Blue Moon (11 page)

I indicated the names of the authors were known to me, although I had never read anything by them. “You should seek out those two titles, particularly in your line of work. Essential, I would have thought.” He then proceeded to tell me about the struggles that beset both writers in their attempts to write accurately and honestly about the entire life of any man or woman, of how the authorities had attempted to silence them. He proceeded to speak at length about both men, indicating, I now realize, a very sensitive aptitude for literary criticism. We chatted for about an hour, at which time he indicated he had used up my time, and I might leave.

From this encounter—and those that ensued in the following month—I learned a vital truth. Most of my clients wanted to have the act of sexual intercourse completed quickly in order to experience a chaste social intercourse. In such agendas, sex was an impediment to the real purpose of the encounter.

I also discovered several things about myself. Sex was merely a necessary inconvenience in being a prostitute. When I sucked or manipulated a penis—or had one inserted into me—I simply imagined myself somewhere else. My body was performing sexual acts, but my mind was always otherwise occupied. I also realized that my skills as a reader could help fill in the time in all these encounters. I began to ask clients if could tell them a story—or read to them. During a first encounter, most clients looked surprised but hardly ever demurred. So my specialty was soon
established. I was never famous for sex. Among my clients, I became a renowned spinner of tales.

My retinue was wide and varied. For Mr. Justice Smith, who presided over countless probate cases, the subtle sado-masochistic manipulation of the patient Griselda by the Marquis Walter was perfect ware. A sort of busman's holiday. Sometimes, I dipped into the boring autobiography of Casanova in order to entertain those clients who thrilled to exploits they would never venture to undertake. On occasion, beautifully simple tales, such as “The Little Mermaid,” calmed the anxiety ridden, reassuring them about themselves.

A good narrative requires a strong plot line, but so much more resides in the way the teller breathes life into it. Although I did not yet have my own stories to tell, I learned how to frame one, to select the right narrative to match the needs of my client. I was the voice who brought dead authors back to life.

My new profession exacted more time than even I expected. Whenever I left home, I had to be scrupulously groomed. Mother insisted that I always look my part. Sometimes, she would help me with makeup, but I soon learned to deal with this aspect of my toiletry. Endless shopping for clothes, especially undergarments, took up more hours than applying makeup and dressing.

Later, sales clerks—when interviewed—would recall the expensive blouses, slips and skirts I purchased. Maureen, a tiny loquacious sprite from Ireland who sold the expensive frocks (originals) at Eaton's, told
Newsweek:
“She adored black. Very classical. Almost severe taste. Always bought the best.” She added: “
Looked
like a
film star. Austere, full of herself. But that impression vanished as soon as she spoke. Very chummy. Always asked after my children. Remembered me at Christmas.”

My role gave me a great deal of satisfaction. On a full moonlit night, costumed in black with a tiny pillar-box hat and veil, wandering down James Street to meet a client, I became Barbara Stanwyck setting off for an assignation with Fred MacMurray, whom she would inveigle—by means of wily female charms—into becoming a conspirator with her in an insurance scam. Or, on dark rain-splattered Main Street, I was Garbo setting off to rescue her lover from the clutches of the Gestapo.

Self-imposed illusions can provide wide ranges of comforts. Yet, as I wandered into Robinson's to look at skirts or walked over to the main post office nearby to buy stamps, I knew I had segregated myself even further from the common herd. I had become a woman of pleasure. I asked myself: surely my new occupation proclaims itself in the way I carry myself, in the look in my eyes? Always painfully self-conscious, I now interrogated every aspect of my existence. And yet, I seemed to Rosie—initially scandalized by what I was doing and then intrigued—much more self-confident, a woman of the world. Inside, I saw only the famished little girl.

In the world of the high-end prostitute, fantasy is the key element. I never took money from clients. When I arrived at a customer's hotel room, it was as if I were paying a friendly social call, which just happened to involve sex within the first few minutes. Mother handled the bookings; Mother received the money. In order to make our product known to those members of the public likely to purchase it, I frequented the city's two racetracks, the stadiums that were home to two football teams, the Tigers and the Wildcats, and would be seen in the afternoon and early evenings in the cocktail lounges at the Connaught in Hamilton and the Brant Inn in nearby Burlington. At those places I sometimes saw—but never spoke to—other women who practised my profession. Like myself, they were there to be seen, to be admired, and, at the appropriate time, to be purchased.

