The Gorgeous Girls (4 page)

You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.

—Dorothy Parker

Old whores never die. They just fuck off. Actually, I think that phrase—old whores—is redundant.

Breathe.

My palm sweats around the small black revolver as I raise it up to eye level. Quickly, I shove the barrel into my mouth and . . .

Bite it off.

Tricks, illusions, sleight of hand—it's my business. I stole this licorice gun bit from the movie
Adam's Rib
, in which Katharine Hepburn plays a lawyer defending Judy Holliday, a potential husband-killer and fully realized addle-brained blonde.

I was just that sort of platinum fool when I became a hooker. Young and not as bright as my uniform: a turning-heads-then-turning-tricks lipstick-red dress with white polka dots sprinkled all over it like confetti; strawberry lip gloss; blood-red Carmen Miranda shoes.

I have always loved shoes—especially outrageous shoes, like the ones I'm wearing now. Chosen with great care for this very important event, they are as black as licorice and shiny as lip gloss. A twenty-first-century take on a 1940s platform: more streamlined than clunky, they have large gold buckles and three-inch gold heels. And from the moment I saw them in the window of Heel Boy, I knew they would bring me luck. These shoes will go down in history, I said to myself—like Dorothy's ruby-red slippers, Cinderella's glass slippers and Pavlova's ballet slippers.

Raz Ma Taz Connelly's black-and-gold platform slippers.

The way the heels reflect light, you could send signals with them if you ever got into trouble. On the other hand—or foot, as the case may be—you could also send signals with them that could get you into trouble.

Trouble. I had plenty of it back when. Vancouver. 1992. I met a stranger at English Bay who had eyes like Omar Sharif's. At the far end of the beach, we embraced on the sun-warmed back of a giant boulder, then slid into its cool granite shadow. As the sun went down, so did I. I thought it was love, so when I found out he was
in trouble with the law I told him I'd sell my soul to save his ass. He said, “How 'bout just your ass to save my ass?”

The Hotel Vancouver, and kitty-corner to it, the Georgia: these became my places of work. But my favourite was the Marine Lounge in the Bayshore Inn, where from the plush, low-lit interior, I could keep one eye on the action and the other on the ocean.

I was certain the Pacific held my soul, rocked it gently in its saltwater embrace while I sold my body to the first suit who winked at me over the salty rim of his margarita.

A matter of weeks after meeting my Zhivago, I'd made a few thousand dollars, but the money, which was supposed to be for a good lawyer to get him off the cocaine rap, disappeared up his nose. What did I know? I was a body, not a brain. But before I was a body-not-a-brain I'd gone to
university, only to quit after a year. I was broke, and all I ever really wanted was to be an actress.

Now I'm getting nervous. Breathe.

I chose an Irma la Douce look for this VIP I'm seeing today. He'll only give me a few minutes—if he doesn't like me right away, I'm outta there. What a business! Why couldn't I be a secretary or a waitress?

Breathe deeply.

Then came the night I propositioned a plainclothes cop. Civic elections were on, and I was nineteen and naive. I wobbled on my platform shoes and shivered under the polka dots as they read me my rights. At the station, they grilled me, wanted to know who my pimp was. I told them I didn't have a pimp, just a lover who loved me. I believed it even if they didn't.

I spent the night in jail, smoking and pacing, then in the bleary-eyed morning I was released on my own recognizance when a friend of Zhivago's showed up to spring me. I rushed home to the one who had turned me into his red-and-white-polka-dot slave and who now beat me black and blue as punishment for getting busted. I'd sold my soul, and now the angry waves came crashing down, dragging me relentlessly into the undertow.

The word pimp didn't vanish from my brain with time as the bruises did from my body. But I had nowhere to go. I had to lie low while the election heat died down, but Zhivago's coke supply was running out and his court date was looming, so I phoned a regular and copped an all-night gig.

