thwap's hooker stories ...

When I was a young man of thirty I worked at a place in a neighbourhood where street prostitutes were known to conduct their trade. (The tavern at the corner was supposedly a place where you could get a hooker at any time of the day or night. Irony of ironies, it is now a women's shelter.)

One Saturday morning, when I went to open the place there was a tall, blonde woman in short shorts who looked about 50 standing by the front door. In the same way that I was cuter in my twenties than I am now, I'm sure she must have been quite striking when she was younger. Now she looked like a good-looking, leggy 50 year-old.

"Are you waiting to go inside?" I asked nervously.

"What's that gorgeous?" she asked.

I blushed and asked if she was waiting for the place to open.

"No. No. I'm just waiting for someone."

Even though I knew what was going on, I still felt a wee bit of a thrill at having been called "gorgeous." Then, an 1970's-style sedan slowed down in front of the building, and a fat, bald, middle-aged guy looked over at us. She sauntered over to the driver's window:

"How's it going gorgeous?" she said.

A few seconds later, she got in his car and they drove away.

And so it ended.

Another afternoon and I was walking down King Street. About a block east of Victoria (around the corner from Tabby's Variety) I heard a man's voice (a middle-aged man, with experience and authority behind it) exclaiming: "Come on honey!!!"

I looked around and saw a car parked beside the sidewalk. The man was in the driver's seat, but it didn't look like he was in control of the situation. He would have been a bigger than average fellow. (He was seated, so it was hard to say.) Like everyone in my post so far, he might have cut a dashing figure in his youth. Now he looked like an ageing 1950's greaser type. Round around the middle.

His "honey" was a tiny, sour-faced little woman in her 30's who sat beside him pouting with her arms folded in front of her in defiance. I could hear her little voice but I couldn't tell what she said. Whatever it was, it made him more frustrated.

"I don't want to go to a goddamned motel!" he shouted.

She muttered something again in her squeaky voice.

"Aww, come on Baby!!!" he wailed. He was definitely flustered. She wasn't going anywhere.

It appeared he'd picked her up hoping for a quick hand or blow-job in his car but she was insisting that they go to a motel where he could get the full treatment and, subsequently, pay the full price. In the end, he gave up protesting and they drove away.

I still can't get over how this tiny woman was so determined to have her way, and dictate terms to this much larger man. How he didn't even try to push her out of his car or anything. I'm not trying to argue that maybe women rule the word and that 'john's" are helpless hostages to the power of the pussy. Just that in that situation, it seemed like she was in charge. Gord only knows what happened later.

It was a hot, HOT, humid summer day. I was walking south on Wentworth Street, near Cannon. A young woman was waving enthusiastically at me from the corner. I actually thought she was a young woman I'd worked with a year or two earlier. (Who I wasn't attracted to.) (I'm around 40 in this story.) She beckoned me over. It's not everyday that a past acquaintance seems to want you to cross the street and talk to her, so I didn't really know how to respond. I crossed the street. As I got closer I realized it wasn't who I thought it was, but, whatever. She smiled and said:

"How'd you like to come over to my place for a blow-job and a cold beer?"

To be honest, it was so fucking hot that I was actually tempted by the cold beer. Getting a blow-job on top of that would have probably been nice. But paying for a blow-job from a stranger, ... nah. I stammered, "Sorry, no. I thought you were someone else." and extricated myself from the situation. At least she stayed smiling and bid me a friendly farewell.

That was the second time I'd been propositioned. The first time is described here.

So, there was this guy across the street from me when I was a kid. A widower in his 60's or 70'. Italian guy with the "wife-beater" under-shirt on. He was friendly enough. Quiet guy. I was inside, alone with him for some reason when I was 8 or 10. He didn't seem creepy at the time and in retrospect I'm still pretty sure he wasn't. He'd had a glass of whiskey on his table and either I asked to try it, or he asked me. I'm not sure. Regardless, I took a sip and said I didn't like it, and he didn't seem to surprised by that.

By the time I was a teenager, (mid to late 1980's) he started to have escorts over to his house. Pretty damned often. To the point where one time, when I walked to the corner and saw this vision: I'm 17 years old and this beautiful, absolutely gorgeous blond, 18? 19? Whatever the "legal" age was;, ... dressed up like an angel/stripper for an Aerosmith video comes walking toward me with the most lovely smile. I knew where she was going. His place. (I also didn't think that she had much going on upstairs, to have travelled across town like that on the bus. I knew she'd taken the bus because I saw it pulling away behind her.)

Something like this but without the wings or the halo.

Anyways, 17-year old me smiled nervously back at her and hoped my knees wouldn't give out on me while I was crossing the street.

