“okay it sounds fine. a drink sounds great too. thanks for not giving me a hard time. looking forward to seeing you x”
I stared at the computer screen.
Am I really going to do this? I guess I don’t have any choice; I have about 12 pounds to last me for 10 more days in London. What did I do to my debit card? The last time I remember having it was when I was buying a ticket to Portsmouth at Waterloo…How could you be so irresponsible, Marie? But I’m fixing the problem now. There’s nothing else I can do, having not told any of my family or friends that I was going to England. Anyway, I want to make my own money, now that I’m 20.
*
I looked up how to get to Blackheath railway station. I felt annoyed that I couldn’t just ride the tube. I had to go to London Bridge, and then take a train from there.
It was 2 PM. I got off the computer and went and tried to nap in my hostel room.
Starting at 4 I changed my clothes, brushed my teeth, straightened my hair, put perfume on, and tried to hide my huge dark circles with concealer. It was a lost cause. I figured I would just keep my sunglasses on until I was back at his place, when it would be too late for him to change his mind. I wondered if I was cheating him, by getting 300 pounds to have sex with him. I wondered why he would offer to pay more than I asked. I thought it was a bit suspicious, but I figured since we were meeting in public and he was paying me upfront it’d be okay.
*
I left the hostel at 4:30.
As I was walking to the tube station I heard whistling from across the street and turned to look. It was some Australian boys about my age from my hostel, waving at me. I ignored them.
I rode the tube to London bridge station thinking about how I had met my friend there a few days ago, and how now I was going back under such different circumstances.
On the tube there were three school girls absolutely plastered in makeup talking at length about their diets and other girls at school. They all had incredibly grating voices, even more so than most English women.
“I was good yesterday, but this morning I had toast. Oh but then for lunch I had cherries.”
“Cherries are good, but the toast …”
“The other day I ate sooo much I had …”
“Did you see she dyed her hair ginger and black? Yeah, like that’s attractive.”
“She’s sooo fat, it’s hilarious!”
They all started giggling at length and it was so grating and I was so hung-over.
I couldn’t take it and switched compartments at the next stop.
As I was getting off the train one of them said, “That girl looked really weird.”
How can people like that actually exist?
I wondered what the guy would be like. I wished I had asked him to send me a picture. He had seemed like the nicest and was the most serious (I had been annoyed with and ignored the guys who asked me to send them tons of pictures and write paragraphs about “what I was into.”)
I was worried I wouldn’t be able to talk to him or that things would be really awkward, but I decided I’d buy beer at a convenience store and chug it before I met him, so I’d be tipsy and less nervous.
*
The train to Blackheath was annoying; I had a headache from being hung-over, and it was absolutely packed with loud Italian tourists who kept yelling and laughing almost right in my ear. I held my head in my hands. “I can’t stand these fucking people,” I whispered.
But then I looked at an adorable little black boy and smiled at him, I then felt slightly sad.
My train arrived at Blackheath station at about 6 pm. I walked to a convenience store and bought two Stella Artois. There wasn’t really anywhere I could sit and drink it discretely, so I guzzled one can in front of a trash can, and figured I would save the other can for a bit.
A lot of people gave me looks. Blackheath was really pretty and really rich looking. Everyone was pretty and well-dressed. I felt uncomfortable.
I wondered where to wait for the guy. I decided just to lean against a wall near the exit of the train station.
Two teenagers came up to me, one a very cute girl.
“Do you get served?” she asked.
“What?”
“Do you get served?” she asked again, more slowly.
“I don’t understand what you’re asking me, sorry.”
They walked away.
I realized she meant that she wanted me to buy her alcohol. I sighed realizing I would probably never get the chance to get a cute 15 year old English girl drunk again.
I saw a kind looking business man waiting in front of the station across the sidewalk from me, smoking.
I went up to him. “Um, can I get a cigarette off of you, please?”
“What?”
“May I have a cigarette, please?”
“Um, sure,” He said and gave me one.
“Thanks.”
I needed to smoke because it was 6:30 now and the whole thing was starting to seem more real to me.
I tried to comfort myself with these thoughts: I won’t get hurt because it doesn’t really make sense to think that will happen. Most men want to have sex with cute 20 year old girls. Very few are sociopath serial killers. Caroline had sex with tons of guys from craigslist and nothing bad ever happened to her. And England isn’t nearly as violent…
And then I started to think: And anyway, I kind of don’t care if I get murdered. I guess that’s an immature thing to think and if something actually happened I’d be terrified, but right now, thinking about it, I don’t care. I guess it’d be bad if I got murdered and then they told my parents the situation but…
I was mostly anxious about him not finding me attractive or not showing up and me being out of money, or not having anything to say and it being really awkward.
I looked at myself in the reflective window of the train station.
“Don’t worry, you look beautiful,” an old man said as he walked past me.
