I orgasm, and we both sit up for a breather.
‘You’ve got a real potty mouth on you,’ he says.
And I’m revolted with myself. Wish I could take the orgasm back. Not because he gave it to me – he didn’t; he just happened to be in the right place at the right time, I could’ve come on a carrot – but because he doesn’t deserve to think that he gave it to me. The buzzer goes, thank god, because I can’t even pretend to be polite to him, and I strip the bed as he showers.
Back in the girls’ room I lie back on the couch beneath the NO SLEEPING IF YOU SLEEP ON SHIFT YOU WILL BE FIRED YOU’RE HERE TO WORK sign. The Cambodian woman is in a booking that’s extended and it’s that time of the afternoon between lunch and knocking off work that tends to be pretty quiet, so it looks like I’ll be settled in here for a bit. Still eight hours to go. I go to stalk their social media profile again and then force myself to hide my phone under a cushion that I then sit on because it’s night-time where they are and it’s not like there’ll be any new activity since I last checked. I’m increasingly frustrated with myself.
What am I doing?! I don’t even want to date them yet I’m behaving as if I do, returning again and again to their profile in the same way I compulsively tear strips of skin from my cuticles. I am one to crush, and crush hard. Often the other person swells in my mind till they fill every crevice, an amorphous shape that becomes a comforting thought to shelter and self-soothe in, a sure thrill when bored. On long drives, in waiting rooms, while massaging a client I can think of them. A place to rest my whirring head. A place of harmless fantasy and fun. But there are not-so-healthy habits associated with this. The need to always be stimulated, to have someone to obsess over, the constant checking of their social media for an illicit endorphin rush, seeking a sign of them thinking of me.
In relationships, all this energy is channelled into caring for my partner – but outside of a relationship I entertain myself with a never-ending daisy chain of crushes to fritter away my time and excess emotion. They pass through my hands as markers of moments in my life, almost indistinguishable from each other but valuable to me for the holding. I like my mind to be crowded with furniture, not empty with echoing footsteps. And a living person is the most convenient occupying force to house there – it really takes up space. What disturbs me is that I don’t even want to be with some of these people, yet I still expend energy on their Instagram profiles, stumble down the same paths I follow when I’m actually into someone but without the motivating desire or curiosity. The crushes aren’t the problem, then, they’re just the excuse I use to exercise these behaviours. Why? What for? Do I not know how to live without a needlepoint of obsession to spin myself around? Must I always be chasing adrenaline? Why can’t I just chill – without a drink or a joint or a mindless scrolling of someone’s feed?
I don’t like myself when I’m into someone. My personality and joy are diminished, my insecurities fester and my boundaries are swamped. As much as I critique the ideas of monogamy and love, I still felt they were a structure I could grow my life on, till it flourished, triumphant, in a wisteria burst of colour and wonder. In a relationship, though, I will sacrifice my mental health for the preservation of ‘us’ at all costs; I lose myself in my partner. Why am I like this? I prefer my thoughts to be a neat row of securely stabled horses which I can walk among, patting their rumps in satisfaction of the splendid order. I like to know what I am doing and where I am heading and have a sense of surety down into my very marrow. But when I am into someone I lose myself in contemplation, let fancies wash over me and pull me out with the tide till I am adrift in all I do. And when I bob clear I realise not that the person isn’t great, but that they shone partly with my own spangling of them. My feelings tinge every aspect of my life; when I smoke a joint my fingers come away pink-stained. I love wholly, completely and unrealistically, and feed the love with the sweet treacle of my own romantic soul – only to realise yet again that it is unsustainable. What a folly!
