In My Skin (12 page)

Almost all my interaction now was with my clients and fellow users. Every few weeks or so there would be a brief visit to my parents, for dinner. I’d walk in and the familiar scent of the house was disconcerting. Fresh, chilled air evaporating off my clothes as I warmed up.

They didn’t ask what I was doing for money, but I thought they must have guessed. ‘No, I didn’t hear the rain this morning,’ I said. ‘I sleep all day.’

‘Do you need a loan?’ asked my mother.

‘I’ve got money.’ I didn’t want to say it; I couldn’t bear to think of them knowing I was out there in the wet, cold streets not so far from this house; I couldn’t imagine how they felt, if they already knew. But I was weary of lying to their faces. It was easier to keep quiet.

‘Take a fifty,’ said my dad, and I took it.

I couldn’t stay long after dinner; there was business to do on the street. Leaving the house and slamming back into the reality of my life was the worst part. My parents watched me thoughtfully while I was with them, and we made little jokes, but they didn’t say much. It was an awful kind of comfort to see them and sit cosily in the safety there, and yet I would be eager to leave too.

I’d see Jake and Vicki, to score. They had a lounge room. And they were friends. Occasionally I’d bump into someone I knew from rehab a year ago; we’d shoot the shit, taking the rugged stances of those who knew something secret, and hear the gossip about how other ex-residents were doing. It felt as if there were a little community of us, eddying all over town. We’d laugh and joke in slang. But I was wary; I hesitated before I trusted anyone to take my money and score on my behalf. A person mild and generous in the kitchen of the rehab centre might be a dog or a thug outside and desperate for drugs. Sometimes we’d fix up together, and I was startled by offers to shout me a taste. There was generosity, too. When I’d see burly jailheads I knew hanging out on boardinghouse steps with their cronies, there was a pride in strolling up and getting a pleased grin in response. I did think I’d made something in this harsh life. I wasn’t no one.

I had regulars, if they could catch me. Some of them were bland and straight, others were more eccentric. Fred, in his fifties, dusty and worn, liked to massage my feet, be masturbated with both feet while I twisted his nipples as hard as I could—a difficult balancing act—then lick my feet clean and give them another rub before he tenderly put my socks back on. He could only pay me twenty dollars. I chided him every time; he’d say,
I’m sorry, it’s all I
have
. Barry was white-haired, genial, and he liked to cuddle and fuck in the front seat of his tiny Morris. George drove me to his empty deluxe office and fucked me front and back after I gave him head, kneeling on the thick carpet in the dark, listening to the idle computers hum. Abdul gave me a lift home one night and asked me to be his secretary. Willis, with scratchy wild hair, parked in the grey concrete bunker of an apartment carpark and said,
Tell me you’re a
slut, tell me to fuck you
. ‘I’m a slut, fuck me, fuck me,’ I droned. I wondered what the students in my feminist university classes would have thought.

The sight of a familiar car, the knowledge that a man had come looking for me, the warm greeting, was almost like comfort. We would joke and chat; the drive to and from the parking place was companionable. They were on the sly, too. There was a friendly complicity to the business. Most of them were nice guys, after all, even if they cheated me. I chose to overlook that disrespect; at least they remembered me. With my face always in the shadows, that meant something.

Every night with my clients we searched for discreet places to park. There were many lanes in the residential streets around; I couldn’t understand why they weren’t more often used by the other girls. Perhaps they were too obvious, or perhaps they were well-known by the police. No one ever busted me, but as I bent over a mug’s lap I would have an ear out for a neighbour squawking protests, or the approach of a car that would mean someone had called the cops. Some nights my instincts told me to direct the driver further away: down to Albert Park Lake, or into side streets in the next suburb. Now that spring was coming the leaves rustled above the car and we undressed in the flickering light of the streetlamps. Cul-de-sacs, canal-sides, back lanes, the parking spots of empty office blocks. It could take a long time to settle on a place, but we always found one. Time was running past, my system was draining out the drugs; one job could take an hour by the time we went and returned.