His was the tongue that spoiled me; he was so unlike other tricks of the general lick variety that I dubbed him “serial thriller.” Passion, pressure, precision. In the morning, I found a note on his pillow saying he'd gone out and that I should make myself at home.

I took a long, operatic shower, then stepped out into the midmorning sun, certain that this money would win back
the love I'd lost by getting arrested.

But when I got home, a fist met me in the face. Blood gushed from my nose and spilled down my dress, obliterating all that confetti. “Having too much fun with the trick to come home in the morning? Where's the money for that?” my Sharif Ali yelled, and hit me so hard I flew across the
room.

He flicked his cigarette ashes onto my blood-spattered uniform, then told me to go wash my face.

That's when I made my break.

I ran through the tree-lined streets of the west end with him hot on my heels. But I know that area like the back of my hand, and I lost him cutting through alleyways. I crossed the Burrard Street Bridge, then wended my way
through oily sunbathers till I came to Jericho Beach, where I walked into the surf and splashed my face.

Through the blood and salt water I saw a sky the colour of baby's breath, and the loss of my soul to the rot of the ocean floor made me cry.

I got a year's probation and a train ticket east.

Damn! I wish I'd dressed more like Shanghai Lily—that “notorious White Flower of China.” But I thought her cool elegance would clash with my licorice-chomping monologue. I mean, if this director likes me today and casts me as his streetwalker, I could be on my way.

It's been a long journey from my checkered past—or should I say polka-dotted past? That was twenty years ago, and now here I am at the eleventh hour wishing I were portraying Lady MacBeth instead of Raz Ma Taz.
Old whores never
. . . Now I'm forgetting my lines, the very words I wrote! I'm not even sure of her motivation anymore.

But I am sure of my own motivation. I do this for my kids, so they can see what it is to live one's passion, how it feeds the soul and enlivens the heart.

Breathe.

Authors and actors and artists and such /
Never know nothing, and never know much.

—Dorothy Parker

I may be passionate
about acting, but I hate auditions. You don't know what the script is about or who the people behind it are, yet you have to act as if you'd like nothing better than to work on their project. You deny gut feelings in order to show them you're professional, talented, lovable. You kowtow and kiss ass, all the while screaming inside that their dialogue really bites.

I like trees. Trees never ask anything of you. Certainly not that you sing or dance. I'm stalling on my way to an audition, lulled by the red and gold leaves of autumn. I'm tempted to just stay here in the park and forget about the audition. But trees don't hand out paycheques, and if I don't go, my name will be mud. A casting agent once told me, “The only reason not to show for an audition is if you're dead.”

At the start of my career in showbiz many moons ago, I did a lot of street theatre, playing the sidekick clown to my friend, a trained mime. I wore black velvet and whiteface and it usually took two double Scotches just to get me out there.

Not a trained mime, I worried about being spotted by the professionals—you know, theatre folk who mostly earn their living indoors. I was afraid they'd see me on the street, a fool without even a fool's skill, and then point at me in auditions and say, “Weren't you that drunken clown in Yorkville last summer?”

No one ever said that. Instead I was offered the lead in a production of
Hamlet
. Trouble was, they turned out to be a Marxist theatre group and I was required to recite the Communist Manifesto instead of “To be, or not to be.”

After that flop, I was concerned the pros would pick me out at auditions like a criminal in a lineup and ask, “Weren't you that commie clown who played Hamlet last season?” No one ever said that, either.

Rather, some rinky-dink agent caught me as the brooding Marxist prince and signed me. From there I climbed tooth and claw up the showbiz ladder. I spent about five years on the first rung, and just as I was about to climb to the second, I got pregnant and fell off the bloody ladder altogether.

Some nights, when I was up feeding and changing the baby, I had to wonder why I didn't just run away to the quiet of the countryside. The answer to that puzzle gazed up at me daily from a dust-laden windowsill: a stack of eight-by-ten glossies (dust-laden themselves) for which I'd finally scrounged enough money just before I found out I was with child. I wanted to be an actor, a real bona fide actor, not just a performer in the daily circus I sometimes perceived my life to be. Curtis was against it. Finally, out of sheer necessity, I dusted off the headshots and got out there again.

