The Hooker and the Frankenraisin
Monday, October 5, 2009

Despite what you may have heard about New York City, it's damn hard to find a hooker here. I've interviewed plenty of hookers in the region, but in eight years the only time I was sure I saw bona-fide hookers in New York City proper was the night I spent in jail. That was, until a couple Wednesdays ago when I was staking out a taxi operation in an industrial part of Queens for a big story.

There was a hooker out on the street with me. We were basically doing the same thing; waiting for the taxi driver's shifts to change. She called them "dates." I called them "sources."

Figuring that somebody who spent a lot of time mingling with these dudes might know about the guy I was looking for, I started talking to her. She was more than happy to talk back.

"I swear I seen the FBI here, I could tell when that shiny, new SUV turned down the block there was a $40 blowjob inside," she said. "I mean, that was a NICE car!"

Before too long the hooker, whose name is Linda, sussed me out as a potential client.

"You got some money on you? You want a blowjob?" she asked.

"No thanks," I said.

As we talked, I leaned against my car, affectionately nicknamed "The Frankenraisin." The 11-year-old two-door red sedan had its trunk crunched by a semi truck on the New Jersey Turnpike in 2004, thus earning it the sobriquet "The Raisin," (the insurance payout financed the first New Heathens record). Four years later the driver's side door was smashed by a city bus, which earned me several traffic citations for driving an unsafe vehicle. I took it to The World's Greatest Mechanic, Matt Poppola at Paddy's Service Station in Newark, NJ. He scored a silver trunk and a green door from a junkyard and with that constructed the three-colored, four wheeled monster my car is today: The Frankenraisin.

The hooker, however, was unimpressed.

"That your car?" she asked.

"Yep," I said.

"Shit," she said as she turned on a heel and walked away. "You AIN'T got no money!"

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