Okay, made it home, what have I gotta do? Shower, shave my legs, eat, check I’ve got the rightsized condoms. Drive to his place in peak hour. God, how I miss the roads of home, the blind corners and burn-out marks and even the loose gravel with dust clouds rising. The way the solar power cuts out at midnight and the music stops, and the way we huddle around the battery-powered radio with the kerosene lamps lit as if it’s the 30s, listening to the broadcasts. Heard the news of Trump’s corona diagnosis crackle over the channel in the pitch-black, fixed the antenna to hear it more clearly, knew I was part of a significant moment in history that was lent a timelessness by the medium. Get the genny going, one of the other girls said. But if we’d powered up that petrol gulper we never would have heard this, that elocution lesson voice reaching out across the verandah to touch the edges of the rainforest, stirring the leaves; we would’ve read it solitarily on our phones instead of having the knowledge hit us all at once, dousing us in this illness of global interest.
The rainbow lorikeets are screeching in the backyard as I slurp some spaghetti and I think of all the voice notes I’ve sent to people, how when I relisten to them I can hear the parrot screams and magpie warbles in the background, how there’s a stamp of Australiana on every missive I send out into the world that a European would never recognise but which pierces an Australian living overseas with nostalgia and the scent of eucalyptus in the rain, how that’s more beautiful than any confession of feeling or apology that I’ve stumbled over, that tropical chorus – we’ve got more types of parrots than the Amazon, did you know? It’s about the only thing that makes me feel patriotic, that and being the fastest English language speakers in the world, try and outpace me, I dare ya.
I need to pick up my pace now – get going, girl. It’s five o’clock already and you’ve gotta be ready ringing at his doorbell at six with a clean arsehole and a bladder full of pee. Take that pineapple juice to finish off in the car, let’s go.
This client’s such a breeze, a widower, been seeing him for five years now, she passed seven years ago. He knows the ins and outs of my life, calls me by my real name yet never oversteps a boundary. As he opens the door to me he asks how’s it going with that girl overseas, and I remember that last time I was here I was at the height of it, exhilarated by the flirtation and high off orgasms, talking to him about my infatuations as I always do.
‘Oh right, yeah, that. Wow, that feels so long ago. She ended up not being into me. It got a bit confusing. I was devo for ages but I feel fine now,’ I say as I unlace my boots.
‘That’s a shame; it sounded like you guys had such a good connection.’ And he sets a champagne flute out on the table for me to pee into – not all of it, though! Have to save some for his face in the shower. I know the routine after all these years.
‘I mean, we did and we do, but it’s a connection that’s better as friends coz she wasn’t feeling it, you know. Also, it confirmed to me once again that I am much happier and a better person when I’m not into someone. I need to stay away from that stuff for a long time. It’s the friendship that mattered more to me anyway and that’s why I got so into her, too, coz there was already a strong base there, so, like, nothing lost.’ I fumble at the buttons of his shirt as I begin to kiss him.
Move through the motions and the rooms. Undress in the living room, my hand stirring up his cock, put a condom on, suck him for a bit. Guide him to the bedroom, my bare feet slapping on the wooden floors. His wife gazes down on us and I think of how familiar her face has become to me, how he must lose more of her each day and mourn the blurring of her features but I’ve gained them, how sometimes I make direct eye contact with her while I ride him and I wonder. I know the things he does with me he used to do with her and I am simply a stand-in. She was a hot kinky bitch and she also liked girls; she would’ve liked you, he’s always said. I think of us all fucking and I think of that brothel client who masturbated while he sobbed to the videos of a porn star who killed herself, how he paused it on a face cum shot and said this is how I’ll always remember her, and I think of how people say you’re still alive while someone still remembers you, and the space is suddenly a phantasmagoria of dead women, with silvered shifting outlines and mouths open for eternal swallows, I guarantee girls in the afterlife don’t spit, maybe they spit roast though, I feel like purgatory would be full of group sex, perhaps she’s getting off just as I’m getting off now as his cock is in my arse, damn that makes me come fast. We leave her behind as we go to the bathroom, or maybe we don’t, maybe she’s light-footed beside me, crouching in the corner as I squat above him aiming my stream, watching him wank till he’s done. He wipes his face with a bath towel as I hop in the shower and say that was fun, and I mean it.
‘Yeah, it was. I’m probably not going to be able to see you for a while – that’s why I wanted to do anal today.’
‘Oh really, why?’
And he tells me how he’s met someone and he wants to give it a go with her. How she’s Taiwanese and a working girl and how he would never have thought to date a working girl before, would’ve been made jealous by it, but after years of knowing me and seeing how I spoke about my girlfriends he knows that people can do this work and even sometimes enjoy it and still love their partner. How it’s no reflection on their romantic relationships, and he’s proud of how hard she works and that she sends money home to her family. How he would never have had this attitude if it wasn’t for me, how he is grateful to me, but he wants to do the right thing by her and not see other people at the moment. I’m touched. Sure, I’ll miss the money and maybe I’ll even miss the sex, but what are those things compared to him finding someone he wants to be with, and her finding the same? I say farewell to him with a kiss on the cheek and a more solemn internal goodbye to his wife.
