Books by DAR

Flipping For It

Excerpts: Pages 105-115

Thomas is auditioning hookers in the early Sunday-morning safety of his lab overlooking downtown Providence. Against the growing possibility that Jane has put a detective on him, he can no longer take the chance of going out for relief: he has to send for relief to come to him. This is difficult if you are as choosy as Thomas is. Thus the audition, Thomas’s attempt to select his hooker with as much delicacy and latitude of choice as possible. With the blinds drawn against the early Sunday-morning light streaming in, Thomas burrows in the couch reading the escort ads in the back of the paper and circling the most likely. He makes a call.

“Heads or Tails,” answers an unusually bored female voice.

“Hi,” says Thomas nervously. “I’m interested in your ad.”

The female voice blows smoke. “Jesus, you’re an early bird. What’re you doing being horny at this hour?”

Thomas has nothing to say. Perhaps he feels offended?

“Only kidding,” the smoke-voice says. “Give me your name and where you’re at and Joyce’ll be there as fast as the bus can bring her.”

Children are waking in the condo next door as Thomas waits with the jitters for Joyce. The children are complaining to each other. Soon with squeals of angry laughter they are having a pillow fight. To block it out, Thomas turns on the TV and goes to the bathroom and takes a hot shower. He sudses his penis well.

“There are more dangers to the animal kingdom than simple drought and starvation,” says the TV in the next room. “There are thousands of insidious ways animal communities can be wiped out, some gradual as the change in a river flow, some sudden as a forest fire . . .”

Thomas hopes maybe Joyce is a fiery Irish colleen with raven hair. Not too many freckles, though. While he is brushing his teeth in the shower, there is a knock at the door. “Coming!” he shouts, trying as fast as possible to stop dripping. He throws on his royal blue robe, opens the door, and not unexpectedly is a little disappointed. Far too many freckles. Also, Joyce looks sullen as only certain eleventh-grade girls can look sullen, with eleventh-grade too-blue mascara and eleventh-grade too-tight cord jeans. She is not exactly unattractive, but this is really a special occasion for Thomas. This is his audition to relieve his thirst for love. He thinks maybe he can do better on the next try.

“You know what?” he tells Joyce, drying his feet on a ratty old towel and hurrying to put on socks and Topsiders.

“Whuh?” says Joyce.

“I just got a call from a TV show! Can you beat that? This TV show wants me to go out and interview this guy, some nature expert, I don’t know, some authority on Iceland crabs. Can you beat that? And he’s leaving for the airport in one hour, so I’ve got to get there.”

“Huh?” says Joyce. Suspiciously she swings her brown vinyl pocketbook from one shoulder to the other.

“I’ve got to go,” Thomas explains. But look, maybe I’ll get a chance to date you later someday. You’re really pretty. I just can’t do it right now.”

“I don’t know about this,” Joyce says suspiciously. “I never had a cancellation before. I got to call my boss.” She flips her head at the bathroom. “You got a phone here?”

“There’s one by the couch,” Thomas says.

“Yeah, but I got to have my privacy, if you know what I mean,” Joyce says.

Thomas allows her to use the toilet, the phone, whatever. Then he gives her twenty dollars for her trouble and says he hopes maybe to see her again someday. Unexpectedly, she kisses him with surprising warmth on the mouth. “Bye-bye,” she says, swinging her pocketbook flirtatiously as she steps out the door.

Thomas is warming up to the audition. He removes his Topsiders and hops back on the couch to call another escort service. This one looks swanky. Its ad shows rockets going off amid all sorts of elegant silhouettes. Some ads are really disgusting but this one looks nice. This one does not advertise mother’s milk, for instance, or wine enemas. This one looks nice. He calls and soon Monique is at his door, glamorous back Monique dressed slitheringly for the evening at eight a.m. Thomas invites her in. What a knockout she is. What a superabundance of perfume she is wearing—but oh-oh, the one perfume Thomas cannot abide is musk. Musk is a terrible turnoff for Thomas. Also, Thomas has glimpsed that Monique has a sky blue rubber off the to side in her mouth. At first he thought it was a piece of bubble bum but he realizes it is a rubber whose purpose is to be slipped over him when the time comes. What’d she do—keep it in for the whole ride over here? Or just insert it in the elevator? In any case, the edge is off his lust.