In later years, my attendance at such places would be turned decisively against me. According to the Powers, my neighbours on
Rosslyn Street, they once encountered me at a thoroughbred meet at Fort Erie. Mrs. Powers, a tiny, perpetually harried creature bedecked in a grey Persian lamb coat, lamented the lack of hotel rooms in that small city. She and her exhausted husband feared they would be forced to drive back that evening to Hamilton. “Here,” I said, taking a key from my purse, “use mine.” That much is true. I added: “I have to get back tonight.” According to Mrs. Powers, I said: “I won't be needing the room. I'm sleeping with a jockey.” No act of kindness ever goes unpunished.

The stuff of legends goes in even more ludicrous directions when it claims I offered my services to two entire forward lines and a couple of sets of defencemen from a local hockey team. Such gossip reeks of misogyny. There is also a neo-Freudian spin on my early existence. When my father first worked for the HSR, he drove a bus. This turn of events supposedly led me as a teenager to bed a number of HSR drivers. The nub of this thesis: Evelyn MacLean was desperately searching for a father-figure.

My mother had strict rules regarding my services. A new phone line and accompanying telephone was installed in the house in the name of Evelyn White, but only my mother was permitted to make or receive calls on it. A customer had to indicate his pedigree: who he was and how he had learned of my availability. Many called but relatively few were chosen. Mother preferred Gentile customers of Anglo-Saxon heritage, but she made exceptions if a Jewish or Italian client was sufficiently powerful or dangerous. She warned me about becoming involved with clients: I was not to write letters, and she intercepted the few that arrived at Rosslyn Avenue. Professional deportment, professional detachment: those were her standards. I was to warn her about any client who acted in a markedly strange manner. “You cannot be too careful, dear. These are well-placed men, but even such persons can get strange ideas. Fixations.”

Once again, she was correct, particularly in the instance of tiny little Mr. Beasley, a well-heeled realtor from Oakville. Not more than five feet tall and inordinately thin, he looked the model of prissiness. On the three occasions I saw him, he was courtly when I arrived at his room. “Let's get down to business,” he would then rather abruptly command me. This was a signal for me to remove my clothes, lie down on the bed, and touch myself in my private parts. Staring
abruptly at me through his tortoiseshell-framed glasses, he would remove his clothing and begin to fondle his member, which, considering his height, looked worthy of a giant.

“You want me to put this in you, don't you?”

From the first, I guessed the script. Demurely, I responded, “Please. I'd really like that.”

“You women are all alike. All you want is a big dick.”

I nodded assent to this apparent truism.

“My wife says I'm too big for her. Hurts too much. Would a whore think it hurt too much?”

“It would hurt, but I'd enjoy it,” I lied.

“Well, you can't have it.” Mr. Beasley would then proceed to masturbate. When he was close to orgasm, he would wander over to the bed and then deposit his sperm on my vagina. All of this activity was accompanied by violent language. After he reached orgasm, he commanded the “dirty little bitch” to clean herself, to remove all the “spunk.”

Many of my clients had unusual ways of experiencing sexual release. Mr. Beasley's particular predilection was not unknown to me—or frightening. His stories were disturbing. Rather than listening to anything I might say, he would tell me anecdotes about famous prostitutes from the past. One of the two most terrifying was about “Dusky Sally,” the paramour of Thomas Jefferson; according to his version of history, the “black cunt” robbed a great man of political vigour, and, in the process, made him a willing dupe of the “niggers.” The last time I saw him he related the sad life history of Helen Jewett, who lived in Manhattan in the 1830s and was known for her interest in serious literature. A coquette as well as a prostitute, she led some of her clients on, giving them the impression she entertained sentiments of love for them. Her big mistake was to make such a suggestion to a young clerk, who savagely murdered her with an axe while she was sleeping next to him. Having related that narrative, the realtor then paused, licked his chops and described in gruesome detail the autopsy performed on the still warm corpse, emphasizing in the process the removal of her “female innards.”

