Wiser (6 page)

As he plunged into my very willing body, teaching me more about myself than I’d ever known, I had to laugh. New York City was so different from Tennessee. I was happier than I’d ever been in my life. My brothers and sisters were safe. I was finally in a place where I felt like I belonged.

And when the poet put his hand between us and gave me the best orgasm I’d ever had, I knew I never wanted to leave.

My tastes were as capricious as the beautiful city, changing its face block by block, or simply by crossing a street. The poet and I parted amicably and I wondered if a corn silk-haired Tennessee girl ever made it into any of his anthologies. Other lovers I took were less willing to let me go.

“This means we’re together now,” one of my trysts told me from the bed as I wriggled back into my jeans. “Where are you going?”

“We shared our bodies for a few moments together, but that doesn’t mean we’re together,” I said simply. I was in a hurry, wanting to get down to the harbor as the sun rose so I could sketch. Maybe I’d lay a little color in with the set of watercolors.

“You know, I thought you were different,” he said. “You’re just another slut.”

All these names. My whole life, people had tossed names and labels to me like they’d stick. I simply smiled at him and left to walk on to the next adventure.

The next adventure’s name was Casey, a fiery, petite young nursing student who stripped by night. I mixed her a drink at a party another friend was hosting and it was love at first sip.

“Where’d you learn how to make such a good martini?” she asked, dumbfounded as she stared at the concoction.

“Alcoholic parents and an illegal bar,” I answered, not hesitating to give anyone the truth if they asked for it. I had nothing to hide in this big city. It just absorbed my secrets among the millions of others it was hiding among its tall, silent buildings

Casey had laughed and toasted me with the glass. “To Sandra, the best bartender I’ve ever known,” she said. “And even to her alcoholic parents, wherever they may be.”

I was keeping track of my brothers and sisters in their new homes, but I didn’t give a single thought to my parents. For all I cared, they could be dead or rotting away in prison somewhere for child abuse and neglect.

Casey ended up agreeing to pose for me. I was trying to boost my sketching so I could maybe get another portfolio together to apply for art school. My only experience with another woman at that point was the ill-fated kiss of the high school basketball player at my own party experience. Casey was the real deal.

She posed for all of five minutes before practically launching herself at me, a ball of energy and passion.

“Have you ever been with a woman?” she asked, breathing hard when we broke a kiss.

“No, but I’m looking forward to it,” I said, feeling like honesty was more becoming than coyness.

I’d had many different calibers of lovers from the poet until Casey. I took them all at face value, never going in with a single expectation except for the simple fact that I was going to be sharing my body with someone. Maybe it was because Casey was going to school to be a nurse. Or maybe she just knew the female body from previous sexual experiences.

Whatever the reason, when she put her lips at the juncture where my legs met and began to lick my lips down there, I lost myself. I tangled my fingers in her hair, holding her head just there, just there, just a little more, and a little more, until my world exploded and I came back to myself, kissing Casey and tasting the flavor of my pussy on her tongue. I learned more than I thought imaginable that night, napping and waking up and doing everything all over again.

I was almost sorry to leave while Casey was still sleeping, but I had a restless spirit, always wanting to move on to the next adventure.

The next adventure was Mama’s nightclub, when I answered an advertisement for a bartender wanted. By then, I’d long since blown through my cash from Tennessee and was basically living according to the goodwill of others. I was ready to get a job and start saving my money for art school.

I remembered being impressed by the bar most of all at the nightclub. It was four times as big as the bar I’d started out behind in Tennessee and had a huge variety of liquor. Back in Tennessee, no one told me which tequila they wanted in their margarita. It was always from the only bottle of tequila we kept in stock. This bar had no less than five different brands of tequila alone.

Mama hired me on sight, before I’d even said a word, gushing about how blue my eyes were. She didn’t even care that I was only nineteen at that point as long as I lied to anyone who asked.

“Don’t you wanna know whether I can bartend first?” I asked, a little shocked at the large, classy lady looking at me with glowing, perfectly made-up eyes.

“If you don’t actually know, sugar, then you’ll learn,” Mama said. “I’m at peace with that, even if you did answer a bartending ad.”

“If you don’t know whether I can bartend and hired me to do so no matter what, I don’t think I really understand what’s going on,” I said.

Mama took a few steps forward and pinched me on my cheek.

“I love the thinkers,” she said. “But don’t think too hard about it, sweetheart. You’re a pretty girl. That’s what my customers like the most.”

Despite that, I’d wowed Mama behind the bar, putting on a show with tossing glasses and bottles up and down. I juggled three shot glasses before slamming them down on the bar and filling them up immediately with a bottle of whiskey before twirling it on the palm of my hand and putting it back down.

“I can see that you can more than bartend,” Mama said, clapping her hands in obvious delight. “They’re gonna love you, Blue!”

With that, I exchanged Sandra for Blue, the freedom of New York City for the security of a place to live and work. We threw back the shots to celebrate, the burn of whiskey signing the contract.

What really sealed the deal for me was that I could live on premises in Mama’s boarding house. She explained to me how the work I did paid for my room and board while the tips I made were mine. I also liked the idea of having friends right on hand for me to meet and hang out with in the form of the rest of Mama’s girls.

