D-G
D is for Disasters
For me, there’s no such thing as an insurmountable disaster. If it all goes horribly wrong, console yourself with the knowledge you’ll probably never see the customer again. Even if it goes right, you will probably never see the customer again.
That said, always be certain your phone is fully charged and within arm’s reach if needed. And keep a travel pack of baby wipes on hand for cleaning up all messes of biological origin.
E is for Eating
Whoring is like exercise: you can’t eat too soon before the appointment, or you risk blowing chunks at an inopportune moment. The usual timing of non-dinner dates means that normal meals are almost always out of the question. Have a generous lunch. Take a snack to nibble on the way home. Carry a spoon just in case.
E is also for Exercise
Someone once told me that girl-on-top positions can burn as many calories per hour as one of those gym stepper machines. Note that the gent is apt to give out before you have achieved a fat-burning workout, though.
F is for Forgetfulness
Always reconfirm appointment details with the agency. My memory is not worth relying on, and knocking on the door of room 1203 instead of 1302 can have unexpected-and probably not hilarious-consequences. I keep a small pad of paper handy.
That said, don’t write the details on the back of your hand, either.
G is for G-spot
You won’t need to know where this is at work. Tuck it away in the cupboard at home and save it for best. lundi, le 1 ^er decembre
The client’s hands were square, long-fingered, and wandering. They reminded me of my boyfriend’s. He pawed my breasts, my thighs, and ventured inside.
I jerked suddenly. “Sorry-did I hurt you?” he asked.
I was on my side, he was spooning me, the offending fingers resting between my legs from behind. “Only a little.” I picked up his right hand and examined the nails. Clean, but longer than most. And rather jagged. “Do you bite these?”
“Yes.”
I rolled over the edge of the bed to reach my purse on the floor. “Hold on.” Brought back a small silver cosmetic bag and pulled out an emery board.
He shuddered. “I can’t take files,” he said. “It’s a nails-on-chalkboard sort of thing.”
“Trust me,” I said, and sanded his edges smooth. He ran his thumbs over the polished ovals, commented on the difference. “You’re far too nice for this job,” he said softly, which I took to mean either that he’d had bad experiences with escorts before, or most escorts are nice and I was just the first. Hoped it was the latter. mardi, le 2 decembre
So what’s a girl to do with a day off?
Besides shopping for knickers, naturally.
Booked in advance, plenty of warning. Boyfriend out of town, no gym session with N. Tried arranging lunch with Al, A2, and A4; no luck. No illness, no customers. A good proper lie-in. No errands, no appointments, and no laundry. Time to cook (and maybe leave the washing-up for another day). No cleaning lady and no calls from the manager. Nowhere to be, nothing to be. Just me on my own.
Best find that vibrator, then. jeudi, le 4 decembre
There is someone in London who just paid to lick the pucker of my arse for one hour. Isn’t that what everyone really wants in life, someone who’ll kiss your grits and enjoy it?
If someone had only told me from the outset such perfect clients existed, I would have jumped in straightaway. vendredi, le 5 decembre
“Have you ever been with a woman?” the client asked, stroking my breasts.
“Yes,” I said. He sighed. “Many. Outside of work.” It has been a while since the last. The Boy grumbles and pouts sometimes, because he knows about my past and has never had a threesome. I am wary of the problems that picking up a spare girl can introduce to a relationship. Better to go pro, I think. Maybe sometime in the future. Not now.
“Are you gay?”
“No, I just like women.” Probably equally to men for sex. But I would rather be in a relationship with a man, which I think reads as essentially straight. This was a conclusion won over much heartrending identification nonsense during university. Women: I’ll fuck them, but I don’t want to go home to one.
“Any woman?” Perhaps he had one in mind. I hoped not.
“Not all women.” samedi, le 6 decembre
I’ve been looking through the site again. The manager rearranges the profiles from time to time, to give this or that girl a lift in business, or to emphasize a new arrival to the agency.
My own profile compares reasonably against the other girls on the site and pictures around the Web. Nothing to stand out particularly; just like hundreds of others. It was a bit stunning to see just how many call girls were working in London. There seemed to be a leggy blonde or brunette sex goddess for every potential horny businessman on earth, with maybe a MILF or two to spare.
I remember the first time I saw myself on the site. The profile turned out decently enough. I wouldn’t have thought so, considering the way the photo shoot went. There had been some selective cropping and Photoshop magic, but the woman in the images is very definitely me. Would someone recognize me? Don’t be silly, I scold myself. No one who knew you and spotted them perusing escort sites would ever confess to it. Or would they go one worse and book an appointment?
The photographer for the escort agency met me at a hotel. Cute until she opened her mouth. She started in on me straightaway. “Hair-not big enough,” she said, and pulled out a teasing comb that looked as if it had served time in some of the country’s finer dog-grooming facilities. Her own pink lipliner was enlisted in the quest to make my lips look fuller, poutier. The lingerie I had brought, still in their store wrapping, were judged unsuitable-which is to say they were far too tasteful. “You would suit something… purple,” she said, throwing a cheap lace vest at me. At least it was unworn; it still had the tags on. This is how I found myself in colors I’d never wear, with makeup I’d never use, hair ten times normal size, writhing on the hotel furniture. “Keep those legs straight up in the air,” she said as my thighs shook from the exertion of holding pose after pose. “And… relax!”
We worked through a dozen standard glamour shots. “Are you getting bored yet?” she joked.
“Yes.”
She looked hard at me. “You’re bored? That’s terrible.”
“I was being ironic. Actually, I’m not bored at all,” I said, cupping my own breast for the thirtieth time.
“Pity about the bikini lines. So seventies porn star.” This from someone who put me in pink latex hot pants? She changed the film and shot through another roll. I couldn’t imagine there were any more impossible contortions to exact. After an hour I’d had enough and got up to change back into my civvies.
“Next time we see you, I will give you the name of a salon I know, where they do miraculous facials,” she said, a parting shot on my way out the door. Subtlety is not a strength in this woman.
The verdict came back within hours. Surprisingly, the manager seemed far more pleased with the results than either the photographer or I was. “Darling, the pictures, they are fabulous,” she purred on the other end of my phone. I’ve noticed she never introduces herself on the phone but launches straight into conversation. Must be a graduate of the same charm school as my mother.
“Thank you, I was worried about not looking relaxed.”
“No, they are perfect. Can you do something for me? Can you write something about yourself for the portfolio? Most of the other girls, I write something for them, but you should do this very well.” She seemed pleased to have bagged another graduate for the agency; perhaps they make commission on educational level?
Cripes. I am a tall, luscious… ah, no. Amusante, savoir faire? Save me. Self-motivated, works well in group… perhaps closer to the truth. I wondered, where are the CV clinics for whores?
In the end I was pleased with the result. I had liked the look of the agency’s website from the beginning, and especially the descriptions of the women. They seemed more honest than most-there was no messing about a girl’s size and what she did-but also less pornographic. Not a one contained guarantees that the girl pictured could swallow hosepipes, was a raging sex machine, or had last been featured in the pages of a top-shelf publication. The tawdry outfits from the photographer’s wardrobe looked unexpectedly sexier and more subtle in a picture than they had in person. I wouldn’t have admitted this to her for the world, of course.
And I wised up to the tricks the photographers used. After seeing the poses echoed in hundreds of pictures, the contortions I had been put through looked familiar.
There is clearly an art to the glamour shot. On the one hand, perfection is expected and nothing less is tolerated, so who wouldn’t consider pixel manipulation her best friend? On the other, those of us who do like the way our bodies look feel at a distinct disadvantage to those who would airbrush their way onto a catwalk if they could. Perusing the pictures revealed these trends:
• The bending-over bumshot. Everyone looks good like this. Roseanne probably doubles for Heidi Klum in such a pose. If you don’t see the full-on wobbly face-up, don’t be surprised if it turns out to be rather less (or rather, more) than you expected in the flesh. Also applies to the all-fours crawl and the face-down spread eagle.
• The tit grab. A double-A could take on Dolly-Partonesque proportions given the right tilting of the chest-flesh. What is the point? Many men like small breasts. As someone once said, more than a mouthful’s wasted (mine are a perfect handful, but you’ll have to take my word for it. And I’m not saying whose hands either).
• The deep-cleavage angle from above. See previous.
• The toe point. She’s not a trained balletist; she’s trying to make her legs look longer. I reckon if God had meant us to point our bare feet in midair, he wouldn’t have invented stilettoes.
