I don’t know how it happened. Yes I do. A drunkenly intimate conversation about his extensive experiences, no doubt with me once again cajoling him into revealing further details about his dalliances with winsome strip-a-grams (‘Was she pretty? Did her underpants have Velcro fasteners?’) had led to a series of teasing hypotheticals which in turn led to some kind of ‘I dare you’/‘No, I dare you’ idiocy and all of a sudden, there you have it—we were standing in our kitchen wearing pyjamas and daunted expressions, and a lady of the night was on her way over.
My first thought at the time—for some reason—involved my dog, who I assumed should be morally protected from the forthcoming experience.
‘We need to lock Bob Ellis in the laundry,’ I said.
Matty seemed nonplussed.
‘Why? She’s been in the room before. During.’
‘With us. This woman is a prostitute. I don’t want her touching my dog. Or having some sort of . . . visitor relationship with her.’
The thought of some strumpet making coo-coo noises over Bob Ellis and scratching her behind the ear, being a normal dog person, was somehow just too much to bear. Put my boyfriend’s dick in your mouth, fine. Tickle my dog’s belly, get the hell out of my house. My dog didn’t ask to be involved in any depraved sexual fantasies; she was simply a normal hound who liked chasing tennis balls. Having her sniffing about, wagging her sweet little tail, even—god forbid—barking high spiritedly to join in the orgiastic fun, somehow took the edge off the wickedness of it all. It was bad enough having my gym clothes and a library bag in the corner of my room. When did you ever see movies where a winking prostitute entertained a customer with a sports bra and a ‘Ready, Steady, READ!!’ tote bag within arm’s reach?
I suddenly saw my house through a prostitute’s eyes—or at least my clumsy assumptions of what a prostitute was, after all of Matty’s My Fair Lady-esque teachings. I realised I now hated my 1950s salt and pepper shakers. I realised I now hated the fact I was too much of a teenage dolt to wash and put away my clothes. Why wouldn’t I wash and put away my clothes? Other people washed and put away their clothes.
Most of all I hated that a stranger was going to be there passing judgement on my stuff and I would have to pay her for her time.
I panicked.
‘What should a room look like when a prostitute comes over for a threeway?’
‘I don’t know. A room.’
‘Maybe I should tidy up.’
‘She’s not Mary Poppins. She’s not going to run a white glove over the furniture and then fly off with her umbrella.’
The closer it all got to becoming real, the more I felt I wasn’t cut out for these kinds of scenarios. I’m all talk. I embrace the giddy, monstrously creative idea of something or someone over the actuality of its existence. I loved imagining the wickedly wry double entendres I would make to the Monica Bellucci lookalike once she arrived and the no-doubt intellectually engaging discourse that would serve as precursor to any sex act. In my head it was all wild and perfect and everyone involved was very good-looking and possessed of a keen sense of comic timing. Matty would wear a top hat and a spinning bow tie. My underwear would come off seamlessly without any awkward tugging or wriggling. It would be perfect. Yet in reality I was terrified, and experiencing what they no doubt knowingly refer to in escort circles as ‘buyer’s remorse’. I paced and wondered what on earth had brought us to this desperately sad and careless point. The moment the knock on the door came I disappeared to my bedroom like a coward and left Matty—the pro, the dirty, over-experienced, stripper-fucking pro—to deal with the pleasantries.
Our lady caller announced herself with all the delicacy and grace of Anna Nicole Smith on Oaks Day. ‘GROUSE PLACE! HOW LONG HAVE YAS LIVED HERE?’
Her greeting echoed around the entrance hall. I looked around my room for somewhere to hide. I couldn’t possibly face this. I’d written for Neighbours, for christ’s sake. I had a blog. I had gone to the same school as Peter Costello.
Matty replied, ‘Actually, I don’t live here. My girlfriend does.’
‘AW. WHERE’S SHE TONYTE?’
His response was brief, but honest. ‘She’s . . . hiding in the bedroom.’
I wanted him to die in a freak accident. A painful one that involved fire and a pair of pinking shears.
‘WHYNTCHA GET HER THEN?’
