It had been a week since the handsome young stranger entered my life. Obviously, he was a storyteller of fables and fiction, for his literary masterpiece had never found its way to my so-called beautiful hands. What a shame. He was so good-looking and amusing. I thought of him often. He entered my dreams at night as I lay with other men who were not as desirable. I couldn't get Davy out of my mind. For the first time in my life, I anticipated wanting to see someone again for reasons that had nothing to do with payments received.

This evening, I arrived at the club at the usual time of 9:00 p.m. Again, the place was empty, for the evening was young. Mickey waved me over to the bar, where he talked with the bartender, Pete.

"Sugar! Come over here a second,” he said.

As I approached, Mickey held up a single sterling rose. Oh, how I love sterling roses. It was a pale blue color without thorns, which made it like no other rose by comparison.

As we sat at the bar, the young man poured himself a glass of wine and offered me the same. I had to reject his offer, for the girls at the club were not allowed to drink while on duty. The bartender would serve us a special drink called a '7'. It was a 7-7 without the Seagram’s.

Instead, a hint of tea was added for color, and the john was charged $22.00 for what he assumed was an alcoholic concoction. I would collect the swizzle stick from each drink throughout the night and be paid $10.00 for each turned in at the end of my shift.

As our glasses touched, the sound rang lightly between us — fragile as the moment itself.

“How do you do?” I asked, slipping automatically into the polished cadence I reserved for first encounters. “Would you like to be friends?”

There was a season of my life when I learned how easily a person can disappear while still being seen by everyone. A stretch of years when my life looked far more glamorous from across the room than it ever felt from within it.

Under amber lights and the forgiving haze of cigarette smoke, I became whatever the evening required — warm laughter, softened eyes, a promise I had no intention of keeping.

That was what I was paid for. Not my body, not entirely. They paid for the illusion that someone was waiting for them.

At seventeen, I was still a virgin who flinched when someone looked at me too long. I learned some very hard truths, though no one pulled me aside to explain them. There was no ceremony, no gentle revelation. Just a slow accumulation of evidence that became impossible to ignore.

Funny how life negotiates its terms.

Love, it seemed, was meant for the beauty queens.

The girls with luminous skin and effortless laughter. The ones boys circled instinctively, as if drawn by a force older than reason.

The rest of us learned by watching.

It was 1968, and I was lonely in the particular way that only adolescents can be: surrounded by people, yet entirely unseen.

Westchester, New York, was the kind of town that rewarded polish and punished deviation. Lawns were trimmed, reputations carefully curated, and daughters quietly measured against one another like entries at a county fair. I never placed.