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Nikita speaks: I was leaning against the counter at the local sex shop. The owner didn't want to give me a refund on a pair of white lacy thigh-high stockings. It says on the packet that 'one size fits all'. If only this were true, the sex industry would be a very boring one. I said, 'The stockings are too long in the leg.' I would never say, 'I'm too short,' like everyone expected me to. It was always the woman's fault. She's always too something or other and never just right and the stockings just wrong. You can be perfectly wrong, like my old Greek boyfriend, the one with the freckle on his cock that grew into a wart. Never mind. The shop owner seemed to be content with the fact that the stockings were fucked and I was perfect and so gave me a refund. Well not really, but he knew that I made and spent big money. 'These stockings are perfectly wrong for me,' I said. It must have sounded kind of kinky 'cause this American sailor who had been down the back of the shop watching a dirty movie, came up and wanted to join in the conversation of how the girls were going to open up more brothels in the town. 'If there's going to be a brothel of international significance,' said Sharlena, 'then we'll be the first to open it.'
He followed me out of the shop and I had that sensation of being pursued and that somebody loved me. I laughed on the inside, shaking it off. Then I shrugged. At least I was still cute enough to have thoughts like this. I was dressed in a purple T-shirt, with no bra on and holey burgundy velvet pants. Without trying to, I had solicited a client outside the sex shop. He was my first off the street client. I had become a regular little streetwalker. It made my night. I said, 'I'm a sucker for compliments, so keep giving them. True or false, they work.' Roxanne said, 'He was a groovy little American sailor who spent too much time around strip joints back home, whilst falling in love with hookers and strippers. He was intent on acting out the tale of the shattered romantic. He wanted to carry a broken heart with him everywhere he went. And everywhere he went his little book of Shakespeare's sonnets went with him. He was a professional around women, but since he had been on the ship for several months without sex, he soon found himself forking out three hundred and twenty bucks for a couple of hours of pleasure with the indecipherable Nikita.' 'This isn't just sex. I really love you, Nikita. I love your soul.'
He seemed sad, so I let him take a Polaroid of my arse. Big mistake, I thought. As if I had such a unique and famous arse, that in the future someone might recognise it. After the booking had ended he rang up and recited some of his poetry over the mobile phone. It was about how the two hours had caused him pain, because I was so beautiful and he might have fallen in love with me, but alas it would never be so. 'So why does he do it to himself?' 'Basically,' Jackie explained, 'the guy was an absolute loser and thrives on pain and failure. If he wants the pain, then let him have it,' she said, 'otherwise, he'll be wanting his money back.' Roxanne said, 'He hung around strip joints in the USA, clutching his pocket-sized poetry book and pretended that they were all breaking his heart. He had booked enough escorts in his quest to find true love, failing time and time again. It had somehow never occurred to him to get a regular girlfriend.' 'Like, hello have you been told lately?' said Jackie. I agreed. One day he would probably get all angry about that and try to take revenge on one of them.
Jackie speaks: Why didn't the guy just pull himself off? Or get a girlfriend or at the very least just face his aloneness and put up with it? I said, 'why don't you just wank?' Some men wouldn't wank. They found it degrading. They'd rather be with a woman. They'd rather pay for it. We know that you don't want to hurt them, Roxanne. But the other night I had to squash twenty ticks who were trying to suck my dog's blood. They were on me too! They were just doing what ticks do and couldn't help themselves. Now don't get me wrong, I do like animals but I'm not a blood donor to the insect world. So I killed them all. I squashed a few beneath my thumb, but they still kept moving, so I broke their spines with the tip of my false nails. It really sickened me to my heart to do that. I chopped all the ticks up into little pieces and hated myself for doing it. Sometimes I chopped off half of their bodies by accident and they still moved both halves. Roxanne said, 'it was as if they were trying to piece themselves back together in the confusion.' It was a rotten world and although I had fucked up big-time, I knew that worse was to come. On some days, when I felt really down, I thought it could be worse. I could be a tick. Or when I died I might come back as a tick to be squashed by the false nail of a prostitute. This is what that sailor hoped for. He wanted someone else to take responsibility for putting him out of his misery. But I couldn't really do that, could you?' Roxanne said, 'I could only enjoy his company for those two hours. Nothing wrong with a girl enjoying her job.' 'I know what you're sayin', agreed Nikita, 'one night is okay, so long as he can afford it.' Yeah, but if you fell asleep next to him, you'd have to chew your own arm off, just to get away from him in the morning! |
