In My Skin (17 page)

We collected the clean, harsh white bed-sheets from the man at the desk with pride, made the bed, and put our clothes away. With quiet hands I set out our belongings on the dresser: books, make-up, swabs and fits, some trinkets, and a handful of coins.

Every day, apart from a few afternoon hours of hanging out with Robbie and exploring the new neighbourhood, and the times I went with him on the expedition across town to score from Jake, my waking hours were spent in the brothel, still learning my way.

There appearance mattered in a way it hadn’t on the street. I borrowed some shoes from the lost-and-found cupboard and learned to teeter on high heels for the first time in my life. I was loaned a dress, too. Red velvet. I’d never worn such a thing. I smoothed the fabric over my curves and saw how the high heels pushed my body into a new, insolent posture. I smudged dark eye-shadow around my eyes and put on lipstick, and learned how not to leave it on during a booking and walk out with a cock-sucker’s ring of pale red around my mouth. I leaned in as I shook clients’ hands in the lounge so they could see my cleavage. I would need all the girly wiles I’d disdained my entire tomboy life if I were to make the money I needed. I compensated by not simpering or acting foolish, by using my wit, and by striding as boldly as I could in my heels.

I found I liked some of my clients. As with the mugs on the street, even in this sleazy place they weren’t all bad. Many were normal joes who came for the friendly girls. They seemed oblivious to the smacked-out zombies on the couch, the calculating glances of the hosts. Within a week, I had acquired regulars. One of them was a jovial bikie, who would give me a back rub and tell me how beautiful my breasts were. A giggling eastern European fellow booked me one night and kept me for three hours lying on my front while we discussed history and politics and he admired my arse, stroking my buttocks in rapture. An Indian student sat on the bed, trembling with nerves and need.

Other clients were coarser, come in search of girls who’d skip the condoms and offer cheap anal; they weren’t interested in looking us in the eye, except to assess our compliance. Their bookings were usually arranged with the management and, once a host had sidled up to one of us and whispered, we would go up to the room and find the gentleman already sprawled on the bed, greeting us with a blank stare. It wasn’t that they didn’t make conversation: they’d joke and chat. But there would be a heaviness in the air, in their humour. Their hands would hold us less forgivingly. The awareness of our need for money brought a tilt to their thoughtful smiles. Perhaps the joking was in the way of apology as we bent our heads to their naked cocks, took the cash they held out for the privilege of our other entrance, as we stared at the ceiling in determination and they grunted on top of us, mauling our skin.

Two weeks into my time in the brothel I was surprised to see a familiar face: a girl I knew from the streets, who also occasionally scored from Jake. She’d disappeared from the St Kilda scene and now I knew where to. She was striking: a delicate, almost antique face, framed with lush black hair and animated by her irrepressible spirit and smile. Esmerelda, she called herself. She leaped up to hug me, and from that time we were comrades in the house. It was a strange thing, to have a friend, a female friend again, and one from whom I didn’t have to obscure the realities of my life. We talked about working, and the street, and keeping our boyfriends’ habits. She paid for her partner’s drugs, but refused to buy him cigarettes, a particular scruple; she’d collect butts from ashtrays and bum cigarettes off clients, keeping a little tin full to take home. She convinced me that Cherie’s was the place to be and she loved Juanita, who seemed to dote on her.

She gave me advice. Don’t think you have to kiss them. It’s at least fifty for anal. Did you see the panic buttons in the rooms? Just next to the lightswitch. Bruno will come up if there’s trouble, though it might depend on who you’re with. Watch out for Brandy, she’s giving fantasies for free these days. Do you do twins? I’ll try to get you into one if anyone asks me—we can do a booking together! Make sure the clients behave themselves. When they’re behind you, always reach around and pretend you’re squeezing their cock tighter, or play with their balls—so you can feel if the condom’s still on. Never, ever, tell anyone, not even the other girls, your real name. Or where you live. Or how much you make.

