faire l'amour

by Jessica Gadziala

  By the time it was Saturday, my hands were itching to get on her skin more so than ever before.

  And I couldn't help but notice that my prediction was coming true.

  The more I got, the more I wanted.

  And I saw no end in sight to that need.

  EIGHT

  Rosie $18,000

  The money came easily.

  In a way.

  Three times a week, I showed up at Golden Age Productions, I went into a room with Preston, I came out, and I was handed a check for fifteen-hundred dollars.

  But just because it was easy didn't mean it didn't come at a cost.

  And as each day passed, I was finding the cost harder and harder to settle up.

  Not because it was becoming harder and harder to do the scenes.

  No.

  Honestly, it was just the opposite.

  It was becoming too familiar, too easy.

  I found myself aching for it when the days passed when I didn't need to take a trip over to the studio.

  I realized too that it wasn't just the sex. It wasn't just the physical release that made my life easier, made the stress that was my new life more manageable.

  There was that.

  The tension that slowly but surely curled itself around my neck, rested heavily on my shoulders during the week with more unsuccessful visits with my brother where he alternately ignored or argued with me, when ladies at the store screamed at me over sale prices as though I made the rules, as my electric bill got higher as the days got hotter... it all just dissipated when Preston's hands were on me, when he brought me to shivers and orgasms.

  I wasn't sure I could get through the week without those outlets for the anxiety and fear and self-defeat.

  That was not the problem.

  No.

  The problem was that it was becoming harder and harder to convince myself that it was work, that I had what it took to separate things like sex and intimacy from real feelings of affection and attachment.

  Each time his hand reached for mine when the orgasm started to crest through my system, when he kissed my temple afterward, when he curled me onto his chest, or pulled me in to spoon me, his arms always a solid, comforting anchor, his words soft and sweet and reassuring, it got harder and harder for me to remember that this was all pretend. This was not real life.

  Because it sure as hell felt like real life.

  It sure felt like affection.

  And there was no denying that the way I felt pulled to him, craved being near him even when we were close... yeah, that was attachment.

  At least on my part.

  Twelve times.

  That was all it was.

  Twelve days.

  Twelve scenes.

  Twelve.

  It was such a small number.

  I'd been on more dates with a guy whose name was lost in time to me back when I first moved to the city.

  But nothing about it felt small.

  In fact, each time we came together - both literally and figuratively - the feelings grew, became bigger than expected, became larger than me as a whole.

  And then something would break the spell of the moments we found together, leading to us both dressing ourselves with a quiet sort of resignation that it was over.

  I didn't know how Preston felt about it. He probably felt nothing about it. He'd been doing this longer than I had. He'd been with countless women. I was one of many. Just a co-star.

  Nothing else.

  But as for me, each day it got harder. To get up. To get dressed. To turn away from him, make my way down one of those endless hallways, pretending my knees weren't threatening to buckle, that it didn't take actual effort, real focus to keep my feet moving forward instead of turning, running back to him. To plaster a fake smile on my face for Merrick or Melody or Coop or any of the others who were frequently hanging around the main office area.

  I guess this job did, in the end, require some acting skills. Just not the sort I had planned on.

  Not the fake orgasm, the fake comfort for the cameras.

  No.

  The acting I had to learn to perfect had nothing to do with the sex at all. And everything to do with my feelings.

  There was no denying it.

  Maybe it was inevitable.

  I was probably naive to think I could go into something like this without my emotions leading me around by the lump in my throat.

  But each time I left, I had to sit in my car, head tipped back on the rest, taking slow, deep breaths with my eyes tightly closed, reminding myself that it was a job.

  Just a job.

  Lying to myself had become as frequent as my logins to the portal on the site.

  Looking for comfort.

  Looking for him.

  GAPPR.

  It was silly, I guess, to seek comfort in the conversations with a stranger whose face you had never seen, whose voice you had never heard, who you would never actually meet.

  But that was exactly what I did with GAPPR.

  I would get home and before even washing Preston's scent off of me, would walk over to my computer, log in, sit there like a teenager by her phone waiting for a boy to call. And when his box face and screen name popped up, there was a swelling feeling in my chest, something that managed to take away some of the confusion, that eased the aching feeling that was becoming all-too-familiar in my chest.

  Sometimes he would call me out on it, tell me I looked stressed or worried or even sad, ask me to tell him what was going on, if there was anything he could do to help.

  "You're doing the best thing," I had told him as I turned my head to discreetly - I hoped - swipe a wayward tear off on the shoulder of my shirt. "Sometimes, it is just nice to have someone to talk to, to help the world slip away."

  And he did that for me, this man who paid money just to talk to me, watch me sit there in my fluffy pink robe.

  He made the world fall away.

  He made all the noise inside me quiet.

  He gave me peace in a world that was suddenly chaotic.

  As I sat and typed, I could feel the weight lifting, could feel my neck muscles loosening, could feel that gaping hole in my chest closing up little by little.

  Preston ripped me open.

  GAPPR helped sew me up.

