Nothing But My Body

by Tilly Lawless

  After this I’m gonna sneak out to smoke a rushed joint with a puff puff pass babe let’s smash it so we can get back to this set at 4 a.m. and then I’m gonna contemplate kick-ons at 5 a.m. but go back to mine instead coz there’s a bathtub we can lie in while the magpies are carolling and we wait for Woolies to open and at 7 a.m. I’m gonna get a call from someone going baaaabes you still up come to Newtown, and I’m gonna be washing the dirt off my knees and untangling my hair and I’ll say no but let’s get pho together this week. And I’m gonna open my iCal for the first time in three days and sigh as I remember my responsibilities and see the brothel shifts ahead of me and I’m gonna think about how I’m there for the taking, ripe for the picking, to be had but not in the sense of being a mark, more that I’m not hard to get, all you have to do is pay me, I’m an easy lay, unhindered by virtue, supposedly carrying a high body count as if it’s a disease or baggage, when in reality the soul is self-replenishing and limitless, not a finite source that is whittled down to nothing with each conquest and paid request, I’m not the wilted rose society thinks I am, petals picked by all and sundry, I’m louche but not loose, my pussy like any muscle becomes stronger with each use, till it can pull men in and crunch them up and all that’s left of them are some crumpled $50 notes. And really the only people I’ve ever been truly had by are those I’ve fallen for who haven’t liked me back but have bathed in the validation all the same, because that’s what they were interested in, not me. I know I could probably be plucked like a fresh flower again in that regard, all naivety and softness – more fool me!

  thursday

  ‘ARE YOU AFRAID OF CATCHING THE VIRUS?’ HE ASKS ME AS he dresses post fuck. Funny that they never ask me that beforehand. I guess it might ruin the mood; no one wants blue balls even in the midst of a pandemic. I want to ask him, Are you? You’ve just had direct contact with me, even begged me to kiss you, and I lied and said I had a boyfriend because clients always respect that more than my own boundaries.

  ‘Not really. I’ve done this work for seven years and the risk of infection is a reality. There are things I’m way more scared of catching than corona.’

  My body has always been on the frontline with this, the threat and awareness of illness and violence are occupational hazards. Prudently checking they don’t finger me with the same hand they just fiddled with their foreskin with, holding the condom as they pull out so no cum spills inside me, making a snap decision to leave my heels on so I have something to kick them off with if need be because they seem suspect.

  ‘Oh yeah, like AIDS.’

  ‘Well, I mean HIV isn’t a death sentence in this country, you can get access to medication, and if you’re undetectable you can’t pass it on. But, yeah, that would be a big deal for me because it is illegal to do sex work in Australia if you’re HIV positive, even if it’s undetectable. Plus, it’s a chronic health thing you have to manage for life. So yeah … I can’t afford to take time off work anyway, especially now that brothels are gonna close. I need to make as much as possible to tide me through for who knows how long. And personally I’m more worried about not having enough to live on than corona.’

  ‘I heard it’s not really that bad for young and healthy people anyway.’

  ‘Totally. I mean I’m not scared of catching it myself but I am scared of unknowingly passing it on to people, and I feel like especially with the work I do, coming into contact with so many people, it’s on me to be as responsible as possible. I actually stopped socialising a few weeks ago, coz I don’t wanna be an accidental super spreader. I figure clients know and accept the risk they’re taking in coming in here, so I don’t feel guilty about that, but I would hate to pass it on to others outside.’

  He gulps and looks uncomfortable. What, man, you want me to delude you into thinking you’re not taking a risk? You’ve chosen your horniness over the safety of the wife and kid you mentioned, whereas I’m here because I need to survive, and I’m not going to ease your conscience about that. We’re in a pandemic, watching the death toll climb every day in Italy and the UK, and we all need to make sacrifices. I haven’t seen any of my friends in weeks and I ache for the company of someone other than a client. Spending every day at the broth, which smells of sperm and bleach as they always do, my skin cracking from soap and hand sanitiser as it always has, knowing that I’ll invite repulsion if I contract anything because sex workers are already viewed as carriers of disease, my body already seen as contaminated even when healthy. Knowing that I don’t have an employee contract to support me through the brothel closures, knowing I can’t work from home, knowing I have no family members in a position to lend me money.

