Twisted

by Lola Smirnova

  Without any hesitation, Lena sprinkles with tears too, through her happy smile, and locks us in her arms. ‘I love you both so much too!’

  Margo turns red. ‘Dolls, stop this drama right now! People are staring, and I look like an idiot now, here alone.’

  Then, ‘Oh … what the hell!’ she says, moves closer and hugs us too. ‘I love you too, my crazy bitches!’

  And we laugh again …

  23

  The rest of the time in Luxenbourg I spend like a hamster in a wheel – I work in a peep show.

  This is a place where the client enters one of eight small cabins, which frame the round, non-stop rotating stage, called a drum. He drops a €2 coin into the box and the viewing window opens onto the drum, for a few minutes, while the performer does a striptease show. The explicitness of the dancer teases the spectator, while the dark cabin and paper towels suggest relief through self-stimulation – in other words, jerking off.

  A few days after the birthday party, Natalia victoriously walked into my room and said that she’d found the club for me. I felt relief, but only until it was announced it was a peep show. Her scrambled explanation of what it was and why she couldn’t find me a normal cabaret shocked me.

  ‘Jul, the upside is that you don’t have to cram yourself with bubbly every day ... it’s an even better option!’

  No shit! A better option?!

  The idea of revealing my fanny in public repelled me … It is one thing to dance on the stage, at least three meters away from the clients, and take your panties off to the final chords of the song, while modestly keeping your legs crossed. The peep show is a completely different story. It is a gynecologist’s room where, besides the doctor, there are another seven freaks with affectionate interest staring at your pussy …

  Why? Why? Why Nata? Why did you do it to me?

  There are five girls besides me working here: one Ukrainian and four from Hungary. It takes me by surprise, because I never saw or heard of any Western European girls working in the cabarets. Why, then, the peep show? It’s a place that all the girls, including me and my compatriot and new colleague, Vlada, are scared of and scorn as a shameful honky-tonk. It takes me some time to answer.

  It’s simple. All the girls dance on the drum, one after another, for four minutes each; so, we have a 20-minute break between our turns, which we spend in the waiting room with couches and a TV, a small kitchen with a fridge, and a shower. The working shift is long – twelve hours. So, we are allowed a one-hour break during the day.

  Besides the systematic performing, we also give private shows in a separate cabin, which is a small room with only two chairs facing each other, separated by a glass wall. If a client likes a dancer on the drum, he can call her for a private show – €30 for ten minutes, of which €10 goes to the club and €20 to the girl. Besides that, there is a salary, which is an equal share between the girls and the owner from the €2 coin collection. In the private cabin, everything is allowed with only one restriction – the invisible barrier between the participants.

  At first, I am bogged down in denial, fed by my complexes and fears.

  This place is nothing but a sick zoo. I will linger here for a month and then Natalia will help me to find another cabaret.

  While our pride makes Vlada and me cover our pussies on the drum, and we don’t get even one private dance the entire week, the Hungarian girls manage to do up to ten private shows every day, sometimes even more. Each time they pass by and glance over at our Ukrainian-cheerless couch while rushing to their next private dance, they wear these half-pity-half-snooty smiles on their faces.

  Dirty sluts!

  Okay, it takes me some time, but eventually I get the picture … the Hungarians are making the same money as we do in a cabaret. Probably even more, not only without sexual intercourse or even a single touch, but also without drinking their asses to death while someone fucks their vaginas and brains. (As we already know, 99 per cent of the cabarets’ clients first bonk the entertainer’s cerebrum before they decide to buy the bubbly; then, if she is lucky and the expenditure is done, her pussy too.) Here, any kind of contact is excluded, except for visual communication.

  Yeah, I know ... I’m slow, and could have made this scientific breakthrough on my first working day! I probably shouldn’t smoke pot ...

  So while we Eastern Europeans think that the peep show is a vulgar and dirty place to work, the smart women, like the Hungarians, are squeamish about champagne bars and actually have a very well paid and germ-free job.

