Pajama Girl

                I had just left my ex-girlfriend’s place to go home and get ready for work.  Over the months, I’d end up making many of these five a.m. trips across Portland.  I hated getting up that early, and I still do.  These little drives across the city before getting ready for work didn’t, technically make my mornings that much longer.  They just made me get up after the first sound of the alarm.  I hate, hate, hate getting up in the morning, especially at ridiculously early hours, and I’m notorious for hitting the snooze alarm until it stops going off.  Half the time, I just sleep through the alarm, anyway.

                But these mornings together had the additional benefit—apart from the, ahem, obvious one—of getting me out of bed quickly because one of the few things that I hate more than mornings is being a nuisance to the good lady whose bed I share when I have to get up earlier than she does.  Not that there have been many of these bed sharing ladies who get up later than I do, my ex-wife, an ex-live-in-girlfriend, and the ex-girlfriend of this story, Tamra.  I had a commute of over an hour, one way, for about 7 years, and I got up early in order to get home at a decent hour.    Right now, I just have my cat, and I don’t give a shit about being quiet for her.  This makes getting up especially difficult for me, even when I’m well rested and have my head on relatively straight.

                I would love to put some of this into an on-line dating profile—along with assurances that I have a great ass—but I don’t want to seem like I’m just looking for a woman to use her just to help me get up early.  I’d also want to have sex with her, and I don’t want to come on that strong.

                So, I was on Congress Street in Portland, Maine, heading toward my place, when a few short blocks from Tamra’s, I saw a woman leaning into the driver side window of a car in a convenience store parking lot.  As I drove by, she pulled away from the car and started flagging me down. 

                Duty was calling.

                Now, I wear many hats.  Man, parent, grandparent, writer, bureaucrat for America, retired soldier, local man-about-town, woodworker, taxpayer, citizen, lover of well-crafted cocktails.  I could go on, but the thing is, I don’t let any of these define me.  I’m just Ted Perrin.  My one, simple goal in life is to be a good man.  I don’t want to be perfect—anymore.  I just want to be a good man who works hard and does good things.  Naturally, I’d prefer to do all this as hilariously as possible, for that is my calling in this world.

                And this, this damsel in distress was an opportunity to do a good thing and to serve my community, for I am a gentleman, and Portland was my community.  So, I pulled over and rolled down my window.  A twenty-ish-year-old girl with dark, shoulder length, somewhat greasy hair leaned in.

                “Can you please give me a ride over by Franklin Tower?” she asked.

                Why, yes I could give her this ride!  I lived very close to Franklin Tower.  So close, indeed, that I could throw a baseball from the backyard of my apartment building and hit it broadside, if only there were no trees or buildings in the way and I could throw a baseball about three or four hundred yards.  But proximity to my home and to my route there were not important, for this was an opportunity to serve my city, and she, my fellow-Portlander, was in need of my service.

                “Uh, sure,” I said, unlocking the door.

                This young woman said, “Oh my God! Thank you!” and she climbed in.  She wore a nondescript hooded sweatshirt and plaid pajama pants.

                I pulled away from the curb, full of myself after deciding to give this young woman a ride home, the smallest token of appreciation that I could give to my community on this cold and dark morning.  I wasn’t going to go too far out of my way, after all.  But deep down, I decided to bask in my own glory for a block or so before asking her the address where she wanted me to drop her off, or what brought her to such low estate, bumming rides across town from strange men, so early in the morning.  I didn’t say it, but I felt this toward her, “Goddamnit, you’re welcome, young lady.” 

                She, however, did not wait for a block or so, “Can I ask you a question?” she said.

                “Uh, sure,” I said.  I can’t remember what was crossing my mind before what happened next, but I was probably thinking about how lucky this girl was that I had picked her up.  I’m so fucking wise, and I give great advice!  I couldn’t wait to bless her with my wisdom.

                “Do you mind?” she said.  This wasn’t exactly the line of questioning that I was expecting, not that I know what I would have expected.  She was leaning over the console, her right hand open and hovering over the imaginary border between the console and the driver’s seat.

                “Uh, no, I guess,” I said, unsure of what was going on, and how it may have been affecting my status as a pillar of the community.  “What—“I started, but she was too quick to act before my full question came out, “—do you mean?”

                Her hand went forth, darting well past the boundary of my personal space and into my nether regions, or, what I often call my “man area.”  As far as having a woman reach forth and have a fondle of my general penis and ball area and general crotch region, this was not, shall we say, my first rodeo.  However, I must concede, that this was the first time this had happened in my car, with someone whom I’d just moments prior met, and whose name I did not know, while I was sober and the car was moving.  New territory, indeed. 