I didn’t know her well and I had long since learned to be a little cautious with everyone, but she already knew my real name. Esmerelda and I sat on the couch every night, close together and holding hands like twelve-year-olds in a camp dorm, giggling and talking, and I think she was as glad of me as I was of her.

She told me she’d found a better dealer and drove me after the shift, just as dawn broke, to a carpark. A stout Vietnamese man in a tatty sports jacket stuck his head in through the driver’s side window and Esmerelda grinned at him.

‘Lucy, this is—what’s your name going to be today?’

‘Plum,’ he said, smiling like an idiot at the ridiculous name he’d invented. His face was merry and his accent thick. ‘Plum! I give you phone number. You can ring me. I come to you.’

The deal was good, much bigger than Jake’s, and when I tried it in the thin light of my room, Robbie sleepy and waiting, it was stronger. New place to work, new place to live, new dealer, better money; in one big heave, I’d finally left St Kilda behind.

Only three weeks after I started at Cherie’s, when I’d mastered the high heels on the stairs and the routine of slipping out to fix up in the dark alley around the corner, when I had my coterie of friends and was thinking I was set fair to stake some ground, Robbie’s ex-girlfriend Serena saw him in the street. She was a prostitute too.

‘She’s working where? That place’s fucked. Tell her to get out. No, I’m not kidding. She can go to the place I’ve just quit. Here’s the address. Tell her.’

I knew Serena had been working a lot longer than I had. Maybe she knew what she was talking about. Cherie’s did have some dubious customs. So I got up early the next afternoon and went round to a house called Mood Indigo.

How did one go about applying for a brothel job? I’d ended up at Cherie’s by accident. Did you need references? Did they want to know why you were leaving the last place?

The woman at the reception desk was bent over some paperwork and warbling away to the radio when I walked in from a long entrance passage. The building was like a bunker, without windows, and with low ceilings, but there were rose bushes out the front and a wrought-iron fence. A tidy place, similar in décor to Cherie’s: faux-marble counter, flowers in a vase, an Alma-Tadema nude on the wall in a gilt frame. Opposite the reception was a small nook with black leather couches. There were no girls sitting there, but I could hear the sound of women talking down a short passage opposite the desk.

‘Hi, I, um, wanted to ask if you had any jobs going,’ I said.

She looked at me. Dark hair, hyperthyroid eyes, a small mouth with a droll expression settled permanently in the lines around her lips. ‘Have you worked before?’

‘Yes. I’m working at the moment.’ I wasn’t sure if I should have said that. I was flustered with the awareness of having things to hide. Like the drugs. I hoped the light was bright enough to disguise my constricted pupils.

She came out from behind the counter and said, ‘I’m Nora. Let’s go have a chat in one of the rooms.’ She led me into a bedroom.

She asked me about having worked, and I managed to evade telling her where exactly; she didn’t ask. She said Mood Indigo was an ‘intro-house’. Ladies had their own lounge, and came out to meet clients individually. This sounded good; it was tiring being on display to men all the time. What services did I do? I said I did a good straight service but I was pretty open to learning.

Nora took me in to meet the girls. Their room was quite large, windowless, with a kitchenette in one corner, a television on a bracket, a large table in the middle, a make-up counter with a mirror and fluorescent lights, and a row of lockers along one wall. There were a couple of women sitting at the table, flicking through magazines and watching ‘Days of Our Lives’. At one end sat an older woman, small, with dry blonde hair and an encampment of magazines and rolled cigarettes spread out in front of her.

‘This is Lola, and that’s Briony and Camille,’ Nora said. They looked up and nodded. ‘This is—what’s your name?’

‘Lucy.’

‘Lucy, that’s okay, we don’t have any Lucys at the moment.’

The girls went back to their desultory entertainments. Nora took me through to the desk again.

‘So, what nights do you want to work?’

‘All of them.’ She looked up at me. There was something kind and shrewd in her eyes. I dropped mine to stare at the counter. There was a little gleaming smear of what looked like lube along the edge next to a bowl of mints.

‘Seven nights? All right. We’re a bit low on girls at the moment. You won’t get too tired?’

