Desperate Measures

by Stephen Leather

  Chapter 16

  Monday March 29. There was a new girl at the Sloane Square flat today. Her name is Bee and she says she’s from Thailand but I think she’s from Laos. She’s very short and dark-skinned but quite pretty. I think she’s about my age. Sandra has paid for Bee’s contract. Bee is her real name, she says, but she’s working under the name of Belinda. I hadn’t heard about the contract system before but Nancy explained it to me when I went home with her. Some girls come to the UK the way I did. They go to the British Embassy in Bangkok and get a student visa or a tourist visa. It’s not difficult so long as you own property or have money in the bank or if you have someone like Kung to sponsor you. But if you can’t get a visa by the normal route, there are agencies who can do it for you. The going rate, Nancy said, is £6,000. If a girl in Bangkok has £6,000 she can buy a visa and a ticket to London. But £6,000 is a lot of money. Most people in Thailand would have to work for more than a year to earn £6,000. So if a girl doesn’t have £6,000, she takes out a contract. Someone else pays the £6,000 for her and then when she gets to England she has to pay back £18,000. That’s what Sandra is doing. She paid the £6,000 for Bee to get to London, now Bee has to pay back Sandra £18,000. That means that Sandra will make a profit of £12,000. I know that £18,000 is a lot of money but if Bee works really hard she might be able to pay it back in two months and she has a one-year visa so she will have plenty of time to earn money for herself. But it made me realise how lucky I am. I only have to pay back Oliver the money for my flat.

  Bee started work on Tuesday but she had £700 for Oliver, the same as me. That means she had earned £2,100 and got to keep £1,400. I think she gave most of that to Sandra. Sandra has also loaned Bee the money for her flat in South Kensington, not far from her own flat. It seems like a good way of making money. I think once I’ve paid Oliver what I owe him that I might buy a contract and bring in a girl from Thailand. I could save £6,000 in a month or so and if I invest that in a girl’s contract then I’ll make a profit of £12,000.

  I paid Oliver £800 towards what I owed him, which means that now I owe him just £2,550. Two or three more weeks and hopefully I won’t owe him anything.

  When I got back to Nancy’s flat I asked her if she liked working with other girls. She said it was easy because you only had to do half the work. Most customers come very quickly when they are with two girls and sometimes you don’t even have to have sex with them. I asked her if she was shy when she saw another girl naked and she said that she was the first few times but that it’s just work so it doesn’t matter. It’s a job and if two people do a job it’s easier than when one person does a job. She said that it was great working with Candy because Candy really liked sex so she would let the customer do whatever they wanted.. That meant that when Nancy worked with Candy, Nancy had to hardly do anything at all. I asked Nancy how many of the girls she had worked with. She said she had worked with Candy and Sandra several times and with Vicky once. On the website there were photographs of her with Candy. They were lesbian pictures, kissing and holding each other. She said that most of the time in the studio she was laughing until the photographer spoke sternly to her. She said that if I wanted she would work with me and show me what it was like. I laughed but I thought that maybe I might try it. I have to do something to make more money. So far I haven’t been able to send any money back to Thailand because I am giving most of my profit to Oliver and the rest of the money goes to pay my expenses.

  Chapter 17

  Wednesday April 1. Yesterday was a quiet day. It was raining very hard so I think customers weren’t thinking about sex. Maybe they are worried about Covid and don’t want to go out. They said on the TV that 3,850 people had died of the virus in England. Almost four thousand. I don’t understand why so many people are dying. Nobody is dying of Covid in Thailand now. Nancy phoned me at nine o’clock and said that she had no customers so why didn’t I go to her flat because she and Candy were cooking Thai food. I had some cooked prawns and some strawberries that I’d bought from the Tesco supermarket so I took them. There was a queue to get into the supermarket and there was a big man in a fluorescent jacket telling people that they had to wear a mask and stay six feet away from everyone else. They had run out of toilet rolls, but that is okay because I still have some.

