See chapter 1
here.
Some of these events are also mentioned in Nora Meara's first-year memoirs of her time at City College,
Freshman Hooker.
As mentioned before, City College is in upper Manhattan while Maspeth is in western Queens.
*******
Appearances Count
I don't think my looks are extraordinary. For one thing, I rarely wear any makeup, except for lipstick sometimes. Otherwise, I just can't be bothered with it. And I was lucky, perhaps, to be living in an era when all that attention about one's face and hair was at a low point. It was the 1970's malaise I guess, but it suited me fine.
And let's be honest about it: women don't want to admit that makeup, no matter how subtle it is, significantly changes their appearance. As for me, I didn't care if I was presenting my unadorned face. My clients rarely seemed to care either, with one exception I'll mention some other time. Otherwise, they got to see what I truly looked like.
I'm about five-foot seven and I'm on the slender side but not truly skinny. I am a bit vain about my cute little ass, and I like to show it off by wearing tight pants or jeans.
Throughout my ten-month period as a working girl, I wore my dark-blonde hair in my usual way, down to my shoulders. Anything longer than that was a nuisance. If I felt like it, I would pin it up behind my head.
And guys don't mind getting some ass from girls who wear glasses. Probably most hookers don't wear glasses when working, but I didn't want the hassle of getting contacts. Thus my steel-rimmed spectacles, which I usually took off for blowjobs. When one of those jokers shot off, I could never be sure exactly where their cum might wind up.
During the second semester of hooking in 1974, I went through a phase of wearing a lot of "bad girl" clothing. It was the usual stuff: mini-skirts, shorts with boots, a bared midriff, and so on. Something about hooking made me want to project my sexuality, although inside I didn't
feel
particularly sexy.
It was during that period that I was attending a history class with Paul. For some reason, he thought I was a reincarnation of Cleopatra (maybe the Elizabeth Taylor version!). A queen, he later called me, which did fit into some part of my self-image. In response, I would tease him a lot by really vamping it up.
That doesn't mean I actually liked him. In fact, I could be quite rude, even nasty, if he made any approach to me. That would include him looking at me although I might be blatantly displaying myself. In my opinion, all the men in that school were twerps to be exploited, and he happened to be the one sitting near me in that class every week.
I could have moved elsewhere in the room, but I refused to give up my view out the window.
Let him move!
But he also was stubborn and wouldn't change his seat, the first hint perhaps that he was truly interested in me.
******
Supply and Demand
I quickly found out that selling my used undergarments -- let's call it lingerie -- was a lucrative side hustle. If guys saw any of that during a trick, they'd often want to have something as a souvenir. And of course, they could masturbate into the cloth or nylon at later times, I'm sure while remembering me.
Some would brag about how eager they were to shoot a load into my former possessions. I certainly didn't mind, as long as I got my money.
The first john ever to buy my stuff had received a blow job at my house in Maspeth. (I will have more about Maspeth shortly.) We did it in a conventional manner which I had suggested. Many of them were willing to go along with the positions I suggested on a particular day.
For that one, he stood in front of me while I knelt on the living room floor facing him. He wanted me to take off some of my clothing and we negotiated about which items would stay and which I would remove. I wound up topless and skirtless that day.
Belong my waist, I had a somewhat offbeat outfit on. About a week before that event, I had purchased one of those all-in-one garter-strap-stocking garments. It was all made from a single piece of white cloth. He wanted me to remove the ample pair of see-through white panties I had on top of it all. Thus the "cut-outs" on those stockings offered a good view of my crotch from the front and my ass from the rear.
When the trick was completed, he asked me to remove those stockings too. He wanted the panties as well so he could keep everything to take home with him. I was fond of both of those garments ever since I had first seen them in a store on Orchard Street in Manhattan.
Then I thought,
just charge him, overcharge him, for your apparel. You can always get more of it.
Thus we both went away happy. I had earned more cash than I had originally expected, and he had my underwear to play with on his own time.
I knew I was on to something good, and two days later I made the pink panties offer to that Cohen Library jerk-off client. He lacked enough money so that failed, but other johns were very eager to obtain a hooker's intimate clothing.
I might even suggest a clothing deal if they didn't mention it first. If I was at Maspeth, they could even buy my shoes. (I wasn't going to carry an extra pair of shoes to the campus.) The garment factories were always churning out products, and I kept earning more money to buy replacements.
Some of them wanted the more traditional get-up of garter belt-straps-nylon stockings if I was wearing those on the day of the trick. Those were quite popular among my clients. I seemed to have a knack for developing new lines of business. The interest in the garter-straps combination was so popular -- common really -- that it didn't seem like a fetish to me any longer.
Pantyhose, tights, knee socks, tennis shoes; it was all profitable. I merely had to wear something and it was transformed into merchandise that was good to go. If I was at school, I took extra underwear in my bag to replace whatever I had sold.
*******
Only the Dead Know Queens
It soon became obvious that there were advantages to inviting customers out to my home in Maspeth. Sometimes I could indeed find a trysting place on campus, but that took some planning and creativity, especially during the daytime.
My uncle Tony was the only other inhabitant of the house, and he worked during the day as a carpenter. His own children were grown and his wife, my Aunt Millie, had passed away five years earlier. I moved in during my senior year of high school, and I had my own room on the second floor.