When I mentioned this episode to Mother, she informed me Beasley was a “real nutter “After that, I was always booked or ill when he phoned. Although I never visited him again, I am relatively certain
I saw him following me one evening when, after returning from the Connaught, I alighted from the bus near Rosslyn Avenue,

If I took a day or evening off, or if I had my period, I would go to the pictures with Rosie. Occasionally, Stephen would take us driving. Westdale—the suburb near the university—was daintily pretty but dry. If we wanted to drink, we had to venture into the two adjacent small towns, Dundas or Ancaster. I could never be seen to be alone with a man, my mother had warned me. My clients liked to imagine they were the only ones who had access to me, and it was important to maintain this illusion. The presence of a boyfriend or suitor could destroy my public image and thus ruin my career.

Without doubt, I became a consummate story-teller, a consort worthy of King Shahriyar. Instead of using such skills to ward off death, I was deploying them to fill in the necessary time and thus distract my clients. Many of my elder clients became only interested with hearing my confabulations. Younger and middle-aged men were different. These were rapacious persons, filling their entire sessions in various forms of foreplay and vaginal and anal penetration. There were those who simply wished their manhood to be admired by way of sucking. And then there were those who wished to be beaten. Such clients provided their own instruments of torture. Mother made it clear to them that I was unwilling to be subjected to such humiliation.

My new profession was lucrative, but it came at two heavy prices. My father—ashamed that the legacy of Lady MacLean had virtually come to an end because of increased vigilance on the part of the bookkeepers at the Hamilton Street Railway—became deeply resentful of the entrepreneurial skills of his wife and daughter.

“You've made Evelyn into a common whore,” he told Mother one day.

“Evelyn is well paid for acting as a companion to wealthy gentlemen,” she briskly retorted.

“She has sex with men. Lets them put their things into her.”

“Donald, you've always had a coarse way with you.”

“I'm coarse? You've become a madam that sells her own daughter. In the old country, we called such people panderers.”

Mother's temper, badly masked at the best of times, asserted itself.

“You're the first man who tried to put his privates into her! For all I know you did! You're the person who
spoiled
Evelyn, not me. You're the real whoremonger!”

She struck him and, like a character in a pantomime, he fell abruptly to the floor. Suspecting that there was not much wrong with Punch, Judy began to chortle, until she noticed the blood at the side of his head. A bit guiltily, she reached down to assist him, whereupon he pulled her down upon himself, scratched her in the face, and proceeded to mount her, as if to fulfill his conjugal duties.

“Help me, Evie!” my mother yelled in her most theatrical way. She was not so much injured as surprised.

“Daddy, let go of her!” was the best I could do as I reached down and pulled her up by both arms. Getting up quickly, he raised his arm at me and then thought better of it. His inset eyes, like fiery dark pieces of coal, fastened themselves on me. When he saw that I had noticed his erection, he quickly retreated to the basement.

Despite the rubbers that Mother insisted be worn by all those clients who performed vaginal intercourse, I was soon faced with pregnancy—the most feared and common side-effect of my calling.

Abortion was an especially dangerous option in the forties. No hospital would perform such a procedure on a young healthy woman such as myself, and Rosie had told me of the deaths and mutilations endured at the hands of some of the local practitioners of the dark art of ridding unwanted babies from unwilling mothers-to-be.

I wish I could claim to have been a good, even an adequate mother, to Heather, who was born in July 1942. From the start, she was really my mother's child, almost as if I were the father who went out to work to support his wife and child. I never gained much weight during any of my pregnancies, especially so in this instance. I saw clients until the end of May and then took a relatively brief holiday until after Labour Day that year. My clients were told by Mother that I was pregnant and that no special risks during carnal exchanges would be tolerated. Miss MacLean became Mrs. White, in large part to evade the scrutiny of the ever-vigilant Children's Aid Society.