Matty entered the bedroom with apologetic shrugs. I hissed at him, mimed furiously that this was a bad idea and I had made a dreadful mistake and if he could please ask her to leave and take an apricot cookie for her troubles on the way out I would be forever grateful. Instead, I was dragged from my hiding place and shoved into view like the youngest child of the Von Trapp Family Singers facing a pre-dinner performance.
I waved. I still can’t believe I waved. Who waves at a prostitute?
‘Hello there.’
She was roughly twenty-five years of age, she was roughly five foot four, and she was rough. Not in an obscene way, more like if you saw her at the Brownlow on the arm of Cameron Ling you’d think, ‘Gosh, isn’t it nice that Lingy’s found someone to chat to?’ She had long red hair and a tight khaki Supre skirt and she was beaming at us like we were her children and we’d just presented her with a Paddle-Pop-stick photo frame with the phrase WORLD’S TOPPEST MUM painted on it.
I really had no issue with her physically—she was kind of sweet, if you had consumed seven glasses of pinot gris and smudged your vision slightly—but I definitely wished she’d stop clasping her hands and saying ‘LOOK AT YOUSE TWO!! SOOOOOO CUTE!!’ every five minutes. In hindsight she was probably nervous and attempting to break the ice, but at the time I thought she was about thirty seconds away from spitting on a hanky and wiping dirt off my face with it.
I kept stealing helpless glances at Matty, who seemed happily ensconced in his role as host and instantly began leading our guest on a tour of the kitchen. Surely this was the moment a vaguely amusing idea became too real and everyone made polite noises about needing to go home and pay the sitter. It hardly seemed the time to leap into a life experience in which I was no longer certain I wanted to partake.
I’m not even sure what I wanted out of the whole deal anymore, outside of a rather ribald story to terrify my cousins with around the table on Christmas Day and a satisfied longheld curiosity about what a real-life prostitute would look like when not being depicted by the cast of Foxtel’s successful Australian drama series Satisfaction. And now here I was, watching helplessly as a ginger floozy with small patches of eczema on her elbows admired my toaster. This had all gone horribly, horribly wrong.
After a long and involved discussion about the best place to position a microwave in a crowded kitchen, Matty clapped his hands together like a pleased quiz host and asked if I’d like to join them in the bedroom.
‘Oh, that’s okay,’ I said. ‘I’ve probably got some vacuuming to do anyway. You two go right ahead.’
He insisted, politely. I could see his eyes daring me into the experience.
‘You wanted this,’ they seemed to say. ‘I’ve set it up. Now stop being such a pussy and let’s just get into the bedroom and get it over with.’
Inevitably I allowed myself to be led back into the bedroom and our generous soul of a callgirl led us through the motions of an unbearably awkward and somewhat sweetly naff threeway, which was interrupted only a couple of times by the sounds of a very unhappy and confused dog howling the blues in the laundry. I’ll refrain from discussing the act itself in too much detail as while I have many life ambitions, becoming the next Nikki Gemmell is not one of them, though I will mention that if you’re looking for the perfect Valentine’s Day gift nothing says ‘I want to get close to you’ quite like no-name-brand lubricant and a dental dam.
‘DO YIS MIND IF I USE YER BATHROOM?’
Possibly not quite on par with the soothing sound of listening to one’s parents pootling about in the kitchen drying the dinner dishes, it is nonetheless strangely comforting lying
in bed hearing a prostitute use your shower. There may even be a moment of fretting that you haven’t left a clean towel out, before you remember that the guest in question touches genitals for a living and may not mind sharing your Expo 88 bathroom set for a few festive minutes.
Matty and I lay in my bed regarding each other in vaguely stunned silence.
Where were we supposed to go from here? What increasingly sick, depraved scenarios would we find ourselves in as we tried to top this particular arrangement? Would we push each other further into the depths of experimental hell and end up hanging naked from door handles like Michael Hutchence? Is that how these kinds of things worked? Would I turn up on the front page of New Weekly—‘Relatively obscure ABC scriptwriter in trans–gender amputee octopule daisy chain shock’?
