World Wide Jeb

Do You Have Something Against Prostitutes?

March 11, 2001

The morning after the Mardi Gras parade, I made a concerted effort to peel myself away from the comfort of a warm bed at 6am and crawl down to Oxford Street, to take a look at the wasteland of a party and resultant scruffy denizens.

Certain regions of the street were near inapproachable due to offensive odours, the likes of which could be produced only by excessive waste. Or alternatively, the aftermath of probable vomit produced by straight men who were a little unsettled by the sight of a leather slave master being driven into ecstasy by writing around on a giant paper mache testicle.

After wandering around aimlessly for a while, I decided to grab a coffee. After locating a coffee shop without militant lesbians milling around outside (like Rick the Pimp, I too harbour a little fear for the more overly butch stereotypical lesbian).

As I squinted and adjusted my eyes to the dim light within the coffee shop, a very sorry looking group of party people were quietly speaking amongst themselves. I was most tempted to screech ‘ONE COFFEE, PLEASE!’ just to witness the resultant groaning and cowering away from loud noise.

I ordered my beverage and sat down with it at an empty table. The place was quite crowded so it wasn’t long before someone else asked if they could sit at my table too.

‘Can I sit here?’ a bundle of muscles wearing little more than a child’s attempt at art-n-craft asked me.

‘Sure,’ I said, sipping my coffee and reading the newspaper. ‘Is that an accent I hear?’ I asked.

‘It’s a Chicago accent,’ he replied.

‘Oh, an American accent, right,’ I realised.

‘No, a Chicago accent,’ he shook his head as he emphasised ‘Chicago’. Rather than risk another incident similar to when I met Mark, I simply agreed that it was a Chicago accent.

A waitress approached us and Chicago man looked up groggily. ‘A hamburger with the lot,’ he barked. ‘But none of that purple plant crap.’

I raised my eyebrows at him. ‘Beetroot?’ I pondered.

‘Yeah,’ he confirmed. ‘I don’t know why you Oss-ies put that crap on a hamburger. I had a bit of a bad experience at a Burger King in the city yesterday.’

‘This place probably never served hamburgers so early in the morning,’ I spoke, a little amused.

‘Do you have a problem with hamburgers in the morning?’ Chicago started suddenly.

‘No, I just… I just haven’t had them in the morning, I don’t think. Not many people do in Australia, anyway,’ I cautiously stepped.

‘Well, nobody bats an eyelid in America,’ he arrogantly stated, and began to unfold a paper napkin. Considering he was wearing only a small pair of PVC shorts, the risk of oil burn from a dripping hamburger was quite high, I guess. Still, it didn’t solve the problem of where to tuck the napkin in.

Chicago appeared to realise this problem also, and after a moment of thinking, rolled the napkin into a little ball. It worried me that I couldn’t see where he put it and that he was moving around a lot under the table. There was quite a high probability it was stuffed down the front of his shorts.

‘What about breakast menus?’ I asked.

‘WHAT?’ Chicago’s head snapped from looking down his pants to meet my eyes.

‘Doesn’t McDonalds and all that have breakfast menus? I’m sure there wouldn’t be that many places in America that serve hamburgers for breakfast,’ I said.

Chicago pressed his lips together until they went white and appeared to be tiring of me quite quickly. Looking behind him at the man cooking his hamburger, his eyebrows raised in alarm.

‘Is that idiot baking my hamburger?’ Chicago asked me.

‘I don’t think so,’ I replied.

‘Is this an Australian thing?’ he continued.

‘We generally don’t bake hamburgers,’ I said. ‘Although I did bake some by mistake once when I’d just moved out of home.’

Chicago shook his head in confusion. I thought I’d try to confuse him a little more.

‘Recently when I was cooking hamburgers, I was looking for some cooking oil. I finally found a can of spray-on oil and sprayed the pan, then cooked the burgers. I started eating them and they tasted quite strange yet pleasantly fragrant.’

Chicago cocked his head.

‘It turns out I’d used Glen 20 instead of cooking oil.’

A puzzled look was returned.

‘It’s an air freshener brand.’

I began to wonder whether he was genuinely confused or if he thought I was a blubbering idiot.

‘You know… so they were Glenburgers.’

Chicago appeared to ignore what I’d said as he rested his head against his arm on the table and sighed.

‘I hope they’re not baking my hamburger over there,’ he repeated.

Rather than risking a paradoxial conversation, I elected to agree rather than recall another culinary disaster story.

‘I haven’t even had sex since I got here,’ Chicago lamented, absently tearing another napkin into shreds.

‘Surely that’s not the sole reason you came over here, though?’ I asked.

‘It was a pretty high on the agenda,’ he quickly replied. ‘I’ll have to go to a prostitute if things keep going this way.’

My eyebrows raised, unsure if this was in jest or not.

‘Have you got something against prostitutes?’ he demanded in an angry tone of voice.

‘No! No!’ I quickly replied. ‘I used to live in St Kilda in Melbourne, which is riddled with prostitutes.’ I quickly cursed myself for my choice of words.

