Wonder what the London girl is up to. The conversation with her is so good that I wonder if we’re as compatible in other ways. I’m so over client sex. Vigilant, cervix-spasming, condom-checking, clock-watching client sex. Not that it can’t be fun; it can. But I want to have sex with someone I’m into. I want the bedroom to be an addition, not the purpose. I want to laugh, and then come, and then laugh again. I want to be under, over, in, deep, with someone new. Till we collapse in on each other, forget the time and wake up three weeks later when reality breaks down the fourth wall and one of us has thrush. I don’t want someone I just find hot, that I’ll let top me but won’t let kiss me. I want to fuck and be fucked, to be so interested in them that the sex is interrupted by conversation, and then the conversation by sex. Maybe I just want intimacy, the tactile kind. The getting-to-know-you-from-the-inside-out kind. The three-fingers-deep, mouth-tasting-of-you kind. The I’m-hungry-let’s-make-toast-at-three-in-the-morning-so-we-can-keepgoing kind. The lesbian kind.
I fantasise about more than a fuck, as nice as the time with that guy was. But I don’t fantasise about romance. That desire is deadened for me by the last five years of relationships. Romance serves only romance, a nasty creature consuming itself and both of you in the process. And all that’s left is a strap-on you don’t want to wear and a t-shirt you don’t want to wash.
On the podium to the left of the stage there’s a man on his knees giving another man a blow job. They’re right at eye level but gazes just sweep past them to the DJ booth, which was designed to be at ground height to eliminate hierarchy. Because, sure, they’re playing for us, but we’re dancing for them, and there’s an exchange. Just as my writing is brought more meaning by the tears cried by those who read it, so we are making something all together, in our bodies and the spaces between us and the moments in which we touch. In this dark sanctuary where we close the blinds against the sun’s rays and dance on as if a new week isn’t beginning, where we dance for sixteen hours, twenty hours, twenty-four, and end up too exhausted to leave, just hovering around the entry on peeling leather couches watching other people circulate, see that same girl lap the building, see that same security guard shaking someone awake, see ourselves not at all with a sticker covering our phone cameras and no mirrors to remind us of how gross we are with our possum eyes and gurning troll faces. We stay on because we’ve been stripped of any semblance of propriety, ‘looking good’ forgotten, just like that one lone swimmer in the Kit Kat pool, we checked in our inhibitions along with our jackets and now I’m with my muscles and my sinews and that thyroid cyst I push around my throat and the dried cum my pussy has leaked that I can scritch off my thighs with a thumbnail and my mind sharp and demanding and my excitement to live, to be a part of this messy imperfect world, in the fritter of my fingers and the leap of my thoughts across my synapses, quickening with the breach.
monday
SHE’S MOISTURISING HER HANDS AGAIN BUT THEY’RE STILL cracked and flaking – too many years of washing dishes without gloves, she tells me. She started sex work late, when she was already fifty, and now she’s nearing sixty and none of the city brothels will hire her. I’m here because I wanted to try a famed mining town; veteran workers always wax lyrical about the amount of cash you can make in places where women are few and men are trapped, too much cash to be believed, too much to fit in your wallet or bra, and so I made the three-and-a-half-hour drive west to this country town that is nothing like the one I grew up in, all dry eucalypts and dust, no rivers to break the heat. A backyard to sunbathe naked in, though; I can lie in the grass between bookings and stare at the one lone palm tree and feel like I’m on holidays. City broths could never!
She wants to move back to Cambodia, she tells me, is trying to make enough money to retire there. But it’s hard when it’s a race against her age and each year new younger girls appear. I feel that and I’m only twenty-six. I know there’s a legion of eighteen-year-olds coming up behind me, have noticed I don’t get the clients with paedophilic fantasies anymore; they reserve their whispered smut for the ears of girls much younger and more nubile than me.
