The Further Adventures of a London Call Girl (4 page)

• ObScore: 9/10 (and the winner)

Dear Belle

Dear Belle,

I recently arranged a blind date on a gay hook-up website – and the man who came to meet me was my closeted father. Family dinner conversation is now somewhat stilted. Do I tell Mum?

Dear Twisted Sister,

Only if you two are now an item.

Dear Belle,

My boyfriend fantasises about covering me in strawberry jam. Maybe I am a bit of a stereotypical gayer, but I like my body to be clean and sweet-smelling, and can’t bear the idea of properly sticky sex and then hours in a bath scrubbing syrup off my whatsits. Can you suggest how I gently turn down his suggestion, or another substance we could substitute for the jam? To his credit, he is a Bonne Maman man.

Dear Squeaky Clean,

Few things taste better than cream tea on a human plate, but I do understand your reservations. Whole fruits, organic and in season, are far cleaner than messy jam. Failing that, supply him with yummy fruity-smelling soaps and similar in a picnic hamper or resign yourself to the fact that getting sticky is one of those things we have to do for love.

Dear Belle,

I’m quite capable of coming up with a chat-up line. My problem is what to say next. Any suggestions?

Dear Tongue-Tied,

Your name and a suggestion to buy the object of your affection a drink are usually a good place to start. But I have a question for you: what’s a nice lad like you doing in a column like this?

Dear Belle,

I’ve fallen for a gorgeous Catholic girl. She’s pledged to stay a virgin until she’s married. I’ve pledged to shag her before the summer. How can I tempt her into the sins of the flesh?

Dear Mortal Sin,

Pop the question. It doesn’t mean you have to go through with it, and if my understanding is correct Catholic girls will normally let you have one sample before buying.

vendredi, le 1 octobre

N reinstated as a fuck buddy for the time being. Is good because: he’s good in bed, has a car, and can take a hint when he’s not welcome. Is bad because: wait, can’t think why it would be bad. Will come back to that later if there is time.

‘Hey, pretty lady. Been trying to ring you all day,’ N said.

‘Sorry. Dropped in and saw A1 after work. He’s in a mobile black spot.’

‘Fair enough. How is the big guy?’

‘He’s fine, said to say hi to you. Ended up waiting for him ages, though, got cornered by his boss. If that man sucked up more air from the room you’d have to call him Dyson.’

‘Yikes. That bad?’

‘Worse. He went to the opera with his wife last week – poor thing, I bet she doesn’t get a moment’s peace. Anyway, they went to see Les Mamelles de Tirésias, which the boss took a lot of pleasure in telling me meant Theresa’s Tits.’

‘Patronising twat.’

‘No kidding. Then he was off on some lecture about breasts and how some academic boffin or other proposed that men like breasts because Neanderthals preferred their coitus from behind and the mammary glands remind one of buttocks. Or something.’

‘Rubbish,’ N said. ‘How many arses have you ever seen with nipples on?’

samedi, le 2 octobre

How to fuck someone and still be friends. Or, your cut-and-keep guide to being a good fuck buddy (or as N calls it, Friends with Privileges).

1 The Sex. Must be good. Otherwise, why bother? This person is not going to raise children with you.

2 The Companionship. It helps if this is someone you get on with and see around socially. Puts a nice ending on all those group nights out when it looks like you aren’t going to pull (or pull anything decent). You’ve pulled before you even arrived. What if he’s pulled and you haven’t? Even better: take them both home.

3 The Gossip. People will assume you’re a couple. Get your stories straight and nip this in the bud.

4 The Jealousy. There shouldn’t be any. If you suspect this is someone whose dalliances with others you might be even remotely miffed about, move on. It’s not going to work.

5 The Talk. Must be open and frequent. Nothing sucks quite like finding your fuck buddy has secretly fallen for you.

6 The Protection. Never forget he has carte blanche to fool around, and so have you. Regular does not equal clean.

7 The Foreplay. Don’t play the whole ‘I’m drunk, club’s shut, didn’t pull, I know you’re home alone’ booty call shtick. Not more than half the time, anyway.

8 The Threesomes. With luck, there should be plenty. N is kind enough – even when we’re not fucking – to ask women he’s with if they would like to sleep with me, too. Say it together: awww!

