Nothing But My Body

by Tilly Lawless

  No one picks me, though, and so I’ve got time to delve into the fear in my mind, interrogate. What does this pandemic mean for us? What does it mean for me and the future I’ve so carefully crafted? How long will I be out of work for? Will I be able to sneak around and see clients privately? But with hotels closed does that mean I’ll have to risk seeing them in their homes? You’re allowed to go to the house of an intimate partner – are my clients intimate partners because we fuck? Does it come under ‘care’ because touch is a need? Is my work essential? Why are intimate family and romantic partners the only authorised exceptions to isolation? If I start fucking my friends, will our relationship be more legitimate to the government? Will travel change forever? How can I deliver my pitch to my potential sperm donor now? Is being knocked up by someone overseas in the next few years unfeasible? Will I even have enough money to raise a child if sex work moves online, where there’s a world of people to compete with, including celebs? I need another income but the only thing I know is in-person sex work and besides, everyone is losing their jobs now, the job market is sure to crash; who’ll hire an unhireable hooker? And what about my friends? I miss them already! It’s been a few weeks and communicating with them over the phone is not the same. I want to feel them shake with laughter beside me, tell them they’ve got sleep in the corner of their eye, tuck their tag in, lie in the grass with my head in their lap, smell the scent of their shampoo, touch their arm to get their attention in a group. And my overseas friends – who knows how long it’ll be till I’m with them again? I don’t care about travel for the sake of travel, adding countries to a list, but I want to spend time with those I love. My heart aches to think it’s already been a year since I’ve seen some of them, and I’ve been living off the expectation of being reunited with them this year, but now … don’t think about it. You don’t want to cry at work, not on this day.

  ‘Maddy, your reg is here, he’s in room one.’

  Leap up, check my face, grab some towels and a drop sheet, off down the hallway. And it’s my Somali client. He’s such a sweetie, only ever wants to finger me softly and fuck me even softer, so soft I feel like it’s not even sex, just some quiet meditative state we’re entering into together. I’m glad it’s him. I couldn’t handle another difficult client on the back of that douchebag.

  ‘I brought something different today.’ He hands me a package as he undresses for the shower.

  ‘What are these?!’

  ‘They’re finger cots for when I go inside you. See? I can put them on my fingers.’

  ‘Oh, they’re like mini condoms! But why do we need them?’

  ‘Well, I have dermatitis, and because of coronavirus I have to sanitise my hands so much at work now that my fingers are cracking and bleeding – and that might be unsafe for you.’

  I take his hand from him as he is drying it. It’s an ashy grey with splits all along it; it must be so incredibly painful.

  ‘Your fingers look so sore! Have you got some good moisturiser for them? And it’s good you brought those cots, not just for me, which is so considerate, but also for you – by the look of these the acidity of my pussy might sting you!’

  ‘Yeah, I moisturise all the time but it doesn’t do much.’ He carefully rolls one down his index finger and I lie back in quiet anticipation, knowing I don’t have to expend much energy with him. He likes to feel that I’m relaxing, having a break from hard work, and I suppose I am to a degree, because he is so kind that I don’t feel like I have to be constantly on alert. I trust him, which is saying a lot for a client.

  As he rhythmically fingers me and I rhythmically moan my mind wanders. To Berlin, Melbourne, Brisbane, London, Delhi, Los Angeles, New York. To friends who are struggling. In Berlin, a gay boy has gone through a rough break-up, is shattered and self-doubting. I want to lie beside him and binge-watch movies, help him regain trust in himself, comfort him just by being there. In Melbourne, one of my oldest friends has given birth to her first child, is isolated and needing help. I want to be there to watch him so she can have a much-needed nap, go grocery shopping for her, give her the support she needs. In London, a sex worker friend is having a cancer scare, has to have her new implants removed for a biopsy, is terrified by the loss of income. I want to drive her to appointments, walk her dog for her, lend her money so she knows she’ll make it through. I’m a hands-on friend; what does that mean in this time when we have to be hands-off? How can I help those I love from afar? How can I do things for them? How can I know they’re in pain and not go to them?

  It’s a kernel of sadness right inside me, and his latex fingers bump up against it, twist it inside me till I quiver with it. What a cruel world, that I can have this unasked-for touch so far inside of me and yet be denied access to those who complete me. Where is the sense in that? And this gentleness with which he touches me – does he too wish he were reaching inside someone else? Am I getting the overflow of his love for another? Are we simply poor replacements to each other, creatures driven by the need for connection and hampered by borders and class? What would this world be without borders, without nation states? How could we move among each other, and how could the hoarded wealth of prosperous nations be shared? Trafficking only exists because borders exist, and exploitation only exists because of wealth inequality. How did I come to be lying on this bed? How did other women come to be lying on other such beds? It’s nearly always a tale of migration or economic need. Need that led to this symbiotic relationship I feel with him, and the parasitic relationship I feel with my wealthy clients, whereby I am leaching from them just as they leach the labour of the working class; we’re both leeches in that equation and I burst with blood like a pomegranate, staining their hotel bedsheets. What does it mean that I do sex work because I am working class but am no longer working class through doing sex work? On this bed now, with a migrant man who stacks shelves, who sells the use of his body just as I sell the use of mine, where I am the product and he could physically overpower me if he wished, who has the power? Is that what this is even about, an exchange of power? That’s what people always debate, who is exploiting whom; the woman either can’t consent or she’s manipulating the desires of the man. Is everything in life a power exchange, though? I don’t think I could reduce this moment to such a simplistic take on it, and besides, I feel equal to him; whatever is between us is malleable, and flows.

