Mask

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be. ~ Kurt Vonnegut (1922 - 2007)

On the day she was introduced to me by Larry, an ex-parishioner, she sat on my living room floor applying layer after layer of makeup as she told Larry and me of her life of woes. I did my best to keep my eyes off her 34 D, surgically enhanced breasts, a third of which were exposed by the top she was wearing. At some point she stopped caking on the makeup, pointed to the bottles and jars and tubes sitting on my coffee table, and said, “This stuff isn’t really me. I just work as an adult entertainer (my euphemism) and hustle guys. I am not really a whore (her word).”

She was, as I understood her words, simply dressing and pretending to be a whore. Unfortunately, in the two or so years in which she contacted me off and on, I came to learn the untruths she told that day. She would contact me to “rescue” her from some dire situation she had gotten herself into: a guy who had promised her $5,000.00 if she would live with him, or the time she was hiding out from the police because she had an outstanding arrest warrant pending in another state. I always came through for her—in the best way I could. And she realized that: I was the one male, she told me, who would help her and not demand sex in return.

No, she wasn’t really a whore. To the best of my knowledge, she never prostituted herself for money. (The guy who offered her the $5,000.00 never came through with the money; he did, however, provide her with a place to live. The "relationship" lasted less than two weeks before she telephoned me to help her "escape" from his abuse). She would, however, exchange sexual favors for a place to live—and for drugs of all kinds: whatever drug some dude had available, she once told me. But she never defined this as prostitution: she was just partying (again her word).

I suppose that we have to be very careful about the roles we play, as Kurt Vonnegut points out, what we pretend to be. When we act a role, we take on the elements of that role—and often we become what we pretend to be. She, who hustled so many dudes (again, her word: she could seldom remember a dude’s name), hustled and lied to everyone she encountered, including her parents and siblings and children, and those friends who really cared about her welfare. She also hustled and lied to herself.

Where and what she is doing now is beyond my knowledge. I have had no contact with her in more than a year. The last I knew of her, she was hustling a dude who was trying to hustle an insurance company for a half-million dollar settlement for a faked injury from an automobile accident. However, before she got involved in that hustle, I did manage to help her enroll and participate in a Methadone program. It is my hope that, at least, she no longer trades sex for drugs. And, perhaps—just perhaps—someday she will let down the mask she wears, stop pretending and be the person God created her to be. That is my prayer for her.