God's Callgirl

by Carla Van Raay

  Instead, I kept thinking. And the more I thought, reasoned and pondered, the more I tired myself out.

  Malcolm, a new client, broke down in sobs when I told him I didn’t do sex. He apologised for his tears, but begged me to let him be inside me just once. ‘I haven’t been inside a woman for two years. I want to know if I’m still man enough,’ he added, sombrely.

  That last bit made sense to me, even if the rest was a manipulative tactic. Malcolm had brought a condom along, so instead of agreeing to intercourse, I offered to do fellatio, as long as he wore the condom. I instantly regretted it when I tasted the horrible spermicide and antiseptic, a dry astringent taste that stayed in my mouth for hours afterwards, even after several cups of tea, coffee, herbal tea and, finally, wine.

  I gave up with the disgusting rubber and said, ‘OK, we’ll do it like you want.’ (You win, because I should’ve known better!) I worked up his flaccidly disappointed penis with my hands till it became enthusiastic, and climbed on top of him. Poor Malcolm; he didn’t really want to transgress my boundaries at all. After one stroke inside me, he gently lifted me away and came inside the condom. ‘That’s all I need,’ he said. ‘Now I feel complete.’

  Most of my clients were decent men, agreeable, generous and genuine. There was nothing wrong with them or with what they wanted. The thing that was ‘wrong’ was that I wasn’t used to respecting my own energy or the feelings of my body. And when I didn’t respect myself, I felt bad. What I did didn’t make me a bad woman; it just felt that way.

  I found myself giving in to the pleasure of the erotic surge of sex again and again, only to feel more depleted than ever afterwards and disappointed in my lack of judgment and self-control. In the moments before orgasm, in the heat of lusty passion, I fooled myself into thinking that this time it would be different, that I’d still feel good when it was over. But the good feelings subsided very quickly. I didn’t stop because I was addicted: addicted to sex, to the attention I was getting and to easy money. At the time, it was so difficult for me to feel all this completely.

  I WAS CONSTANTLY petrified that my friends or acquaintances might find out that I did relief massage, and more. Consequently, I had few soul-baring conversations with anyone; in fact, my only confidant was my homosexual friend, Shane. He was a charming, artistic, intelligent, beautiful and tolerant young man, whose sole intention towards me was to support me. He came to my house to surprise me with his creative cooking, while his musical voice and sweet presence constantly lifted my spirits. With Shane, I could discuss almost anything. Almost. Even with him, I never discussed my deepest fear of being found out.

  Apart from Shane, I developed a friendship with Ruth and Don, a couple who lived a few streets away. Again, we never discussed my lifestyle. I had started part-time teaching, to give the impression that this was my source of income. For two years we visited each other, and had many lively and funny philosophical discussions over dinners cooked by Ruth. My dark secret was my own, and seemed to take on more darkness over time.

  There was one other secret I soon had to bear, a secret Don and I would equally share. The trouble began when Don told me he wanted to have sex with me. I looked into those large dark pools of his eyes and saw that our innocent sex jokes had turned into a fantasy for him. I knew that Ruth and Don were both virgins when they married, and neither had ever had another sexual partner. They had joked about taking on lovers, which made me hold my breath—in spite of the love and appreciation they obviously had for one another, this smoke might eventually uncover a fire. Ruth, for one, talked openly about how she’d taken a fancy to someone at work. But it was only something to laugh about; we always knew that her fantasy was going to stay just that.

  I was severely taken aback by Don’s request. Even though he was a dear friend, he was definitely not my type for a romantic fling and I’d never dreamed that he might feel otherwise. Was there something wrong with my sexual radar? I decided that, no, Don wasn’t attracted to me, he just wanted to have sex with someone other than his wife, out of pure curiosity. I told him this, but to my surprise he didn’t give up.

