“Um, do you want to sit down?” I asked.
“What? I couldn’t hear you. You talk too quiet.”
“Do you want to sit down?” I asked again, forcing myself to talk louder, and motioned towards my couch.
He went and walked and sat down on my couch, and I walked after him and sat stiff and rigid, feeling unbearably nervous and awkward.
I faced straight ahead.
I have to say something to him but him but I can’t think of anything to say.
We sat like that in silence for twenty seconds with me desperately trying to think of something to say, but my mind was completely blank.
I decided to just stand up. I stared at the blank white wall to the right of his head. I began to take off my clothes. After that extended awkward moment, I felt like I was in a race to take my clothes off as quickly as possible. I was afraid of him losing his patience with me.
You have to keep the customer satisfied, Emily, or he might take his money back.
I just stood there naked for a moment while he looked me over.
“Oh. You’re cute.”
“Thank-you,” I muttered. I am not “cute,” I am extremely beautiful. (Around normal men, I had severe anxiety about the way that I looked, but with johns there was this resentment, this bitter anger at the thought that my immense physical attractiveness could even be a question to them.)
“Can I take some pictures?” He asked.
“No…” I said weakly.
“No? I can’t do that?”
I shook my head. I’m not going to give you anything extra.
He unbuttoned his pants and pulled them down. I was disgusted by the sight of his tight, dingy grey briefs.
I sat down next to him, and he stood up.
He rubbed his penis all over my face.
I get turned on whenever I watch this happen in porn, but now it’s happening to me and I feel sick, though also slightly turned on. I want to like this more.
He touched his penis to my lips and I opened my mouth mechanically.
He placed his hands on the back of my head and gripped my hair and began to move my head wildly back and forth.
My eyes were shut tight. I stopped thinking then and was only aware of the pain in my throat and how much I wanted to gag but I couldn’t. I can’t show any weakness, I can’t let him humiliate me. I can’t let him win.
This continued for minutes and I felt irritated.
Why won’t he just fuck me so he’ll cum in a few minutes and then this will be over?
“Look at me,” he said.
I opened my eyes and looked up at his face. Usually my eyes were always closed during sex work, so I could dissociate from the experience. Maybe he knows why I close my eyes and that’s why he’s forcing me to look at him.
“Have you ever had your mouth fucked before?”
Why is he asking me questions when my mouth is full of his penis and I can’t talk?
He began to jerk my head back and forth even faster and I became very dizzy.
I finally gagged and started to cough and gasp.
“It’s a lot of cock to swallow, sweetie.”
It’s big, but it’s not that big.
He pulled his penis out of my mouth.
“Let me fuck you doggy-style.”
I positioned myself so I was on all fours. I turned my head to make sure that he put a condom on, and when I saw that he had I turned my head forwards hoping he hadn’t seen me looking back, and I closed my eyes.
He penetrated me and he thrust his hips so fast and his penis went so deep inside of my vagina that it caused a sharp pain. I forced myself to fake moan, like I was enjoying it, but sometimes gasps and cries of pain escaped.
“How many guys do you fuck a week? Ten? Fifteen?”
“Um, three or four…”
He wants me to degrade me; he wants me to degrade myself. What if he demands his money back at the end if I don’t do what he wants?
“How many, princess?”
“Usually two a day, sometimes three…”
“Do you fuck black guys?”
“Yeah…” I could feel blood rush to my cheeks as I was so incredibly embarrassed.
“What guys your favorite?”
“Um…”
“Black guys?”
“Um…”
“White guys with big cocks?”
“Yeah…”
He laughed at me.
“Tell me how much you love my cock, you nasty slut.”
I was scared and humiliated to the point where my mind was numb.
“I love your cock,” I half cried from the pain.
He laughed at me, and slapped my ass really hard. I cried out in pain.
“You are a horny little thing.”
I had to blink back the tears that were welling in my eyes.
(I entered, temporarily, into a bizarre mental state induced by my need to disassociate from the humiliation, the pain, and my disgust at my willingness to engage in it.)
“You like being submissive don’t you?”
“Yeah…” I moaned.
I have to go along with this to get paid because I’m a whore. I deserve to be treated like this it’s my job I have to make him happy. I’m getting off on being treated like this and I like it. I love it. I want to be treated as a worthless whore, I am a worthless whore. I feel so relieved. I don’t have to think or impress. I’m so tired of lying to myself and keeping up the illusion that I’m not a worthless sex object when I am, I am, I so obviously am. I am a stupid worthless whore and I like being treated like one.
“I’m going to cum in your mouth.”
“Okay.”
“What do we say?”
Yes, I want to beg for his cum. He is going to cum in my mouth because he wants to degrade me, he sees me as less than human. He is honest and it’s a relief. I am so tired of men pretending that they see me as something other than a whore, that they see any woman as anything other than that.
