Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl. Tracy Quan

home sweet home—where I’m greeted by my boyfriend’s amorous voice mail. He’s working late at the office, he misses me, he’ll be finished at…just about now. But I’m not in the mood for an impromptu sleepover! Being stuck in Roxana’s living room for two hours, surrounded by the reek of incense and badly dressed girls, has completely turned me off to all forms of lovemaking, paid or unpaid. And besides, I’m saving myself. For an early-morning date at the Carlyle with Jasmine. Do I call him back? Pretend I’m not around to get the message? What is the etiquette when a working girl becomes engaged?

      Lately, I’m paranoid about having him in my apartment. I worry about Matt finding things while I’m fast asleep. Like those over-the-top black crotchless panties I wear for Milton. With the red frilly opening. Yikes.

      FRIDAY. 2/18/00

      Well, I opted for an impromptu sleepover—at Matt’s place—after hinting that I “just want to cuddle.” In preparation for a night of sexless bonding, I showered and changed into a pair of white cotton panties. My Not Tonight Gear is actually more expensive than some of my workwear. Sexy understuff is as rare as bottled water these days. And there’s always a special at Bloomingdale’s or the local lingerie boutique. But you hardly ever see good seamless Swiss panties on sale. Good-girl undies, like the girls they were designed for, get harder to find every day. One of my millennium resolutions was to pamper my lower body in all its moods and phases, so I’ve invested in high-quality off-duty cotton panties. In white, of course. It’s a mistake to stint. You don’t spend a whole lot of time in your work panties—they’re off before you know it—but your off-duty unders have to stay on, sometimes overnight. The sixty-dollar panties I wore last night are comfy and loose but properly fitted. With a demure embroidered flower on the right hip.

      I arrived at my boyfriend’s bachelor pad wearing my pristine waist-high armor. You know how they always say “Wear something risque under your business suit—even if you are the only one who knows about it, you will feel like a sex kitten.” Well, same thing here.

      Having doped myself up with melatonin, I took to Matt’s bed feeling very much like a neutered being. As I was drifting off in one of his T-shirts, I heard him showering, then setting the clock. Then I felt his hands making experimental advances. He slid the T-shirt up to my waist and ran his fingertip beneath one leg of my panties.

      “So…where were you when I called?” he asked in a friendly voice. “What did you do tonight?”

      How could I begin to explain my night? Roxana’s incense-filled den of activism, a bitchy encounter with a former street kid, that aging dominatrix with her ad in Screw, and his girlfriend being asked to join the Council of Trollops steering committee because she’s…a Call Girl of Color?

      “I was hanging out with Allison,” I said in a sleepy voice.

      His hands delved deeper, and I pulled my lower body out of reach. As I drifted off into chaste slumber, or tried to, he whispered a dirty endearment into my ear. My response was lukewarm. Then I heard him saying, in that hushed reverent tone that boyfriends reserve for pastel-colored underwear: “You should wear these panties more often. They’re…so soft.”