Jamie Callan - Talk About Sex: An Orientation

All I'm going to do is talk. That's right-you're going to pay me to sit here and talk to you. Let me explain-I come to your hotel room, I always wear something nice, maybe a jacket and matching skirt, or a simple dress, pearls, always stockings, always heels, always tasteful. I sit on your bed, cross my legs, smile, and then I talk about sex. You're not allowed to touch me. That would be breaking the rules. I talk for exactly forty-five minutes. I always finish on time. I charge three hundred and fifty dollars. I accept all major credit cards and I am completely discreet. If, for example, I bump into you on 58th Street, and you are going into the Paris Cinema, I will not acknowledge you and I will not talk to you. That would be breaking the rules. Yes. The rules.

There are seventeen rules altogether.

The most important one is that you do not touch me. I know I already said that, but it's worth repeating, don't you think? The second most important one is that you do not touch yourself. And the third most important rule is that you appear and remain completely dressed. You don't have to wear a suit or tie, but a nice sports coat and a pair of khakis or well-pressed chinos are appreciated. You may not eat during the session. This isn't actually on the list of rules, but it's common sense. Obviously it's hard to talk about sex when a man is chomping on a pastrami sandwich. And there's the smell to consider as well. It gets distracting. So no eating. However, you may drink. Cola, orange juice, bottled water, and beer or wine-in moderation-are all acceptable. No hard alcohol. It dulls the senses, and you just won't get your money's worth-not that I care, but you might. I provide none of these refreshments. It's up to you to keep them in the fridge, and if your hotel doesn't supply you with a fridge Actually, if you're not staying in the kind of hotel that supplies you with a completely stocked fridge, then I probably won't be visiting you.

I will not accept any beverages, so please don't offer me any. However, if my throat becomes dry after talking for a time and I need a glass of water, I will get up and fetch it myself. You don't need to bother yourself; I will take care of getting it and work the interruption seamlessly into my conversation. You will not even notice a change in tone, so don't imagine that you can get an extra five minutes at the end for lost time. There will be no lost time.

Now, the "menu," as I call it, is extensive, updated weekly, and includes not only the classic favorites such as the man who gets caught in a rainstorm and must seek shelter at the home of three nubile teenaged girls who have been abandoned by their parents and are living in a woodshed on the side of a deserted highway in Minnesota but also five or six daily specials. For instance, on Fridays I might offer Catholic schoolgirls in plaid jumpers and knee socks who forgot to put on their underpants that day, playing hopscotch on the sidewalk in front of your enormous split-level house in Mamaroneck, eating pork chops on a Friday, when Father O'Leary comes along and must find a way to teach them a lesson and punish them. This one takes place in 1967 and it's a favorite with fifty-three-year-old Jewish men from Westchester County.

Of course the list is computerized, alphabetized, and on the Internet. I do have a website, and you can access me at www.hoteltalk.org. This does not mean I will respond to inquiries, and I seldom answer e-mail. But please feel free to send a message. Just don't expect an answer.

