On Friday, Rachelle and I went over to Center Island to have dinner with her aunt and uncle. As we sat by their slip, a large powerboat pulled up next to us. Music that sounded like a typical FM rock station, blasted from the deck. Men, who were getting older then they would have cared to admit, stood around in baseball hats drinking cans of Heineken, while all around them youngish women in bikinis made a display out of being youngish women in bikinis.
Whispering broke out along the shore. Apparently, once a year, one of the residents of the marina throws a little party for friends of his in the porn community. This man, who makes corporate videos for a living, was loved by everybody at the marina, and somewhat apologetically, would ask their permission for his one, somewhat scandalous, day of partying each year.
However, it was clear that everybody around the place was enjoying the spectacle. Wives playfully punched their husbands in the arm, and the husbands, in turn, pretended to watch the women with more interest than they likely had. The truth, as you might imagine, is that bottom-rung players in the porn industry are not radiant with beauty. When you looked at them, you saw tattoos and sadness, women who had run out of ideas a long time ago. The men seemed piggish and blunt, as if they were more interested in making other men jealous, than they were in spending time with these women. In short, they treated the women like property, and the women acted like they were property.
One woman, who was all fake tits and ass in her little bikini, hollered and shouted from the deck in a hard partying whiskey voice. Her face was as deeply tanned as it was weathered, and she seemed just a shade older than she was supposed to be.
Somehow, she didn’t seem to belong to the clique of porn actresses, as much as she seemed to be trying to fit in. The other women stood by the picnic table, drinking and chatting, aloof, while she roamed about, trying to be the life of the party. Eventually, she staggered over to our area, asking if she could pet our dog. Of course, we let her, but we all sniggered, cruelly imitating her scratchy, slurry speech—Can I pet yer hamster? Ees so friggin’ cute!—behind her back.
When she returned to her party, we were told that she was not a part of the porn community, but was a woman who hung-out at marina cleaning boats. Men, usually single men, would hire her to scrub down their boats. And so, each week, or in some cases a couple of times a week, she would swab the decks of certain boats. She would then go below deck, and later, the men who had hired her, would arise with her, giving her wads of cash that she would stuff into the pockets of her cut-off jeans. A prostitute, not an adult film world actress.
In short order, everybody in the group, save this one woman, headed across to the beckoning light of the city, presumably to rip it up in clubland for the rest of the night. Alone, in the gathering dark, she began to diligently scrub down the boat after the afternoon party. It might have been one of the saddest, most lonely thing I have ever seen.