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Welcome to Fiction Friday and my SpoonRiver of Houses. Come back each week as another house takes the stage. http://fiction-friday.com will take you to the complete list of Fiction Friday Houses.
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You might turn and look away in disgust but really, that is your problem, not mine.
I was a Victorian style house located in town, down the block one way from a church, not just any church, it was a beautiful cathedral type church.
But, I’m here to talk about me.
Up the block on the other side were bars, a shabby hotel and a boarding house.
People from all those places, yes, especially the church crossed my front porch. Clients of all types, big, round, disgusting and noble came to visit. Women of all types worked here to serve those men. Did you know we sometimes served women, too?
Sure, towards the end we had to hide behind a massage therapy business, but still, everyone had to know. Did you know that even women come for a little rub down?
There was always an inborn sort of classiness within my walls.
In the kitchen, much like any boarding house, someone was always cooking a cleaning. And not all the women who stayed here were in the business. Some were here to hide out from some trouble or another. More than one baby took his first breath here and more than one was ended here.
Some women came to hide from dangerous husbands and judgeful families and yes, some of them came to learn the trade.
The ladies here were not your crack house skanks, they had to be clean to be here, even before the laws and taxes and regulations. A lady here had to have a certain class. She had to help out with the cleaning and cooking and was pretty much like a housewife in her duties, except the part about trading husbands and sleeping with men who should have been home.
Colleen was the first one to bring toys into the house. She was one for inventive fun. But, then it was Colleen who got kicked out when a church guy chose her and was appalled by her trinkets. I could hardly believe they let her go.
Soon it was expected to have some costumes, a lot of theatrics and drama. Guys like to pretend, well, except the frumpy ones that come out of the church.
Brenda was the first one to do the Lady Heather routine with the bondage and the real man’s games. She pretty much took over. She brought in more ladies and the older ones, the straight up ones that liked to get the job done, they left.
The new ones in leather and later latex were self renewing, they stayed a shorter time on the job but made some pretty good money.
The leather ladies drew too much attention though and soon had to shut down the works and pretend to be a boarding house.
Toward the end, like I said before, these walls enclosed a massage parlor and the ladies were subjected to health codes and regulations. The customers changed to ordinary people and the cash flow changed a bit as well.
I was closed down for about a year before coming back, not as a cat house or a parlor, I became a bed and breakfast of all things. There is a gift shop tucked away in the corner room down stairs, filled with toys I don’t even know the meaning of.
They are bought discreetly by married couples, dating couples and cheaters.
You can take the cat out of the cat house but isn’t it just a rose by any other name?