The Further Adventures of a London Call Girl (7 page)

‘Love to,’ I say. ‘Not free Saturday, though.’ Afternoon appointment with a client, booked before I made my decision to quit, someone who’s paid for extra hours on the spot before. I planned to wear my hottest scanties and leave the whole day free, just in case.

‘Sunday. I’ll call you and we’ll arrange something.’

‘Lunchtime-ish?’

‘Roger roger. Talk to you then.’

‘I look forward to it.’ When I hang up, Mira and Erin are giggling like I’ve come to school in my pants and nothing else. If that’s what female friendship is like, I’m glad to have mostly opted out.

jeudi, le 28 octobre

A major criticism of pornography is that anyone viewing large amounts of perversion cannot help but become used to it, then jaded by it, and then (so the argument goes) so removed from the people involved that inflicting harm on random strangers seems like a good idea. In short, that Page Three girls are the thin end of a wedge leading to secret rooms in Belgian flats.

I don’t buy it. I’ve watched loads of porn, seen about every flavour of wank mag out there. The problem is not that exposure to large amounts of raunchy imagery encourages the viewer to objectify sex; it’s that porn by its very nature is objectified. Porn is reductive. All sexual imagery is shorthand for the total experience, be it a marble nude or the sticky pages of Hustler Taboo. The proliferation of imagery in modern media doesn’t make perverts where there were none before, it simply makes Gary Glitter’s collection electronically portable.

‘There are basically only a handful of porn plots out there,’ I said to N.

‘True. Your basic vaginal penetration, anal, oral, foreign objects, animals.’

‘I’d consider animals the same as objects – the point is someone’s getting reamed by something that is not human genitalia. Fisting, as well.’

‘Fair enough. Then pain, rape, and restraint.’

‘Often all three at once,’ I point out.

‘Yes, but not always, so they count as different types.’ That was true – plenty of people who enjoy rape fantasies can’t stomach pain; loads of people are into tying each other up on a purely consensual basis.

‘Bodily fluids – should there be a breakdown within that category, or is it okay to consider bukakke and scat the same thing?’ In my experience, I’ve found that men who like urine fall into two almost equal categories, the pissing-on and the pissed-upon. But by far they’d rather be receiving than giving in the poo department. There’s a dichotomy some enterprising academic could probably turn into a thesis.

‘Same thing, different levels of extreme. Someone gets covered in yuck.’

‘By that criterion I don’t think vaginal and anal genital insertion are technically much different,’ I said.

‘Maybe not, but you’d risk offending too many people by saying so.’

‘Non-genital-focused kink,’ I said. ‘Catch-all category for men watching women squash insects, smoking fetishists, things like that.’

‘What’s the point if someone doesn’t get done?’

‘Who knows?’ I counted up the list. ‘Eight in total? That’s not bad. After all, they say there are only five basic plots for stories. Does that mean porn is the richer cultural tradition?’

‘If so, I’m a connoisseur of fine art.’

vendredi, le 29 octobre

The phone rang. I was tired. I sort of forgot that I had promised myself not to do this again, and said yes to the manager before remembering that I was meant to say no.

‘Splendid, dahling. He lives in East Molesey.’ Ugh. And it wasn’t even convenient.

I was kneeling over the client, pulling his cock and balls. This one was a gusher; the amount of pre-come he was producing was staggering. My thumb and forefingers were already sticky with it, and a fat drop rolled down the shaft.

He reached up to stroke my face. From that angle, the soft hand, chalk-white skin, dark hair – he looked like someone else. I felt like there were crossed wires in my head, making me see ghosts that weren’t there. ‘Your neck,’ he murmured, and I wasn’t sure who was saying it. His voice was papery at that volume, very like the boyfriend before the Boy – the One.

When I was young I believed that, by concentrating hard enough, anyone who was thinking about me would be able to see for a few moments through my eyes, wherever I was, and hear and feel what was happening. When Being John Malkovich came out I was stunned at how closely the film resembled this half-forgotten fantasy.

I wondered who might be thinking about me, and would they be seeing this? My hands on someone else’s shoulders, a dark trail of hair on the lower belly that looked far too familiar?

