by Ed Bemand
“So, I’ll be getting my solicitor to draft something up, and then we’ll be going our separate ways.”
“Who is he?”
"Well that's half the problem isn't it? Not that it matters to you. I'm leaving you and I want to have children with someone else."
“Children?”
“Yes, Alan, children.”
“You never said...”
“You never asked, cared or listened. Let’s just accept that we made a mistake and try to do what we can to move on from it. I intend to sell this house and use my share of it to start afresh. Will you be wanting to buy me out?”
It wasn’t an option. They had always made some effort to keep nominally separate finances for each of them, as well as the joint account that they both contributed to to deal with things together. Alan had some money, but nowhere near enough and with the rise in property prices in the years since they had bought this place, his salary alone wasn’t enough to even get him a mortgage for the rest of it.
The house was sold and Susan left, taking a large amount of the stuff that they had populated the house with in a large van. He was left to sort himself and the remainder of their possessions out. He hadn’t protested with her about any of it. The whole situation seemed to have got out of his control. She had arranged everything without seeming to need much input from him. All he had to do was sign the papers she presented to him. He was told the date that he needed to vacate the property by. He was left feeling lost and alone. He found a flat to rent while he figured out what to do with himself and spent a lot of time sat alone and staring at the walls. Somehow the fact that he was now free to sleep with as many prostitutes as he wanted had become cold comfort to him.
What it had never occurred to Alan to ask, which was partly why Susan was so comfortable with the idea of parting from him, was that the person that she was getting rid of him for was called Alice and that the children that they were talking about were the result of a sperm donor called James. Susan herself had medical issues that precluded the possibility of her having children. She had liked to blame a lot of the problems on Alan when they were together, but with him out of the equation she was forced to face the unfortunate realities of her own anatomy. Alice, as it happened, was perfectly healthy and readily fecund and able, with only minimal effort, to become pregnant. When the baby arrived Susan strove to love it as one of its mothers with no prejudice towards its lack of genetic similarity to her.
Had Alan betrayed Susan with his actions or was his sin in failing to realise that she might have wanted something more than she was getting from him? Was either of them really guilty of betraying the other, or was the whole marriage simply a mistake, something to be ended as quickly and politely as possible so that they could each get on with their lives?
Twelve: How Melinda learned to give men what they wanted
When we left Melinda, she was about sixteen and had just started to learn the importance of caution around men under the harsh tutelage of Rick the rugby boy. She took the lesson to heart and ceased the casual riverside dalliances with teenage boys that had begun her sexual awakening. It didn’t put her off sex altogether but it did sour her impression of men.
Now, she is in her mid twenties with many stories spanning her activities of the last decade. For a while now she had mostly focussed her desires on other women. She enjoyed the tenderness and the way that most women seemed more inclined to take their time about it. She didn’t identify as a lesbian and made no attempt to dress extra boyish. Anyway, she wasn’t particularly attracted to butch girls. She liked her girls to be soft and pretty. Feminity was something that she relished and valued, both in herself and her lovers. On the rare occasions that she had ended up with a man recently he had been especially pretty and had a girlish quality.
With the years her figure had matured pleasantly and she was now much more comfortable with the idea of her own feminity. She preferred to keep makeup simple and saved skirts and dresses for special occasions, but she was happy with herself and her appearance and with the expression of her desires. She had learned how to make the most of what she had. Being more comfortable with herself made it easier for her to see how she could use it to get what she needed.
She hadn’t purposefully given up on men altogether. Her mistreatment by one had not put her off what they could offer her. She just exercised a lot more caution with them. Having allowed herself to lose control of the situation once, she didn’t want to let it happen again. She restricted her attentions to those she was confident in being able to remain in charge of. She could get a great deal of pleasure from a cock, and her experiences with artificial replacements had shown them to be a meagre substitute for the real thing, it was just the man it was attached to that she had to be careful with. There was something so visceral and immediate about male ejaculation. You could see the moment of climax in every fibre of their being. Of course, a woman’s climax was a wonderful thing, but they didn’t have quite the same physicality about the moment of explosion. Anyway, there was something even more special about the male ejaculation when it was you it was happening to, a well timed one was the best way she knew to have a good orgasm. It was just a pity that condoms needed to get in the way of it. The cum itself was something she regarded as a regretfully messy necessity. For the purposes of gratification she could pretend to like it, but she’d rather not end up with it all over her.
She regarded her affairs with other women as being harmless dalliances, like a more grown-up version of her youthful encounters. They seemed free of most of the risks that were involved with men. She had no desire to become pregnant or catch any of the diseases that seemed to be regarded as inevitable consequences of promiscuity. While she did take a lot more care over contraceptives and the like now than she ever did when she was younger, she was still cautious and selective in her partners. Sex was important but a fuck wasn’t worth dying for.
She had preferred to keep people at an emotional distance for some time now. It was easy enough for her to get what she needed without requiring additional entanglements, so why complicate things unnecessarily? Better to keep people away and just take what she needed.
She had initially started working as an escort for an agency, but somehow found that she was more put off by the idea of having to pretend to be interested in what strange men had to say than she was by letting them fuck her. Why put up with spending an entire evening around some tosser when you could get away with half an hour... maybe an hour at most if they paid extra?
