Call Me Sasha: Secret Confessions of an Australian Callgirl

by Geena Leigh

  Usually it was a waste of time talking about the clients when we could be getting another job instead, and I really didn’t want to re-live what I had just done by talking about it. At the end of each booking I’d squeeze Nivea all over my body in lines and dots and then lather the cream into my skin. After seven or more showers and a few spas each day, my skin relished this nourishment. It was a ritual where I would reclaim my body and give myself a few minutes to recuperate.

  13

  In a rut, age 24

  After seeing tens of thousands of penises, I realised there were definite patterns to the bodies that were attached to them. We got good at sizing a guy up from his physique before actually seeing him naked. My penis acumen unfortunately wasn’t always on track, though, and every now and then I’d make a poor judgement call and it would be my night for big dicks.

  For some strange reason, whenever one of us had a big dick for the first client, that would be the pattern for the whole night. I’m not talking about dicks as in idiots; I’m talking about penises that should have only been affixed to horses, not humans. ‘It’s Big Dick Night,’ one of us would say. And all the other women would cringe, empathising with her and counting our blessings that we had the small-to-mediums.

  Without prior discussion or consent clients would often try to push their appendage in the other hole. I couldn’t let my guard down for a moment, especially on Big Dick Nights. One of those things would likely cause irrevocable damage.

  About ninety-nine per cent of the time, once the client left the room, he left my mind. Sometimes the guys would go back into the bar, instead of leaving the premises, and I’d end up propositioning the same man, unaware that I had just had sex with him five or ten minutes before. The guy would look a little bewildered (feeling hugely insignificant), but I would just move on to the man in the next seat. A few times, the guy I’d just had sex with laughed about the mix-up, accepted my offer and we went back into a room and did it all over again.

  I appreciate that drugs and alcohol killed off many of my memory brain cells. Sometimes I wish that more were gone. Not remembering some things is a skill I learned to cultivate. We all do it at times—it’s a self-preservation thing. If I could vividly recall even one per cent of the guys I’ve slept with, I’d probably be very tempted to jump off the Sydney Harbour Bridge in disgust.

  If a client was too rough or too rude, I’d deliberately make a mental note to recall something unique about him so as to avoid him if he ever came back. If I didn’t remember his face, sometimes I’d remember a guy by his cock or by how he fucked—but by then it was too late. Oh, this is the guy who likes to lick my arse! Or: Oh, this is the guy who has no rhythm and thinks he’s on a mechanical bull! Then there was the guy who would pull it right out after every thrust and wave it around in the air like he was waving one of those fluorescent wands that ground crew use at the airport to signal to the pilot when he is taxiing—I’d have to grab hold of it, to ensure it went back in the right hole every time, and then lots of air would be pushed up inside me and make me feel like my uterus was going to burst out of my stomach.

  Sometimes sixty minutes felt like a lifetime. How do you tell a thirty-five-year-old guy he doesn’t know how to fuck? I didn’t want to make those guys angry, so I’d diplomatically take the lead by flipping over onto my back and gently guiding him. ‘Oh, I love it when you do that,’ I’d encourage him. Or: ‘Mmm, that’s it.’ Whenever a guy like that showed the slightest degree of coordination, I’d positively reward him, like you’d do to a puppy.

  I wasn’t interested in what the clients did for a living, or anything about their lives. Some women treated work like it was a networking event. To me, the men were essentially irrelevant. As long as they paid me well, we’d have a fun time; if they didn’t pay me well, I felt unappreciated and annoyed. I wasn’t looking to bond, and mostly neither were they. If a client happened to be a talker, they’d explain that they go to brothels because their wives won’t have sex with them anymore. Blah blah blah. Here he goes, trying to justify why he goes to brothels. Their infidelity didn’t bother me—if all men were loyal, I would have had no income.

