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Just like myself and my mother before me, she had failed to be a mother to her baby. The failed mother that is myself held the remainder of the body of the other failed mother. This new life attached itself to the soft warm skin beneath the red lace and began sucking on the bottle of marsupial milk, its tiny pink claws and panther face crying out. We needed something greater to intervene in the surgery. Her agony intensified, as she was hit again and again by passing cars. 'God, help me!' I cried out, as I tried to reach her with the tarp. I threw it over her on the middle of the road, enveloping her mutilated body inside the plastic. On the way to the surgery the small frightened ringtail quivered and bled.
Her face was crushed to a pulp. As she lay dying in the tarp she called gently to her baby. She fought the wet death that crept through her body with her little smashed-in face. She fought the world as the gloved hand that tore her baby from her teat, with the jaw hanging like bones, as if they had simply been picked up off the ground and stuck into her face. She hissed and screamed. The vet couldn't prise the baby from the teat until the poison rested her face in its numb fingers. The poison that worked where all my love couldn't work. The baby grew cooler and I called out, 'I'm going to lose her.' This situation was well beyond me. Yet this small incident is insignificant. The lost and suffering cry out into a space that we are unable to perceive and small incidents tear us down like hail to petals. It's like living in a cemetery.
Nikita speaks: He's a depressed man just back from the war. Women's cunts are about as exciting as palm trees to him now. I couldn't help out with his limp tool and he didn't expect me to. During this hour it was as though we had been marooned together for fifty years. He said, 'You just don't do it for me,' and neither did he for me and he didn't even tip. He whinged about the money and moaned that it would have been better spent elsewhere. I switched out the light to hide the prickly heat rash on my arse rather than dabbing a stack of make-up on it. He squawked, 'Now I don't even get to see what I buy! For God's sake!' It was like taking a toddler's favourite plaything away. Today wasn't the day for me. The rooms were mouldy. There was a rich moss growing along the walls and cupboards and it had taken hold inside all the crotches of my frilly knickers. I sprayed some Impulse onto the linings so that they wouldn't stink for the next client.
But it was actually the stale massage oil that was reeking inside my clothes and linen. It could just be because I was premenstrual that the clients had decided to play up. Perhaps the freaks could smell the blood that was about to ooze from my body. The bloated tropical moon slid into view from behind some storm clouds, as if it were about to turn around and grin at me. The air was all swollen with rain, and premenstrual. He said, 'This isn't work. You're enjoying yourself.' Huh, you wish, I thought. At least I was worth something! He would never make it as a male escort, even with the work being so easy and all. For a start, he was ugly, unfit and he stank like shit. Those things aside, no one would put up with him and his negative attitude. He wasn't prepared to give at all. He didn't even want to bring an erection into the world in case he 'gave' away some of his semen. Roxanne said, 'He perceived ejaculation as an act of generosity and he just wasn't prepared to give.' He preferred to whinge and be frustrated and miserable. If there was something more unattractive to a woman than a limp dick, it was the negative attitude that went with it. God, let the blood come soon. There was no salvaging joy from this wreck.
It had taken us a little while to get here with Sharlena driving. The whinging guy's room was on the upper level of the Atrium, a very nice choice in accommodation. I stood out and the more I tried not to, the more I did, so I chose to relax. I didn't care whether I was a sex worker anyway. I just had to hide it from all the geeks who did care. So I walk through this huge foyer that contains a dancefloor, restaurant, snazzy reception and a fancy dessert bar with all those dainty little cream puffs behind the glass. They were the kind of cakes that appeared in all those needy dreams, where you grabbed more and more of them but there just weren't enough, or where you start stuffing them into your mouth and pockets, only to have them deflate as if they were all made of air. It could be cakes and sometimes it was money.
Then at the end of the dream you wake up disappointed to find you have nothing again. You have nothing in your hands, mouth and pockets and nothing in your life to show for anything, except the blue day and sunshine pouring down. Well, I have similar dreams about men. And that's what this job is all about. But you know I kind of like the feeling of pulling up my skirt like an anchor and sailing off into the blue. I want to live where there is no one nagging at me or putting me down and where there is no weak man who tries to control my life, or who is terrified of my power. The statistics say that most women are raped, bashed or murdered by a man they know like a partner, ex-partner, relative, acquaintance or friend and not a stranger. Therefore, the more men that you know in your life, the more likely it is that harm will come to you. So, statistically speaking, the more men you know and the closer you are to them, the closer you are to death and your own unhappiness. Jackie smiled and said, 'Well, looks like I'm in for a long life then!' |
