In My Skin (22 page)

‘I can only try,’ I said.

‘I know. I don’t want to hurt you,’ he said, and kissed me slowly and drew me up onto him.

It hurt. It was big. I imagined it was like having a baby in reverse. I breathed, and concentrated; I sent breath billowing down through me to my vaginal muscles, trying not to think of pelvic dislocation. Under me, the guy’s face was red with arousal and the effort not to thrust. I beamed at him as sweat broke out on my face. ‘Slowly does it,’ I said. I gingerly moved up and down; only a few slow, tight pumps, and he came.

‘Will you treat me special?’ a young man in the intro lounge asked for the fifth time.

‘You know I will. I’ll treat you like a prince,’ I said for the third.

He was fastidious in his pride, smirking. ‘I don’t want to be just another client, you know,’ he said. In fact he was my sixth job of the night.

In the room he jabbed his penis into me as hard as he could, but I barely felt it. He was writhing on top of me, groaning and sweating; I gasped and clenched against him, simulating some kind of crisis. I didn’t have the energy to fake a full orgasm, but I wanted him to come. ‘Oh yeah, baby, baby,’ he hissed into my ear, wet breath on my skin. When he’d finished he took his time showering and dressing. I waited by the door, already dressed, the room fixed, my arms full of towels, ready to go. The buzzer went a second time. I could hear the thunk of footsteps passing out in the hall. It was a busy night.

‘Mate, I love this song!’ he said, still naked, grinding to the Ricky Martin track on the stereo. ‘All the girls tell me I’m like Ricky!’ He wiggled at me. ‘Hey—’

‘
Yes?
’ I hefted the towels ostentatiously, put my hand on the door handle.

‘My cock. Tell me honestly. I want the honest truth. Is it—you know, is it—would you say it’s big? Is it big? —Or—?’ He held it in his hand and grinned at me.

‘Honestly?’ I said. ‘It’s kind of small.’ He stopped dancing and pulled his clothes on.

Amazingly, he came back to see me again. I wondered if he’d even remembered me. But the next time he made a point of screwing me for a good forty minutes straight.

‘This one is so unbelievably ugly,’ said Chloe, coming back into the girls’ lounge from an intro. There were raised eyebrows. ‘I don’t mind ugly, but he looks like a fucking toad.’

‘That’s too bad, Chloe,’ said Nora, walking in. ‘He’s booked you for an hour.’

We were allowed to refuse a booking, but only with good reason. If a girl knew a client in real life, or had heard reports of him being trouble, or if he refused to be checked for diseases, she could decline. Appearance wasn’t a good enough reason; and, in any case, it was a question of money. When I had a truly appalling specimen, I tried to think past the exterior, and he had to be pretty astoundingly ugly for me to notice. Hairy backs could be furry and comforting. A plain face could hide a kind heart and clever tongue. A pimply face might need affection. I kissed bald spots, acne-flecked cheeks, ignored dirty fingernails and blotchy patches of moles. It was all flesh.

I had to remember that irritating men weren’t, for the most part, malicious. They were just fools, or anxious about having sex with a woman so experienced. Insecure about their bodies, trapped by an idea of what a brothel-going man should be like. I knew all too well what stupid and fearful behaviour felt like from the inside; I knew what frailty might make a person do. I wanted to gentle these men, as I might have like to be gentled myself.

Nevertheless, my little nugget of rage slowly accreted new layers. I felt it harden, shiny in its varnish, a lode of energy for me to rub when I needed it. I was almost always cheerful, polite, agreeable; even when I was sick, sweating, exhausted with hanging out for drugs or simply worn out.

‘You’re always so happy,’ a man said to me.

I looked at him. It was six o’clock on a Sunday morning and I hadn’t had a taste for fifteen hours. The shift had started at seven and I’d done nine bookings. My body was feeble, my skin clammy, my eyes burning dry. Allowing someone to touch me was a test of nerves already shrieking. I’d be going home to heroin soon, home to my dank boarding-house cell, to my difficult boyfriend, to a day of sleeping and then rising again to return here. ‘Am I?’