• The evening wrap/well-placed fur. Fat arms, okay?
• The turned-up collar/long hair obscuring the cheek. Double chin, or lack of any at all.
• Knee-high boot and pencil skirt combo. In real life this is immensely sexy. Who hasn’t wanted to stroke the milky white strip exposed on a lady’s leg? In sexy photos, anyone willing to show only an inch of thigh at a time has issues.
• Bubble bath. Good for hiding a multitude of sins.
• Bending backward. Like the bending-over bumshot but in reverse. Poochy tummy extremely likely. Personally I’d rather see an inch to pinch than force someone to suck it in for an hour on the trot.
• Crossed legs. Hasn’t waxed. Ankle socks, ditto.
• Girlish pigtails and teenage clothing sense. Is actually thirty-four. dimanche, le 7 decembre
N, the hub of all gossip, was meeting me at the gym and coming back for supper afterwards. He has a keen interest in porn and the magazine collection to prove it. He told me about his plans for a trip to Amsterdam with a friend from work.
“Why not pick up some girls for a threesome while you’re there?” I asked, leaning forward over the handles of a stationary bicycle. The threesome is his longest-standing fantasy. After the grannies and horses, naturally.
I feel bad for N. Having tasted once or twice the fruits of group sex, it has become a full-time obsession. He was the one, for example, who demanded I go over my night with the posh woman and her boyfriend in detail, even to the point of providing illustrative diagrams. “Why, do you think Dutch women are any more willing than the English?”
“No, I mean you could hire some.”
“Mmph,” he said. He’s an attractive man. While supportive of the concept of prostitution, I don’t think he’d actually dip a toe into sampling the professionals. He started a slow jog on a treadmill while I pedaled. “If there were legal brothels, I could hire out all the girls,” he mused.
“Now you’re being greedy,” I scolded. “If I remember correctly, once is usually enough for you.” With a few exceptions. Once in the distant past he and I had a threesome, and as far as I know, he hasn’t had another shot since.
“Ouch.” But he was smiling. And when he smiles, I think how sexy I find him, how his eyes crinkle like a film star’s. “Any chance you might-”
“Sorry, darling, that train left the station years ago.” Eww, friends hiring me for sex. The thought hadn’t even occurred. Must make a mental note to nip all future suggestions in the bud. Especially as they are not all at the same level of knowledge about my work. A2 knows outright, Al and A4 know the general outline but not the details, and the less A3 knows, the better. N, of course, gets the full skinny, warts and all. Literally.
The belt of the treadmill squealed and buckled under N’s bulk. “Are you done torturing that machine? Because I’m getting hungry.”
He drove us back to my house. It wasn’t late, but the city was already as dark as midnight. N was born and raised in London, and guided the car around back roads and alternate routes I didn’t know existed. The night air was still moist from rain in the afternoon, the streets shining with long red and white reflected lights, and I rolled down the passenger window to listen to the gentle shrr of tires on the road. “How much do you tell that man of yours?” he said after a long silence. N and the Boy know and don’t approve of each other, but since they live in different cities, rarely meet.
“Enough.”
“Can’t imagine he’s happy with it.”
“Can’t imagine he has a choice,” I said, affecting more bravado than I felt. If he turns out to have major objections, I thought, I’ll find something else to do.
Probably. lundi, le 8 decembre
Booking with a banker at a hotel near Bond Street. We drank some coffee, chatted about New York briefly, then got down to business. And, as they say, business is good.
He: “That was my first anal.”
Me: “Really? I’m surprised.” Perhaps not that surprised, since there have been more than a few first-time anals in my past. But surprised he didn’t mention it, and surprised at the spatial imagination of someone who manipulated me around his member so fluidly.
“Well, I enjoyed it.”
“I would tell you it’s my first time too, but you’d know I was lying.”
He (laughing): “So how did I do?”
“Excellent-just remember, lots of lube, and use fingers first. As you did.”
“Thanks-you’re too nice.”
“Well, you did all the hard work. So to speak.”
(later)
He: “I don’t understand why my colleagues would have an affair with some girl in the office, and risk a marriage, when they could have someone like you.”
I nodded, didn’t have anything to add.
“It must be a power thing, or to show off to other men. Still”-and he shuddered slightly, in the manner of a man whose faint tan line from a removed wedding band is still visible, and he knows it-“I just couldn’t risk some little temp ringing my wife up weeks or months afterward.”
We had time before both of our next meetings and talked about Lebanese restaurants in London (good, on the whole) and Italian ones (uniformly rubbish). Later he let slip that he had tried to book me before, when I was away. I’m glad his persistence paid off.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. mardi, le 9 decembre
I walked into the hotel, large coat bundled tight around me. It was more insurance that none of the tools of the trade would fall out than protection against the sharp weather. The client undressed while I laid out the things he had requested: blindfold, the Persuaders, choke chain collar, and nipple clamps.
“I’ve never done this before,” he said, eyeing the whips.
Doubtful. Still, his fantasy, not mine. “I’ll be gentle with you then,” I said. I was lying, and we both knew it.
We were finished in exactly an hour. Sometimes the job seems too easy to be believed. mercredi, le 10 decembre
Grumpy; nothing coherent to write. Have a list instead.
LOVE: A SPOTTER’S GUIDE
• Love at First Sight: the overwhelming desire to see the inside of the nearest closet (pub toilet, friend’s back garden, the alleyway over there, et al.).
• True Love: can be introduced to the family without unreasonable fear of embarrassment. On the part of the family.
• Everlasting Love: a polyamorous couple who haven’t had sex with each other in years.
• Love Match: an alliance between kingdoms.
• The Love of Your Life: the indolent boy from your last year at uni who spent eight-plus hours a day online and ate all the Nutella, the memory of whom somehow improves with time.
• In Love: a momentary instance of being almost as interested in someone else as in oneself.
• Loving: capable of untold amounts of suffocation.
• Motherly Love: capable of untold amounts of suffocation.
• Brotherly Love: forbidden by the moral laws of most world religions.
• Lover: the one who comes round when your partner’s “out of town on business” (read: seeing his lover).
• Lovable: cuddly. In the pejorative sense (similar to the concept of “shapely legs,” which is code for chubby).
• Lovely: only just bearable. “That was a lovely party! I do hope you take me to Kettering again!”
• Love Potion: About the only thing, at this point, that might incite the Boy to call. I’m getting lonely up here. jeudi, le 11 decembre
N gave me a lift home. He had already eaten and I was beyond tired. I made a sandwich for myself and cups of tea for us both while he read to me from the paper.
Later I tried to kick him out of the flat so I could have a bath. It’s been too long since I indulged in a long, bubbly soak. “I’ll wait,” he said. He’s an odd one and stubborn as well, and I was too tired to argue, so I let him.
When I came out of the bath, he rolled me over on the bed and kneaded my back from neck to ankles. I would have thanked him-I imagine the satisfied sighs got the message across. On his way out the door he paused. “Next time, of course, I want at least a blowjob for that,” he said.
“That’s only funny because I know you’re not kidding, sweetheart.”
Some people wouldn’t ask. I can think of one in particular. I’ve always been attracted to strong, tall men. And they have not ever forced anything on me. Except for one. But I begged him to do it.
It was assault with kissing. I’ll call him W. When we met, we were both in love with other people, but it didn’t matter. What we did could only loosely be called sexual congress anyway.
W was tall and nicely built, the result of a career in sport. We flirted over the course of a week and agreed to go out on the Friday night. I dressed and thought about W, his long, thick limbs and large hands, knowing something odd was happening. I couldn’t imagine myself in this man’s arms so much as on the end of his fist. He looked capable of breaking me into small pieces, and crushing those pieces into a ball. I could not stop thinking of him hurting me, and the thought made me sick. It also turned me on.
Our meeting place was just south of the river. We stood at the crowded bar of a pub for a while before going on to a comedy club where I got legless on gin and tonic. The acts ranged from bad to criminally awful. I began fantasizing about having W’s bulky shoulder rammed into my face. I went downstairs to the ladies’. W followed me in.
“You’re not going to corner me in the loos, are you?” I asked, pawing his shirt. My head came to not quite the middle of his chest. I could smell the sour waft of a day’s sweat on him and was aroused.
“I’m not stalking you,” he said. “Much.”
I bit him as discouragement. The layers of fabric felt fuzzy on my tongue. My teeth closed just hard enough to make it hurt. But he didn’t flinch. “Now then,” he said, taking my face in his hands, “you’ll pay for that. I’ll see you outside.”
