In My Skin (15 page)

Robbie said, ‘I feel bad that you do all the work. I’d like to give it a try.’ He wasn’t bisexual, but he thought he could suck a dick. So one of the pretty boys took him down to the park one night. I left him there, smoking cigarettes with the others under the palm trees, slouching on the grass; it was a strange feeling to walk away and off to my own block. Like a married couple setting off to their respective offices in the city. I did my business, and came back to get him hours later. He was squatting by the side of the road, slightly apart from the others. He looked upset.

‘How was it?’ I asked.

‘I freaked out,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I can do this.’

‘It’s okay,’ I said, and hugged him and took him home and we fixed up. We lay in each other’s arms in the dim light of the old lamp. He didn’t try it again. It was understood that I could take it; he couldn’t.

It didn’t seem so strange that I was working again. Now I wasn’t alone, now I had a proper room, this life seemed almost manageable.

We kept it up for a couple of months. The thought of my house in the country was there, but we hardly mentioned it, and there never seemed enough spare money or time. Every now and then I’d put money in the bank for Jason to pay our landlord in the country. It was a shame to leave the Gatwick when there was still some of the rent week under our belt, when Robbie’s dole day was coming up, when we still owed Jake money. The problem was that we couldn’t actually pay the rent here. We had to run up the stairs now, quickly passing the manager’s office, ignoring the notes left under the door. The deals from Jake were getting smaller as our credit worsened.

Down to our last ten dollars; down to our last ten cents. I jiggled the coin in my hand. It wasn’t the first time I’d been reduced to this. Robbie said, ‘Wait here,’ and I saw him approaching a stranger. He came back with a begged cigarette to where I was standing, abashed and fidgeting. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘We should buy a car.’

I looked at him in disbelief. Held up the little coin in my fingers.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘But a car would be good.’

I started walking fast. We were on our way to Jake’s, to wheedle some gear on tick.

‘You gotta have your dreams, Katie,’ I heard him say lightly behind me.

My court date came up. David said he’d defend me. ‘No make-up, wear your hair up, find a skirt, take your nose-ring out,’ he said. ‘Just sit there and let me handle it. You’ll be fine. They don’t want to break you, they just want to get you out of the way.’

It was terribly early in the day to appear looking respectable. The courtroom was a little sleek chamber, windowless, upholstered in smooth grey. In the back row of the public seats was a group of schoolgirls on an excursion. David directed me to sit next to him, in the front row. The magistrate peered at me briefly. He was an older man, with white hair and a pert expression, and a laptop on the desk in front of him.

‘Look remorseful,’ hissed David.

The police prosecutor, a solid woman in her blue and white uniform, conferred with David. He came back to me looking annoyed. ‘That bitch, she’s going to read out all the details of the charge. She doesn’t have to. It’s just spite.’

I sat there, prim and awkward with my too-clean hair falling in my eyes, as the prosecutor relentlessly enunciated every detail of how I would solicit my jobs, how much I charged, how I would use the back seat of a car for sex. I kept my knees together (‘Don’t cross your legs’) and my eyes on the floor. Behind me I was aware of all the schoolgirls listening.
I don’t care
, I told myself.

David made an articulate defence, describing how I’d been an academic success who had unfortunately fallen in with bad company and gone astray. My counsellor Daisy had written me a client assessment. David mentioned the rehab and the house in the country. The magistrate regarded me impassively. ‘I will say in closing, Your Honour, that my client has excellent chances for rehabilitation and recovery, and that a penalty will only jeopardise this.’

A small flurry of consultation with the prosecutor and tapping on the laptop. ‘Miss Holden,’ said the magistrate, and David nudged me to stand. ‘I understand your circumstances, and they cause this court much regret. But I will use you to make an example to this community.’ I cursed the schoolgirls. ‘And in order to dissuade you from falling further into a life which is clearly causing you damage, I will issue you with a good behaviour bond for six months. This means that if you are arrested again in this period, you may face severe consequences.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, and sat again.

