Desperate Measures

by Stephen Leather

  While we were eating, one of Nancy’s mobile phones beeped. It was a text message. She looked at it and laughed and then showed it to me. It was one of her customers, telling her that he missed her. She sent him a message back saying that she missed him. She called him darling. I was really surprised because I never give my number to customers but Nancy says she does it all the time. She said it meant nothing because she was using a Pay-As-You-Go T-Mobile SIM card so she could throw it away whenever she wanted and the customers only know her as Nancy so they don’t even know her real name. She said that every night she sends the same message to ten of her customers, saying that she misses them and she hopes to see them again. She sends them all the same message! And they all believe it. She says that it’s like advertising. When they get the message they think about her and hopefully they’ll feel horny. If they feel horny, they’ll want to see her. I asked her if she saw them on her own but she said no, she always told them to phone the agency and make an appointment. She said that Oliver would be really angry if he found out that a girl was seeing a customer privately. I can understand why. It’s only fair that he gets his share because he does own the agency and he does get us all our customers. If it wasn’t for Oliver, we wouldn’t have any customers at all.

  Nancy phones some of her customers for phone sex. She talks to them while they play with themselves and make themselves come. She says she likes doing it and sometimes she plays with herself while she’s doing it. She’s a bit crazy and I think she really likes sex. I like sex, too, but sex with customers is different from having sex with a husband or a boyfriend. Sex with customers is all about money, nothing else. But I think I might start giving my phone number to some of my customers. The nice ones, anyway.

  Chapter 22

  Saturday April 18. Kung keeps phoning me and asking for money to pay the builders and to pay the bank. I think he thinks that now I’m in London I’m rich. He keeps telling me that he loves me and that he misses me but when I ask when he’ll leave his wife he says that he can’t. I told him I don’t want to be his Mia Noi, his second wife. I want us to live together as a family. I told him that I’m not scared of his wife, but he must divorce her. I wish I’d never started building the house. It was supposed to be our home together and now it’s just a reminder that we aren’t together. It is a nice house, though. I designed it with an architect and spent ages choosing the fittings for the bathroom and the kitchen. I’m going to have a spa bath and a huge shower and a huge television in the sitting room but none of it will mean anything if I don’t have a husband.

  I sent Kung £1000 yesterday. He said he needed it urgently so I did it by Western Union. There are lots of places that do Western Union transfers close to Paddington Station. You give them the cash in pound notes and they tap the details into their computer. You give them the name of the person who is to get the money and the country they are in, and they give you a password. You give your friend the password and then they go to any Western Union office and show their ID and give the password and they get the money. It costs about £50 to send £1000 which I think is quite cheap because they do it really quickly. I asked Kung if he’d use some of the money to buy Ice a present. He loves Mickey Mouse so I asked Kung to buy him something with Mickey Mouse on it.

  I’m going to send my mum some money but I don’t want to use Western Union because I don’t want her walking around with a lot of cash. I will probably post it to her. It’s great to be able to send my family money. Now that I’ve paid Oliver what I owe him I’m starting to earn real money. So far this week I’ve earned more than £3,000, £2000 for me and £1000 for Oliver.

  I’ve also been to a customer’s house. He was a nice man, called Robert, and he had a house in South Kensington. It was a big house with lots of bedrooms but he said that he lived there alone. He told Oliver he wanted me to wear a school uniform so I had it on under my Kenzo coat. As soon as I took my coat off he knelt down and started kissing my feet. That’s all he wanted to do for two hours, to kiss and lick my feet while he played with himself. He paid me £420 and gave me £50 for my taxi. Men are so funny. He was obviously really rich and he was quite good looking. Tall and a bit skinny but with a kind face. Why would he want to kiss a girl’s feet? I found it a bit ticklish, but it was an easy way to make money. When he’d finished he asked me if I’d give him my phone number so I did. He’s the first customer I’ve given my number to. I wonder if he’ll call me, and if he does I wonder what I’ll say to him.

