The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl

First published in Great Britain in 2.005

by Weidenfeld & Nicolson

5 7 9 10 8
6
4

© 1005 Bizrealm Limited

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and t

he above publisher.

The right of Belle de Jour to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library.

ISBN
o 297 84781 1 (hardback)

ISBN
o 297 84850 x (trade paperback)

Typeset at The Spartan Press Ltd,

Lymington, Hants

Printed in Great Britain by

Clays Ltd, St Ives pic

Weidenfeld & Nicolson

An imprint of the Orion Publishing Group

Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin's Lane,

London WCIH 9.EA

www.orionbooks.co.uk

Dedicated to F and
N.

This book would not have been possible without the support and patience of Patrick Walsh and Helen Garnons‐Williams, and their staff and associates, to whom are owed many thanks.

The first thing you should know is that I'm a whore.

I don't mean that in a glib way. I'm not using the word as an analogy for working a desk job or toiling away in new media.

Many of my friends will tell you how temping for a year or ending up in sales is equivalent to prostitution. It's not. I know this because I've been a temp and I've fucked for money, and they are in no way similar. Not even the same planet. Different solar systems altogether.

The second thing is that I live in London. These two facts may or may not be related. It's not a cheap city. Like almost all of my friends, I moved here after university with the hope of getting a job. If not a well‐paying one, at least something interesting, or populated exclusively by handsome, eligible men. But such positions are thin on the ground. Almost everyone is studying to be an accountant now, including my friends A2 and A3, who are respected in their academic circles. Good god ‐ a fate worse than death. Accountancy trumps even academia in the unsexiness stakes.

Prostitution is steady work but not demanding. I meet a lot of people. Granted, they're almost all men, most of whom I'll never see again, and I'm required to fuck them regardless of whether they're covered in hairy moles or have a grand total of three teeth or want me to recreate a fantasy involving their sixth‐form history teacher. But it's better than watching the clock until the next scheduled tea break in a dismal staff room. So when my friends pull out the tired analogy' of corporate employment‐as‐whoring yet again, I nod knowingly and commiserate with them, and 1

we down cocktails and wonder where all our youthful promise went.

Theirs is probably on a trunk road to the suburbs. Mine is spreading its legs for cash on a regular basis.

Having said that, the leap to full‐on prostitution did not happen overnight.

I ended up in London like thousands of other recent graduates. With only a small student debt and a bit saved, I thought I was set for a few months but my surplus was quickly drained by rent and a thousand trivial expenses. My daily routine consisted of poring over the job pages, writing enthusiastic and sycophantic covering letters, although I knew I'd never be interviewed, and masturbating furiously before bed every night.

The masturbation was, by far, the highlight of those days. I imagined myself employed as a testing engineer for an office supplies manufacturer, and that the job involved covering my inner thighs with bulldog clips as someone screwed me vigorously. Or being the personal assistant to a powerful dominatrix, chained to her desk and eaten out by one of the other slaves, who in turn was impaled on a dildo. Or floating in a sensory deprivation tank, as unseen hands pinched and pulled at my skin, gestures at first gentle, then painful.

London wasn't the first city I'd lived in, but it was certainly the largest. Anywhere else there is always the chance of seeing someone you know, or at the very least, a smiling face. Not here.

Commuters crowd the trains, eager to outdo their fellow travellers in an escalating privacy war of paperbacks, headphones and newspapers. A woman next to me on the Northern Line one day held the
Metro
just inches from her face; it was only three stops later that I noticed she was not reading but crying. It was hard not to offer sympathy and harder still not to start crying myself.

So I watched my mean savings dwindle away as buying a 2

Travelcard became the highlight of each week. And while I have a crippling lingerie‐buying habit, even cutting down the intake of lacy things was not going to solve the problem.

Not long after moving I had a text from an acquaintance, known through my friend N. This is N's city and he seems to know everyone. He's at least four of my six degrees of separation.

So when he went out of his way to introduce me to this lady, I paid attention. 'Heard you're in town ‐would love to meet when you're free,' the text said. She was a compactly sexy older woman, with a cut‐glass accent and impeccable taste. When we had first met I'd thought she was out of my league. But as soon as her back was turned N indicated in half‐whispers and furious hand gestures that she went like a train and liked women, too. I dumped a gusher in my knickers, as they say. Like, instantly.

I saved that text for weeks as my imagination grew more heated and restless. Before long she had morphed into the latex-clad hell‐bitch‐boss of my nocturnal reveries. The wenches and sex‐crazed office drones in my dreams were developing faces, and they were all hers. I texted back. She rang almost immediately to say that she and her new man would love to see me for dinner the next week.

I panicked for days about what to wear and splurged on a haircut and new underwear. On the night itself I tore my wardrobe apart, changing outfits a dozen times. Finally I decided on a tight aqua jumper and charcoal trousers ‐ a little office‐temp, perhaps, but modestly sexy. I arrived at the restaurant half an hour early, even after half an hour of trying to find the restaurant in the first place. The staff said I could only be seated when my party arrived. I spent the last of my money on a drink at the bar and hoped they'd cover the cost of the meal.