Around her the notices shout down at us from baby pink and mint green walls: TO AVOID CONFLICTS DO NOT TOUCH OTHER PEOPLE’S FOOD GIRLS ARE NOT REQUIRED TO SHARE FOOD and: DEAR LADIES IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF ALL GIRLS TO CLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELVES AND KEEP THIS AREA TIDY and: ATTENTION LADIES THIS IS A SHARED AREA MEANING NO SLEEPING ON LOUNGE AND NO LAYING DOWN ON LOUNGE WHEN OTHERS WANT TO SIT AND NO SUITCASES, MAKE-UP AND PERSONAL BELONGINGS TO BE SCATTERED ALL OVER THE PLACE! In spite of this the place is fairly welcoming. We can stay as long as we want with a room to sleep in without having the cost of accommodation taken from our earnings. The management are kind, because being so far from anywhere there’s a scarcity of workers and they can’t afford to frighten us away. They’re actually grateful when we show up, in stark contrast to some of the metropolitan places I’ve worked at which act like they’re doing me a favour for hiring me, forgetting that it’s my body that’s the drawcard and worksite.
‘I have an older woman friend who still works at brothels,’ I say. ‘I can text her and ask what places in Sydney hire mature-aged women, if you want.’
‘Oh, honey, please, if you could – thank you, honey.’
She gets back to me five minutes later. Amanda’s Heaven and Cougar Town. Not particularly appealing names, but I’ve worked at Real Promiscuous Massage and Wives Only so am not in a position to judge. Her mobile has no internet, so I look them up for her and give her their addresses and phone numbers, and as she writes them down she says, ‘Thank you, honey, oh thank you so much,’ over and over again. I know that relief, the pain of the hunt for money. Not like her, because I’m young and white and can get hired wherever I want, but I have sat on shift after shift where I’ve earned nothing and racked my brains for somewhere else to go and feared that my time is over and that even sex work, which is meant to be the last resort, is finished for me and I can’t even sell that most basic of resources, the one I’m born with. I know the panic. And so I’m glad when the first client of the day comes in and I say no, I don’t do kissing, and he picks her instead.
I move outside to get that sun, play on my phone and find myself back on that person’s Instagram profile. Count how many photos of theirs I’ve liked, wonder why they haven’t liked any of mine, check out who else they follow and see they’ve been liking other girls’ photos. Are my photos not as good or do they not find me attractive or does the time difference just mean they miss mine in their feed or are they just not interested in me at all? But they always reply to my messages, are happy to chat, and surely that means more than a photo like anyway? Maybe they don’t feel the need to engage in that public approval when I’m a sure thing; maybe that’s how they court someone and I don’t need to be courted. I would rather they replied to my messages and didn’t like my posts than the other way around, so why do I feel sad that they’re giving likes to others? It doesn’t take away from our communication. Still, what does she have that I don’t? She’s a model, sure, so conventionally better-looking. But I know people find me interesting and compelling, and that’s more important in the long run. I know I’ve fucked a lot of hot people myself but it’s the ones who make me laugh that I’m drawn back to.
I know it doesn’t matter yet I still obsess over it. Reread our old messages. Scroll back through every photo they’ve liked. It doesn’t thrill me as much as the first time, though, and I want more. Another hit of dopamine, all the way from Europe. Express delivered. Instantaneous effect guaranteed. I could post this photo as a trap, but then if they don’t respond to it it’ll make me so sad; it doesn’t matter if it gets a few thousand likes when the one it was posted for doesn’t recognise it. Besides, it’s always better when they respond to something of mine I haven’t posted for them, when it’s unexpected.
‘Maddy, intro!’
Brush the grass off, bodysuit and heels on. I’m slightly sweaty but in that nice
, wholesome, sunbaked way, just perspiration, like a lady, don’t even smell. Inside is cold – the sun won’t make it through these old brick walls – and I feel as if I’m striding a solitary catwalk down the carpeted hallways, imagining it is them watching me on the other side of the world, not my doppelganger in this ornate mirror.
The client’s a young white guy with a beard and high vis; I bet like most tradies he’ll book for halfa and he’ll be no frills, simply wants to get off in between jobs.
I’m right and he’s out of there in less than fifteen minutes, including both showers. Easily satisfied with small talk and doggy, forgettable in the best possible way. I come back into the girls’ room and before I even have time to dance a little jig over the sheer joy of money making I’m called out for another intro and I’m in a forty-five immediately.