This part will pay well if I get it, so I'd better get moving. Glancing up at the clock on St. James Cathedral, I realize my audition is in five minutes! I race through the Eaton Centre with its fluorescent lights and visual overload, its roaring white noise, its heavy perfumes hanging in the air like stale parties. I struggle for breath, for fresh air. I can't breathe . . . I'm going to die right here . . . right here where Timothy Eaton's left foot used to be.

“The only reason not to show for an audition is if you're dead.” I should have known it would end like this. On my way to a bloody audition.

But wait. This could be one of those rare, fun auditions like that music video I auditioned for a few years back. I'd dressed for that one in tailored pants and a silk shirt, my agent having neglected to tell me exactly what the part called for. When I got to the production house, the casting agent wagged a long “Scream Red” fingernail in my face and shrieked, “You don't look like a mother!”

Ironically, I had my then eight-year-old son with me (my babysitter had cancelled at the last minute). I don't think the casting agent liked that, either. My boy waited quietly in the lobby while the casting agent thoroughly chewed me out for my appearance, finally suggesting I tie my hair back (a mother thing, apparently). Not having an elastic band on hand (such a bad mother!), I was shit out of luck.

I got the part.

The director was an artist, who was involved in the process from the audition straight through to the shoot, extracting nothing but the best from his actors. He gave me a big hug when the shoot was over, and I thanked my lucky stars and hoped I would get more jobs like that one.

I arrive at the production house a few minutes late, but, as usual, they aren't ready for me anyway. Hurry up and wait. At least it isn't one of those go-sees where dozens of people line up to fill out a form and have their Polaroid taken, only to be told to stand in another line.

At a go-see, the operative word should be
go
. If you could actually
see
past your star-struck spectacles to the spectacle of all those cattle wearing too much makeup, you'd turn around and make a beeline for the door. 
Go!

This is a tiny, claustrophobic waiting room, and I'm getting really nervous now. My licorice gun is getting gooey in my hand. To calm myself I think about the warmth and charm of fire. Some people stock up on candles in case of a power failure in their house. As a single mother I used to stock up on candles in case of a power failure in me. Most post-audition evenings were five- or ten-taper nights, but since moving in with my lover a month ago I can create one-hundred-candle power with just a few logs. Yes, Joe has a fireplace.

Nerve-racking as it is, the audition seems to go well. The director is smiling, but the writer blurts out that I'm not right for the part. The director frowns, and I want to beg them to hire me. Instead I put on my happy face to show that I am professional, talented, lovable. Inwardly, I kiss the role goodbye.

Late that night, as the family sleeps, I put a log on the fire to revive the dying embers. I curl up on the floor with a blanket and pillow, and the dancing blaze lulls me into a trance. Slowly I become whole again. Relaxing in the warmth and crackle, my mind drifts. I plan a production of
Hamlet
to be mounted in some park next summer, with the actors perched in the branches of an oak tree, or peering from behind maple leaves, or soliloquizing under weeping willows.

I like trees.

Part Four

“‘I'll wear my heart
like a wet, red stain on the breast of a velvet gown.'” Rose smiles like the Cheshire cat in heat as she delivers this line from a Dot poem and then reveals that she and her man, Joe, have just returned from a weekend in the country, where they celebrated their first anniversary.

The girls are lounging in the front window of The Ossington, beyond which snow falls relentlessly in large dreamy flakes. Slipping out of her powder-pink fun fur, Wanda offers a line from Shelley for their meteorological contemplation: “‘O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?'”

Rose replies, “In Toronto the answer is a resounding yes!”

“Embrace the white stuff!” Con implores, flinging her back-to-natural-blonde tresses over her shoulder. Her belly resembles a huge snowball beneath her baby-blue angora sweater. “Make angels, make snowmen, make love!”

