Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman Read Online Free PDF Page B

said.
    She went on, “It’s not sex for money that makes prostitution disgusting. It’s the opportunity for blackmail, for disease, for cruelty. It’s dangerous because it’s a secret.”
    â€œI guess the secrecy is inherent,” I said. But I was mistaken. Our city held one former prostitute who cared nothing for secrecy, but I hadn’t found her. She called the station. “I have something to say about whores,” said her message. “My name is Muriel Peck.”
    Muriel Peck worked in a health program for poor people and in her spare time was an activist for prostitutes. She was willing to come to the station and discuss her history and views, so I canceled the criminologist I’d scheduled for the last session. A dark-skinned black woman wearing blue jeans, a purple corduroy jacket with a hood, and hiking boots, Muriel Peck arrived carrying a large blue-and-green bag, which turned out to contain rag dolls about two feet tall: one pink, one brown, and one green. She propped them on chairs. They were whore dolls, she explained. She’d made them. One doll was dressed in a short, sequined skirt and a bra top, another wore overalls, and the third—the green one—a long, old-fashioned skirt with a bustle. There was no way to know they were prostitutes, except that they wore cardboard labels: “Lady of the Night,” “Woman of Ill Repute.” The point was that women of all sorts have become prostitutes.
    â€œBeing a whore did not make me somebody who was only fit to die,” Muriel said confidently on the air. Her graying hair stuck out from her head a few inches in all directions, which made her head look big and led the eye to rest on her face, which was still but intense, with prominent nose and cheekbones, and hooded eyes; you looked to make sure she wasn’t angry. “That’s how people thought for centuries, you know—not just about whores but about any poor girl who went to bed when she wasn’t married. Italian girls, Jewish girls. I am part Italian and part Jewish. Black skin is like chocolate ice cream. Any flavor the factory messes up, they add chocolate and everybody says it’s chocolate. That’s why you sometimes find a strawberry in chocolate ice cream.”
    â€œOh, that can’t be right,” I said.
    â€œOh, yes. One fourth Jew and one eighth Italian. I can show you the family tree.”
    â€œThat’s not what I was doubting!” I said. “I’m one fourth Italian, too.”
    â€œThere you go.”
    â€œThree quarters Jewish.” We seemed to have changed the subject. Listeners probably thought they’d somehow tuned in to two ladies in a living room.
    â€œWhy did I start?” Muriel said, though I hadn’t asked. “I was poor. Times were bad. The factories seemed worse.”
    â€œBut wasn’t it dreary, being a whore?”
    â€œYes.”
    She now worked in organizations that fought to decriminalize prostitution. “Some of us want to make it legal,” she said. “Some just want to take away the criminal penalties, so a girl can go to the doctor without thinking next stop is the jail.”
    She’d quit being a prostitute after two years. “I was lucky. My pimp died.” Eventually she’d gone to a community college, and later she’d studied nursing. She wanted to talk about the dolls, and I tried to describe them. “All sorts of women,” she said again. “Shakes up your preconceptions.”
    â€œEven green women,” I said.
    â€œEven green. I make baby dolls too, for kids. Some kids love the green dolls, the lavender dolls. Some scream if you show them a green doll.”
    â€œThe babies are not whore dolls,” I said.
    â€œNo indeed. No baby whores. Child prostitution is one hundred percent evil. Because no child chooses that. Even if they think they choose, they don’t choose.”
    â€œSo adult