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

The belt of the treadmill squealed and buckled under N's bulk. 'Are you done torturing that machine? Because I'm getting hungry.'

He drove us back to my house. It wasn't late, but the city was already as dark as midnight. N was born and raised in London, and guided the car around back roads and alternate routes I didn't know existed. The night air was still moist from rain in the afternoon, the streets shining with long red and white reflected lights, and I rolled down the passenger window to listen to the gentle shirr of tyres on the road. 'How much do you tell that man of yours?' he said after a long silence. N and the Boy know and don't approve of each other, but since they live in different cities, rarely meet. 'Enough.'

'Can't imagine he's happy with it.'

'Can't imagine he has a choice,' I said, affecting more bravado than I felt. If he turns out to have major objections, I'll find something else to do.

Probably.

lundi, le 8 decembre

Booking with a banker at a hotel near Bond Street. We drank some coffee, chatted about New York briefly, then got down to business.

And, as they say, business is good.

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He: 'That was my first anal.'

Me: 'Really? I'm surprised.' Perhaps not that surprised, since there have been more than a few first‐time anals in my past. But surprised he didn't mention it, and surprised at the spatial imagination of someone who manipulated me around his member so fluidly.

'Well, I enjoyed it.'

'I would tell you it's my first time too, but you'd know I was lying.'

He (laughing): 'So, how did I do?'

'Excellent ‐ just remember, lots of lube, and use fingers first. As you did.'

'Thanks ‐ you're too nice.'

'Well, you did all the hard work. So to speak.'

Later . . .

He: 'I don't understand why my colleagues would have an affair with some girl in the office, and risk a marriage, when they could have someone like you.'

I nodded, didn't have anything to add.

'It must be a power thing, or to show off to other men. Still,' and he shuddered slightly, in the manner of a man whose faint tan line from a removed wedding band is still visible, and he knows it, 'I just couldn't risk some little temp ringing my wife up weeks or months afterwards.'

We had time before both of our next meetings and talked about Lebanese restaurants in London (good, on the whole) and Italian ones (uniformly rubbish). Later he let slip that he had tried to book me before, when I was away. I'm glad his persistence paid off.

'Do you have a boyfriend?' he asked.

'Yes,' I said.

51

mardi, le 9 decembre

I walked into the hotel, large coat bundled tight around me. It was more insurance that none of the tools of the trade would fall out than protection against the sharp weather. The client undressed while I laid out the things he had requested: blindfold, The Persuaders, choke chain collar and nipple clamps.

'I've never done this before,' he said, eyeing the whips.

Doubtful. Still, his fantasy, not mine. 'I'll be gentle with you, then,' I said. I was lying, and we both knew it.

We were finished in exactly an hour. Sometimes the job seems too easy to be believed.

mercredi, le 10 decembre

Grumpy; nothing coherent to write. Have a list instead.

Love: a spotter's guide

Love at First Sight:
the overwhelming desire to see the inside of the nearest closet (pub toilet, friend's back garden, the alleyway over there).

True Love:
can be introduced to the family without un-reasonable fear of embarrassment (on the part of the family).

Everlasting Love:
a polyamorous couple who haven't had sex with each other in years.

Love Match:
an alliance between kingdoms.

The Love of Your Life:
the indolent boy from your last year at uni, who spent eight hours a day online and ate 52

all the Nutella, the memory of whom somehow improves with time.

In Love:
a momentary instance of being almost as interested in someone else as in oneself.

Loving:
capable of untold amounts of suffocation.

Motherly Love:
capable of untold amounts of suffocation.

Brotherly Love:
forbidden by the moral laws of most world religions.

Lover:
the one who comes round when your partner's 'out of town on business' (read: seeing his lover).

Loveable:
cuddly. In the pejorative sense (similar to 'shapely legs', which is code for chubby).

Lovely:
only just bearable ('That was a lovely party! I do hope you take me to Kettering again!').

Love Potion:
about the only thing, at this point, that might incite the Boy to call. I'm getting lonely up here.

jeudi, le 11 decembre

N gave me a lift home. He had already eaten and I was beyond tired. I made a sandwich for myself and cups of tea for us both while he read to me from the paper.