The sex trade wasn’t something that she had anticipated starting to work in, but a job was a job and she wasn’t so fastidious that it was any kind of problem for her. Mostly she just had to keep smiling sweetly and take the money, even when it meant listening to some pointless bastard and then letting him fuck her. She wasn’t losing anything by letting it happen. She made absolutely certain that there were prophylactics in the way at all times. Strange guy’s spunk was not going to get near her.
She found herself feeling increasingly contemptuous towards the men she had to deal with. One evening she was involved in a session with a dull, older man. He was abrasive and unpleasant and not really her idea of good company. She just had to hope that it was over with quickly. When he stripped, the sight of his bloated body surrounding a sad, little cock was so pathetic that she wasn’t at all surprised that he had to rely on paying women. Normally she managed to hide her contempt better, but tonight she just couldn’t be bothered. To her surprise he seemed to enjoy it more that way. When he had difficulty maintaining his erection, she told him to just deal with it himself and he started eagerly wanking it. The life that rapidly stirred within it made her laugh.
“Is that what you want, to just toss yourself off for me?”
“If it would please you, miss.”
She was taken aback. Why the hell would him playing with his sad little cock please her? On the other hand, it was better than having him fight to keep it hard enough to stay inside her.
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“Just get on with it.”
He did and he came quickly. He was so embarrassingly grateful it sickened her. He started coming back to her every week. The next time she didn’t even bother to strip for him. She just told him to take his clothes off and wank while she sat in a chair watching him boredly and smoking. It was the easiest money she had ever earned. She didn’t even need to touch him.
She already knew that men could be strange, but this was interesting. She had some awareness of the different things that some people were turned on by, but the ones that didn’t affect her hadn’t seemed very relevant to her before. Why would she want to watch fat men wanking in her personal life?
At that time, she was working independently, relying on a discrete level of advertising to get new clients. She changed her adverts, and started to call herself a mistress. She always made sure to chat with clients on the phone before making her appointments with them. So far she had been able to restrict herself to those that seemed safe. For extra security, she kept a small revolver that she had acquired discretely accessible whenever she had clients. There was no way that she was going to let what Rick had done happen again.
She started to ask more questions about what they wanted and expected. Often, their answers surprised her. She hadn’t realised just how many men there were that were eager to pay to be mistreated and humiliated by a woman. Couldn’t they find one that would be rude to them for free? She wasn’t complaining though. She just had to learn to diversify to make the most of the opportunity.
She adjusted her wardrobe to fit the part that she was starting to play and acquired various props and toys. She had started to wear long black gloves whenever she was dealing with a client now. She found the action of donning them helped her to enter the mindset that was required to do the things she was now, and they helped to insulate her from the reality of what she was doing. She found wielding a crop or cane across the naked flesh of those she had such contempt for incredibly pleasing, even if it wasn’t exactly sex as she had ever thought of it before. It felt like the perfect revenge. What could be better than getting paid to hurt them? Lately, anyone that expected to get to orgasm around her had to be able to bring themselves to it. She was able to earn more money trying to hurt men than she had before when she tried to please them.
“Do you do anal?” The caller asked her when she had exhausted her normal questions.
“You don’t get to fuck me anywhere.”
“No, I meant, would you do it to me?”
She never had so far. Would that stop her? She discussed it in the sex-shop that she was becoming an increasingly regular customer of.
“Oh yeah, they love it. Get yourself one of these and they’ll be begging for more.”
She stood in front of the mirror at home with her purchase. She had stripped to her underwear and strapped herself into it. The long, black rubber cock jutting from her crotch seemed unnatural and confusing. Was this really what the guy wanted to have her do to him? It sounded like he did.
When the appointment came, the man was shy and polite. When she removed the robe she had been wearing and let him saw the appendage she had donned for the occasion he practically fainted with delight. His cries of pain and pleasure as she started to fuck him with it were loud and enthusiastic. He paid her extra and left looking drained. She realised afterwards that some kind of lubricant was usually a necessity for what she had done to him. He hadn’t complained. Clearly he liked it rough.
She developed the image she presented to the clients around what they appeared to expect. Some of the clothes and shoes were absurd and not particularly comfortable, but they made it easier for her to separate who she was in those sessions from who she was outside them. She couldn’t see any reason why she as herself would feel a desire to ram a rubber cock in the arse of a balding fat guy, but a couple of sessions like that went a fair way towards paying her rent and it was a lot less hassle than working in some tedious nine to five job.
After a few years of doing the same act she was getting increasingly bored of it. The most she could expect to get from any new clients was to be surprised and faintly repulsed. Fortunately, the disdain she expressed was apparently exactly what they wanted her to. If it led her to be rough and cruel on occasion, none of them seemed to mind. She seemed to be attracting a clientele that positively thrived on the abuse. Perversely, in time she started to enjoy it. When men were getting on her nerves, why wouldn’t she enjoy having the chance to take her frustrations out on one of them? The fact that they enjoyed it just encouraged her to be crueller, to inflict more pain on them. The riding crop she often carried in her sessions started to feel more and more at home in her hands. She wouldn’t have wanted any of them to realise it, but she found herself becoming progressively aroused by the pain she was supplying. She was starting to enjoy the power for its own sake.