‘No, I like working hard. I like to concentrate.’

She filled in a roster-sheet. ‘Phone number?’

‘I—er—I don’t have one at the moment.’ In my mind I saw the stained carpet of the room Robbie and I shared at the boarding house. ‘I’m living in a hotel. I’ll bring in the desk number next time.’

‘Right…Well, can you start tonight?’

I hesitated. I really had come to enjoy my little corner of Cherie’s. I had friends there, and regulars. I knew the drill. But this place looked nice, and I was happy not to see any hosts around. Perhaps this was a step up. The receptionist was friendly, and that made me feel better than I expected.

‘Sure.’

So I ditched Cherie’s with a phone call, saying I had to take the night off—thinking,
hedge your bets
—and went home to score. At seven I put on my make-up and got on the tram back to Mood Indigo.

When I arrived I realised that I had no dress or shoes. The costume I’d worn at Cherie’s had almost come to feel like my own, but now it remained in the locker there for another girl to wear.

There were clients walking out of rooms with rumpled girls wearing dressing-gowns, and a change-of-shift stir as women in street clothes came out to get their pay. Nora introduced me to the other receptionist, Bea, an older woman with crimson lipstick on a tiny bow mouth, a halo of carefully frizzed red curls and thick eyeliner around her enormous eyes. I was blushing as I explained my lack of costume to Bea.

‘Not to worry, sweetpea, we’ve got some spares. But you might want to get some of your own pretty soon.’

In a locker I found French maid and policewoman costumes and children’s plastic doctors’ kits, and a long black dress and too-large high heels, which I strapped on. The other women in the lounge watched me as I slunk into a chair and gazed at the television.

I’d already learned that there’s a kind of quiet bristling when a new girl starts: some women figure that more girls mean more custom; others see only new competition. And new girls usually do well. I needed to be successful—successful enough for four tastes a night at the very least—but I didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes. The girls’ lounge was too small for enmity, and I didn’t like not being liked. I’d already discovered that the company of the other women provided a warmth I’d been missing for a long time.

Before I could do any intros, however, it seemed I needed to be checked. As it happened, that night there was a doctor in the house—she came once a month to check all the girls for sexual health. I’d never heard of this at Cherie’s, but Bea told me it was a legal requirement. I was shown into the little room where Nora had interviewed me, and a pleasant-faced young woman said hello. She asked me to lie on the bed and she gave me a physical examination, then asked the usual questions about safe sexual behaviour. I told her about my permanent cystitis and she wrote me a script.

‘When’s the last time you got your period?’ she asked.

‘I haven’t had it for about two years,’ I said. A quick glance at me. ‘My last doctor said it’s because my body knows it’s not a good time to be fertile.’ It was also because of the heroin.

‘Stress,’ the woman agreed. ‘This can be a stressful job.’

She wrote out a certificate with my working name on it and told me to give it to reception. I was now cleared to work. ‘You can ask me anything,’ she added. ‘This is a proper medical examination, just like at the surgery. Speaking of which, do you have your Medicare card on you please?’

I fetched it from my locker and gave it to her. It felt strange to sign my real name on the slip. She handed me the receipt. ‘How are you finding the place?’ she asked.

‘You’re the first person to see my vagina here, so I can’t tell you yet,’ I said.

She laughed. ‘I reckon you’ll be fine. I visit quite a few places, and this one’s good.’

Back in the lounge things had settled down and everyone was watching the evening news.

‘Girls! Intro!’ Bea trilled from the door. We all stood and shook out our hair.

The routine wasn’t so different after all. We took turns to stride in a suddenly confident lope to meet the man, who was tucked around the corner in the little nook. In the corridor as we lined up to wait our turn a couple of women asked my name. Carmen, an elfin-looking woman in an ornate bustiere and flowing skirts, told me I should make myself at home. A tall blonde with lanky limbs and emerald eyeshadow made dry jokes and muttered that she was Valentina. The others ignored my tentative smiles. I was glad, in a way, not to get the first booking. I got the second.