Very occasionally a mug would pay for a hotel for the night. They didn’t want a furtive screw in a parked car. I was embarrassed, when they stopped their cars and asked if I had somewhere, not to be able to offer them a room. It felt unprofessional. We drove around St Kilda, to the usual dives, and sometimes further out. Concierges were suspicious, even when the man went in alone to ask. But I eventually learned which hotels would rent out by the hour. There was one down by the sea, where a grizzled old man in Room 23 would hand you a key and take twenty bucks off you for fifteen minutes. When I walked into the shabby little cell there was the scent of semen in the air, a used condom on the floor. I only rented that place if the mug said he didn’t mind slumming it. I thought sometimes the men liked the glamour of a little rough trade.

Another time a moustachioed family man took a room in a nicer place. He said he’d booked it for the whole night so I could stay on there after we’d finished. We did the job, enjoying the large bed and the bathroom and the privacy. He left before midnight; I had enough money from this to score for the night and so I did, and returned with chocolate and juice to spend the evening indoors, watching television, the street girls passing the building outside.

When I woke in the morning it was to the manager opening the door. ‘Who the fuck are you?’ he asked as I raised my blurry head. ‘The guy who took this room said he’d be gone by five and it’s past seven. I’ve got people coming in half an hour.’

His contempt was obvious, although I knew a few working girls lived in the hotel. Stumbling half-naked out of bed I groped for my clothes on the floor. ‘I know what you are,’ he said. I dressed and gathered my bag and reeled off into the morning without even putting my contact lenses in. St Kilda was different in the daylight. I shrank from the gazes of its ordinary residents. I took a tram ride, my eyes closed, straight to David’s and back to sleep until it was dark again and time to go back to work.

One night a truck driver picked me up. The truck lurched to a halt beside me; it was a huge bound to get up into the cab. I perched there on the grubby vinyl seat and checked him out. He asked if I’d go with him to a hotel for a few hours. He’d pay me well. I have to score first, I told him. He was a truckie, he wasn’t shocked. He drove his roaring truck up the quiet, narrow side street to Jake’s, gave me some money in advance and kept my silver rings as collateral while I rushed in to buy, terrified that I’d take too long and come out to find my beloved rings and my mug gone. The truckie, Greg, was thickset and coarse, with dirty hair and oil-grimed fingers. We drove and drove, along a dark freeway, and stopped at a motel. He took a bag with him.

Inside the room, he settled himself in. First I fixed up. ‘Try this, go on,’ he said, and after I’d injected myself he laid out a line of white powder. I said no, but he insisted, and I clumsily snorted it up. It was speed; I was immediately giddy with restlessness and a prickly joy. The two drugs in my system—one slow, one fast—clashed and fizzed. When I got out of the shower he dribbled baby oil all over me. There was a spa, too, and after we’d mucked up the bed—his thick, rough body delightful on my intoxicated skin—we soaked in warm water and talked.

‘You know what it’s called when a truckie takes off all the gears? When he’s at the top of a hill? You’ll like this,’ he said. ‘You get to the top of a big long hill, and you just take all the gears off, and down you go. The most amazing fucking feeling. All the weight of the rig behind you. It’s called “angel gear”. Like an angel, right? Fucking
flying
.’

‘Mate, that sounds like my fucking life,’ I said.

We spent the whole night playing, snorting speed, giggling sex-talk. He opened his bag and brought out handcuffs; I figured he was okay, and I let him put them on. He fucked me, as I squirmed theatrically and gave him coy looks over my shoulder, and then to my relief he took them off. I enjoyed the seedy idiocy of this scene. At dawn he took me back to David’s and I went to bed feeling like I’d had some kind of stupid adventure.

I found myself in crazy situations, the type to make me laugh in disbelief at how far I’d come. Naked but for socks, bent over the lap of an equally naked fat man on a park bench late at night. Both Doug and I were alternating chuckles with low sexy murmurs. He would smack my bottom until it glowed with heat in the cold air, a sensation I’d never had before. ‘Is that okay? I don’t want to hurt you,’ he’d murmur, and I’d say, ‘I can take it harder. Come on, harder!’ and he’d grin, and I’d bend further over, loving the ridiculous porniness of it all as he whacked at me.
Slap, slap
. When a man passed us with a takeaway pizza box in his hand we just stared back at his astonishment and chortled as he walked quickly on. Freezing cold, our breath coming in white clouds, our flesh pearl-pale under the lights.

