Anyway, October’s no time to be a streetwalker. No time’s a good time to be. I mean, sure, there are warmer months where you can enjoy the feel of heat on your skin but there’s always the knowledge that, sooner or later, you going to get invaded. It’s like trying to read in a room full of mosquitos. Those tiny pricks and the itching afterwards. No matter how long you stay in the shower, you never feel clean.
You can sit on the streets. You don’t have to stand or walk.
I’ve seen some sit with their legs open, displaying. Like a greengrocer setting out a stall with the shiniest fruit to the front. You might say gross and you might crinkle up your nose, but when I tell you these things I’m not coming from a place of fun and happiness. I’m talking stress; the kind of stress that gets you to do things you don’t want to do and be in places you wouldn’t have imagined being in when you were playing with your Barbies.
I can see my breath. I can see that heat escaping from my body in the form of water vapour. Each out breath loses me comfort and each in breath gains me pain. I think I’m too nice for this nasty life.
A car pulls up and a head leans out, eyes looking at me. Then the eyes look at the not me: the parts below my eyes. The head nods and a hand appears. Beckons. Now I don’t normally go for the deadly side of the species, but she had kindly eyes; warm with a hint of cinnamon. I move slowly, almost reluctantly towards the car. Not trying for sexy or suggestive. Heck, she might be asking for directions. It’s unconventional to look someone up as a precursor to that, but stranger things …
“You know where I can get me a pussy?” Her voice is a rich alto. I flick my eyes down, checking for that tell-tale bump in her throat. None.
“Animal Shelter on 92nd,” I say. Deadpanning it but not in an unfriendly way.
“Say, that’s real nice of you,” she says with a smile that showed her teeth. Good teeth. “Get in; you can show me how to get there.”
I got in. Like I say, it was October and her gaze was, strange to say, starting to make me feel like butter on hot toast.
Anyway, I should stop there, right?
The rest is a whole ‘nother story that you might need to ask a grown-up for permission to read.
From Marla then here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here but this one loops us back to the beginning.
Robert C Day 