Cooking With Betty

2003 50/50 Award for the Memoirs of a Former Prostitute

Picture this in Panavision 3-D memory: a writhing mass of testosterone huddling close to the smell of cunt. Chanting, chanting, on and on, “Cum, cum, cum, cum!” A memento of California cluster-fuck dreamscape, complete with the faint bleach-like odor that pervades the adult bookstore. Sticky floors that make your shoes go rip with each step. A flicker of throat-coat squiggling. There is nothing quite like a filmy, sticky gullet, all bitter cream and sour paste.

I am Betty Crocker, but holy shit—the memories. Welcome to the force of collapsing inward, the self-gravity, the entropy. Oppression begins from within. I can’t get up out of this death-trap-whirlpool. This wide-eyed glaring. This blood coursing, veins pulsating, mind flashing: fluorescent buzzing. It’s set in motion. I can’t leave this ride, I’m committed, strapped in. This chambermaid libertine floozy reminiscing takes over. I hurl into a trash can as I tumble into the depths of whoredom, the sheer glee of S&M, the discipline, the bondage.

Meet me at the nude cabaret in Tribeca, in SoHo. Join in with the hard-core musings of business-suit frolicking. Spill it, spew it, clog up the toilets with your teeming prophylactics. Flood the carpet with raw sewage and wet toilet paper. This is “Theatre,” the generic “All-Star,” of course. It is the bold-faced lie of the Manhattanite mind-warped insomniacs. I’d like to see you try to jump off the conveyor belt of the Times Square sex shops. Nobody dabbles and walks away unaffected. Sex and Love Anonymous cannot compete with this sensation, this imagery, this saturation. Twelve steps is not far enough to resist the temptation to regress, to leave behind etiquette, dignity, social grace.

The vision crashes through dendrite, rips through axon. This is your eye-socket cock-thrust frontal lobotomy. This is the mind sucked down into the asshole. Pucker up, let’s go around the world. Now it’s stingy-tight, holding back a wall of diarrhea. I can go on this way, surfing the fantastic for a little while before I lose myself and get sucked under.

First, it was the cynical misnomer called the gentlemen’s club. A sick joke which provided a forum for anemic waifs strutting, coifed like lemon meringue, wearing little more than rhinestones and garters, to hustle table dances for twenties. We would have a showcase twice a night, throwing condoms wrapped up like matchbooks out into the crowd to incite the spending sprees. These lonely old codgers were no match for our estrogen overload and slick talk. We entered the stage in spandex “evening gowns.” We had make-believe dossiers announced by the emcees each time we performed, a prime selection of elegant sluts.

Take a moment to hard-boil this illusion. Further devolve to the inevitable bottom: cold, hard cash. There is always some way to up the ante when the building is a cavernous labyrinth without any clocks. I’m talking about the famous champagne court, complete with hostess and maitre d’ bringing fresh strawberries, even in the middle of February. Betty knows even a top of the line Harry and David’s Holiday Fruit Basket can’t pull that one off. But the client always found comfort and peccadilloes by the candlelight in the corner. The bump-and-grind treatment served up with a smile. Never forget the $150 tip, up front.

The recession hit during Desert Storm. Times got lean and mean and merciless, conniving fleshpots undercut one another with relish. After my husband deserted me, supporting my two toddlers became the gateway to becoming an amateur porn-queen sex-junkie. Here, we come to the guaranteed money-maker. This circle-jerk, finger-fuck, jizz-bucket joyride, this dildo-shoving, butthole plunging, blossoming in my head like a fall bouquet resplendent in mauve, yellow, orange, and white. Even Betty picks up tips from that supreme entertainer, Martha Stewart. The arrangement was aesthetically pure. The bloom of youth in strobed neon light, disco ball dance hall. Chrysanthemums and tea roses, my ass.

I was the feature at bachelor parties, a country bumpkin demonstrator of a bounty of produce, delivered fresh to your doorstep, boombox and costume bag in hand, a heat-packing Mack Daddy at my side. Zucchini squash, cucumbers, the tropical calypso banana shimmy…. Betty has some knockout recipes for zucchini muffins and banana cr¸me pie. But never the eggplant. You can’t make muffins out of them.

