In My Skin (32 page)

‘You can stay as long as you want,’ said my parents. ‘You can come home.’

The lease on my house was up in May; the landlady wanted it back. I didn’t mind. Robbie was staking it out, the rent was expensive and I had other plans. I fantasised of Europe. Douglas and I talked, and he said one day, ‘You should go. You could just go, you know. Kick around, and have fun for a while.’

I glanced at him.

‘Seriously,’ he said.

It wasn’t that life was so unbearable now, but I felt bound—too bound—by it. When I was an addict, travel seemed a dream of the perfect escape, but so impossible it became forgotten. Now it could be my reward, my chance to re-set myself, to take the next step in following my imagination; my tool to recovery.

My methadone level was still high, but I’d begun to drop the dose, in consultation with my doctor—just a few mils at a time, but steadily. At the rate I was going, I’d be finished with it by about September. The end of my tethering was in sight.

And so I prepared to save money, and to pack up my little house. There was a lot of time still, but I had a whole houseful of stuff: my very own place, with all its furnishings.

I talked to Robbie. The dramas seemed distant now. He was docile, calm, wretchedly thin. He spoke of his despair and loneliness, of the harshness of the world; I put my arm around his bony shoulders. The skin on his face was as delicate as a child’s.

‘You can stay until the end,’ I said. ‘But you help me pack, okay?’

So we packed up. I’d come over a few afternoons a week, and return to the house to stay the night after work; of course I let him in to sleep with me. Back to how things had been, but so different. He was using a little still, but I simply didn’t think about joining him, and he kept it out of the house. There was a drought in the heroin supply that summer; it took hours and hours to score, all for an over-priced and thin-quality pinch of powder. Even at those moments when nostalgia for a taste took me, it seemed too much trouble. Where once I would have spent a day traipsing around St Kilda in search of just one cap, now I couldn’t be bothered spending a couple of hours on it. When the hunger for the needle really bit at me, we scored some speed.

Robbie and I began making love again. Back in my rehab days, one of the counsellors, an ex-user, had said, ‘Just wait till the first time you have sex clean. Better than any drug.’ He was right. I still had the opiate methadone in my system, but my nerves were less blunted and my heart felt clear. I made love to Robbie with all the tenderness of pity for what we’d lost, and all the passion of relief. We lay in bed by the candlelight and giggled and talked; a new freshness came over us. A kind of late grace.

Moving out was a time of tension. Everywhere I went there were obligations undone. I was late to work, packing up my books; I was late home to my parents’, staying on to do another booking at the end of a shift; I was late to the house to fetch more cardboard boxes and go on piling my stuff into them. Amphetamines, when I used them, made the day longer, but they always left dirt in my veins.

All around me people were suddenly unhappy with me. Helen was out for my blood; she was irritable with everyone. Bernadette picked it up and sniped too. I tried to keep my head down, but it wasn’t easy. My mother had a go at me for treating the house like a hotel, breezing in at dawn and only rising to rush out the door. ‘I
work
,’ I said; but she said, ‘And the
housework
?’ and I felt neglectful. I was spending more and more time at my own house, now it was more welcoming; she was anxious that I might fall back into old habits.

By the time I moved out I was shredded with exhaustion. Everything was staggering to an end, but Europe lay ahead.

BY SEPTEMBER I’D HAVE been a year and a half at Il Fiore. Already it was long enough to consider its rooms my home, its people my community. I knew the moods of the place; I could gauge the climate and the fortunes; I was respected and trusted, I believed. Girls came and went, but there was a solid core of us who remained throughout. The receptionists were like family; Helen had good moods and bad, but maintained her control. The clients washed in and out the door and many of them were familiar faces.

I’d earned myself a nice stable of regulars, and their arrivals jollied me through each shift. I could count on two or three regs per night, usually; there were those who turned up predictably every week, and others who blew in on a whim.

I had a silent, rotund Indian man who could come three times in half an hour. I went through the same routine of coy encouragement every session, and he left with the same smile every time.