‘They’re human beings too, you know,’ he barked, starting to get louder. Given that this was the first sentence of the argument that was audible to other people around us, it would probably appear that I was caught in a homophobically-tinged argument.

‘No, seriously, uh, I used to talk to them and everything,’ I explained. ‘They were all really nice girls and I used to have coffee with a girl who stood outside where I lived.’

‘I fucking bet you did,’ Chicago spat back. ‘Look at you here, trying to pretend to be gay and you’re just a scared straight boy who goes to prostitutes to hide being straight.’

For a sudden confused moment, I nearly told Chicago that he’d gotten the argument the wrong way around, when I realised that I wasn’t straight. This was enough to confuse me for a few more seconds and allow him to continue, assuming victory.

‘I bet you’ve never even had sex with a man,’ he spoke.

‘Now hang on, I am gay,’ I said. ‘So of course I’ve had sex with a man, but not a woman. Anyway, why would someone have sex with a member of the sex they’re not really attracted to?’

‘I did,’ he dismissively spoke as he lit up a cigarette. The way he so casually uttered this revelation made it sound as if it was quite fashionable to get all wonky on the sexuality side of things.

‘So how can you call yourself gay?’ I prodded.

‘You really do have something against prostitutes, don’t you?’ Chicago bizarrely turned the conversation back to ground I thought we’d already covered.

‘Are you a prositute?’ I asked, wondering if I’d gotten everything wrong.

‘My FUCKING GOD!’ he trilled, shaking in shock.

‘Sorry,’ I quietly apologised. ‘So let me get this, er… straight. For want of a better word.’

Chicago nodded, arms folded.

‘You’re gay. But you also had sex with women.’

‘A long time ago,’ he confirmed.

‘What happened?’

‘I’m not at liberty to tell you,’ he simply said.

I decided I’d already done enough probing into Chicago’s personal life and left it at that, but he wanted to continue.

‘After a horrifying experience with a quasi-female prostitute, I had counselling for strong feelings of inadequacy,’ Chicago rambled.

‘Quasi-female?!’ I couldn’t help saying in surprise. That was the strangest sounding term for what I assume is a drag queen that I’d ever heard.

‘Therefore, I have blocked the experience from my consciousness and have no recollection of any events that may or may not have taken place during such a difficult time in my life,’ he reeled off, obviously not for the first time.

A little unsure where to turn the conversation to, I pleadingly looked towards the waitresses, hoping his hamburger would be ready soon and that it wouldn’t cause him to have a mentally assaulting experience that would need to be blocked from his consciousness. I decided to go for what I thought was pretty safe ground.

‘So are you out here by yourself?’ I asked.

‘I’m here with my ex boyfriend,’ he explained.

‘Cool,’ I replied, and wished I had more coffee to drink, to fill in the awkward silences.

‘Well, he’s sort of half dropped,’ he continued, shifting in his seat.

‘Are you about to drop him, or you’re making up?’

‘We’re sorta 70% not going out,’ he acknowledged. I couldn’t even begin to imagine the bizarre mathematics behind this. ‘Maybe I won’t have sex,’ he decided. ‘I’ve had a little too much sun while I’ve been here and I haven’t been feeling that well a lot of the time.’

I was doing my best to ignore him and hoped he went away while I read the newspaper some more. Instead he took a great interest in my nose and stared quite rudely at it.

‘Is that pierced?’ he pointed at me, skinny finger jabbing in the air.

‘No,’ I curtly replied.

‘It looks like it,’ he said. I rubbed my nose.

‘That’s a pimple,’ I replied, hoping that would be enough to make him move away from me. Ridiculously, the pimple was towards the top of my nose and would have been a near impossible place to pierce.

‘People do get noses pierced there in Australia, though,’ I couldn’t help but say.

Chicago continued to stare at me while I read the newspaper. Being under his gaze for well over two minutes, I looked up at him with what I hoped was a very annoyed look on his face.

‘You want my stud ass, don’t you?’ Chicago whispered at me with his best attempt at a sexual look.

I coughed loudly and made my reply quick and to the point. ‘I most certainly do not,’ I said.

‘You want my Chicago stud ass,’ he continued, as if he hadn’t yet heard what I’d said due to time lag in a satellite interview. In fact, it was quite probable what I’d said hadn’t yet registered.

‘You’re right,’ I decided. ‘You’ve had too much sun.’

‘I want your ass,’ he suddenly turned the tables on me.

‘You don’t want my ass,’ I was quite to dismiss. ‘I have a woman’s ass.’

This brought a look of horror on his face and I could see experiences with quasi-females struggling to unroot themselves from his buried consciousness. I decided to play on this a little more.

‘My ass looks like a giant pear,’ I whispered to him, as if it was a deliciously dirty little secret.

Visibly white, Chicago jerked out of his chair and began to exit the cafe.

‘Big juicy pear!’ I called out for good measure.

He turned back to me and was about to say something which was probably very rude, when a waitress cut me off.

‘Here’s your hamburger!’ she happily announced. ‘You get a free small bowl of fruit salad with that, too!’

I couldn’t help but wonder if the salad contained pear as Chicago shrieked and stumbled down the street.