I leaned back up against the wall, checking the clock constantly. I looked at every guy who walked towards the station, wondering if it was him. I was mad at myself again for not asking for a picture or at least a description. But I also figured it was probably for the best so I couldn’t back out due to his possible unattractiveness.
Then finally at about five minutes past 7 PM, a bald middle aged man in a banker’s shirt and khakis came up to me.
“Hello, it’s great to see you, Emily. I was worried you wouldn’t turn up!”
“Hello, nice to meet you.” I said politely, and shook his hand.
“I have to go to the cash machine, but I’ll be back in about five minutes okay?”
“Okay.”
I wondered if he was really going to the ATM or if he thought I was unattractive and was running away.
But, no, he came back quickly.
He seemed very excited.
He led me to a pub.
“I was trying to imagine what black plaid would look like, but then I saw your sunglasses and realized that it must have been you…”
He told me about how he was a bank manager and worked for a French company and went to France all of the time. I told him about how much I liked France and wanted to go there, talked about how I liked French music and existentialism when I was in high school and François Truffaut and Jane Birkin and Anna Karina and how I had a stalker once who said I look just like Chantal Goya and how much I wanted to smoke Gauloises…I guess I didn’t care about entertaining him like I was probably supposed to and was just thinking about the things I liked to keep my mind off of what was actually happening.
I told him about how I was studying art and design, how I made money designing websites and pamphlets and that sort of thing.
“You do look like an art student.”
It was pleasant enough; it was like the feeling I got when I talked to my uncle whom I see at Christmas.
At the pub I told him to get me whatever cider he recommended.
I was n
ervous about him not having paid me right away, but I figured it was okay since we were at a pub. If he didn’t pay me here, I would just leave.
He came back to our table with a cider and a beer.
“I’ve been like really obsessed with cider since I’ve came here. Like I never had it before…”
He told me the difference between lager and beer and about where he had grown up which apparently was famous for lager.
He asked me why I came to England.
Told him about how I had always liked British music and fashion especially lately I really like Alexa Chung, and how I thought that people back home would be really impressed and jealous when I told them about how I had been to London.
We talked about how much we like Marianne Faithfull. I thought about how in America you would never find a stuffy, middle aged banker who liked Marianne Faithfull.
“Do you want something else?” he asked when I had finished my cider.
“Yeah, I want a mimosa, like Buck’s Fizz.”
We had to mix the champagne and orange juice ourselves.
After drinking a glass I finally asked, “Um, do you want to pay me the first bit now?”
“Yeah, certainly I do,” he said and reached into his wallet and handed me the money underneath the table.
I counted it quickly and put it in my bag.
It really was 200 pounds.
And now I had money, so now I was happy again.
Since I had left my parents’ house I was constantly struggling with money. My first year of college I would often go two or three days in a row without eating. When I later moved to Chicago, I was sick with anxiety the first few days I lived there. Due to an error with my bank, I was going to be thrown out into the street. I got that same panicked, anxious feeling in London when I had ripped through my suitcase and purse and hadn’t been able to find my debit card.
I thought then that not having to endure that kind of horrible stress and fear was worth whatever happened with this guy. I just want lots and lots of money and expensive things so I don’t ever have to be afraid of what’s going to happen to me again, no matter what I have to do to get it.
“I’m really hungry. Will you buy me something to eat?” I asked.
“Sure. Do you want a burger, maybe? The menu’s right there.”
“I think I want fish and chips.”
“You’re going to eat fish and chips and champagne?” He laughed.
“Yeah, what’s wrong with that?”
He went to the bar to order me my fish and chips.
When he sat back down we talked more about London and other general things.
Somehow it got to me admitting, “You can probably tell I’ve never done anything like this before.”
“Yeah. I mean the way you look and how you were so nervous when I first met you, it’s nothing like agency girls. I mean I was nervous, too…”
“How many times have you done this?”
“This is the third time. The first two times were with professional girls and I had absolutely nothing to say to them. But with you, you seem intelligent. Like there’s a lot going on behind you.”
“I’m smart at some things I guess, but not with people or at growing up. And those are the important things…”
*
The waiter brought me my fish and chips. He was cute. I wondered if it looked to other people like I was here with my dad.
“Is it supposed to be a filet?”
“Yeah. It’s very traditional fish and chips. They even gave you mushy peas.”
“In America, fish and chips is usually like fish sticks, you know. I guess it wouldn’t be authentic…”
After eating and finishing the rest of the champagne I said, “Do you wanna go?”
While walking back to his place some tween girls walking past us stopped and asked him if he could help them because they were lost. He looked up directions for them on his iPhone. He was very sweet to them. I thought how surreal it was for there to be a gang of kids talking politely to a man who was with a prostitute. I wished I had a cigarette.
“That was nice of you, to help those kids,” I said.
*
His place was nice. I could tell he was well-off, I guess. But it also felt uncomfortably stark and lonely.