  And I’ve got it good compared with so many! I’ll at least be able to apply for Centrelink to cover my rent. So many of the migrant women I work with here can’t. The beautiful Vietnamese woman I always sit with (the only girl who regularly chats with me on shift because, like me, she can’t speak Mandarin or Indonesian or Japanese, and the girls’ room, like prison, is split by language groups; Brazilian girls travel in impenetrable packs in Sydney’s biggest brothel) isn’t eligible for any government support and says to me forlornly, ‘Baby, I’m homeless,’ when I ask what her plan is. I’ve let that sheepish client out and am back beside her in the girls’ room and there’s a tension that I’ve never felt here before. None of us knows what’s coming. We’re all just gonna fuck and fuck and earn and earn and squirrel away as much as we can for the winter ahead. The doors have to shut at midnight tonight, along with pubs and cafes and anything else deemed non-essential. I’m doing a fourteen-hour shift to catch every last penny I can.

  ‘It’s okay, though, baby – they say I can stay on here even when it closes. I will be lonely but I am not afraid. At least I am not having to pay rent.’

  You can feel the fear, in the 1.5-metre spaces between us and the way we furtively step away from each other in the hallways, the temperature gun that the manager holds up to each client at the door, the distant wave instead of shake of the hand in intros. All the other white girls have vanished; they started to disappear when corona became all too real. To normal jobs, to online work, back to their parents’ house. The media is saying that COVID-19 is showing up the inequalities and disparities in the way people live, and I suppose the sex industry is a microcosm of that. Now when the frantic weekend manager commandeers our intros with her sales pitch she goes from, ‘Here is Angel, most beautiful Chinese girl, very sweet,’ and, ‘This is Nicole, busty D-cup, Japanese, so naughty and fun,’ to, ‘Here is Maddy. Maddy is Aussie. Here till six o’ clock only. Aussie. Maddy. Aussie,’ because nothing else needs to be said to set me apart.

  It’s true that it’s the selling point for many clients. I wish someone had told me sooner that I could make bank if I left the city and worked in the suburbs with higher migrant populations, where less white girls want to go. Sure, I make less per job. But I’m so much busier that it works in my favour, and it doesn’t bother me that I’m being screwed on a dodgy mattress that’s straight on the floor; I don’t need fancy wallpaper and an open bar to tell me I’m worth something. I know I’m not what these men pay for me. None of us are. Most of my clients are Pakistani, Chinese and Indian, and they almost always say, ‘You’re the first white girl I’ve ever been with.’ I’m sure, though, it’s less conflicting for me making money from being racially fetishised when I don’t have to deal with the everyday exhaustion of being reduced to my race in Australia. All of it is in my favour.

  This client who has just picked me is no different. ‘You’re the first white girl I am seeing,’ he says in slight awe as I take him to the room. ‘Are you from Sydney?’

  ‘Nah, I’m actually from Northern New South Wales. But I’ve lived here a few years now. What about you?’

  ‘I’m from Myanmar.’

  As he showers I fiddle on my phone and my stomach begins to churn as I read the news and see other sex workers panic on Twitter. What are we going to do in these shutdowns? How long
will it last? Will sex work become a scapegoat, coronavirus used as an excuse to pass anti–sex work legislation? The water is off, put your phone away, pay attention to him. He hasn’t paid to feel your fear, he paid to feel your body, and maybe he just wants to forget everything that is going on for one brief window of the day – you can give him that escapism. Kiss gently down his torso; his skin is smooth, which I’m glad for, no hairs to pull out of my teeth.

  ‘Do you like girls being on top?’ I ask him as I squeeze some lube onto the condom, wipe off the excess and put it inside myself.

  ‘I like you any way.’ And he reaches out to pull me against him, he wants to feel all of me on him in cowgirl, and he’s so soft that I don’t mind as much as I usually would. Also, who knows when I’ll feel human touch again? Maybe I’ll be grateful for this in a few weeks’ time, hold the memory to me like he’s holding me to him, along with the feeling of that girl lapping at my arsehole in a double yesterday, can’t remember her work name but she’s so sweet, lent me her fork that time when I was struggling to eat with chopsticks – hope she’ll be okay through all this.

