Roadmaps for Nowhere Girls, Pt 1

Please read this as if I had posted this in December so that the timing and urgency still makes sense :) thank you :)

(If you are a woman who doesn’t know what you want, please read the following as a formula for figuring it out, or as a story of friends, new and old. If you are a man who has been unfaithful, please read the following aloud as first shame courses through you, then as indifference settles.)

---

In the times C and I had been introduced to each other, bumped shoulders at house parties, liked each others’ posts on social media, referred clients to one another, I can’t say I learned much about her, beyond her long hair curling down her back, figure a flurry in Lululemon, always on the go. And though I didn’t know much about her, she showed herself a dependable person when our paths did cross. Two winters in Aspen, when she saw my eyes glaze over gliding down the bunny slopes in a new ski suit, she dug beta blockers from her duffle bag of supplements, which I washed down with a raspberry Whiteclaw, burying the nerves six feet under the snow. When a snowstorm blew over the small town and trapped me in a dark, damp room by the airport, she’d sent pho delivery, the steam rising from the styrofoam bowl doing better to unthaw my ears than the hissing radiator. Later I mailed her boots she’d left behind. Not once did I see the inside of her room.

When C sent me an apartment listing on one of those hazy mornings I couldn’t tell whether my eyes or my windows were clouded, I didn't entertain the idea of living together. Girls in close proximity can be beautiful. Girls are for late night ice cream runs and reality tv binges while decoding the latest brush with a work crush. Girls are for helping you into your beloved dress with the tricky back zip. Girls are for mirroring your delusions. Your skincare options double, and if you’re lucky, you’re the same shoe size. Your ears, saved from curling iron burns. 

(If you are a woman who doesn’t know what you want, erase from your memory the wet bits of food floating in the sink and the matted hair spirals clogging the shower drain. Erase the fake tanner staining the walls, the disordered eating habits you developed as a bonding ritual. Do this so you don’t hurt alone.)

There is a seductive idea that strangers become bonded forever when thrown together by circumstance. In Manhattan, beautiful women congregate for sport. In Manhattan, there is a particular invented urgency to find your scene. Often women who appear together have the same look, and they will become true friends, a phenomenon that is not unique to sex work. C and I did not belong to the same scene, but I knew we had both wound up with plans to retire from escorting in pursuit of love and normalcy, and I knew by the end of summer, we both found ourselves effectively homeless, her bouncing from overpriced AirBnBs and me, untethered to my reality.

(If you are a woman who doesn’t know what you want, bake cookies for children who aren’t yours. Surrender to the scent of dough the same way it gives up shape beneath your fingers. Stretch it like the hours and days before you, then roll it flat to uniformity. Notice the hot and burning sensation rising from the pit of your stomach.) 

She needs natural light, a nearby train station, an Equinox, a Trader Joe’s, a doorman who looks the other way. I need a walk-in closet for my collection of vintage bags and shoes, and refuse to walk up past two flights of stairs. Her budget larger than mine, timeline narrower. We look at rooms directly over dive bars and loitering stoop kids. We look at cramped, dark rooms redone after the war with puzzling configurations, owned by Hasidic men who won’t look us in the eye, even though they likely frequent the very massage parlors where my friends are employed. 

The apartment that we look at next is in Brooklyn, a newer build that boasts luxury finishes, plank flooring, high ceilings, two full baths, perfect for roommates or the modern working couple. Somehow, this offends me more than the units with doors painted over so many times they no longer shut. At our viewing, a woman opens the door to the living room, which looks wider than it does in the photos, fitting an L-shaped sofa, where a laundry basket sits, half loaded. The woman is in the middle of a phone call, eyes faraway, but gestures for us to come in. Still on the phone, she pushes aside a pile of unopened mail on the kitchen counter, and moves a mug to the sink, which clinks against a stack of dirty dishes. The corkboard on the wall by the fridge is bare, except for a destination wedding invitation. In the bathroom, bottled products line around the edges of a soaking tub, bras and underthings lay strewn on white ceramic. Sidestepping a mound of clothing on the bedroom floor, the woman ends her call, apologizes for the mess, and leads us down the iron steps winding to the basement. The light turns on to illuminate a desk to the side of the staircase. Just to the right, another bathroom, this one with much fewer products, and a closet-sized room with a tiny window. A bed, sheets unmade, a row of sports jackets hooked to the wall. 

I worry our skincare regimens won’t fit democratically in the medicine cabinet. I worry that my dog and C’s dog will not get along. Instead I say, “Ketamine therapy is advertised on the corner— Sinful!” and “One square block is lined with Just Salad, CAVA, Dig, and Sweetgreen!” C shakes her head and replies, “I know the universe brought you to my life for a reason, but god, sometimes.”