I was unstable on my heels, leaning heavily on his arm all the way to the corner of my street. We stopped and I looked up. He lifted my body easily, standing me on a bench. From that height we had our first kiss.
“Get a room,” yelled some teenagers from the other side of the road.
We didn’t. Not that night, anyway. The night after.
The location was a pastel-decorated chain hotel in Hammersmith. I didn’t even take an overnight bag. He pushed me down on the bed as soon as we were inside and straddled my waist. Pulling out his cock, he aimed it not for my mouth or my cleavage but at my cheek.
So it began. After that first time, when he hit the side of my face so hard with his erection that there were blisters inside my mouth afterward, there was no going back. “I’ve never made a woman cry before,” he said. “I liked that.” No pretense of romance. Just us, anywhere we could be together alone, and his open palm. On cold days in parks where the biting weather would make it sting all the more, he’d stop the car suddenly, and we’d get out and he’d smack me one. My knickers were always sopping wet after.
I couldn’t explain the bruises. I didn’t. “Ran into the door,” said with a shrug. “Hard session at the gym.” Or, “A bruise? Where?”
There was the weekend W reserved a room at the Royal College of Physicians. Visiting medics can stay there when in London; I don’t know how he blagged his way in. We sat on the narrow single bed, watched a porn documentary and ate pizza. I had too much to eat-when I went down on him, his member was too big and it choked me. I coughed up Meat Feast and diet cola on his thigh. His penis grew even harder. He pulled my hair until I cried as he masturbated on my tear- and vomit-covered face. The bathroom was shared with the next bedroom. When I stepped into the hall, a young Indian doctor left the room opposite. He glanced up and froze, shocked to see me. The young man must have been able to hear us carrying on, though perhaps not the detail of it, as he seemed puzzled at the vomit on my chin and shirt. I lifted my hand in a small wave. “So, then, which one of you is the physician?” he asked awkwardly. “I am,” I lied, and walked past him to the toilet. The doctor’s jaw plummeted.
W was as mystified by the attraction as I was. “What do you think when I’m hitting you?” he asked one afternoon. We were sitting on a bench in Regents Park watching the geese and swans. Every few minutes, satisfied no one was coming down the paths, he’d hit me again.
“Nothing,” I said. There was only the moment when his hand would stop stroking my cheek and I knew the smack was coming; the first hard impact of his palm against the side of my face; the eye-wetting sting of pain; the warm glow of heat there afterward. It was perhaps the only time when there was nothing else in my head. It hurt, but the pain was neutral: there was no hate or disgust behind it. It was pure and exhilarating like any other physical experience. Like the moment of orgasm where you forget yourself, your partner, the world.
“Do you get angry with me?” he asked.
“No.”
W visited my house only once. He whipped me through a shirt, then topless, stopping only when I started to bleed. In the shower at the top of the stairs, he covered me in piss, then forced my face down in the puddle as he beat the back of my thighs. After he spent his load on my face, he held a mirror up. “You are such a picture,” he sighed. Eyes stinging with come, I half-opened my lids to see a red-cheeked girl squatting in a white tiled bath. And he was right. It looked good. Not in a cover-of- Glamour way, mind. I smiled broadly.
Once on holiday in Scotland I furtively sent W letters. “Ate a packed lunch and contemplated the dimensions of your hands,” read the first, tentative one. Later: “Next time you see me, don’t forget to bring a torch and those ropes.”
And the last, written a day after I stood out in the cold night air while the midges chewed me alive and W outlined in detail exactly what he wanted to do to me: “After you told me how you would beat and defile me, I came back inside dripping wet.” Yes, I was still in love with someone else, but that was a model-gorgeous, gentle lad, who would never even hear me on the toilet, much less contemplate painting my face with his feces.
The relationship felt too tightly wound to survive, destined for a breakup, a spell in prison, or, worst of all possible worlds, a suburban marriage with occasional light S amp;M. W couldn’t bear the thought either, and one night we engineered, on the flimsiest excuse, the demise of our affair. And I-polite yet firm, like a woman in film noir-smacked him.
“You’ve been wanting to do that since we met,” he said.
That never stopped me wanting him. Two weeks later I sent a note. “There are still marks on my left breast from your fingernails. I miss you.” vendredi, le 12 decembre
Phone call from the Boy last night. It consisted of the usual moaning and gnashing of teeth, both in a sexual way and at our fate of being star-crossed lovers with the A23 betwixt us.
Toward the end of the conversation, things turned a bit more prosaic. “My dad’s going to be in London a couple of nights this week.”
“Why’s that?”
“Retraining courses for work,” the Boy said. “I know he’s dreading it. He hates London. I mean, what is there to do when you’re stuck in the city by yourself and don’t know anyone?”
One thing came to mind immediately. Dear God, I hope he doesn’t call an escort. “Oh, I’m sure he’ll be fine. Your dad’s a smashing chap, someone’s bound to take him out on the town one night.” Please, don’t let him call an escort. And please, I know it’s a lot to ask.. please don’t let it be me. “Maybe your mum could go as well?”
“No, she’s busy this week.”
Fuck. My logical mind knows it’s statistically unlikely. Still, I have three hotel visits in the next two days and can’t help wondering. If time has taught me anything it’s that (a) cheating is a common human condition and (b) the stars always align against me. samedi, le 13 decembre
Went to Bedford for a booking last night and caught a late train back. There was almost no one on the platform: a youngish professional wearing sneakers and headphones, a few lone women. I wondered if they were going home from work, and if so, why this late? The trains were running behind and it seemed we were waiting ages.
A clutch of teenaged boys jumped on, drunk and raucous. One of them eyed me up whilst the others harassed the fat boy in the group. They took one of his shoes and played an increasingly violent game of keep-away which culminated in his loafer being chucked out the window at another train. He began screaming and tackled two of the other boys. They got off at Harpenden, unsurprisingly, and the carriage was mine alone as far as Kentish Town.
I felt inexplicably happy and walked home instead of taking a cab. Neither high heels nor drunken idiots frighten me much-when you spend a life in stilettoes, pavements are no hardship, and I’ve shrugged off enough come-ons that I could write the book on losing losers. I sang aloud, a song about lovers who want each other dead. Several empty night buses rumbled down the road. A man on a bicycle passed me and said, “Great legs!” He slowed down and glanced over his shoulder to gauge my reaction. I smiled and thanked him. He rode on.
It was cold and clear. I looked up, and was surprised at the number of stars. dimanche, le 14 decembre
The manager rang to deliver the details of a client to meet near Waterloo. “This man, he is verrrrry nice,” she said. I decided on top-to-toe white, mainly because I had a new lace basque that had never seen the light of day (or night, for that matter), also because all my other stockings had runs. He’d booked two hours, which I took to mean that he wanted something odd or that he wanted conversation.
This was the latter. I rattled the brass door knocker and a shortish man answered. Older, but not ancient. Deep characterful grooves on either side of his thin-lipped mouth. Charming house and nicely decorated. I tried not to look too much like I was assessing the interior. We drank our way through two bottles of chilled chardonnay, discussed the Sultan of Brunei’s gambling habits, and listened to CDs. “I suppose you’re wondering when we’re going to get down to it,” he said, smiling.
“I am.” I looked up at him from the floor where I was sitting barefoot. He leaned down and kissed me. It felt like a first-date kiss. Tentative. I stood up and stripped the dress over my head.
“Just like that,” he said, running his hands over my hips and thighs. The thin fabric whirred against his dry palms. Standing up, he turned me around and bent me over a table. His mouth pressed to the gusset of my knickers and I felt the hot steam of his breath through the fabric. He stood again to slip on a condom and, pushing the gusset to one side, took me from behind. It was over quickly.
“I’ll take you on my next holiday, baby,” he said. “You deserve to get out of the city.” I doubted this, but it was nice to hear.
He had loads of fluffy towels and a giant bath for afterward, and we ate crisps and drank wine a full hour past when I was supposed to go. It was odd; I felt the cab turned up far too soon. He asked for my real name and direct number. I hesitated-against agency policy. Then again, the manager herself had indicated that more than a few girls do this. I gave it to him and texted the manager to let her know I was on my way home.
It was cold outside, even the few steps from the door to the cab. I had a long coat and woolen scarf on and was secretly pleased I wouldn’t even be going as far as a tube station or bus stop. The cab driver was from Croydon, and we chattered about Orlando Bloom, New Year’s fireworks, and Christmas parties. I told him I worked at a well-known accountancy firm. I don’t think he was fooled for a second. Instead of going home, I directed him to a club in Soho. The cash, when I pulled out the bills to pay him, made an unfeasibly large lump in my hand.