“You’ll never believe what just happened,” he tells Monique, hurriedly putting on Topsiders once again. “This TV show just called . . .”

Thomas is not really getting discouraged. He brushes his teeth again. He walks to the kitchenette of his lab to get away from the sound of the pillow fight next door. No luck. He flops back onto the couch and opens the paper again to scan the ads. “Lovely and lacy” sounds too romantic. “Candy-kisses” sounds too fattening. “Celebrate your aliveness!” sounds too industrious. “Hi, we’ve from Venus!” sounds too unstructured. “Awesome” sounds too awesome. “My tits in your face!” sounds too forthright. “Discover ecstacy!” sounds too long-term. One who advertises hersef as “the mud wrestler supreme” sounds too . . . profound? Another who gives her measurements in centimeters—90—60—90—sounds too wry for Thomas this morning. Yet another who offers a free digital pen and pencil set sounds no fun at all. In all of Providence isn’t there just one nice beautiful girl who can warm him all the way through?

But now here is one who describes herself as a “pre-op” named Pam. So even medical students are taking part-time work as hookers, Thomas thinks. Oh well, with the cost of medical school . . .

Pam is pretty. Pam is wearing a frilly blouse with flowery cuffs overflowing her wrists, and very nice soft linen pants. Pam is carrying a Lord & Taylor bag. Pam removes handcuffs from her Lord & Taylor bag, also a paddle that looks like the kind you hit against an attached rubber ball, also a squirt gun.

“You never know,” Pam shrugs. “You’ve got to be ready for anything.”

Thomas likes Pam. Pam is ready for anything. Pam and Thomas sit on the couch. They talk about this and that. Thomas likes Pam’s breathy voice. Thomas likes Pam’s linen pants. Thomas is leaning close enough to Pam that he can detect the scent of cotton rising softly from her linen pants. It is quite an intoxicating scent to be breathing at such an early hour of the morning. Pam is smoking a Virginia Slim, and when part of the ash falls to her linen thigh, Thomas flicks it off with the tip of his index finger. It is quite an intoxicating thing to be doing at such an early hour of the morning.

“What time is it anyway?” Thomas asks.

Pam cocks her wrist to reveal a great big man’s wristwatch.

Thomas snickers at the unexpected humor of this delicious debonair lady, his own personal medical student!

And she is fascinating. She seems to know the whole city through the special lens of her sideline work: knows, for instance, what color they’re painting the underside of the Mount Hope Bridge because of the colored splatterings on the legs of the construction worker who came to see her last evening. Knows there was a stabbing this dawn on Pine Street because her last customer was a cabby who’d passed by the assault. Fascinating! The city is her village. Oh, give me a pre-op every time, Thomas thinks—with their special acumen, their specialized powers of observation . . .

“What is your specialty anyhow?” Thomas asks.

“Pleasing you,” says Pam, and pulls out her penis.

Thomas gives the guy ten bucks for his trouble.

“Oh, pre-op,” Thomas says to himself after Pam splits. “Oh. Oh. Oh.”

All right, this is it, Thomas thinks. He is a little shaken, but still determined to put a dent in this celibacy that’s got his body locked in shock. No more escort services. No more fancy titles. What Thomas wants is a straightforward solo, someone who works for herself.

“Some dangers come in a crack of lightning that ruins a badger’s lair,” says the TV. “Some come in a flash flood that destroys a generation of beaver dams . . . “

He calls another one. This is it, Thomas decides. This is the last one. If this doesn’t work, I’m calling off auditions for the month.

“Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Beholder,” this one reads.

And oh, how Thomas wants to be a beholder of beauty. To hold beauty in his hands again, to squeeze beauty between his fingertips, to taste beauty with his lips and tongue, to sink into beauty with that inexpressible luscious ease, that moment of pure peace . . .

“Hello,” he says nervously, hopeful beyond words, “I’m interested in your ad.”