9 The Others. If a potential amour asks if you’re sleeping with your fuck buddy, don’t deny it. Disclosure might send a third party running, but you were going to have to lie to someone like that to keep the peace, anyway. You don’t have to be explicit – ‘Yes, and just this morning I woke to him wanking on my face.’ Just be honest.

10 The Goodbyes. You must behave like adults. Don’t ring him three weeks later from Africa and say you’d marry him if he’d have you back. It’s a lay, not a life.

lundi le 4 octobre

Straight from one work to the other. Am not sure I can handle the turnaround. I came in tired from the office, and had half an hour to shower, change – higher shoes, better knickers, slinkier suit, shinier lippy – and get out again. Must check and see whether manager actually has changed my profile on the website.

The client was waiting for me with a porn film already on. ‘Ah,’ I said as we sat on the bed. ‘Ron Jeremy. An absolute classic.’

‘So you like them big, do you?’ he asked, rubbing the growing bulge in his trousers.

‘I like them all,’ I said. This was going to be a talk dirty one. I felt a little disappointed – I was tired from work and not sure I could summon the necessary imagination to keep up a running commentary.

‘Good,’ he said, unwrapping his own package. It wasn’t huge, but it wasn’t small, either. Just the slightly larger side of average.

I reached down and took over the wanking from him. ‘Gorgeous instrument you have there,’ I said.

‘I like a girl who can take it all in her mouth.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ I said, squeezing the base of his shaft. I could have taken twice the size of his, but it’s good for them to think you’re impressed. ‘But I’ll certainly try.’ Some porn starlet was giving Ron Jeremy her best oral effort on screen.

‘Wait. Before you do,’ he said, reaching by the bed, ‘have you had anything to eat?’

‘Not really, no,’ I said, surprised. It was an unusual client who inquired after my health.

‘’Cause you see, I want you to choke on me,’ he said, and brought a handful of small, dry pastries out. The sort wrapped in plastic film that you get free in the first-class carriage of a train. ‘And if you could retch up some food on my balls that would be perfect.’

‘Do you have a drink?’ I asked. ‘Something to help these go down quickly?’

‘And back up again.’ He winked and headed for the minibar.

As it turned out I didn’t have to do much dirty talk after all.

mardi, le 5 octobre

The Canadian at work, Erin, has a friend in another department, Mira, a moon-faced Asian girl. At least I think Mira’s in a different department. You wouldn’t know for certain, seeing as she’s always hovering around Erin’s desk.

They talk. And talk. And talk some more. Their conversations aren’t unbearable as such, just endlessly banal. It’s not even a month and already I know more about celebrity breast implants than a sub-editor at Heat.

The other topic of conversation is Erin’s fiancé back in Vancouver. I use ‘conversation’ in its loosest sense here since, as a soon-to-be-married woman of the world at twenty-four, Erin typically uses the opportunity to unfurl her wisdom on the relatively inexperienced twenty-three-year-old Mira.

‘It’s such a struggle being apart,’ Erin moans theatrically. One key element of making friends with women is casting everything that happens in the most tragic light possible. ‘Long-distance relationships are so difficult, you wouldn’t even know,’ she sighs.

Oh, boo hoo, I think. Like you two are the first ever to live apart. Bitter about Dr C? Me? Surely not.

‘We have to rely on the phone for everything now – I mean everything.’ Erin lowers her voice a notch. ‘Even the sex.’

And I bet he’ll dump you over the phone, too, I think.

‘Wow,’ Mira sighs, which encourages Erin to go on about what a romance it is and how this experience has confirmed for her that it’s meant to be. She swigs deeply from her ever-present water bottle. It’s the sort you only ever see Canadians or archaeologists carrying around, sipping from on an hourly basis as if the conditions of a modern city are approximate to those of the Mojave. I’ve been to India, Mauritius and Colombia; you can bet that anyone you see there carrying a Nalgene bottle will be either on a dig or from Vancouver.

‘The adversity is going to make us a stronger couple in the end, I can say that,’ Erin says. When did everyone start conversing in therapy-speak? I wonder whether it’s possible to go blind from rolling my eyes so much.

I don’t know if it’s the accent or this girl specifically, but Erin’s voice has a foghorn-like quality that cuts through everything else. She took a conference call and I swear I had to almost jam my fist down the other ear to keep the honking out.

Mira doesn’t contribute much. She lives with her parents, and is trying to get them to buy her a flat. If she’s ever been in love before it will have been with a baby-pink iPod or a fluffy kitten. She’s like a wobbly satellite to Erin’s sun.