  And neither of them were real. Not in the way I ached for them to be real, the way I craved for them to be a part of my life.

  Sleep became elusive again after signing off with GAPPR. As I lay in bed alone, the space around and within me was so hollow it hurt.

  I would pull my pillow to my chest like a lover, burying my face, and letting it out. Crying until it felt like I had finally maybe leeched all the pain out, got it out of me.

  Only to fall into an exhausted sleep, and wake to feel it right there again, a cruel, ever-present friend grabbing me at the wrist and pulling me backward each time I felt like I had made even the slightest bit of progress.

  Invariably, by the time I got out of the shower, my email would ding on my phone, alerting me to more money, to more of GAPPR's selfless kindness.

  He bought my brother all his graphic novels.

  He kept me fed on overpriced, healthy foods.

  He helped me slowly get some comforts in my apartment.

  And after transferring the money from my PayPal to my checking account, he paid my electric bill down.

  He didn't like being thanked.

  I tried.

  Each time I saw a deposit, I reached out, tried to convey how much I appreciated it, feeling my eyes water with the gratitude as I tried, only to be rebuffed, told to stop thanking him, reminded that he was happy to help, that he had more money than he needed, and it pleased him to give me some of it.

  I tried to picture GAPPR sometimes as I was reading his messages, unable to accept the image of a faceless man sitting at his computer watching me.

  Sometimes, I pictured him as an older man. A fatherly figure. Someone who saw me and thought of a daughter
, felt compelled to impart his lifelong wisdom, generously give to me like a dad handing off money to his teenager each time she wanted to go out with her friends.

  Which made sense why he never asked me to take off my clothes, to do anything sexual.

  Other times, though - and maybe these were needier times - I pictured him younger. Attractive. Soft-eyed. Soft-hearted. Lonely. Like me. Needing connection. Like me. Feeling an odd, unexpected attraction for a stranger on the internet. Like me.

  And I could close my eyes, imagine his face, imagine giving him my address, waiting with my belly in delicious knots for that knock on my door. I would rush across my apartment, turning the locks, pulling the chain, throwing the door open.

  Then throwing myself into his arms.

  Feeling it.

  Finally.

  The affection.

  Attachment.

  Without the confusion, without the restrictions.

  And it all would fall away, fall, crush to dust beneath our feet. All the stress, the uncertainty, the fear, the worry, the crippling loneliness.

  Never to be seen again.

  I wanted, at times, to lose myself in GAPPR.

  Almost as badly - or maybe just as badly - as I wanted to lose myself in Preston.

  But I could have neither.

  And each day, I would swear my feet sank just a little bit lower into the ground, each step becoming just a tad more difficult until I felt like every move I made was a dragging strain, exhausting me like nothing ever before.

  The days when I didn't have a scene with Preston, I would visit my brother, then come home, fall into bed, the tiredness taking over me completely, every molecule in my body sapped of the energy it needed to function properly.

  It was the ding of my computer that woke me up, dragged me out of the sheets and across my room to the computer where I had left the chat open on the off chance that GAPPR would be on at an unexpected time.

  "You look exhausted," he told me as I tried to roll a crick out of my neck.

  "I feel exhausted," I admitted. "I don't know what's wrong with me," I added. "It's hard just to get out of bed lately."

  There was a long pause on GAPPR's side, making my belly clench, worrying this was too much, too real, too heavy for an online conversation. Men came to women online to escape reality, right? Not to get entrenched in more of it.

  "I'm sorry to hear that. Have you considered talking to someone?"

  "I just... I don't know when I would even find the time. And, in a way, I do. I talk to you. I know I'm complaining today, but I swear it helps. The nights would be a lot longer without someone to talk to."

  "You're not complaining. Everyone has hard days. You're entitled to them. And I'm glad talking to me helps even a little. Is there anything, in particular, you want to talk about?"

  I couldn't talk to him about Preston. I mean, logically, GAPPR knew there were men in my life. I was acting in porn movies.

  The problem was, it wasn't men.

  And it wasn't acting.

  And I didn't think men ever wanted to hear about a woman's feelings toward other men anyway.

  Besides, somehow, I didn't want to share that. Not the good - the way his voice would slip into his native French, would roll deliciously over words I didn't understand, but felt shiver through me as though something inside me recognized them, interpreted them, understood their meaning. Or the way his arms would wrap me up tighter if he thought I was pulling away. Like he wasn't quite ready to let me go yet.

  And certainly not the bad.

  The way I felt like as soon as our clothes were back on, he would disconnect, get colder, put distance between us.

  The way that distance was just another slash in my already minced-like heart.

  So I couldn't tell him about any of that.

  But I could give him the struggles with my brother.

  The ways I felt incompetent, that I was failing him, that I would never even come close to living up to the sky-high bar set by our mother.

  "You can't blame yourself for his mental illness."

  "I don't. I don't. I understand that he just... he was given a short stick. But I'm mad at myself for not visiting more, seen how my mother interacted with him so I could learn from her, would be able to model my behavior after hers."