David bought me lunch afterwards. I had to excuse myself for a moment while I retrieved my box of syringes and spoons from under a bush where I’d stashed them while I was in court.

‘It could have been worse,’ he commented, once I’d fixed up in the restaurant toilet and sat down to eat some salad. It was too early in my day for the heavy meals on offer.

‘It would have been a lot worse without you, mate,’ I said. He held my hand across the table, looked at me sadly.

‘That’s what friends do.’

His hand was warm. The tears behind my eyes were warm too.

This meant that working on the street was now even more fraught. That night I could barely bring myself to approach the cars that stopped for me, out of fear that the police would see.

I’d moved from one side of St Kilda to the other; there was a different tone to life now. Robbie introduced me to queuing up for food vouchers. I’d never considered charity before; that was for poor people, and I didn’t think I deserved it, or had the energy for it. But I watched Robbie plead emergencies, and walk out with an advance cheque for fifty dollars. It was a lot of work; crossing from one side of St Kilda to the other, gathering paperwork, cajoling rent receipts, getting medical certificates. But at the end of it was a needle full of juice.

All the time I felt more and more that I was one of those people on Fitzroy Street whose eye a nice person wouldn’t want to meet.

One night at the beginning of March I was picked up by a young, preppy guy who called himself Scott. Glasses, tidy shirt buttoned up to the collar, nice new car, snappy manner. He told me he wasn’t after a girl, but the brothel he worked for needed extra ladies for the night, and he could guarantee me a good night’s earnings. This guy looked clean and bright; he even said he could organise some smack for me if I wished. I said I’d come, just for a try, just for something different. Just another, more unusual, booking.

WE ARRIVED AT AN ELEGANT terrace house, on the other side of town. The brass plaque next to the front door said
Cherie’s
. Inside, Scott introduced me to Juanita, a middle-aged blonde woman behind a huge desk, and left me standing there. ‘Enjoy,’ he said as he walked out. The woman asked me my name; I told her it was Lucy.

‘Okay.’ She gave me an ambiguous half smile and went back to her magazine.

In the lounge room, beyond the entrance hall and the desk, was a black leather couch occupied by half a dozen girls, either asleep or hypnotised by the television on the opposite side, and a dozing man, slumped into the cushions. No one gave me more than a glance.

Along one wall ran a faux-marble bar, with a mirror and a sink and coffee cups behind; the lighting was low, so I could see a courtyard illuminated beyond the rear window. Facing the front desk was a staircase. The whole place was quiet, except for the buzz of the television turned down low.

The girls were all in sexy dresses or lingerie and high heels. I was in jeans and a tight singlet, my little backpack on my shoulder. I hovered awkwardly, ignored, until ten minutes later Juanita at the desk told me to go upstairs to room five. I knocked on a door marked ‘5’ in brass, and opened it. There was a young man lying naked on a bed. He was good looking, with black hair and blue eyes; he smiled at me, but didn’t say anything. The room was nice: a big bed, big mirror, expensive linen, soft lighting, and a toilet and shower hidden behind a partition. On the bedside table were tissues, and a small basket of condoms and packets of lube.

‘Hello?’ I said. I felt very grungy in this clean ambience. ‘I’m Lucy.’

‘Hi Lucy,’ he said. ‘Sean.’ He shifted lazily on the bed.

As I undressed Sean met my chatter with silent smiling irony; he just lay there and watched me as I got more and more unsettled, and then he yanked me up to sit on his cock.

He turned over for a massage after the sex, and I rubbed at his muscles for a bit; then he jumped up for a shower. I followed him, grateful for the chance to wash off the grime of sex. The dirty towels, what to do with them? I left them on the bed in a clump. A phone buzzed. ‘Answer it,’ he said. A voice on the other end said, ‘Time’s up. You can come down now.’