I curl my feet in the consciousness of my mind; toes caught upon a crush, pebbled thoughts like grit that never quite leaves. I take things – that glance, this text – and play them till the colour fades, till I can take them up and sew them into the narrative of romance that I have strung above my bed, to look at and muse over when I should be asleep. Standalone moments of no importance, but in that galaxy of emotion and hope they take on another meaning. Queer girl writing her own romances, appropriating femme friendliness into a wider whole of wishful wanting, a perfect knit for all weather. A knit to overheat in, a hairshirt to sweat out anxious thoughts of Does she? Doesn’t she? How many million ways can this be read and can I possibly be reading them all wrong? As women we’re raised to take tepid two-steps, to doubt, to let the other make the move. And when you are caught with another girl in that dance … How many times have I stepped the same steps, trodden the same tired grooves of my mind, an ouroboros of extreme elation and suffocating uncertainty? How does one get out of this labyrinth? Burn all your romantic novels, cough on the fumes till you spit out the sediment? Bury your pink lingerie in a bed of rock, quell those femme yearnings, become stone? I need to be done with romance in the same way I was done with drinking – because it isn’t good for me.
The intercom buzzes at me: an intro. Thank you, God, for the money and the distraction! You really do care about the smallest sparrow, and I need to be kept from my phone.
The client’s around thirty and I can tell within a few minutes of being in the room with him that he has an intellectual disability. He’s tentative, asking what he can touch and what he can’t, and pats my head gently as I suck him off. Dido is playing over the sound system – whoever heard of Dido at a brothel? – and I’m transported back to my single renaissance in Europe; where I played ‘Thank You’ on repeat out of gratefulness to the world for existing and for me existing within it.
We try doggy but he keeps laying his full weight on my back and it’s hard for me to maintain a sexy position beneath that so I get on top. With me in cowgirl, though, he keeps covering his face, peeking through his fingers to watch me ride him. I figure he’s shy so I don’t say anything (I’ve had guys fuck me with their eyes tightly closed, or even with their head turned away, as if we’re a couple in a fight – I’m never sure if it’s a denial of what their body is doing or an escape into it).
‘Do you like me being on top or do you want to do something different?’ I want to make sure this is okay.
His hands are still over his face. ‘Yes. I’m so sorry I’m not good-looking,’ he says, voice muffled beneath his palms.
‘Wait – is that why you’re covering your face?’
‘Yes. I’m so sorry I’m not good-looking.’
‘That doesn’t matter! What matters is being respectful and hygienic and considerate, and you are all of those things.’
He still won’t uncover his face, though, and keeps repeating his apology, and my heart breaks a little. I think of all the clients who have treated me terribly and how none of them has ever apologised for their behaviour, and also all the seedy guys who haven’t washed under their foreskin yet expect my arsehole to be pristine and ready for a finger at any moment, who want me to suck their stinky sweaty balls with no thought for my comfort, and here is this guy, who has been nothing but kind, apologising for something he can’t help but which someone has obviously made him feel bad about before.
After he comes I shower then dress beside him slowly, contemplating the vast divide between my bookings. People are obsessed with what’s real and unreal about my work, as if it can be neatly categorised. Like anyone in any customer service job, my work is partly about treating everyone with the same level of friendliness and respect, regardless of whether we would actually get along outside of that interaction. With some clients I fake orgasm but leave the booking grinning because we are so well matched in conversation. With others our talk is stilted and I’m surprised how quickly I come. Some guys I am attracted to but we
are completely out of rhythm with each other. Some shipwreck themselves on the rocks of my anatomy. Others I hope I never see again.
People always ask if I enjoy the sex I have with clients or if I have to fake it, as if the two are mutually exclusive and the interplay between them isn’t much more complex. In actuality, it depends. And I’m not sure what people are threatened by more – that I don’t always love it, or that I don’t always hate it. That sometimes I go into a booking horny, wanting a girl I’m into, and put the guy in doggy so I can imagine it’s her fucking me till I come. That sometimes I pretend a yawn is an orgasm moan and count the money I’m going to get over and over as they thrust. That sometimes my skin crawls and I pray for it to end. That sometimes I am filled with hope about the world and humanity as I connect with a stranger I never would’ve met otherwise. Just because I wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t paid doesn’t mean I don’t ever enjoy it or have genuine moments of human connection. Just because part of my work is feigning doesn’t mean it’s all a sham. Social interactions within a workplace are far more intricate than a simplified real versus unreal; my job, like many jobs, may be part performance but it’s not only performance.
