Authors: Carla Van Raay
I spoke briefly with the woman at the desk; the scorched smoker’s voice from the day before gave her away as Stella. She greeted me, quickly looked me over, then pointed me to the waiting room next door. Good; I wasn’t especially unsuitable then.
I entered the girls’ lounge room with the same feeling of doom as when I jumped into the lime pool at Box Hill during that last summer before entering the convent, falling fast and inevitably into the dark still water far below. My bathers had slipped off my shoulders, I remembered, from the sheer pressure of water rushing at my body.
The lounge room was in semi-darkness and permanently dusty. An old darkred carpet patterned with pink roses lay over another, even older carpet and nondescript pictures of still lifes and horses were displayed on discoloured walls
which had long stopped caring what was hanging there. The musty smell reminded me of my paternal grandparents’ home. The curtains at the windows were drawn and the only light came from a dim shaded lamp in the ceiling. There were a number of armchairs crammed into the room; they were good for waiting in, and wait we did.
A turmoil of feelings swirled around inside me. The place was seedy and uninspiring, and I
hated
working without feeling enthused. I felt like a fish out of water, but uppermost in my mind was a burning desire to get an education in this business. There was no conversation while we waited. Some girls read a magazine in the dim light. Some chewed gum. Most sat wrapped in thought. If anyone was nervous, no one showed it. If anyone guessed that I was new, it didn’t mean a thing. Silence reigned. In that room we were in competition with one another.
The girls smoked on the back porch, and even in the kitchen, but never in the lounge room. This rule wasn’t to protect our health—it wasn’t an issue in the early 1970s—but to keep the smell out of our hair and clothes. Stella had her minimal standards.
A stir of stale air heralded the entrance of the first client. My heart did a flip. Would I even be noticed? I wasn’t, and it gave me a chance to watch instead. A lightning-fast appraisal of what the guy might be worth decided the play: whether the girls would compete for him with smiles or pouts, by unfolding black-stockinged legs, showing a hint of lace panties under a short skirt, or a suggestive turn of half-naked breasts. One girl rose from her chair, in readiness for his nod. His glance swept over me, but he seemed to recognise the one who stood and off they went without a word.
My silent co-workers were a mixed bunch who were generally more glamorous and explicitly sexy than I was.
They did their best to show off their breasts, real or false—either way a definite asset in this business—and wore the reddest nail polish to match the invitation of their shiny lips.
I wasn’t overtly sexy enough to fit the stereotype. I traded on standing out by being unusual, which is probably why I didn’t make a fortune out of it. I had nice breasts, but they were on the smaller side. I hated nail polish and garish colours. I didn’t know how to pout, seduce with my eyelashes or affect a sexy walk. My allure rested on understatement; I could create excitement from what could be hinted rather than displayed. Of course there was my elegant slimness, my Dutch blonde hair and what a friend once described as my ‘deliciously long legs’, in spite of some varicose veins. My best feature was perhaps the shape of my bottom: I knew it was ‘cute’ from the reactions so far received from admirers. My knees were slightly knobbly from the many hours of kneeling in the chapel, but not too bad. Another string to my bow was lively wit and conversation in a situation where I was the centre of attention. Yet another was my innocent friendliness, since I hadn’t had time to grow cynical, mistrustful or hard, took no drugs apart from the contraceptive pill and had none of the ulterior motives that drove many of the girls.
I watched and waited but no other clients arrived that afternoon. However, Stella now knew she could depend on me to turn up. ‘I’ll put a new advertisement in tomorrow’s paper just for you,’ she promised. That was her way of saying she wanted me to be on her team.
The next day I came dressed in a white lace top with a pink velvet short skirt over white lace pantyhose. In spite of my height, I wore high heels. Shoes have always been a problem for me: I’m size eleven, which restricts my choice. I had to settle for a pair of shiny black ones I’d stashed in
the back of the wardrobe. The colour didn’t match, but they were pretty and I was surprised at my pleasure in seeing my own feet: eleven measures of sexiness on tall, slim, shapely legs. I found some flashy fake gold and pearl drop earrings and a matching necklace, and put on brighter pink lipstick. I looked myself up and down in the mirror: it wasn’t really me, but it would do.
