Tricks and Coffee

Five--err, Starbucks.
Originally uploaded by scribecalledsteff.

[Starbucks is relevant further into this posting. For now, though, consider this an extra special treat, for you--my little voyeuristic readers.]

When I was a kid, I was always aware of three books on my parents’ bookshelves. They were, in no particular order, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, and Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex *But Were Afraid To Ask.

I recently received some seven or eight boxes of books back that had been in storage. The copy of Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex was there, too. I grinned when I spotted it, and couldn’t help but flip through.

I came upon a chapter on Prostitution. They’ve laid the book out very handily. It has questions punctuating every chapter, and the question/answer that best caught my eye was:

What’s a street whore?
Usually an overage hustler, an alcoholic hooker, or one that’s on narcotics. They have become so dilapidated that they are willing to go for the price of a drink, a fix, or a cheap motel room. They don’t last long and are swept up by the police, usually within the hour.

Another class of prostitutes works the bars; these hustlers are carefully segregated by the class of the bars they frequent. The neighbourhood girls hang around cheap corner bars; the club girls make themselves available at selected night spots. The more expensive hookers choose the more expensive cocktail lounges in the fashionable hotels and motels.

If business is bad, the callgirl might work as a bar girl. Call girls don’t like to cruise the bars. They consider it degrading, but as one of them said with a wink, “A girl has to eat to live!

The whole book is this dated, if not moreso. But it’s great for a laugh. One of these days I’ll dig out my book on housekeeping from the ‘50s and really give you kids a laugh.

* * *

One of my bestest friends, GayBoy, works at a Starbucks.

Nay, did I say work? Indeed not. GayBoy assistant manages the lowly proletariats who man the cesspool of coffee.

Actually, he enjoys his work most of the time and likes the company. As do I. I think I get hundreds of dollars of coffee free per annum by way of the all-joed-out GayBoy.

What he’s not too crazy about, though, is the hood in which he slings caffeine.

Let’s call it the corner of “Crack and Whore.”

* * *

Enter Volume One of the Crack and Whorescapades.

My friend tells me all manner of stories from his work. Some cause a chuckle, but most are pretty tragic. I joke around a lot about dope, but when it comes to drugs, if some dude didn’t grow it while listening to The Grateful Dead and chanting passages of The Bhagavid Gita, then I don’t go there.

A lot of these streetworkers trip out on crack and meth. Whenever they’re tweaking, they need sugar fixes. Maybe there’s a reason my friend’s shop exceeds retail goals every month.

He tells me that when he’s pouring a caramel macchiato behind the bar, the hookers will drape themsleves over the bar as he squirts his syrup in their cups, and cry out, “More please! More please!”

When they’ve ordered a pastry, they’ll call out, “The big one! The big one! That one, there!”

They’re professionals, you know. So you know what this means, don’t you? The vote is in: Size officially does matter.