That was before I knew anything about the industry, didn’t know I didn’t have to give a fifty per cent cut to a management that pressured me into doing things I didn’t want to do. Sent me out in taxis across the city, each residence a gaping maw that might never spit me out again. The danger fit my idea of what sex work must be and I thought what I was doing was illegal so didn’t think to wonder if I could work more safely or deserved better treatment. Seven years later I know better: I work in brothels or for myself, and I’ve given up those gruelling nights. So here I am, striding through the city at 9.50 a.m., a morning delivery to a guy with morning wood, and I don’t have to split the cash with anyone.
I’ll meet him in the lobby and, unlike that first time, I won’t be self-conscious, don’t care that the scarlet letter emblazoned on my soul shines brightly. Don’t care that I’m in the elevator with a man thirty years my senior. So what, my hair flick and upright shoulders exclaim, I’m a working girl. Judge me not lest thou be judged. I’ve got the hardened shellac exterior of a pro now; the prostitute, the professional, from whom judgement slides like water off a duck’s back. The way I make my living is no better or worse than anyone else in this grimy scramble to survive (that’s what the clack of a working girl’s shoes sound out on the parquetry, if you’ve ever wondered). I’ve become bold, almost brazen, and here I am under this beautiful blue sky and isn’t it a blessing to be alive!
It’s also my day. These passers-by may not realise when they walk past me, but if they keep walking to Boy Charlton Pool they’ll see all the gays with their chiselled, oiled abs out. They’ve flown in from all over the world because guess what? It’s Mardi Gras, and the city is ours for two weeks. Obelisk and Redleaf become beats beneath the sun. I’m close to the Cross now, too, which the government has tried to kill with lockout laws and gentrification. Strip joints closed, clubs replaced with yuppie restaurants … No queue outside World Bar now; Oxford Street is a ghost town. Only ARQ and Bodyline beat a faint pulse of what once was, and the casino keeps the score, shows the corruption in its teeming crowd. It’s still ours, though! You may think it’s deserted, yours to roam, but really it’s haunted by the gays of years past, spectres of the AIDS epidemic that roost by day in the top floor of the Bookshop Darlinghurst and by night come out and plague the straights. You may think these streets are yours to walk, but they belonged to someone else before: the queers, the hobos, the junkies, the trannies, the prozzies – these streets were theirs before they were yours so be careful, you may find you have to wipe your shoes clean before going into your nice apartment. Don’t forget, when you stand under the refurbished Coke sign, that those who were despised and reviled formed these streets, literally. No left turns up William Street was simply a way to deter clients from picking up a sex worker, by making it harder to turn their cars around to go back when they saw one who tickled their fancy and their balls. The first supervised injecting room, Les Girls and Tilly Devine – all here. When I get an STI test at Kirketon Road Centre – Health For All –and walk to a booking at Springfield Avenue, where I’ll screw a man in a co-ho’s apartment and dance back down Victoria Street high on money, I think of all the other whores who’ve done the same and how, even if they’ve destroyed the red light district, as long as there are still some of us working here there’s still a red light blinking, and just like the drag queens bashing a homophobe in Taylor Square and the twinks sniffing amyl in Universal (the Midnight Shift reincarnated), we’re honouring the history and keeping the Cross alive: they haven’t murdered us yet.
Though we do get murdered. Not necessarily because of who we are intrinsically from birth but because our deaths are less likely to be investigated by authorities because we are seen to be worth less than other respectable women, expendable: not an innocent victim but a woman who has invited such treatment through the very nature of her work. We’re the favoured targets of serial killers; Jack the Ripper, the Green River Killer and any other violent perpetrator who has benefited from the acronym NHI (‘no human involved’) being assigned to their victims, an acronym that has been used by police for those deemed undesirable – black people, homeless people and sex workers among them. And God help you if you’re someone who is devalued from birth already and takes on our profession, like a black trans woman sex worker, because society certainly won’t! I feel a little kick of fear in my belly now, as I always do on the way to a private booking, even though I’ve screened the client, because it’s private workers who tend to get singled out and every date I go on is a blind date. The brothel I’m at has been so slow lately, though, since this new coronavirus thing, because it employs a lot of Chinese migrant women and racist idiots assume that they’re more likely to carry it, even though none of them are recently returned from China and it seems that just as many of our cases have come from the United States. So I’m grateful for this horny man, whoever he is; I’ll just lay my hand on this paperbark tree momentarily as I pass it in the hope that he’s all right; touching living wood rather than dead brings better luck.
