Big Momma’s
My first job after I turned sixteen was at a family-run pasta place called Big Momma’s. I was hired as a dishwasher/busboy but was promoted to waiter within a week after the waitress quit. There was a small dining room with a bar in the back. Most of the time it was just the bartender, the cook, and me. On the busy nights, I got some help from Tonya, the owner’s daughter, who was a year older than me and had the biggest breasts I’ve ever seen on a teenager. But she was really bossy and spoiled and I enjoyed seeing her more when she wasn’t in the kitchen yelling at someone.
There was also a really nice waitress named Deanna who was nineteen and treated everyone like she was their mom. She was going out with Jim, the main cook. Jim was tall and wiry, with shaggy hair, a big nose, and a perpetual five o’clock shadow. He must have been ten or twenty years older than Deanna. We had a cassette player in the kitchen and we took turns playing music on it. I would bring in tapes by groups like Cameo and Midnight Star and Jim would play Judas Priest or, oddly enough, James Taylor.
Jim and Deanna were a good couple though, and they lived together in a cluttered apartment close to my high school. They invited me over to their place a few times and Deanna even set me up on a blind date with one of her friends. The friend was cute, like Valerie Bertinelli, and I was thrilled when we chose to go to a haunted house. That meant my date would probably get scared and grab my arm or even hold my hand. Of course, that’s exactly what happened, but I probably blew any chances with her when I tried to kiss her later in the 7-Eleven parking lot.
One of my favorite people at Big Momma’s was Joan, a frizzy-haired bartender who would sneak into the kitchen several times each night and fish the biggest chunk of Roquefort out of the blue cheese dressing. I thought it was gross at first, mainly put off by the stink, but I learned to love it soon enough. Each night I worked with Joan turned into a blue cheese fishing battle.
By the summer of 1985, after I had graduated high school, I was dressing a little more strangely than most Tri-Citians. I would wear double-breasted dress jackets that Mom sewed for me, combined with stretch pants, Beatle boots, earrings, and shiny broaches. The boss eventually called me to the back and hinted that I was going too far, and without giving me a second chance, they fired me. When I got home that night, I tried to feel good about not having a job but I ended up on Mom’s lap, embarrassed and crying.
Cruising
I wouldn’t say I had a prostitute obsession, but when I was sixteen—just old enough to drive my Chevy Malibu—Maurice and I would cruise around east Pasco, looking at any cheap hooker the streets had to offer. We did so in silence, an unspoken pull toward what our small town had deemed “the ghetto.” The first few times we trolled this area, we just looked around, our imaginations coloring in details about every abandoned building and the discarded pieces of torn clothing that littered the cracked sidewalks in front of them. We eventually got comfortable enough to wonder aloud about how much the women charged for their services. We’d pull over and ask them sometimes, careful to strike some sort of balance between businesslike firmness and nonthreatening friendliness. The girls humored us, talking dirty and sometimes letting us touch their breasts. We must have looked out of place on those streets, two puberty-wracked white boys—me with my pimples and braces, Maurice with his red hair and freckles. Both of us were still reluctant virgins posing as street-smart kids.
There was one thrilling night when we actually let two of the girls in my car. They wanted a ride to a hotel that was on the other side of the tunnel that separated Pasco from east Pasco. Maurice and I listened in on their conversation during the ten-minute drive. They talked about clothes, cigarettes, and carrying guns. When we let them out, they walked to our windows and kissed us like we were their pimps.
This was around the time I started working at Big Momma’s, where I made anywhere from ten to thirty dollars a night in tips, which I carelessly spent at the record store. I hadn’t had a girlfriend yet—in fact, I had barely kissed a girl. But I was eager to have sex and had, coincidentally, been training for such an event for at least two years, masturbating regularly with my mom’s back-rubbing vibrator, timing the seconds it took for me to ejaculate, like some perverted scientist.
I had no prospects for girlfriends. I was shy and anxious and probably a little gross. But the prostitutes were hardly out of my league. Most were not pretty at all and actually rather unhealthy looking. If they were better looking, they probably would have been working in Seattle or Portland or even Spokane. That’s what I came to reason. Still, they were women who had sex a lot and, I imagined, could show me a thing or two. I wasn’t picky. I was desperate.
My sexual yearning came in two dominant fantasies: One was romantic love. I listened to sappy love songs by the likes of Lionel Richie, Peabo Bryson, and Luther Vandross and I cried my eyes out, wondering if I could ever experience the depth of love in their music. When they sang about happiness or heartbreak, I felt that happiness or heartbreak, minus the actual presence of a female. The other fantasy was simply fucking. As in, fucking anything that moved. Humping, screwing, boning. You get the picture.
I began forsaking Maurice and going out by myself. He was my only real hanging-out friend at the time, so it was hard to pull off sometimes. I’d get off work and call him to tell him I was just going home or had to work late. It felt a little like I was cheating on him.
One night I decided I’d had enough of my virginity. I hit the gloomy streets of Pasco, my Malibu crawling at a steady twenty miles per hour. There was no one out. I stopped at a taco stand and ate something disgusting, killing more time and shaking with nerves. That’s when I saw her, coming around a corner a block away. I jumped back in the car and drove over. For some reason, I couldn’t just walk down there. I had to have something to hide behind, a getaway. The car would make me feel like I was somewhat guarded and safe.
As I got closer to her, I realized I didn’t have a choice. She was the one. I wasn’t going to wait any longer. I rolled my window down and asked her the question. She gave me a couple of options, like a menu or a list of the nightly specials. Fifteen dollars for a hand job, twenty-five for straight sex, and fifty bucks for a suck and fuck. Apparently, it was a bargain night. I told her I wanted what she called “straight sex,” which sounded like a good introduction for a beginner like me. She got in my car and gave me directions to a motel. She was probably in her midtwenties, short and a little chubby. Her dark hair was styled unattractively and she looked bored. If this were a girl I saw at a school dance I wouldn’t have looked at her twice. Her name was Greta.
When we got to the motel, she opened the door to her room and went immediately to the bathroom. She told me to take out the money and get undressed. I took off all my clothes except my boxers and socks. She came out of the bathroom, wearing a bathrobe, and walked to the bed. She gave me a condom and told me I had to put it on. She lay on the bed and opened her robe, letting it stay under her like a beach towel. Her body was unfit and slack. More like a trucker’s body than a prostitute’s. I didn’t feel any hot sexual vibe from her at all, more like a “Can I smoke my Marlboro yet?” kind of vibe. I started to have second thoughts and wanted to renegotiate the price. I told her I was nervous because it was my first time, maybe hoping for some sort of discount. Her demeanor softened a little and she started cooing warm sentiments to me as she touched my penis with her hand to make me hard. I struggled with the condom, afraid I’d lose my erection if I didn’t get it on fast enough. I had experimented with a condom just days before, putting one on and jacking off with it. My hand smelled bad for the rest of the day, but I couldn’t help instinctively sniffing my fingers when no one was looking.
I got on the bed and fell on top of her. I could barely feel myself inside her. I wasn’t really certain I