  Finally I gave up one afternoon, thinking that the experience would fix him up for good: he would find out how boring sex could be without an emotional involvement. I agreed that he could come to my place. It was the strangest encounter I have ever experienced. Don’s friendship reminded me of a gallant Roman warrior who would defend you to the end. Ruth, his wife, was like a queen to me, deserving the highest loyalty. Yet here we were, betraying her, but with no intention of hurting her.

  Once naked and in bed, Don approached me with the straightforwardness he probably always brought to lovemaking with his wife. I made no particular effort to excite him; rather, I wanted to show him that it was the quality of the relationship that gives spice to sex, not a different body. I hoped that he would be as bored as I was. We had sex in the missionary position, and afterwards lay side by side on my bed, he on his back and me watching him. His face was turned to the ceiling, away from my eyes. Don chose not to confide in me what was going on inside his head, but he urged me to say nothing to Ruth. ‘It would only hurt her, she wouldn’t understand.’

  I promised solemnly to keep our secret, but it was another burden to my fear of being found out. I knew that the world ‘out there’ would call me a strumpet, a whore, a vice girl. Someone who couldn’t make a living doing something decent, who didn’t know how to earn an income withoutselling her body. I believed in freedom, yet didn’t have the courage of my convictions. In other words, I was a fraud.

  THIS FEELING OF being a fraud, someone who was living a lie, became an intolerable torture. And so it was that one evening I attended a lecture by a famous psychologist from the USA, who proclaimed his wisdom on Jung’s archetypes to a large audience. He looked like someone who might give me some insight into my suffering. I was determined to speak with him and patiently waited backstage until all the people had gone. He and his offsider, who had told him about my urgency, came in, sat down and waited to hear something extraordinary.

  ‘So what is it?’ asked Mr Famous, leaning forward, a hand on his knee, while his helper hooked an arm around the back of his chair.

  ‘I feel like a fraud—’

  I had barely managed to utter my dreadful confession when they both burst out laughing.

  ‘Is that all?’ Mr Famous exclaimed, getting up and moving away while my mouth hung open. Next moment they were both gone, laughing and talking about something else. I tried to process his response. What did he mean—that being a fraud was nothing to worry about? That everybody was a fraud and what else was new? That being a fraud was the easiest thing in the world to fix? I couldn’t get it into my brain that it was a laughing matter. Was Mr Famous a fraud himself? That was one possible explanation, but not one I was willing to accept.

  I remained as confused as ever, and turned to spirituality to try to find an answer. I investigated the Baha’i faith, transcendental meditation, raja yoga, delved into Indian religions, visited Buddhist monasteries. I avoided becoming involved with a guru—no Rajneesh, Sai Baba or Muktananda for me. Perhaps I thought these holy people would condemn me, or mesmerise me out of my unique path. It was scary enough to sit with a penetrating teacher such as Paul Lowe, once a devotee of Rajneesh. I definitely didn’t want to be with anyone who could see straight through me and tell me I was a terrible person. No, I wanted to find a path that would tell me I was all right the way I was! Someone who could fix the poor, cracked vase inside me, who could take away my self-doubt and what I had started calling my self-sabotage, which was keeping me from being wealthy.

  None of this was clear in my head at the time. If my thoughts had been clear, I would have heard myself say: You are a slut and a sleaze and you don’t deserve anything good.

  THE QUALITY OF my massage began to suffer. I wanted to get it over and done with, and I grew tired more easily. When I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I was shocked to see how pale and unhappy
I looked. It was so important for me to feel that I was doing some good with my work, but increasingly I couldn’t find that inspiration. When the insidious suspicion that I might be doing harm instead of good grew, the term vice girl took on a new meaning. Slowly love changed to distaste.

  The doubts that rankled my brain day and night developed into a veritable struggle between good and evil, threatening to unbalance me. I told myself not to be silly, and breathed deep sighs of relief when I felt good, but I couldn’t keep at bay the conviction that the core of my being was rotten. The effort to live with my contradictions became a screaming nightmare. I had no one in whom to confide my despair, no one to offer me a healthier perspective, so I wrote out my confusion on paper, in frantic, disorderly notes. My journal filled up with bizarre and tortured ideas in my desperate attempts to gain some clarity.