I kiss him on the cheek, let him out and wish him nothing but good for the rest of his days, and am back in the girls’ room in no time, ankles crossed over the arm of the lounge as I count the condoms in my condom bag, ensuring I’ve got enough for whatever size dicks lope, drooping heavy with pre-cum, through the brothel doors. In the same way other girls open purses and tampons fall out, so happens with hookers and condoms. They’re stuffed into the sides of my car door, in between the pages of books. I pull them out of my pockets when I’m scrounging around for some bud. Multicoloured and branded sheaths of latex, existing in hope and promising safety. In some places sex workers are arrested for having them; just carrying them is seen as proof of soliciting, intention to prostitute. I’m so institutionalised that a condom being put on is part of the foreplay for me: I get wet when I see one rolled down a strap-on, can’t even think of a blow job in my private life without one. Sex and condoms go hand in hand, or dick in orifice, flesh or otherwise.
High heels and fishnets are the stock images you always see of sex workers, but for me it’s condoms, coconut oil, hand sanitiser and burner phones. It’s a truth universally acknowledged that the longer you’re a whore the more burner phones you have, and mine pile high in my living room, chunks of plastic that I can’t bring myself to throw out in case I need to cross-reference a client’s number, or in case I need to switch to a different advertising bracket in private work. Sometimes I start in shock when one rings at a restaurant table and I don’t recognise the ringtone. ‘Whose phone is that?’ I ask, only for someone to say: ‘It’s coming from your bag.’ Oh, right, one of my other identities. It’s hard to keep track. Gotta remember to refer to myself as the right name in the right context; gotta switch between calling a close friend Ruby at a friend’s birthday party and Lucia when I eat her out in a hotel room and Mimi when we pass each other in the hallway of a brothel that’ll fire us if they know we work independently too. No wonder so many sex workers and managers just revert to the blanket ‘babe’. One slip-up and you can ruin someone’s life, as fatal as a slip-off from a stealther. It’s high stakes in hookerdom, but only because society makes it so.
When I have a week off work because of thrush, with no money coming in and desperate to be well again, I’m reminded that I’m like an athlete, relying on my body being working fit. When I squat at a man’s groin that stinks of stale urine, grateful for the latex separating his genitals from my mouth, I’m reminded that I’m like a nurse, paid to be intimate with bodies in ways I don’t want to be. When I struggle to keep my pose and moan as a client drops his entire weight onto my back in doggy, and I position myself to seem as if I’m backing on to his cock while protecting my low slung cervix from a bruising, I’m reminded that I’m like a performer, hazarding strain to my body while creating an aesthetic visual. When I listen to a man cry about his life, because it’s less stigmatised and emasculating for him to see a prostitute than a psych, I’m reminded that I’m like a therapist. When I smile instead of cringe at something a client says, I’m reminded that I’m like someone in customer service, there to respond politely, not to assert my own beliefs. When I coddle a drunken man at midnight, fetching him water and helping him dress, I’m reminded that I’m like a babysitter. When I soothe a bickering couple, manage to make them forget their friction and enjoy something together, I’m reminded that I’m like a diplomat or hostess, all tact and solicitousness. When I handle a fractious man, get him to relax and come and guide him gently into conversation, I’m reminded that I’m like an actor doing the hardest improvisation ever, responding to unconscious cues and crafting a finished product, an experience. When I wash cum off my fingers, which had curved protectively over my cunt to shield it from the spray as I feigned masturbating while a client jerked off over me, I’m reminded that my work is quite similar to so many things, but not quite any of them, and it doesn’t need a euphemism. I am just a whore and I’m okay with that.
