Mattress Actress (20 page)

By now I had finished an entire bottle of wine all by myself and was still thirsty. I was sobbing from guilt and fear. My eyes stung and my chest heaved. Austin was mute. He opened another bottle and gently refilled my glass. Under other circumstances I would have been drunk as a skunk but unfortunately I felt stone cold sober. My whole body was shaking for I knew the worst was yet to come. I settled in for the next onslaught of hard reality.

‘Annika, are you a prostitute?’

I didn’t think it was possible for me to cry any harder than I already was, but I did. I burst into uncontrollable tears. ‘Yes, yes, I am.’

To my surprise, Austin moved to sit beside me. He held my hand.

‘Do you hate me? I don’t blame you if you do. Please know that I am a good person. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, I just wanted you to get to know me first.’

‘I don’t hate you, I love you.’

We cuddled for the longest time. I cried for hours even after we finished talking, even after we made love, even after he had fallen asleep. Had I found pure acceptance? Had I found love again? Had I found someone who could care for me as Ben had? I know I thought I had. Within three months we were living together, which posed a problem: I had nine months remaining on my lease.

Upon moving in with Austin, I now had two homes. One opposite Parliament House that still had nine months remaining on the lease, which I only needed weekdays between nine and five, and my home on the beach with Austin. I really only needed one bedroom for my antics, so I decided to rent out the other rooms on a daily basis. I advertised the rooms at $50 per shift—day shift and night shift—and a share in receptionist charges. Renting rooms to other working girls fell within the blurry rule of the law. I was not really living off their earnings, because I was not demanding a cut of their wages. Basically a very semantic technicality.

There was no shortage of applicants, but I had to be selective, I didn’t want my clients to hear my address and say, ‘Oh no, I went there once and was greeted by a beast with breasts, no thanks, I think I’ll pass.’ I eventually decided on three girls who were very attractive but only did rub-n-tug.

Eliza was an amateur body builder. She needed the money because she had put her new breasts on her credit card and was ten grand in the hole. Louise was a single mother who had the body of any supermodel. Little did I know that she had a long and dark history with heroin. Then there was Stephanie, who was also a single mother, and had just recently regained custody of her son. She had a body to die for and breasts to pay for, but was not overly striking. Stephanie was the fussiest sex worker I’d ever met. She refused any client she didn’t like the look of and needless to say, she made the least of all of us. She’d also try to insist that because she had made no money that day, she should be excused from any or all charges. It got to the point where she owed me $300 and I had to dismiss her.

Stephanie was replaced by Donna, who described herself as twenty-one years old, tall, a natural blonde, and busty. So you can imagine my surprise when a scrawny 35-year-old brunette knocked on my door applying to rent the room. I gave her a crack, but she soon went the same way as Stephanie.

Advertising is a funny business. There were so many coded messages in the adverts you saw in the paper and so many tricks that agencies pull on clients to rip them off. For example, any girl advertising a Greek name—Athena, Eleni—meant that she offered anal. If the ad read that the girl was eighteen years old, it really meant she was underage. A catchphrase like ‘naturally stunning’ meant that she offered a natural service, and usually she was a junkie.

The ads in the paper made it sound like everyone was potentially a Miss Universe contestant, but the reality was that very few of these girls existed. A punter would answer an ad for Tracey, a Barbie lookalike, be quoted a price and given an address and a time. Upon arrival, he would be told that he just missed her: ‘Another client just walked in and booked her out for the next two hours, so sorry.’ By way of compensation for his long journey he would be offered any of the other three girls on the couch for a cheaper rate. He would be taken to another room and be introduced to Fat, Ugly and Menopausal. The agencies figured that he wouldn’t want to waste a trip. You wouldn’t believe the amount of times I had seen girls advertise, ‘Luscious Such-n-Such, Former Model,’ and think to myself, Was she a hand model?

Loads of girls came and went from my place. But Eliza and Louise were the stayers. They worked hard and made a killing, but come Monday they were always penniless again.

Everything ran smoothly with the exception of the occasional wait for a shower. It was a regular conveyor belt of men.

