The tarmac jars my shins as I stride past the art gallery and a couple of brush turkeys scatter into the mulch. These shoes aren’t made for fast walking, they’re heeled and impractical, and the white cockatoos on the fence of the botanical gardens jeer at me as they throw down shredded fruit. I know, I know, I’d be better off barefoot like you guys are, but I’ve got a booking to get to and I can’t show up with my soles black from the city pavements. I’m budget enough as it is; gotta make sure I always park far enough away from the job that the client doesn’t see my old car, which would ruin the illusion of me being a high-class escort worth $600 an hour. I can get away with a bare face and nails because I market myself as a wholesome girl next door, come straight from a swim not a shopping spree, but the fact I get around by bus or a dodgy 90s car doesn’t need to be disclosed. Let them think I Uber it or, even better, taxi it and pay with $50 notes like I did when I was twenty and did a brief stint at an escort agency. The smell of Chloé still takes me back to 5 a.m. in the back of a cab, streetlights glancing in the windows and mascara grit in my eyes, rolling out of bed only to fall asleep in my Gender Studies lectures, double life concealed beneath my floral dresses.
That was before I knew anything about the industry, didn’t know I didn’t have to give a fifty per cent cut to a management that pressured me into doing things I didn’t want to do. Sent me out in taxis across the city, each residence a gaping maw that might never spit me out again. The danger fit my idea of what sex work must be and I thought what I was doing was illegal so didn’t think to wonder if I could work more safely or deserved better treatment. Seven years later I know better: I work in brothels or for myself, and I’ve given up those gruelling nights. So here I am, striding through the city at 9.50am, a morning delivery to a guy with morning wood, and I don’t have to split the cash with anyone.
Here I am, striding through the city at 9.50am, a morning delivery to a guy with morning wood, and I don’t have to split the cash with anyone.
I’ll meet him in the lobby and, unlike that first time, I won’t be self-conscious, don’t care that the scarlet letter emblazoned on my soul shines brightly. Don’t care that I’m in the elevator with a man thirty years my senior. So what, my hair flick and upright shoulders exclaim, I’m a working girl. Judge me not lest thou be judged. I’ve got the hardened shellac exterior of a pro now; the prostitute, the professional, from whom judgement slides like water off a duck’s back. The way I make my living is no better or worse than anyone else in this grimy scramble to survive (that’s what the clack of a working girl’s shoes sound out on the parquetry, if you’ve ever wondered). I’ve become bold, almost brazen, and here I am under this beautiful blue sky and isn’t it a blessing to be alive!
It’s also my day. These passers-by may not realise when they walk past me, but if they keep walking to Boy Charlton Pool they’ll see all the gays with their chiselled, oiled abs out. They’ve flown in from all over the world because guess what? It’s Mardi Gras, and the city is ours for two weeks. Obelisk and Redleaf become beats beneath the sun. I’m close to the Cross now, too, which the government has tried to kill with lockout laws and gentrification. Strip joints closed, clubs replaced with yuppie restaurants . . . No queue outside World Bar now; Oxford Street is a ghost town. Only ARQ and Bodyline beat a faint pulse of what once was, and the casino keeps the score, shows the corruption in its teeming crowd. It’s still ours, though! You may think it’s deserted, yours to roam, but really it’s haunted by the gays of years past, spectres of the AIDS epidemic that roost by day in the top floor of the Bookshop Darlinghurst and by night come out and plague the straights. You may think these streets are yours to walk, but they belonged to someone else before: the queers, the hobos, the junkies, the trannies, the prozzies – these streets were theirs before they were yours so be careful, you may find you have to wipe your shoes clean before going into your nice apartment. Don’t forget, when you stand under the refurbished Coke sign, that those who were despised and reviled formed these streets, literally. No left turns up William Street was simply a way to deter clients from picking up a sex worker, by making it harder to turn their cars around to go back when they saw one who tickled their fancy and their balls. The first supervised injecting room, Les Girls and Tilly Devine – all here. When I get an STI test at Kirketon Road Centre – Health For All – and walk to a booking at Springfield Avenue, where I’ll screw a man in a co-ho’s apartment and dance back down Victoria Street high on money, I think of all the other whores who’ve done the same and how, even if they’ve destroyed the red light district, as long as there are still some of us working here there’s still a red light blinking, and just like the drag queens bashing a homophobe in Taylor Square and the twinks sniffing amyl in Universal (the Midnight Shift reincarnated), we’re honouring the history and keeping the Cross alive: they haven’t murdered us yet.
