thirty bucks a pop.

            Speed made me frantic and thin and euphoric. I soared above myself and felt good up there, looking down at myself in a jagged disconnect. Did I mention speed made me skinny? Yeah. Perfect.

            The orchid breeder ended his marriage. I didn’t know about such serious things, but I’m sure that woman still has a doll in my likeness with pins stuck through its face and heart and I don’t blame her.

           He puffed on a cigar and asked me, “Do you want to come to San Francisco?” Of course I did. My small town was tightening around my neck. It was suffocating and embarrassing. I realize I am summarizing but it’s difficult to remember specifics. It was a long time ago. Neither the biter nor the biter’s girlfriend wanted me.  Besides, I wanted go stalk Kathy Acker and Kathy Acker was in San Francisco.

          I packed some clothes and books into boxes and climbed inside the U-Haul. “Wait. Let me say goodbye,” I said as we passed my Dad’s office.

         Dad’s law office was a place of wood paneling and waiting. As a kid I’d sat at his desk and endured many lectures and cried for things I didn’t know how to ask for. It was a place of longing and avoidance and tense phone calls;  a cold place. “Take care of my little girl, “ Dad said. But it was too late. I was no little girl and I had the itch of need, banging my throat like a drum; the beat of needing more powdered perfect, rising like bread in my skin.

Summer’s the best time in Humboldt.

Trinidad Humboldt Summer

There are faded blue steps leading up to my Mom’s house where heavy ceramic pots drip ivy, African violets and pink geraniums. Snake plants shoot up to the sky where there are robin nests on beams. A ceramic owl stares up from the porch with a chipped wing.

You have to be careful not to get pricked by spiky succulents or scraped by decorative butterflies on wires as you climb her stairs. One glance to the right and you see bright colored trees in the front yard: a blood red cherry tree with deep purple leaves and her favorite, the Golden Chain.

Mom's Yard

The Golden Chain, Latin: Laburnum is from the pea family, has pale yellow pendulous flowers and clubbed leaves like hooves. Every part of the tree is poisonous if consumed. People who mistake the seeds for peas suffer from vomiting, coma, convulsions and frothing at the mouth, but it’s wood can be used for cabinets and musical instruments. The Golden Chain is lethal as it is messy. It weeps all over Mom’s lawn.

Never mind predictable or calm. Mom loved dangerous things and volatile men. She loved fireworks and places where tourists don’t go. She liked exploring caves and caverns. She was an outhouse hiker. I’m my Mom’s daughter so I feel most alive when I flirt with danger. I like uncalculated risks, like I’m daring her to keep me safe. I jump out of planes at 14,000 feet, take uncharted boats through the backwaters of India, chase barracudas and pet blowfish in the Carribean.

July 4th from Bay

The plan is to plant another Golden Chain in Mom’s yard where the rest of her ashes will be buried. Some of them were scattered from a Mayan Temple in Tikal. The rest will go in her yard, with her crazy yellow tree. There will be some stones from Samoa beach placed there to mark the spot. A little water feature if we get ambitious. In the backyard are horses, that skittish and unpredictable and beautiful beast. So of course, she was horse-obsessed.

I always picture Mom riding horses whose only interest was to buck her off. She got most of her teeth knocked out by a horse when she was eighteen. Years later, another one dragged her through the bushes in Northern Australia and she had to get stitches on her lips while we were on vacation.

Fireworks from Bay

A few years ago, she visited LA and swooned over the purple jacaranda blossoms, their brazen purple flowers that flooded the streets in my neighborhood. That was before the cancer, near Mother’s Day and right before she turned yellow from jaundice. We drove to Vegas to gamble and see Celine Dion, but Celine cancelled the show. My Mom was acting hysterical and disoriented. I didn’t know why then, but soon found out she was sick.

Humboldt Redwoods Trail

After Vegas, when Mom’s skin turned yellow, we thought it was her liver drowning in whisky. She was in a hospital bed in San Francisco.

“I’m not an alcoholic. Look at my hands!”  She held up her hands, steady as stones. That’s when time of surgeries began. The hectic trips to San Francisco and frantic drives to Humboldt.

In her yard, I’d sit next to her orange lilies exploding from every pot, little explosions of purple blue Iris and her plum tree dropping black fruit.  The jaundice went away when they removed her intestines, but she never ate comfortably again. She loved tomatoes and her greenhouse bursted with orange yellow and red cherry tomatoes. There were so many tomatoes, you couldn’t eat them fast enough. Neighbors came over with Tupperware to collect. I sat in the greenhouse on a plastic white stool to breathe the steamy warm dirt air and I could hear the two horses. There used to be chickens and a pig, but they’re gone now.

The Golden Chain thrives in Humboldt, as long as it’s protected from the wind from the nearby ocean. You should see her Golden Chain now, bleeding yellow.

