This may be putting the cart before the horse, though. She turned tricks because she was poor and it was a way to make money. But not every person who needs money is going to sell their ass or pussy.
No. Something has to bend you that way first. Add to that an example, an introduction, or a possibility, and you have all the necessary components. Motive, means, and opportunity.
My theory is that there was a damaged sexual component in her psyche somewhere; an uncle, her father, a family friend . . . somebody fucked her up. And most likely when she was very young. I’m sure she was always pretty, precocious, and smart; her consciousness lit up as far back as five or six years old. An easy and enticing prey for the disturbed and deplorable individuals who would exploit an innocent and defenseless little girl. There is no limit to the evils of the world and if you can imagine it, it’s been done. And worse.
What I came to learn was that her sister Sonia (or Sanoo as she was called by her family) was her entry point into prostituting herself. Veronica’s sister introduced her to three or four men (it wasn’t any more than that) Sanoo had already tricked with. Veronica said they were men who worked at the newspaper with her sister. This was the big factory press where they printed the newspaper, not the offices where they wrote it.
Sanoo was a beauty like her sister, but where Veronica was slim and petite, Sanoo was curvy and voluptuous. She had worked at the newspaper for a few years and guys were always asking her out on dates. A lot of these men were married. Sanoo started sleeping with a few of her suitors and if they were generous enough she made it a semiregular thing. One or two of these guys would give her number to a friend and eventually she became popular enough to quit the newspaper, making the same amount of money working a fraction of the hours.
When the law of diminishing returns asserted its inevitable influence, Sanoo’s dates would ask if she had any friends she could introduce them to. She couldn’t come up with any girlfriends she thought would be interested in such an arrangement, but when she mentioned she had a sixteen-year-old sister who was as pretty as she was, well . . . it was music to their perverted ears.
Barry was a friend of one of the newspaper guys and a chef in a fancy steakhouse down near the fish market on the East River. (Veronica would later reveal that in truth Barry was a short-order cook in a shitty coffee shop near the ferry.) Barry lived with his mother on Morton Street in the Village in a fifth-floor walkup that had no doorbell or buzzer out front. You had to call him on the phone and then he’d throw keys out the window in a little white glove that “could have been peeled off of Mickey Mouse’s arm.” He had lived in the little apartment with his mother his entire life.
Mama Ro, as she was called in the neighborhood, would often travel to Schenectady to visit her sister over long holiday weekends like Memorial Day or Labor Day. Barry would take advantage of this temporary freedom by having a girl climb the five flights of stairs and pay him a visit.
Veronica said that Barry had a strange relationship with his dog, an old, unkempt bitch named Duchess. While Veronica would be getting dressed after doing whatever it was she did with Barry, she would watch as Duchess curled up next to her naked master. She said that Barry would stroke Duchess around her breasts (do dogs have breasts, or are they just considered nipples?) and between her hind legs.
“Just like the way he was stroking my body a few minutes before,” Veronica added.
She went on to describe how Duchess began to tremble and breathe heavy and rapid, her tail wagging stiff and wild. And all the while Barry’s glazed eyes would be fixed on Veronica as she zipped her jeans and put on her shoes. She said it looked like Duchess would be Barry’s next lay as soon as she got paid and walked out the door.
I told her I was surprised that despite the debauched scenario she described, she returned to do more business with the twisted freak.
“When I write my book it’ll all be worth it. I may even say that Barry would bring the dog into our sexual encounter in some debauched Roman-emperor kind of way.”
I told her I didn’t think there was any possibility of the Barry/Duchess romance being anything but debauched, and that it needed no embellishment at all if she wanted to include this tale of animal love in her collected stories of woe and misfortune.
“Don’t diminish my truth.” It was something she said often, like a mantra or an adopted maxim that you’d write on a piece of paper and tape to the mirror. “Okay? Don’t diminish my truth.”
“I’m not diminishing it at all. In fact, I’m encouraging you to stick to your truth, that your truth needs no dressing up or down, no manipulation necessary.” I said it with a slightly sarcastic inflection, a tone I regret to this day.
“I told you when we first got to know each other that I’m a nigger of the world, I live outside of society, and I have no tolerance for anyone who judges me. Did you forget I said that?”
“I’m not judging you at all.” I was lying. “I am judging Harry or Barry or Larry or whatever the dogfucker’s name is.”
She stared at me cold and hard.
