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Some of the more competitive girls with low self-esteem and various addictions were showing their arses from under the ir skirts. I got chosen even though I was in an evening gown. The slick Italian boxer chose me. He said, 'I want you to look sexy without doing that. If you weren't there I would have walked out.' I said, 'There are some beautiful women out there.' Beauty is subjective by nature. I guess I was just his taste. As it turns out, he liked the longer dress. He said, 'The other ladies leave nothing to the imagination.' He wanted some mystery left around the vagina and breasts. There are many men who want to enter the daylight lives of the girls. But instead they are left to pay off their credit cards, while she walks off into the sun and buys everything with cash. What was the real colour of her eyes in the dim lit room with the burgundy sheets and towels? Were they green-hazel or grey-blue? And was the hair of the lonely ex-policeman golden brown or slightly greying? Either way he shouldn't have been in there, falling out of sense and into the arms of a working girl. I said, 'You are a handsome and intelligent man, please go out with other women, because I'm not prepared to see you outside the job, in the daylight hours.' That is where he wanted to take my heart and hold it briefly. He wanted to free up the sex from one who worked the sex. Or perhaps it was the simple thrill of knowing a working girl. He said, 'I know you're gonna think this is crazy, but there's something different about you. I don't want one night stands from nightclubs back down in Sydney. I'm twenty-six now and ready to settle down with a woman.' He was acting all masculine around me. 'What am I gonna do with you tonight, then?' 'I don't know,' I said, 'Are you horny for me tonight?' As it turns out he was a regular traveller to Darwin who had tried the same line with all the other girls over the years. He never just came to speak. He always fucked. But he was harmless. I told him to leave his phone number at reception and told them to throw it in the bin. He only paid for it after dark. He would never enter my daylight hours, where I fell asleep with the sunlight on my forehead. He would never know where I did my nails, had my facials, went shopping for lacy red panties, or to the cinema, or to visit friends, or just to be alone.
The next man to get the wrong idea about me was the Swan River real estate developer who was up from Perth on business. I think I may be attracted to him and I'm worried. So who has the power? We both like each other beyond the protocol of the industry, or do we? He is on a rollercoaster ride and has money to spend, or does he? I am destitute, but reasonably happy or am I? We are both lonely on occasion, and each is carrying emotional baggage. Now because I have a bit of power, I feel guilty and less likely to want to charge him. But I know better than that. I am standing at the parlour bar looking into the wine glasses. 'Where do you get your strength?' he asks me. 'I'm not religious,' I said, 'but I get it from faith.' 'Faith!' he seems surprised, 'Something really terrible must have happened to you.' There are three ways to fuck a man whom you do not love. One is while thinking of your next holiday to far north Queensland or your dog. Another is imagine you've been dragged into a cave to fuck like nature. The third is two human beings, momentarily lost in each other for God knows whatever reason, teetering on the edge of their own evolution, or that terrifying moment before the fall into passion.
He turned up four weeks later. He had previously told me it was to be a 'one-off.' He's strong, I thought, never expect to see him again. But here he was at four in the morning. He walked straight into the parlour and found me standing at the end of the bar. I stopped talking as my jaw dropped. Later on he was to say that it had been worth it just to see my reaction. 'You're a complication for me,' he said, 'I promised myself that I wouldn't come back here, but here I am. I am weak.' 'Not necessarily,' I said, 'you're exploring your emotions. You are courageous.' 'You're a complication, though.' 'Not necessarily,' I said, 'I'm not a complication for you. You aren't really interested in me. You only think you are.' Every night some half a dozen clients think they might want to get to know me, offering all the bullshit in the world. I am tired of the offers of around-the-world travel from those men who won't even bother to give a fifty-dollar tip. It's true that we are a bit lonely now and again, but so what else is new? |
