R. “the sailor & the hooker”
There is a little naval port in Argentina, whose name I cannot recall, southwest of Buenos Aires, where I bought my first and last hooker. It was in a small, poor town, six or seven blocks long, with a restaurant, a lone bar, and a brothel, illuminated in pink neon lights, called “Playboys.”
She was fair-skinned, had almond-shaped eyes, long eyelashes, and a mouth that seemed the very color and shape of sadness. An hour of time with her was worth the equivalent of two medium pizzas, delivered to your door, in any American suburb.
In the room, in a building one block from the brothel, there were mirrors walls and a radio that played a fuzzy eighties song and whose buttons blinked repeatedly like faulty red traffic lights. The girl said it was a new song in town and then motioned at the bathroom and told me to take a shower.
The water was ice-cold and the bar of soap was rough and left red blotches on my skin. When I emerged from the bathroom the girl wrapped me in a towel and hugged me gently. After, I sat on the bed and watched her undress. When I asked her name and where she was from, she just shook her head and looked at me suspiciously. We regarded each other for a long moment, our naked bodies, and it seemed so strange to know her so intimately, her billowing breasts, like two pale clouds, her naked skin, the triangular-shaped patch of hair between her legs, glistening in the dim light – to know a body so intimately, but not the person who inhabits it. Finally, she smiled and said softly in Spanish, “You are a nice guy,” and retreated into the bathroom.
Alone in the room, I listened to the sounds of the building: the squeaky bedsprings, the gurgling shower drain, the pitter-patter of drizzling rain, the jumble of everything, too loud and bright, like the coming-out of a dream into the harshness of reality and suddenly there was a sick feeling in me. Once, as a child, I had smoked one of my grandfather’s ancient-tasting cigars and, after taking a huge puff, coughed out the blue smoke in a heaving gag of puke – the feeling was like that, a lingering thing inside of me, like a heavy indigestible smoke.
I dressed quickly and left without saying goodbye. Outside, the air was damp and the rain had begun to come down so that by the time I got to the ship, running and sloshing through puddles of water, I was soaking wet, but the sick feeling was gone. I imagined the girl emerging from the bathroom to find the room empty and the radio playing a fuzzy, soft song, and hoped she would be filled with relief.