I grabbed my bag and we went down the creaky stairs. He went over to talk to Juanita and I sat on the edge of the couch. Later that night I noticed Sean whispering in clients’ ears, suggesting this girl or that, fetching orange juice or coffee for them. He was apparently some kind of host. I caught his eye; he winked, and said nothing. I guessed I’d been tested and approved. I went upstairs with the next client I was given, and ignored Sean leaning sardonically on the banister.

It was strange, to have a room. It was more formal here than the occasional hotel rooms where I’d taken my street mugs. Now I was conscious of my body under the lights. For the first time since I started working I wondered, with an old sense of chagrin, how I compared with other girls. I hadn’t shaved my legs but at least I could shower after each booking. And every single booking, I realised, involved sex. By the end of the night I was sore. But I had had the chance to ease myself into techniques I’d barely used in my working career so far: different positions, different expressions on my face. Already I felt more performative, more self-conscious, more aware of some responsibility as a worker.

The men, too, behaved differently. They had come not for a furtive blowjob in a parked car, but to experience something more than just intercourse. There was a stagey intimacy here. I had to be charming; I had to satisfy, in a new way. My nervousness became a desire to prove myself.

When the shift ended at four in the morning, Juanita counted out my earnings carefully. Out of habit I stuck the money down the side of my bra.

‘You can come back tonight if you want. Be here at seven,’ she said.

‘I might,’ I said, still wary of commitment.

I’d rung Robbie at the boarding house, to let him know where I was; I was looking forward to going home. I’d worked hard, and it was exhausting trying to guess at the protocol of the place; no one helped me out, and I’d had to fumble my way through with several bemused clients. The other women gave no apparent signs of resentment when I sat on the couch, and a couple had given me careless smiles. Mostly I’d been ignored. The money was better than I’d made on any night on the street, even after half of it was kept by the house; the warmth of the lounge and the relief of not looking out for the cops had lulled me. I decided to come back.

On my second night I was told to take over a booking after the client had complained about the girl he’d taken: I was instructed to make him happy. I walked into a darkened room. Only a little light came through the painted-out windows. There was a large bulk on the bed. I could smell alcohol and hear wheezing.

I walked over and lay down, saying, ‘Hi there, sweetie, I’m Lucy. Do you need some attention?’

Massive hot arms swept me in tightly. He was drunk, sweaty, disgruntled and still very horny. His tiny fat prick jutted from the corner formed by his belly and thighs. His flesh weighed on me, his stink choked me, his clumsy hands ripped at my hair.

‘Just wait a minute!—Just wait, sweetheart—’ I gasped as he missed his aim yet again and I wondered how long till I could get out. I fumbled for a condom. His hands were grasping at me, his stubble was scraping my face. I didn’t dare complain. I lay there and held on and moved my face fretfully from side to side, evading his, feeling the chafing of my skin under his dragging touch, the weight of him crushing me.

Inside, I felt myself become cool and determined.
I have to
manage
, I thought. I didn’t show how he was hurting me. This was part of the discipline I had learned.

The buzzer went and it was over.

I let myself get hurt a lot. I had been trained in the bookshop to be patient, forgiving, tolerant of customers, and I thought the same rules would apply here. I allowed men to maul me, leave finger-shaped bruises on my arms and hips, burns on my skin from stubble and harsh holds. I pressed my lips together and was polite. They were paying, it was my business to endure. They weren’t always brutish; sometimes it was awkwardness from inexperience, sometimes it was alcoholic clumsiness. I was strong, I could take it, it was a matter of pride. I needed the money; I wanted them to be satisfied.

I began to feel at home at Cherie’s, to have regular clients, to observe the workings of what I later discovered to be a brothel known for recruiting young women who’d never worked before and giving them access to heroin. It probably wasn’t in fact as evil a house as the unlicensed joint a few doors down, into which sullen Asian girls were whisked by minders and where, it was whispered, anything at all could be arranged. The girls there were prisoners. Cherie’s was more subtle. Half the guys who attended were normal clients who simply liked the atmosphere, and never knew what was going on. The other half arrived on the scent of girls in need of money who might be cajoled into dispensing with condoms.