Later I tried to kick him out of the flat so I could have a bath. It's been too long since I indulged in a long, bubbly soak. 'I'll wait,' he said. He's an odd one and stubborn as well, and I was too tired to argue, so I let him.

When I came out of the bath he rolled me over on the bed and kneaded my back from neck to ankles. I would have thanked him ‐ I imagine the satisfied sighs got the message across. On his way out the door he paused. 'Next time, of course, I want at least a blowjob for that,' he said.

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'That's only funny because I know you're not kidding, sweetheart.'

Some people wouldn't ask. I can think of one in particular. I've always been attracted to strong, tall men. And they have not ever forced anything on me. Except for one. But I begged him to do it.

It was GBH with kissing. I'll call him W. When we met we were both in love with other people but it didn't matter. What we did could only loosely be called sexual congress anyway.

W was tall and nicely built, the result of a career in sport. We flirted over the course of a week and agreed to go out on the Friday night. I dressed and thought about W, his long, thick limbs and large hands, knowing something odd was happening. I couldn't imagine myself in this man's arms so much as on the end of his fist. He looked capable of breaking me into small pieces, and crushing those pieces into a ball. I could not stop thinking of him hurting me, and the thought made me sick. It also turned me on.

Our meeting place was just south of the river. We stood at the crowded bar of a pub for a while before going on to a comedy club where I got legless on gin and tonic. The acts ranged from bad to criminally awful. I began fantasising about having W's bulky shoulder rammed into my face. I went downstairs to the ladies'. W followed me in.

'You're not going to corner me in the loos, are you?' I asked, pawing his shirt. My head came to not quite the middle of his chest. I could smell the sour waft of a day's sweat on him and was aroused.

'I'm not stalking you,' he said. 'Much.'

I bit him as discouragement. The layers of fabric felt fuzzy on my tongue. My teeth closed just hard enough to make it hurt. But he didn't flinch. 'Now then,' he said, taking my face in his hands, 'you'll pay for that. I'll see you outside.'

54

I was unstable on my heels, leaning heavily on his arm all the way to the corner of my street. We stopped and I looked up. He lifted my body easily, standing me on a bench. From that height we had our first kiss.

'Get a room,' yelled some teenagers from the other side of the road.

We didn't. Not that night, anyway. The night after.

The location was a pastel‐decorated chain hotel in Hammersmith. I didn't even take an overnight bag. He pushed me down on the bed as soon as we were inside and straddled my waist. Pulling out his cock, he aimed it not for my mouth or my cleavage but at my cheek.

So it began. After that first time, when he hit the side of my face so hard with his erection that there were blisters inside my mouth afterwards, there was no going back. 'I've never made a woman cry before,' he said. 'I liked that.' No pretence of romance. Just us, anywhere we could be together alone, and his open palm. On cold days in parks where the biting weather would make it sting all the more, he'd stop the car suddenly, and we'd get out and he'd smack me one. My knickers were always sopping wet after.

I couldn't explain the bruises. 'Ran into the door,' I shrugged. 'Hard session at the gym.' Or, 'A bruise? Where?'

There was the weekend W reserved a room at the Royal College of Physicians. Visiting medics can stay there when in London; I don't know how he blagged his way in. We sat on the narrow single bed, watched a porn documentary and ate pizza. I had too much to eat ‐

when I went down on him, his member was too big and it choked me.

I coughed up Meat Feast and Diet Coke on his thigh. His penis grew even harder. He pulled my hair until I cried as he masturbated on my tear‐ and vomit‐covered face. The bathroom was shared with the next bedroom. When I stepped into the hall, a young Indian doctor left the room opposite. He

55

glanced up and froze, shocked. The young man must have been able to hear us carrying on, though perhaps not the detail of it, as he seemed puzzled at the vomit on my chin and shirt. I lifted my hand in a small wave.

'So, which one of you is the physician?' he asked awkwardly.

'I am,' I lied, and walked past him to the toilet. The doctor's jaw plummeted.