As I said, this guy lived right across the street from me. I could watch from my second-storey bedroom window as they arrived at his house. One time I was struck by how one young woman was accompanied by her boyfriend. They were holding hands and they kissed before she "went to work" and he left.

I'm pretty sure the last time he had an escort over was the night the young woman (dressed in jeans and some kind of sports jersey) got into a loud drunken tirade in front of his house. It was probably around midnight and the whole street could hear her. Men were shit. Men were assholes. The world was shit.

He kept trying, nervously, embarrassed, quietly, to get her to calm down and come inside.

She yelled at him with disgust that he was as bad as all the rest of the men. He was just an asshole too. An exploitative piece-of-shit.

He never got mad. He didn't yell back at her. I can't remember if he got her inside to wait for the cab, or if he went in by himself to call. I remember it was quiet for about ten minutes or so before it came and she got in and left. So either she'd waited inside for it or she sat quietly on his steps.

And I think that was the last time.  It might have even caused him to move away a year later. I'm not sure.

So, I Have This "Friend" ...

I was out walking my dog a couple of weeks ago when i saw someone I recognized from my home town.  ...

...

Sorry. He just called.

...

Anyway, i stopped and he didn't recognize me. Then he did. Then I did. I remembered I didn't really like this guy. He wasn't a bad guy. I just remembered that he irritated me.

He used to go to my high school. A couple of grades below me. I think his sister was in my grade. then we saw each other again at the gym. After a few years of that, he got fairly huge. (Though he's not tall ... 5'7 or 5'8.) But before I left Hamilton he'd let himself go. I remember seeing him looking pretty portly.

So, we talk. He's moved to Toronto. Looking for work. We should get together. We'll see each other around.

We bump into each other again and we have to exchange numbers. (Alternative: I could have refused.)

See, I don't need yet another person i have to walk past in awkward tension.

So, I get a call to come over. Smoke some weed. What the hell. I do. I have weed at home, but I'll be social.

The guy's taste in television is reality tv about yuppies buying houses; teenagers in trouble being "scared straight" by visits to the prison; drug fiends having interventions; and sports.

I've watched more NFL and NHL in the last couple of weeks than I have in the last 5 years.

It comes out: He smokes a lot of pot because he's depressed. He destroyed his hips through work and through (somehow) bodybuilding. He's 100 pounds overweight. He's had both his hips replaced. He's trying to pick up work waiting tables. He has no other job experience. He doesn't know anybody else in Toronto. He's 47, balding, poor and decrepit.

But hey! I go to the gym! We'll go the gym together!

Sure. Why not?

So, he hoarks loogies on the sidewalk all the time. He makes comments about young women's bodies for my consumption that it's entirely possible they can hear. He was staring at some young woman at the gym. (later, he reflected to me on how buff she was and how she could probably beat him up)

When we do dumbbell curls, he says "Curls for the girls!"

I told him not to stare at women on the street. He says: "What am I supposed to stare at? Guys?"

One time; we were watching television, and somehow I started talking about right-wing Margaret Thatcher fans. He mentioned a boss he had who was from Britain. How the guy said all sorts of nasty stuff about "Pakis" and "Niggers" and he (remembering how he'd been called a "Diego" and a "Wop") told him to lay-off that kind of talk around him.

(Side note: This racist British boss had a Chinese wife and had had kids with her! He should be sent to talk to the Anglo-Saxon racists in British Columbia!!!)

So, after every session at the gym, ... Can I come over? Come on! Nah! Come on!

So, I've done it a couple times. A few times. The weed and the booze help to make it semi-interesting for me. I learned a little bit about the economics of pro-wrestling for instance. While high.

He often asks me questions he's asked twice before. He's says things he's said twice before.

Out of the blue one night, he asks me to move in with him. I blurted out: "Fuck off!"

I've got my own bathroom to shit and fart in. I don't need to share the joy.

I told him I couldn't come over after our workout because I had a date. He felt bad. After the workout he asks: "You sure you don't want to come over?" As if I'd cancel a date to smoke weed with this guy from my home town.

People; ... I think this guy is suicidally lonely and depressed. Someone (a woman I know) told me to tell him the truth and that he's not my problem.

But I'm soft-hearted and soft-headed.

But I'm also depressed myself and I'm in no mood to make anyone a "project" to improve them.

What should I do?

What's Their Story I Wonder?

Last summer I got on the Bloor Line at High Park Station with my bike. As the doors opened a cute red-head, in her early twenties, looked at me with what appeared to be a look of longing. Being 48 and grey (but hey, it's possible my bicycle hid my gut) I figured at least one of us misunderstands something. I'm not really interested in a young lady in her twenties anyway. People in their twenties are cool and all, but it's an entirely different culture for me now. There'd be a lot of re-inventing the wheel. Besides; imagine meeting your lover's parents and they're your age!

