The Further Adventures of a London Call Girl (17 page)
Read The Further Adventures of a London Call Girl Online
Authors: Belle de Jour
‘Any plans today?’
‘I’m going to stay in and order up scrambled eggs, salmon and champagne. We only came here for the kids’ sake, after all. I need some holiday as well and getting sand in my hair is not my idea of a good time.’
‘Travelling the world with room service, though. Sounds like a good reason to have children.’
‘It’s only once a year. Usually it’s me up in the dark, pouring Cocoa Pops down their throats.’
‘That sounds pretty good, too. Would you like a taxi?’
‘I’ll take the bus, thank you.’
‘I’ll walk you to the stop.’
dimanche, le 13 février
Hmm, maybe, considering my general interests, it might be to my advantage to learn more words in Spanish for sex acts.
Would have to ask Tomás. Scratch that plan.
mercredi, le 16 février
The Spanish is coming, but slowly. Today I learned the word for Jewish (judío) and asked Tomás about his religion (Catholicism, naturally). I think if I was ever a Christian that would be the flavour I’d choose. The celibate priests, the Vatican, the changing of wine into blood: I find it difficult to buy the general theory underpinning the activity, but damn, they do have all the best kit. I struggle for the words to tell Tomás that being Jewish is as much about the culture as about the belief. He nods. He gets this.
Do I miss home? Tomás asks.
‘Not really.’ I have always felt a stranger in a strange land. The fact that people here know I’m a tourist from a mile off doesn’t bother me because, I realise, I’m used to the same treatment at home.
I can pass on looks in England until someone asks my name. ‘Where are you from?’ they say. Here, I tell them, fruitlessly. I remember a shopkeeper in Yorkshire who balked when he ran my debit card through. I asked what the problem was. ‘I’m looking for a wedding ring,’ he says. ‘Er, why?’ I asked. But I knew. It’s the surname, not even remotely anglicised, which doesn’t match my face. And then my mother went and gave me an equally odd first name to match.
The counter staff at the Polish deli back in London never addressed me in English; with the name and the looks they assumed – almost correctly – that I was one of theirs. A career in MI5 was always out of the question; my grandparents are all foreign-born.
At least here the disdain locals feel for tourists is above board. Young men in low-riders can’t decide whether to whistle or hurl abuse when they drive past me. I can deal. I can deal with looking different and being treated differently. What I can’t take is back home, where lip service is paid to multiculturalism but you can still say someone has ‘something of the night’ about them with impunity.
Nothing rankles quite like when friends claim to know what it is like not to feel English because their granny was born in Edinburgh. Fuck that noise. My relatives came from countries which have since burned out of existence; they spoke Yiddish and Hebrew when to do so was to risk death. I’ve been to Henley, been to the polo, been chatted up by viscounts and kissed by OBEs. None of it matters. I am not English to them. How I cringe when the Boy talks about the family he wants us to have and uses the term ‘hybrid vigour’ as if I was husbandry stock.
I say to Tomás – in English – that being a tourist is not a strange concept to me. And that I feel bad for him, watching the place where he grew up being invaded by drunk tourists. He smiles and nods, but then says, ‘It gives us work,’ and the conversation ends there.
jeudi, le 17 février
Belle’s Guide to Your Holidays, part 2: Sunshine
If evolutionary biology is to be believed, the native residents of warmer climates typically have darker skin and hair than their northern counterparts as a response to constant, unrelenting UV exposure over the aeons. Conversely, people bred in cooler climes lost the pigmentation for dark hair and skin long ago.
This is clearly poppycock. For one thing, I’ve lived in the North of England, and there is no such thing as a natural blonde in Newcastle. Furthermore, even the most limited exposure to cultures abroad will reveal that people who live in sunny places never go out in the sun. Ever. It could be thirty degrees at Easter in Seville, and the local girls are wearing nothing more revealing than a long-sleeved top, jeans and a quilted gilet because it is ‘still winter’. I can not understand the ruckus surrounding the wear of traditional Muslim dress in schools, except perhaps that it was a bit daring compared to what the usual schoolgirl sports and therefore at risk of inflaming the male teachers’ desire.