I’m passing through the clipped grass of the Domain now, which always gives me joy because of the way it came about. Originally created as a private park for the rich by Governor Macquarie, it had a high wall around it that the poor kept breaking down and climbing over so they could get drunk and fuck inside. The wall kept getting raised and the poor kept getting in and being rowdy, till eventually the barrier was demolished and the park was given over to the people as a public domain. It gives me hope that more spaces can become public spaces; all those reserves of the rich, such as golf courses and private gardens, should become accessible to everyone regardless of wealth or postcode – it would help to justify the water they guzzle. My favourite thing about the United Kingdom is that the public’s right to access paths that have been used for hundreds of years trumps private ownership. I wish that existed everywhere. Privacy is a right, sure, but not when it gets to the point of hoarding – sorry, Madonna.
I enter the lobby right on time, and the client is a generic private client. White, middle-aged, suit. I surreptitiously text the number of the hotel room to my housemate as I walk through the door with him, making small talk, and then comment on what a good view he has, as if I haven’t seen the view of Hyde Park from every hotel room in the city already. He wants to chat to me a bit first and he’s pretentious as fuck, wants to parade how intelligent he is and size me up at the same time. Says something about my tan and asks how I cultivate it; I answer honestly that I don’t try but I swim in the ocean most days so inevitably I’m tanned.
‘Did you know that tans only came into fashion in the 1900s?’
‘Yeah.’ Of course I know that; it says in my ad I have a history degree. He probably thinks that’s just copy talk, though. The worst thing about rich clients is they’re always surprised when you’re smart, as if it’s shocking to have an articulate person doing physical labour. My working-class clients usually treat me more like an equal and aren’t shocked that I’m intelligent, whereas my rich clients always have this condescending attitude, like ‘how lucky are you to be around me and exposed to culture by me’. I guess if you’re working class you know jobs aren’t necessarily a summation of your abilities, you do what you need to do to get by, but if you’re upper middle class or upper class you’re more likely to think your job is a reflection of your innate capacity.
‘And do you know who it was that changed the prevailing fashion?’
‘Coco Chanel, when she accidentally got sunburnt on holidays and came back with a tan.’
‘Wow, you and I are going to get along! I didn’t expect someone like you at all.’
There’s the backhanded compliment I was waiting for; it always comes.
I ignore it and begin to kiss him, moving my hand down to his fly. Let’s get this moving; we can chat afterwards, if there’s time. Play with his cock, let him eat me out for a bit, move into 69 and put a condom on as he mauls my clit and I try not to jerk away, squeeze some lube o
n without him noticing, jump on in cowgirl, go reverse cowgirl for a bit, move to missionary and kiss him with feigned passion then hold him tight against me as if I want all of him inside me when really I just want to rest my head on his shoulder and think about other things, enthusiastically suggest doggy and he blows in that after a few minutes like they almost always do. I love when everything goes to plan. Now we can chat away.
‘You know, you’re so interesting to talk to, I would love to just meet up to pick your brain – we don’t need to do this other stuff.’
‘Yeah, we can do that for sure. I do offer social dates at a lower rate.’
‘Oh no, I didn’t mean that – I respect you too much for it to be mercenary. I feel like we could be friends; don’t you feel that?’
He respects me so much that he can’t respect that me spending time with him, regardless of what we do in that time, is work to me?! How do you wrap your head around that, Mr Penthouse Suite? Why do the richest cunts always want shit for free!
‘Yeah, I do feel that, but this is my job. It’s not just sexual labour that I do, it’s also emotional and intellectual and I have to be reimbursed for that. It doesn’t mean I don’t like you, but if I saw every client I liked for free I wouldn’t be able to pay my rent.’