Eventually the shower stopped and, employing an alarmingly twee technique that I would repeat in many a twisted, drawn-out relationship argument over future years, I decided that my best course of action at this juncture was to pretend to be asleep, thus avoiding any further awkwardness or possible exchange of phone numbers and promises to meet up for Hanukkah or however these sorts of barter arrangements worked. I may have even faked a delicate little snore. Matty duly followed suit. This scenario worked wonders on melting the heart of our new friend, who stood fondly at the bed’s end watching us for a smidgen longer than was entirely comfortable—like a kindly grandmother musing privately to herself about how fast they grow up these days before heading out to her recliner and knitting a glove. She even became so caught up in the emotion of the moment she leaned over and whispered to us.
‘Youse two are going to sleep like angels,’ she said in hushed, sweet tones. Presumably it was all she could do to restrain herself from giving us a kiss on our cheeky little foreheads and reading us a chapter from James and the Giant Peach. When we’d heard her let herself out and clip-clop down to her minder’s car two hundred and fifty dollars richer, we opened our eyes and looked at each other.
We should have left it at that. We should have chalked it up to experience and moved on with our lives leaving only a few minor emotional scars and a vaguely bawdy story to shriek over in moments of obscene intoxication. I don’t know if less sex with prostitutes would have saved our already careening-out-of-control relationship, but in the end amid the chaos of perceived slights, furious arguments over money, and screaming, alcohol-fuelled street battles I doubt the two other encounters helped much. Matty and I were on a path to annihilation.
The second—months and months after our debut tryst with Mrs Ling; it took us both a while to wash the abject awkwardness from our scarred retinas and talk ourselves back into the game—was during an utterly obscene blowout weekend in Melbourne’s Grand Hyatt where we indulged in the sort of idiotic orgiastic display that even Shane MacGowan would baulk at for being ‘slightly over the top’. We draped ourselves all over the room with that mixed sense of daring and ownership that comes with paying ludicrous amounts of money for a hotel stay, ate club sandwiches in bed, spilt red wine on the complimentary robes and made a nuisance of ourselves with the overnight duty manager. We also—and Dear Starving Children of Africa I apologise profusely in advance for this piece of information—paid a thousand dollars for a hooker to visit our room. Perhaps it was the recklessness of being away from home that led me to believe that this would be a good idea. There was no dog to worry about, there were no gym clothes, no library books. Just a gaping suitcase trailing stay-up fishnet stockings and a torn Wheels & Dollbaby dress that made me look like an oversexed Christmas cracker. To be honest I think the only reason I was talked around—again, this man was persuasive to say the least—was an intense curiosity over what a thousand-dollar hooker might look like. Would she be seven hundred and fifty dollars more attractive than our ginger pal? Would we be paying top dollar for political debate and knock-knock jokes? Would fireworks fizz forth from her vagina on point of climax? A thousand dollars was a lot of money.
‘Let’s just stop talking about it and book it,’ cried Matty, displaying what would eventually become an all-too-familiar enthusiasm for spending somebody else’s money. And I, beholden to his spiky allure, had no choice but to comply.
The poor girl. She was lovely. She looked like Dawn from The Office and at the hotel-room door she regarded our two drunk, sweaty, over-eager faces with the sort of mild contempt usually seen on an X Factor judge directly following an off-key rendition of Lady Gaga’s ‘Paparazzi’.
‘Hiiiiiiiii,’ she breathed with forced enthusiasm.
‘Do come in. Can I get you a drink? Gin and tonic?’
Matty was a genial host when he chose to be. He was like the Noël Coward of the prostitute set.
‘I’m right, thanks.’
‘Might get one myself, then.’
He veered off drunkenly to the minibar. Dawn and I regarded each other with shy, comradely smiles. I suddenly could see where this was heading. We were going to be like best girlfriends, spending the night swapping stories and giggling and occasionally pausing to lightly hit each other over the head with soft pillows. Only instead of tagging her in Facebook photos I would pay her a grand to have sex with my boyfriend while I sat on a chair drinking glasses of champagne. What could be more bonding?