N is a bouncer at a gay club. Among other things. I popped in to see how he was getting on with his cold, and hopefully to raise his stock a little. This ploy might work if we ever met in a place where straight people go.
“Darling, is it wrong to be jealous of a drag queen?” I sighed, as the very image of Doris Day slid past me in a white fur capelet.
“Who’s the object of your envy this time?” he asked. I nodded toward the blonde goddess. “Oh, don’t be,” he said. “I hear she spends three hours every day just removing hair.”
It got me to thinking about my own trials and tribulations. There is no optimal method of depilation. Razors leave terrible stubble, worse when it’s winter. I have clocked the time between smooth skin and goosepimpled hell at about three minutes. Cream removers smell terrible and never quite get all the hair anyway. Those vibrating-coil epilators should be marketed to masochists only, and waxing is usually administered by a sixteen-stone Filipina woman named Rosie. Also, it leaves the most horrible rash for the first day.
This is not a complaint-it is a statement of fact on the condition of being female. Probably something to do with the Tree of Knowledge. In return for all this suffering, we do get a few benefits. Baby-soft nether regions. Easy cleanup. Increased sensitivity. I have to stay on top of it, being blessed with a follicular thickness that is the envy of most arctic animals. My mother by contrast used to joke that she shaved her legs once a year “whether they need it or not.” I struggled with a razor as soon as I could get my hands on one and flirted as a teenager with the notion of shaving the hair off my arms, too.
My hair removal regime involves a combination of waxing and shaving, largely because of an aversion to having things ripped out of my armpit. Crotch, though, that’s no problem. Go figure. “I know how she feels,” I joked as N stepped to the side and let a group of hooting students through.
“So how did it go?” he said, looking back out at the street.
“Fine,” I said. “Nice man.”
“Single?”
“Could be divorced.” I shrugged. “Photos of his wife or ex-wife everywhere.”
“Children?”
“Two, both adults.”
“Man, I would never,” he said.
“Liar.” lundi, le 15 decembre
We sat in the car, silent. The light was on inside.
“I thought he was supposed to be out,” I said.
“He was,” the Boyfriend said. “At least, I thought he was.” He looked like he might start crying. “Please, come in. You’re my guest. I want you here and I’m sure he can stand it for a minute if he’s on his way out anyway.”
I knew there was a reason why the Boy always comes up to see me instead of the other way round.
When the Boy last visited, we met his friend S for breakfast. Now, S had been recently dumped by H. What S didn’t know was that H had been sleeping with the Boy’s flatmate for several weeks beforehand, and we agreed not to tell him. S seemed fairly chipper though and is commencing motorbike lessons now that there is no girlfriend around to forbid it. S already planned to christen the bike he will buy “the Crotch Rocket.” I promptly offered to test-drive his giant machine once it’s up and running. Anyway, that same housemate who was sleeping with S’s ex was simultaneously two-timing his own girlfriend, E, who lived in the house, with an average of three girls a week. And while E had no idea, the Boy and I harbored no illusions about what sort of a man his housemate was.
And in such situations, what can you do but hold your tongue?
Taking my bags, we went to the door. The Boy opened it and put his head round the corner carefully. “Why, hello, you’re still in situ?” he cheerily queried of the Housemate. “I just wanted to let you know, I’m here with the lovely-”
“NO,” bellowed the Housemate. “I will not have THAT WOMAN in my house.”
Ostensibly, the Housemate dislikes me because of my job. He hasn’t always hated me. In fact, I have another theory altogether: he is annoyed because I am one of a very few women he could never, ever have. Not even if he paid for it.
For the Housemate is young, attractive, smart, and wealthy. Has no trouble with women at all and knows it. He has come on to me at least ten times in one year with no luck whatsoever. I could never go off in secret with the Boy’s ersatz best friend. And his girlfriend E really does not deserve one more secret affair happening under her nose. Funny how and when morals decide to jump in, eh? A cheater, I can take. But a liar I have no time for.
“Listen, she’s leaving quite early in the morning, and you won’t have to-”
“I said no, didn’t I?”
The Housemate can do this; he owns the house. The conversation continued in this tedious vein for the better part of ten minutes. Less than charmed, I went to the car and waited. When the Boy returned, we nipped to the chip shop for a snack and, certain the Housemate must surely be gone, snuck back after an hour. But my temper and libido suffered from the episode somewhat. Nothing a few cups of chocolate and an hour-long massage couldn’t cure, of course.
“What are we going to do, kitty?” he said, half asleep. “What are we going to do?”
“Come up to London and move in with me,” I blurted. It’s time I moved to a more sociable area of the city anyway, one in which the crack addicts may yet stagger by the door but at least don’t collapse just inside.
“Money’s an issue,” he said.
“You can live off me while you look for a better job up there, then,” I said. “I can afford it easily.” Oh, cringe, shouldn’t have said that, don’t remind him!
“This is all rather out of left field,” he said.
“You would be able to fly to see your family instead of drive,” I said. His family are very close to him in feeling, but not geography. Living in London would put him much closer to the major airports.
“True.”
“And you’d have nicer furniture.” My flat is furnished in the slightly naff flowery vein favored by landlords of the aspirant class. “You don’t have to decide. I won’t take offense if you say no. But it’s an offer, anyway.” Ah, negotiating the terms of modern cohabitation. Who said romance was dead?
It would solve one problem-that of the belligerent Housemate. Though perhaps faced with the day-to-day of my comings and goings, the Boy would soon go off the idea. But I sure could use a friendly face and a foot rub with the beating these stiletto-clad feet take on a daily basis. mardi, le 16 decembre
Most transactions in the business are paid in cash. I find myself at the bank rather often and tend to use the same one every day. Cashiers are naturally curious people who would have to be brain-dead not to wonder why I come in with rolls of notes several times a week and deposit into two accounts, one of which is not mine.
One day I presented the deposit details on the back of a slip the Boy had been sketching on. He studied art, at some long-forgotten time in the past, and still tends to doodle and scratch at odd pieces of paper. The cashier turned it over, looked at the drawing, and looked at me. “This is good. Did you do this?” she asked. “Yes, well, I’m a.. cartoonist,” I lied. The cashier nodded, accepted this. Which is how the people at the bank came to believe that I draw for a living. Whether they took the next logical leap of questioning why any legitimate artist would demand payment in cash is unknown to me.
One advantage of this job is not being limited to the lunch hour for running errands. Therefore, I tend to go shopping in midafternoon. “Live close to here?” the grocer by the tube station asked one day as I picked out apples and kiwifruit.
“Just around the corner,” I said. “I work as a nanny.” Which is blatantly unbelievable, as I never have children visibly in tow and, unless the Boy is staying over, am only buying for one. Still, he now occasionally asks how the kids are doing.
I tend to bump into neighbors very seldom, except in the evening, at which time they see me dolled up in a dress or suit, full makeup, and freshly washed hair, meeting a cab. “Going out?” they ask.
“Best friend’s engagement party,” I say. Or, “Meeting people from work for drinks.” They nod and wish me well. I slip out the door and wonder what story I’m going to tell the taxi driver. mercredi, le 17 decembre
Met the As for lunch today. They don’t always hunt in a pack, but when they do, no eating establishment is safe.
A1, A2, A3, and A4 were already waiting at a Thai restaurant. I was unexpectedly the last to arrive-at least three of them are tardy by nature. We exchanged kisses and settled at a corner table.
I count the time I’ve spent enjoying sex from the first time I slept with A1, a number of years ago. I remember the afternoon clearly. The man’s large frame blocked the light from the single window of his flat. I smiled up at him, we were naked, entwined in each other’s limbs. He reached down, put his hand round one of my ankles, and moved my leg until it crossed my body. He bore down on my doubled body and entered me.
“What are you doing?” I squeaked.
“I want to feel the fullness of your arse against my body,” he said. Though it was not my first time-far from it-it might as well have been. Here was a man, finally, who knew what he wanted and, better still, knew what to do to get it.
A1 and I dated for several years. It was not an easy relationship except for the sex. Once our clothes were off, so were all bets. I knew I could ask him for anything and he could ask the same. For the most part, we always said yes to whatever the other wanted, but took no offense if the suggestion was rejected. He was the first man to tell me I was pretty whom I believed, the first person outside of a gym shower I could walk in front of unclothed. And I adored him physically: A1 is tall but not too tall, muscular, hairy. His dark straight hair and gravelly voice were deliciously anachronistic. He was the sort of man who should have been around in the fifties as a captain of industry.