  We move to missionary and he orgasms almost immediately; we have so much time left that when he pulls me down to lie alongside him I don’t resist. We can be post-coital. Besides, I’m feeling almost nostalgic for this work. It’s been a part of my life for so long, and sure I hate it at times and get burnt out and never want to be touched by a man again, but now that it’s being taken away from me I am sentimental about these moments of calm, alone with a stranger, while the world is chaos around us. Float along with me on this piece of debris, the brothel bed, symbolic and soulful, don’t take your arms from me, who knows where we’re headed.

  ‘Has it been a while?’

  ‘Yes. Four years.’

  ‘Four years?! Why so long?’ I’m shocked. Often clients will say a few months, they’ve just got divorced, but more often they say a few weeks.

  ‘I was in Manus for four years – I was only granted asylum a few months ago.’

  Manus. The detention centre. Australia’s shame among many shames. Where we lock up people fleeing poverty, persecution and certain death. Forget about them because they’re conveniently offshore. Who am I kidding, though? We’d probably forget them even if they were interned in the midst of our cities. I don’t know what to say. I can’t even begin to imagine his last four years. I don’t want to go silent on him, though; they pay for interest as well as touch, and I shouldn’t let my guilt bind my tongue.

  ‘Did you come with your family?’

  ‘No, with my friend. We are both Rohingya. But he was only kept there for eight months.’

  ‘What? Why? Didn’t you have the same asylum claim?’

  ‘Yes we did. We don’t know why. The only thing is he is a lot lighter than me.’

  Our country doesn’t deserve you, I think. And I press closer to him, because all I can give him right now is the warmth and comfort of my body, when we’re entering a time in which he’ll be deprived of it all over again. Deprived by the state, except this time it’s not blatant and unnecessary cruelty.

  The buzzer rings – it seems we’re going to be deprived by the clock! No more lull to spare, we shower and I let him out and there’s four intro rooms filled that I move between, Hey I’m Maddy lovely to meet you Hey I’m Maddy lovely to meet you Hey I’m Maddy lovely to meet you Hey I’m Maddy lovely to meet you, and then I bump into another girl doing the same and we both sputter sorry and step back to make room for the other and then we both step forward and giggle and my eye is caught by the porn playing in the intro rooms, I can glimpse it through a gap in the curtain, and I think of how it primes the men so that they’ll come hard and fast and leave happy and we can get to the next booking even faster and I think of how the same tired tapes have played eighteen hours a day, seven days a week for fifteen years and how now those screens will be dark for who knows how long and will the hallways miss the girls, I wonder, will the rooms miss the sounds, will the walls miss the touch of a hand in doggy and will the building miss me and the way I run nude through it, garbage bag in hand, after emptying the room bins, discarded desire dragged along behind me? Some people call me a cum dumpster but they’re wrong: that goes in the condoms that go in the tissues that go in the bins that go in the garbage bag that I’m taking to the dumpster. I am simply the brothel poltergeist, a noisy spirit. Fuck me, I moan, go deeper, I implore, I’m gonna come, I lie (there), or maybe I don’t, I’m no pillow princess, though ‘palace’ this may be, you can tell from the royal red of the sheets, the classic bordello hue, the same red that I bleed on clients in clots, I’m so sorry, I apologise, it’s never happened before, I insist, you’re too big for me, I lie, or maybe I don’t, maybe I say, Oh no, my period must’ve just come, as if the head of their dick wasn’t pushing a sponge deep inside me, as if I didn’t know it was close to overflowing but I hadn’t had time to squeeze it out between clients, barely had time to take a rushed menstrual shit and clean my arsehole with soap and water. Is this how whores of the past lived? I wonder. Is this how I’ll go back to living, or is this virus the death knell of what I know?

  ‘Maddy, room one. How long are you staying till, by the way?’

  ‘I’ll do the whole fourteen hours, till close,’ I say as I escort the client to the room I’ve been using, the same room again and again to avoid cross-contamination in these dire days.

  He’s a white guy, a minority in this establishment, and we’re into it as soon as he steps out of the shower; he’s hard before I even touch him. He begs me for a bareback blow job and I act demure and say, ‘Sorry, I have a partner, and there are some things I save for my personal life.’ He dirty talks throughout, hassles me for kissing, and when I say no kisses all over my cheeks and face, as close as he can get to my lips without actually touching them. I look past his ear and smile wryly at my reflection. It’s easier to cope when we’re in on this farce together. I’m with her. After he comes and washes himself off he says, ‘So you’re doing a fourteen-hour shift?’