Imagine me, all sweet cheeks and marmalade in my Daisy-Mae short shorts, my red checkered halter busting at the seams with my water balloons, balanced atop stiletto pigsty galoshes. Mascara dramatics replete with Aquanet, Bonnebell lipgloss, heavy shaded lids, and a perfect pouting mouth, wet like fruit. My visage resembled the cover of a culinary epicurean periodical. The sheer artistry of flashing color and undulation, the cunning joy of working the suits into a slather. The frenzied corporate cut-outs always blew their wads on me.

I glaze over, an adrenaline and epinephrine brain-float. Agitated, whirling in seething kick-ass body rushes. I ride the wave of the Super Bowl Sunday parties, the body memories—pinched, grabbed, slapped, mauled, picked up and tossed around like a beach ball. The beer muscle thugs all swarming me, trapping me, pinning me down. I made the rent and then some in one day.

But it gets better.

Private sex parties, lap-dance joints, peep shows, jizz palaces, private booths in the back, the whorehouse. I can feel my father’s hands. This is the night of the long knives, slaving for the man at the downtown in-call run by the infamous Carla. Betty comes to visit, quite the entrepreneur, never limiting herself to cake mixes and recipe books, selling lingerie and fancy underwear out of the trunk of her car.

Carla’s was just off the expressway, free parking to boot. It was quite a commodity. We coveted the married clients. They were no trouble at all, and they depended upon us to keep their anonymity. A professional standard of “ethics” came into play. They almost never deviated from the rules, and were as eager to please us as they would be to an actual girlfriend. We were their kept women, their mistresses, if only for an hour at a time. The mind can believe anything in the light of artificial circumstances.

But at other times it seemed to be overrun with masochistic johns. It got to me, I guess. Freaks and senators, infantilists crying for diaper changes, “Mama.” The amyl nitrate sucking closet addicts always seemed to choose me. I can still see them pumping away in the full-length mirror I was blessed to gaze at as I grabbed my ankles and pasted on a shiny, anesthetized smile. We all became familiar with underbelly of the city and learned how to move between worlds: gutter-swank chameleons.

They adored the soft glow of the Christmas lights wrapped around the brass headboard. Like birds, the men seemed attracted to shiny things. Jesus. It’s amazing what I forced my body to do when facing the possibility of abject poverty and moving into a project with my preschool-aged daughters. I was a pro so I took a job with an escort service. People come and go routinely in a hotel environment, nobody would bat an eyelash when I walked briskly through the hallways avoiding eye contact with the help.

For outcall dominance work, I kept a locking attaché case to house my collection of lovely hardware. Dominance always paid better. I wore a supra-femme power suit complete with a red tie. My arsenal of nipple-clamps, dildos of various sizes, clothes pins, handcuffs and rope were neatly stashed away after the rigor of the bleach disinfectant. The extra-special peppermint oil and q-tips were always handy for the piss-hole punishment. It was more refreshing than Vick’s Vapo Rub, so I was told.

And oh, the rugman. How could I forget Stan? This nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn wanted to lease me an apartment to be my sole worshipper. Another wanna-be sugar-beat-me-daddy. “What good fortune!” my fellow sex workers exclaimed, “You will hardly have to work at all. Think of all the advantages.” But, no, I would never give a slave so much control over his mistress. I craved all the admiration I could get from every scumbag and wierdo who could afford me. Bootlickers, bodyguards, golden showers, soft-core bondage, paddlings, fist-fucking. My cat-o-nine tails was a guaranteed pleaser. I was a make-believe ice-queen, a mimeograph of a Mephistopheles Dame with duct tape and latex gloves.

I would set up shop for a week at a time in a motel. I used a pager, setting several appointments up the week before. There I’d wait, lounging on a towel that covered the cheap, rickety vinyl chair as I watched the tube, but never on that filthy bedspread, that mass of bacteria infested with countless sperm colonies. I was the Beautiful Supercunt, amazing in my vulcanized red rubber suit and needlepoint spiked heels, smoking my cigar, stroking my whip for each Armani degenerate—the more high powered their jobs, the more discipline and degradation they would request. And didn’t I just love it? All war-paint, jutting hips, ribcage basketballs. Glazed honey buns with pecans and cinnamon. Betty cares enough to make it appetizing.

I’ve been such a bad bad bad girl. You have every right to spank my bare heiney. Me and my filthy little mouth. I remember the phone calls for hardcore anal-rape fantasies, the lemonade, the brownies. The requests for nasty titillation, torture talk and strict discipline. I would sweat and grimace and lubricate as they moaned and purred through the earpiece. They were easy enough. All pre-paid by way of a convenient post office box and a pre-arranged time slot with a collect call.

