The Seven Veils or How I Became a Gigolo

I picked her up at the opera house. She was in her early 40s and elegantly dressed but a little plain for my tastes. She was, however, personable and chatty. She had just seen the version of Strauss's Salome where Maria Ewing did a complete striptease during the dance of the seven veils.

The performance was part of the schizophrenia of the period. At the same time as the SFPD was cracking down on strip clubs, pornography was moving into higher culture. Samuel Ramey had recently played the tittle role in a production of Mefistofele where the entire cast of around 150 tore off their clothes for the finale. Of course looking at those humongous naked bodies writhing and flopping about on the stage, it was easy to imagine that you were seeing Hell.

The lady and I agreed that Ewing's dance, while erotic, was tasteful and obviously aesthetically justified by the plot.

When we arrived at her small mansion in Pacific Heights, she went through her purse several times before turning to me with embarrassment and saying, "I'm sorry. I must have taken the wrong purse. I don't seem to have any money."

"Well," I told her, "I guess that leaves me with no choice but to call the police."

"A man with a sense of humor," she said as she opened the door and started to step outside. She looked back over her shoulder adding, "come inside if you're afraid I'm going to run on you. You can use the bathroom if you like."

Her bathroom was not only bigger than my studio apartment, it was cleaner. When I stepped out into her huge kitchen, the lights were dimmed. She was standing in the middle of the room wrapped in several, thin, ankle-length shawls and nothing else. I didn't count them but she looked like a woman with a fetish for detail so I assume that there were seven.

She turned on the Dance of the Seven Veils and proceeded with her own take on the piece. While not as professionally accomplished as Ewing's, her dance was more erotic - obviously justified by the aesthetics of the moment.

When she got down to three veils, I rhetorically asked , "You don't intend to pay for the ride do you?"

"That depends," she said slowly spinning and adroitly flipping a shawl around my thighs, "upon how good it is."