The boy that I loved
(A writing exercise: imagine a real event and tell it from the other person’s point of view which I did here about a real event from 1974)
When I asked him to be my pimp, he nearly fainted.
He was the shy guy who knew me as the pretty waitress who served him breakfast each morning on his way to work.
Everybody knew he had a thing for me and wondered when I would tell him I was a whore.
I felt like shit not telling him; but was scared he would hate me if I did.
Maybe that’s why I liked him so much. He started out in my mind as just another john, but no matter how many hints I dropped, he wouldn’t buy.
He seemed to respect me even though I could see in his eyes he lusted after me.
Men act on impulses, even when they don’t know what I am. In a small town like this, most men know who I am, which is why this boy seemed like he had landed in the diner from another planet.
Each time he came in, I
rushed to help him – feeling every bit the 15-year old school girl I was before
the first man started me down the dark road that made most people think I was
cheap.
I spent weeks worrying that he would find out about me and believed
if he did, his whole attitude would change towards me.
I knew men at the diner jealous about how I felt about him, and would tell him just to be mean.
Even those who didn’t want to hurt me might have given me away since men talk as much as women do in this town, especially when it involves “getting some.” Some men might even have felt their duty to alert him to me so as he would not ruin his life by falling in love with anyone of my ill repute.
And as hard as I had become from being in this profession as long as I had, I knew I could not survive the hurt of losing him would bring. I guess I saw him as my last hope at becoming respectable again.
So I took the first step and invited him to my house.
I wanted to get him away from all the loose-lipped assholes at the diner, who were always copping a feel whenever I was off guard.
I figured if he got to know the real me – the one deep down inside of me that I always kept protected so that the wrong man couldn’t hurt me – he wouldn’t react badly when he finally learned the truth.
But the moment he arrived, my landlady was on us, saying she had warned me about doing business in her place.
He heard her, too, and looked at me, confused.
I knew if we stayed there, he would learn much too much too fast.
And I might lose him forever.
So I told him we had to go to his place – which turned out to be a rooming house up the street used mostly by kids from the college.
Although he was slightly older than they were, the college kids seemed to think him as great as I did, and thought my being with him was great.
They told me it was grand that he finally had a girlfriend—they had always hoped they would find someone as good as me.
And best of all, he seemed to think so, too.
I felt so guilty, I cried.
Being in such a place only reminded me of how terrible the world I actually lived in was with a whole town full of me who knew who I was and what I did, and would be more than willing to inform him the moment I tried to pretend like I wasn’t that way any more.
I knew I couldn’t just give it up, but if I didn’t, I might lose him anyway.
So I made him the offer, while I was still in the safety of him room.
I figured if he was my pimp I wouldn’t feel so cheap, always having him to go back to, even if he didn’t want me full time.
For a long time he stared at me, tears welling up in his eyes.
I couldn’t tell if he was hurt or angry, or just sad because he saw his own vision evaporating. Then he shook his head, saying he couldn’t be that for me, although he ached to make love to me, and asked if I wanted money for him to do it.
His words stung, but I knew I deserved them.
Life wasn’t like that silly movie where prostitute meets rich man and lives happily ever after.
For me and now for him, life had boiled down to this one moment in his room. I shook my head, and then unzipped his pants, exposing his already elevate penis – and took it into my mouth, tasting the salty semen his excitement had already extracted, and the more sour taste of urine, making him harder within a moment, hard enough to take up inside of me, hard enough to keep us bonded, he being as clumsy as a teenager which made me feel like a teenager, too, we two moving and groaning together in a moment that would expire all too soon, me, aching to hold onto that moment, to keep him from ending it with a sudden explosion, holding him at the very edge of that explosion with all of my life and happiness living on the very lip, rocking him, he rocking me, moving and shaping ourselves around each other for a memory that had to last the rest of eternity.
I saw him again after that night, of course, as he continued to come into the diner for breakfast and I continued to gush at him like a school girl. But it was never the same, and eventually, he stopped coming in at all.