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Diary of a Married Call Girl
TRACY QUAN
For Paulo Henrique Longo
Table of Contents
9 The Rise of the Fallen Woman
MONDAY, 3/12/01
Dear Diary,
My two best friends are no longer at war: They invited me to brunch on Sunday. Do I want this unlikely alliance to succeed? Let’s just say I’m ambivalent.
Yesterday, I was late for the brunch at Quatorze—which I had to embroider into a birthday celebration when my husband started asking too many questions about my day. Sliding into a banquette, I looked around furtively. Jasmine, sitting next to me, barely noticed my arrival.
“You can’t fuck him on the first date!” she was telling Allison. “You’re becoming a public figure!”
Across the table, Allie was sipping a mimosa.
“What do you mean, ‘a public figure’? I’m just me,” she protested.
“He met you at that crazy conference!”
“That was a panel discussion. For Lucho’s course. Re-Writing the Extra-Colonial Body. He’s fostering a dialogue with sex workers! And he wants to discuss his plans for a documentary. He was too shy to introduce himself at the harm-reduction conference. So we didn’t really meet till last week. Tuesday will be our first chance to—”
“Discussion, conference. To him, you’re a public figure. This isn’t like turning a trick! This guy’s a fan. Fuck him right away, and you’ll destroy his illusions. Listen, those panties stay on if we have to glue them on.” Jasmine paused. “You wouldn’t want to disappoint a fan…would you?”
Amazing. Jasmine has gone from blanket rejection of Allison’s “sex worker activism” to micromanaging all the details now that Allie’s a budding spokesperson.
Allie blushed. “A fan? I never thought of it that way! But”—she began to looked worried—“I don’t want Lucho to have illusions. I want him to really know me.”
“For god’s sake, he knows too much about you as it is. Now look at Nancy. I’ll bet she didn’t fuck Matt on the first date.”
“Please,” I warned Jasmine. “I am so not in the mood to dissect Matt!”
“What’s wrong?” Allison was glad to change the subject from her latest crush to my new husband. “Is everything okay? With you and Matt?”
“Matt’s fine,” I said tersely. “I’d much rather hear about your professor friend. You met him at…a harm-reduction conference?”
Should I tell Allison about the birthday ruse?
Maybe not. There are things your single girlfriends just don’t understand. Especially a friend like Allie, who seems to be grooming the man she just met for an illusion-free romance. Which sounds as appealing to me as a sugar-free meringue.
“When you became a spokesman,” Jasmine told Allie. “You gave up your right to sleep with guys on the first date.”
“I—what are you talking about?”
“He knows you’re a working girl! If he doesn’t, you can sleep with him anytime you want. Because he won’t know he’s getting free sex from a hooker! But he knows. And you’re not just any working girl. You’ve got a reputation to maintain.”
“A reputation. This isn’t the 1950s,” Allie objected.
“No kidding! If you sleep with him right away, he can go on Craig’s List. Or yap about it on his website! You have to find out more about his past before you fuck him. And don’t tell him anything about yours.”
The waiter appeared at our booth. Jasmine ordered a martini and I, with genuine remorse, a businesslike Evian.
“No kir royale?” he asked.
“Not today,” I said. “Medication,” I added, as both girls were giving me owlish looks. “I have to leave early,” I explained, when the waiter had drifted away. “Something at the Waldorf.”