Doug would drop me off and hand me an extra five dollars. ‘For a hot coffee,’ he’d say.

Other times I convinced men to jump park fences. ‘Just pretend you’re a horny teenager,’ I’d cajole when we were desperately searching for somewhere to fuck and they had no car. I’d lead them up to a high wrought-iron fence, and we’d scramble over and find ourselves in a huge, silent dark space. Possums hissed in the trees and we crunched over gravel paths to the rose garden. In the pagoda in the centre of the formal rose beds I’d take down the man’s pants. He’d be smiling, startled at finding himself in this setting. The odd sensation of skin naked to the outside air. All around us would be the scent of trees. Above us the sky pink with light.

And once there was a storm. My mug, a loud, bragging type, insisted we lie on the grass. The wind rose, cool, and the grass underneath pricked my naked skin. The man’s face above me was ugly, but there was a din of thunder, and the dazzle of lightning; raindrops fell in my open mouth. I lay there, feeling wild, feeling something at last.

A few guys were even attractive to me. I discovered that it was possible to be aroused by a mug—by his stubbled cheeks, the tautness of his belly, by the fervent look in his eyes. There was one young man, who turned up at rare intervals; he’d drive us down to the beach-side carparks and with the blackness of the sea before us we’d kiss, passionately, and he’d look at me with dark, intense eyes. He was quiet; his moans when I made him come were rewarding. I wondered, sometimes, as he took me back to the block, if I might have a crush on him. It was almost like being with a real man.

I wondered if I’d ever have sex for my own sake again. Whether anyone would want me after this. How could I go back to innocence? It wasn’t worth thinking about.

A mug dropped me off in the city one night just past midnight. Turning a corner into the main drag, steering past all the young men loitering around on the footpath, I ran into James.

‘Hi!’ I said. He looked just as he always did: thin, dressed like a ten-year-old boy, and very startled. It had been a long time since I’d seen him.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’

We started walking together. He was glancing sideways at me, quickly and cautiously. I could see he was nervous. ‘I—I’m working, now, James,’ I said. ‘On the street.’

His footsteps continued. I didn’t dare look at him. ‘It’s not so bad! I’m pretty good at it—’ I was smiling, probably strangely. ‘I know you never wanted me to do it when we were together, but— anyway,’ I said. ‘How are you? How’s life clean?’

‘It’s good.’

‘I tried—but I wasn’t ready. I’m getting by.’ I hoped he saw my smile.

The night was full of well-dressed people going out to expensive entertainment. We jostled our way through the crowds. James relaxed, talked about his new sharehouse, his job. He told me Jodie and Sam, from the old days, had got clean. I gabbled on, about staying at David’s and how tough I was now, how independent. I told him about Jake, and the girls on the street, and a boy I saw nearly overdose at Jake’s—

‘My God,’ said James. ‘Is that what your life is like now?’

My smile skewed on my face. The expression on his was aghast. Then he was veering away into the doorway of a club.

‘I’m going in here,’ he said, already metres away. ‘Stay safe, Kate. I miss you.’

There was still time for thinking. I wrote my diary obsessively. Some things haunted me. I wrote a card to my employers at the bookshop.
I’ll never forgive myself
, I wrote.
I just wanted you to know
. Barely anything made me feel shame anymore. But the hot stench of that remorse was sickening. Nothing would rinse it from me.

And I got a tattoo. It had to be something to give me strength. Something to mark my body which would remind, and recall me. I knew where I wanted it: in the hollow between the round of my shoulder and my collarbone, a tender, sheltered place. I told the tattooist I wanted a white rose. I’d always liked white flowers; to me, in my dreamy adolescence, they’d represented something lovely and pure. Now I marked myself with this symbol to remind myself of that naïve girl with her head full of fantasies. The flower was just a bud.