“…Please,” I muttered.
He ejaculated in my mouth.
I love the taste of his semen.
I gagged.
I got up immediately and ran to my bathroom and spit the semen out and rinsed my mouth out.
When I came back out he was standing near the door, fully dressed.
“Well, thanks, sweetheart.”
I tried to say, no, thank-you, I hope I see you again, but I just found myself nodding.
I walked him to the door, smiled at him, and then shut the door after he left.
I collapsed onto the floor and curled up into the fetal position and began to hyperventilate and sob.
men
(he never did)
his roommate/best friend/my then boyfriend.
when z was gone he came out to smoke
cigarettes with me.
“i like your skirt.”
“do you think i need to wear leggings under
it since it’s so short?”
“no.”
[sic]
How embarrassing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[“When men say ‘I love you’ they mean ‘I own you’”]- Simone de Beauvoir
(he never did.)
i feel like i’ve learned and been told over and over again that sex won’t make men fall in love with you and pretending like it will is hurting me, but i never knew a man could hurt you so much by withholding sex.
adrien brody
hello.
i’m marie calloway.
thanks for your XXXXXXXX XXXXXXX blog and other writing. especially your essay on pornography called XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX. those things have really broadened my mind. (before was strict classical marxist.)
please look at my tumblr if you want.”
I sent that email in March. He didn’t respond for months, so I felt a little embarrassed thinking he must have seen my email and ignored it.
But then I got this response in May:
“thanks for reading!
You can tell I don’t check this email account very often, too lazy even to set up a forward — sorry for not responding sooner — I will start following you on tumblr —”
“thanks for replying
I didn’t know you have a tumblr
I couldn’t find a non XXXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXXXXX email for you.
if you want please read my writing zzz
http://thoughtcatalog.com/author/marie-calloway/
tao lin liked both stories zzz
x”
“I liked the Thought Catalog pieces in a Tao Lin-ish sort of way — that is, they are so direct yet make me experience an abstract discomfort, a spiritual sluggishness — reading that I realize it may not sound like a compliment, but it is.
also — you can email me at___@_____________.com — I think I am shutting down the XXXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXXXXX thing.”
“i’m glad you liked my writing. zzz maybe this is weird but sometimes I wondered if you would hate it/hate my blog since it could be seen as the self-absorbed narcissism you write about a lot zzz getting writing published felt weird though, and all the attention. I kind of didn’t like it. still I asked tao lin if he would be interested in publishing a compilation of my stories/photographs thru muumuu house. zz
will you release a book soon?
plz add me on fb if you want.”
“couldn’t figure out how to add you on Facebook — I am sort of a Facebook dummy, despite writing about it all the time
maybe you can add me
read your pieces as critiques of narcissism and self-absorption, which are hard to make without embodying
them to the nth degree — nothing more narcissistic than complaining about narcissism (like I sometimes do) — think one must feel it in the writing to understand why it is problematic, pervasive, a kind of drugged state
when I used to check on how popular my blog posts and stuff were, I was way more anxious — had a very ambivalent response to knowing what got more attention, and found it too easy to conflate attention to the subject I was writing about with attention to me as a person or writer — can see why those pieces of yours would bring a lot of weird attention, obviously —”
“oh I wanted to ask if you watched the bebezeva documentary and what you thought of it :o also maybe what you think of bebezeva in general??”
“haven’t watched but will and let you know —”
Ten days later I booked a flight to New York City. I was technically going to meet my Internet boyfriend, John, a 19 year old who had fallen in love with my writing, and who was paying for everything. But what I was really excited about was the chance to meet Adrien Brody.
I sent him this email:
“hello
I will go to brooklyn may 26 - june 1
I would love to sleep w/ you
probably you’re not into that sort of thing but thought I would say anyway zz via nothing to lose
goodluck in your life zzz”
“Hello —
I am intrigued by your proposal — would love to meet up if possible — Sunday and Monday would be good days for me — also been meaning to watch bebezeva video — send me a link to it if you can”
I didn’t respond to that message because I didn’t know what to say and was terrified of saying something that would make him change his mind.
Four days passed without any correspondence between us. I wanted to keep his attention, so I emailed him again, this time a gallery of photos a friend had taken of me in thigh high socks. I was also curious to see how someone who seemed so dignified and cerebral would respond to a young girl sending sexy photos of herself to him over the Internet.
“here’s some art me and some guy made
“provocative yet disarming — not sure if it is supposed to work this way but I wanted to loop the images and make them work like animation
I am at this conference session about narrative and postautonomia marxism, your link oddly resonant with it “
or at least I am forcing a resonance in my mind —
In Amsterdam now but back in New York on Monday — will plan on seeing you next Sunday —”
I was relieved, and proud, that I was so attractive to him that it made him definitely want to see me.