Her personal love life wasn’t exactly benefitting from the work. If anything, her professional dealings with men had left her increasingly disinterested in having anything to do with them the rest of the time. She found herself wondering if all men were the same as the ones she dealt with. She didn’t have a huge amount of close contact with men outside of work, so it was easy for her perspective to become very skewed by what she was exposed to every day. For lovers she preferred to stick with women, even if that did put inevitable limitations on her. She had never dealt with a female client so it was easier to fool herself that other women didn’t share the desires that all the men she dealt with seemed to be obsessed with. Most girls appeared to be interested if she told them about her work and claimed it didn’t bother them, though one or two had looked scared by it, as if they expected her to start whipping them against their will. Anyone that nervous wasn’t much use to her so she was happy to just walk away and not see them again. To last for any length of time with her, a girl had to be tolerant of her work and the unsociable hours that went along with it. She couldn’t be bothered to have to lie repeatedly about why she was rarely available in the evenings or at weekends, or why it was quite likely that she wouldn’t be in the mood for sex when she had just spent a few hours humiliating and punishing men. Admittedly, sometimes doing that was enough to get her very much in the mood for sex and it was all she could do to not jump on the nearest available person that didn’t physically repel her. The challenge was in not letting what she was doing for money bleed over into the rest of her life too much. She did a job. Who she was for it she wasn't otherwise.
She had always been sexually open and not overburdened with shyness, so it was often easier for her to be the one to take the lead in encounters in her leisure time. She had developed a taste for younger women, the sort of pretty girls who were about twenty and were still a bit nervous about sex, especially with other women. Being bold and confident was usually necessary to get what she wanted out of them but she didn’t want to mix up the kind of stuff she did for money with what she was doing for pleasure.
Was she happy? Kinda was the most honest answer she could give. Having to do stuff that you didn’t want to seemed to be an inevitability of the human condition. At least she could limit it to about twelve hours a week. Plenty of people had to put up with much more shit than she did. The absence of a long-term lover wasn’t a big deal. She had never really had one yet. Fucking the same person half a dozen times was about as long term as she had ever managed. Maybe she just wasn’t designed for cohabitation and kids and all that stuff. Her parents didn’t seem too concerned. Claire was getting on with having lots of kids by this point, so they were already covered for grandchildren, which fortunately took the pressure off her to reproduce. She didn't tell them what she did for a living. They didn't ask. It was easier to just not talk about some things.
She had no real plans or desire to stop the kind of work that she had been involved in, but then it had been the only real work she had known. Anyway, she had been successful and profitable in what she had done so why would she want to start afresh in anything ne
w that would almost certainly require more work for less rewards? The only obvious step available to her was in becoming the person who was running the operation rather than the one who was actually having to offer the service to the clients. She was well enough funded that she was able to arrange for a suitable premises, after that she just had to find some girls and some clients to get money from. She was experienced enough in handling men to deal with most of the non-sexual demands that they placed and it wasn’t hard to find suitable girls that were glad to be somewhere that was relatively safe and looked after and run by someone that was both experienced and sympathetic. She may have stumbled into what she was doing but she was good at it and able to make both a living and a career for herself from it.
If she was now dealing with girls that were willing to do things that she herself wasn’t then that was their choice. It was important to her that all the girls were there by choice and that they were comfortable with what they were doing. She knew that there were plenty of places where they weren't so choosy but she didn't want to be running that kind of house. The girls who worked for her all had to maintain basic standards of behaviour that she was strict about, in terms of their presentability, hygiene and sobriety when working, but that was surely only a good thing for all concerned. Things worked better for her, the girls and the clientele if standards were maintained. She wasn’t looking to run a particularly grand establishment, just a nice, discrete house with a few girls in it at a time. They wouldn’t be the cheapest but they would be within the reach of those that were prepared to invest that bit more than the minimum to make sure that they were well looked after. Abuse of staff or clients would not be tolerated. The more outré services could be offered to those willing to pay a suitable additional cost, as long as there was a girl willing to provide for them. It was a good business that she was able to develop and she was justifiably proud of it. The local Police knew precisely what she was doing but they also knew that she was making an effort to be no trouble to them or anyone else, so they left her alone. Their time was better spent dealing with people that presented actual trouble. Anyway, she was realistic enough to accept that allowing those members of the force that were so inclined to take advantage of her facilities was simply good practise. She never had to actively engage in blackmail against them, relying on courtesy seemed to work well enough. She had long since made it a clear and fundamental rule that privacy was assured for all that visited the house. Any girl that was hoping to end up with someone famous and be able to sell the story to the gutter press had no place in her house. In an age where girls seemed to be looking to retire off the spoils of tell-all confessions about the infidelities of celebrities Melinda attempted to enforce the traditional importance of discretion on the part of the courtesan. If clients weren’t free to express their desires within the house without fear of repercussions, then what exactly was the point of what they were doing?