‘I just struggle with the transactional nature, though. I feel it adds a performative element to it, and you’re so interesting you don’t need to be treated like a prostitute, and I don’t like feeling like a john.’
‘I don’t think of any of my clients as johns; it’s not a term I relate to. That’s used more by people who want to denigrate and homogenise clients, when I think there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with paying for sexual and emotional intimacy – it’s a basic human need.’
‘Yes, but you understand what I’m saying: I view you as more than that. I respect you as a person, I don’t see you as an object.’
Wow, I wish he did just see me as an object, because at least the guys who want a blow and go, as if I’m a pocket pussy, don’t try to wriggle out of paying me!
He’s now going into an absurd justification of wanting to spend time with me for free which I zone out of, but my ears prick up at a mention of Marlon Brando – how did he get dragged into this?
‘… said that we’re all partly acting in life, so he refused his Academy Award on the basis that he couldn’t accept an award for acting when we all act in our day to day.’ This guy scatters references like signposts proclaiming how cultured he is.
‘I thought he refused his Academy Award because of the treatment of Native Americans in the film industry,’ I say.
‘Well, yes, that too,’ he admits reluctantly.
It seems we’re at an impasse. I can see by the bedside clock that there’s only five minutes left, thank god, so I excuse myself to go shower and get the hell out of here. He talks to me while I do, making a few derogatory comments about brothel workers and how he would never go to one because they’re not of the same calibre as me. Wish he could’ve seen me on my knees in one two nights ago, giving a gobby to a cock that had already been inside me, all for $90, and coming up with a rash on my legs from the mouldy carpet. Mate, the only difference between a brothel worker and me is marketing. We’re quite literally the same person.
As I kiss him goodbye he invites me on an (unpaid) trip to his Paris apartment, when he’s next over there from his home in New York. (‘A girl like you needs to be taken to Paris – you’re too good for here.’)
I wait till the door closes before I roll my eyes. Babe, I’ve taken myself to Paris already!
Brush him off: it’s easy to do on a day like this when you’ve got a queer party to get to. I strut back through the city and a lizard with a long striped tail winding down the sandstone wall watches me with his yellow eye as I kick off my shoes and start to skip along the pavement. He’s immobile and I’m jittery with excitement, but we’re both triumphant and soaking up the sun and I blow him a kiss and wish him a good day. I’m $600 richer and my feet are bare and life is good – what more could a girl want?
I guess there are other things I want. I want to have a stable home that I own so I don’t have to worry about where my dad will live now that he’s nearing seventy with no money and no assets. I want to speak another language. I want to have children. Beyond that, though, there is nothing I want that I don’t already have. Sometimes I’m almost startled by my own lack of ambition. I have no great desire to be someone, prove myself, achieve things. As long as I have the respect of those whom I respect and continue to work on myself, that’s enough for me. I feel content. I feel loved. I feel grateful. I feel ready to be a mother. Should I want more from life than friendship and financial security, though? Shouldn’t I be wanting to make my mark on the world? Isn’t that what your twenties are meant to be about? Does it make me parochial not to have ‘big’ dreams? Or is the idea of success and happiness being caught up with career and social status limiting in itself? We value ambition so much that my lack of it makes me wonder if something’s wrong with me. I do have big dreams, but they are for the world, not myself. I want more for the people in it and I want the planet to survive us.
Kylie comes on the radio and excites me out of my reverie. I’m going to see so many friends in such a short time! Don’t need no uppers when you’ve got that Mardi Gras adrenaline running through you; the spirit from those people who marched in 1978 and got arrested and beaten by the cops charges the whole city, and not just the city – it spreads outwards through the suburbs, pulsing in the hearts of queers. Even straight people feel the vibe and want to be a part of it, and corporations want to cash in on that pink dollar so that you’ve got a No Pride in Detention float alongside a Liberal Party float. Remember, it started as a protest and it’s more than a party, I want to say to the apolitical people who come along for the glitter and glam. Remember that there’s still a wealth disparity between queer men and queer women; remember that trans women are getting murdered; remember that there are gay asylum seekers locked up in detention right now; remember that lesbians can’t get our IVF subsidised by the government, unlike heterosexual couples, because we’re ‘socially infertile’ not ‘medically infertile’. Remember.
