14 We Are All Prostitutes
Since she was the freshly-minted Champion, Delilah's remaining days in the UK were a scattered mess of interviews and photoshoots. She wasn't sure if she preferred interviews about pokémon or about being a female role model; they both made her uncomfortable in their own special ways.
"So, you've got attention for the sort of purity of form that characterises your battling—how did this come about? Why did you decide to train your pokémon this way?"
"Well, I just don't really think it's, you know, necessary. And I think doing a lot of tricks is, like...um, sort of gratuitous. Like, I think sometimes it's, like, tacky, or..." She noticed the corner of his mouth twitch upward. "What is it?" she asked.
"Nothing," he said, waving his hand. "Go on."
"Okay...um, so like, I think some restraint in pokémon battles is, like...commendable. I don't remember who said it, but somebody said, like—"
He burst out laughing. "Like, like, like, like!" he said. "I have no trouble believing you're from California!"
He continued laughing for what felt like an awkwardly long time but was probably only a few seconds. She was taken quite aback, but she exaggerated it for him: "Oh my God, chill judgmental! Like, as soon as poss!"
He laughed, wiping tears from his eyes.
"You know," she said, "the only thing worse than someone who says 'like' too much is someone who points out when people say 'like' too much."
He laughed again. "You're probably right," he said. "Sorry about that. What were you saying?"
Did she say "like" too much? She did notice that people weren't saying things like "rad" and "for sure" and "I know, right?" as often as she was used to hearing; did she really say "like" and address people as "man" so much that it was that noticeable? Was it distracting? Did it make her sound dumb?
When Adam had been in Johto, he had been the one who was different; but when she was in Kanto, everybody else talked like he did, and she was the one with an alien speech pattern. Was she inviting stereotypes? Did she come across as a genderswapped Totally Kyle? The way Adam and his parents talked did make them sound more intelligent, she supposed; did the opposite apply to her? Alternately, was it a stereotype if it were true?
Besides, it wasn't as if saying "like" served no purpose—it made whatever she was saying less specific, more flexible. It wasn't totally filler. (Did she say "totally" too much?)
Being famous was kind of funny. There was a small flare-up of feminist outrage after she did a magazine photoset that took inspiration from old pulp novels and was sort of cheesecakey; Mr Driscoll, one of the men who were sort of like her press agents, shared numerous letters with her about how shameful it was for the first female Champion to be photographed like that, and how men invented high heels so women couldn't run away "when they rape you". There seemed to be a number of people who were disappointed that she wasn't a naïve tomboy with a hidden romantic side.
Still, she got fan mail anyway, so she didn't really care if people thought she should get a political breast reduction. She autographed a lot of photos of herself and even got paid to go to a jazz concert with Lance, solely so that people could look at them and take pictures. Lance was very nice to her, and let her fall asleep at the table because she was so tired from having her picture taken all week. She had a strange jazzy dream about a car made of Styrofoam and when she woke up there were red lines on her wrist from leaning on it.
As Champion, Delilah got to have her own room on RMS Aqua, which was an ocean liner with swimming pools and a battle court and a theater and who knew what else. It sailed transatlantic, from Vermilion in Kanto to Fort Lauderdale, Florida and through the Panama Canal to Olivine in Johto. In September it was leaving Olivine; in the meantime, she spent a few days chilling out at home.
Whitney invited her to lunch, with Morty and Eusine and Falkner, the Violet Gym Leader; she met them at a Greek restaurant in Cianwood.
Eusine stood at the table with his hands on his hips, looking down at his legs. "Do these jeans look weird?"
"What do you mean?" asked Whitney.
"I don't know, they're awkward," said Eusine, trying to look at himself from behind but failing. "I feel like they make my bum look really huge."
"Let me see," said Morty.
Eusine turned around.
"Yeah. Change right now. I will never be seen with you looking like that."
"But really though," said Eusine, stroking the denim in agitation. "It's so...I look low-class. I don't want my bum sticking out everywhere. People will make judgments about me..."
Falkner showed Delilah what he was drawing on his napkin. "This is how I feel right now," he said.
It was a person sitting on a toilet under clouds with lightning coming out of them; she burst out laughing.
"Must be the tzatziki," he said.
"I think it's the conversation," she said.
Later she went with Eusine and Whitney to look at the shops nearby while Morty and Falkner were grocery shopping.
"So, this cruise," said Whitney. "How long is it?"
"It's a couple weeks," said Delilah. "From here, to Florida, to England."
"Lucky you. How long are you going to be there, in England?"
"Well, I don't know, a couple months, at least, I think. I mean, there's still stuff I should do, like promotional stuff, that would be easier if I were over there. So, I'll talk to my guys, and see how long they want me there...and I'll check out some of the gyms there, too, you know."