  Sometimes during sex they’d rub my belly button thinking it was my clitoris, or grab my breasts like they were stress balls. For fuck’s sake! I’d think. That’s why your wife won’t sleep with you! I felt sorry for their wives if this was as good as it got—it wasn’t my responsibility to teach grown men how to have sex. I was happy to show the virgins a thing or two—they were eager, appreciative and willing to please. On those occasions I told myself I was contributing to the wellbeing of society and a future wife’s happiness.

  Unlike The Club, some employers were really strict—they wouldn’t let the women wear dresses that were too short or nail polish that was too bold. I lasted about three hours in one of those clubs. It would have been twenty minutes, except a girl lent me a dress that didn’t show my panties. I managed to keep my mouth shut that night until I’d earned enough money to buy the cream cashmere coat that I’d spotted earlier that day in Myer. How could a dress be too short in a brothel?!

  Lustrous red lips, black fishnet stay-up stockings and a blonde wig with soft curls became my signature look. I always wore dresses that were short, tight and low cut, with stretchy soft fabric. Simple cuts looked the most elegant. I remember one night seeing a shortish girl with auburn hair standing next to the metal lockers and pulling on a dress that had a series of buckles and criss-cross straps all over it. I knew she’d spend twenty minutes wasting her time, trying to figure out how to lace that damned dress back up again (especially after a few Jim Beam and Cokes), instead of going back on the floor and getting the next job.

  There were plenty of beautiful women at The Club, many of whom would just do the minimum work to get by. My line of thought was that the more money I earned, the sooner I could stop working there. But that wasn’t the case—I would just end up fixating on some other thing I ‘just had to’ buy or do, and that would keep me stuck there working.

  As I got ready for work each evening in The Club’s locker room, it was like getting into character, like an actor preparing for a play. I would step out of my street clothes, slip into my short, tight red dress and attach the honey-blonde wig to my scalp with bobby pins. I used specific brands of make-up, deodorant and hairspray for work and totally different ones for me at home. It was like having two identities, and I needed to keep them separate. This ritual of taking my gear from my locker and getting ready would all be part of the process of mentally preparing myself for the work to follow.

  I would move to the edge of the stool and slowly slide my black lace stay-ups along my leg and then step into a pair of ridiculously high black stilettos. The air in the locker room was usually thick with hairspray, perfume or the odd joint. I would sit at the wide mirror with the unforgiving fluorescent lights and apply heavy make-up with dark smouldering eyes, essentially forming a shield between the clients and me. Emotional detachment (and/or being drunk and high) was the key to staying sane.

  Geena would walk into The Club each evening, but it would be Sasha who would walk out onto the floor and own it, soaking up the attention. The men thought that they were there to choose us, but it was the other way around. It was my choice who I was going to take into a room. I liked scanning the room and picking the man I wanted. It made me feel powerful—like I was Queen of The Club. Once I was in the room, though, the reality of the work would soon unfold, and it ranged from mild abuse to general humiliation. I would hate it vehemently.

  •

  Keeping my body safe and disease-free was always my priority. There were only one or two times when my health was clearly at risk. I remember one client vividly. I had been on my back for a while when he swirled his finger in a circle. I smiled and turned over, so I was on my hands and knees. Now he was pushing hard and hurting me. I turned my head away and stared at the cum-coloured perspex statue of a lady’s head on the wall, until he finished. The alcohol and
drugs did their best to numb my body and mind—sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes I just had to endure it until the client stopped. I could shut down my body and just live in my mind as long as I needed to.

  But as John released his grip around my hips, I saw the condom lying on the carpet near the wall. I got up off the bed and felt his semen running down my inner thigh. I froze. ‘It wasn’t safe?!’ I cried. What I really wanted to do was scream, ‘Arsehole!’ He sniggered to himself as he pulled up his shorts, laced his sneakers and scurried out, leaving the door wide open and me standing naked for everyone in the waiting room to see. I suddenly grew very concerned about falling pregnant, and quickly showered and let the warm water wash him off me and out of me. I went to the doctor to get a morning-after pill as a precaution, and my period came the following week, but I proceeded to fret for the entire six weeks until the HIV test came back negative.