We would have unbelievable rows. The passion I felt for him was something I didn’t know how to handle. It felt too intense and slippery for me, liquid mercury pouring out of my hands. We made it up in the bedroom, of course. Or on his kitchen table. Or his desk at work, after his boss had gone. In an elevator. In a university post office.
And we did it every way we could imagine, from the exotic (double penetration, restraints, golden showers) to the embarrassingly prosaic-missionary while he watched a football match on telly. I’ve done more and dirtier with other people since then, but never felt such a sense of stretching my own boundaries.
He was the first person to take a paddle to my behind; in return, I administered a doubled leather belt to his bottom while he bent over a sofa, holding his genitals away from the strikes. His impressively varied collection of pornography was the first hard-core I’d ever seen, and we acquired new magazines and sorted them into categories with glee. The things he did like-watersports, anal, women with frogspawnish come dripping off their faces-took their place; even things he didn’t like such as bestiality and lesbian sex had their place, because he was a collector. The explicit permission to just look at someone’s body, as opposed to a surreptitious glance in the gym or a furtive peek before the covers came up and the lights went out, was delightful.
I started seeing A2 several years after A1 and I split. He was a sensitive lover. Not gentle as such, but strong and slow. He seemed to me to make no unnecessary movements, and I was enthralled by his long, measured steps. Sometimes, with his pale skin and fair hair, he still looked like a teenager. Or even younger-an overgrown boy. From the beginning of our affair to the end, no body and no touch ever felt so right every time as his did. No fingers and no tongue ever came so close to being what I imagined the perfect lover was like. His body was spare but muscular. Tall but not excessively so. Not an ounce wasted.
He had a washing machine at home; I didn’t. I went round one day with laundry and found a pair of my own knickers in the otherwise empty drum. “What are these doing in here?” I asked.
“I missed you when you went home last weekend, so I wore them,” he said.
I examined the elastic. His hips were so narrow it didn’t seem to have torn the underwear. “Maybe we should get you some for you,” I kidded.
“Maybe we should,” he said, not joking.
I had his key. After waking and breakfasting (poached eggs on toast if hungry, cappuccino and a slice of challah if not), I would cycle to A2’s house. He usually rose late and was showering when I arrived. The bedroom door would be open and I went to the bureau drawer containing almost two dozen pairs of knickers. Choosing one, I would leave it in the drawer of the bedside stand and return to the front room. He would come out and dress. No comment on the knickers, which were for later.
We spent most of each day together. He worked from home; I had odd hours in a bookshop nearby. While I was working, he’d take a break from his, bringing me takeaway cups of coffee and tea. We read the literary supplements; I gave him bound proofs of upcoming books from the back room. My workmates were a mad, absinthe-drinking middle-aged woman and the often-absent, never-happy boss. Almost every week I ended up covering half of their hours but didn’t mind. There were books and plenty of them. And it was exciting the few times an author of note came in the shop. I noticed, though, that most of them breezed in the door and went to check for their titles on the shelves before coming back to the front to greet me.
After work A2 would be waiting at home. No words, just through the door and straight to his sofa. He sat, arms thrown over the back, as I opened his jeans with my teeth. Always a harder trick to pull off than I remembered. Then the first flash of silk or lace, and his hard cock distorting the fabric. I put my face in his crotch and smelled the odor of a day’s worth of sweat, piss, and pre-come through the knickers. I nibbled him, licked the underwear until it stuck to him.
A2 loved to pull at me, turn me over on his hands. He stripped me bare but kept the girly pants on. When he entered me-almost always anally-it was with the knickers pushed to one side, constricting the base of his penis, clinging to his balls.
After a few months the knickers weren’t enough. I bought a summer dress, short, brightly colored. He tried it on. I laughed and fucked him in the dress and was only slightly depressed that A2 had thinner hips and better legs than mine.
“Let’s go to the sales,” he said one weekend. I didn’t have to ask if the purchases were going to be for him or for me. Soon several short, pretty dresses joined the knickers in the drawer.
I knew there was another woman. He’d told me before we ever slept together. I probably fooled myself into believing it was almost over, for she lived hours away, and from what I knew had always treated him badly. But one week he went to see friends in the city where she lived. While I tried for a few days to ignore the itching weight of his key in my pocket, in the end I could not resist. I tore his house apart looking for evidence of her: e-mail, pictures. There was one in particular that broke my heart: her gorgeous face cracked in a smile and pink satin pajamas open to the waist. I found her name, her number, and rang her. There was no answer. I left a message on the answerphone: this is a friend of A2’s, I just wanted to talk to you-don’t worry, it’s not an emergency.
She rang back. “Hello,” she said, sounding tired.
It was hard to keep from screaming. The pulse in my neck was throbbing. “Do you know who I am?” I asked.
“I’ve heard your name,” she said. I told her about me and A2. She was very quiet. “Thank you,” she said at the end. The day after he came back, I used his key to go in but he wasn’t in the shower.
He was waiting for me. I’d upset her, he said. What right did I have to do that?
There was no answer. I was shaking with anger. What right does anyone have to feel jealousy?
One of the teachers at school gave a talk to the girls in our year about his marriage. Love is a decision, he declared to a room of hormonally charged teenagers. We scoffed. Love isn’t a decision; the films and songs tell us otherwise. It’s a force, it’s a virtue, we were at the charmed age when you can suck off your brother’s best friend in your bedroom and still believe in a one true love.
Then I fell for someone who hurt me. Gradually I came around to the teacher’s point of view. You have to open the door before someone can come in. That was no guarantee of control once they got there, of course, but it was something that was comprehensible, if not entirely logical.
In control, that’s what I thought. But first-time jealousy tore me to pieces the same way first love had. We argued and fucked, and fucked and argued, then we argued more and fucked less.
And when we did have sex, it had changed. Once he used to put knickers on and bend over the edge of his sofa. Laughing, I would apply a riding crop to his behind. After a few minutes we’d run to his bathroom where he’d excitedly pull down the panties and look in the mirror. If I hadn’t yet imprinted the pattern of the fabric on his skin, we’d go back and try again.
After, I just whipped him and whipped him until his skin was raw and spotted with blood. Until he told me to stop.
The times we shared a bed, A2 slept with his arms tangled around me. I kick and struggle against sheets and blankets in the night; he held me in. I rub my legs together like a cricket; he warmed my cold feet between his. Whenever his hand rested on my belly, I would wake, wondering not only at his stillness-he was only slightly less animated asleep than awake-but also at his lack of self-consciousness. The body is so unarmored: our species’ success is dependent on what is inside our skin, not a thousand spikes mounted on it. I might have hurt him any time he was asleep. If he turned over, exposed his spine, I might have attacked him right then.
And once: I woke before the alarm to find my curtains open on a perfectly gray morning. Hearing a sigh, thinking him awake, I turned toward A2. He still lingered in the twilight of sleep and his long arms were at strange angles under the displaced pillow.
“Why are you tucking your hands in like that?” I asked, for his elbows jutted out but his palms were jammed beneath the bedding.
“So you don’t snap them off,” he murmured, and went into deeper sleep. The first starling of the morning started in a tree outside.
He broke things off with his other lover but I never quite believed it and we drifted apart, sleeping together less and less frequently until one day he was seeing someone else and so was I. We were each happy for the other.
Now, A1 squeezed my knee and affected a dirty-old-man cackle. A2 winked over his menu. A3 glowered in the corner-as is his custom-and A4 grinned brightly into middle distance.
“So what are you lads up to today?” I asked.
“Nothing very much,” said A1. His measured words were like those of a schoolteacher.
“Nothing much at all,” said A2.
A4 smiled toward me. “Wasting as much of your time as possible.”
“Don’t you fellows have jobs to go to?” They don’t all live in London, but business brings them through on a semiregular basis.
“Theoretically, yes,” grumbled A3. He’s the ginger one. Dour northerner. And I mean that admiringly.
“Rubbish,” said A2, turning toward me. “And your good self? Things to do, people to see?”
“Not until later,” I said. The waitress came by to take our orders. A2 ordered the special for everyone. None of us knew what it was. Didn’t matter. A3 seemed reluctant to give up his menu. A2 asked after the Boy.