He wants me to lie down on my stomach while he slowly kisses up my legs and torso. I momentarily feel bad that I haven’t shaved them as he cradles them in his hands and begins to kiss the soles of my feet. ‘You are so beautiful, sweetie,’ he whispers over and over. Like ASMR it’s a soporific and I could almost fall asleep. That soft sibilance . . .
‘Are you Iranian?’ I ask.
‘Yes, I am, sweetie – how did you know?’
‘The way you say your S’s. I’ve heard it before in people whose first language is Farsi.’
‘You know Farsi? You are smart as well as beautiful, my love,’ and he lightly sucks my toes in devotion.
‘What is this on your foot?’ he asks as he strokes my tattoo.
‘It’s the postcode of my hometown. I wanted it there so no one would see it, coz it’s private to me, but also my sole is what has direct contact with the world in the earth I tread and my left sole is the same side as my heart.’
‘Oh! You think of this stuff that is wonderful. I do not always make love with the girls here but I want to with you – you are deep, I can tell from the way you think.’
Usually when clients say ‘make love’ it makes my skin crawl because they’re placing an emphasis on the sex that I don’t think it has, intimating that we have an emotional connection. With him, though, I think he just says it because ‘fuck’ seems too abrasive. I can tell he chooses his words carefully, wanting them to be as gentle as his touch. We end up doing it face to face, sitting up, more rocking our groins together than anything. I stare at his temple between his eyes, a trick of the trade, because from his perspective it looks like I am staring directly into his eyes. He comes quietly and quickly, before I begin to feel violated by the intimacy of such a position.
He cleans himself fastidiously afterwards, even drying his penis with tissues after the shower so as not to dampen his underwear. The crotch of my bodysuit by comparison is filthy, stiff with dried lube and discharge. I let him back out onto the street, give him a kiss goodbye on the cheek, and go into the intro that’s already waiting. Another tradie and he picks me for half an hour. So $85 + $100 + $85 = $270. That’s good for midday, especially as I’m going to be here till 10 p.m. There’s really something to be said for working way out in the country when you’re at the only brothel in a two-hour radius and there’s only two of you on a day shift. No competition.
Wow, though, this guy is awkward. Doesn’t want to chat, doesn’t want to make eye contact. He’s probably got a wife back home, judging by the ring on his finger. I ride him in cowgirl and he comes in less than a minute, then hurriedly pulls his clothes on with his back to me without even having a shower. I have to rush to open the door for him and he takes off like a bat out of hell, driven by his desire into a place like this and driven out by shame. Is he afraid of me judging him? I wonder. Or does he avoid my eyes in case he sees something human in them, is forced to engage with me beyond an orifice to dispel his semen into, realises that I remind him of his daughters or other women in his life? Maaaate. It’s not innately disrespectful to me or the women at home if you pay to fuck me, I want to say. And it’s not my business if you’re married. I feel for your wife for being cheated on, sure, but I also feel for you for being trapped in a society that promotes sexual monogamy as the only valid form of relationship and won’t let you express your desires outside of that. And I get that maybe it doesn’t feel like you’ve betrayed her if you don’t talk to me, coz subconsciously we all know it’s emotional infidelity that matters. God, there are those who sew up their genitals to everyone but their spouse and have emotional flings with their ‘work wife’, as if that’s somehow better! If only we could all voice our want; if only we didn’t quantify love according to level of possessiveness.
I’m hungry now, so I order a pizza and sit in the sun and scroll their Instagram profile again, imagine them being in Australia and how they’d laugh at my old car and then be impressed by how comfortable I am in the city that I’ve made my own, how I jaywalk in the CBD because I can read the traffic patterns and walk home from the beach barefoot and sandy and am unfazed by anyone staring when I laugh raucously. Think of them finger-fucking me beneath the etching of Frederick the Great, Frederick the Gay, that hangs above my bed and think of them coming north with me and seeing the place that makes me who I am, why I’m unlike other girls they’ve met because I’m not European and collected; I’m country Australian and brash and as honest as our summer is long.
