12:51PM - Saturday December 27, 2003
Whorehouse Chronicles Pt. 1
A lot of the itme I get asked, "So how DID you get a job at a whorehouse, anyway?" That part is actually about the easiest thing to explain about the whole thing. You see, it was a legitimate business, and my girlfriend at the time was the one who was the receptionist, and she got the job by answering a Manpower ad of all things. After we'd broken up and before she moved away to Montreal to work on her Masters, they needed a new receptionist. I have no problem with sex work, so on her recommendation I went and interviewed and got the job.

Strangely enough, it's the only job I've had where my hair had to be a normal colour and I had to take out my facial piercings. Lets just say the owner was a dink and leave it at that for now.

This job stole my life. I worked an evening shift which meant I never saw my friends. I had Sunday and Monday night off. Woohoo. It was however, under the table because the owner didn't want to put me on the books because he didn't really like me. It had other problems, too, such as all the rules that nobody told me about but the manager and owner expected me to figure out on my own. There were lots of little quirks. We'll get to those because I did a lot of trial and error learning.

I was also dating the EvilEx at this point, which made my life suck for completely different reasons. I was isolated by his emotional abuse, isolated because of my job--it was an odd period of my life.

Did I mention that I got the job three days into a month-long transit strike? I had to walk to and from work, and it was fifty minutes each way. 25 minutes to the bridge, 20 minutes to cross the bridge, and 10 minutes on the other side to get to work. Approximately. Thanks god it was summer.

Did I also mention that was the summer they were remodelling the bridge and it was closed at night? Yeah. There were shuttles over on the hour. I would finish at 3am, and then have to wait until 4am before I could grab a shuttle. Of course, someitmes I would phone the update line to see if the bridge was open and it wouldn't be, but when I waited around to catch the shuttle, I would arrive to find the bridge open and a long walk home waiting for me. Oh joy. Even after the transit strike was over, I still had to walk home from a whorehouse int he middle of the night because this city is lame and has no 24 hour transit service.

I drank a lot of chocolate milk and ate a lot of Kinder Eggs that summer while waiting for the shuttle. If I knew the guy driving the shuttle, he'd let me off at my street becasue we passed right by it on the way to the Halifax side of the bridge. Saved me a 25 minute walk, and only one did a driver give me trouble. We'd been chatting amiably, but when I asked to be droppe doff, which I only did if there was noone else in the shuttle, he bawled me out but good. For no reason, because he still let me off at my street. Fat bastard.

Let's just say that the cab company started to know who I was. And I also knew exactly how much it cost to get a lift home. I generally only took cabs on my last weekend shift which was an extra hour long. I was just too tired to wait around until the 5am shuttle. I just wanted to get the fuck outta there and get home to bed.

So now you have some background, the juicy bits will follow.

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