  After that, no matter what strange Kama Sutra-type position I happened to be in, my hand never let go of the base of the condom. I would literally hold on for my life. Every single time in the room I prayed that my body would stay safe. As the number of my clients went up, of course so did the risk. When I felt especially paranoid, such as if I was dealing with a dick with a jewel embedded in it, I used two condoms at once. I’d heard that using two could create friction between them and they might break, but that never happened.

  Once in the locker room when one of the women was taking her clothes out of her locker, she said to one of the newer working girls, ‘Some of the men we are with have HIV.’ The chatter dropped away. I paused, and then continued to reapply the powder to my face, humming Avril Lavigne’s ‘I Don’t Like Your Girlfriend’ to myself. We all knew she was right, but no-one had actually said it before. No-one wanted to hear it. ‘I love your shoes!’ the nasal American said to one of the Asians, and the mindless chatter erupted once more.

  In addition to the (mild) level of camaraderie among the women, there was also competition. If you put ten or twenty dysfunctional, half (or fully) drunk and drugged-out women in the same room there’s going to be conflict. However, it was an opulent club where the earning potential was high, so no-one wanted to make too many waves and have to go to work in an inferior establishment.

  Brothels are much like prison; the different races tended to stick together. The Asian hotties, the wild South Americans, the sassy Africans and the drunk whities would position themselves in different sections around The Club.

  One night the girl from Melbourne with the severe eyebrows and the orange tan was sitting across the bar flicking through a copy of OK!. ‘Sasha’s here to make money, not friends,’ she said. The girl with the muffin top sneered at me and they giggled in unison.

  At first I felt annoyed that they made me sound like an ice queen and I momentarily contemplated shoving my wine glass in both of their faces, but then I realised that they were right. I did keep the other women at a distance. I didn’t want any hookers as peers. I didn’t want any additional attachments or to have any other reasons to stay there. I wanted to do my thing and get out. It was more than that, though. After moving around so much as a child while growing up, I was sick of making friends and then leaving them all behind. It was too painful. I learned not to attach. Also, the few occasions I spent time with another worker outside The Club, we’d end up talking about work, and that was the last thing I wanted to be reminded of when out for lunch.

  As soon as my shift ended each night (or morning or even the odd afternoon), I would do my best to erase it from my mind. Having attachment and intimacy issues served me well in my job, but it crippled my ability in the real world to form deep friendships and relationships, as I discovered whenever I left The Club and worked in straight jobs, and made non-prostitute friends. I never felt I truly connected with them. It took me a while to feel a bond to someone, which seemed to come more naturally to other people. It can take me years to care for someone, or to feel that someone cares for me.

  Some of the women were university students, working tourists or single mums. Those who didn’t earn that much would have found it easier to stop working, because they could more easily adjust to a lower wage. There was a woman who came in Monday to Friday at 9 a.m. She would take off her business suit and blouse, slip into a skimpy dress, work all day, then put her suit back on at 5 p.m. and go home to her husband. We all had our own reasons (or excuses) for being there. We didn’t talk about it. We didn’t judge each other. We just got on with it. Everyone mostly left me alone to do my thing, and that’s how I worked best.

  There was a continual turnover of women. Only a handful of us stayed working at The Club for a long period of time and we once joked about whether we’d receive a gold dildo for ten or twenty years of loyal service at the company. This was the life we knew. A new girl started one evening and the orange-tanned girl from Melbourne introduced me as, ‘Sasha—she’s a lifer too.’ My heart sank. At that moment I decided that—I didn’t yet know how or when—one day I would get out of there.