And I’m a whore who’s about to make more money, as the doorbell rings a few times in quick succession, the punch of an impatient man with a hard-on hammering; hammer me, mate. The buzzer rings, it’s an intro, and I’m off down the hallway. Damn my arse looks good – if I’ve ever had enough and the manager is forcing me to intro still, I walk out of the intro backwards so they don’t see my best asset and pick me, and by enough I mean the enough when you’re fucking your eleventh client of the day and you bite yourself hard on the arm as he fucks you so you can feel and focus on something other than his dick pumping in and out of what feels like the very centre of you – and he’s a moustachioed man with leathery skin who obviously thinks he’s pretty suave.
He picks me and while he showers I take off my bodysuit, as I always do so we can get into it, but also because I just prefer being naked and sometimes that high G-string rubbing on my swollen pussy irritates it and gives me thrush, so I’ll hang around the girls’ room with my cunt out, airing it.
As he’s drying himself, he says – with a pout that is possibly meant to be endearing but makes me want to slap him – ‘Ohhh, you unwrapped the lolly!’
‘What lolly?’
‘I mean you; you undressed yourself. I like to unwrap my treat.’
I want to remind him that unlike a lolly I can unwrap myself and also can hear and feel and am not to be consumed; instead, I try to pass off a grimace as a flirty smile. He doesn’t seem deterred and comes towards me as if intending to seduce me when, mate, I am a sure thing, no seduction needed; must we role-play as if I’m not a hooker?
He lies me down and begins to lap at my nipples in a way that men obviously think is sexy but I am always revolted by – so much tongue that now if I ever hear a dog sucking on a bone the noises set me off with shivers; greedy, needy mouths suckling at me, pretending it’s for my pleasure when really it’s for their own.
He is French. Some of my worst clients have been French and Italian, I think because they have fallen for this cultural stereotype of themselves as passionate lovers, and so they perform the part with an audacity and smarminess that makes my vagina do a rushed crab crawl back inside myself, knit its lips together and pray for no entry. They always want to make you come, and are confident they’ll be able to. Sometimes I delight in telling them that, actually, I orgasm easiest with clients I’m disgusted by coz I don’t give a fuck and relax into it, and then see their confusion when they don’t know whether they should pursue their goal or if it would be more of an achievement to make me too nervous to orgasm.
‘What’s that? Oh, I actually already came today and I can’t usually come again so soon.’
If he hadn’t already irritated me I would’ve just faked it, but he can have the truth. Sometimes I err on the unprofessional, break that performer’s wall, invite in the blunt Aries me that simmers just beneath the surface etiq
uette; she’s no pushover.
‘Where’s the fun in it for me, then?’ he asks. ‘Next time I need to be your first client of the day.’
I bite the pillow so she doesn’t snap back, gotta keep that tongue on a leash. I just wish he would leash his tongue, too; I can feel it slobbering in my ear canal.
And my mind is off, thinking about them while he fucks me, the worst possible thing to be thinking of because with every move of his I’m aware it’s not them. It feels sacrilegious to have his hands upon me, a travesty. I want to cut them off at the wrist, could hang them from the ceiling, an art installation to go among the classic brothel art, dismembered body parts casting shadows on the pastel nudes and yonic oils. If I owned a brothel I would make sure there were no more weird colonial rooms, the exotic and oriental among the pop culture, Karma Sutra Room, Hollywood Room, Jungle Room, Morocco Room, James Bond Room, no tribal statues or Asian fusion. There would just be the petrified penises of ugly mugs tacked to the board in the office, instead of CCTV screenshots. There’s a blacklist that’ll actually stop them hurting a woman again – and oh, hello, he’s getting harder and faster, my cervix is braced in protest but I won’t stop him coz he’s so close; just tickle his balls and grit your teeth, girl, and there we go!
He lies back panting and I lie beside him for one brief minute, say that was nice and stroke his chest because I can afford to be affectionate now that he’s finished. I don’t dislike him as much when there’s nothing left to dread. Then I spring up to shower, can see from the clock that time’s almost up, and I’ve got less than five hours to go and I’ve got that adrenaline from money making, want to eat through all the men like a silverfish through a pack of cards, leave them in chewed disarray while I’m plump on the proceeds, twitching my cute little antennae at other working girls.
Nothing But My Body Page 6