  Chapter 23

  Monday April 20. It worked! Robert sent me a text message saying that he missed me and I sent him one back that said ‘I miss you too, honey.’ Then about an hour after I sent the text message Oliver phoned me to say that Robert had booked me again for Sunday afternoon and that this time he wanted to see me for four hours! Four hours outcall costs the customer £690. Almost £700 and he doesn’t even want to have sex with me! He wanted me to wear the school uniform again and I did, though this time I went out to Marks and Spencer and bought some knee-length white socks, the sort that school kids wear. I had to queue for half an hour to get into the store and when I was in I had to follow arrows on the floor to show which direction to walk.

  Robert loved the socks. This time he made a snack for me, peanut butter sandwiches and a glass of milk, and he sat in the kitchen and watched me eat it. I wasn’t really hungry but I ate the sandwiches and drank the milk because I could see that it made him happy. We went to his bedroom and this time he asked me to take off my top and my bra but he didn’t want me to take my panties off. He kissed me up and down my legs and then slid off the socks and spent an hour just licking my feet. When his time was up he gave me the £690 plus a £50 tip. He kissed me on top of the head and said that next time I saw him he wanted me to call him ‘Daddy’ which I thought was a bit strange but he is the customer so I’ll do whatever he wants to make him happy.

  I went to the Sloane Square flat with Nancy. We went in an Uber because there are almost no taxis driving around the streets. When you use an Uber the driver wears a mask and you have to wear a mask as well. And they always have sanitiser in the car. I told Nancy about Robert and she said that I should tell him that she was my young sister and that we could both go and see him. I said I’d ask him but I don’t think I will because I want to keep Robert as my own customer. I think Nancy would want to have sex with Robert and that’s not what he wants.

  I had £1,600 to give Oliver. It was my best week ever. I had earned £4,800 during the week, and £1,110 was from Robert. I am starting to understand how valuable regular customers are and why it is important to be nice to them. Robert had paid me £1,110 and I hadn’t even had to have sex with him. I would have to have sex with seven customers for one hour each to get the same money. At just before midnight I went to the bathroom and sent Robert a text message. ‘I miss you, Daddy’ is what I sent. I was sure that it would make him horny and sure enough, ten minutes later I got a text back from him. ‘I miss you too, baby. See you again soon.’ I hope he does book me again. It was easy money.

  Nancy had just £900 because she had been spending time with her kik. Kik is what we call a boyfriend, sort of, more like someone we have sex with for fun. Nancy has sex with the boy for free. FFF, she says. He’s nineteen like her and she showed me a picture on her phone. He is quite handsome, but I don’t understand why she gives away what we are supposed to be selling.

  Everyone was earning good money. If anything Covid is good for business because men get bored staying at home and they can’t go to pubs or bars so then they decide that seeing an escort is the best thing to do.

  We ate Thai food and sang some karaoke and then we played cards. I wasn’t so lucky and lost £600.

  Chapter 24

  Saturday April 25. Yesterday was a busy day. Oliver phoned me at two o’clock in the afternoon and told me that I had a booking for three o’clock and that the customer’s name was John and that he wanted me to wear school uniform. John said that he
was a teacher and he wanted me to call him Sir while he made love to me. It was funny because I kept thinking about John at my language school and that made me want to laugh. John wasn’t a very nice man and he was a bit rough with me. I think he enjoyed hurting me.

  Then Oliver phoned me again at five o’clock to tell me that I had a two-hour booking for five-thirty. His name was Gordon. Gordon was nice. He was about forty and a bit fat but he had a nice smile and he kept saying how pretty I was. Gordon made me laugh, too. He kissed me when he went and said that he’d see me again and that made me happy. I gave him my phone number and said that he could call me if he wanted and he seemed really pleased. He paid me £300 for the two hours and afterwards he gave me a fifty pound tip.