Don’t forget, when you stand under the refurbished Coke sign, that those who were despised and reviled formed these streets, literally.
Though we do get murdered. Not necessarily because of who we are intrinsically from birth but because our deaths are less likely to be investigated by authorities because we are seen to be worth less than other respectable women, expendable: not an innocent victim but a woman who has invited such treatment through the very nature of her work. We’re the favoured targets of serial killers; Jack the Ripper, the Green River Killer and any other violent perpetrator who has benefited from the acronym NHI (‘no human involved’) being assigned to their victims, an acronym that has been used by police for those deemed undesirable – black people, homeless people and sex workers among them. And God help you if you’re someone who is devalued from birth already and takes on our profession, like a black trans woman sex worker, because society certainly won’t! I feel a little kick of fear in my belly now, as I always do on the way to a private booking, even though I’ve screened the client, because it’s private workers who tend to get singled out and every date I go on is a blind date. The brothel I’m at has been so slow lately, though, since this new coronavirus thing, because it employs a lot of Chinese migrant women and racist idiots assume that they’re more likely to carry it, even though none of them are recently returned from China and it seems that just as many of our cases have come from the United States. So I’m grateful for this horny man, whoever he is; I’ll just lay my hand on this paperbark tree momentarily as I pass it in the hope that he’s all right; touching living wood rather than dead brings better luck.
I’m passing through the clipped grass of the Domain now, which always gives me joy because of the way it came about. Originally created as a private park for the rich by Governor Macquarie, it had a high wall around it that the poor kept breaking down and climbing over so they could get drunk and fuck inside. The wall kept getting raised and the poor kept getting in and being rowdy, till eventually the barrier was demolished and the park was given over to the people as a public domain. It gives me hope that more spaces can become public spaces; all those reserves of the rich, such as golf courses and private gardens, should become accessible to everyone regardless of wealth or postcode – it would help to justify the water they guzzle. My favourite thing about the United Kingdom is that the public’s right to access paths that have been used for hundreds of years trumps private ownership. I wish that existed everywhere. Privacy is a right, sure, but not when it gets to the point of hoarding – sorry, Madonna.
I enter the lobby right on time, and the client is a generic private client. White, middle-aged, suit. I surreptitiously text the number of the hotel room to my housemate as I walk through the door with him, making small talk, and then comment on what a good view he has, as if I haven’t seen the view of Hyde Park from every hotel room in the city already. He wants to chat to me a bit first and he’s pretentious as fuck, wants to parade how intelligent he is and size me up at the same time. Says something about my tan and asks how I cultivate it; I answer honestly that I don’t try but I swim in the ocean most days so inevitably I’m tanned.
‘Did you know that tans only came into fashion in the 1900s?’
‘Yeah.’ Of course I know that; it says in my ad I have a history degree. He probably thinks that’s just copy talk, though. The worst thing about rich clients is they’re always surprised when you’re smart, as if it’s shocking to have an articulate person doing physical labour. My working-class clients usually treat me more like an equal and aren’t shocked that I’m intelligent, whereas my rich clients always have this condescending attitude, like ‘how lucky are you to be around me and exposed to culture by me’. I guess if you’re working class you know jobs aren’t necessarily a summation of your abilities, you do what you need to do to get by, but if you’re upper middle class or upper class you’re more likely to think your job is a reflection of your innate capacity.
