Egad. My life is currently giving all new meaning to the expression "going from bad to worse." Since my return from my summerlong stay at the Jersey shore to the quaint and beaucolic city of Brookyn (insert sarcasm here), I have dealt with bugs and mice in my apartment, sudden and financial ruin (remember, if you ever move to New York City, a cash register sound can be heard the SECOND you enter the city. And it never stops until you leave), a breakup with a white powder lovin’ boyfriend and well, a general sense of loneliness and ennui. I never knew you could feel so alone in such an peopled place.
Anyway, enough mea culpas. Let’s get back to the prostitutes, shall we? Or “prossies” as I will refer to them in this entry. My roommate is a bit of a pushover. Which has worked to my advantage thus far. Because I’m a bit of a pusher. He went to his construction site last Friday, where he serves as a designer, and met some woman who entered the site looking for a “modeling agency.” They struck up and conversation and Voila! My roommate, who doesn’t do so well with the ladies, brought home a brand new, fresh, spankin’ "model"! He tells me this Sat. morning. He tells me she’s in his bedroom now. Congrats, Justin, I tell him. Good for him.
When she finally stumbles out of the bedroom, a tall black woman, wearing 5-inch white thigh-high stiletto boots, a rabbit fur top and a matching rabbit fur hat, emerges. I almost spit out my coffee. “Hey there, baby,” she says. “My name is Lutwella.” Lutwella, indeed.
I figured, yeah, you seem like a prossie. Like a straight-up, street-walking-car-door-hanging prossie. But…what care I? Dost thou not have enough problems on thy own plate, Beth, than to worry about a roommate’s sexual miscalculations? I sip at my coffee, give her one last glance and go back to my paper. She and Justin eventually go on their merry way. Indeed, what care I?
But care I did. Because she kept returning. The entire weekend! I’d hear the clippety clop of her white boots up the steps to our apartment and wonder, when is this going to end? Then Sunday night, I hear the clippety clop of her boots and an additional thud! Thud! The apartment door opens and Lutwella is dragging along a large, fuzzy pink suitcase. There is no roommate, only her.
“What are you doing? Are you going away somewhere? What are you doing?” I stammer nervously.
“Honey, you can talk to Steven about that.”
“By Steven, I’m guessing you mean Justin, my roommate.” I say.
“Did I call him Steven. Oh shit, bitch! I can’t believe I said that!” she says, cackling away, slapping her bony knee. “No, seriously. I’m a model. And I came here to New York from Cincinatti to look for work. I’m a model.”
“You said that. What are you doing here…I mean, in this apartment?”
“I need to meet some people. Make some money. I can make money here. I can make up to 100.”
“A hundred what?”
“A hundred bucks, honey. Sometimes I get paid a hundred bucks an hour.”
“I bet you do, Lutwella. I bet you do.”
“Anyway, my friend…she said I could sleep on her couch but then she had all these other losers there. And I had to sleep on the floor. I have to look good. I can’t get those modeling jobs when I’m sleeping on the floor! So Steven…”
“Justin”
“Shiiit…did I say that again? Justin said I could stay here.”
“For how long did Steven say you could stay?” I ask tensely.
“Well, I’m supposed to go home in 10 days. That’s what my Greyhound ticket says.”
Okay, let’s stop here. This is a long blog and writing this, while offering some comic relief, is literally a little too close to home and making me tense all over again. When Lutwella was taking her bubble bath (kid you not!) that night in our bathroom, I pulled my roommate aside and said “You got to be kidding me, right? You got to be kidding!?”
“Well,” he whispers, “she has nowhere to go and she’s sleeping on a floor and…”
I go on to explain to him that sleeping on a floor IS in fact a place to go. And so is her HOME in Cincinatti. And I just gave you a big fat check so I DO have a place to go, a place free of prostitutes who double as models. He seemed very confused with this very basic logic. He was under some strange “I haven’t had sex in a while and now I’m getting some” trance and my straight-laced logic need not apply.
I went to bed that night, tense and mentally exhausted. Nothing makes you feel worse, I’ve decided, than explaining the obvious to people. The standard “pink elephant” thing - “Hey, there’s a pink elephant in the middle of the room.” “No there isn’t. YOU’RE the pink elephant. There is no pink elephant. It's a polka-dotted daffodil!” Its the fundamentals of crazymaking. My roommate denied the existence of the “pink prossy” in the room. But the pink prossy exists. I can hear her clipclop now. Help.