  I start watching them. They use different wigs, and often choose some accessories for the costumes, like a policeman’s hat, French maid’s apron or kinky collars and handcuffs – and, more importantly, sex toys too. They’ll do anything but be modest or conventional. They are not ashamed of opening their legs wide or coming loud, while getting carried away by self-stimulation on the drum or in a private room.

  Eventually, I get tired of it. Someone is constantly making money in front of my face while I bitch and moan and keep my net sales miserably low. First, I visit a local sex shop and buy some seductive lingerie, lubricant, one small-to-medium-sized vibrator, and another black, considerably sized dildo.

  I don’t even know if I am going to use it, but the satisfier looks so naughty that I can’t resist ...

  My new purchases help immediately – I am called for a few private dances and get some appraising looks from the Hungarian girls.

  Still, there is a huge difference between my earnings and the Hungarian girls’. I decide to fight my shame and open up my legs more, so the men can properly see my moist, pinkish slit. As a result, my sales increase by 20 per cent and Vlada stops talking to me.

  But when I begin to relax totally on the drum and enjoy myself – I’m talking about self-stimulation with, sometimes, a happy ending – my income jumps by another 50 per cent. And with time, I even manage to score a few regular customers – potential paedophiles who love my extra-small body size and flat chest.

  Since starting the peep show I feel like a cosmonaut who is getting ready for a moon landing. Twelve hours a day, every 20 minutes, the same routine and movement while turning on the drum … over and over. It’s like the movie Groundhog Day. The constant rotation makes me nauseous and dizzy. After my shift I climb into bed and close my eyes, but my head is still spinning, making me feel sick. I even end up throwing up, until a few days ago one of the Hungarians took pity on me and advised me to get some pills, which helped at least to take the spinning-in-bed symptoms away.

  The constant repetition and the long working hours don’t help me to keep my spirits up. In moments of deep self-pity, and with a strong desire to break the cycle and walk away, I remind myself about one customer I had while working the day shift in Sexy Girls …

  He was about 60, tall and thin, and worked as an auto mechanic. His hands were always dirty; he smelled of sweat, as if he’d never been in the shower; and his mouth had a set of yellow stinky teeth, which often smirked on his badly dented and tanned face. He always ordered one regular Coke and stared at the big screen, covered by constantly moving genitalia. If I was really persistent, in exchange for a piccolo and right by the bar, he would dig my pussy with his two fingers, scratching it with his nails, under my skirt, so nobody around would notice …

  These revolting, vivid images always help me to appreciate what I have – no, what I don’t have – to deal with while working at the peep show!

  24

  There are plenty of upsides to this new, unusual employment (yeah, as if drinking and fucking some freaks is a usual kind of job), especially my relative sobriety.

  I don’t drink, and have stopped going out after work, because the long hours and the stress of all the exercise make me quite disciplined. I’ve forgotten when I last used heavy drugs, including cocaine. The only reward that I allow myself is the joint that I draw on every night while lying in bed (I was lucky to get a tiny, cupboard-sized room with space for only one bed, so I do
n’t have any roommates to complain about the smoke), with the lights off, watching the smoke curling through the street glow, melting in my happy – oh, and usually very coherent – place.

  I have another pleasant surprise when I work out how much money I’ve made, considering my absolutely useless beginning. In three weeks I made the same amount as I made in the cabaret in a full month. Without a doubt, I decide to stay at the peep show for the next month, and am really looking forward to seeing how much I can make using all my newly acquired tricks and skills together with my open-minded attitude.

  I even find a fun part of my occupation – watching the customers, discovering how freaky the freaks can be – and wonder at the certainty that I will never stop wondering.

  Except for one incident, when I ended up puking in the toilet because of one degenerate client: while masturbating, he bent over, slid his asshole apart, scraped the shit out of it using four fingers, ate it off his palm, ejaculated into the same hand, then polished the cum off like it was a delicious topping to the brownie he’d just eaten …

  Yuck! I still cannot forgive myself for not turning my face away or just closing my eyes and protecting my future life from these disgusting memories that keep on flashing through my head.

