The parlor is much smaller than I had expected. When you walk through the door you're met by a digital jukebox on you left hand side, and as you gaze through the narrow length of the parlor in the very back your eyes meet a dance floor with a brass stripper pole. A sign hangs on the mirrors behind the pole that reads: Dance At Your Own Risk.
This narrow walkway through the parlor is flanked by the bar to the right, to the left a row of high bar tables and chairs waits, each seat almost facing the bar. The driver leads me past the bar, past the VIP Safari room and into the kitchen. He drops my bags and disappears for a moment, a girl walks past and into the office, then another girl appears and quickly descends down into the lower hallway.
An office attendant walks up to me and tells me to take a seat, she calls through her intercom and pages for a girl that will be my big sister. They confirm with the manager that I need to be put back into B hall.
My big sister appears and greets me with a smile, she's a voluptuous Iranian woman with long black hair. She takes a packet of paper work from the office and leads me on a tour of the house as we drag my bags along behind.
The halls filled with rooms sprout from the main parlor and seem almost labyrinthine. In the very back B hall my room is a tiny square with indoor/outdoor carpet. The queen sized bed sits under a window and a small sink faces it on the opposite side of the wall. The real bathroom is across the hall. In the room it feels glacial, the air conditioner on this hall goes full blast day and night. I would later find out that the climate control in the entire house is an ongoing battle that is never won.
All together the room looks like a Motel 6 room reject. My big sister whips out the packet and begins reading the house rules out loud, each one seems pretty basic, and not hard to follow, the packet is thick and filled with forms that require me to sign my real name and my new working name.
We're half way through when a bell rings, my big sister jumps up and runs out of the room, a few minutes later she returns out of breath.
"You're going to have to run to make those line ups, I don't know why they put you all the way back here." she says as she plops down onto the bed and resumes reading through the packet. Another bell goes off, and the process is repeated several times over before the house finally grows silent again.
On this first day the house seemed odd and almost misplaced in time. Its aura wreaks of better days long since past, but it still feels cozy and filled with potential. I watch from the kitchen as another line up is called, I try and peer past the bar to see the process and it feels distant, but the reality slowly seeps in that it will be less than 14 hours before I get to join them.
Monday night in the house is pizza night, my big sister sits with me in the kitchen and politely asks me questions about where I've come from, why I chose to come here, and probes me for potential prices that I will be giving to clients in my negotiations. She tries to help me out as much as possible, I can tell she's trying to ease me into things.
When the pizza arrives girls buzz through the kitchen, it's the cooks day off and many of the ladies whirl around not noticing me until they catch a glimpse at my teal hair.
The most commonly asked questions in my first week as a hooker are: So, why green? and, What's your name again?
Some seem confused as to why I would have teal hair, they make helpful suggestions on which colors would probably make me more money. I explain on numerous occasions my reasoning for the hair color and that my name is also my pen name.
"So, why Juniper?", they ask, and often they call me Jupiter on accident. This doesn't bother me, because Jupiter is just as pretty sounding I tell them. Some of them tell me that I'm very pretty and that I will make money because I'm young and white, and then they ask me to consider changing my hair to blond because its a big seller in this industry.
Around 8pm I wander back to my room, and I put on three layers of clothes, my room is now in the sub-zero temperature range, and I pass out.
My first day was exhausting, not physically, but mentally. I processed vast amounts of information in less than six hours, and I had to be up by 8 am to be driven to the sheriffs office and receive my work card. I believe that at this point in my journey I look young and naive to all the other ladies, most have had previous experience working illegally, or have been in the brothels for many years. Most of all as I fall to sleep for the first time in the house, I think about how I would have never imagined I would tuck myself into a brothel bed, and fall asleep so soundly because it already felt like home.
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