I leaned in. How about something a little more private? We could go to the back …

He stared at me, his voice plain and clear. Why would I have ground beef, he said, when I can get rib eye at home?

I don’t know, I said. I tried to stay calm, though my stomach lurched. Maybe because you’re hungry right now?

He let out a laugh. Sorry, he said. I had a snack before I got here. He made the gesture of jerking off, one quick wrenching motion. I noticed his gold wedding band. Better value.

Of course. Disgust and embarrassment bubbled inside me. I turned away for a moment, not wanting him to see me shake. Then I stood up straight and forced a smile.

Well, I said, have fun.

Later I’d see Arabella dancing on his lap, her ponytail grazing the floor. He had that same dead look in his eyes. He kept his stupid blazer on. I guess he must’ve gotten hungry.

I have a memory of my mother, aimlessly driving, drumming her hands on the steering wheel. She wears her hair in a bun held in place by a pencil. She’s the only person I’ve ever met who does this. She’s picked me up late from school once again. At this point she’s stopped giving excuses for why. Now she’s singing along to the song on the radio. The first time ever I kissed your mouth …

I’m shocked to discover she knows about love. I must be nine years old. At this point my father has been dead (or “gone away,” as we said) for two years. Up until now I’d assumed that love was something set aside for me, a muggy world of affect from which she, as my mother, was barred. It was nothing personal. She belonged to a world of grown-up things like cars and work, while I belonged to a secret underworld of romance and desire. Now I’m forced to reconsider her, this prettyish woman in sweatpants, her grave-colored hair. Wisps of it frame her thin face. She’s lost so much weight. She catches me staring and smiles.

I pick through my handful and give him my blues. Dino gives me his reds. When we kiss, our tongues turn purple.

This is a memory I cherish. I carry it with me like a pocketknife. I carry it with me like a postcard that I need to send but I don’t have any stamps.

That was how I found myself sitting opposite Emeline in a greasy red booth, both of us shivering under the diner’s fluorescent lights. As with most 24/7 establishments, the Silvercrest was home to a rotating cast of chatty winos, junkies in sandals, and insomniacs pondering their fifth cup of joe. A heroic waitress zinged between all of us, her sleepy smile like a lighthouse beam. She didn’t need a notepad, she remembered everything. Her name tag said LORI. She reminded me of Cookie, in that nothing could faze her. When she found someone nodding off in the unisex bathroom, she nudged him awake and said gently, Not here, honey. She escorted the man out the door, then delivered two slices of lemon meringue pie to a juiced-up couple in the corner. I watched them feed each other bites of pie, giggling like chosen fools. They poured mini bottles of whiskey into their coffee mugs, their legs tangled together under the table.

[...]

How different was she, really, from us girls at the club? She was the late-late shepherd of broken hearts, enabler of appetites, a cushy female presence to distract us from decay. If she was good at her job, she remembered her regulars’ names. She didn’t get naked, but we watched her ass just as hungrily, tracking her movement from table to table. Come to me, we thought, increasingly desperate. It’s my turn now. See me. Come back. It was her job to feed us, an angel in stretch pants. The difference was that the strip club was dark and the diner was bright, alarmingly so. At last, she approached me and Emeline.

When we kissed, it was anticlimactic. We had been sharing a bed for almost two weeks; all signs pointed to sex. I let my loneliness propel me. She was feeling deep feelings and I didn’t want to be left out. I wanted her halo to warm me, her belly to bounce off. So I lifted my shirt. Her body was so soft and warm it almost felt like a trap. Was this why men went crazy? For a moment I could understand their lunacy. I too would forget all my manners when confronted with something so inconceivably plush. I had a taste and now I wanted more; a sample would not fill me up. I wanted all of her body, all of her in me, like those collapsible tents that you carry in bags or those specialty dishes of meat filled with meat. I wanted to eat my own tail, form an infinite loop, just so that she could drink from me. She smelled like apricots, a smell I’d forgotten. Apricots, I thought. Apricots! Her dark hair made the pillows look damp. Her mouth was like a Slurpee: endless, red, and wet.

Later, as she slept, I got out of bed to let the dogs out. I sat on the doorstep and watched them scuttle about, pissing single-file and digging up the flower beds. What a beautiful term, flower beds. I felt peaceful and sore. It seemed to me then, in my floaty postcoital daze, that the number one evil in the world was loneliness. It drove people to do terrible things. It was the reason strip clubs existed, to abate male longing and its grim consequences. How lucky for men! To know that every city in America had a long list of places, some seedy, some luxe, some playing hip-hop and some playing jazz, where any man could go to feel less alone. Yes, he had to pay to enter. But of course—we were feeding him.

In truth, I liked him for using me. I liked him for being a tool. The cashier at his local bodega knew him better than I did. I couldn’t explain why, but his cruelty felt cozy. It felt good in the way of pressing down on a bruise, morbid curiosity meets bored masochism. My friends were operating under the assumption that I deserved better, whereas Jax and I were agreed on the topic of my disgrace. He fucked me when he was lonely or depressed and didn’t try to hide it. We didn’t waste time with movies or sushi. He used me like a rental car. I always knew how the night would end. He would come in squiggles on my chest, then let me shower first—how gallant. It was a strangely peaceful pact and I was determined to keep up my end of the deal by never wanting more.

I took a deep breath; I could see my car at the end of the block. Emeline, I said, but I couldn’t finish the sentence. I studied her face, hunting for clues, but even at this late hour she was bright and blank. She looked worried for me, as if I were the loony one. I didn’t think she could be such a good actress; then again, I barely knew her. Gifting me the wig, stealing my perfume … What did she want from me? I leaned against a parking meter, hugging myself. San Francisco was sinking, I could feel it; it was a city of tricksters and frauds, dead ends and trapdoors, people who weren’t who they said they were. The Victorians built on landfill were sliding into the sea, the buses all read NOT IN SERVICE. Emeline watched me, and I could see, in a small but real way, that she was afraid of me. Not because she thought I’d hurt her, but because she didn’t understand what was happening. She’d never seen somebody snap.

The libidinal underworld to which I belonged was as foreign to Charlie as gay bars or food banks. Still, he was my first foray into what you’d call sex work. He would claim he gave me money as a favor, but at the end of the day, he gave me money for sex. People saw us in restaurants and thought he was my father. We had sex and then he paid me, or sometimes he paid me and then we had sex. It was like waitressing but supercharged. And sometimes it was fun. Sometimes I felt like I was hacking the system, using my just-OK body to plunder the rich and help the meek to inherit. I made the mangy dreams of mild men come true. I wrote off manicures as business expenses, I sometimes grossed more than Charlie’s hourly wage. I got paid to listen, to be told I was pretty, to wear sparkly things and dance to songs that I loved. Sometimes all of this really was true and my life was a bildungsroman.

Ophelia understood what I needed. I hated talking about the bad days, especially with people not in our world. I didn’t want to field their pity, their gentle suggestion that I “phase out of this lifestyle” or however they’d word it. Show me a lifestyle that feels good all the time, I wanted to shout. Prove to me that your lifestyle is insured against longing. Show me a pie chart, a breakdown of breakdowns, the data on anguish. Maybe then I’d consider going back to school. Maybe then I’d throw my Pleasers away (off a bridge, maybe?) and become a nurse or accountant, but only if someone could promise I’d never feel dirty. Until then, I had TV and blankets and rosemary oil to help with the bad days. I had good days when I felt divine and men cried in my arms. I had a duffel bag of singles hidden under the bed, an amount I couldn’t fathom. For however I felt about Charlie and the nature of our relationship, it was too late now. I was in it. Baby was born.