City of Desire: A Novel - Hardcover

Morrison, Sidney

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1940468493 ISBN 13: 9781940468495

Publisher: Riverwood Books, 2017

Synopsis

City of Desire is the deeply researched but fictionalized telling of the beautiful, smart, and tragic Helen Jewett―New York City’s most desired prostitute in in the 1830s. This compelling debut novel by Sidney Morrison is based on the historical facts of Jewett’s life and murder, and the subsequent trial of the accused killer. 

Helen comes from poverty, but her father hires his precocious child to a respected judge as a servant and companion to his children. She captivates him, and the judge creates an avid student of literature, history, politics, and sex. Her intellectual and sexual development leads to scandal, and she is dismissed.

Seventeen and “ruined” without references, Helen lands in New York City and turns to prostitution for survival. Helen attracts the attention of reporters, moral crusaders, as well as the rich and powerful who seek her services in the best brothels in town. Her obsession with a client proves her undoing.

About this title

About the Author

Sidney Morrison is a retired history teacher and school principal and now a part time educational consultant and leadership coach for school principals in a variety of schools in Southern California. City of Desire is his first novel. He lives in Los Angeles.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter Ten

As required, Dr. David Rogers came to inspect her, and immediately Helen noted two distinctive features—his age and the sound of his voice. She expected an older man, a fussy, distracted doctor in spectacles unable to hide his impatience or condescension even as he accepted the good fees that came with providing a needed service for a well-established business of ill repute. But Dr. Rogers, a medium-built man, was thirty-four and handsome in the symmetry of his ordinary features, brown eyes, a thin nose, and a rounded but even chin.

His voice most impressed her; it was the deepest voice she had ever heard, a rich bass as smooth as polished brass with a depth and resonance that filled the room even as he spoke casually. His words possessed a lilting musicality that suddenly put her in the Park Theater’s third tier, marveling at the waves of sound from the voice of a great singer. As he spoke, Helen took a deep breath to calm the rapid beating of her heart.
“Miss Jewett, I shall be brief, and this inspection should not take too much of your precious time,” he said, conveying no discomfort with the fact of sitting across from her in an upstairs bedroom. “Have you seen a doctor before?”

“Yes.”

“Then this will not be too uncomfortable. I will not have you stand holding your skirts while I explore you on my knees, as do most of my colleagues. A most uncomfortable stance, and not conducive to accuracy.”

Helen gulped lightly, not knowing what to say.

“Any questions?”

Before she could answer, he explained, “You will remove your underwear and lay down on the bed with your skirts pulled above your waist. I will use my right hand to touch you between your legs, in your private parts, to make sure that you are clean and able to perform your duties. Any questions?”

“No,” she whispered.

“Very well. Do you have any water in the pitcher and a bowl we can use?”

“We?”

“You will need to clean yourself, and I will clean my hands, too.”

“But why?”

He expressed no surprise, as if he had encountered this reaction many times before. “Just as when we clean our rooms, there is clarity. Dirt and grime obscure.”

“I’m not dirty!” Helen protested, starting to rise from the chair.

“Please, Miss Jewett, I didn’t mean to suggest that condition. From what I can see in your room and with your person, you obviously care. But dust and dirt can be invisible to the eye, and water and cloth can only improve matters. Certainly you prefer your customers clean, without dirt on their intimate parts?”

“Of course,” Helen said with haughty emphasis, surprised by her discomfort. Dr. Roger embarrassed her, his clipped, detached words making her skin moist and hot.

“Then let us begin.”

After washing as required, Helen removed her pantaloons and placed them out of sight on the floor, so that he could not see them. Acutely observant, as if watching a performance on stage, she noted the inconsistent oddity of this gesture. With what he was about to see, hidden pantaloons seemed silly and pointless.

But when she lay down on the bed, pulled up her skirts, and he sat down beside her on her left, he did not look between her legs. He said softly, “Spread your legs wider, please,” and inserted his fingers into her vagina. His fingers were cold, and she flinched. He said, “You will get used to them in a moment.”

She did, and then he asked, “Miss Jewett, what is this? What happened?”

She immediately replied, “What do you mean?”

“Miss, Jewett, please don’t lie. Doctors need the truth from their patients, if we are to help.”

“Is something wrong?”

“What happened, Miss Jewett? Something happened to cause these scars in your womb. I think I know, but you need to tell me.”

He withdrew his hand, and Helen turned away, pausing to wonder if she should lie or tell the truth, a truth she had never revealed to anyone before. That voice, that sublime voice stirred a desire to trust the doctor, and she whispered quickly, fearing that with delay she would lose her resolve.

“I was raped in Boston, in the Back Bay, by a gang of men.” She hoped that once spoken, the admission would lessen the weight of her memories.

“They hurt you. Terribly,” Dr. Rogers said softly.

“Yes,” she said, tears flowing from her eyes as she continued to look away. She could not face him. “After they took turns, one of them became very angry, I don’t know why, and started to slap me again and again, and then, and then ...”

“He thrust some object, some crude object, into you,” Rogers continued.

“Yes, and I screamed and screamed. I thought they were going to kill me. Then they ran off. There was so much blood. And no one came to help me. Nobody came to help me.” Her bitter words felt hot on her tongue.

“But you survived,” Dr. Rogers said. “You survived, but did you see a doctor?”

“There was so much blood, and all I could think of was to use my skirts to fill me up and stop the bleeding.”

“Then you didn’t see a doctor?”

“No.”

“You could have died, from the excessive bleeding or from fever. You are a strong, fortunate young woman.”

She turned to face him, emboldened by the absence of accusation or final judgment.
“But . . .” she added.

“But there are scars . . . scars that will prevent you from having children.”