  Candy said she was having her period so she wasn’t working. Some girls carry on working when they have their period but Candy said she got stomach cramps and sex made them worse so she always took three days off when she had her period, sometimes four. I am lucky because my period only comes for two days and it doesn’t hurt much.

  Candy is quite thin and tall and really the first time I saw her I thought she might be a ladyboy. Her voice is quite deep and she has a square jaw but she’s definitely a girl and I think farangs find her very sexy. She has really nice eyes and long eyelashes. She cooked Pad Thai and added my prawns, and Nancy had some chicken that she fried with chillies. Candy drank whiskey with her food and Nancy had a bottle of Heineken beer.

  Candy was telling us about the faces she made when she wanted to make a customer feel sexy. She showed us, it was so funny. She sort of lifts her chin and half opens her mouth and half closes her eyes. She’s right, it does look really sexy. She says that she makes a sexy face and then takes off her bra slowly and that makes a customer so horny that they come really quickly. I practised in front of the mirror and she showed me how to get my mouth just right. I kept laughing but it worked, I did look really sexy.

  After we had eaten our food Nancy got a pack of cards and said she wanted to play. I said I didn’t want to gamble but she said we could just play for spare change. She said we could play for a pound a game. Candy wanted to play and she said that two wasn’t much fun and that when three played it was a better game so I said okay, I’d try. The game was quite easy. It is called Pok Gow. Someone is the dealer, and you take turns for who is the dealer. Every player gets two cards. But if you want to play twice, you can. And there are two more cards in the middle that you can also bet on, but you have to decide if you want to bet after you have seen the first card. If you want to bet on it then you put your money in the middle.

  Farangs play a game like it called Blackjack or Twenty-One but Pok Gow is more fun because there are more ways of winning. You need to get nine to win. An ace counts as one, and a king, queen and jack do not count. If someone’s cards add up to eight or nine straight away, they have to show them. If their hand is better than the dealer’s hand, they double their money. If the two cards are in the same suit then they get three times their money.

  If no one has an eight or nine with their two cards, you can choose if you want another card or not. If you take another card, and your cards add up to more than the dealer’s cards, then you win double your stake. If all the cards are the same suit, then you get three times your stake. If the cards make a run, like a six, seven and an eight, then you get three times your stake. If you have three picture cards, then you win three times your stake. If you get a run of three cards and they are in the same suit, then you win five times your stake. But if the dealer has a run of cards in the same suit then everybody loses five times their stake! It sounds complicated and it was quite difficult at first but after a while it was fun. We were all laughing a lot and sometimes it was exciting. Once I won £8 on two hands. By the end of the evening I had won more than £20. Nancy and Candy said I was lucky and that I should play with them next time we went to the flat in Sloane Square. I’m not sure if that is a good idea. When the girls play in the flat they play for £20 a game and that means if the dealer gets a good hand you can lose £100.

  Chapter 18

  Monday April 6. I played cards with the girl’s at Oliver’s flat yesterday and I won! I can’t believe it. I won £800. I was so happy. I’d have to sleep with eight men to earn £800 and I got it just playing Pok Gow. Oliver said I was really lucky. He won too. Actually, he won more than me. All the girls lost money except for me. It was a bit sca
ry at first because it was twenty pounds a hand but I started winning right from the start. Oliver was the dealer and I got nine straight away, then eight, then a got a run of hearts – the two, three and four – and I won £100. At one point I was winning more than £1,000 but then towards the end I started losing a bit. We finished playing at four o’clock in the morning. If I played cards every week and won £800 every time then it wouldn’t matter so much how many customers I had.

  Business was better last week. I had £950 for Oliver. Plus I gave him £1,500 towards what I owe him so now I only have to pay him £1,050. I am going to send the rest of the money I won back to Thailand. I thought Covid would mean that our clients would stay home and not go out, but most of my clients say they don’t care and that sex is more important than Covid. I hope they continue to think that way.