“I’ve asked him to come up here and move in with me,” I said.
“Mistake,” said A1.
“Big mistake,” A2 said. A3 mumbled unintelligibly. A4 continued smiling for no good reason. That’s why I like him best. My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was the manager of the agency. She asked if I could be in Marylebone for four.
“Four the time or four the number?” She meant the time. I checked my watch. Very doable. The As pretended not to eavesdrop.
Most people raise an eyebrow when they find that my closest friends are mostly men, and for the most part, men I’ve slept with. Strange, I think. Whom else are you going to sleep with besides the people you know? Strangers?
Don’t answer that. jeudi, le 18 decembre
N and I had a minor falling-out at the gym. Nothing serious, such as whose glutes are benefiting more from adding lunges to the workout, but a parting of ways on the subject of restricting access to public services and benefits. He: in favor, at which point I believe the words “paranoid refugee hater” may have traversed my mind, if not escaped my lips.
We managed to keep from strangling each other and repaired to mine for risotto. Conversation stayed on safer subjects, namely shoes, rugby, and who in the Footballers’ Wives cast sports the best cleavage. I’m sure we’ll work out this schism in the end-both the cleavage debate and the ID card thing. That said, disagreements never resolve themselves as quickly once you can’t fuck each other anymore. vendredi, le 19 decembre
The manager is a doll, but easily confused. Case in point: I was sitting in the back of a cab while the driver tried to find the Royal Kensington Hotel-which, incidentally, doesn’t exist.
I was a quarter of an hour late. We finally decided she must have meant the Royal Garden Hotel, Kensington. The driver waited outside while I checked the name and room number at reception. It was indeed correct. I gave the cabbie the thumbs-up and he drove off.
The client was freshly showered and wearing a white toweling robe. We walked through to the suite’s front room, where another woman sat drinking wine, already topless. She was a small blonde cutie from Israel.
I took off her skirt and shoes and undid the ribbon ties on her black silk knickers with my teeth. I had been told she was his girlfriend, but something about it didn’t quite jibe. He seemed to know her no better than I did. If she was a working girl, she definitely wasn’t from my agency. Instincts can be wrong, though, and in threesomes with someone’s girlfriend the best course of action is to lavish attention on the woman. It was no hardship-she smelled of baby powder and tasted of warm honey.
We moved on to the bedroom. He went at me from behind while she kneeled down to work at me with her tongue, fingers, and a mini-vibe. I found his exceptionally smooth body fascinating-someone’s been spending plenty of time down the waxing salon, I thought-an effect compromised by his rough, untrimmed beard. The whiskers tickled and scratched as he lapped at my girl-parts.
“I don’t know what you had in mind,” I said as my time started drawing to a close, “but I think it would be great if you came all over both our faces.”
The Israeli girl licked her lips and winked at me. A pro. Had to be, had to be.
Afterward I produced a small bottle of apricot oil and she gave both me and the client the most luscious massages. If I hadn’t enjoyed it so much, I would have been jealous of her skill. I gathered my clothes from the rooms while she pummeled and kneaded his back.
The client went to collect my coat. I gave the girl a kiss and nodded at the bottle of massage oil in her tiny hand. “Keep it-you’ll make better use of it than I will.” He came back and put a possessive arm around her, and my mind switched over again. Escort? Girlfriend? I couldn’t be sure. The tip he slipped me was equal to the fee. samedi, le 20 decembre
I am heading home to see friends and family, as is my custom. The Boy has gone on to spend a few weeks with his parents, as is his custom. I think some things should be sacrosanct from the intrusion of couplehood, and watching your family get drunk and pass out in the toilet is one of them.
Train travel is a most exciting wonder of the modern age. Having invented no shortage of faster, cheaper, and more comfortable ways to travel, we insist on perpetuating an outdated, and dare I say it, wildly inconvenient method of transport. What other modes of carriage could possibly expect you to make your own way to the start and terminating stations, wait until the company’s convenience to commence your journey, sit so long without even a free warm soda, and set up seats and tables so that you are inadvertently rubbing thighs with every pervert between King’s Cross and Yorkshire? I love it, you know I do.
Having made this trip so often, I know-seconds before the conductor’s voice breaks over the loudspeaker-when we are one minute from my stop. I know which carriage will put me closest to the exit and could conduct a tour of the station blindfolded. Even when no one is waiting for me, and I know there will be a twenty-minute queue for a taxi when I get there, the effect of stepping onto the platform at home is vivid delight. And the glow of being on my own ground lasts indefinitely, or until I pull into my parents’ drive. Whichever comes first. dimanche, le 21 decembre
Daddy and I went for a walk just after sunset. He claimed his legs were cramping from so much sitting around, but I suspect it was to get away from my mother, who has gone into celebratory overdrive. She’s an equal-opportunity party animal, juggling five or six seasonal holidays at a go. The last we checked she was trying to whip up familial enthusiasm for an Eid firework party. Having only a vague notion of what Eid is, who celebrates it, or what shoes would be appropriate to standing in a back garden and craning my neck at multicolored gunpowder, I decided in favor of the walking option.
There was a nip in the air, just enough to set the cheeks and ears tingling. We walked past a cottage with smoke from the chimney-“Coal,” Daddy said, authoritatively. We had a wood-burning stove when I was small, that we used to cook the family meals on as well. When it went and the new electric cooker and fake fire came in, I was very sad.
We returned to a dark house and a worried-looking man pushing his car back off of ours. He did the little foot-to-foot dance of trying to look innocent, which is especially tough when your front bumper is entangled in someone’s station wagon.
Daddy did a low whistle. “Ooh, the woman’s not going to be happy,” he said to the strange man, as if the threat of my mother’s displeasure alone could convince a perfect stranger not to do a runner. He circled round the scene of the accident-not much, just needed to lift the other car off the bumper, spot of scraped paint. Even I could see it wasn’t serious. But the stranger had clearly had a bit of Christmas cheer and was panicking.
“Don’t know, now,” Daddy said, sucking his teeth. “Could be a lot of damage.” The man pleaded for leniency. The usual story-points on his license, poor insurance, wife at home about to give birth to a multiheaded Hydra and only his being home on time could save her.
“Tell you what,” my father said, stroking his chin. “Let’s have about two hundred off you and call it even.”
“I only have one-twenty on me.”
“One-twenty and that bottle of whisky in your front seat.”
A curt nod and the man handed over the goods. My father crouched low and, with a coordinated effort, they disentangled the bumpers. The man got in his sedan and drove off slowly, mumbling gratitude. We waved him round the corner.
“Well, that was potentially exciting,” Daddy said, unlocking the front door. He handed me half of the notes. “Let’s not tell your mother, shall we?” lundi, le 22 decembre
The first prostitute I ever met was a friend of my father’s. It was about this time of year. I was still a student.
He is not a pimp, I swear. My father is in the habit of taking on impossible projects. He’d probably qualify for sainthood if he was, you know, a dead Catholic. These altruistic efforts have ranged from resurrecting a doomed restaurant to rehabilitating a series of doomed women. It’s a tendency that has led to no small amount of frostiness on my mother’s part, but she has had some few decades to accustom herself to his softheartedness by now.
She could tell when he was embarking on yet another failed cause before he even opened his mouth. “There’s only one reason you’d be coming in with flowers,” she barked from the kitchen. “And it’s not our anniversary.” Maybe she’s the one whose name should be put forward to the Vatican, actually.
It was winter of the year, several Yuletides ago now. The holiday cheer was largely lost on me due to a recent breakup as well as not being Christian. The vulgarities of the holiday are sometimes charming, or occasionally grating, but that year they were unbearable. All I could see were so many people gaining joy from an event imbued with only minimal importance by most of the world, as represented by endless yards of tatty tinsel and unwanted gifts. One afternoon, standing in a queue at the bank, I saw my reflection distorted in a cheap red tree bauble, and it occurred to me how temporary and meaningless all of it-the holiday, the bank, the world in general-was. I felt incapable of even anger at being alone. Defeated. So I did what any spoiled eldest child would do and went home for a few weeks to sulk properly.
As a restorative jaunt my father suggested I go with him to visit one of his “friends.” She, I was told, had just been released from prison on fraud charges related to her drug habit. Having regained custody of her children, she was working as a cleaner in a hotel and trying to stay off the game. Charming. I smiled tightly and we drove off to meet the woman.
We sat in the car in silence for a quarter of an hour. “I know you know your mum doesn’t approve,” he said suddenly, by way of the obvious.