Sun cream is famously expensive on holiday, and this is less to do with fleecing the tourists than because there is no local demand for the product: the women go about swaddled in enough layers of fabric to give a Saudi woman pause. It is widely cited that the average Briton will suffer more sun damage in two weeks’ holiday than they would the entire rest of the year. I daresay that’s still more than the local population will experience, sheltered as they are in cavernous churches and under innunmerable café awnings.
Doing as any normal British person would do, namely, tearing off your clothes and falling asleep on an exposed piece of ground the moment the temperature climbs above, say twelve degrees, immediately marks one out as a tourist. Even wearing a straw hat will indicate to the locals that you ain’t from ‘round ’ere’. Pity the poor English lass who succumbs to dipping her cramped white toes into the balmy Med, for she will be followed by catcalls of ‘Hey, inglesa!’ or ‘Hey, Inghilterra! Daveeeeeed Beckham!’ wherever she goes.
dimanche, le 20 février
J, Tomás and I were flopped on the sofa on the lanai. Now, how cool is that? Outdoor rooms complete with power supplies and, here at least, a television. You couldn’t do that in Britain. We were eating pizza and watching a schlocky horror movie. Not just a mildly tasteless film, but really quite appallingly so – the sort of film where blood spurts with the energy of a thousand suns.
The phone rang. J went to answer it, came back outside and flipped the receiver towards me. ‘For you,’ he said. It could only be the Boy. Ugh. I hadn’t told him about Vic and didn’t think I was going to – it felt good to have a secret.
‘Hello, little kitty,’ he said. I hate that name now. ‘Wow, sounds like you’re having a good time. Are you lot having a party or something?’
No, you fool, we’re having a bondage-themed orgy with the Colombian national athletics team. I’m being spit-roasted by Olympic hurdlers as we speak. What do you think? ‘No, the neighbour came over for supper, that’s all.’
‘I have some great news,’ he said, voice trailing off in that way that you use only with little children when you’re about to take them somewhere they don’t want to go, such as the GP, as in, ‘Weeeeee’re going for a caaaaar riiiiide todaaaaaaayyyyy!’
‘What’s that?’ I said, as yet another nubile teenage girl was beheaded by the chainsaw-wielding antihero. I wondered vaguely whether Susie had responded yet to the Boy’s sad little email begging her to have sex with him.
‘I’m coming to visit next month!’
Question answered, I suppose.
mardi, le 22 février
Now, as a native of Britain, it is hardly within my rights to criticise another country’s cuisine. After all we have made a national pastime out of fashioning suet into various shapes, and few native recipes do not require a process of boiling, then frying, then boiling the food again.
But it has occurred to me that, quite apart from the profusion of glorious fruit here, the food does seem to only consist of four things: pulses, tomatoes, rice and chilli. Sometimes cheese. And having discerned this, I reckon it will save me a lot of time in the future.
Thank goodness. Means Tomás and I can proceed to a new topic in Spanish.
mercredi, le 23 février
‘So should I book a flight via Canada or via the US?’
‘I have no idea,’ I said. I was outside on the sofa, bare feet, watching ants make a steady trail from the definitely-outdoors of the back garden to the semi-outdoors of the lanai. I pointed to them when J walked past, deep in conversation with his Screaming Lady on the mobile, but he just shrugged.
‘Does one take longer to get through customs than the other?’ the Boy asked.
‘No idea,’ I said. ‘America, probably.’ In fact they’d gone through my luggage when it was in transit here, which I discovered only on opening a suitcase on the third day to discover a friendly note from the Department of Homeland Security inside letting me know that, for the sake of public safety, they’d had a good paw through my knickers, nothing to be alarmed about.
‘Oh, kitty, I am so looking forward to seeing you,’ he said.
‘Please don’t.’
‘Pardon?’
‘I hate it when people recycle pet names.’