I pull up in front of mine and the balcony is already bustling. I’ve got friends up from Melbourne and they’re sorting out their outfits, there’re bare bums and bags being tied up in condoms and shoved into nature’s pockets and temporary tattoos and one lone friend smoking a durry and regaling my cat in Tagalog. A ‘Late Nite Tuff Guy’ remix of Kate Bush is playing and I leap up the stairs, skidding on eucalyptus leaves as I go. ‘Guys, guys, guys, that client was such a dick! I’m just going to have another quick shower and then I’ll be ready!’ Ready to have a bump, ready to drape myself over people in a Marrickville gutter, ready to have epiphanies on the dance floor, ready to live. My last few Mardi Gras I was deeply depressed, but now I’m back inside myself. I’m not just a shell going through the motions; I’m overflowing and giving back to those around me: come have some of my joy, I’ve got enough to share, you can see it peeking out the tip of my stripper heels, wedged in between my toes, sparkling at the diamante crotch of my bodysuit, in the bend of my back as I pose for this pre-party shot. I’m all me and all confidence, none of that blight of anxiety that riddles my brain till it’s moth-eaten and stunted.
Now we’re piling confusedly into two Ubers, the vinyl seats sticky on my bare arse, hope I don’t leave a dollop of ovulation, have I got my ID?
‘It’s taped inside your hat,’ one friend answers, which is a relief, especially when I didn’t even realise I asked that question aloud.
We’re here and I’m tottering out of the back of the car, tripping over the tree roots, popping a quick squat and having a quick snort of K before going into the venue. We’re on a suburban street, but it’s a suburban street that’s used to the loudness and nudity of the ‘el-gee-bee-tee-eye’ – I recite the letters as I stamp my shoes on the pavement in impatience. ‘Hu
rry up, guys, I wanna go inside!’ Now I’m singing the letters to the tune of the nursery song ‘Farmer in the Dell’ – will someone please think of the children? Not the hypothetical children that conservatives claim to defend, but the very real children loved by all these queer parents here today; the children who have been raised by a village just as I hope to raise my children, surrounded by those I love.
There’s an older gay man on the door and that’s one of the things I love about Sydney, how intergenerational the queer scene is – this party itself has been running since the 90s, and there are dykes here with the eyebrow piercings they got back then too, chapped and capable hands that I’d quite like to feel rough against me, to hear them say, Your skin is so smooth, like they always do, and I say, Thanks, you can go inside me if you want, you don’t have to be careful with me, I’ll only say ‘gentle’ with my eyes rolled back to temper your enthusiasm when you’re a fist deep, otherwise I’m yours to touch as you will.
I’ve been touched a lot lately by lots of different hands, not just clients’. I have finally worked out how to have fun casual sex in my private life without investing or inventing emotionally. I always believed it was possible in theory, though not necessarily in execution. The last few months, though, I’ve blithely gone from bed to bed, watched a trans guy shakka in satisfaction after I orgasmed on his strap-on, so huge that he had to ease it inside me with two hands. Let a non-binary person fuck me natural, their clit swollen from T damp inside me, rubbed wet against my arsehole like the teasing of a sea anemone. Repositioned myself on a client’s cock so I could feel my bruised cervix, like tonguing a pulpy gum, sweet reminder of an even sweeter fuck with a girl in Brisbane, eyelashes curling up at me as she ate me out, mouth below water level like the snouts of the crocodiles rumoured to be in the drains beneath that city. All of them I’d fuck again, none of them do I have a desire to date, and I don’t stress about how they feel about me. I’ve been honest about my intentions; I’m not toying with them for validation, I just want to be one of their toys every now and again – but unlike the toys stored under their bed I don’t stay the night, I just come (to their house, and in their bed) and go (home, with wetness cold and uncomfortable in my underwear afterwards). I want to be touched with lust and kindness, and touch back with gratitude and respect, don’t need them to message me or interact with me online, it is what it is, mutually beneficial, bend me over your bedpost and we’ll meet in a moment of unabashed need, forget about me after till your clit knocks against your boxers and you know it’s time to text again.
Nothing But My Body Page 9