Everyone always asks me, ‘What’s the biggest you have ever seen?’ My answer is never what they expect to hear. I recall this man arriving at our door one summer day. He must have been ninety-nine not out. He was shaped like a question mark, all hunched over, wearing the cutest little old man hat, which he immediately removed when I greeted him at the door. I invited him upstairs to my room and it must have taken him five minutes just to shuffle over to the staircase. As he reached the bottom of the staircase, the doorbell buzzed again with Louise’s client. She passed us making our way up the stairs. Every stair was tackled with herculean effort, at the slowest pace imaginable. I almost wanted to clap with every new step. About halfway up I saw Louise had finished her half-hour booking and was taking her client into the shower. My heart beats dollars; I was thinking to myself that in this last thirty minutes I could have taken $180. I was so pissed off but remained patient, polite and courteous, to this man who’d probably fought in Gallipoli he was so old. Louise passed us with her client, escorting him out while Eliza passed us with her next client.

All in all, it took us forty-five minutes to get up those stairs. I was thinking, This bastard better make it worth my time. Sure enough, he paid me the hourly rate, which I assumed would last about fifteen minutes, as he had already just about exerted himself to death on the staircase. By the time I had bounded down the stairs with my cash, informed the receptionist what time to knock for me and returned to the bedroom, the old man was already undressed.

Let’s refer to him now as Tripod. My first thought was, That thing won’t fit in a condom, I am going to have to Gladwrap it! Then I reassured myself that all would be OK, because at his age the likelihood of him being able to get an erection was just about nil. As I started to undress in front of him, I realised just how wrong I was—that thing was rising like the Goodyear blimp. I managed to stretch the extra large condom on to within a millimetre of its life. Tripod had turned into Benjamin Button, old on the outside but with the exuberance of a fifteen-year-old. I was biting that pillow for dear life!

When he asked me to get on top, I thought to myself, this must be exactly as Edmund Hillary felt when he had reached the peak of Everest. Far from the anticipated fifteen minutes, Tripod lasted a gargantuan thirty-five minutes. I showered, dressed, left him at the top of the stairs and took the rest of the day off. I was spent.

From then on, any man who rang up on the phone inquiring if I could handle big dicks, my response was always the same: ‘I charge per erect inch!’

Around 1995, I succumbed to the pressure and invested in a laptop. I wasn’t really sure it served any other use than sending really fast letters that didn’t require stamps. It didn’t take me long to see and hear all about personal web pages for promoting your products online. Well, I had a product and even better, I had half-a-dozen computer-savvy clients to help me set it all up. I know for a fact I was the first girl to promote a web page in the paper. Now there could be no lying or even stretching the truth about your description: ‘Hi, could you describe yourself for me?’ ‘No need, here’s my website address, have a look and call back to confirm a time.’

The website was an instant hit. At the time I still shared my home and did rent rooms to a couple of other working girls. We all charged the same rate, were on par physically, yet I was kicking their arses. Of course I anticipated backlash from it, and I expected my discreet identity to be torn to shreds, but at the time everyone already knew what I did, so who was I really hiding from? A part of me thought it would really only be potential clients who would see the website, because you had to call first to get its address. However, deep down I knew it had the potential for ruin. I could have obscured my face, but I chose not to.

Another tool we used was to keep a record of all clients in the phone so that when we were having quiet days we could do a big call round: ‘Long time no see, give yourself a break and stop in for a bit?’ That usually aroused five or six clients a day. All regulars were saved as John Mechanic, John Dentist, Tom Chemist, etc. But just like Santa we also had a naughty list: Barterman1 was a client who knew the prices but arrives $50 short and full of excuses. Alwayslate4 speaks for itself. If clients were rude on the phone they were recorded as rude1, rude2, etc. That way if rude5 called we knew not to even bother answering the phone, same when Heavybreather6 showed up on the caller ID. If a client made an appointment and didn’t show up, his number was saved as NoShow1, NoShow2, etc. Clients tend to forget which ads or phone numbers they have phoned over a space of time. But with this system, we knew a little about who was calling, so when any of the Noshows called we relished our chance to waste a bit of his time for a change.

‘Hi I’m ringing about your ad in the paper, can you give me a description?’

I’d describe any Miss Universe type to get them hooked.

‘What services do you offer?’

‘Any and all of them!’ Once again, an answer that they would never hear from Cleo’s lips.

‘So do you charge extra for Greek or golden showers?’

‘No, am I supposed to? I’m really new to all of this.’

‘Do you offer natural French?’

‘Why, I don’t think you can catch any diseases in the mouth. Can you?’