He was quiet. I could all but hear the wheels turning. What the … ? Does that mean … ? But in the end he must have decided that questioning me might lead to an argument, because he didn’t follow it up. But he did find a reason to be off the phone pretty quickly.
samedi, le 26 février
Okay. Now, J is my man, and I love him to bits, but some things do rankle:
• The Screamer. I mean what is it with her? Yes, sex is fun. Yes, it is exciting. But we just spent all evening watching horror films on video. Don’t let’s feel the need to recreate the audio experience in the bedroom afterwards.
• Socks. Are men not familiar with the concept of putting them away? He seems to manage to guide most laundry in the direction of the basket under the bathroom sink. The socks, on the other hand, seemingly possessed by a rambling spirit, manage to evacuate themselves from the other clothing and are scattered about the house. At last count I spotted six (none matching).
• Hair on the soap. I’ve stopped waxing as it is no longer related to steady employment, so this is not an issue where I can claim superiority based on a lack of body hair. But somehow my pubes manage not to burrow into the soap. Unless of course they belong to the Screamer, in which case eww.
dimanche, le 27 février
Food and drink are not my strong points. Yes, I enjoy them as much as (and sometimes more than) the next person, but am not particularly knowledgeable about which beverage goes with which meal or the difference between sardines and pilchards. Come to think of it, does anyone really know?
But I am, slowly and with Tomás’s help, trying to improve my cooking skills. Not out of any attempt to impress, mind: it’s more so I don’t end up eating salad cream sandwiches every night when I go back to the UK. That’s not out of desperation; I genuinely love salad cream. The fact that it’s such a slap in the face to po-faced GI dieters is simply extra.
And I must admit, learning under such a talented and patient cook is a bonus. We’ve already tried out dozens of things for me to cook when the Boy is here that I can’t wait to try.
lundi, le 28 février
I went back to Jo’s and we stayed up drinking; it was just like old times. Her boyfriend kept ringing but she just ignored his calls. It felt so good to know she preferred me over him. I sort of felt sorry for him but not really. Later we were in bed and I had an erection all night. I know I could have had her at any time but didn’t.
I see the Boy paid his bloaty ex a visit. Clearly hoping to get a little ego fluff before coming to see me.
Fucktard. I went out and laid a gorgeous woman and you dry-hump a beached whale.
The thought didn’t make me feel particularly better.
Dear Belle
Dear Belle,
I am a gentleman of 74 and I have been seeing my ladyfriend, Doris, for almost six months. I would very much like to take her ‘up the Garry’ but am unsure how to approach the subject. Should I buy her chocolates and then ask her politely while in the boudoir, or do you favour the approach whereby I slip it in, pretend it was an accident and gauge the situation by her reaction?
Dear Dark Knight,
If your ladyfriend is of a similar vintage to your good self, there is positively no way she would believe that the ramrod banging on her back door arrived there by accident. My advice would be to broach the subject outside the bedroom, perhaps during a quiet, romantic (and suitably expensive) dinner, whereupon you produce documentary evidence to your freedom from all known diseases and assure her of your patience, good humour and familiarity with all the modern forms of lubricant.
Dear Belle,
I am desperate for my boyfriend to have a back, sack and crack. It’s not fair – I Brazilian myself regularly but he won’t do me the courtesy in return. How do I persuade him?
Dear Mrs Sasquatch,
Having your Brazilian is one thing, but the sheer acreage covered by a B, S & C is equivalent to waxing you, all your female relatives and every woman you meet today baby-smooth for the next three weeks. Why not just pick one of the three? I’d choose back, if you are a girl who is into aesthetics, but sack is probably the connoisseur’s choice.
Dear Belle,
I’m a married accountant. A recent late shift at the office led to some under-the-desk filth with a sixth-former on work experience. I’m racked with guilt – and now the little witch is blackmailing me for her silence. What do I do?