  We always have to ask for the money before we do anything. I feel a bit shy doing that but Oliver says that if we don’t the customer might try to get sex for free. They will have sex and then say that they haven’t got any money and that they have to go to the ATM and then you never see them again. That happened to Nancy once. A customer stayed for four hours and he was so nice looking that she didn’t ask him for the money. He had sex with her lots of times and he drank a whole bottle of wine while he was there. Then he said that he didn’t have enough money but that he’d get some from the bank. She never saw him again. She told Oliver and he said that she still had to pay him his commission even though she hadn’t been paid and that didn’t seem fair to me.

  Not long after Gordon had left Oliver phoned me again and said that I had a booking for three hours. I was really happy because that meant I would be working for six hours in the day but only with three customers. His name was Richard and he paid me straight away and he asked me if I’d give him a bubble bath. I hadn’t done that before and I didn’t have any bubble stuff but I said I would have a bath with him. I cleaned him and then started to massage him between the legs and then he said he wanted to make love so we had sex in the bath with me on top. It was funny because water started to go everywhere. He came really quickly but his dick stayed hard. Really hard. I dried him with a towel and then we went to the bedroom and he made love to me again, this time doggy-style which I don’t really like because it goes in really deep and hurts a bit. It took him longer to come this time, but he was still hard. I gave him a massage and then he wanted to make love again, this time on top of me. He put my legs over his shoulders and he was so deep that there were tears in my eyes. He wasn’t rough, though, not like the teacher had been, but he was quite big and he pushed really deep inside me.

  When he’d finished I thought that would be it. Most men can come twice, especially if I am really sexy with them, but not many can manage three times. But Richard was still hard and after five minutes he was doing it again, this time with me on top. He made me make love to him for almost half an hour and I was exhausted, and then finally he came. Then he said he wanted another bath and I thought that meant he wanted to shower and then go home, but no, he wanted me in the bath with him and he made love to me again.

  In all he made love to me eight times in three hours and he was as hard at the end as he was at the start. I could barely walk and I was so sore. After he had gone I phoned Oliver and said that I couldn’t see any more customers. I told him that Richard had had sex with me eight times and Oliver laughed. He said that he had probably been taking Viagra. I thought Oliver was joking. Why would a customer take Viagra before going to see a working girl? Our job is to make them feel good and to have sex with them, why would they need to take a pill? Oliver said some customers wanted to get value for money so they took Viagra before going to see the girl. That way they could have sex lots of times.

  That didn’t seem fair to me. It’s like cheating. He paid me for three hours but he had sex eight times. He paid me £450 for the three hours so that works out at just £65 for sex. That’s too cheap. I wouldn’t have sex with a man for £65, not when I have to give one third of what I earn to the agency. It means he paid me just £40 each time we had sex.

  Oliver said that Viagra can make men go red in the face and it makes them sniff as if they have a cold, so the next time a customer comes with a red face and a sniff I’ll ask them if they have taken Viagra and if they have then I won’t see them. Or I’ll ask them to pay more money.

  Chapter 25

  Wednesday April 29. Cat took me to get some more photographs taken yesterday. She said that my pictures on the website weren’t sexy enough. I thought that Covid meant that his shop would have to shut but she said it wasn’t a problem. The photographer’s studio is in West Kensington. He had a sign up on his door saying that he was closed because of Covid but Cat rang the bell and the photographer unlocked it for us. He’s a nice man called Thomas and I think he might be gay. Cat had two dresses for me. At first I laughed when I saw them. One was a shiny black rubber dress that covered my breasts but hardly covered my backside. The other was a red vinyl dress that was also short but which had holes cut out for my breasts. Can you believe that? When I put it on, my breasts were sticking out! I thought it looked silly but Cat said it was very sexy. When I saw the photographs I realised that she was right. The idea is to get customers to come to see me so the more sexy the pictures are, the more they will want to have sex with me. I just hope that nobody in Thailand ever sees the pictures. If Kung saw them I would die of embarrassment. Cat said I should buy the dresses and she sold them to me for £300. She said that customers would see the dresses on the website and ask that I wear them when they came to see me. It makes it sexier for them, she said. The new pictures should be on the website by the end of the week.