But they won’t come here. I’m not a big enough draw to warrant flying to the other side of the world – at least not when you’re European and a long-haul flight seems insurmountable. I used to travel a hundred kilometres a day just for school, my concept of distance honed by the huge continent I come from. I’ll put in the effort but they won’t, they won’t even like my Instagram posts, and here I am taut in my stomach again, fretting over them. Can’t even tell if it’s anxiety or hunger now; either way it’s a bore that I get like this, no fun when the endorphins of a stalk dissipate so quickly, become despair.
The doorbell rings and I go to get my pizza, open the door in my work wear and the delivery boy is so nervous that his hands are shaking as he gives me the change. Poor kid. I’m not going to abduct you. And you’re not irrevocably tainted by standing on the doorstep of a brothel; the stain is not that perdurable. Though my extended family see it that way – think I leak a stench from my cunt, have left a mark on the family name that can’t be scrubbed out, unlike the stink of a bitch in heat. I guess he’s lucky that us whores come in by the back door, that he doesn’t have to stand in the pool of muck that seeps from our overused pussies, glorified sewers, pussoirs.
‘It’s so hard to get a handyman in to fix the broken shower,’ the receptionist tells me as I close the door. I don’t need to be told. I know how the curiosity is mingled with fear and revulsion; I saw it in his wide eyes.
I’m eating my pizza out in the backyard when I get called in for another intro and this one picks me for a spa booking. I get an extra $20 just to fill the bath and sit in it with him, pamper him beyond the perfunctory. He’s a farm boy, sheep not cattle, and he quickly makes his political opinions known. Anti-immigrant, even though neither of us is Indigenous so we’re sprung from immigrants ourselves. Anti-gay, though not anti me being ‘bi’ coz that’s hot, but none of that guy-on-guy stuff, thank you very much, and as long as I don’t sleep with bull dykes, just other girls like me. Thinks people who are depressed are weak, and no wonder there’s such a high suicide rate among men in rural areas I think as I plunge my arm under the water to hide my self-harm scars. Not that I’m ashamed of them, but the last thing I want to do is enter into a conversation about them with a guy like this. I remind myself that I’m paid to placate and please, not to be myself, as I play with his balls with my toes, his penis semisubmerged and wrinkled.
We begin to talk about his family; he’s got a crest tattooed on him. They’re originally from Wales.
‘Wales? Oh, I love Wales! Have you been there?’ He hasn’t. This doesn’t deter me, though; I mistakenly think that because colonial history fascinates me it’ll fascinate him too.
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��The thing I love most about it is how they’ve managed to preserve their language, in spite of being pretty much consumed by the English. Like, in Wales you actually hear people speaking Welsh openly on the streets, which you don’t hear so much with Gaelic in Scotland or Ireland. And the way they’ve been able to do it is by reversing the hierarchy that situates English as the ultimate; like, in schools, instead of streaming based on English and maths, like we do, they stream based on Welsh, so it gives an advantage to those kids who speak Welsh at home. At least, that’s what this Welsh girl was telling me when I was there.’
He looks both horrified and confused, and I recall that only five minutes earlier he had proclaimed brazenly that Asian migrants should only speak English. What identity crisis spiral have I sent him into by suggesting that the tongue in his native land isn’t even English? Maybe he didn’t even know that the Welsh language existed? He’s just proudly brandished his Welshness his whole life, thinking it was just a subsect of ye olde England, used it to crush cultural differences, in determined bigotry, ignorance and hypocrisy.
‘Have you heard Welsh before?’
His no is angry and disgusted, and I think it’s judicious to move forward into the other stage of the booking. I take his cock in my hands and compliment it. It’s not a lie; it is a nice cock. It’s just unfortunate that it’s attached to such a not-nice man. We move to the bed and as I put a condom on him, slather myself in lube and he begins to fuck me, I have that always surprising moment of oh, I could come. Could come with this guy who I am repulsed by and don’t respect and actually already kind of hate and wouldn’t notice on the street and wouldn’t talk to at a party. One thing I have learnt with this job is that sexual attraction does not equal sexual compatibility, and my body often betrays my sensibilities. We go into doggy so I can avoid looking at him and think of who I really want to be fucking me, and my mind dissolves and I speak in tongues as I always do, truncated sentences of unfinished thoughts, a cacophony of oh my gods and fucks and baby that feels so good I’m going to come.
Nothing But My Body Page 5