“Forever?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“A convenient consequence,” Helen observed, turning away again. “I don’t have the fear that most of us here have.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m too selfish to be a good mother.”

“I wish some other women were as scrupulous; there would be far fewer children to mend.”

“Do you have children?” Helen asked. Immediately, she regretted the question because Dr. Rogers moved slightly away from her and said wearily, “No, I do not.”

“There’s still a need for good fathers.”

“And you still bleed, of course, because if the scarring had stopped that, you would be dead already. And I can tell that your Venus spot is still intact.”

Helen wasn’t surprised that he knew about the spot; he was a doctor, after all. But now his reference to it seemed to shift the conversation from medicine to sex, to the survival of the source of a woman’s sexual pleasure. When she wanted to feel intense sexual pleasure, she touched herself there. Sometimes, she told select men about it and requested a gentle touch of the hand or a delicate stroking of the tongue. What was Dr. Roger’s suggesting? Should she be grateful? Was he seeking assurances for his own sexual satisfaction at a later date?

She closed her legs, and asked, “Is there anything else?”

As if reading her mind, he replied, “Miss Jewett, you presume. I am a doctor, and I can make reference without any hint of solicitation. Without this kind of detachment, I would not be able to serve Mrs. Welden or the other establishments. Why is it that so many of you think that once we see you or touch you we must, out of necessity, be consumed? Good day, Miss Jewett.”

“I didn’t mean to insult . . .”

“Good day, Miss Jewett.”

After this inauspicious beginning Helen was then surprised when he returned a week later, left his card, and asked for a specific time and date that she would receive him in the parlor.

When he returned, she could not resist asking, “Why did you come back?”

He smiled, and said, leaning slightly forward, “You interest me.”

His brown eyes glowed with mischief.

“How?”

“I looked around your room and noted your piles of books. I couldn’t help but be intrigued by your choices, Shakespeare, Byron, the Bible.”

“You’ll need to pay for my time if you wish to discuss my reading habits,” Helen said evenly.

He laughed, his head tossed back as if he had to take in more air to enjoy this moment.
“Miss Jewett, you take yourself much too seriously. But you are practical.”

“I have to eat, and books are not free.”

“Certainly. I also came to apologize.”

“Apologize? Why?”

“I don’t think I was sufficiently sensitive to the events that befell you in Boston, to the emotional consequences . . .”

Helen’s voice rose to emphasize her displeasure. “Dr. Rogers, that was a private matter, a matter not appropriate to a parlor conversation now.”

He sighed, his exasperation light but pointed nevertheless. “Miss Jewett, for one so young, you seem prone to pronouncements and denunciations.”

“Would you rather I cry endlessly, seek your pity, or hide in my room? I am not a coward, and I don’t hate all men.”

“Perhaps we should go upstairs?” he said, looking toward the door even as he remained seated.

“A convenient, if profitable, change of subject,” Helen observed.

“You prefer privacy, you said, if we mention certain matters.”

“Six dollars,” said Helen, her voice all business.

“You interest me,” said Dr. Rogers, his eyes widened with curiosity. “Say something even more interesting.”

She stood, staring at him. “I’m an abolitionist,” she declared, scanning his face for a shocked reaction as she cast aside discretion. He only smiled.

“Now that’s interesting,” he replied. “Please tell me more.”

Helen suddenly lost her nerve, believing her confession had compromised her support of the Antislavery Society and threatened the already precarious standing of abolitionists in the city. Blacks and their white supporters were being openly attacked on the streets.

She needed to assert herself before this handsome, fascinating man, but her pride had made her reckless and improvident.

“You can’t say anything about this,” she pleaded, gripping the folds of her skirt in her right hand. “As my doctor, you can’t talk about private . . .”

“You are no longer my patient.”

“What do you mean? You referred to your last visit. You apologized for a comment made as a physician.”

“I am here as a customer,” he declared. “Did you not quote a price for your services?”
He seemed to enjoy her befuddlement, smiling as he made comments with mocking insouciance.

Helen paused, taking a breath and trying to find the exact pitch for what she had to say next. “I make the decisions about services to be rendered, and I can be selective ... very selective.”

“Not yet, Miss Jewett, not yet. And besides, you need me. I can be good for business. I can spread the word about town. I have influence.”

“Yes,” was all she could say. He had won. In her business, reputation mattered most. If she was ever going to have clients with money, and lots of it, she needed access to them. Dr. Rogers was her bridge.

“When may I see you in your rooms?” he asked at last.

“Come tonight at eight, and I will be ready for you,” Helen replied. “Be prompt,” she continued, almost adding “please” as a perfunctory courtesy. But she omitted the word as too conciliatory, and left the room without looking back.

He was prompt that evening, and when they stepped into her room, he sat down at her desk and quickly scanned her books. Helen unbuttoned her bodice to signal the beginning of the business of the evening.

“Tell me something else interesting,” he said looking directly at her. “No, something more than interesting, something provocative, suggestive, even obscene.”

A man of words, she surmised, a man needing words to stir him. The sight of her naked breasts would not do. Helen thought for a moment, and remembered the lines from 1795’s Displaying the Secrets of Nature in the Generation of Man, the perfect passage for a man by a man—a celebration of his penis.

She began: “Now will I storm the mint of love and joy and rifle all that’s in it. I will enjoy thee, now, my fairest; come and fly with me to love’s Elysium. My rudder, with thy bold hand, like a try’d and skillful pilot, thy shall steer, and guide my bark in love’s dark channel, where it shall dance, as the bounding waves do rise and fall, whilst . . .”

Edition details

• Publisher: Riverwood Books
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1940468493
• ISBN 13: 9781940468495
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256