The final encounter—and I say that with no small sense of weariness, as even writing about it makes me feel tired and slightly nauseous—was a year later, after an eight-hour drinking session (there’s a pattern here, yes) at the Retreat Hotel in Brunswick, during which time Matty and I had wondered aloud what it might be like to have a threeway with a male friend. The obligatory ‘Which of my mates would you want to fuck?’/‘No, which of your mates would you be okay with me fucking?’ conversation followed, along with a long list of people we could ask who wouldn’t laugh us out of town. We then undulated back to his bungalow and tittered to ourselves for a long and involved while before he lunged for the Yellow Pages and called for a male escort.
‘Matty, you mustn’t,’ I murmured in the unprotesting voice of someone quite prepared to see how this next faintly ridiculous turn of events would unfold.
Male prostitutes—the final frontier.
And the one we eventually got was on his ‘L’ plates.
‘I’m a bit nervous,’ he confessed as he arrived at the bungalow, all sweaty palms and apologetic smiles. Which is exactly what you want in a male whore, isn’t it? A bashful type, eyes downward, looking for all the world like he’d spend the rest of the evening politely losing games of backgammon and making fruit whips with Matty’s housemates in the communal kitchen. Lord knows where these people get their licences. Is there a TAFE course?
Our guest perched uncomfortably in the doorway. I sensed his trepidation and flew into mother-hen mode.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ I proffered brightly, while Matty shot me a what-the-fuck-do-you-think-you’re-doing look. How could I help it? The poor, slightly built manchild appeared to have wandered off the set of Oliver! and into his worst nightmare.
Nonetheless, we persevered. We were practically professional perverts by this stage. At any rate, we were clearly at least two times more experienced than our perspiring, terrified escort. It was all I could do not to take him by the hand and murmur, ‘There there, dear heart. We’ll look after you.’ It was like having sex with Bambi.
I was bold after my two previous encounters, imperfect though they had been. I took charge of the situation and pointed out who should go where and at what exact moment. I may have even haggled. I’m not proud of it.
Our new friend—bless his face, he should have been nominated for a bravery award—duly mucked in (‘all hands on deck now, there’s a good lad’) and things seemed to be progressing nicely until at one point I looked up and Matty wasn’t there. He had just . . . disappeared. Further investigation found him brooding outside the doorway of the bungalow, smoking cigarettes and scowling. He couldn’t handle it, he said, seeing me with another guy. It was all fine in theory. But there we we
re, right in front of him, in his bed, on his sheets. It was enough to make a man fair lose his erection, which is precisely what had happened. And now he was furious with himself. No, wait, he was furious with me. Or our hapless visitor, who was by this stage standing naked and awkward in the corner of the room desperately wishing he was at home with mum and dad watching Hey Hey It’s Saturday.
‘I could . . . go,’ he offered helpfully, and Matty, awash with feeling, stirred up and sickened and upset in a way he’d never imagined, dismissed him with a curt nod. I don’t remember our escort getting dressed. To this day there must be some random neighbour in Brunswick who in 2004 bore witness to a shrieking naked twenty-something running from a house and into the night.
I felt ridiculous. Vulnerable. I lashed out.
‘I thought you wanted to try it.’
‘I did!’
‘So what happened?’
Matty, who had seen it all. Matty, who had lived a life of girls and drugs and fist fights. Matty, who talked up the beautiful knife edge of our existence but was suddenly wishing the whole damned thing had never happened and we could go back to being a normal couple who did things like going to the laundromat or eating toasted pides at Ray on a Sunday morning with the papers spread-eagled out in front of us.
He was nearly in tears.
‘It was too . . . real.’
We stayed together for a while after that but to be honest the whole notion of dangerous experimentation was growing increasingly hollow. I still loved that terrible glint in Matty’s eye when everything was about to get wild, when the ground would disappear beneath us and we’d wake up two days later in his dark and sticky bedroom above the Chinese restaurant on Sydney Road, crying and apologising and swearing to each other we’d never let it get so fucked up again. And then we did, of course, we let the cycle continue, because we were both damaged little flowers who seemed to bring out the worst in each other. We never mentioned what had happened in the bungalow or joked about paying for whores again, and eventually I called time on the relationship. Or he did. The details are hazy. There were some snotty, undignified tears on the carpet of my Northcote home and somebody slammed a door and that was it.
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