John was a builder with a burly physique, a Mills and Boon jaw and the bashfulness of a nineteen-year-old. ‘Gee, you look better every time I see you,’ he’d say, and I’d cuff him around the cheek. His sweetness undid me; he said he simply couldn’t pick up girls.

‘But you’re
gorgeous
,’ I said. ‘Are they
mad
?’

He blushed. ‘I don’t mind. I get to see you.’ He was shy in bed, too, holding me as if I’d bruise.

‘You can’t hurt me,’ I said, smiling down at his hesitant face. ‘I like to feel you. You can try anything with me. This is
your
time.’

The next occasion I dimmed the lights right down. The room was pitch black—there were no windows, of course. In the dark I took his hand. ‘We’re going to just feel it,’ I whispered, leading him to the bed by touch. I knew the room without having to see. ‘Anything you want.’ His hands clasped my hips; we moved slowly, with the care of the blind. His body grew taut and his breathing louder. I moved against him. It didn’t matter if I screwed up my face or if I thrust against him aggressively, and he surged back with unfamiliar passion.

‘Oh, God,’ he said and kissed me hard.

When we’d finished I left the lights down while we held each other, and at the end of the booking when I put them up again, it was slowly, with the consciousness of a blessing.

One of the house regulars was Yanni, a young man with an inheritance. He was loaded with money and a group of cousins and friends to party with us. They’d arrive with whoops and jokes and make Bernadette giggle, and then book the largest room, which had a king-size bed and a spa, and plenty of floor-space. Often we’d have three or four men and a few of us all together in there, with towels spread on the floor for extra room, one couple in the spa and two or three on the bed. My knees would knock against those of the next girl as we each straddled a fat belly and pumped and giggled and crooned. A hand crept up, not attached to the man beneath me, to fondle my breasts. The men were drunk and happy to stay for hours on Yanni’s credit card. It was a good time, but physically arduous. We had to do all the crouching and thrusting, and Yanni liked nothing better than a 69. An hour or two holding myself up on my trembling arms and keeping my crotch raised above his face while I laved his wet cock was tiring enough, but he liked licking both clitoris and anus, scraping his bristled chin across my tender skin with every stroke. One booking with Yanni made me a lot of money, but it cost me in pain and the effort not to complain. With a customer like that you couldn’t be too honest about their shortcomings. Luckily he usually stayed till the end of the shift; I walked away gingerly when he left.

Regs came and went. I’d see one of mine at the desk one night as I strolled by and when I greeted him he’d look behind me, to where Coral or Jessie was walking out beaming. I knew by then that the girl a man liked on a Tuesday wasn’t always the same person as on a Saturday. It had happened to me so often I’d lost all the feeling in that part of my pride. Or perhaps I had so much pride I could afford to let a little atrophy.

One regular I knew wouldn’t defect was Philip. He was a silent man with a bony, handsome face and a superb body, as clean and pale as a Greek statue. Sheepish down in the lounge, where Bernadette would escort him in to wait for me, in the rooms he would unleash an intense sexuality that genuinely aroused me. It was athletic sex. Pulled into every position possible in half an hour, I became pliable, swooning. The harder his grip, the softer I became. He adored me, and I cherished him. He was the type of regular who found a girl they liked—on Helen’s suggestion—and stayed with her until she left. I liked him so much I’d allow the booking to run on while he finished, and Bernadette wouldn’t say anything.

Mick was my other favourite. He’d arrive last thing on a Sunday night, usually when I was already in a booking, and I’d come downstairs to find him curled up on the couch, asleep. He worked in clubs and was always drunk, but he held it well. I found his stocky body addictive and I lavished my caresses on it while he lay flat on his back and joked with me. There were times when I thought I was a little bit too fond of Mick.

‘Can I please suck your cock?’ I’d ask, sliding up his body.

‘Hell, yeah,’ he’d mumble.

It was the men who recognised who I was who earned my sincere affection. They could ask how my night had been, and not flinch when I told them how many bookings I’d had already; they didn’t baulk when I requested money for fantasies. To them I was a lovely girl who was content to work. They got my respect for not pretending otherwise.

