Read Online Some Girls: My Life in a Harem by Jillian Lauren - Free Book Online Page A

Taylor. She acted true to form and demanded a commission from my earnings. I acted true to form and agreed to give it to her.
     
    When I explained the situation to Sean, I got my first indication that my departure wasn’t going to be as seamless as I had anticipated. There were going to be casualties. Previously, I had simply let Sean assume I was still dancing at the club, but the deception made me feel like shit. When I took the job in Brunei, I knew I had to come clean.
    “I’m putting my foot down here,” Sean said calmly. “You cannot do this.”
    We were standing in his narrow kitchen, with the yellowed paint peeling off the walls and the chrome legs rusting out from beneath the kitchen table.
    “Are you going to give me twenty thousand dollars?”
    “Not everything is about money. You make enough money at the club.”
    The fact that he was right made me angrier, made me fight harder. The fact that I had lied to him about working at the club made me feel guilty and that made me fight harder still. Plus, I kind of did believe that my work “relationships” and my relationship with Sean were unrelated. They were light years away in my emotional landscape. I thought that he should understand and, furthermore, that he should agree.
    “I just want this money so I don’t have to worry about money for a while.”
    “That’s not how money works. More money gives you more to worry about, not less.”
    “This is a job, okay?” I explained deliberately, as if he had been struck stupid. “This has nothing at all to do with us.”
    Sean seemed to grow taller and broaden by a foot.
    “Do you know that you’re fucking insane?”
    “I am not insane. You’re a bourgeois, controlling asshole.”
    He looked like he wanted to hit me. I recognized the look; I had seen it in my father a thousand times. The difference was that Sean would never actually do it. My upbringing had led me to believe that this meant he didn’t love me enough. I had no such hesitation and I threw a plate at his head to prove it. He ducked and it hit the wall behind him, shattering. I immediately felt like an idiot. It’s so humiliating to clean up the shards of the dishware you’ve pitched across the kitchen. He looked around and sighed and I could tell he agreed with me; I should be ashamed of myself. He asked me to go.
    I didn’t understand why he insisted on standing between me and what I wanted. It was just an adventure, a stack of cash, a foreign prince. Couldn’t we give each other a little freedom? Meanwhile, I was the one who had gone through his letters, listened to his answering machine, excavated his apartment looking for relics of old girlfriends. I suppose I knew my stance was hypocritical, but I stood by it anyway. Because in the end I was going to do what I wanted to do. No one was stopping me from getting on that plane.
    I paused on the landing in the stairwell. Up a flight stood Sean in his doorway; down a flight was the door to Rivington Street. I really did love Sean. I just did it poorly.
    “Don’t leave me,” I said.
    “I’m not leaving. You are.”

chapter 7
     
     
     
     
    I spent my last thirty dollars on a cab from Beth Israel to Kennedy Airport. The international terminal was an erector set of beams and soaring ceilings that transformed me from a throbbing vein of guilt into an anonymous traveler adrift in the midday light. Walk through the doors of Kennedy and you’re swept into a liminal state, not exactly here anymore but not there yet either.
    I spotted my fellow traveler Destiny from behind as she waited on a long check-in queue. Her teased hair aspired to brush the skylights and she wore a spandex tube dress that shifted from neon pink to neon orange, like a tropical sunset. The top of the dress smooshed her boobs into one amorphous form. My mother says tops like that make your bust look like a loaf of challah. Destiny’s loaf of challah would have fed a developing country. I gave her a quick hug and