W was as mystified by the attraction as I was. 'What do you think when I'm hitting you?' he asked one afternoon. We were sitting on a bench in Regents Park, watching the geese and swans. Every few minutes, satisfied no one was coming down the paths, he'd hit me again.

'Nothing,' I said. There was only the moment when his hand would stop stroking my cheek and I knew the smack was coming; the first hard impact of his palm against the side of my face; the eye‐wetting sting of pain; the warm glow of heat there afterwards. It was perhaps the only time when there was nothing else in my head. It hurt, but the pain was neutral: there was no hate or disgust behind it. It was pure and exhilarating, like any other physical experience. Like the moment of orgasm when you forget yourself, your partner, the world.

'Do you get angry with me?'

'No.'

W visited my house only once. He whipped me through a shirt, then topless, stopping only when I started to bleed. In the shower at the top of the stairs he covered me in piss, then forced my face down in the puddle as he beat the back of my thighs. After he spent his load on my face he held a mirror up. 'You are such a picture,' he sighed.

Eyes stinging with come, I half‐opened my lids to see a red‐cheeked girl squatting in a white‐tiled bath. And he was right. It looked good.

Not in a cover‐of‐
Glamour
way, mind. I smiled broadly.

56

Once on holiday in Scotland I furtively sent W letters. 'Ate a packed lunch and contemplated the dimensions of your hands,' read the first, tentative one. Later: 'Next time you see me, don't forget to bring a torch and those ropes.'

And the last, written a day after I stood out in the cold night air while the midges chewed me alive and W outlined in detail exactly what he wanted to do to me: 'After you told me how you would beat and defile me, I came back inside dripping wet.' Yes, I was still in love with someone else, but that was a model‐gorgeous, gentle lad, who would never even hear me on the toilet, much less contemplate painting my face with his faeces.

The relationship felt too tightly wound to survive, destined for a break‐up, a spell in prison or, worst of all possible worlds, a suburban marriage with occasional light S&M. W couldn't bear the thought either, and one night we engineered, on the flimsiest excuse, the demise of our affair. And I ‐ polite yet firm, like a woman in film noir ‐

smacked him.

'You've been wanting to do that since we met,' he said.

That never stopped me wanting him. Two weeks later I sent a note:

'There are still marks on my left breast from your fingernails. I miss you.'

vendredi, le 12 decembre

Phone call from the Boy last night. At last. It consisted of the usual moaning and gnashing of teeth, both in a sexual way and at our fate of being star‐crossed lovers with the A23 betwixt us.

Towards the end of the conversation, things turned prosaic. 'My dad's going to be in London a couple of nights this week.'

'Why's that?'

57

'Retraining courses for work,' the Boy said. 'I know he's dreading it.

He hates London. I mean, what is there to do when you're stuck in the city by yourself and don't know anyone?'

One thing came to mind immediately. Dear god, I hope he doesn't call an escort. 'Oh, I'm sure he'll be fine. Your dad's a smashing chap, someone's bound to take him out on the town one night.' Please, don't let him call an escort. And please, I know it's a lot to ask . . .

please don't let it be me. 'Maybe your mum could go as well?'

'No, she's busy this week.'

Fuck. My logical mind knows it's statistically unlikely. Still, I have three hotel visits in the next two days and can't help wondering. If time has taught me anything it's that a) cheating is a common human condition and b) the stars always align against me.

samedi, le 13 decembre

Went to Bedford for a booking last night and caught a late train back.

There was almost no one on the platform: a youngish professional wearing trainers and headphones; a few lone women. I wondered if they were going home from work, and if so, why this late? The trains were running behind and it seemed we were waiting ages.

A clutch of teenage boys jumped on, drunk and raucous. One of them eyed me up while the others harassed the fat boy in the group.

They took one of his shoes and played an increasingly violent game of keep‐away, which culminated in his loafer being chucked out of the window at another train. He began screaming and tackled two of the other boys. They got off at Harpenden, unsurprisingly, and the carriage was mine alone as far as Kentish Town.