  Generally, the weirdos don’t bother me. I do what I have to do: play sexy, climax once in a while and keep observing the pure deviation.

  The guys like Lena’s new adorer, who likes to wear women’s stockings, don’t bowl me over any more.

  Ha! Red stockings …? How about the pink G-string on the big, muscular guy who looks like the Commando starred by Arnold Schwarzenegger that can literally hold only one of his balls? Or the full set of white and lacy lingerie, including bra, and the pre-staged game in which the dude bends over the chair assuming the doggy position with his back to me while I menacingly shout at him, ‘You dirty, little bitch! I am going to nail you right now …’ while he frantically masturbates until he discharges, enjoying his humiliation.

  Then there’s this other nutcase who masturbates without touching his tool. He takes his pants off, unbuttons his shirt and lifts his arms behind his head. He starts moving his body, violently throwing his penis against his stomach and hips. Um … how can I describe it? Imagine your garden hose, with the water turned to full pressure, that you’ve accidently dropped on the ground. Vivid, isn’t it? The extrovert whips himself with his own dick until he comes, while I play with myself, watch him, and pretend that I am extremely turned on by his routine.

  Also, there is a Russian guy, Ruslan. He is one of a kind, as well. When he called me to the private cabin, he asked me not to take my clothes off and to do nothing but simply talk to him.

  Yeah, can you believe it? That’s never happened to me before!

  He hates cabarets, because, as he explains to me, ‘Each time I’ve been to one I’ve ended up trying to escape from another drunk girl who’d got all upset and personal because I didn’t want to sleep with her.’

  It sounds suspicious. Why wouldn’t he want to have some ‘fun’ instead of talking? I bet his tool is not working.

  I keep these thoughts to myself. It’s always better to get into the role of soul therapist than to rub my already tired and swollen pussy again.

  The weirdos don’t take me by surprise any more, but I still struggle to understand why handsome young guys would visit such places. There are quite few of them. And I am not talking about pimpled high-school students, or the poor perverts whose childhoods, taking into account Sigmund Freud’s theory, I always tried to avoid imagining in order to preserve my mental well-being. I mean the guys in their late twenties or thirties, who definitely give the impression of some kind of success. Why would they come to a peep show in the first place? Why would they choose masturbation over sex, especially when they must have partners, given their fair looks and well-proportioned and functioning penises?

  ... Until, one day …

  I had a private session with a very handsome guy with a very handsome limb between his legs. When I walked into the room, he stood right by the glass and asked me to do the same, holding me spellbound with his big, dark, far-reaching eyes. We were so close to each other that if there were no glass, we would feel the warmth of each other’s bodies. His gaze was deep and provoking. A wave of lust suffocated my body. He asked me to take off my silky lace nightgown, slowly, while he softly breathed how beautiful I was and gently brushed the glass as he would my body. I stood with my legs spread shoulder-width. With one hand, I lightly rubbed my clit; with the other, I followed his hand’s movement over the cold glass, caressing my flaming body. We both came at the same time.

  I experienced a surprisingly powerful O, followed by the stream of hot tears that covered my face. As my body calmed down, my ecstasy became bitter sadness – one of my best sexual experiences had been sealed behind damn glass.

  Interesting … what we find weird or freaky in the beginning can sometimes turn out to be very sensual and enjoyable. It actually doesn’t really matter why someone does this or that, as long as he or she finds pleasure in it without harming others.

  Or maybe I’m totally turning into some kind of freak myself …

  25

  I’m surprised when, a few days after my psychotherapy session with Ruslan, he comes back to see me.