Dear Twisted Knickers,
I’m afraid it’s pay now or pay later, dear. Obviously the honourable thing to do would be to refuse the former object of your lust her illicit payday, and take the consequences whatever they may be. Or if domestic harmony is more your speed, go ahead and shell out, but don’t expect that having found your weak spot she will actually let the matter drop. The choice is yours. And next time you’re afflicted with an unruly swelling, may I recommend either taking matters into your own hands or letting a professional see to it?
mardi, le 1 mar
It’s so wrong. I know it’s wrong. And yet I can’t help myself.
I fancy the pants off Grayson Perry.
Of course, in the case of the famously cross-dressing Turner Prize-winner, they would invariably be ruffled pink pants. For Mr Perry is not just a transvestite but a grown man who enjoys dressing like a little girl. And that is a twist so far up my alley it’s ringing the bell right now.
People with sexual kinks can often tell you when and where they began to fetishise – a young boy discovering his mother’s shoes in the closet, for instance, or a teenaged girl pinching herself hard enough to draw blood while masturbating. Mine may not be quite a lifestyle choice, but it certainly looms large in my sexual closet. And my preference for men dressed like girls had a genesis, though it started much later than childhood.
I’d always been attracted to cross-dressers. One of my strongest erotic memories was making out with a boy from school in a purple crushed-velvet dress on Halloween. Once I dated a Norwegian because he occasionally wore a black maxi-skirt. But the desire didn’t fully flower until later. It was with A2. He was tall and undoubtedly masculine, but also thin-framed and long-haired. And he looked the business in Petit Bateau.
For a time, when things between us were good, it was our mutual obsession. Midweek blues thwarted by going out on knicker-buying missions. He in the sleeveless frock, me topless in a tight pair of boy’s briefs, watching lesbian porn together. We joked that he was a gay woman trapped in a man’s body and that I was a gay man in a woman’s. It wasn’t true, of course. We just liked frilly pants. A lot.
Alas, it came to an undignified end. I showed less and less enthusiasm for dressing up, as a result we had sex less often, and eventually, not at all. I felt terrible about it but could never explain. It was far easier to let him think that I had bored of the game and it didn’t turn me on any more. Or that, as he slowly gained weight, his figure didn’t cut quite the dash in a red silk G-string that it once had. But the truth was far worse, something that could never be spoken.
I simply could not go on fucking a man who had better legs than I did, and the stockings to prove it. It just wasn’t seemly.
mercredi, le 2 mars
How tiresome! I know this is the first time the Boy’s been abroad without his family for purposes other than skiing (and, by extension, having gluhwein-fuelled sessions with brainless totty), so he needs plenty of hand-holding. On the other hand I also know this holiday is taking the place of the one he didn’t have in Thailand with Susie, so I’m not as excited about the prospect as he imagines I should be.
jeudi, le 3 mars
Surprise envelope in the post. The Boy drew me a card! I check the postmark – sent almost ten days ago.
It’s a little comic starring two cats. The first one is flea-ridden and scraggy – above it he’s written Me: fed up, tired out and generally pooey.
Then another cat, a ball of straightened fur, thousand claws flying in the air like a spiky ball. You: lonely, grumpy and full of hiss.
Then the last sketch, which looks surprisingly similar to my room here, of two cats curled together on a bed with white curtains open and sunshine through the window. Us: blissed out and back together.
It’s lovely and sweet; he really is clever with a pencil. But the fact that I can’t be certain he drew it for me in the first place makes me very sad.
vendredi, le 4 mars
Belle’s Guide to Your Holidays, part 3: Hot Spots
Is there anything more appalling than a so-called tourist hot spot? I mean, apart from Friday night on the BBC?
At the height of the season there’s one thing you can guarantee about going out in a foreign city, and it’s that the clubs will be lousy with English-speakers. Also that you will have just missed the live band but the wet T-shirt contest is due to start any minute and a group of drunk American teenagers are nominating you.
Tourist spots are meat markets which make Smithfield look like Tesco Metro. You could set a watch by the drunken men who wobble past and offer you a drink or a dance: by my reckoning, about one every four minutes.
Your choices are limited: accept, and you’re press-ganged into the sort of memories that make people choose holy orders upon return to jolly old Blighty, or refuse and be accused of lesbianism.