  I had three customers yesterday. The first one came at three o’clock. His name was Simon and he was about thirty five and wore a really nice suit. He was quite handsome but he had the smallest dick I had ever seen. It couldn’t have been more than two inches long. It got hard and he came okay but it was so small that I could hardly feel it and I kept worrying that the condom would come off. I didn’t mention how small he was and neither did he but I think we were both thinking about it. I felt sorry for him. I mean, if a girl has small breasts she can get implants, but there’s nothing a guy can do about a small dick. I asked him if he would give me his phone number because I liked him and he was so pleased. I’m glad I made him happy. Before I went to sleep I sent him a text saying that I missed him, but he didn’t reply.

  The second customer came for two hours. I gave him champagne and kissed him and then took him into the bathroom so that we could have a bath together. I bought some bubble bath and now I ask all my customers if they want to have a bath with me because that way I am sure they are clean but it’s also really easy to make them come in the bath, just using your hands. You pour shower gel over them and massage them and squeeze and they come. Then I tell them I’ll give them a massage in the bedroom and often that’s all they want. Or maybe oral sex. Easy money! Anyway, this customer was called Sean and he wasn’t too tall, just a bit fat, but when he took off his clothes he had the biggest dick I had ever seen in my life. I am serious. I went from Simon with two inches to Sean who was at least a foot-long. I’m glad all my customers aren’t as big as Sean, that’s for sure. I wouldn’t be able to walk.

  The third customer came just after midnight. His name was Matt and he had his name tattooed in Thai on his arm, plus a tattoo of a Buddha’s head. I think it is wrong to have a Buddha tattoo, it is not supposed to be a decoration. I didn’t like Matt. He kept trying to speak to me in Thai but I pretended not to understand. I told him I was from Malaysia. He said he had been to Thailand many times and that he loved Thai girls but I think he just liked sex. He was a bit ugly and fat so I don’t think he would find it easy to get a girlfriend in London. He had no class and he swore a lot. He said he had been to Thailand many times but the only place he had been to was Pattaya. Pattaya has a lot of prostitutes and farangs go there for sex. Matt said he liked Pattaya because in Pattaya he could have sex for just £10. He stayed for one hour and didn’t give me a tip. He as
ked me for my phone number and said that he would take me out for a Thai meal once the restaurants are open again but I said I wasn’t allowed to give a customer my number but the real reason was that I didn’t want to see him again. He made me feel like a prostitute, and I don’t like that. I’m not a prostitute selling sex for £10 in Pattaya. I am an escort and yes I sell my body but it’s not the same.

  Chapter 26

  Thursday April 30. I went to see Robert yesterday. He booked me for four hours again. He always does the same thing. He gives me peanut butter sandwiches and a glass of milk and then kisses and licks my feet. It’s so strange. Really, I would like to do more for him. I would like to make him happy because he is such a nice man. He is fifty years old and he has never had a wife. He lived with his mother but she died three years ago. She was very rich and she left him all her money. The house is huge. It has six bedrooms and a big garden and is full of really nice furniture and paintings. He lives there all alone. He has two maids who come in and clean the house and he can’t really cook so he phones restaurants and they bring food to him. He has had girlfriends, he said, but he has never met a woman he wants to marry. He says he doesn’t really want a wife but he wants a daughter. Yesterday I said he could make love to me if he wanted to but he said he didn’t. He makes himself come while he kisses my feet. He said he uses Asian girls from lots of agencies but he likes me the best. I said I liked him too and that he was my favourite customer which made him smile. He has a job working for a bank, but he says that he doesn’t work for the money because he has enough of that. His mother owned a jewellery store somewhere and he was her only child. Actually I think she owned quite a few jewellery stores.