Category: memoir

Sexwork & Stripping. On & off stage, under the lights or in the dark; back in the day, until today. For me, it would never as good as the first time.

I sniffed my mother’s armpit. Last March, after the fall that fractured her L1 vertebrae…

Fifteen years ago I was on the phone when he said, “Hold on, I think the boiler just exploded,” and put the phone down. After a few moments, “I gotta go. There’s body parts and plane parts all over. I gotta go.” He worked at the Marriott Hotel opposite the World Trade Center and it was early and the story hadn’t hit the news yet.

Previously published: BUST Magazine Spring/Summer 1996 (as Scarlett Fever) He pushes me inside a yellow…

Previously published: Johns, Marks, Tricks & Chickenhawks (Soft Skull Press, 2013); Best American Erotica, 1995 (Touchstone Book…

Originally published as “Lele” in Hos, Hookers, Callgirls and Rentboys: Professionals Writing on Life, Love,…

I have the week off. I don’t know why I said that. I have no idea. A day? A week? I don’t know. But it sounds like something regular people say. Like that. But, really, Myron’s mad cause I’m making money for someone else, and I think I’m going high-class but somehow I’ve fucked this up before I even get a chance to fuck it up.

“It’s two blocks, you could walk faster than…”
“I could. But I don’t hafta. I have cash, see? So, I don’t hafta walk. I’m paying, so just drive….”
“Sonofabitch,” I mumble under my breath. I’m a loud mumbler.

I’ve been gone. I’m sorry. I’d tell you where I’ve been, if I knew. I’d like nothing more than to know where I’ve been and what I’ve done. I’d like to pull my brain out through my ear, pop it in the VCR, sit on the couch with you, a vodka and a bowl of popcorn and see what happened; see the things my brain is busy blocking out. Or maybe it’s the vodka that blocks it all out. There is no way of knowing.

It’s 3AM and the Lollipop is empty, except for a few regulars. Everyone’s feeling good and it’s like this morning never happened. Piper’s chain smoking Newports and laughing about something Chief’s saying; Myron’s in the back room with a new dancer, and me and Max are trading insults. It’s what passes for flirting between us and I’m so into this game, I don’t notice the Big Man’s come in until I hear the tap tap tapping of his diamond pinkie ring on the bar.

Maxie slides onto the stool next to me and looks at my empty glass. I’d swallowed it in one gulp. “Here, kid. Ya look worse’n usual. You could use another.” He pushes the bottle towards me. I can always use another, I think. “Now, spill it,” he says.

Still staring at my reflection, I gingerly press my fingertips against the burns on my chest. And just like that, that smell is back; the sulfur of match-heads, the slightly sweet hint of tobacco, burnt hair and flesh.

The thing about moods is they’re so mercurial, at least mine are.  The other day I was…

I walked through the new Washington Square Park, expecting to be disappointed, or at least…

Daddy was a con man. Not a thief, not a Catch Me if You Can…

How is it so easy to write about my mother, and so hard to write…

I don’t know about little boys, hell, it becomes more and more apparent each day…

I open my eyes to a greasy tin ceiling & the smell of oil and gasoline.I’m…