Antonia, My question is I want to find a non-pro female sex worker (someone who doesn’t strip, escort, etc) to have a night of fun with.  Like the next-door type/soccer mom.  I know that a lot of non-pro women would be up for it as a one time thing, but how do I find someone like that? I can’t stop pretty girls on the street and say “Hi, can I pay you to sleep with me?”  And I’m not into Facebook/social networks/etc…So I have no idea how to find someone like this.  Feel free to post this question on your blog and if anyone would like to contact me and has any suggestions, maybe they could contact you and you could fwd the info. Thanks!

-G-

Dear Mr. G,  Tons of guys want a hooker who’s not a hooker.  It’s a request that has haunted me for years. I’ve read ads exactly like your letter and heard it from the mouths of many clients. Limited by my own experiences and opinions,  I spoke to one straight man and five women: sex workers and non-sex workers alike. Additionally, I filmed a healer named Alexis in order to answer your question and will have that plugged on here soon (edit: now playing).

Before you get thrown in jail for solicitation or punched in the nose for pissing off soccer Mom’s everywhere, let’s examine what bubbles beneath the surface of the want: Your desire for a non pro for a night of paid fun.

I think that men who want hookers-who-aren’t-hookers have internalized some hostility towards women, towards sex workers specifically and are plagued with a tad of self loathing. My hope is to drag those hostilities out into the light and scatter them like trash so you can see what’s what. Then I will help you get laid.

*Entitlement.

As a man,  you’ve been trained by our culture to believe women are at your sexual disposal and you feel entitled to them.  You imagine that every woman has a price tag attached to her chest. Why would you think otherwise? Our culture hurls gorgeous, sexy women at you from every angle promising ecstasy and fulfillment. Why would you want to convince a woman to take your money who is not a sex worker? It’s manipulative and demeaning. Don’t do it.

What I’m getting at, G,  is you don’t really want a non-escort, non-stripper,  soccer Mom for a night of paid fun. You want to hire a sex worker to play the role of girl-next-door, soccer Mom.  You want her to do this flawlessly.

You want her to be buttoned-up, combed and spritzed with lavender scented aromatherapy. You want car seats in the back of her SUV and a high end hair scrunchy to hold her shiny pony tail in a firm grip.  She’ll work part time in a flower shop and grasp a yoga mat under her waxed armpit. When you meet, she’ll sip a non-fat latte with no foam in sensible flats.  She’s never considered flaunting her nipples to legions of strangers for cash. Her name will be Jennifer. You need to get your ass on line and find Jennifer. You need to be specific and generous and kind and pay her handsomely.

* Client Shame.

You may be riddled with Client Shame. Our culture despises men who hire women for pay, unless they are Richard Gere and rescue, marry the girl (read:buy her out of the biz). Clients are seen as desperate douche bags, men who are undesirable, unattractive and sleazy.  You have internalized this client shame but I think it’s a form of self hatred exacerbated by our culture that seeks to feed you sex then criminalize you for buying it.Don’t believe the hype, G. It’s a trap.

It is worth asking yourself: what does it say about you if you hire a girl for sex? Does it make you less of a man? Can you love yourself and hire a woman to play a role?

Role play is fun and wild and safe. I recommend listening to Dan Savage’s podcast. He’s intelligent, hilarious and informative:http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLovePodcast/Page/

I suggest you make it a game. You want to live out a fantasy so have the courage to pursue it.

*Anti-sex worker sentiment

Our culture hotly desires women then hates them for becoming models and adult entertainers. They are considered the most disposable demographic in our society and valued as commodities.  Along with children and animals, they are the most vulnerable to violent crime and exploitation. You have internalized this hostility, otherwise, why would you want a woman who is non-pro? Is the non-pro less sincere because she’s performing a role? If you want a NSA night of fun,  then you need to casually date.

This is a part-time job and you have to be willing to invest some time and energy. You will need to go on a dating site or join a bowling club or ask all of your guy friends to hook you up. You need to get your entitled, self loathing ass on line and do a bit of work and find someone fun and ask them to play out your fantasy with you.

When you find someone fun and sweet and game, you may want to do what I have done:

Years ago in SF, I dated a hot, butch, punk mohawked dyke who was briefly my slave. I told her to meet me at Café Du Nord. I said this:

When I come in, ignore me. No matter what I do, act disinterested in me. After a few minutes, go to the bathroom. I will follow you and shove you against the wall.

I will hand you a hundred dollar bill and proposition you.  ”Come home with me and eat my pussy until I come.” No matter how long it takes, you’ll do it and you’ll take the money, and then you will leave. It was one of the most fun dates I’ve ever had.

Happy Role playing, Mister G.

Sister Golden Hair by Sheila Hiber