It’s a pity, really, because the men have not picked up on the subtle dress code of the tourist club. Women in T-shirts and shorts are not interested in your advances. Women wearing the square root of an inch of Lycra are. If in doubt, check the lower back for a prominent tattoo, or as my friend L calls it, ‘the tramp stamp’. You’re as good as in.
One gentleman recently approached me and would not be rebuffed. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m not looking for company. Why don’t you try some of the others?’
‘Because you got it going on, and you don’t even know it,’ he says.
Oh, I know it all right. You don’t charge three hundred an hour without some confidence that you have at least a little something going on. But still, I was wearing more clothing than all the other ladies in there put together, and I didn’t even have trousers on. When I pointed this out he accused me of Sapphic tendencies and lurched away.
It’s when the lights go down and the dancing starts that things turn from horrifying to truly purgatorial. Drunken girls writhe against random crotches to the strains of the Pussycat Dolls. I can’t help it, it makes my stomach turn. Don’t get me wrong. I love dancing. I love sex. I love strippers. I love that I can choose to do any of those things. What I hate is the alcohol culture that makes us act like twats abroad. What I hate is the skeezy cunts in Fred Perry shagging vodka-blind Top Shop girls up against a public wall in San Pedro. What I hate is the knowledge that in two weeks’ time these same people will go home with sunburns, sarongs and an undiagnosed STI for the NHS to take care of. And when Emily tells her future husband how many men she’s been with, she won’t count these holiday fucks. She won’t stand by her own actions. She’ll judge me and people like me for getting paid to do something she did for free.
samedi, le 5 mars
‘How about you?’ Tomás’s friend, a man with sideburns so black they looked drawn on, asked me. ‘What’s your seduction music?’
‘The usual things,’ I said. ‘Bill Withers, obviously. Isaac Hayes’s Hot Buttered Soul.’
The fellows nodded in appreciation, but the truth is, I don’t believe in seduction music. If Suede has to do your work for you, doesn’t that indicate your partner is better off having a crack at Brett Anderson?
I won’t deny that some music is inherently sexy. I love Air and Jeff Buckley – nothing gets me wet quite like the first six tracks of Grace – but any lover lazy enough to stick that on as a half-arsed prelude to fucking is about as likely to get the good stuff from me as John Prescott is.
When I was a sex worker things were different: men were paying for a full-on experience, and if frilly lingerie, bubble baths and Morcheeba did it for them, I could suspend dis-belief for an hour and play along. But at home I like nothing more than the sounds of two bodies together.
The lad I dated at school habitually played U2 whenever we set out to do the dirty. I don’t know why, apart from a suspicion that he (incorrectly) thought his parents wouldn’t figure out what we were up to in his room. I can’t believe some of my first non-self-induced orgasms were obtained listening to Bono’s voice. It’s positively shameful.
A4 ruined Bob Dylan for ever when he revealed that a mate of his from uni – a skinny ginger bloke who buys hair gel in bulk – played ‘Lay Lady Lay’ every time he brought a girl to their flat. Every time I think of it, the thought of some over-earnest undergrad spinning that tune makes me cringe. Big brass bed indeed.
But I suspect the fellows actually weren’t lying tonight when they listed, among other things, Enrique Iglesias and Cat Stevens as their choices for music to make love by. If nothing else, on the off chance I actually end up pulling any of these gentlemen, I will be sure to avoid the one who listed ‘Parachutes’ as the most genius sex platter ever. Because there is excusable bad taste, and then there is Coldplay.
dimanche, le 6 mars
The Boy’s plane is late. I tried to check the status online before leaving but the connection was down. Gives me a little time to wander around, not that there’s much to the airport.
When the plane unloads I scan the crowd: there he is. He looks drawn, but that’s not surprising. Including flight changes the journey took sixteen hours. He jogs slowly towards me and picks me up. We kiss. He smells different.
‘Wow, it’s hot,’ he says. We haven’t even left the airport yet, and that is air-conditioned. And it’s only March. I smile. ‘Bring sunscreen?’ I ask.