I said nothing and looked out the window, where people poured out of the shops into the night.
“She’s really a lovely person,” he said of the friend. “Her children are absolutely charming.”
My father is the most ineffectual liar. In her depressing kitchen she regaled us with the story of a septic infection in her thumbnail that culminated in a week off work. Her two sons were as I imagined: the elder, about fifteen, eyed my figure under three layers of heavy clothing, while his younger sibling could not be shifted from the telly.
I could not stop thinking of my last boyfriend, who had left me suddenly among accusations of my snobbishness and utter lack of sympathy for other people. Well, as Philip Larkin put it, useful to get that learnt.
The other adults and the teenaged son left the room to look at his bicycle, a rusting heap retrieved from a Dumpster, which lay crumpled outside the door. My father is if nothing else rather handy and promised to look into its health. I knew the effort was more likely to result in a cash gift to the young man rather than any resurrection of the bike and was left, scowling, to watch the younger son attack the remote control.
As soon as the room was empty, he turned to me. “Would you like to see my bird?” he asked.
Good gracious. Is this some sort of euphemism? “Okay,” I said.
We went to the window, and he opened it. Outside was a large holly bush. He clicked his tongue and waited. I waited. There was only the sound of motor scooters and festive drunks emerging from a pub.
He clicked his tongue again and whistled. A small bluetit beeped back and flew out of the bush to land on his shoulder. When he opened his hand, palm-up, it settled there.
Turning back in the window, he told me to put out my own hand. I did. He showed me how to play a game with it-I snatched my hand away so the tit would fall, only to catch it again as it opened its wings. “That’s how I taught it to fly,” he said.
“You taught it to fly?”
“A cat killed its mum, so we brought the nest in,” he said. “We got crickets and fed them with a tweezer.” There had been six in the nest, but only one survived. He showed me another trick, where with the tit on his shoulder he would look to the right, then left, then right again-and it would peep in each ear as he presented it.
The others came back in, the older son flushed with the satisfaction of having parted my father from some portion of his wallet. The bird flew out and the younger boy closed the window. Their mother was chattering gamely about some other minor recent illness, owing, she was certain, to the quality of food within Her Majesty’s prisons. “You get hardly nothing, starving all the time, but you still get fat.” We stayed for another cup of tea and a chocolate bourbon, then my father and I went home in silence. mardi, le 23 decembre
Long coat… check.
Dark sunglasses… check.
One hour’s alibi to the parents… check. I’m out the door and free.
I was on time for the rendezvous. He was late. I sipped a coffee and pretended to read the paper. He slid in the door unnoticed, sat across from me. I nodded hello and pushed the package across the table.
A4 lifted the lid discreetly and looked in the box. “You sure these are the goods?” he asked.
“None finer,” I said. “Guaranteed results.” He exhaled, his shoulders unclenching. “If you don’t mind my asking, do you really need so much product to get through a week with your family?”
“They’d kill me otherwise.” He opened the box again and sniffed deeply. “Soon as they start to smell blood in the water, I can throw these chocolate truffles their way. That buys me at least a few hours.”
“Secret recipe,” I fibbed. Actually I’d found it on the Internet. Butter, chocolate, cream, and rum. So simple even I couldn’t cock it up.
A4 and I dated for some years, we even lived together for a time. We didn’t have, as they say, a pot to piss in, but it was a comfortable domestic arrangement and we had a lot of common interests. Namely, complaining about the rest of the world. It lasted until I moved away in the first of several unsuccessful attempts to gain useful employment. I was upset, recently, to find that he thought the post-student house we’d shared was “a hovel.” I always remembered it fondly.
“You’re a lifesaver,” A4 said. He’s the one my father still asks after, as if we’re still an item. He’s the one I have the most pictures of. There is one of him in the mountains in a silver frame on my bookshelves. He’s looking up at the camera, at me, a hand out to steady himself, and smiling. Sweet creature. Smiles often.
“You’ll pay me back another time.” mercredi, le 24 decembre
I miss living in the North. The stories are all true. People really are friendlier up here. The chips really are better. Everything really is cheaper. The women really do go out in midwinter wearing less.
I miss getting pissed for less than a fiver. jeudi, le 25 decembre
Right, I have been waiting absolutely weeks to say this.
Happy Christmas, ho ho ho!
(It made me laugh anyway. It’s Hanukkah, and I am eating white chocolate gelt at the moment, which is cooler than cool. And no sign of a gift from the Boy, which is somewhat less than cool.) vendredi, le 26 decembre
My first diary was a seventh-birthday gift. Fortunately, most of the intervening volumes have been lost. This morning, bored to death, I set about cleaning out a desk and found some old ones from a few years back. They were written in softcover exercise books with flowers drawn on the covers. They date from the time N and I met.
We met a few years ago and hit it off immediately. “Hit it off” being a coy way of saying “grabbed a room in the first hotel we could find.” A couple of days later, when we came up for air, he mentioned his female friend J and the possibility of a threesome. He’d had threesomes with her several times before and vouched for her beauty and overwhelming sexuality.
We were sitting in his car, looking at the river near Hammersmith. “Sure,” I said. I hadn’t been with many women, but considering all the ground he and I had covered in a weekend, it seemed impossible to refuse. He rang her to arrange a meeting, and this is how the diary entry continued:
We met J at her place and went for brunch. Food was nice, talked about sex and underwater archaeology.
Back at hers I made hot cocoa for N and me. When he went out of the room, she kissed me and asked how many women I’d been with. Lied and said eight or nine.
We drank the cocoa in the front room and N said he might have a nap. J took me to her bedroom, which held a big white bed and pillowcases that spelled “La Nuit” in a serif font.
We kissed and touched. J seemed tiny until I took off my shoes-in fact we are the same height. Her bum looked so good in the cream striped trousers, but even better naked. The night before, N had said I had the best arse he’d ever seen, but J’s, I think, is better. Her neck, skin, and hair all smelled so nice I was suddenly aware of my own sweat. “Did N do that?” she asked of the deep scratches on my shoulder. I showed her the dark bruises on my thighs and the faint marks from his cock on my face. She told me to lie down and blindfolded me and tied my hands.
She dragged a soft, multistranded whip across me. “Do you know what this is?” “Yes.” “Do you want it?” She saved the hardest lashes for my breasts and fucked me with a double-headed dildo. When I pressed my face in her crotch, she untied me and took the mask off. I licked her through the knickers and then took them off-J was shaven down below.
It was easy to get her off with my fingers. After which I noticed N watching from the open door. Asked how long he’d been there. “Since the mask went on,” he said. “I could smell the two of you before I even got to the door.”
At this point J’s boyfriend turned up and the diary gets a little vague. To make a long story short, he had a problem with N-namely, he didn’t want N to touch J. Out of frustration N blurted that if that was so, J’s man couldn’t touch me either. Instead, N tried unsuccessfully to fist me. I was so distracted I couldn’t come. J sucked her partner off, we all showered seperately, exchanged numbers, and N and I left. He dropped me at King’s Cross.
He asked if I needed anything before the journey. Something meaningful to live for, I quipped. Food and sex, he said immediately, and I laughed. I’ve reminded him of this flash of philosophy several times since, but he never remembers saying it. Walking through the station, I felt lighter than air, dazed. Happy.
“Well,” he said just before the train doors closed, “I guess four in a bed is too many.”
I remember masturbating on the ride north. It wasn’t easy; the carriage was crowded and people kept sitting next to me. I didn’t want to do it in the toilet. But I had hours to do it in and unbuttoned my trousers as slowly as needed for perfect silence. It happened with an Asian girl sitting next to me, turned talking to her friend a few rows back. I had a coat thrown over my lap and pretended to be asleep. Afterward I rang N to let him know. It was somewhere around Grantham, I believe. samedi, le 27 decembre
I have never been the sort of girl to make New Year’s resolutions. Such things are bound to lead to teetotaler parties, ill-advised marriages, or worse. Once I resolved to use floss and mouthwash before brushing every day for an entire year. This was before I realized (some 1.4 milliseconds later) that maintaining such a level of dental hygiene was not only unlikely to last an entire week, but also massively unattractive. Would you want to wake up to a full-on Broadway musical starring your beloved’s tonsils every morning? I think not.