Standing under lights that cast shadows on stark walls and gray doors, and most unforgivably, the lines on my face, I know I will not be happy there, but the woman tells us she and her husband are moving to California, where she is starting a new job, and they had moved in early in the pandemic when the rent was set below market, and they needed someone to take over their lease, and they have viewings after us, so we have to decide quickly. I try to envision my life there: I’d tear down the chalk art wallpaper lining the kitchen backsplash, break up the stark whites with some prints, set leafy greens along the window sills. It wasn’t quite love, but it was real. C and I could even use separate entrances if we didn’t get along. Afterall, Covid deals were rarer than love.

---

While we wait to hear back, C stows all her things in a storage unit in Brooklyn and sets her eyes along the Pacific Coast, where she will drive down for two weeks. I decide to meet her in San Francisco, even though I had just flown there a month prior. Like visiting an old friend, San Francisco hits with nostalgia in territories I’m no longer familiar with. Is that taqueria on Chestnut and Avila with the chanterelle tacos still open? What’s in season now? Who are you seeing? What happened to the bushman by the wharf, the one that scared me shitless as a kid? It’s a shame, I liked him.

Before my retirement, I would go back often, to see family, old friends, new friends, clients. Switching between versions of me, always on the cusp of colliding. On the last trip I had dinner with my childhood friend M and the man she’d been dating for two months. They have gotten serious. He is handsome, the thick rim of his glasses framing a bright but serious face I can only describe as family-friendly. And though she has the same thick black hair, cheery smile, determined eyes, the rhythm in which they spoon crab fried rice in each other’s bowls has settled something in her. I’m happy for her. I can’t help but wonder about their sex life, but I don’t ask. 

Across a plate of wings, she said she only had an hour to spare before resuming her studies for the Bar, but she can make time for her oldest friend. When he inevitably moves to the topic of careers, I shift my weight in my seat. I looked over to M, who shrugged. “Oh, a bit of this, a bit of that. I’ll tell you some other time,” I said, lemongrass and chili flakes numbing my lips. Before we part, I hand her a small gift bag. A salty room spray and gold plated necklace from a local boutique, a consolation for missing her graduation earlier that spring. 

 The night I touch down in San Francisco again, C’s rental car gets towed. At the door the puppy bounds for me and my dog, front paws up my thighs, and though she is only ten-months old, the pitt and cattle dog blood in her nearly knocks us over. C, pacing back and forth across the living room, on the phone, orders her to get down, and she does. The dogs have met before, though she has almost doubled in size and has picked up a limp on her hind right leg from all the travel. That night we all share a bed for the first time, one dog resting in the crook of my arm, sniffing, huffing deep, the other, at my feet. I dream of M and I waiting at the 27-bus stop across the now vacant Payless shoe store. It is a story M told over the table. In it, we are 11, she is confiding in me about her latest neuroticisms and I am telling her, you know what your problem is? You care too much what people think. In my dream I am echoed by a flock of pigeons and an old man throwing seeds at their feet, their hardened green droppings speckling the square. The buildings surrounding us begin to crumble. 

When I wake in the daylight, body heavy from lack of sleep, my nostrils are pricked and my throat is dry. I peel off the comforter that is now coated with wiry dog hair, and shuffle to the kitchen, where C is leaning against the counter, tapping her foot. She’s been up for a while, trying to pin down the pound in which the city has decided to stow her car. In the cold light of the open fridge I survey the contents: cold brew, nonfat yogurt, raw chicken breast, some bunches kale. I take the glass bottle of cold brew. C hands me a mug from the cabinet. She asks if I want collagen powder. I say yes. She unscrews the tub and spoons the white powder into the mug. The strong liquid soothes my throat.

“What are you going to wear today?”

I’m not sure yet, I say. I say I think I am picking up an allergy. “You know you can get shots for that,” she says.

When she leaves to pick up the car, I unzip my suitcase, picking out a green lacy dress. I expected to find her clothes hung neatly in the closet but all her things are still in their bags. Before I turn on the shower, I snoop the bathroom vanity to find more supplements, and surprisingly, a bracelet that I had made earlier that summer. In the group chat, plans were exchanged to meet in Europe for the Eras tour. I couldn’t make it, nor did I identify as a Swiftie, though we spent a day stringing bright colored beads into friendship bracelets to pass out at the show. This one spelled FLOP ERA. 

After I get dressed, I call an Uber to check in the hotel I’d booked a suite for a night, and begin the mental checklist as I had done so many times before. Draw curtains, check. Dim lights, check. Hide extra towels in the closet, check. Supplies in the nightstand drawer, check. N makes it to the hotel with minutes to spare, removes her black coat to reveal a black skirt that cinches her figure, black pumps. We don’t have much time to deliberate before there is a double rap at the door.