  His pace is getting faster and I quicken my sighs in response, should be about time to fake it so we can move on to penis penetration; he is only able to be pleased after he feels he has pleased me. What a gentleman! Don’t need him to know that the sex I enjoy most with men is when they pound me hard and fast; I like a quickie and a sense of being disregarded, but only when I know there’s respect behind it.

  Finger cots off, condom on, and he’s fucking me slowly in doggy and I back up into him to encourage him to blow, know the way my arse cheeks spread with the impact, know the way my arsehole gapes invitingly when I’m relaxed; if that isn’t a sight that’ll get him going I don’t know what is. He wants to hold my hair like they often do, marvelling at the softness and the blondeness, and I’m a bow bent in his hands, my neck taking the strain of each thrust – hope he finishes soon or I’ll end up with a pulled muscle. Though I guess that doesn’t matter so much when I’m about to go into a long period without work . . .

  ‘I’m gonna come,’ I fib, and I feel his cock pulse inside me, and I think of the strength of the latex and hope it holds out no matter how big his load. A load that I’m now cradling in careful hands, carrying to the bin with a caution that bestows more value on it than its worth, as if it’s something precious when really I just don’t want to spill any sperm when I’m the one who has to use this room next. Some men insist on tying it up and taking it home to dispose of, as if sex workers are semen-hungry desperadoes who’ll search through the trash and steal your DNA, insert it inside themselves and sue you for child support. When they do that I want to say, Mate, I do have a list of pot
ential sperm donors and you are not on it.

  This client isn’t like that, though. He cleans himself up and then helps me to clean the room up, asks me what I’m going to do for money during lockdown, says he’ll be thinking of me. I’ll be thinking of you too, the money you bring me and the consideration you treat me with and your poor, painful hands. At least his job is assured – one of the lucky ones.

  ‘There’s a client waiting for you, half an hour, room three,’ the manager tells me as I let my Somali client out.

  ‘Oh yeah, easy – have I seen him before, do you know?’

  ‘I don’t think so. He just asked for whatever Western girl was on.’

  Go quickly into the girls’ room to grab more towels and it’s empty, everyone must be in jobs. There are dressing-gowns and hair extensions and half-eaten meals everywhere, which reminds me that I should order a burrito before I go into this next booking. Good that everyone is making money; guess there’s money to be made in the destruction of society just as there is in the building of it and whores, like cockroaches, endure, because we have to. So I scuttle back down the hallway, picking up the client on the way. He’s a young tradie, obviously just knocked off after a long day.

  I make the bed as he showers, reach for a condom in his size as he lies down, lick his nipples as I check he’s hard enough, sigh as I skewer myself onto him as if his dick is large and I’ve been waiting for it, it’s a missing piece of me that I’ve pined for. He won’t let me ride, though, so eager that he’s fucking up from underneath me, ruining my rhythm and so, ‘Doggy?’ I suggest, and that’s how he ends up coming in less than two minutes, panting across my back.

  ‘That was fast.’ He’s a little mortified.

  ‘That’s okay, it’s a compliment! Besides, easier for me, I’ve got a long shift today so really I should be thanking you. You’ve been at work too, I’m guessing?’

  We get chatting and he’s got a girlfriend he loves and lives with but they never have sex; she’s told him he can seek it out elsewhere.

  ‘She was raped by a guy friend of hers last year, and at first it was okay and we still fucked a lot, but it’s started messing with her the last few months and she’s pretty off sex.’

  ‘Man, that’s so rough. It’ll probably just take time. It’s good you’re not rushing her, though. I hope things ease up for her, and for both of you.’ And I give him a kiss on the cheek, watch him walk down the stairs, going back to his love and her hurt.

  Gets me thinking about all the women hurt at the hands of men. All the women raped in war, all the women who will be trapped in houses with violent partners over the coming months. I think about that young girl murdered by a client in the CBD, how her self-defence classes couldn’t save her from the intent of someone bigger than her. I think of how scared she must’ve been in her last moments and how so many people came to know her through her death, but she isn’t defined by those awful minutes of terror; her life was years of laughter before that. I think of how every day I go alone into rooms with men who are stronger than me, how vulnerable I am and how sometimes I’m scared, how that rich London girl, daughter of a 70s rock musician, said, ‘But that sounds so dangerous – why would you do it?’ And I didn’t even know how to answer because her world was so different from mine – where to start? Because my dad isn’t famous and wealthy like yours yet I want to be able to travel overseas and hang in foreign bars like you do. These are not things to be thinking of now, though, not on my last shift. If I get too anxious about what clients can do to me I’ll be afraid to go into the room with them and, besides, I know men have treated me just as badly as a woman on the street, sometimes even worse. If I am killed, will my death usurp my life?