  I condemned myself for encouraging what I called ‘men’s alienated behaviour’. My guilt was intense. I couldn’t see that my clients’ motivation wasn’t my business. I couldn’t see that I was arrogant to believe that I could understand what they were thinking. What had happened to my initial conviction that my sexual contact with men would benefit them spiritually? Was I allowing myself to be intimidated by society’s mores? That wouldn’t have been possible unless there was some guilt lurking inside me, waiting to be triggered. But the guilt had been there long before I started my work. I had chosen a profession that would prove to me that I was guilty.

  Sores grew on my feet and wouldn’t heal. I tried antibiotics, mercurochrome, healing ointments, doctors, naturopaths—but the sores were relentless, the pus and pain signs that there was something vile in me that wanted to come out. I felt putrid with this excruciating dilemma rotting my soul. It was in this miserable state that I phoned Gaye, a specialist in rebirthing.

  AWAKEN, DEAD PRINCESS

  GAYE WELCOMED ME quietly into her apartment for my third session with her. Rebirthing is a process of connecting with the energies of early-life events through a particular way of breathing, then releasing them through the breath. What exactly was being released wasn’t clear—apparently it didn’t need to be—but the sessions left me feeling cleaner and lighter. Gaye was an experienced healer and a devotee of a revered Indian spiritual master, from whom she drew inspiration for her work. I trusted her.

  As on my previous visits, I lay on a soft mattress on her parqueted floor. The room was warm, but as I followed her breathing instructions my body grew very cold. Gaye covered me up. Soon the breathwork began to open up channels of energy in my body that had been blocked by old fears. Coarse waves of energy began to pulsate through my legs and arms, feeling like raw electricity. This was normal, although uncomfortable, so I allowed it to happen and continued to breathe.

  In an indefinable moment, my normal consciousness changed and I found myself waking as if in a coffin. My head was resting on a small firm cushion and I lay dressed in a long, plain, almost-white gown, the hem and sleeves trimmed with tiny embroidered flowers. I realised I had been buried there alive and immediately wanted to get out.

  ‘What’s happening?’ asked Gaye, sensing that I had entered a visual domain.

  ‘Stuck in a coffin,’ I said in the flat voice of trance.

  ‘Push against the lid,’ she advised.

  I did, with both hands and all my strength, but it was no use. ‘The lid is made of stone and I can’t move it,’ I said hopelessly, and let my limp arms fall to my sides. I felt I had failed an important challenge. But years of experience had honed Gaye’s intuition and she remained silent.

  In the perplexed surrender that followed, something began to move in the silence. It was my own body, so I felt, rising up slowly, horizontally, from the coffin. It passed easily through the stone lid and, without opening my eyes, which were closed in death, I could see the little family chapel where the coffin rested on stone blocks. It was icy cold in that silent place of worship; the walls were moist with a dampness that had not lifted for years.

  As I rose smoothly up to the span of the chapel ceiling, dark clouds gathered and I knew that I was on my way to hell, to meet the devil. Inexorably I rose towards the evil one, my arms folded over my chest, resigned to my dreadful fate.

  What happened in the next few moments was the last thing I could have imagined. As I neared the mass of threatening clouds, arms shot forth like lightning in a storm to grab my floating body. I was instantly in the embrace of an unseen being who held me firmly. To my utter wonder and unspeakable delight, instead of being burned with devilish scorn I was enveloped in an unearthly bliss. All I felt was exquisitely pure love. Every cell of my body seemed permeated with joy and my body felt vibrantly alive, like never before. I was speechless, immovable, drowning in this bliss. There was no face, there were no words, only an overwhelming feeling of being held tenderly, merged with the one who was holding me.