Most people think they wouldn’t do these things, but I’ll no more defend myself now than I did then. It’s not as if every raped and abused—the words themselves have become trivialized by relentless Lifetime network movies—woman chooses to use her body as her workstation.

I can’t deny our family snapshots haunt me with what they cannot show. The burning insinuations, the denigrations, my eldest brother’s knives brandished against my throat, my father’s unwashed hair, the nappy sheets. Dark places no camera could record. My step-sisters hated me for the sick enigma that remains, a flicker in my aura. I still feel their desire to expose my shame—my survival. They mock the suicide blonde in their midst. Betty is no Breck girl.

This Betty is not yet 35, and my teeth are intact. I seem bright-eyed and healthy. I work a moderate fitness regimen into my schedule. Hell, I can bake like a champ even though I grew up eating microwaved convenience dinners by myself in front of Oprah Winfrey. I do digress, don’t I? I crave the rush of danger, the smell of strange yet familiar men in anonymous couplings. The imprint is strong. Thanks, Daddy.

Right now my body is hopped up like old times. It is a beautiful symmetry. I am ready to dive headlong into a crowd of horny men loaded down with dollar bills for me to tit-grab. Slide it into the g-string for me, lover. I make sense in my own little corner of the world. This volatile essence of contradiction, rage, comedy, tragedy, love and hate within me has detonated and cannot fit together again. I need a team of movers and a semi to pack up my proverbial self and move to a spot not so inhospitable to suburbia, soccer moms, dishes, laundry, daytime tv, ad nauseum. As exciting as library paste, this haus-frau bon-bon coffee-klatch matron. I need my juice. My latex anal-exploration psychodrama cash flow mother lode. Vivid vanilla just isn’t doing it for me. The trite tittering of prodigy-moms stuffing themselves with hubris, with pretense. Puritanical pukey prattle drowns me, suffocates me, kills off that ravishing hard-ass in me. The invincible Super-Whore. She hands me brazen and feisty to annihilate this shame. How could you dream of a better friend? She is so kind to me.

People tend to assume that there is truth in my Betty Crocker packaging. We all fall prey to that. We are taken in because we can’t bear to admit the deeds are done and it’s too late. This embezzlement of life-force that leaves a jagged-edged hole leading inside to expose the unreachable, the incomprehensible. I am destined to be the whore-clown moderator of the hatemycunt.com chatroom late at night, hovering over the monitor. Tapping at the keys, stabbing at words, this is the twisted humor of the aftermath. The channel to my secret inner-life where I touch everyone in their secret crevice shrouded by denial. My circuitry overloaded and jumbled, I’m deep frying these excremental journeys in a vat of boiling pus. This is Betty’s nasty little secret. “Stick it, pat it, mark it with a B, and put it in the oven for baby and me.” My pornographic Dada, my sexual sturm und drang.

When morning comes, Betty lends me pills to kill myself all the day long, a sheep accounted for the slaughter. But nothing can make me forget my Roman soldiers. I see them, combing the hairs on their burly chests. I smell the gifts of perfume they bring to me as if it were a regular date. They always pay with gold pieces for the sacrifice. Inside of me, I conquer them. Turning our separate gazes to the silent angels will never persuade me to forgive myself.

All day long I contort my psyche to suppress the repugnance, the angst, this framework of disgust. Trimming, cutting, breaking, warping, smashing, crunching my puzzle piece to force it where it belongs will never make me fit. No amount of astro-glide, cherry-flavored heat-jelly, no over-stimulation nor sensory deprivation can conform what has become "me" into that mold. This aversion to normalcy, this self-loathing has taken root.

No family function, no holiday meal, no PTA meeting can ever comprehend my hoochie-mamma Jezebel offspring. No casual acquaintance, no business associate can ever know what lies beyond their conception of me. This twisted child, this body servant remains a riddle against everything that structures the social mores we take for granted. But I’m sure to bake you a mean peanut butter chocolate brownie.

Johanna Schreiber is bored with being blonde, yet still enthralled with contortionism, an extreme meditator and rage-a-holic, heterodox choirgirl and cantor, she plays numerous musical instruments—badly. She is currently performing her Betty Crocker impression as a wife and mother in the Delaware Valley.

[ johannaschreiber@yahoo.com ]