"The gyms are brilliant," said Eusine, who was born in Celadon. "Best in the world. Kanto, that's where all the best trainers go eventually."
Delilah's Pokégear rang then; she looked at it, and saw Adam's name. "Hello?" she asked.
Adam didn't answer her; he was talking to somebody, so she waited: "...And so I figured out," he said, "that it wasn't necessary for me to continue attending classes. So they called my father and told him I was a troublemaker, which I was, but instead of letting me graduate early they gave me jobs like answering telephones and delivering notes."
"Hello?" she said again, but again he didn't answer.
"So, when I was nineteen I was in Italian Vogue after I spilt a Ruby Manhattan on the Astounding Mandi," he continued. "That was when my name in an editorial really had some novelty to it. Now, you know, I'm not new anymore, they've got used to me..."
There was a sort of broody pause, during which Delilah wondered whether or not she should hang up, and eventually somebody else said, "Hey, let me...yeah? Like that?"
Delilah listened for a moment, trying to figure out what was going on, and finally she realized: Adam's phone was in his pocket, and he was sitting on it wrong and had accidentally called her Pokégear while somebody was sucking him off.
She threw her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing as he moaned through his nose on the other end, and apparently he shifted his weight because then the call ended.
Eusine and Whitney had wandered deeper into the shop, and she went and found them.
"Ohmygod, you guys," she said. "I just got a phone call from Adam Harlow...?" She reenacted it for their entertainment. Eusine laughed uproariously, but Whitney shuddered delicately.
"He is so disgusting," she primmed. "I mean, sure, you're hot, so what? You don't have to be so weird and gross..."
Eusine rolled his eyes. "You know what your problem is, Whitney?"
"What?" challenged Whitney. "What is my problem?"
"You think you're too good for cocks."
"What?"
"You think you're above them."
"What does that even mean?"
"You think it's embarrassing to be aroused by a penis."
She gaped at him, shocked and incredulous.
"You're one of those girls who wants to be a lesbian just because you think penises are ugly."
"Eusine...you're an idiot," said Whitney. "Besides, penises are ugly."
"It's not like vaginas are any less stupid-looking," Eusine continued. "The point is, you don't know what a good dick can do. Good dick can do anything. See, Delilah knows, she's got Adam Harlow's phone number."
Delilah stuttered, "Well, that's—I mean—"
"That's what he's famous for," said Eusine.
"Well, but I never slept with him, though," said Delilah.
"But you would, right?"
"Well, sure, I would..."
"Of course you would, you're only human," he said. "You would, I would, any sane person would."
"What are you saying?" said Whitney. "That I'm not human? That I'm insane?"
"Oh, pffft," said Eusine. "As if you wouldn't do sex with Adam Harlow."
"Are you kidding?" said Whitney. "Look how tall he is! He's, like, three times my size! He'd rip me in half!"
"Calm down, you guys," said Delilah. "It's not a big deal."
"Do you think Adam Harlow's is a big deal?" Eusine asked dreamily. "You've got the closest, Delilah, what do you reckon?"
"Well, I don't know, I mean, I never saw it before..."
"He is tall," he mused throatily. "I wonder if it isn't like, you know, a fucking...donphan. Like, do you suck it or give it a peanut?"
Delilah burst out laughing.
"But maybe it's disappointing," he continued academically. "Maybe it's more like...a lightswitch. Maybe he's all talk. But, he's also quite slim, so maybe it's long but thin, like a length of dental floss. Oh, I'm dying of curiosity, Delilah, you've got to find out for me!"
"Eusine!" exclaimed Whitney. "You can't just ask her to do that!"
"Why not? She said—"
"Delilah's not a total whore like you are."
Eusine laughed, looking surprised. "Ohoho! Whitney!"
"I wouldn't count on it anyway," said Delilah, trying to distract them from their disapproval of each other. "Really, I mean, Adam like really can't stand me."
"Really?" asked Whitney. "I thought he liked you. Irwin made it sound like Adam was super into you."
"Well, men," said Eusine with a limply dismissive hand gesture. "They love Delilah, don't they? Just look at her. See, Whitney, you can be attracted to somebody you don't like."
"Obviously," said Delilah. "I don't think anybody likes Adam."
Eusine laughed. Whitney said, "That's mean," but she was smiling.
Morty and Falkner came back to pick them up; in the car Falkner opened up the take-home box from the restaurant and said, "Mmm, who wants moussaka?"
"I bet it's still warm, too," said Delilah, and he laughed.
"Ugh, oh my God, get that out of my face," said Whitney, fanning the air.
"It's car-warm," he said, taking a bite. "Even better than oven-warm!"
"That spanakopita is making the car smell like puke," said Whitney, rolling down the window.
"Oh, don't exaggerate, Whitney," Morty chided her. "It just smells like...lasagna, and farts."