Erin’s launching into an in-depth rehash of last night’s phone call from her boyfriend when I put the phone down. I turn round in my chair. ‘Umm, I’m very sorry, but I’m sort of struggling through something here. Would you two mind keeping the noise level down a wee bit?’

From the looks on their faces you would have thought I’d slapped them each with a rotten herring. ‘Yeah, ooookayyyy,’ Erin says. ‘Whatever.’

‘I’m sorry, I thought you said to speak up if I needed anything.’

‘And?’ Erin says, arching her brow. ‘Did you need something?’

‘Just wanted to say that it’s a little distracting, is all. Maybe you could go talk in Mira’s office.’

‘Well, yeah, but you don’t have to be such a bitch about it.’

I mumble something about being terribly sorry and turn back to my desk, blushing madly. Why does it feel like being at school all over again? It’s a long, long time since I’ve been in the company of women.

mercredi, le 6 octobre

Am keeping a bag in my desk for after-work appointments, of which I hope there will be very few. Checked the website from home – not from work, don’t want to raise any suspicion in the IT department – and the manager seems to have kept to her promise and altered my profile.

As in, the pictures are so blurred you can hardly tell the photo is human, much less a woman. I rang her.

‘Darling, hello,’ she whispered. ‘My boyfriend is here, so I have to keep it brief.’

‘Um, I saw your changes,’ I said. ‘Are you sure this is going to work? I mean, I can’t imagine anyone booking me with a photo like that. Maybe we should consider taking me off the site altogether.’

‘Listen, sweetheart,’ she said shortly. ‘This is what we agreed, no? If you keep changing your mind I will have to start charging you for Webmaster time. And no one wants that, do they?’ Her tongue clicked against her teeth. ‘I don’t know why it is you’re so fussy all of a sudden. You used to be one of my easiest girls.’

‘I’m sorry, really, I’m just … you know, considering whether any future career is worth …’

‘Yes, honey, I’ll be right there!’ she shouted brightly to someone else. ‘I have to go now,’ she hissed. ‘We’ll talk.’

jeudi, le 7 octobre

Sat with Erin and Mira at lunch. Erin is on a diet, so I suppose that means Mira is as well, even though she hasn’t an ounce to spare. ‘Doing anything interesting this weekend?’ Erin asked, smiling lightly.

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘Going Up North to visit family.’

‘Wow, don’t set the world on fire with your social life,’ Erin smirked. Mira giggled. How did I deal with this crap as a teenager without killing someone? I looked at them, straight-faced, until Mira felt uncomfortable and stopped.

‘Erin’s boyfriend is coming home from Canada,’ Mira said.

‘So I heard,’ I said. In fact, anyone within a mile radius of our office could probably say the same. ‘Ooh, I’m late back to my desk.’ I left the remains of my sandwich on the table and scooted off to the coffee room to read for a quarter-hour alone.

vendredi, le 8 octobre

Off to see the parents; I know they’ll want the complete lowdown on the job, the co-workers, every last detail. I’m looking forward to lying in and not having to do the washing-up. N picked me up from work and gave me a lift to the train. Not without asking a favour in return, though.

The cars around us were hardly moving. ‘How long do you have until the train goes?’ he asked.

‘About twenty minutes,’ I said. ‘Do you think we’ll make it?’

‘Probably.’ The traffic on the Euston Road moved even more slowly, if such a thing were possible. ‘Feel like using the torch on yourself?’

‘Go on, then.’ He passed me a long, black-handled metal object. It was cold to the touch and thick as my wrist. I didn’t know how much I would be able to get in and said so. I pulled my tights and knickers down to my ankles and put my feet over the dashboard. ‘Let me know if we pass any buses,’ I said.

‘Not to worry, no one ever looks.’

‘Not even taxis?’ I worked the torch about halfway in, but not being too wet to begin with hindered its progress somewhat.

‘Maybe a bicyclist would but I doubt it,’ he said. ‘Ah, I’ve just caught the first whiff of your smell.’

We crawled past St Pancras. ‘Going to stop now so I can get dressed before King’s Cross,’ I said, putting my feet back on the floor and extracting the torch slowly. Its rough sides scraped my lips on the way out – I’d be feeling that for hours after, I knew it. ‘Do you want me to wipe it off or leave it as is?’ I asked. My juices are thick and white that time of the month and clung wetly to the shaft.