The voice, for the first time this morning, is stunning.

“I’m glad you called,” the voice says. Pleasant, clear—promising, definitely promising. Even the silence is promising. She is waiting for Thomas to make the next move.

“My name’s Thomas,” Thomas says, “and if you’re the right person I’d like to meet you.”

“If you’re the right person, I’d like to meet you,” the voice responds. “Would you mind telling me something about yourself?”

“Well, let’s see,” Thomas says. “I’m downtown at my lab this morning because I’m going through a divorce at home and I needed to get away for a break. I guess that’s the reason I’m calling you, too. For a break.”

The woman pauses. “You’re legit,” she decides. “And I know what these divorces cost in terms of self-esteem. You should really figure you’re going to be spiritually out to lunch for at least a year.”

Thomas is nodding. He is beginning to grow stirred at the sound of this clean, intelligent voice.

“How did the divorce come out?” the woman asks.

“I left my power in the pansies! My football buddies spilled beer in the boudoir! How the hell do I know how it came out?” Thomas shouts. He calms down. “She was buying flowers to symbolize her love for me,” he confesses, “but she started sleeping with the FTD guy.”

The woman pauses, weighing his touchiness. “I still think you’re legit,” she decides. “Your pain sounds large but not unmanageable. So I may as well tell you my name is Jane, and I’d like to provide the healing you seek today.:

Thomas is nodding dramatically. “Jane,” he says in a voice half-strangulated by the fourteen-year-old—type boner he has popped at the sound of the name. “Do you have a rap you can pitch at me, Jane?”

“Well, I’m free-lance, as you must have noticed from my ad,” she says. “I work strictly for myself so that I can more carefully select the gentlemen with whom I’d like to have dates. What else. I have some regular clients who visit me in my luxury duplex in Corliss Landing but I’m also available to make outcalls for occasional clients such as yourself who seek a skillful professional to renew their psychic energy through the relief of various mind-body tensions, specifically those associated with coupling.”

“Good rap, Jane,” Thomas says. His boner is growing by leaps and bounds. He notices he has written her name on the back of an endangered-species flyer, and has been doodling around it. “Yes, go on, Jane.”

“I do straight, Greek, French, round-the-world, Greek—did I say that? Though Greek would naturally cost a little more. I do light B and D work, some S and M work, though not the heavy stuff. I want to make it clear that I am not into water sports.”

Thomas is impressed. “Gee,” he says. “You sound like . . . like I’d like to meet you. Are you free for an outcall this morning?”

“As it happens, I have a cancellation in seven minutes,” Jane replies. “Let’s see, you’re downtown, yes, I believe I can be there in seven minutes.”

“Yuh!” Thomas says.

“Cab fare is included in the price.”

“Which is . . .?”

“One and a half.”

“A hundred fifty?”

“For an hour,” Jane says. “Of course, if our healing really gets hot, I might be able to throw in a little more . . . but I do stress that I’m not into water sports.”

“No, no, that’s fine,” Thomas says. He stares at the doodle around her name and snaps his fingers ruminatively. “Let me see, there was something else I wanted to ask you.”

“Take your time, sweet.”

“Hmm, well, but I don’t know how to ask you this. Are you . . . I mean you have such a pretty voice. Are you as pretty as your voice sounds?”

“Thomas, did you read my ad? Did my ad say ‘prettiness’ is in the eye of the beholder? Or did it say ‘beauty’?”

“It said ‘beauty’.”

“Great, so what’s your street number?”

“But wait,” Thomas says. “I don’t mean to sound cynical . . . it’s just that I’ve been disappointed a few times in the past . . . recently . . . “

“Thomas, listen to me,” Jane says. “You won’t have any problem with my looks.”