‘Very unlikely, sweetheart! Don’t worry I won’t come in your mouth anyway. So what are your rates?’

My biggest problem with this little charade was trying not to laugh. All of the girls listening had to hold pillows over their mouths so that this numbskull couldn’t hear them in fits of hysterics.

‘Well, I have a $160 rent bill due today, would that be too expensive?’

‘How about we make it $160 an hour then, give or take? What’s your address?’

Now because my objective is to waste as much of this prick’s time as possible, I first had to establish where he was so that I could make up my fictitious address. ‘Where are you calling from?’

‘I’m leaving home now in Wanneroo.’ Which, if you don’t know Perth, is miles up north.

‘Oh, you’re in Wanneroo.’ All the girls would quickly yell out faraway suburbs, while one of them quickly searched online for ‘Kwinana Police Station + address’ which is a very southern suburb about an hours’ drive for NoShow.

‘OK do you have a pen? My address is 25 Sulphur Road, Kwinana. I really look forward to meeting you, see you soon.’

I know it’s nasty but sometimes a girl had to get her own back.

Every now and then some random gent would just turn up saying his friend had given him the address and he ‘just wanted a look’. Some would turn up and start bartering: ‘Oh but I’m a poor student. Bit cheaper please?’

This really got my back up: ‘This isn’t Bali, my friend, and I’m not a fucking T-shirt. I tell you what, have you got $20 on you?’ The client would look at me slightly bemused and quickly fork over $20. I would pop that bill straight in my bra and then tell him to piss off. ‘That’s my inconvenience fee. You knew the prices, you agreed to pay, you have wasted my time, which is very valuable, now get lost!’ In no time flat the balance would come flying out of his back pocket.

‘You’re short $20.’

‘I already gave you $200.’

‘Yes, my service includes French, mutual French and sex for $200, an ear fuck is $20 extra.’

In my time I heard so many cockamamie justifications for infidelity, including: ‘It was just a head job, it’s not as if I’m fucking anyone.’ We call that excuse the Presidential loophole. Or ‘Can I just get a massage and hand relief, because I’m trying to remain faithful while my wife is away.’ But my very favourite is the excuse when clients claim that they are visiting me to ‘give the missus a break’. This excuse is generally reserved for pregnant wives or post-pregnancy wives. My home was right near the maternity hospital, and I am embarrassed to admit how many clients would tell me that they were in the area visiting the wife after the delivery and thought that they would pop in for a quickie. Made my skin crawl, but Cleo just took the cash and smiled.

I would occasionally—actually it was a little too often—run in to clients while I was out socialising. Most of the time it was a matter of pretending you didn’t know each other or—because you were never sure that they had given you a real name – a very generic hello there, nice seeing you again, you’re looking well, must catch up soon. Generally it was a polite interaction, but as always there is an exception to every rule. One Friday night I was out with a girlfriend at the local, when out of the corner of my eye I spotted a client who was drinking with another man I didn’t know. I smiled and waved politely, which apparently in drunk man language means please come over and insult me in a crowded bar.

‘My mate says you’re on the game!’

It’s a good thing that my girlfriend was well versed in my occupation or I would have kneed this guy in the nutsack. I just stared at him.

‘Well, well,’ he said.

‘So what else did your friend say about me?’

‘Nothing, just that you were on the game.’

‘It’s a good thing I have a better memory for details than your friend over there. Here’s what I remember: I do know your friend, he told me his name was Justin, and he was a barrister who worked in the city. I also clearly recall he booked me for half an hour, he is uncircumcised, sort of looks like a sausage with plenty of overhang, it was about three to four inches standing fully proud and exposing a mole at the base of his dick. He suffers from rapid ejaculation so he arrived at and left my home in under ten minutes, and that includes his shower. Normally I believe in discretion, and keeping clients’ secrets, but if he feels the right to expose me, then I am happy to reciprocate.’ Of course, not all of this was true.

‘Oi, Justin, show us ya mole on ya dick!’

Justin was one of those people who suffer from red blotches on their face and neck when they are embarrassed.

Reverse that scenario: I would never dream of walking up to a guy and saying, ‘Hey, you know your mate there, he likes to visit pros,’ but somehow because I was perceived as being lower on the hierarchy of moral acceptability and existence, it was perfectly permissible to approach and insult me in public.