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Goldie said, 'I took the corn and peas out and mashed all the red stuff into his rissoles. He ate it all up. He really loved it!' He said, 'You did well tonight, princess.' He was a masochist. If she had placed the catfood at her feet and told him to lick it up, he probably would have wanted sex straight away, but she didn't do that. He must have sensed something, because the next day a whole new lounge and dining room suite had arrived from Harvey Norman just for 'Princess'. Meanwhile she had read an article in the NT News on how to make your dog obedient with Pal. She rang Sharlena and said, 'See, my dear. Treat a man like a dog. That's what they want. That's why I'm so good at what I do. I give them what they want.'
I understood why she had met someone on the job. I was attracted to my new client. He was a slightly built businessman from Sydney. He was extremely intelligent. He had projected the persona of his ex-wife onto me throughout the booking. I said, 'I'm really not the bossy type. You must be mistaking me for someone else.' Then we kissed and I knew that it must be time to give the job a break for a couple of nights. 'We can't do that again. We can catch Hep B,' I said, 'The notice is up in the staffroom kitchen.' But I was already beginning to sound like a girl around him. This was the first client I had kissed and he said he had not kissed a woman in a few years. Yeah, right. I had initially liked him because I felt self-conscious around him and tinged with fear. It was part of my vulnerability thing. I felt titillated by being uncomfortable. He had an intense gaze that made me turn away even when I didn't want to, and a smile that didn't falter. It drove me crazy. For the next eleven hours I required warmth from this man who absorbed energy from me like a solar panel being recharged by the sun.
He said, 'I drain people. I absorb people's energy without them knowing it.' But I am an aimless source of energy and so I flared and radiated for him. His fingers through my hair, the writhing conversation, the twisting, turning, kissing particles of human being until the other heavenly bodies had been forgotten. We worked together until the two were quietly orbiting each other within the same solar system. We had struggled into this atmosphere and it was hard to let go. When he finally turned and left me standing in the room, I felt guilty about him spending three thousand dollars, and how I had turned my head slightly to the side when he went to kiss me good-bye. 'I wouldn't want to mess up your lipstick,' he said. I had really given something to him, so that I had felt slowly enriched and encircled. He stared at me for a while longer. Earlier he said, 'This is a one-off.' He hadn't had a partner for almost a decade. 'You'll be missed,' he said. It was locked into his face behind his intelligent eyes, where he remained prisoner to all the things he hadn't expressed. There was no way that we would ever get together beyond this situation. It wasn't industry protocol and it simply wasn't sensible. In some ways, the successful booking had been more devastating than a failed date. I felt tricked by my own fantasy, and that's what had made the situation appear real and why a lonely intelligent man had extended for twelve hours or more.
It had been a real head-fuck. I was the boss of the head-fuck at his brief instruction. Most likely we would think about each other and the intensity of the experience for many years afterwards. So I had thirty men a week including some rich lovers on the side. He would most likely fade from my memory that little bit faster alongside the general confusion and chaos of my life, whereas he would think about me with age, or the lonelier he became. He might even think about me as his body was preparing to die and be returned to dust and stars. Meanwhile, I was cleaning out the shower with a towel and thinking about my next job. These two factors were becoming closer by the minute. I had enough love for all of them, but only for brief moments in time. And I sometimes had my favourites. |