*
I arrived in New York on Thursday night of the 26th of May. John was a virgin and he lost it to me that night. The rest of the time with him was mostly spent eating out, shopping, laying in bed, and wandering around New York. The entire time was spent half-interested, my mind constantly going back to Adrien Brody.
Then, on Saturday afternoon, after we got back to the hotel (slightly drunk) from Central Park, I checked my email.
“let me know if/when for sun/mon — need to figure out my plans — may be out of town until sun afternoon — hope you are enjoying NYC”
“sunday is fine whenever
you can text me 702-XXX-XXXX
btw sry if too forward
will u read thru my archive of selected blog posts and say what you think
just b/c I want you to”
“will do — be in touch tomorrow 6ish”
John was gone all Sunday visiting a friend.
I spent the day shopping, first at Tiffany’s where I bought John a bottle of cologne, meant as an apology for him having to spend so much money on me, and for going off to see another guy. Then later I went to the crowded, five story Forever 21 near Times Square and bought lingerie and nail polish.
I wanted to go for a drink after shopping, but I decided against it and went back to my hotel and lay in my bed, nervously waiting. I checked the time on my phone frequently, near constantly as it got closer to 6.
I tried to read the new book I got, but I couldn’t. I could only wonder if I should change my clothes, fix my hair another way, wear my new lingerie…
And then he texted me.
My hands began to tremble.
“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god…” I repeated over and over.
“Back in city. This is Adrien Brody. must determine where to meet. Where are you?”
I immediately forwarded it to John and closed my phone shut.
I looked at the time it was sent, 6:35. I figured I should wait until at least 6:45 to respond. I put the phone on the bed and inched away, staring at it.
I couldn’t tell if I was acting in a contrived way, or if it was all genuine. I thought about that for a while, and then at 6:40 I picked up the phone and typed a response:
“in manhattan. 7th ave and 55th st.”
“I can meet you in 45 minutes there and we can proceed out of midtown. I will text you when I get off subway. That okay?”
“k.”
I examined myself in the full length mirror in the hotel room, and decided to change my clothes. I decided my legs looked too fat for the shorts I was wearing, so I put on a black pencil skirt and a blue pinstriped dress shirt to match.
I thought that I would meet him near the subway, so I went and stood out in front of the station.
I was worried about my face. I examined my face with my pocket mirror, but I didn’t trust it. I took out my phone and took a picture of my face. As I was doing that, someone walked by and made fun of me: “That girl’s taking a photo of herself!”
The picture looked horrible. I initially panicked, and then tried to convince myself that it didn’t actually look horrible, with mixed results.
I stood in front of that station in a kind of numb anxiety for what seemed like an incredibly long amount of time, made to seem longer by me checking the time on my phone every two minutes. It was a strange feeling, having spent the past two weeks looking forward to nothing but meeting him, but as the minutes drew closer I was overcome with nervous dread. He wouldn’t find me attractive, I wouldn’t have anything to say, we would sit in a bar in painful silence until he found an excuse to leave and I would feel humiliated and ruminate for months…
My thoughts were
interrupted by an incoming text.
“Here. Sitting in dismal space on 56th west of seventh smoking a cigarette by hooters. Where are you?”
“near the 57th st station.”
“On the street? What corner. Will find you? Im wearing a blue polo shirt. Bald.”
I had to walk away from the station to the nearest street sign to find out what corner I was on.
“west.”
I walked aimlessly around the block, looking for “56th west of seventh” or just the sight of him.
I finally saw him on the opposite side of the street from where I was standing.
My first impression of him, after noting that he was bald and wearing a navy polo like he said, was that he seemed awkward and out of place. He was carrying a black shopping bag which added to this feeling somehow. He seemed strange and clumsy. This reassured me, like he was actually what I had imagined and hoped he would be.
I thought he had seen me and would come to me, but he started to turn and walk right.
I texted him just to be sure:
“are you carrying a bag?”
“Yes.”
I reached for my phone to text him that he had just passed by me, but I decided to just go up to him instead. I started to run after him. As I started to run, I passed a tourist with his son who said, “Watch out, that girl’s going to get you!” This made me feel self-conscious, and so I tripped. My shoe fell off into the street. I covered my face with my hands, embarrassed.
With my head still facing downwards, I went out into the street and put my shoe back on.
I raised my head, and I saw Adrien Brody was looking at me. I could tell he had seen the whole thing.
I walked up to him, feeling humiliated, hoping he would pretend nothing had happened; and that’s exactly what he did.
We said hello and started to walk.
what purpose did i serve in your life Page 5