  ‘Yeah, I am. We have to close at midnight so I want to work as much as I can.’ And I step into the shower.

  ‘If you’re doing such a long shift you should really have some mouthwash as an extra precaution, to protect you.’

  ‘Well, I don’t do kissing or BBBJ, so I don’t think that’s really necessary. I take the precautions I need for the services I do.’

  ‘I’m just saying it as a doctor.’

  ‘O-kay.’ I roll my eyes as I scrub his cum off my tits.

  ‘You also should get tested regularly – you know, STI tests. Bloods, urine etcetera.’

  ‘Why are you assuming I don’t?’

  ‘I’m not. I’m just giving you my professional opinion, as a doctor.’

  ‘Dude, you were the one begging me for BBBJ as if it’s not risky! And I’m also a professional. I can assure you I know how to be safe in this job.’ I flick my towel in frustration.

  ‘Don’t get worked up. I just know you wouldn’t mix with many medical professionals so I’m giving you some helpful advice.’

  ‘No you’re not, you’re being condescending! Why is it every time I see a doctor client they lecture me as if they know more than I do?’

  ‘You’ve seen other doctors here?’

  ‘Yep, many.’ And they’re always the most annoying, I want to add – superior attitude, think they’re the most intelligent person who’s ever deigned to set foot in here. Instead I hop on one foot as I shimmy back into my bodysuit.

  ‘Well, I’m just saying you should be careful. You’re exposing yourself to a lot here. So make sure you get tested and when you do you get tested for everything.’

  I’m too angry to even respond. I think of all the needles that have been stuck into my veins and how his audacity burns more than an anal swab inside my tight, dry rectum. Motherfucker. I pick up my pleasers, hands shaking, and ask if he wants to go out the front door or the back door. Let him out with a curt goodby
e, but my eyes condemn him – why’d you fuck me if you think I’m so dirty? Reminds me of that client I had a few weeks back who bothered me to go on a date with him outside, and when I finally said I was gay to get him off my back he verbally abused me – ‘Disgusting, a waste of your body, how could you do something so wrong and gross as sleep with women, disgusting, disgusting’ – and then wanted to fuck me for a second time, come inside that person who was so disgusting to him, be held by arms that he couldn’t respect, and all I could think was: At least have the integrity to match your words to your behaviour, to keep your precious dick out of my abominable body. If I’m so vile how can you be turned on by me? $120 is not nearly enough reimbursement for being ejaculated into twice in forty-five minutes with a sprinkling of homophobia.

  I’m back in the girls’ room now and I’ve got sharp tears of rage in the corners of my eyes and a lump in my throat. I want to go home, I hate men, but this is the last day and I need the money. Pull yourself together! You’ve worked through worse than this. You worked through that seven-hour booking, when you finally knew that you needed to break up with your girlfriend, as she hit you repeatedly in front of a client while you were hog-tied at the wrists and ankles, and you tried to hide your tears from him so he wouldn’t know the room was being debauched but not in the way he paid for, terrified that he would notice that her violence wasn’t just professional play but intimate aggression, mortified that what you were most ashamed of had seeped out of the confines of the relationship and splattered on the walls for anyone to see. You couldn’t apologise copiously for whatever imagined slight you had committed – the only way to make her stop – because it would draw attention to what he was witnessing; just had to keep fake-orgasming as she left red handprints over your chest and neck, keep hoping that he would take the vibrator out of you soon and untie you, so you could tally your orgasms in pussy juice on the mirror and escape the reach of her angry hands. That was a genuinely awful night; this client has only thrown your mood, don’t let it affect your earnings. What am I on? Five clients so far, $510 and it’s only 4.30 p.m. I’ve got a booking at five; pretty sure that’s what the manager said earlier. I’ll quickly intro all the guys there now, there are a lot coming in today, all racing to get off before the closures, there’s ten of us on, though, so it’s good it’s busy, and I’ve got time for a quick halfa, the sooner I get into another client the sooner I’ll have that last client pushed further away from me by someone else’s touch.