look what the cat dragged in (things appearing on my welcome mat)

I opened the door to a prostitute. I knew it the moment I saw her.

Actually, that’s a lie.

The moment I saw her I felt suspicious…

That’s a lie, also.

I heard a knock at the door, and ignored it. The prostitute knocked again. I felt uneasy.

I saw her through the peeping eye in the doorway. I was looking at her through a funnel. She was beautiful and hideous at the same time. Her hair was ginger-tinted blonde, uncombed and flawless. Her skin had no make-up covering it and it was mottled in an attractive way. Pale. But damaged; not English rose pale. Not hauntingly pale. Or ice. Just pale.

It was her legs. I saw her legs and I knew she was a prostitute. There were scars and freckles side by side sharing the awful space of her skin. She was standing there in a black coat in the freezing six degrees temperature and the bottom quarter of her legs poked out, unshaped, beneath her. Her legs were bare from the shin down and the same motley pale as her face. She was wearing ankle socks like mine - faded blue, thin - and canvas sneakers.

And she was a prostitute.

I knew this the instant my eyes fell on her legs. I caught her ankles as she walked towards the hallway, a prostitute in my kitchen. The curiosity in my stare tripped her up. I tripped up a prostitute in my kitchen with my eyes.

But it was her kitchen more than it was mine. It was hers before I even knew it was mine. My room was hers, too. She has done more in this room than I have. I pay $150 a week to live with the remains of a prostitute. There is a slutty skeleton in my closet.

She, however, makes $150 in a single hour. $150 for a few farts and groans, a ride with a stranger, for uncertainty. Yet I can afford to eat far better than she can.

If I were rich I would buy a prostitute. I would buy her off the street and make her sit in my living room. I would ask her to talk. I would teach her how to sing and show her this piece of writing. On cold nights when goose bumps appeared below her shins she could sing to herself and keep warm.

Would she rather my money? Or theirs? I get the feeling she’d prefer the latter. She’d rather be paid for uncertain familiarity than gamble the ambiguity of my purposes.

I talked to a prostitute on my doorstep, and let her into my home.


All of the above is true.