The worst thing about rich clients is they’re always surprised when you’re smart, as if it’s shocking to have an articulate person doing physical labour.
‘And do you know who it was that changed the prevailing fashion?’
‘Coco Chanel, when she accidentally got sunburnt on holidays and came back with a tan.’
‘Wow, you and I are going to get along! I didn’t expect someone like you at all.’
There’s the backhanded compliment I was waiting for; it always comes.
I ignore it and begin to kiss him, moving my hand down to his fly. Let’s get this moving; we can chat afterwards, if there’s time. Play with his cock, let him eat me out for a bit, move into 69 and put a condom on as he mauls my clit and I try not to jerk away, squeeze some lube on without him noticing, jump on in cowgirl, go reverse cowgirl for a bit, move to missionary and kiss him with feigned passion then hold him tight against me as if I want all of him inside me when really I just want to rest my head on his shoulder and think about other things, enthusiastically suggest doggy and he blows in that after a few minutes like they almost always do. I love when everything goes to plan. Now we can chat away.
‘You know, you’re so interesting to talk to, I would love to just meet up to pick your brain – we don’t need to do this other stuff.’
‘Yeah, we can do that for sure. I do offer social dates at a lower rate.’
‘Oh no, I didn’t mean that – I respect you too much for it to be mercenary. I feel like we could be friends; don’t you feel that?’
He respects me so much that he can’t respect that me spending time with him, regardless of what we do in that time, is work to me?! How do you wrap your head around that, Mr Penthouse Suite? Why do the richest cunts always want shit for free!
‘Yeah, I do feel that, but this is my job. It’s not just sexual labour that I do, it’s also emotional and intellectual and I have to be reimbursed for that. It doesn’t mean I don’t like you, but if I saw every client I liked for free I wouldn’t be able to pay my rent.’
‘I just struggle with the transactional nature, though. I feel it adds a performative element to it, and you’re so interesting you don’t need to be treated like a prostitute, and I don’t like feeling like a john.’
‘I don’t think of any of my clients as johns; it’s not a term I relate to. That’s used more by people who want to denigrate and homogenise clients, when I think there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with paying for sexual and emotional intimacy – it’s a basic human need.’
‘Yes, but you understand what I’m saying: I view you as more than that. I respect you as a person, I don’t see you as an object.’
Wow, I wish he did just see me as an object, because at least the guys who want a blow and go, as if I’m a pocket pussy, don’t try to wriggle out of paying me!
He’s now going into an absurd justification of wanting to spend time with me for free which I zone out of, but my ears prick up at a mention of Marlon Brando – how did he get dragged into this?
‘. . . said that we’re all partly acting in life, so he refused his Academy Award on the basis that he couldn’t accept an award for acting when we all act in our day to day.’ This guy scatters references like signposts proclaiming how cultured he is.
Mate, the only difference between a brothel worker and me is marketing. We’re quite literally the same person.
‘I thought he refused his Academy Award because of the treatment of Native Americans in the film industry,’ I say.
‘Well, yes, that too,’ he admits reluctantly.
It seems we’re at an impasse. I can see by the bedside clock that there’s only five minutes left, thank god, so I excuse myself to go shower and get the hell out of here. He talks to me while I do, making a few derogatory comments about brothel workers and how he would never go to one because they’re not of the same calibre as me. Wish he could’ve seen me on my knees in one two nights ago, giving a gobby to a cock that had already been inside me, all for $90, and coming up with a rash on my legs from the mouldy carpet. Mate, the only difference between a brothel worker and me is marketing. We’re quite literally the same person.
As I kiss him goodbye he invites me on an (unpaid) trip to his Paris apartment, when he’s next over there from his home in New York. (‘A girl like you needs to be taken to Paris – you’re too good for here.’)
I wait till the door closes before I roll my eyes. Babe, I’ve taken myself to Paris already!
This is an extract from Nothing But My Body by Tilly Lawless (Allen & Unwin), available now at your local independent bookseller.