Eusine laughed explosively and Whitney said half-under-her-breath, "So it's just a typical day in Eusine's car..." Eusine smiled back at her mockingly.
At Whitney's house that evening they played a game called Dream Star, which was the kind of hopelessly girly talking fortune-telling game designed for ten-year-old sleepovers, and watched This Is Spinal Tap while eating a gallon of ice cream. Adam called her back, wondering why her number was in his history when they hadn't spoken; he had had another mood swing, and was civil to her, maybe because they were only talking on the phone rather than in person. He told her that he had gone with his parents to Greece over the summer, where he "took a slash and a sleeping pill" and passed out without turning on the lights, and proceeded to detail the differences between "five"-star hotels across the continent.
Irwin had said it sarcastically, but maybe it was truer than he thought. Apprehensiveness in the face of the unknown was a universal human trait, and maybe it was attractive to her that a testimonial to Adam's sexual ability was so readily available. Maybe part of her attraction to him was just her being unadventurous. There was nothing understated about Adam's sexuality, but there was nothing very unconventional about it, either. Was Delilah so uncreative that it took someone of Adam's overwhelming sexiness to even get a second look from her? Was she too asexual to appreciate something subtler? There may as well have been an omnipresent flashing neon arrow pointed at his crotch. Everything he did was an advertisement; when she was around him she became very aware of her body (and his).
There was a sort of hypnotic contradiction about Adam: there was fiery sex, and there was icy chic. There was pampered prep and there was pugnacious punk. He was something of a snob, but he was too dumb to be pretentious; he clearly had problems, but he was too smart to be endearing. She wasn't even sure how to define their relationship: they knew each other too well to be acquaintances, but they didn't like each other enough to be friends. They weren't enemies, who actively sought each other out just for the sake of abuse; in fact at times they got along quite well. Delilah just couldn't be bothered with Adam, and really it was sort of liberating. It was sort of like having a tawdry affair, but on the opposite end of the relationship spectrum.
She had a couple of photoshoots in Cianwood and around Johto, so there would be pictures of her in her natural habitat for her fans, and then the night before the ship was leaving Olivine she attended a reception/press conference where Lance's name was removed from the Champion Suite and hers was put on, engraved in a golden poké ball like a star on a Hollywood dressing room.
Lance made a graceful little speech about how he wasn't sad that he had been defeated, and was happy to witness the rise of a new Champion, and then Delilah made a speech accepting his acceptance, and then they both stood there for questions.
"How nice is it to know that young girls can look up to you and feel confident about their dreams?"
Delilah had wanted to respond with "I don't understand the question" but unfortunately she understood it all too well. She pressed her lips together uncomfortably. "Um," she said. "I think that's a little arbitrary. Why couldn't they feel confident looking up to Lance or Red Ketchum or Gary Oak or any other Champion?"
"You don't think it's significant to be a woman in your position?"
"Well...no, I don't. I don't see why role models should be exclusive. Why can't boys admire me too?"
"Of course they can," said the reporter. "But you really don't think it's more meaningful because you're a woman?"
Delilah tried not to get mad. "No, I don't," she said shortly. "Is a boy's admiration for me less valuable than a girl's? I'm not trying to prove anything. All of my fans are equal, they all mean the same amount to me. Is a boy's admiration of me somehow inherently less powerful?"
"Well, I wouldn't put it that way," the reporter insisted. "But it's reaffirming in a powerful way to see someone in a mutual minority achieving something big."
"I think that's patronizing," Delilah said candidly. "I don't want to be admired for being a woman. I want to be admired for being good at what I do. I mean...I know certain groups of people have made this big deal about, like, how much they hate me, because I wore a corset in a photoshoot. Like, I've never spoken to any of them, but I guess their reasoning is that the first female Champion is a female who is maybe, like, attractive to men in a very stereotypical way. But really, like...being made up into this massive female role model...I find that just as objectifying as walking down the street and getting stared at, probably even more so."
"Well, in that case," somebody else piped up, "how about your measurements?"
She rolled her eyes, and everybody laughed. "My measurements are large, small, and large," she said, and they laughed again.
Lance later hinted heavily to her that she didn't have to answer every question asked of her.
Well, it wasn't that important, anyway, she decided. It did make her a little mad; her sex had nothing to do with her pokémon, so she didn't think it should have had anything to do with the way people looked at them, but it wasn't really a big deal, in the end, and she couldn't do anything about it anyway.
Nevertheless, she was very excited about her gigantic suite on the cruise ship. Would it be more Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, she wondered, or A Night at the Opera? Or maybe like that Baby-Sitters Club book she had read where they went on a cruise in the Bahamas and conveniently met eligible thirteen-year-old bachelors.
Hmm. Actually, hopefully not...