I rested my head on his chest. One of his legs flexed, one straight, it happened again. The ghost. It must sneak in as autumn sun slanting through the window. Hundreds of motes stirring in the slight breeze, picking up crackling bits of memory and sticking them together. I closed my eyes. At least his smell was different. That put things right.

‘I’d like to see you again,’ he said as I dressed. ‘Call me. Not for an appointment. A real date.’

‘That would be nice,’ I replied, and meant it perhaps a little more than is good for me. He slipped his card into my hand with the tip. I noted the name and put everything back in my bag. ‘I’ll ring you sometime, Malcolm.’

samedi, le 30 octobre

I’m not a superstitious person, but my horoscope today came true!

Someone from your past is trying to make contact, it read. Your best plan is to have an open mind in the weeks ahead.

Hey, cut me a break. It’s right next to the sudoku, okay?

I went online and checked my email – a note from L, the girl I was at school with. It was nice, for once, to have an unexpected email from someone I actually cared to hear from again instead of an ex.

At school L and I were separated at birth, thick as thieves, peas in a pod. We shared the same filthy imagination and French classes, and having discovered so, discarded the time-honoured schoolgirl tradition of passing notes for an altogether more advanced form of communication: a shared notebook of ideas. Granted, most of these were and are unpublishable, ranging from the demented (a sketch of the cartoon girl from our language texts, petting her cat’s anus with her toes) to the dangerous (a full and detailed list of what we would do and to whom, given infinite time, resources and freedom from prosecution) to the frankly libellous (a portrait of our history master masturbating).

This carried on for some months when, for reasons I can only dimly figure now, I took the notebook home over the holidays and my parents read it. And were horrified. And spent about a nanosecond considering their previously liberal attitude to child-rearing before ringing L’s parents. We were forbidden to associate after that. In truth, we were not any worse with each other than we would have been had we never met. It’s just that we had kept a record.

Two years later we became cautious friends again in economics A levels. The other students had about as much aptitude for academic life as a salad bar. Clearly they were all going to become captains of industry some day. She chose the course as necessary to her future in law; I chose it because it was my only opportunity to nap during the day.

We told jokes in the back of the classroom; recited Billy Connolly’s filthier routines. But we never, ever wrote anything down again. And we never told our parents.

dimanche, le 31 octobre

Resolved: never to pick up the phone without looking to see who’s calling. Ever. Again.

I thought it might be my neighbour, calling to arrange a meeting. It wasn’t. It was a call I should have known would come again. It’s an unwritten rule of breakups that one of the parties involved must make ill-advised, drunken, desperate calls to the other. And no matter how it ended, who broke up with whom, it’s these horrible drunk diallings that will be remembered. Whatever moral high ground the person may have had is immediately forfeited. At least that person wasn’t me.

Not Dr C, though. The Boy again. Fucking horoscope.

Dear Belle

Dear Belle,

I’m going out with a pair of best friends: one knows, the other does not. I’m having lots of sex but it does chafe rather. Any tricks of the trade to help me out?

Dear Double-Booked,

Sorry, but has the message to lube well and often missed your household? Lube well. And often. If the front entry wears out, use the back for a bit. But for goodness’ sake, girl, are you mad? You’re missing the opportunity for a threesome if you don’t tell the other gent what’s going on!

Dear Belle,

My boyfriend likes to rip my clothes off of me when we have sex and, though I did find this exciting the first few times, it’s now working out rather expensive. How can I make him stop without seeming completely repressed? Or am I just repressed? I’m not one of those women who thinks a nice frock is better than sex, but is there a third way?

Dear Busting Out,

While it would be tempting to lead you in the direction of some of the city’s finer second-hand shops, even that can prove expensive after a few months. My personal experience with just such a man taught me to buy clothing that fastens with poppers. That, or replace all your zips with Velcro.

Dear Belle,

I have been going out with the same girl for three years and I am really bored in the bedroom. It’s crossed my mind to look elsewhere, but my heart is really in this relationship. She’s sensitive and shy about sex, and I guess I just need a bit more spice. What should I say?

Dear Don’t I Know You?