  The doorbell rings and it’s my dinner. Gulp down the burrito, wash my mouth out with water so I don’t get chilli in my pussy after sucking some guy off, what time is it now? 6.30 p.m. so I’ve got a bit under six hours to go and I’m sitting on $750, that’s good, I should easily make a grand tonight, which buys me two weeks in which to adjust to lockdown and figure out what the hell I’m going to do without work. This is all I’ve done for seven years; it’s all I know! And while I’m skilled they’re not skills that are recognised; they’re hard to write about in a résumé. I thought I could just always do it, that sex work would always be waiting for me with clinging arms and crowded couches and sagging beds. I’ve contemplated moving on but thought it would be a slow transition, not that it would suddenly stop. So many people must be feeling this now, their careers vanishing.

  The doorbell rings again and I intro a young guy whose cap is pulled low over his face. ‘What’s your nato?’ His eyes peer out at me with interest.

  ‘Australian. What about you?’

  ‘Sri Lankan, but born here. I want to see you.’

  ‘Okay, sick, I’ll tell the manager.’ And I trot back along the hallway to let her know.

  He takes his hat off in the room and he’s got a beautiful face. Beautiful body too; I’d probably fuck him for free if I were horny.

  ‘You’ve got a good body,’ I concede as I slide the condom on with my mouth. ‘You work out?’

  ‘Yeah, I box.’

  ‘Hot.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I swim. You Tamil or Sinhalese?’

  ‘Tamil.’ And he pushes my head down so I gag a little, just the amount I like to gag. I finger myself as he face-fucks me and I can feel my pussy swelling and pushing outwards, ready to swallow my hand if I let her, and I open my legs wider so I can rock against the edge of the bed, just as I open my throat wider to accommodate him. I’m too impatient for this. ‘I want you to fuck me,’ I say truthfully, and then he pushes me back on the bed without ceremony and I’m laughing because I haven’t been fucked like this in ages and I’m falling off the side of the bed and then he’s picking me up and putting me on top of him but pulling me down with his arms so he’s going well in me and I’ve got hair in my mouth and his sweat is on me and it’s so rare to get a root like this at work and it’s making me forget everything else momentarily as he grabs my ankles and turns me onto my stomach and enters me from behind and I can see the veins in his arms pumping as he pumps me and I think, Oh god, if only they were all like this, this job would be the best job in the world, wish he was my last booking of the day, what a one to finish on, I love fun sex not serious sex, it’s a game like all good things, I want to get the same rush from it that I do from swishing on a swing set or frolicking in a field, and I arch my arse up into him so it hits a different angle, an angle that I usually keep tucked away because it can hurt but with him I want it, it reminds me of how my ex used to fuck, all flurry and feistiness so I’d forget which way on the bed was up, so I’d forget how many times I’d come or which hole they were even inside, I just want all my orifices filled by you and all your bodily fluids inside me, spit on your fingers and put them in, spit on my face and then lick the inside of my lips, let me frig against you like I’m in season, my vulva winking like a mare’s with need, it’s all animal, split me up the middle and stain the floor the lurid pink of your fantasies, turn me into a wet patch to argue over after, is this what the pandemic is taking away from me, my hair caught under my armpits as he shudders into my shoulders and I didn’t even come but I don’t care because he fucked me like the ghosts of lovers past and I won’t get another one like that today, we’re both gasping for breath.

  ‘That was fun. You should come see me again if we ever reopen.’

  He grins and nods, unable to speak yet, and I feel his heart thump beneath my hand and know mine is thumping the same, know it’s invigorated and he fucked the fear right out of me, thanks, man, for this reminder that everything is transient, and that sometimes the best things in life are fleeting and that’s okay, you’ll be okay, as you always are.

  friday

  THE WATER IS SO COLD THAT MY NIPPLE ACHES AS IT PINCHES tight around its piercing. I’m chasing that summer feeling, where I roll from sleep into the crackle of
the ocean floor around my ears, lie back in it just as I lie back in the bed, lazy and indolent, and beg a lover for orgasms. This is the closest I can get to it now, with the salt water brackish in my mouth as I duck under a wave, my limbs heavy and coagulating like the blood within me, slowly petrifying in the mid-winter temperatures. The sky is a sharp cloudless blue, not the soft monotony of high summer but a crystal glare, with the crisp branches of deciduous trees along the coastline. Serious swimmers pass me doing laps as the sunbathers give me strange looks. I’m the only girl in the water without a wetsuit, and I’m in nothing but a G-string.

  They don’t know that I woke with panic in my mouth, ate beta blockers for breakfast to try to ebb the flow, wanted a joint, a drink, anything, and so came here instead in the hope the shock of the cold would throw me right up out of my mind and out of myself, till I felt a different person. They don’t know that I came here every day through lockdown, that it kept me sane when I wasn’t allowed to see anyone, that I climbed through construction sites to avoid security guards stationed on the shut-down beaches, slithered down walls of barnacles to get into the Pacific that was denied me.