‘No, I brought after-sun instead.’ I knew he wouldn’t, so I bought sunscreen anyway. Factor 30. Will have to sneak it into his food, or something.
lundi, le 7 mars
There are probably a thousand ways to tell a local from a tourist here, but this one works without fail: see who’s on the beach in winter.
Reliable sunshine never occurs in Britain. In fact, it never occurs in most parts of the world. That’s why so many people travel here. But for the locals it’s a bit chilly, and they wouldn’t be seen dead on the beach before June.
I’m willing to suck it up – the weather is great, and I’m here because the Boy is here, enjoying the sun, having fun and so on. The water is off limits, but the sand is warm and welcoming.
I never expected, though, that if I took him to the beach he would do something which made even the hardened tourist-watcher wince. Something which even the half-irradiated Canadians and clueless Germans found beyond the pale. Something which, should archaeologists discover written evidence of this culture in a thousand years’ time, will surely have gone down as one of the more memorable events in local history.
He went for a swim. In winter. In the ocean.
No one swims here. The beach, especially at this time of year, is for seeing and being seen. For one thing it’s cold in the water – far colder than the Gulf Stream-warmed coastal waves of Britain. Also, the riptides are so fierce you can find yourself halfway to drowning in about three seconds. There are signs posted everywhere. Surfing at one’s own risk is just about tolerated, but swimming, never. You’d be mad.
‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ he yelled. I lowered my sunglasses and the entire population of the beach stared at us in horror. ‘It’s bracing!’
mardi, le 8 mars
I’d forgotten what it’s like to be part of a couple. All those annoying habits that can be kept at arm’s length over a transatlantic telephone line are suddenly right up in my face. Such as:
• The snoring. Really, why do men do this while women don’t? Although, considering how few women I’ve shared regular sleeping arrangements with, perhaps I’m generalising.
• The inability to make decisions. ‘Would you like me to cook something, or shall we go out?’ And he just sits there, mouth agape for several seconds, before saying he’ll do whatever I want to do. Well, if I wanted something in particular, I wouldn’t have asked, would I?
• The man stuff. You know when a man comes onto another man’s territory, how they have to be competitive and determine supremacy? The Boy actually offered J an arm-wrestle within twelve hours of being here. Luckily J declined and laughed it off – he probably would have won, anyway.
• The ignored advice. I told him to bring suncream. He didn’t. I offered him mine. He didn’t use it. He got burned within an hour and is now hobbling around like Ranulph Fiennes straight out of a desert marathon.
• The fucking phone. I came up behind him to ask a question and saw him tapping ‘Hiya lass, not to worry, arrived safely, miss you!’ into the hated thing. ‘Who are you texting?’ I smiled, pretending not to have seen the screen. ‘Uh, um, m-m-my brother,’ he stammered.
mercredi, le 9 mars
The Boy’s sunburn is not improving. Note to manufacturers: after-sun is all a bit of a scam, innit?
The choices in such a situation are: he wears clothes that cover the burn, and complains endlessly about the pain of fabric against skin, or he doesn’t, and risks more burn. And I don’t want to go into the sexual contortions necessary to avoid rubbing the burn – because while I like it a little rough in the bedroom, and the Boy loves dishing it out, he most emphatically cannot take it. You’d think he was being flayed alive from the sound of it.
At least it’s payback to J for my putting up with the screaming lady.
jeudi, le 10 mars
‘You’re not taking him on the bus,’ J laughed.
‘What?’ I said. ‘It’s the easiest way to get around, and it’s cheap.’
‘It’s cheap for a reason,’ J said. ‘Those people are crazy.’
‘If you don’t think we should take the bus while he’s here,’ I said sweetly to J, ‘the least you can do is loan him your pushbike.’
Now, calling J’s glorious machine a pushbike is an under-statement along the line of calling Harvey Nick’s a corner shop. It’s a titanium-framed beauty, and clearly cost thousands – or possibly was extracted from someone in exchange for drug debts. I don’t like to ask.
‘No. Fucking. Way.’