Your heart may be in this relationship, but is your mouth? By which I mean talking to her about the problem instead of to me. You mention your lass is shy – but she’s not too shy to have sex at all, and that’s a start. What you need is a long-term plan and patience. Some ladies respond well to having a twelve-inch strap-on and a library of porn thrown their way, and some do not. Gentle changes, slowly, over time, with a lot of snuggling afterwards. It’s not much to invest if you think she’s in it for the long term. And if you’re incapable or unwilling to make this sort of effort, but prefer instead to whinge about it, do us all a favour and move on, eh?

lundi, le 1 novembre

‘Hey, where are you?’

‘I’m at the restaurant,’ I said. The waiters were starting to give me pitying, honey-he-ain’t-gonna-turn-up looks. ‘Where are you?’

‘Kind of caught up in things,’ the neighbour said. ‘Can we push it back to another day?’

I squeezed a fork so hard I was surprised it didn’t bend. Left deep tine-marks in my palm, though. ‘Sure. Of course.’

‘It’s the bloody girlfriend,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘She just turned up at my desk.’

Girlfriend?

‘Anyway, sorry to disappoint you,’ he said. ‘I’ll make it up to you. I’m off to a work do tonight, it’s tropical themed, I’ll bring you a coconut.’

Girlfriend??

‘Talk to you later.’ And he rang off.

mardi, le 2 novembre

Flagrant violation of company policy #1: Misuse of IT resources.

God bless the internet. How on Earth office workers managed to fill up their time in the years BW (Before Web) is beyond me. Have spent the post-lunch period downloading music and listening to it on headphones. The better to drown out co-workers’ inanity, my dear. L and I found each other online and spent much of the afternoon in a chat, before deciding to meet for late drinks.

‘You look exactly the same,’ I smiled. Perhaps a little glossier and more expensively dressed, but L was the very image of herself as a schoolgirl. It was only now I realised how much she resembles Gillian Anderson, and I said so. She laughed.

‘Cheers dears,’ she said as we touched cheeks. ‘I wouldn’t have recognised you.’

‘Really?’ I’d always imagined I looked much the same as before, aging gracefully into adulthood. Maybe those tiny lines I’d been noticing lately weren’t as invisible to others as I’d hoped.

‘You’ve lost a ton of weight,’ L said. ‘

Work stress,’ I lied. Generally speaking, most of my work time is spent trying to dissociate myself as much as possible from work itself, and as soon as I’m out of the office I forget about it until the next morning. ‘Sometimes you have to choose between a full night’s sleep and a meal, you know?’

L nodded. We curled up with our cocktails at a corner table. ‘So what keeps you busy these days?’

I’d already decided not to tell her about the small matter of fucking men for money. Not that I thought she wouldn’t approve; but it’s a bit much to spring on someone at a reunion, no? ‘Oh, it’s terribly boring,’ I said. ‘I’d love to hear more about what you’re up to – from law to acting? Why? How? And more importantly, what are the men like?’

She laughed. ‘I find the professions surprisingly alike,’ she said. ‘The men are like men everywhere – hopeless.’ I concurred and we giggled our way through three more drinks before going our separate ways. It’s a good thing, I thought, that some things don’t change.

mercredi, le 3 novembre

N is very negative on the subject of pursuing the neighbour. It’s not fair to the girlfriend, he says; and I agree, but don’t think things are necessarily so cut and dried. Some people can get up and walk away from a relationship as soon as they think it’s not going anywhere; others hang on beyond any hope of saving it. I don’t want to pressure the neighbour (largely because I don’t think he’ll leave his girl).

In the meantime I have to deal with him vacillating between flirty and stand-offish. If this is what neighbourly relations are like, I can see why I never bothered before.

jeudi, le 4 novembre

The foot fetishists, they are tops.

I don’t understand their fetish – feet are nice enough, but not that nice. But boy can I cater to it, and they certainly seem to like me.

Despite too large a fraction of my life spent in stilettos, my feet are in surprisingly good shape. Fine-boned, high-arched, uncallused and blessed with nicely shaped toes and toenails. Of my physical features I would rate the feet rather highly. I don’t spend very much time on them, preferring a single lick of clear varnish to a full-on pedicure, and yet they seem to do quite well.