One young man reminded me that I was a working girl when I was in danger of forgetting. His name was Gabriel and he was a melancholy boy in his early twenties. He booked for an hour, and then two; he told me that he was depressed. He’d smoked too much pot and become isolated and a little lost. His honesty touched me. I admitted to him that I knew what drug addiction could do. I showed him my arms.

‘That’s no good, mate,’ he said. I kissed him on the cheek. He kissed me back.

He was good looking, with a fine young body and a handsome olive-skinned face and thick, long black hair; something in him drew me. When he came back less than a week later I was pleased.

‘I can talk to you,’ he said into my embrace. ‘I don’t care about the sex.’

I did. I stroked and teased him until he capitulated. My libido was coming back. It was strange, almost shaming, to find myself the one seeking sex and having to cajole it from a client. ‘That’s so fucking good,’ I said, hot-faced. He just looked down at me almost sadly, and went on thrusting. I liked to see him come, the way his face eased, the sense of satisfaction I gained.

He began visiting me several times a week, for an hour or two each time. I was gratified but concerned.

‘What about the money, you can’t earn this much,’ I said.

‘Fuck the money, I don’t care.’ He was miserable that night. I dimmed the lights and stroked his hair. ‘I just can’t—feel anything, you know? I just want it all to go away.’ My heart ached for him. There was something in Gabriel that I knew in myself.

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘This is my email address. You can write to me if things get too hard, if you—you know—’

He took it. ‘Okay.’

The next time he brought me chocolate. ‘I know you like it,’ he said, smiling. Then it was a teddy bear with the saddest face I’d ever seen. Holding it was like holding a baby.

‘You should have kept him for yourself,’ I teased. ‘Don’t be so nice to me.’

We were getting very close. If he didn’t show up every few nights I was a little forlorn. He emailed me; I replied. I’d told him a lot about me. It felt so good to be open with someone, to share doubt and sadness. I knew something was happening beyond the strictures of work.

Then he came in and told me he wouldn’t be coming back. ‘I’m getting to like you too much,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t seem like a good idea. I won’t be using that email address anymore, so please don’t write. And, by the way, you should be more careful giving yours out.’

I looked at him and touched his face. ‘Are you sure?’ I didn’t want him to disappear. He was a friend. But I wanted him to be happy, not troubled over a working girl.

‘I brought you chocolate,’ he said. ‘Don’t eat it all at once,’ and he hugged me, and walked out.

The women I’d known on the street had, mostly, begun in brothels and then fallen from grace. I’d gone the opposite way. I’d worked my way in, and up.

When I passed through St Kilda on my way home, I looked out at the black streets, the occasional pale figure standing under a light, and shivered with pity. For them and for myself. It seemed a cruel exile, out there in the dark. Yet I still had a pride that I’d been there, that I’d had that apprenticeship. It gave me a sense of being equipped, of having perspective. From darkness to the glowing lamps of the brothel, it had been a long slow dawning out of shadow.

From the quiet beginning at Il Fiore I’d risen to being one of their most prized ladies. Even on nights when the drift of clients was slow, I would be booked. I’d stagger into the lounge from one booking, rushing off to the next, bemoaning my fatigue, while a couch-load of less-fortunate women watched me sourly.

Vanity was my fault. Giddy with the adoration of the men, the glow of success and popularity, I thought I could do no wrong. Now that I wasn’t using heroin, my mind sharpened; I talked non-stop, glittering and brittle. When Bernadette said, ‘I think you eat dictionaries, just to aggravate us with the big words,’ I thought it was a compliment. When Coral said, ‘For Christ’s sake, Lucy, just shut up a minute,’ I thought she was joking. When Helen said, ‘Lucy, if you’re late one more time I’m going to kill you,’ I imagined she was bluffing.

Things were going well for me. I was adhering to my methadone program and reducing the dose steadily; there were a few sticky hours every day before my dose, but I managed them and, by the time I’d been to work for an hour, I’d be fine. There was usually a booking waiting for me when I arrived—I’d have to dash to get ready, but I enjoyed the sense of diving into work. My gowns were dirty; there was no time to get them washed.