  The Midnight Ladies worked from midnight until 8 a.m. I was a rookie recreational drug user and light social drinker compared to the Midnight Ladies. They were hard-core. They couldn’t converse or walk in a straight line, but they could work. They would talk to imaginary people as their gangly bodies sauntered up the corridor. Then they’d hook up with one of the handful of fidgety regulars and disappear, always into the same room, until dawn. The amount of pressure and stress that I was putting on my body was nothing compared to what they did to theirs. The Midnight Ladies had a turnover of approximately eight years. At the end of their time, though, they didn’t just leave The Club—they left this earth.

  Prostitution is a game at which one can only lose. It is a life of misery. If someone tells you otherwise, they’re lying—they’re just trying to justify not having the courage to find other work. Low self-esteem and the lure of money gets you in. What keeps a girl there? Fear. Fear of not having enough; fear of the unknown; doubt about her own abilities. You need to have the determination of a heavyweight boxing champion to get out.

  There’s no leave loading, superannuation or paid sick days in prostitution. Not many of the women could save money. I would say that only three per cent of working girls ever saved money, bought property or built assets, irrespective of how much money they earned. Most would fritter away their income on meaningless things to try to make themselves feel better, to fill the void. We mostly lived night to night.

  We always knew that we could go back and earn more, as if there was an ever-flowing stream that we could access whenever we wanted to. We didn’t quite master how to make a dam and keep it, though, let alone leverage it to work for us. Even though I knew I could always earn more money, there was a lot of stress involved until I actually earned what I was after. I’d keep a tally in my head throughout the night and would feel incredibly uncomfortable until I had reached my target.

  One night the well-educated Lily sat in the locker room boasting that one of her clients had written a rave review about her on a sex website. ‘That’s great for my hooker career!’ she said.

  I just stared at her. Hooker career?! That was an oxymoron. To me, a career is when you wear a nice suit and do PowerPoint presentations. I don’t recall ‘Tying A Guy Up With Stockings And Brutally Shoving A Dildo Up His Arse’ ever being discussed at Careers Day. Then again, I didn’t go to school much, so maybe it was.

  I couldn’t ever keep a dildo once it had been near a guy’s butt. Even though it had a condom covering it, I didn’t ever want to see or touch that thing again. I kept the same one for myself and re-used that, though. I kept a hot-pink vibrator for me (pink for girls) and a powder-blue one (for boys), to ensure I didn’t get them mixed up in my oversized handbag; I needed to replenish the stock almost daily. If they’d had loyalty points on those purchases, I could have flown around the world first-class ten times.

  The incessant lying to my few friends and to those family members who st
ill spoke to me grated on my self-worth. I felt silly; I believed they could see straight through my lies about my pretend office job.

  Once I called a friend back on my phone while I was sitting in one of the bedrooms. Then a girl came in with a client and said, ‘Sasha—we’re using this room!’ and the client added, ‘Hey—I get another girl for free! Let’s party!’ Their giggles echoed down my mobile into my friend’s ear. How do I explain that? To avoid lying and feeling bad, it was easier to distance myself from family and friends.

  As the years ticked by, it became evident that some of the younger women were consistently being chosen ahead of me. I didn’t like being placed second or third. I liked to win; who doesn’t? The reality was that it’s an industry in which, as I aged, my earning capacity diminished. There were women well into their forties (and even fifties) still working there, and some of the men, especially the guys in their teens or twenties, loved being with one of those older and more experienced women; but I didn’t want to still be working there when I was forty and become one of them.

  The Club also gradually lost some of its allure over the years. The brass fixtures tarnished. The edges of the bed sheets grew tatty and began to fray. It was embarrassing if, when I took a client to a shower, the tap fell off in his hand. I would laugh and pretend that it was the first time it had happened. Then something else would go wrong, such as the heavy thick glass shower door loudly scraping along the floor due to a missing screw in the hinge, which would ruin the mood. The carpet was well worn in patches (especially at the sink, where doggy-style positions in front of the mirror were popular) and water from the showers would seep into it, leaving it soggy. How could we expect guys to pay top dollar when the place was rapidly sliding into a two- or three-star establishment?