When Stella came into the room on behalf of the client who had asked for the new girl from the advertisement—‘Long legs, blonde Monica, very good to talk to’—I stood up in my high heels, feeling so tall that I was almost dizzy with fear that he would be overwhelmed by my height. But he didn’t seem to care; he was just in it for the novelty. He paid at the desk and we left for his motel.
Acting as nonchalantly as I could, I made it gracefully down the steps to Tony’s clean and newish car, and he took me straight to a motel that let rooms by the hour, with its own car park—very handy, I thought.
Tony was straightforward and businesslike. He showed me in, locked the door, instantly proceeded to take off his clothes, got himself on the bed and was ready for action. Even so, he whispered, ‘Not too fast,’ as I cat-crawled to him on the bed, having undressed more leisurely and deliberately while my heart was pounding and my mind worked overtime. What was expected from me? I had no real idea. I decided to gauge the situation moment by moment by trying to enter his world: what was
he
feeling, thinking?
I touched his naked body and felt it thrill. I was gifted with a special touch and wasn’t even aware of it. Feeling welcomed and wanted, my hands were ready to become bolder, when he took over from me, stroked my body boldly up and down and entered me as he rolled me onto the bed. His body was impetuous and he came very quickly.
Was this it? No; Tony stopped me from moving off the bed. ‘Please stay a while,’ he begged. Why not, I said to myself and relaxed beside him.
Tony lit a cigarette with slightly unsteady hands, lounged against the pillows and surveyed the body he’d hired with a bit more attention than he’d given it at first. He watched me as I turned to conjure music from the motel radio. From the corner of my eye, I noticed his penis begin to regain some of its life. His cigarette almost finished, he slid down from the pillows onto the bed and I turned to him again and put a friendly arm around his waist. He took my hand, indicating wordlessly that he wanted to be stroked, so I stroked his thighs, his belly, lightly touching his testicles and the length of his now fully revived penis, murmuring that he had a nice body. Tony threw the end of his cigarette into the bin by the bed, turned around and surprised me by powerfully lifting me up to position me over his penis.
This time, it was even more satisfying for him. For me, in spite of a raw shocked feeling of newness, the whole thing was enjoyable. Tony was decent and paid me extra. I took a shower and left him smoking another cigarette. It had all been so thankfully easy.
And so I was introduced into the game. ‘Escorts’ the advertisements in the papers said. At first I thought I would be a sort of geisha, providing company for men without sex being involved. ‘Ah, yes,’ the girls said when I asked them, ‘that happens now and again, but don’t ask us, we’re not interested.’ As it happened, shortly after I joined Stella’s a young man rang wanting someone to escort him to a wedding. Being the new one, I was offered the job and, to Stella’s relief, I took it.
I had two reasons for taking on this particular assignment. Firstly, I had never been a guest at a real church wedding before, and secondly, I had to pretend I was his girlfriend: the
professional complicity delighted me. Everything went well in spite of my client’s extreme nervousness, especially when he introduced me to his family and then suddenly realised he would have to do without me once his two hours were up. He paid me on the spot for another two hours, nervously extracting the money from the internal pocket of his jacket where he had it at the ready. For some reason, it was extremely important to him to give the impression that he was hitched. The deception was carried off with panache well into the reception, and my partner thanked me with true gratitude when I left. Stella let me keep his fee, as there was no profit to be made this time. She had to keep up the facade of an escort agency or risk being busted by the police, who knew what was going on anyway.
Sometimes we girls went out as pairs, posing as lesbians, which provided us with an opportunity to talk. One woman was angry with a former partner and wanted to teach all men a lesson by making them pay for sex. She also hated men because she had been sexually abused when she was an adolescent. Others just wanted quick money, for drugs or whatever else was obsessing them. These girls had no trouble showing their clients who was in charge and how much they wanted. A man had to watch his wallet with them.