                I don’t remember exactly what I said, but the sounds that came out of my mouth were something along the lines of this, “Wha. . . uh. . .wha. . . huh. . .why?

                Completely disregarding what was clearly a question, my pajama clad passenger and fellow community member said, “I owe my roommate some money, and I can do lots of sex stuff for forty dollars.  I’m really good at it.”

                “Wha, uh, what was that?” I managed to say, continuing my sentiment that had been, moments prior, stifled in apoplexy.

                “What’s wrong with you?” She asked.

                “You just felt my crotch,” I said, beginning to pull myself together after the violation.

                “I had to make sure you weren’t the police,” she said.  “You can’t do that to a cop.”

                For that moment, I believed her.  However, I have since seen through what seemed to be her ironclad logic.  One can do that to a cop.  The difference is that a cop might not be as caught off guard, leading him to play along, which would ultimately lead to the arrest of the young lady for, dare I say, the prostitution.   But I wasn’t that clear-headed.

                “What?”

                “Look, I just need money to pay my roommate,” she said.  “I promise I’m good at it.”

                I must admit, as a sales pitch, this approach was fucking brilliant.  I have no idea if she actually thought that a cop had to say, ”No, you cannot feel my genital region, for I am an officer of the law,” when she reached over and asked, “Do you mind?”  But I’m sure that many a man had, indeed, responded to her touch, getting the wheels turning and the thinking coming from the non-brain head.  I will admit that similar touches, in more tender and loving situations, of course, had, in the past, yielded such an interest from me.  However, I, as I’ve noted, am a gentleman and such random groping of my, ahem, “penis and balls” resulted in no such tumescence.   The only, shall we say, stiffening was in my spine.  So, mustering all the gentlemanliness in my being, I told her, “Look, I just left my girlfriend, and now I have to go to work.  I can still drop you off by Franklin Tower.”

                “Please,” she said.  “I really need the money, and I’m really good at it.”

                Therein we find the dilemma.  Do I forsake my commitment to monogamy, to being reasonably on time for work, and to the rule of law in order to help out a fellow citizen in such dire circumstances?  I mean, I could still be reasonably on time for work.  But then there’s that girlfriend, not to mention the moral and legal problem of paying cash money for sex stuff, no matter how good this young lady was at it.  What if I became addicted to how good it was?  There were a number of issues at play.  And sure, forty bucks isn’t exactly top dollar.  Would that even count?  I decided that it would. 

                “Yeah, I’m sorry.  I can’t.”

                “Please, I promise I’m really good at it.”

                “I can’t.”

                “Bring me back,” she said.

                “What?

                “Just bring me back.”

                “You don’t need a ride?” I asked, still having a difficult time wrapping my mind around all this.  I mean, a prostitute and a liar?  What kind of person had I let in my car?  “I, uh,” continued as I made a very illegal U-turn, partly going the wrong way down a one-way street, to bring her back.

                “What’s wrong with you?” she asked.

                I didn’t know what to say.  I hadn’t even begun to process the fact that she was a liar because I was still unable to process the concept of the whole groping my business area thing.  “I’m just flustered, I guess.”

                “What? Why?”

                Her groping of my tender bits had been such an affront to my gentlemanliness.  That’s all I could think about and all I could say.  “You grabbed my stuff.”

                “Ugh,” she blurted in disgust.  “Just let me out here.”

                I did, still a few blocks from where I’d picked her up, and then I made my way home and to work, not knowing that I’d never be the same, trusting soul I once was again.

                I debated whether or not to tell Tamra about my experience, unsure of how my story of picking up a prostitute right after I left her place might go over.  I decided to tell her.

                “Oh, that’s Pajama Girl,” she said.

                “Pajama Girl?” I asked.  Holy shit!  I thought.  She’s a super hero.  A sex stuff super hero with rock-bottom pricing!  And I had forty bucks to blow!

                “Yeah,” Tamra replied.  “I’ve seen her in the neighborhood, always wearing pajama bottoms.”  She also told me how she’d seen the person who she thought was Pajama Girl’s pimp and how he had someone over by Franklin Tower who kept an eye on her.  She told me she knew someone who knew someone who knew all this.   The second someone said that he took a ridiculous percentage of her sex stuff fees, giving her a mere pittance and some drugs in return for his protection.  Hey, people know people who know stuff, man.

                As for me, I’ve since broken up with Tamra and moved from Portland, so I probably won’t ever run into Pajama Girl again.  I’m just left with what will one day be an uncontrollable urge to go up to a young woman dressed in pajama bottoms and a hoodie in Walmart and say to her, “Really?” I’ll say.  “Really?  You get all dressed up like a prostitute to go to Walmart?  Really?”