The following seven minutes are an eager wait for Thomas. He showers a second time. He brushes his teeth a third time. He paces in the lab in his royal blue robe, wishing there was some way to block out the nonstop sound of children next door, and vice versa: the children ought to be protected from what is about to take place in here. What is about to take place in here is something Thomas can barely contemplate without feeling faint. He has such a junior high school-style boner it is painful to walk. He limps to the TV and turns it up for more violin and harp. The picture, however, will not do; he limps to the closet, gets his coat, comes back into the room and throws it over the screen so he doesn’t have to watch Marin making speeches from atop an acacia tree. He limps to the kitchenette and woofs down a granola bar—instant strength. He limps to the bathroom but is in such a state he cannot lose his hard-on even as he is pissing.

“Some dangers evolve from within the habitat. Some develop through a larger change in the environment around them . . .”

Thomas slumps in the couch, scarcely able to think, content merely to take deep, even breaths, until at last there is a graceful double-knock.

“Jane,” he moans, conveying himself heavily from the couch and throwing the door wide open. His bowels clutch; he tries to keep from shrieking as he feels his hard-on slide.

“Nice room,” she says, brushing past him. Then pointing with her coat to his coat on the TV: “Shall I chuck it over yours?”

Thomas feels himself reddening with horror. Each second it sinks deeper into his consciousness that this Jane is someone he does not want to be naked in a royal blue robe before. She is someone he does not want to have naked feet before. And the thought of her naked—“I do light B and D work”—makes Thomas chilly to his bones.

Thomas panics. Unburdened of his ponderous erection—poof! like that—he is light as a crazed baby chimp, all weightless legs and arms scampering around the room. He trips to the window and peeks out between the blinds.

“Jane!” he says. “The detectives are after me. You’ll have to go.”

He peeks out the fire escape again, then dives to the floor. “I’ve just seen then—three detectives in my environment. They’ve followed me here, trying to make me feel extinct.”

Jane regards Thomas upon the floor with the sympathetic eye. “Oh, sweetheart, is your divorce making your paranoid?” she asks.

“That’s right—with good reason!” Thomas says. “My wife has got these detectives hounding me day and night, preventing me from experiencing psychic renewal with anything that they see me with.”

“So what’s the diff? I’m already here,” Jane says. She squats on the couch and begins removing a brown vinyl boot that comes up to her knee.

“Did you hear the TV?” Thomas yells. “Forty species of mammals have already disappeared in our lifetime. Three hundred more are vanishing as we speak!”

The lab phone rings. It is Olive. “Or try this out for size,” she says. “I had this other client whose husband was an A-plus lover, an A-plus provider, but an A-plus asshole when it came to divorcing. Because really—“

“Everyone, out of my habitat!” Thomas shouts, pulling the phone out and hurling it against the wall.

For a moment there is only the sound of the pillow fight next door halting in dead silence.

Jane blinks down at the crazed chimp at her feet. Leaching from her features, the sympathy is replaced by a look more complex. “Easy, boy,” she says softly, backing off the couch.

Thomas regains strength enough to stand. He casts glances about the room. He clears his throat.

“In two minutes?” he begs. “It’s nothing personal, but I just didn’t entertain—“

“Don’t worry, I’m going,” Jane says, backing up inch by inch as her eyes dart toward the door.

“Forgive me, but—“

“You sick—“

“Hey, come on. I’m obviously not going to not pay you, for God’s sake,” Thomas says. “I mean, fifty dollars is only right, the cab fare alone . . .”

“Better make it more than fifty,” Jane ventures.

Thomas goes to the closet and takes out his wallet and comes back and puts a fifty in her hand. For the first time he looks at her without the gaze of a crazed chimp. They stare back and forth into each other’s eyes—an enterprise more intimate, really, than the one they had contracted for.

Jane blinks. She pockets the fifty. Then, gauging the distance between herself and the door, makes good her getaway.

“Sorry we didn’t get to heal anything,” Thomas calls after her as she vanishes.

Thomas goes to the TV and turns it off. He goes to the windows and opens the blinds. He looks about the room in sunlight. The audition, the whole morning, has cost him a hundred dollars, but that is not what makes Thomas feel worst. What makes him feel worst is the fact that she was beautiful—truly she was beautiful, priceless, ideal—that and the name Jane on the endangered-species flyer, doodled over and redoodled over, still sitting on the pillow of this strangely dimpled couch.