‘That’s why I come to you,’ he said, shyly. ‘You make everything seem all right.’

I did smile at that, though it almost hurt.

MY FEARS WERE EMOTIONAL, not physical. The only thing I really feared was losing the last of my friends’ and family’s love, being finally given up on. That was a piercing horror, the thought that there was always still more to lose. And, for now, I had come to a strange peace with my family. I saw them only once a month or so, but I knew they were there, still thinking of me, and that we were perhaps past the worst. Nothing could match the pain of those old days of deception and desperation.

Working itself was not frightening; not to match that. Perhaps it was the drugs; perhaps the secret conviction of my own inviolability, a kind of magic shield around me; but even on the street I hadn’t felt anything sharp enough to be called fear. Only the terrible drag of reluctance, horror at the bleak streets and the enormous task ahead of me every night, and a cold, cold terror at what might become of me if I couldn’t keep going. It wasn’t as if there hadn’t been plenty to be afraid of, but I had walked through those black streets tight-wrapped in my determination.

Now that I was in a safe house, fear seemed even further from me. I was nervous, at times, or apprehensive: going in to intro for a raucous group of abusive young men, or being booked by a coarse man reputed to be trouble. But that was dread, not fear. Again and again I simply did what I was told, or had to do, and managed the situation, and came out surprised and stronger. When frightening things had happened to me, I simply seemed to shut down and wait for it all to pass away.

I knew sometimes girls got really hurt; Heidi came out of a booking white-faced one night, after a client had abruptly rammed himself into her anus. She bled for two hours and then went home. Another girl reported having her hair ripped out by a man whose fervour turned into fury.

There was an incident about a month after I started working at Mood Indigo. One morning when I and most of the other women had already left, a man attacked a girl in a room; when she ran out shrieking for the receptionist, he and his friend began to drag the receptionist by the hair up to a room. The only other girl in the building had to race out into the street in a dressing-gown to call the police while her client cowered in his room. I wondered what I’d do if someone assaulted me. There were panic buttons in each room, but they were over by the door, and in any case we had no security guard, only the receptionist. I assumed I would simply handle any situation if it came up.

I learned the importance of asserting myself one quiet Tuesday night.

Two men came in. They were dark and taciturn. There were no other clients in the house. We intro’d, and the big one chose me. His friend waited in the lounge.

The man’s cock was large, and I was studiedly coy. ‘You’ll have to go gentle with me. That’s a lot to handle.’

‘You can take it,’ he said, and turned around just as I was going to start the massage. He flipped me on my front, squirmed on top of me and jammed himself in.

It hurt, but I tried to angle my pelvis upwards to control the depth of penetration. I was accustomed to men playing a little rough and careless. He put a hand on the small of my back and shoved me back down, then yanked my hips up into place. He fucked me for ten minutes, gradually getting more and more forceful, his thrusts sending percussive blows of shock and pain up through my stomach muscles. On my front, on my back. Then he yanked me up into doggy position again. There was nothing I could do in this position to avoid the full effect of every thrust. Furtively, I edged my fingers in a grip around his cock at my entrance, to make a buffer; the man swatted my hand away. He could hear the breath grunting out of me, feel the tension in my body; he pushed in faster, more ruthlessly.

‘I want to fuck your arse,’ he said.

‘I don’t think so.’ Already I was feeling the thin edge of panic. This was more than I wanted to handle.
Be clever
, I thought.
Control
the situation
. ‘In fact it’s starting to hurt. How about if I get on top for a while?’

‘I want to fuck you. And I want to fuck your arse.’

Paralysis came over me. I didn’t reply. He kept pounding, and I kept crouching there, concentrating on relaxing my muscles, waiting, hoping it would be over soon. Moment after moment of me not saying anything, not doing anything, just waiting. He’d booked for an hour; it had been fifteen minutes. Already my body was protesting; the delicate skin inside me abraded. I thought,
I have to stop
this,
but I couldn’t make myself say it. I just bore down, and waited.