  He takes a private dance, as he did last time, and spends 10 minutes on casual chit-chat. He asks a lot about my family and me. How I’ve got to Luxembourg and how much longer I am going to stay in the country. He seems charming, funny and sweet. When our session is over and he gets up from the chair to leave, he stops at the door, and, overcoming his childish timidity, asks if I would like to join him for coffee sometime and takes my number.

  He is shy to ask me out – so cute!

  We start meeting for coffee almost every day before my shift, in the café across the road from the club. We laugh a lot, talk about life and our families, about our plans for the future, sharing even the most unrealistic, and that is why embarrassing and never-spokenabout dreams.

  For me, the biggest attraction of our innocent attachment (besides, of course, that he is smart, handsome, always light-hearted, and speaks my native language) is that my new Russian friend is not trying to get under my skirt. Our relationship isn’t going further than easy-going, joyful friendship and, sometimes, artless flirting.

  I feel that I can relate to him. He also comes from nowhere and, just like us, he is trying to get out and have a decent life. Once, he shook me up with the fascinating and tragic story of his immigration from Russia to Europe, while he was still a teenager …

  His mother, Ayshe, was Chechen. She was born and lived in a small village a hundred kilometers from Groznyy. His father, Bashir, died from a stab wound during some stupid fight when Ruslan was only three. Ayshe loved Ruslan’s father very much, and for a long time couldn’t get over her loss. But when the tragic news reached them, her parents breathed a sigh of relief. Even though Bashir was a good man and husband, his temper was easily inflamed. They suspected that he’d eventually get himself into trouble, and worried that the trouble may one day involve Ayshe and Ruslan too.

  When the first Chechen war started, Ruslan was fourteen years old. It was then that Ayshe met a Russian soldier, Sergey, whose battalion was stationed temporarily near Ayshe and Ruslan’s village. The two fell in love at first sight. Their feelings were so strong that she ignored her parents’ warnings to stop her ‘outrageous sin’ (obviously, a love affair with the enemy was a betrayal) before it was too late: no one knew how dangerous it could become if the villagers found out about it.

  The romance between Ayshe and Sergey was intense but short. When the battalion eventually pulled out, all she was left with were her lover’s promises that he’d come back against all odds, and the suspicious looks of her parents and neighbours when her belly started to grow. Was he killed, or was she just another trivial love story that he’d forgotten about as soon as he left with the troops? Time passed; he did not show
up; Ruslan’s mother couldn’t keep her pregnancy a secret anymore.

  Eventually she told her parents everything. They knew that she would not be able to stay safely in the village if she kept the child. But Ayshe refused an abortion, and they decided to send her and Ruslan to Groznyy, to their only relative, Aunt Fatima, for good.

  It turned out that Fatima had some – as she called them – ‘useful acquaintances’, with whom she’d kept in contact for a rainy day. Luckily the old woman was kind, and without hesitation used her contacts to help Ayshe and Ruslan to escape to Moscow. There, they met with some more of Fatima’s ‘useful acquaintances’, who helped to organise passports and refugee papers so that the two could immigrate to Europe.

  The next few weeks were hell for fifteen-year-old Ruslan and pregnant Ayshe. Money was so tight that they had to change from buses to trains to hitch-hiking, almost starving every day. Ayshe’s labour started in Ukraine, when they were about to enter Poland. Luckily they met a hauler who helped them through the border crossing without problems or delays, and then took them straight to the closest hospital.

  But another tragedy awaited them. The baby boy was stillborn. As doctors tried to explain, it probably happened because of Ayshe’s physical and emotional exhaustion. She was devastated. But she couldn’t afford to collapse under this tragedy; she had to take care of Ruslan.

  For the next year they wandered throughout Europe, from one low-paid job and homeless shelter to another. Until one day Ayshe met an old man somewhere in Germany, who was looking for a live-in housekeeper to do cleaning, cooking and grocery shopping. His wife had died a few months earlier and he couldn’t cope on his own. He didn’t mind Ayshe’s son also staying with them, on condition that the boy went to school and spent his spare time helping around the house.