Antonia Crane - Spent: A Memoir

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Copyright 2014 by Antonia Crane

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, including but not limited to print, audio, and electronic. For more information, address:
A Barnacle Book | Rare Bird Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 453 South Spring Street, Suite 531, Los Angeles, CA 90013.

Portions of this book have been previously published in Black Clock , Diverse Voices Quarterly , Frequencies , Longreads , The Moment: Six-Word Memoirs , The Rumpus , Rumpus Women , Slake: Los Angeles , The Weeklings , The Whistling Fire , and Word Riot.

Set in Goudy Old Style
Distributed in the U.S. by Publishers Group West

Publishers Cataloging-in-Publication data

Crane, Antonia.
Spent : a memoir / by Antonia Crane.
p.cm.
ISBN 978-1940207339

1. Crane, Antonia. 2. StripteasersUnited StatesBiography. 3. Mothers and daughters. I. Title.

PN1949.S7 C73 2013
792.7/028/092 dc23

for Marilyn Rose DeWitt, my mother,
in honor of her strength and beauty

Never underestimate the fury of a small town girl.

Romy Suskin

The events in this book happened and the people exist. However, most names and identifying details have been changed to disguise and protect the individuals involved. Some identifying details have not been changed because the persons identity may be relevant to the story. Businesses, specific locations and other identifying details have been altered to protect everyone involved and certain events may be presented outside of their chronology. Conversations have been excerpted from memory and events have been reconstructed in order to provide the most accurate account of the events or relationships that I have included. Some dialogue is verbatim. I believe memory is strange territory in which time and trauma can cloud accuracy. The events that occurred are constructed from my recollection. My hope is to honor the people and events in this book to the best of my ability while telling my deepest, most accurate emotional truth.

Part 1

How sexy she is.

I t was Christmas night, and Kara and I had a client at The Four Seasons in Beverly Hillsthe type of place Britney Spears and Paris Hilton would smear foie gras on rice crackers and get shitfaced on Cristal, only they werent there. We were. A mirrored elevator dumped us off on the fourth floor, where we were getting paid to meet a pale guy with silver hair and get him off. Kara knocked on the door after checking my teeth for lipstick stains. A tall man with bloodshot eyes ushered us into the suite. His skin hung on him like meat before its tossed down the garbage disposal. Youre so amazing. Such beautiful souls, he said. Theres so much love. So much love, he said. He reached for us with forearms covered in red splotchy patches. Whats wrong with him? Eczema? I thought, and noticed the fruit bowl piled high with figs and pears. I hadnt eaten. I hadnt even brushed my teeth. I spit out my sugar-free gum, ripped open a fig and bit into the goo.

I hugged him but it was an executive embrace. We barely touched. He said he was an attorney. Like Dad , I thought, wriggling out of the air hug to face him. He was a tower of white flesh, covered in tiny scabs. Were your Christmas presents, I said.

Before Mom died, her tanned skin stretched away from her bones after all the chemo and radiation. Her strong solid arms shrunk. Her legs, shapely from years of horseback riding, withered away. I wanted to hug her, but it hurt her too much. Shed been in bed for weeks and winced when I reached for her. I could lie beside her, but only if I didnt move. She had a feeding tube in her stomach through a hole in her side. Around the hole were red sores and chafed skin. Sometimes the hole got infected. When that happened, we took trips to the hospital for intravenous antibiotics. The feeding tube was like an alien vacuum cleaner attachment: a thick rubber tube and a sac half-filled with thick, orange, liquid vitamin-syrup that flowed into her. When that sac was almost empty, it beeped like a garbage truck backing up. After the feeding tube, she never ate solids again.

When she was asleep her eyelashes fluttered. Thats how I knew she was alive.

When her cancer returned after a brief remission, I started stripping again. I never thought Id go back, but I always did. This was the fifth time. Girls I knew binged on cupcakes and cocaine when holes were punched through their hearts as the people they loved died; others went shopping. I walked into strip clubs, casinos, and hotels, and offered my body to strangers for money. Not my whole body, just certain parts. It was a relief to be touched by cashjust a few hundred bucks could soothe me. Maybe Id make my rent. Maybe Id get killed. What was important was the feel of it.

I was pushing forty and was short on my rent with no prospects. My friend Kara contacted me on Facebook after Pleasures, the strip club where Id been working, shut down. I remembered her from a party in San Francisco, years ago. She carried a guitar around a room lit up by twinkling red pepper lights strung up the wall and over bookshelves.

As a sex worker, Id met hundreds of women over the years, and although I dont remember their names, I remember certain songs they always danced to and the smell of cheap peach lotion on their skin. I remember drops of sweat on their spine as they stepped offstage and the way they hastily tied the bow on a pink lacy bra they had worn to death. I remember the way their ribcage moved as they gyrated on laps, a mole on her chin, freckles on her thighs. At that party, I remembered Karas vacant blue eyes and her soft voice answering yeah to any question I asked. I didnt know if she was a sex worker back then, but her roommate was. Kara smoked nervously and had a chip on her right tooth, but grinned wide anyway. So when I met her at her loft downtown, she chain smoked while I stared at the chip on her right tooth and wondered why she wanted to help me. Her proud smile reminded me of Mom. I talked about my money worries.

I can help you, she said. She suggested we put up an add on an escort site for massage. Im no massage therapist, I said. She promised to show me the happy ending ropes. I figured no matter how much porn guys consumed, touch was something computer screens hadnt yet replaced. So, we took cheesy pictures on her phone and uploaded them onto the site.

She texted her regular client Dennis and set up a meeting. He was first in a long line of clients in my hand job life with Karaour shoulders touched in elevators after she chucked her cigarette into the grass. I smelled smoke on her fingers and chewed my gum fast in tense moments while walking through empty lobbies and hallways looking at numbers, counting in whispers.

My own body went through the motions of sex work while my moms body shriveled from bile duct cancer.

In those feeding tube days, I dreamed of Moms voice on the answering machine, saying, Would you just look at this spaghetti squash? Big as pumpkins and so early! She spoke until my answering machine cut her off and I jerked awake.

In the beige penthouse suite, I got undressed except for my shoes, bra, and fishnets. Kara liked to be naked. Dennis wrapped his long scaly arms around us. Such sweet energy, he said. Grisly black hair covered his chest and sprouted from his ears. We walked over to the California King mattress where he lay on his back, a beached whale in soft sand with his belly up. The white sheets were expensive. Are you married? Kara asked. She had her methods with married men. She wanted to teach them to bring their wives to a massive orgasm. It was stuff she learned in a sex cult in Northern California. She crammed a rose quartz crystal in his left palm.