Old Whores Never Die

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

Breathe.

Now say it like you mean it:

Old whores never…

I can't. I feel faint.

My palm is sweating around a small black revolver. I raise it up to eye level, then 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, potential husband-killer and fully-realized ditsy blonde.

I was once such a ditsy blonde - too young and not as bright as my uniform: a turning-heads-and-turning-tricks red dress with white polka dots sprinkled all over it like confetti, strawberry lipgloss, blood-red Carmen Miranda shoes.

I have always loved outrageous shoes - like the ones I’m wearing now. Chosen with great care for this very important meeting, they are a 21st century take on a 1940s platform. I believe these shoes will go down in history - like Dorothy’s ruby-red slippers, Cinderella’s glass slippers and Pavlova’s ballet slippers.

Rose Connelly’s black and gold platform slippers - trodding a path to a new existence.

The way the golden 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 send signals with them that might lead you to trouble.

Trouble. I’ve had plenty of it. It started the day 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?”

Hotel bars became my places of work. My favourite was the Marine Lounge, 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. Creative writing, art history, English lit. I quit after a year. I was broke and all I ever really wanted was to be an actress or maybe a writer.

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

Breathe.

I chose an Irma la Douce look for this VIP 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?

One night, I propositioned a plainclothes cop. I wobbled on my Carmen Miranda shoes and shivered under the polka dots as they read me my rights. Civic elections were on and they were cleaning up the city, but I was clueless.

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.

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.

The word pimp didn’t vanish from my brain with time as the bruises did from my body, but I pushed it to the back, while I spent the night earning some cocaine capital.

In the morning, I found a note on the trick's 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 white confetti. “Having too much fun with the trick to come home in the morning? Where’s the money for that?” he 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. 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.

Breathe.

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 the streetwalker in his new play, I could be on my way.

To be playing a sex worker - or to be a sex worker. That is the question.

It’s been a long journey from my checkered past—or should I say polka-dotted past? Now here I am at the eleventh hour wishing I were portraying Lady MacBeth rather than this character I wrote for myself, about myself:

Old whores never. . .

Now I’m forgetting my lines, the very words I scripted. And I can't find my supply of licorice revolvers. And I might be late and maybe I'm going to faint...

But I don't think so.

Breathe.