“Come in, come in,” I say, pulling the man in from the hallway.

 Today he’s dressed in a gray wool suit, a soft sided briefcase in hand. He steps in, the door to our suite softly clicking behind. I greet him with a kiss on each cheek. 

“Meet my favorite Italian,” I coo.

C, at my side, giggles in a voice I’ve never heard before.

“And this is my newest playmate,” I say, placing a hand on C’s waist.

He is a client I’ve known for years, who infamously staged an orgy for his 69th birthday. In private he has confided in me that he did not have fun at the orgy, that it was just a compulsion of an aesthete. He places his briefcase on the credenza, unzips it, and brings out a bottle with a yellow label and a cork screw. “Did you know veuve means widow in French?”

C moves the stemmed glasses from the minibar over to the coffee table.

“The story is quite fascinating, actually. The woman who made this champagne famous was actually married into it. When her husband died, she became the first woman ever to become a champagne producer at 27.”

We listen with parted lips, perched on opposite edges of the chaise. I pat for him to sit between us and he does. C fills the glasses, giggling in that same unrecognizable voice when the liquid pools over the brim, dripping froth.

“Cheers to successful women,” I say, and we clink glasses. The taste, at noon, is the taste of white-flesh fruit and self indulgence. C refills our glasses. We must have three glasses before the fizzing in her eyes begins to dissipate, and he brings out an assortment from his briefcase. A heart-shaped flogger, cuffs, a spreader bar, a black blindfold. Black satin, leather, steel, spread out like a buffet. Crossing her legs, the hem of her skirt riding up, C looks up from her glass to me. I pick up the satin cloth and tie it around his head. C takes off the suit jacket, then unbuttons his shirt, which I carefully drape on the chaise. A smile in her voice as she leans in against his ear, “What is your biggest fantasy?” In the next hour, I’m careful not to glimpse at C’s face for too long. And reader, I’m sure you want to voyeur into the scene, but that’s between three consenting adults…. 

(If you are a woman who doesn’t know what you want, it is important to define your goals and milestones. For example, afterward when I ask C how our first duo went, she tells me I sounded like a pornstar, my fixed gaze depraved and wanting. I tell her it is my way of giving dignity to a man who every day gets closer to death.)

---

When C leaves to catch a last minute flight to Vegas for an overnight booking, I am tested with instructions. I am to feed her dog exactly three-fourths cup of special kibble twice a day, to take her out to pee no less than four hours in between, to under no circumstances allow strangers in the house, and to definitely not allow men in the house. I am tested when I get back from dinner at my parents, when I find the entry hall scattered with ripped up pieces of cardboard, poop bags, shoe inserts, a long trail of cotton fluff, a deflated looking eggplant plush toy. C’s puppy looks up at me expectantly, tail thwacking against the hardwood floor. I find my dog hiding in the corner, between the back wooden legs of the bistro table, expression blank. I kneel on the floor, arms extended. He stares back at me with the same inscrutable face. In the periphery of my vision, the puppy comes to push her wet nose against my outstretched hand.

I get back up from my knees, set the leftovers from dinner on the counter. I scrape the scraps into a dish and set it on the floor, near the dogs’ water dish. My dog pokes his head out from under the table, sniffs the air, picking up the scent of milk and mozzarella, which the puppy is currently inhaling. My dog manages to get a couple licks before the dish is cleaned. I take this opportunity to leash them for a loop around the block. 

That morning, at their go-to bakery in Chinatown, my parents picked up buns for my arrival. I fixed my gaze on the basket of buns, fielding my mother’s questions about the status of the construction of the home I bought during the pandemic. My father, with folded arms, eyes to the tv before him, unable to eat any, under the advice of his doctor. The shiniest of them, the corn bun, was a favorite growing up, but now, it is to be bagged for dog food. At my nonanswers, my mother had given up and asked about M. The girl who spoke at your middle school graduation, she said. My mother has met M once, maybe twice, in passing, but to her, she was forever the girl on stage. She is dating a data scientist, I said, picking at a bun. 

On the loop, the puppy leaps and snarls at passing skateboarders and cyclists, the sound of rubber on pavement winding her up to pull on the leash harder. Even with a limp, she is quicker than my dog, who is trailing behind to sniff and mark every pole. At the crosswalk she spots another dog, and I hold extra tight, her collar choking her whimpers as she tries to bound for it. By the time I get to the door, sweat lines under my breasts. I dig my jacket pocket for keys, and find it empty. I must have dropped it on the counter upstairs.