Most of the women I met were not hard types. One girl I paired with was dropped off and picked up at Stella’s by her boyfriend. She was a university student in a hurry to get on with life. ‘I’ll only stay until we’ve got our deposit for a house together,’ she smiled, looking absolutely like the girl next door in a glamorous mood. We pretended to be lesbians with gusto, kissing, moaning, licking—sometimes catching each other’s eye in amusement when we thought the drunken lot who’d hired us wouldn’t notice. They laughed a lot, these men from the construction industry,
who had stayed on after work for fun and drinks in the belly of the new hotel they were building, at the invitation of the boss. I didn’t care if they were laughing at us, or because they were embarrassed, or just out of their brains. It didn’t matter when both of us girls were also having fun and getting paid. What they did with their excited libidos after we left, I have no idea. They probably called for the non-lesbian types. Oh, well.
In those days, most men took a complete health risk with hookers: they seldom thought to use a condom, and neither did I. Stella had only casually mentioned using condoms for protection from venereal disease. She knew, of course, that men preferred sex without them, and if her girls didn’t use them so much the better for her business.
What on earth was I up to, exposing myself like that? It wasn’t that I didn’t think of the risk. I had two strategies. The first was my instinct, which told me when I could trust somebody, even a voice over the phone, and improved with time and experience. Secondly, I went to see a doctor every week for a check-up with a blood sample.
Doctor Dayton was a nearby GP with a soft spot for the girls, taking extra good care of them. He was also an expert in venereal diseases.
‘How much do you charge for your services?’ he asked me one day, surveying my naked body on his table. ‘Not enough, not enough,’ he responded emphatically when I told him. I wish that I could have heard him then, because he was speaking the truth. But I was always far from perfect in my own eyes. I thought of my smallish breasts: they didn’t fit the bill, did they? How could I charge more?
One day I received a phone call from Dr Dayton, asking me to hurry to his clinic for a penicillin shot. Usually when one of his girls came into the waiting room, she received
immediate attention. It was all part of his gentlemanly attitude towards us. This visit was the only time this didn’t happen for me. I arrived at the clinic to see an internationally famous rock star sitting nervously in the waiting room with his chauffeur bodyguard. When they were shown in before me, I knew the reason for his visit. Dr Dayton must have been a very good specialist GP to be known in the circles of the rich and famous! I chuckled to myself, until I remembered that the reason I’d been summoned was because I’d been diagnosed with the first stages of gonorrhea.
I am terrified of injections, just watching them on TV can make me feel faint, but I give Dr Dayton full credit for gliding the needle in so gently, and uttering soothing words all the while as if I were his own dear daughter, that I hardly felt it enter my buttock. He was a treasure.
WHAT WAS REALLY
dirty about working for others in the prostitution business was the so-called containment policy, which meant that some madams were allowed to operate brothels and escort agencies in defiance of the law prohibiting organised prostitution, and others were not. How did those madams please the police to stay in business? That was, indeed, the question. Another evil permeating the industry was the undermining of the competition, and, where possible, the elimination of it. People could—and did—get murdered for mysterious reasons.
What bothered me particularly about my new career was that I never seemed to get to be myself. I was this make-believe person, an inauthentic imitation of a hooker; I was playing a game and nobody said,
who are you, really?
Prostitution is, after all, called ‘the game’. Nevertheless, it shocked me that nobody seemed to
want
me to be anything
different! After about a month at dingy Stella’s, doing daytime hours, I set out to find another, hopefully more classy employer.
I discovered Marinette, who touted a French connection. She ran a different sort of business: men never seemed to come to her place at all. After speaking with the client on the phone, she and I would wait under a street lamp for him to show up and the transaction was made there and then, on the street. Her clandestine yet careful attitude made me feel safe with her. She was a sort of crusty mother figure to me, talking to me frankly about the art of sexual love, which my own mother never had the courage to do. I admired that about Marinette, and learned quite a bit of useful information.
‘The missionary position is for Catholic missionaries,’ she joked in her pleasantly distorted French accent. ‘Avoid it. It is terr…ibly boring.’ She spoke as if she knew the Kamasutra off by heart. I was lithe, but not a yogi, and quite happy to keep experimentation within the limits of my clients’ expectations. After all, they were no yogis either.