Another year, I planned to keep a handwritten diary without giving up out of boredom or forgetfulness. Miraculously, I made it to the six-month mark, spurred on by simultaneous reading of the diaries of those vastly superior journalists Kenneth Tynan and Pepys. By comparison my own suffered from a lack of tales of having my wig deloused or all-night drinking sessions with Tennessee Williams. Nevertheless, even the most reluctant leopard may exchange her stole, and I have given some thought to what good deeds and resolutions I could enact in the next twelve months.
It is hereby resolved that I will never buy an own-brand bottle of lube again. Never.
I believe there is some chance of keeping this one. dimanche, le 28 decembre
Ah, the bosom of home. So comforting. So convivial.
So stiflingly the same as it is every year. I’m off down south again, before Mum notices the dent in the side of the car. lundi, le 29 decembre
(Phone rings) Me: “Hello?”
Manager (for it is she): “Darling, are you asleep?”
“Um, no?”
“Oh riiiight. You just sound so relaxed. I think to myself, I am so relaxed, but you are always much more relaxed than me. Do you read a lot?”
“Um, yes?”
“That would be why then. People who read are so relaxed. Anyway, I have a booking for you right away. I don’t know what it is all of a sudden, but everyone has gone mad for you.” They say that madames are known to play favorites with the girls, promoting some more heavily than others according to personal whim, but I have not yet noticed this. The business seems to have up weeks where I’m turning down offers and down weeks when I wonder if there’ll be anyone at all. But the manager always seems uniformly businesslike.
“Um, good?”
“Verrrrrry good, darling. I will text you the details. Enjoy your book.”
I had to take a different minicab from usual. The new driver did not endear himself-first he started going east, then seemed to be making a very elaborate loop that took in most of Islington. I was on the phone to A4 and only paying scant attention to the road. Twenty minutes later, when we turned back onto a road three blocks south of my house, I exploded. “I could have walked here faster!”
“Yes, well, traffic, this time of night,” he said.
I looked right, then left. There were no cars in either direction. “I can’t believe this.” At this rate, I reckoned I’d be ten minutes late and rang to let the agency know.
South of Hyde Park, he turned into a mile-long queue of traffic even I would have known to avoid. “Excuse me, do you know where you’re going?”
“Of course.”
Ha. “I’m running late for a meeting.” You know, the sort you go to in the middle of the night wearing lace-top holdups and matching bra and knickers under a flimsy dress.
“You know a better way to get there?” he sniffed.
“No, but it’s not my job to.”
“The traffic, this time of night, there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“Nonsense. You could have taken any of a dozen other routes. You drive me around my own neighborhood for twenty minutes? And turn straight into gridlock? Come on, I wasn’t born yesterday.”
He checked his mirror to confirm this was, indeed, true. “Like I say, there’s nothing I can do.”
“An apology would be nice.” No reply. We sat in silence for ten minutes while the traffic crawled along. I fumed, and boiled, and generally stewed. “Can you just let me out?”
“Sure, lady, whatever.” I got out of the taxi without paying and stepped into solid traffic. We had just passed a minicab stand at the top of Noth End Road; I headed straight for it. The second driver had me at the appointment in five minutes for the bargain price of four quid, so I tipped another six.
Luckily the client was very understanding and offered me a drink. I love English archetypes: public schoolboy, thirties, managing director of his father’s company. The sort of person who says “chin chin” before a drink. Fan of Boris Johnson. I stripped down to underwear at the bottom of the stairs and he watched me slowly walk up.
I paused at the top of the steps, turned and looked over my shoulder. “So what do you want to do?”
“I want to make love to you.”
“Like the full-on Barry White kind?”
“Oh yes.” We wrestled in the bedsheets for the better part of an hour. His hair was soft and thick and smelled slightly metallic. “What can I do to make you come?”
“It’s very complicated. We’d be here all night.” I don’t come with clients. Some people don’t kiss, which I think is rubbish. It’s just lips after all. But orgasms I save for someone else. This isn’t difficult-I’ve never reached orgasm too easily.
“That sounds ideal.”
“Yes, but do you have a drill press and six goats? Also, the planets are not in the correct alignment.”
“Fair dues. I’ll know for next time.” He slipped me his card on the way out, said he wants to meet for a drink sometime. “The ball is in your court,” he said as I tripped down his steps to the waiting taxi. In the staccato beams of the streetlights through the car windows, I peeked at the card. Pink and green, engraved, fashionable font, and would have been tempted if I was single, though I can’t imagine how a couple that met in such a situation would explain it to their friends.
“I do not like his type,” the manager said when I rang her on the way home. “Surely he will write a report.” There are websites dedicated to punters reviewing the charms of various escorts, and even what you might think was a successful encounter does not guarantee a positive review. If only we could turn round and review them right back.
“Mmm.” The cabbie circled a random block in Kensington for the third time. They must think I don’t notice.
“So what was he like?”
“Perfect gentleman, actually.” A disbelieving snort down the other end of the phone. “Had him wrapped round my little finger.” Very quickly I got into the habit of saying that whether it was true or not. I don’t want her to worry and I don’t want to fall out of favor. mardi, le 30 decembre
“There is a client, he wants to pee on you,” the manager said. I swear if someone ever got hold of transcripts of my phone calls, they’d probably think I was a-oh wait, I am.
“He wants to what?” I asked, knowing very well what she said.
“Pee. On you. Don’t worry, darling, not in your clothes. You will be in a bath.”
“A bath of what? Urine?”
“No, just a normal bath.”
I sighed weakly. “You know I don’t do degradation.” Not at work, at any rate. I know it sounds odd, but even when W was treating me worst, I knew it was because he cared. I’d be reluctant to let a stranger do anything similar.
“Oh, no, not like that at all, darling,” she said. “He doesn’t want you to be degraded. He wants to pee on a girl who enjoys it.”
Eventually I agreed, but only with a significant markup in the usual fee.
The client was rather nice and seemed exceedingly shy. We talked for a little while and had a drink-spirits for me and a large beer for him. The better to fill the bladder with, I suppose. When it came time to do the deed, I stripped him from the waist down, got all my clothes off, and knelt in an empty bathtub.
He looked at me, looked at the wall above me, and sighed. Nothing happened for a couple of minutes. I was starting to get cold. “Is everything okay?” I asked.
“It’s not going to happen. I’m too turned on,” he said. He looked down again. “If I look at you, I’ll get hard. If I look away, I’ll think of what’s going to happen, and get hard.”
“Try thinking of something that doesn’t turn you on.”
“Such as?”
“Your mother shopping for underwear for you. With you in tow. Aged thirty-five.” He started to laugh. I felt the first trickle hit my neck, roll down my breasts.
Afterward I showered while he watched me. He started to make vague shy-guy noises as I dried my hair and dressed. “Are you okay?” I asked.
“I think I have some more,” he said, blushing, gesturing toward his knob. “You don’t have to say yes, but I don’t suppose I could put it in a glass and-”
“Er, no thank you,” I said. “Health and safety and all that.”
“Some people drink it for their health,” he offered.
“Yes, and some people think an all-meat diet is good for you.” I put my coat on and kissed him on the cheek. “Perhaps another time, when I’ve had more warning.” mercredi, le 31 decembre
In London alone for New Year’s Eve.
The Boy was supposed to visit-at least that’s what I was told. Last night he rang after midnight to say he couldn’t come up, in fact he had gone skiing, perhaps I could fly out and join him instead?
With less than twelve hours’ notice. On December 31.
I hadn’t even known he was on holiday. Why couldn’t he get here? Because it would be too expensive to change his ticket, of course. I’m amazed that someone who professes so little ready cash can throw a pile together to hit the European slopes-but not to see in the new year with his girl. Nevertheless I scoured the Web to see if by some miracle I could be waking up in France. British Airlines were booking no flights before January 2. It was even too last-minute for Lastminute. com.
So I regretfully declined. He didn’t seem that bothered, to be honest. Suspicious? Of course. His travel companion on this little jaunt is none other than the housemate who hates me.
Went into town for lunch, a haircut, and to wander round the Victoria and Albert Museum. I spied with my little eye…
… that everyone who got on the tube at King’s Cross got off at Knightsbridge, leaving the crowded carriages virtually empty…
… a man walking two dogs-one huge rottweiler, one tiny pug. They were both burly, black-coated, and the rott took one step to every three of the pug’s…
… an adolescent girl tucking into salmon and cream cheese on a bagel, with chips…
… three men walking together in matching black knitted caps..
… and three girls coming the other way in mismatching pink knitted scarves…
… on Exhibition Road just outside the Natural History Museum, leaves from this autumn have been mashed by thousands of tires to leave an orange-gold pattern in the street.