Rule number four. After I leave, you must never pretend you are very preoccupied and get on the phone as I've closed the door, only to jump up, stand by the door, and spy on me while I punch the elevator button for the lobby, and then quickly run out of your hotel room the moment the elevator doors close, race down the stairs, follow me out of the lobby, and then dart and dodge through traffic, almost getting run over, trailing close behind me until I get in a cab, and then grab a cab yourself and tell the driver to follow my cab, giving your driver a hundred-dollar bill to do so, all the while trying to restrain the enormous erection that has been forming in your trousers as you descend the streets, 51st, 50th, 49th, 48th, 47th, wondering where the hell I am going to get out, nervous it might be 42nd, relieved in Chelsea, then sweating again through Tribeca and Chinatown, getting stimulated, too, imagining that I live in a loft apartment on Walker and Lisbernard with a poet boyfriend who beats me, and that I am not at all the hardened businesswoman that I appear to be but instead a victim, bringing home my ill-gotten gains and handing them over to a drunken poet named Raoul who hasn't written a decent line of verse in the last twenty-five years and hasn't shaved since Friday. Whatever you do, do not get out of the cab and follow me up the five flights of stairs and stand in the doorway, watching as he grabs at the cash still hot from your own hands, presented to me only minutes before, having nestled in your pocket for an entire afternoon. And do not feel tenderness for me when Raoul screams at me that I am a whore, a bitch, and knocks me about the filthy kitchen, throwing pots and pans, as he continues to get drunker and rail against the New York literary scene, harping on the difference between the experimental poets and the language poets, and how the hell John Ashbery got to be so darn famous, when he suddenly lifts up my skirt, kisses my thighs, begs me for forgiveness as he pulls at my garter belt, brings me closer to him-me standing, while he sits at the kitchen table, wearing only boxers and a T-shirt with tomato sauce stains-rubbing my legs, pushing them apart, poking his fingers inside, deeper and deeper, while he talks about going to Tuscany to live for a year, renting a villa and maybe even having a baby and changing citizenship, while you stand there just outside the open door, and suddenly our eyes meet and you believe in that moment that you can rescue me. Then you watch as I close my eyes, and you are not sure whether I saw you or not, or whether I am thinking about Raoul. About how, despite the fact that he is a dreamer and we will always be stuck together in this godforsaken heat, with him pressing his dirty, unshaven face up against my soft chin, taking me there on the kitchen table, and me moaning as he forces his way in, as I concentrate on the knife on the counter and the beer bottle in the sink, while you stand outside the door, witness to all this, wondering if there are any sublets available in this roach-infested building and how you might leave your wife in Cincinnati for me.

Rule number five. You must never leave your wife for me. I know. This is a difficult one. More difficult than remaining dressed or not touching me. Right now you don't think it will be a problem, but you're wrong. This problem always crops up, primarily because you don't see it as a problem so you don't prepare for it, and then one day you find yourself cleaning out the attic, packing away photo albums, deleting names and addresses on your Rolodex and opening up a mailbox number at the Canal Street Post Office.

You're probably wondering how I got started doing what I do, and you're probably wondering exactly why I do it, and if there's any possibility that I do anything more-perhaps for a bit more money-than simply sit on your bed and talk. The answer is no. I do nothing more than sit on your bed and talk, and I am not going to tell you why I do what I do or if I have any plans to do more. But of course you might not care one iota whether I tell you what I do when I'm not here sitting on your bed. You may be the type who wants to tell me about what you do when I'm not sitting on your bed, you may be the type who wants to sit there for forty-five minutes and tell me all about your fantasies, how you really like the idea of you and two women together and how you like to imagine that I have a sister named Candy, who's still in high school even though she's nineteen and a half because she's been held back two years in a row as a result of an undiagnosed learning disability and a penchant for playing hooky. You may want to tell me how Candy's morals are skewed because she hasn't had much parental guidance and her father abused her, and that at fourteen she fell in love with Mr. Swann, her geometry teacher, and he began to explain an especially difficult proof one afternoon in the back of his eighth-grade classroom, and as it got to be about four o'clock and the room grew dimmer and dimmer, he noticed how Candy's delicate white ankles led up to a shapely calf, which led to a girlish knobby knee with a little flesh-colored Band-Aid pointing upward to Candy's supple thigh, which she crossed and uncrossed, and crossed and uncrossed, pressing her wool plaid skirt, the green and blue and yellow lines crisscrossing over and over again, creating a kind of geometrical pattern that rises and falls according to her breathing and the movement of her hands across her lap, and her hands across her lap, yes, resting right there, on top of her pubis, so soft and furry, you imagine that you-because you are now Mr. Swann, the geometry teacher, don't deny it-cannot help but lean forward and put your hand on top of Candy's and press it down, comforting her, saying, "There, there, now the Pythagorean theorem is not so very hard to grasp." And in that moment, your eyes meet and she leans forward, slowly closing her eyes, almost as if she has fallen asleep-suddenly decided to take a nap in the middle of your classroom, in the middle of the afternoon, because geometry is just so wearisome, and she falls into your arms, kissing you full on the mouth, and you, supporting her slender frame, kiss her back, and back, and back, and then her father walks into the room and says, "What the hell are you doing to my daughter?"