I sat down on his couch.
“Do you want to pay me the rest now?”
He gave me one hundred more pounds, which I put into my bag.
We talked some more.
He asked me if I thought there was anything wrong with what we were doing, and I said that I didn’t think so.
He agreed. “We could have met at a pub. Of course you might not have gone home with me then, but…”
“I was only going to do it with one guy, and you seemed like the least creepy.”
“Really? Only one?”
*
I asked him about his first time, since I always ask men about that.
He told me about losing it at 17. He told me about how he had fallen in love with the girl he lost it to, and how “those feelings never really go away,” which worried me as someone who was still very much in love with the person they lost their virginity to, a year and a half ago.
We talked some more and it got around to him admitting, “Well, I’m seeing someone. But, I don’t know if we’re still together. She’s in South America right now, studying yoga. She hasn’t been in contact with me in a few months. I mean, people are adults, and can make their own decisions…”
There was some silence.
“Listen, Emily. I don’t want you to do something that you really don’t want to do. You don’t have to have sex with me, you can take the money and go.”’
I briefly considered it.
I’m not used to people being nice to me.
“No, it’s okay. I don’t believe in stealing or whatever.”
He said he had to go into the other room for something. While he was walking away I took off my clothes and stood up.
When he came back and saw me he said, “Oh, that’s beautiful. You’re really beautiful, and like naturally beautiful.”
“Yeah, I grew up mostly in Los Angeles, and there most of the girls were like fake blonde fake tan lots of make-up you know, which is cool I guess, but it was just never my thing…”
*
I sat down on his couch and gave him a blowjob while he was standing up in front of me. I didn’t really feel disgusted or anything like I was afraid I would. It was okay.
But then he kneeled down and started to go down on me, which was really gross. I don’t like it even when a really hot guy does it. I forced myself to moan like I was enjoying it.
When he stopped I stood up.
“Do you want to fuck me?”
“Of course I do.” He sounded nervous. “Do you have a condom? Because I don’t.”
“Yeah, I have one,” I said and got one from my purse.
He made some joke about how one should never look in a woman’s purse.
We went into his bedroom, and he lay down on the bed.
I handed him the condom and he put it on.
“Oh, you want me to be on top, huh?”
So I did and again it was like whatever, it wasn’t gross or disturbing.
He lay there and had an erection while I moved.
“Do you want to do it another way?”
“What?”
“Because I just feel kind of tired.”
“Well, I’ve just cum, so. Good timing, I guess.”
I couldn’t believe my luck, with him being a two pump chump.
We both got dressed.
He said he would call a taxi for me.
He went to go use the phone. I sat on his couch.
“I’ve just called the taxi and it should be here in about ten minutes. Can I get you anything?”
“Can you get me like coffee, ‘cause I’m really tired. Just black coffee, nothing in it. And toast with marmite on it, if you have it.”
He we
nt to go make me those things.
I smoked the cigarette I saw laying on his table.
I looked in my purse at all of the money I had now.
He brought me the coffee and Marmite-toast on a tray, but when I grabbed the coffee cup it was so hot that I yelped and dropped it all over his white couch.
“Oh god, I’m so sorry!”
“No, it’s okay. I’m sorry for handing you that. I didn’t realize how hot the cup was. Stains can easily be washed out, but scars are forever…”
I ate my toast standing.
He gave me 50 pounds for taxi fare.
“You know, Emily, don’t make a habit out of this. You seem like there’s a lot going on behind you. You don’t seem like the kind of girl to do this.”
“Well I just had to, since I lost my debit card. I only planned to do this once. And, you know, no girl wants to do this, but if I had to do it I’m glad it was with you.”
“I understand, I mean especially in London, where you just seem to burn through money so fast…”
He wanted me to keep in contact with him; he said he wanted to show me London, “even though this is such a strange way to meet someone.”
I lied and said I would email him.
He talked about how strange life is. “You never know what’s going to happen from day to day. Like waking up this morning I had no idea that going on that website that I hardly ever go on these days would lead to me sleeping with a 20 year old later today…”
Then my taxi was here.
I kissed him on the mouth (he asked me if I minded and I said I didn’t) and hugged him and we said goodbye.
I took the taxi back to Hendon Central tube station.
sex work experience two
I can’t drink anymore of this. It’s almost 4 anyway. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen at this point.
I took a last sip of lemonade and threw it away after the beer I had been chugging in an attempt to alleviate my anxiety.
I walked away from the trash can I had been drinking next to, and went to lean against a wall in front of the tube station.
I wondered if I was buzzed or if it was just my fever.
A suburban looking woman gave me a dirty look as she passed me.
I saw a Middle Eastern looking guy with glasses and curly hair as in the photo and wondered if that was him, hoping it wasn’t because he looked creepy with his messy stubble, and he was a bit fat.
what purpose did i serve in your life Page 2