Something about being back in San Francisco makes me lose my sense of priorities. Maybe it’s the wind blowing in from the shoreline, but for all my time there, I can’t reliably tell a tourist directions to the nearest train station, nevermind remember my keys. I forgot my keys so frequently I had the locksmith on speed dial, right after my mother. I can’t live in San Francisco for the same reason my mother can’t remember M’s name: it reminds of my failures.

I had just assumed she’d told her boyfriend about me. My job, I mean. M had confided in her other friends about me. Whether I had minded, I never confronted her about it. I’d decidedly be brave and face every subtle look, remark. Before I moved to New York, M had called me in a state. Not only had she just learned of her father’s extramarital affair in the Philippines, her mother had known all along and kept it from her. We’ve seen each other through acne flare ups, uneven bangs, friend breakups, romantic breakups, but she did not know me as The Other Woman, the version of me that had little patience for such naivety. I lent her a copy of an Esther Perel book I don’t think she ever finished.

(If you are a woman who doesn’t know what you want, assign a timeline that makes sense for you. For example, when I was ten, when New York was still a fictional place from the movies and books I consumed to distract myself from turbulence at home, I wanted to be a barista and live with my best friend. It didn’t matter that I didn’t like coffee. My fantasies kept me fueled. For my parents these were the silly fantasies of a mei niu. A nowhere girl. A girl with no prospects. As if it weren’t cruel enough, mei niu happens to be a homophone for "beautiful girls". Naturally, I moved to the other side of the country.)

It was one of those nights the San Francisco wind whips my hair over my ears so hard, I don’t notice the low voice from behind at first. At the puppy’s snarl, I brace for her weight as she lunges to snap at the stranger’s heel. It is the security guard of the building, and he asks if I’ve forgotten my keys. I tell him I’m a friend staying at the place. He lets me in. As the elevator door closes he asks me which unit, and I manage to spit out the correct number. With the dogs in tow, I punch in the keypad, walk over the debris strewn across the living room, strip in bed under the sheets. Some time my eyes grow heavy and I drift off. When I wake, to the ringing of my phone, it’s a quarter to eleven, the checkout time. 

While C rushes back from the airport, I throw the towels into the washer, stack dishes in the sink, sweep the debris from the floor, throw everything into bags. I remember to grab the FLOP ERA bracelet from the medicine cabinet. When C arrives, all wild hair and mascara rings, we hauling our bags into the rental car. By the time we stock up on snacks and water at Safeway and pile back into the car, it is already 2 pm. We have to pass Monterey. We don’t have time to stop at the Madonna Inn in San Luis Bispo, like the itinerary she’d laid for us. 

I ask her how the overnight went. Good, she says, smoothing her hair. How did it go with the puppy? Good, I say. We check in on the apartment. The woman says she and her husband are in Italy for a wedding, and that the landlord has already okayed their move, but they need extra time to make arrangements. On the speaker a former Dancing With the Stars cast member is promoting her new book. She has founded a new somatic dance technique. C tells me I can switch it if I want.

Through a pass between two hills, breathing in the thick scent of dog, I must have let out my thoughts audibly. “It’s a sickness.”

“What is?”

“Wanting to live in New York. Piling on top of one another like that. Like a rat king.”

“Humans love to cuddle,” she says.

Sometime between the cliffs of Big Sur, before the road briefly leaves the coast for a few miles, passing through redwoods, we allow silence to fill the car. She puts on her podcasts, I rest my arms on the sill, watching the trees whizz by, and Santa Lucia in the distance. She drives steadily, slower where the road under us is rough and gets rougher as we pull into the unmarked parts. In the back the dogs are curled up, noses touching in sleep.

“The first time I met you I was so nervous.”

“Why?”

“I just thought you didn’t like me.”

Hands deep in my pocket, I run my fingers along the bracelet. I think about that time. I had moved to New York that year. I was single, and at a rooftop in the East Village that drained my psychic energy, and not just because it was next to a palm reader’s studio. I was at one of those parties everyone was expected to bring their own booze, drugs, vibes, which I guess is life, but not similar to a party I’d ever host. Had I known then, that New York might not be for me?

“You don’t care what people think about you, do you?”

There is a version of me that prides over the interchangeable bodega club sandwiches after drunken hours and the random encounters that come with it. There is a version of me that defends cranky delivery men, aggressive taxi drivers, even the predatory real estate brokers —all to live in the greatest city in the world!—but perhaps I no longer had it in me to propel through a throng of slow walkers on pissstained concrete, always feeling lost, watched, yet invisible, you know, all the cacophonic self-important feelings young people have. How can we ever be sure if we are making the right choices? Winding down the coast for 600 miles between San Francisco and Los Angeles, the window rolled down, blowing summer air over my face, I hold onto the FLOP ERA bracelet like prayer beads, our problems dwarfed by the mountains around us.