He asked me again for anal sex.
I’m already hurting anyway,
I thought in my daze.
Maybe I can take more. At least I’ll get money.

‘It’s—it’s a hundred and fifty bucks,’ I said, raising the usual price. ‘And if I can’t take it, you don’t get your money back, okay? You’re really fucking big.’

He stopped, got off me, fetched his wallet, all the time watching me with a smile. A credit card. I took it, and left the room to put the card through, grateful to get out of there. Nora was at the desk.

‘Listen, this guy’s really rough,’ I said. ‘I might have to stop the booking. He’s a bastard. So if I stop it, don’t give him his money back. It’ll be his fault. I’m just going to try to hang on.’

Back in the room. The man was lying there, massive, still breathing heavily. I told him he had to go very gentle because arses are delicate, and lubed up generously. I hoped he’d let me sit on top of him, so I could control the penetration.

He had me back in doggy in a second. His cock pushed in.

It was only just inside me, but already I knew I couldn’t take it. The pain was incredible; not just in my arse itself, but searing up through all my guts. Goosebumps broke out all over my skin. When I released my breath I was panting shallowly.

‘
Stop
,’ I said, but he kept going. Further in, then out, then in again. I could feel deep, heavy pain in my abdomen. He went faster and deeper. I pushed my face into the pillow. Back into a haze of paralysis and a confused notion of pride to be retained. Tears in my eyes. I only lasted another long minute; then I wrenched myself out of his grip and faced him.

‘You’re hurting me! I told you I might not be able to do it.’

He grinned at me.

‘That’s it. I’m stopping the booking. You can get dressed and leave.’ I grabbed my dress and shoes and strode out to shower in another room. My anus and vagina were burning, I was bleeding a little; I stayed under the hot water a while, mumbling my rage to myself. The man’s gloating was unbearable. I had a vision of myself, alone in the room, crushed under him, tiny beneath his weight.

When I got out he and his mate had left. Nora looked at me, shamefaced.

‘I gave them all the money back. They—’

I couldn’t believe it. That fucker had just injured and humiliated me and taken all his money and I was left here with nothing. There was no way I could do Greek again for days, so I’d lose more money. And he’d just walked out.

‘They were really scary, Lucy. His little friend—he just sat there the whole time you were in the room. Smiling at me in this awful horrible way. I thought they might have had a knife.’

There was nothing I could do. I should have stopped the booking earlier; I shouldn’t have taken the money for a service I couldn’t do. But the anger sealed another layer around the nugget inside me, and I decided I’d never let myself get hurt like that again.

A couple of weeks later I was booked by a loud, fat man. His face was bristly with whiskers, his fingers thick and aggressive. As I bent over his bulk to suck his little penis, again and again I felt a rough thumb scrape over my anus and poke into me hard. The first time, I said, ‘Don’t do that, sweetheart!’

The second time, ‘I really don’t like that. Please don’t. I mean it.’

The third time I bit his cock.

The fourth time I straightened and bent low over his face as it peered up at me. ‘If you do that again,’ I dug my nails viciously into the fat of his testicles, ‘I will hurt you.’ I squeezed. ‘I am completely serious,’ I said. ‘
I’ll hurt you
.’

His features were all distorted by lying on his back. He blinked.

‘Right? Okay, back we go.’

The rest of the booking was silent. I saw him out with a smile.

For all the faint tensions between us, the girls were a wonderful source of comfort during an arduous night. In our lounge the men were
them
.
They
were always wanting more than they deserved.
They
were idiots, or holy fools, or dopes, or simply gross.
They
were the target of our barbs, our amusement.

It was easier to tell horror stories than convey a pleasant experience. What could you say about a good one? He was nice, he was sweet, he had lovely soft velvety balls. He brought me lines of cocaine, he felt good inside me, his hands were delicious, he had a really proper shower before the sex. He made me laugh. He made me feel beautiful. He made my night.