  Alice wasn’t the best earning girl last week. It was Bee, the new girl. Alice had £2,100 for Oliver but Bee had £2,200. That meant she earned £6,600 in her second week. Alice didn’t seem very happy, especially when Oliver started teasing her. I wanted to ask Bee how she did it, how she managed to make so much money so quickly, but I didn’t want to ask her while Alice was there because Alice might get angry. She kept glaring at Bee all the time and I think she wanted to fight with her. I don’t understand why she was angry because it’s not as if we are in competition.

  Nancy only had £1,100 for Oliver. She told me she didn’t feel like working last week. She kept telling Oliver that she didn’t feel well but really she met a guy in a pub in the King’s Road and she wanted to see him. FFF, she said, but I didn’t understand what she meant. She laughed. ‘Fuck For Free,’ she said. He was young and fit and she made love to him because she liked it. That didn’t make any sense to me. She’s like me, she’s a working girl which means that we sell sex. Why would she want to have sex with someone for free ? The last thing I want right now is sex with anyone. Sex is my job, it’s how I earn my money. Maybe when I have finished with this job I might start having sex for fun again, but I’m not sure if that will ever happen. Being a working girl has changed me, I know that. I used to like sex with my boyfriend, I would do whatever he wanted to make him happy, but now when I’m having sex all I think about is the money. I smile and I moan and I sweet talk but I don’t mean it, I just think how much I’m earning.

  Candy had £2,000 for Oliver because a regular customer had booked her for two days. Candy does domination sometimes. She wears shiny plastic outfits with high-heeled boots and says that she whips her customers but not too hard. Some of her customers don’t even want to have sex with her. They want her to say bad things and to hit them but she doesn’t screw them or anything. I asked Candy if anyone could do domination and she said it was difficult. You were like an actress and if you didn’t play the part perfectly the customer wouldn’t be happy. She said that I could do a session with her one day if I wanted. Some customers wanted to be abused by two girls. I’m not sure if I could do domination. I think I would find it too funny and I would just laugh.

  Sandra had £1,600 for Oliver. I had taken my Louis Vuitton bag with me. It’s a lovely bag and I always used to take it with me when I did outcall at a hotel and she said she loved it and that we should go shopping together. I think she had forgotten that almost all the shops are shut now because of Covid. I like Sandra, she’s sweet and kind.

  The British Prime Minister is in hospital now. He is very sick. I hope he does not die.

  Chapter 19

  Sunday April 12. I don’t understand why men pay for sex. I know that sounds like a funny thing for an escort girl to say, because that’s how I make my money, but if I was a man I don’t think I would pay to have sex with a girl. It’s easy for a man to come. He can do it himself with his hand. So why would he want to pay £150 or more to have a girl make him come? Some of the men who come to see me don’t even talk to me. They just take off their clothes and lie down on the bed. Some of my customers don’t want to have sex, they just want me to use my hand or my mouth. I suppose they think that having sex with a working girl means that they might catch something. I don’t think they realise how careful I am. So what are they paying for? They’re just paying to come, and I don’t see why they think that it’s worth £150 just to have an orgasm.

  Some of my customers do want more. They want to talk to me and they like to kiss. I suppose they want to feel that they are with a girlfriend, but then if that’s what they want why do they go to see a working girl? They must realise that they can’t have a working girl as a girlfriend. Working girls have sex for money, they’re not looking for a boyfriend or a husband. If they want a girlfriend then they should be out meeting people, not paying for sex. Some of my customers ask me for my phone number but I never give it to them. I tell them that if they want to talk to me then they have to call the agency and make an appointment.

  I don’t think a woman would ever pay for sex. I like sex, or at least I like sex with somebody I care for. I really enjoyed sex with Kung and I liked making love to Ice’s father. But if I went for weeks or months without sex I’d rather take care of myself than pay a stranger for sex. I suppose men and women are different and that’s all there is to say about it.