So I ignored her and looked for a place to sit.

Because of issues of floor space for my bike, I sat near her and her boyfriend (?) at the back of the subway car. She was dressed in black, with a hat and other art-school girl accessories. Pale, powdered skin, bright red lipstick. He was shorter than me, with glasses and a wiry little beard. He was wearing a black derby and a black t-shirt with some death metal band's imagery on it. His arms were thin and wiry like his beard.

She stared straight ahead while he read intently from his paperback. They ignored each other almost all the way to Yonge Station. I wondered if she hated him, or he hated her, or if they both hated each other, who did it first? Or, maybe, again, I'd just imagined that look she gave me. That they're both totally cool just sharing each other's silent company.

Almost at Yonge, he mumbled something to her. She said "Hmmm?" He mumbled (muttered?) something again and she answered "Yeah."

They got out before me as I waited with my bike for everyone else to exit the train. I got on the escalator to the northbound platform and stood on the right-hand side. On the stairs to my right, a nice-looking, clean cut, shortish young man gave a goofy grin to someone in front of me on the escalator. Then I saw him turn his head, still smiling, as he watched that person continue riding past on the escalator.

You guessed it. It was her. Looking down on him like a beautiful princess passing her secret beloved in a passageway.

As I watched her and her little boyfriend (?) heading towards the Yonge platform, I wondered what their story was. Does he ignore her and she can't stand him? Does she constantly flirt and he can't stand her? Does she purposely get guys' juices going and then they both go home and celebrate by fucking like weasels? Are they just a couple of weirdos in their own worlds, doing their own things? 

Ugh! Ewwwww! I Saw Ezra Levant Today. Ugh! Ewwww!

It was at Bathurst Street, near St. Clair. He was sitting at a table outside a coffee shop talking with some other guy. Bigger than I thought he'd be. Fatter too. He was emphasizing some point about something that was obviously important to him at the moment.

In all honesty, I felt worse than the time I discovered that I'd been inadvertently talking to Christie Belchforth. Being in the presence of this vile racist, shameless liar, torture apologist, boorish creep, made me want to have a shower. I walked a couple of paces away though, and then turned back out of morbid curiosity. I wanted to determine if that was him and then force myself to get a clear picture of the sort of failure the human species is capable of producing.

Two people thought I was staring at them. I apologized. I just said: "That's Ezra Levant." They said "Who?" I said "He's a horrible person. He's written all sorts of vile, racist stuff." They looked in his direction and then back to me with disinterest. (God bless 'em!) I apologized again for having disturbed them and then went on my way.

Got on the eastbound streetcar at St. Clair West Station. Older white dude, 70-something, got on the side doors. A Remembrance Day poppy on each lapel of his sports jacket. He spoke out in a loud, grating voice:

"Hello!"

A black woman (in her 50's I'd guess) at the front laughed a little. He carried on:

"Good day driver! How are you?"

"Fine. Fine."

The old guy took his seat. The black woman spoke to him with a Caribbean accent:

"And how are you? How is your wife?"

"Wife? Wife? I don't ..."

The woman realized she'd mistaken him for someone else and tried to make this clear to the guy. But he was off to the races.

"No Dear. I'm HAPPILY un-married!"

"I see." said the woman, trying to put her mistake behind her.

"No. All of my relationships fizzled out."

"Yes. Yes."

"And now I'm the most eligible bachelor in Toronto!"

"Ha-ha!"

"And how are you, Sweetie?"

"I'm fine. I thought you were someone ..."

"That's what it's like after a few sips of Captain Morgan's rum. S-W-E-E-E-T!"

"Well, I don't ..."

"Yes! Sweet! But I'd guess you're not a Captain Morgan's drinker! You're more an Appleby's drinker."

I assumed this was some Jamaican brand of rum. I couldn't bear to sit and listen to this pompous ass all the way to Yonge Street, so I got off at the next stop. I got on the next streetcar and when we passed the next stop I saw that the woman was standing there on the platform. For some reason, she didn't get on our streetcar. I didn't understand this. She'd gotten off the previous streetcar, was still standing at the stop when the next one arrived and only stayed standing on the platform.

At St. Clair Station, we pulled up behind my original streetcar and the driver was getting some sand for his sandbox. I asked if things had escalated. He said that the woman got off at the next stop (which I knew) and that she'd handled it all fairly well. She told him she wasn't from Jamaica. The old guy settled down after that.

I went down to the subway and the old guy was walking around in front of the newstand, following a lone pigeon. He had his arms outstretched, and was saying "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." over and over as he harassed the bird.