This last suggestion prompts Wanda to ask whether her friends have ever had a bad orgasm. The question hangs before the women like a Zen koan, and neither of them responds.

“How about you, Wanda?” Con finally breaks the silence.

“I guess I wouldn't call it bad, exactly . . .” Wanda muses. “More like bland.”

“That's a contradiction in terms, Wanda.” Rose is unable to imagine how anyone could have a bland orgasm—or a bad one, for that matter. Then she remembers that she did once have a bad one.

“Okay, this qualifies as bad. My thrusts caused my IUD to dislodge when I came.” The women shudder in unison as Rose adds, “And it stayed in a half-in/half-out position till I got the gynecologist to yank it the next day.” More shuddering.

Constance reveals that when she first got together with Tyler she was so nervous that she feigned orgasm, then told him to keep going for the next one. “He did, and half an hour later, I'd climaxed seven times for real.”

“That's hardly a bad orgasm experience,” Rose says, shoving a guacamole-heaped triangle of pita into her mouth.

“Yes, it is,” Wanda insists. “She faked having an orgasm.” Wanda makes it sound like a cardinal sin.

“One faked, seven real. A pretty good ratio. Works for me,” Rose says.

“Yeah, so long as I did eventually climax, I don't think the faked one counts.”

“If you fake it, you will come,” Rose jests.

“Oh, it counts.” Wanda is adamant, as though there's some kind of Orgasm God up in the sky keeping score: black
F
s for faked, red
R
s for real.

“The thing is, once I did actually come, there was no stopping me,” Con brags. “I mean, I'm not one of those hundred-orgasms-a-session chicks—I think
they
'
re
fake—but I do come at least five or six times per lovemaking round.”

“At which point any tiny feigned orgasm would be history,” Rose says.

“No.” Wanda holds fast, Gorgeous Girl dissolving in the rigidity of her argument. “It's totally unacceptable to fake orgasm under any circumstances.”

“Oh, come on,” Con says rather heatedly. “It's like padding your resumé—or your bra. A small fib to at least land you in the playing field.”

“Well, I read that if you fake orgasms, the man will download the wrong info,” Wanda says.

“Oh, he'll download, all right, but it won't be info,” Con cracks.

Rose cuts in. “Are you saying you can't go back and reprogram the man?”

“Are we talking about computers now?” Con asks.

“I mean to say that I think men are smart enough to learn new tricks,” Rose explains. “Surely you can talk to him later and tell him exactly what you like and how you like it.”

“Well, why get off on the wrong foot, then?” Wanda asks. “Why not just tell him right off the bat?”

“You have to get to know him first,” Rose replies.

“And what if you fake it and then you don't come? What then? Doesn't that make you feel like the guy is using you like a piece of meat?” Wanda says.

Rose smiles. “The idea is to enjoy the experience, come what may. I mean, I have this friend who is so obsessed with the Big O that it's come to stand for the Big Ordeal.”

The girls pause long enough to take appreciative gulps of hot apple cider, two of which are generously spiked with spiced rum.

“Sometimes when I'm getting fucked—I mean really fucked good—it's sooo good and I'm not even thinking of climaxing,” Rose says matter-of-factly. “I'm just in this other space, this total pleasure zone, and I may not come, not just then. And sometimes that's okay.”

“Is that like tantric sex?” Wanda asks.

“Ah, tantric,” Con says knowingly. “Have you ladies ever pretended you didn't come when you did?”

“Whoa, girl,” Rose says. “Are you trying to say you've had an orgasm and faked
not
having
it?”

“When Tyler and I first started practicing tantric sex, we weren't supposed to come. But I couldn't do it. So when I came I pretended I didn't. I just bit the pillow.”

“So from your first faked orgasm to your faking not coming, you and Tyler got a good thing going, I'd say.”

“Yeah. Pure sexual magic,” Con confirms.

Rose clinks Con's glass. “Kind of like my weekend in the country with Joe.”

Wanda isn't convinced.