  "There was no way you could have foreseen both your parents dying so suddenly, baby. Don't take on more weight than your shoulders should have to bear."

  "I know," I agreed, blinking hard to clear the sudden tears from my eyes. "I just... God. I miss them," I added.

  And once it was out, once I allowed myself to think it, suddenly I could feel it.

  The grief with so strong a current that it dragged me under, twisted me endlessly around the undertow before I could even try to swim away, try to take a deep breath.

  Alone in my apartment, my head fell, my hands raising to cover my face, the sobs crashing endlessly through me, draining every last bit of moisture from my body.

  Alone.

  I had never felt so completely and utterly alone in my life.

  I wasn't sure how long it was before my brain started working right again, before I realized the camera was on, that someone was watching me.

  I self-consciously swatted ay my cheeks, my eyes raising to look, sure he had left the chat at the first sign of tears.

  But no.

  He was still there, still active.

  And there were messages to read that had my heart cracking and repairing itself somehow at the same time - some phenomena I had never heard of before, not even in cheesy overly dramatic teen poetry I used to read when I was younger.

  The next day, I needed to ice my eyes to take down the puffiness, get through a shift at work, then spend an hour and a half trying to get myself ready to see Preston again, to pretend again, to shove down the growing feelings another time.

  "Hey Coop," I greeted him, hearing the tiredness in my tone. "Where am I heading tonight?"

  "Ah, I have you in the living room on this floor," he told me, handing me a coffee I desperately needed since Preston was not averse to coffee breath, always having a fresh cup at his side as well. "Need an escort?"

  "No, thanks. I think I know the ropes finally," I told him, realizing I was oddly proud of that.

  "Heya Rosie," Nate, one of the male-male scene actors called, giving me a warm smile. "You coming to see the new guy's first scene?" he asked, meaning one he was working with.

  "Oh, no. I have filming today too," I told him.

  "I'm so jealous of the closed sets," he said, then broke out into a huge smile. "Who am I kidding, no I'm not. I love the attention. Have good sex!" he called, waving over his shoulder as he walked away.

  "You too," I called back, shaking my head a little. The more I got to know the fellow individuals working in the industry with me, the more I realized how out of place I was.

  Not everyone was like Nate, wanted all the attention. Some simply loved sex. Others liked the good money with the least bit of effort.

  But not a single one ever confused work with real life.

  I knew.

  I had discreetly asked one day when I happened upon a few of them in the break room.

  They'd laughed.

  The door to the living room was open, so I moved in, looking over the space with curiosity. We hadn't used the living room yet. So far, we had been mostly in the white room or the black room. Apparently, the schedule just happened to work that way.

  The space was massive. So big, in fact, that it wasn't a single living room.

  There were two.

  Each was situated to either side of the room. One was darker themed with brown material couches, wood end and coffee tables, an oversized chaise, and a brown and white rug with a mirror over the couch. The other was in grays and blues with white accent furniture and art over the sofa.

  I found myself pleased that the cameras were set up on the grey and blue living room instead of the brown one.

  "Hey,
Rosie. I didn't hear you come in," Preston's voice called. Low, soothing. And something else. But I couldn't quite put a finger on it. But it was almost similar to the sympathy people used to use with me right after my parents' deaths. "Close the door," he invited. And I didn't need to be told twice. I closed and locked it like I had seen him do a dozen times before.

  When I turned back, he was moving over toward the seating area, two mugs in his hands.

  "Oh, Coop actually brought me a coffee," I said, tone apologetic as I made my way over.

  "Well, now you have coffee... and tea," he told me, shrugging it off as he set it on the coffee table.

  Feeling awkward, I moved to sit beside him, tossing my purse just out of the camera's view, putting down the coffee, reaching for the tea out of courtesy.

  The little tab on the end of the string caught my eye.

  Harney & Sons.

  That was, well, not the usual tea for companies to stock, was it? Lipton or Bromley or Red Rose seemed standard. If the place was more fancy, Tazo. But never Harney & Sons. And never the London Smog variety.

  Interesting.

  Suddenly much more interested in the tea, I pulled it to rest on my knees as I cocked them to the side on the couch.

  "Thank you. I've had about ten cups of coffee today. I probably should switch to tea."

  "Not sleeping well?" he asked, reaching out, rubbing the pad of his thumb under my eye where I had tried to cover the purple circles with concealer. And clearly failed.

  "No," I admitted, knowing it was useless even to try to lie when the proof was literally right there on my face. "I go through rough patches of sleep," I added, trying to play it down even though the last rough patch of sleep I had was during finals in high school.

  A Mmmm sound escaped him as his finger moved up to touch the side of my eyelid. "And is a rough patch of sleep to blame for puffy eyelids too?" he asked.

  "I get emotional when I don't get enough sleep." That was true... enough.

  A muscle ticked in his jaw, something I always knew to be an emotional tell. Usually, the idea went, of anger. But nothing about him seemed angry to me, not even vaguely frustrated. He almost seemed, I don't know, sad?

  We were a pathetic bunch if that was the case.