“Once in, never out.” The Johnny Carson look-alike with a cigarette the size of a small brown stump dangling on his lip looking like it was about to pop out and hit me in the eye is giving me the once and the twice over. I am now officially merchandise much like a handbag in a store and it doesn’t feel good at all.

I try not to fidget as I stand in what looks like someone’s apartment, in a living room where the furniture is new and unused. Except this isn’t anyone’s home. It’s a bordello on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Soon I will learn it is one of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of make-believe apartments neatly tucked away across the city. Fake apartments where primarily women and some men sell themselves to well respected businessmen every day from 9am to 5pm and where neighbors never suspect an alternate universe exists on the other side of the wall.

My heart is going thumpety thump thump. It’s almost lodged in my throat. My palms are clammy and my legs wobbly. I wonder if I’m going to survive this interview or simply pass out. Slowly I raise my eyes from where they’ve been fixated on the floor and dare a look-see at him. He’s wearing a preppy sweater vest over a starched white shirt with khaki pants. Geez, who knew pimps looked like someone’s dad?

I was raped by someone I trusted who took me to the movies, lost my job as administrative assistant because the company moved to Connecticut, and my new career as a fashion designer had landed in the toilet because, Zora, the New Jersey contractor I hired to turn my designs into clothes, got sick. So much for going at it on your own.

My belly is only slightly swollen and doesn’t betray my now confirmed pregnancy. I’m wearing four-inch stilettos at 11am with a short pink dress I wore to a friend’s wedding. And my stomach is rumbling from having missed a couple of meals because I can’t even afford a slice of pizza.

When I asked my ex-boyfriend for help by explaining I’d been raped he didn’t believe me. After living with him for five years I’d broken up with him only a couple of months earlier and moved into my own apartment. One of his friends was managing apartment buildings and through him I rented a place sight unseen. Just to get away from my boyfriend’s daily temper tantrums. He was still fuming over the fact I’d left him and had become even more incensed that his “little girl” – as he referred to me had sex with another man. Never mind that I explained what happened. Never mind that I told him the guy forced me into my apartment. Never mind that I told him he pushed me against the wall in my still empty place and then pushed me onto the floor and then pushed himself inside of me.

The term “date-raped” had yet to be invented in the world of mergers and acquisitions, fast money, and post-disco clubs of 1980s New York. What kind of girl gets raped unless I really wanted it? That had been his take on it and there was no way he was going to help me with the $200 I needed to get an abortion.

To him I was now spoiled goods and a liar.

As uncomfortable as it felt to stand in front of Johnny Carson’s double it was even more frightening to think about having the baby. Would I be like my mother who beat me with her fists while screaming obscenities at me? No way was I going to risk that.

His words began to bounce back and forth in my head: ‘Once in, never out. Not for me, I chanted quietly. Not for me. Not for me. I’ll get out. Not for me.’

“How old are you anyway? I don’t sell kids.”

“Old enough,” I retorted in an out of body kind of half hallucinatory state. This could not be happening to me. I was practically a virgin. I knew the names and the dates of the guys I had sex with. I could count them on one hand. Maybe I was having a nightmare but then I heard his raspy cigarette smoker voice and knew for sure this was really happening.

“Take your clothes off. Let me see what you look like.” Warren’s voice, dry and hoarse, had dropped an octave. His cold blue reptilian eyes bore deep into mine. I dared not flinch as panic filled my soul. My eyes immediately darted to my older sister’s face and sensing my fear she flashed him a cold look shaking her head.

It felt protective and I was grateful. In that moment, I forgot I’d gone to her who I considered my second mother for the $200 I needed when my ex-boyfriend turned me away. She was 14 years my senior and from the time I could walk I had always looked up to her. Instead, to my horror, she talked me into accompanying her to this make-believe apartment with the Johnny Carson look-alike so that I could, in her words: “earn the money”.  

Getting raped, discovering I was pregnant and then having her reveal she lived in a dark world I knew nothing about was more than I could handle. I didn’t understand the betrayal and remained in a state of shock for decades.

I’ll never really know why she decided to sell me to a pimp and in all the many years since I’ve never asked her. Perhaps it was her way of getting even with the infant my mother saddled her with when she was only just 14-years-old. Or maybe it’s because the bad blood that has existed between my mother and myself had been passed on to her. Their unified hatred of me spread like thick black tar clogging up every pore of my skin.

I am painfully reminded of being alone in the world as the Johnny Carson look-alike and my sister blathered away while his eyes continued to feast on my body. I would spend the rest of my life trying to cleanse myself of the stain her actions and this moment placed on my mind, body, and soul.

It was the beginning of a long dark and hellish journey and if I could slip back into time, I would march right back to that day, to that moment, and bolt for the door leaving them in their make-believe world of sex-for-pay in a fake apartment.

. . .

I am lulled back by his insisting tone. He’s not letting it go.

“You have a beautiful sister, Gigi, why deny me the pleasure of seeing the goods?”

Whatever small part of me which held out hope that someone, anyone — my ex-boyfriend, my mother, my sisters, a stranger on a white horse, would somehow rescue me, have faded.

. . .

 Copyright 2021 Kirby Sommers. All rights reserved.