  Chapter 20

  Monday April 13. A lot of people are still dying from Covid in England. More than eight hundred every day. But no one is dying from Covid in Thailand or Vietnam. The Prime Minister didn’t die. He left hospital yesterday. I don’t understand how he got sick with the virus. You would think that the Government would take care of its Prime Minister. It’s like everyone in England is scared of the virus but they are not protecting themselves.

  Yesterday Nancy and I went to Chinatown to buy some Thai fruits to take to the flat in Sloane Square and I wanted to buy some Ma-Ma noodles. We had to queue outside and we had to wear masks. There was a Chinese girl wearing a facemask with a sort of gun that she used to take the temperature of everyone who went inside. While we were queuing two farangs started shouting at the people working in the supermarket. They said the Chinese were dirty and that it was their fault that Covid was in England. They were telling the Chinese that they should go home and that British people shouldn’t be buying Chinese food because Chinese food will give you Covid. I don’t think they were drunk, I think they were just mean. They weren’t wearing masks, either. They were getting close to the people in the queue and shouting at them so they should have been wearing masks.

  After a few minutes of them shouting half a dozen Chinese men arrived and I thought there was going to be a fight like in a Bruce Lee movie but the farangs went away.

  When we got to the flat in Sloane Square we gave the fruit to Cat and then gave our money to Oliver. It was my best week ever, because I had done three outcall jobs and two of them had been for three hours. In all I had earned £4,200 so I had £1,400 for Oliver and I was able to pay off the rest of the money I owed him. It meant that from now one, everything I earned, except for the agency’s commission, was mine to keep. I was so happy that I couldn’t stop smiling.

  Alice had £1,900 for Oliver and Bee had £1,800. I could see that Alice was really happy that she was top girl again, and she kept smiling at Bee but I could see that she was only smiling with her mouth, not her eyes. Sandra had £1,500 for Oliver and Candy had £1,600. Nancy had the same as me. Wanda had £1,200 and Vicky had £1,000 for him. That meant in all we gave Oliver almost £12,000. He had it all piled up on his coffee table. If he earned that every week he would get more than half a million pounds a year, can you believe it! Maybe I should start my own agency. I don’t think it’s very difficult. You just need a website and then all you do is answer the phone and arrange a meeting. I think I would rather run an agency than sleep with men for money. Even though more people are dying of Covid, most of my clients don’t believe in it. They think the Government is making Covid sound worse than it really is.

  After we had eaten our Thai food we sang karaoke for a couple of hours, and then Oliver said he want
ed to play cards so we played Pok Gow. I won again, but this time I only won £200. Bee won too. She played really well and at one point she was up £4,000 but then she got a bit drunk and lost half of that. She still made a profit of £2,000, though. Oliver won the most. Oliver drinks beer while we play but I noticed that he doesn’t drink a lot. The girls do, though. Not me, because I don’t like alcohol, but the rest of the girls drink beer or Thai whiskey and Cat is always pouring more into their glasses as if she wants them drunk. We didn’t finish until four o’clock in the morning and I went home to sleep with Nancy. She was very drunk and spent an hour in the bathroom, throwing up. I felt a bit sorry for her, but it was her own fault.

  Chapter 21

  Thursday April 16. Yesterday I was really busy. I had three bookings, all incall. Two were for one hour and one was for an hour and a half. I was really tired so at midnight I sent Oliver a text message saying that I didn’t want to work any more that day. I phoned Nancy and asked her if I could go around and see her. She said that was okay and that she was cooking Thai food so I went to the supermarket and bought some fruit including a big watermelon. I looked for toilet rolls but they didn’t have anyway. And there was no rice. I don’t understand why farangs have been buying up all the rice. There as no pasta, either. But we both love eating watermelon, so it was okay. We cut it in half with a big knife and then eat half each with a spoon. Lovely. Or as we say in Thai, arroy mak!