Walking back to my car a text comes through from a friend, responding to a message I sent earlier asking if she wants to hang tonight. She says she’s at the Crix, can I pick her up so we can go back to mine? Perf. She’s probably a little tipsy given she’s at a pub but whatever, she’s a buoyant drunk, I envy her that.
And we’re hurtling along Wattle Street as she tells me about her exhausting six-day working week. Like everyone she’s both relieved she has work during the pandemic and scared it’ll disappear suddenly. All the people who thought they had secure jobs, who looked down on me and asked when I planned to leave sex work because ‘you can only do it for so long’, have seen their industries gutted and are retraining, whereas my work has lasted, because one thing you can count on is people will always be horny.
We’re stopped at some traffic lights and a ute pulls up next to us, and I can see that the passenger is eyeing her off.
‘That guy next to us is checking you out.’
‘He’s kinda hot.’
And so I wind down the window.
‘Do I know you?’ he calls. ‘You look familiar.’
‘No.’ She somehow manages to make the word both two syllables and coquettish, and as she says it the lights change and I shoot off.
The ute is coming up the other side of the car and he asks for her name as we cruise past Wentworth Park.
‘Where do you live?’
‘Leichhardt. You?’
‘Glebe.’
There’s cars getting between us, though, and now the ute’s a bit ahead and what’s she going to do? They didn’t even get each other’s full names. I can catch up to him, I reckon, even with this Saturday night traffic.
‘Have you got a pen and paper to write your number on?’ I swing around the corner at full speed, overtaking two cars in one go, the stench of the fish markets sharp in my nose as I draw closer to them.
‘No, I’ve got nothing.’ She’s rifling through her bag as I see the ute ahead of me, going up the ramp to the Anzac Bridge.
‘Maybe you can just shout your number to him?’
We’re on the bridge now and I’m switching across the four lanes, coming up alongside him again and –
; ‘Wait, I’ve got an old business card!’
She gestures to him and I keep pace with the ute as she leans out the window and hands the driver her business card. What an iconic 80s move. Forget about meeting people online – nothing can beat the chemistry of in person, and I have so much adrenaline from the chase that I’m as excited as she is when her phone begins to ring as we go up Victoria Road. I don’t hate love, I just hate being hurt and I hate being stressed and I’d rather no love than those things. That’s okay, though, because I get enough as it is and there is so much to look forward to. So much fun to be had, so many friends to make and keep, and at some point, who knows when, but sometime, I’ll see the ones separated from me by borders, and when I do I’ll say let me hold your hand so I know you’re not a hallucination or a figment of my imagination, after all this time, finally, I’ll never take touch or travel for granted again, don’t let go even if your palm is sweaty, I’m not one for affection but I won’t shirk your hug coz I’m fiending that physical contact, frothing it, I’ve been alone in my mind but I’m not alone in life, photograph us in this place so we know we’ve been someplace together, speak Polari to me, teach me to sign, unburden yourself at the door when you shed your scarf, let me look after you just as you’ve looked after me, I want all that and more. This is a love letter to friendship, I want you to write it on me in ink and then press me against the pages, your personal printing press. I want you to hold my ankles tight so it doesn’t smudge and sign it from all of us, because without youse there’s no me.
I want to wake up tomorrow feeling as good as I do today. I want this day and this drive to never end. I want the laughter to keep going, into the next and the next and the next.
I want to dance in a club. I want to cup someone’s face. I want to be texted back as quickly as I text back. I want to lie beside someone for so long that I forget that they’re another person and think I’m talking to myself. I want a friend to race ahead of me at a crowded market so I’m left actually talking to myself.
I want free education and health care and housing for everyone everywhere. I want to feel better so I can do better, for the world and everyone in it. I want us to slow if not halt if not reverse the effects of climate change.
I want to read out loud to someone till my mouth gets dry. I want to give a child a piggyback. I want to climb a tree. I want to skip down a pavement scuffing my toes. I want to choke because I’ve eaten a meal too fast and I want to laugh when I do.
I want to hang a picture. I want to smell a book. I want to cradle a cat as if it’s a baby. I want to go into love boldly, like I do everything else. I want to not be incapacitated by it. I want to learn, always. I want to live.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THANK YOU TO MY AGENT GABY NAHER, THE FIRST PERSON to read this and who saw enough in it, even in the messy first draft stage, to take me on. Thank you to Jane Palfreyman, Tessa Feggans, Ali Lavau and anyone else at Allen & Unwin who was a part of turning this from notes on my phone to word docs to a book you can hold in your hands at a bookstore. Thank you to all of the creatives whose work has influenced my own and who I reference obliquely or directly. And thank you to all the readers who have followed my writing online for so many years, who have engaged with me and had faith in me and supported me—I hope the wait was worth it.
Nothing But My Body Page 15