I roomed with Cocoa first, as did every girl who just started working there. I loved her from the start—her quiet confidence and the way she seemed to know what to do in every single situation. She was clearly Mama’s second in command as well as a leader for the rest of us. Besides my art teacher, Cocoa was one of the strongest mother figures I’d ever had.

I guess I was surprised on my first night of work, mixing drinks like crazy, to find out what the nightclub really was. Surprised, but not affronted. One of my fellow bartenders told me when I asked why girls kept leading customers up a stairwell on the opposite side of the nightclub as the stairwell that led up to the boarding house.

“What’s up there, anyways?” I asked, tossing two handfuls of empty beer bottles into the trash bin with a crash that couldn’t be heard over the loud dance music blaring over the sound system.

“That’s where the real money’s made,” she said, winking. “The bedroom money.”

It didn’t take me ten seconds to piece together what that meant. Girls were up there selling their bodies to men who’d pay to be with them. I was politely interested and asked Cocoa about it that night, after we’d closed up the nightclub.

“I sell myself,” she said, nodding, her beautiful face placid at the admission. “We all do. We get good tips waiting tables. Don’t get me wrong. But the money we make upstairs is the real money.”

For the first time, I felt almost jealous of this “real money” the girls kept talking about. I was behind the bar and rarely had any contact with customers.

But then, about after three weeks of living and working at Mama’s nightclub, Mama herself approached me.

“Some man’s taken a shine to you, Blue,” she said, winking at me. “You know what’s what around her, don’t you, sweet girl?”

“I got it, Mama,” I said, nodding confidently.

“Well, honey, he wants you to take him upstairs, if you get my drift,” Mama said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder. “I’m sending Cocoa over here to help you out with what you need to know.”

Cocoa was laughing and chatting vivaciously, hanging onto a man’s arm. Was this him? Was this who was going to pop my prostitution cherry, so to speak? He wasn’t bad looking. He was fit and had his long, blond hair pulled neatly back into a bun at the nape of his neck. He seemed cheerful, if a little drunk, and as beautiful as Cocoa was, only had eyes for me. I blushed, feeling secretly pleased to be singled out by him, even if it was for a paid sex act.

“You all have fun, now,” Mama said, waving us away. My fellow bartenders immediately began working faster to pick up my slack.

As soon as I came out from behind the bar, Cocoa gave the man a tiny push toward me.

“You’re the most beautiful creature in this entire room,” the man said, grinning. “I’m Emil.”

“Blue,” I said, holding my hand out. When he seized it, he brought it to his lips, kissing my knuckles delicately.

“What a gentleman,” Cocoa said, gaping. “Blue, you lucky thing. They don’t make them like this anymore.”

“I’m pretty old-fashioned,” Emil said. “But I have to have something as beautiful as you the moment I see it.”

My heart pounded harder and harder with every step we climbed, Cocoa chatting about this and that as we went upstairs. The place I’d only imagined before was very real in front of me as we all walked down the hallway together. It was a mirror image of the boarding house, just without all of the pretty decorations and names of the girls on the doors. Behind some of the closed doors in this hallway, I could hear moans and cries. I wondered who’d be hearing my moans and cries.

“Right in here, you lovers,” Cocoa said, flinging a door open. The room was decorated in deep gold and mustard yellow, exuding a sort of luxury that I’d never witnessed before. There were tassels on the heavy velvet curtains covering the window, and the lights were on such a setting as to make everything look like it was gilded.

“Emil, why don’t you make yourself comfortable while Blue and I step inside the bathroom for a moment,” Cocoa said, blowing the man a kiss before pulling me inside of the bathroom.

Once the door was closed, Cocoa dropped her nightclub personality. Some of the girls we lived with were genuinely flirtatious, liking to lavish attention on any remotely attractive member of the male gender. Cocoa was different. She more or less put on an act when she was working. When the nightclub wasn’t open, she was serious and compassionate. It was that Cocoa who was looking at me now.

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” she asked, unbuttoning my work blouse swiftly.

“Of course I am,” I said, indignant. “All of the rest of you are always talking about the real money. Now I’m going to get some, too.”

“All right,” she said with a sigh, brushing my hair back, out of my face. “Keep in mind that I’ll be right outside the door in case you need anything.”

“Like what, a tag team?” I asked, laughing and picking a stray eyelash off of my cheekbone as I checked my appearance in the mirror. “You think this guy is a weirdo, or what?”

Cocoa didn’t give a sign that she noticed my inward wince. I couldn’t believe I was being so quick to judge. When I was still flitting from couch to couch, before I’d come to the nightclub, I was open to each and every person. Why was I discounting Emil as a weirdo before I even spent time with him?

“Every guy’s different,” Cocoa was saying. “The drunker they get, the more wary I am. Usually, drunk guys just mean whiskey dick. More often than not, they’ll get off sooner than they want to—unless they’re regulars. This guy isn’t. He’s new. We try to vet them as best as we can, but the occasional weirdo does slip in. Just call for me.”

“I’m sure I can handle it,” I said, adjusting my bra so that even more of my cleavage spilled out. I had to appreciate my mother for this one detail. I had a pretty great rack.