  My breathing stopped and conscious awareness vanished. I lay on Gaye’s mattress, submerged in utter bliss, resting deep in original innocence; a blessed rest, lost to time and the sense of who I was as a physical being. My breath hung suspended for quite some time, until I heard Gaye’s calm voice softly calling me back.

  I smiled at her, but couldn’t begin to speak of my experience. We were silent for a while. My breathing became regular and comfortable. Slowly my brain started to work again. What my experience had shown me was that so-called evil is somehow part of our existence. How it existed was not clear to me then. I felt, for that brief interlude, that in truth there was only love and no evil. Evil was a sort of upside-down love, that could be transformed entirely by understanding—an understanding that was not quite mine yet. Nevertheless, the contradiction that had been ravaging my soul had been relieved. For that time, I was good, only good.

  Gaye’s voice came into my relaxed state. I focused in on it, this voice that brought me back to the world. ‘You now have to break away from all your evil friends.’

  What did she mean by ‘evil friends’? It didn’t make sense to me. But I didn’t ask any questions, just nodded my head, trusting that she knew what she was talking about. I didn’t associate this with my massage clients—I had never told her about them. When the connection finally dawned on me a few days later, I became angry and shouted, ‘No! The people who come to me are not evil! My work isn’t evil! This doesn’t make me evil!’

  I didn’t understand that I was being asked to drop all ‘friends’ who were a bad influence on me. Unfortunately, Gaye had used exactly the one word, ‘evil’, that would make me reject her suggestion. So, bad luck for me, I wasn’t ready for this lesson.

  Logically, I was right—my clients were not evil and I wasn’t evil. But the work I was doing made me feel evil because my heart wasn’t in it any more. I was going against my instinct, and so didn’t have the necessary strength to rise above whatever negative energies came my way through close contact with my clients. What can be closer than sexual intercourse? This is not just physical contact, it entails psychic exchange. The psychic energies of each person tends to ‘rub off’ on the other. When I first began as God’s Callgirl my energy was so strong, my intention so pure, that I could largely transform or discard whatever a client left with me. My positive attitude had brought out the best in my clients and in myself. But how could I expect to keep my own psychic energies intact when my motivation had been reduced to working for money and because I thought I was good for nothing else? Why couldn’t I see that my level of compassion had dropped along with my enthusiasm, which caused me to become revolted by some of my clients?

  Oh, if only I could have made such distinctions when I needed them. How could I have been so terribly obtuse? Well, it was perfectly easy, given my Catholic upbringing and my previous religious life. In the convent I had learned to equate low self-esteem with the virtue of humility. Worse, religion had taught me to be comfortable with suffering. These lessons ensured that I would deaden my sensitivity to the messages from my own body.

  My sessions with Gaye di
d result in making me feel better about myself. I could once more feel loved for who I was, instead of pinning all my need for approval on success with my clients. The wounds in my feet healed. But whatever it was that had embraced me in those dark clouds was not going to let me off that lightly. If the message had not been clear enough, well, I would have to learn it bit by bit, through experience.

  I CONTINUED WITH my massage work, and the struggle within me continued too. I felt as if I was addicted to sex, but what I was really addicted to was blocking my thoughts and feelings. I could not afford to investigate any further because of my deep-down belief in myself as evil, as belonging to the devil. I covered this up with my fervent desire for the opposite; the belief that I was really good, because my ideals were high.

  When I felt fear, I reasoned with it. When I felt shame, I swallowed it down, again and again. Everything I discovered through therapy was subjected to the preservation of my hidden agenda. My newly-found conviction that I was innocent prevented me from feeling everything that was waiting to be felt. I was terrified to hear the cries from within.

  Can we heal what we refuse to feel? Not in my experience. My shaky construct of my own innocence drifted away again. More than ever, I felt that I would die if my friends knew what I was doing for a living.

  A new client who called himself Ray, an older man of about sixty, slim, educated and polite, came to me for a massage and asked for full oral sex. A blow job to the less polite. This sort of request had come up several times before, and although I had engaged in fellatio with gusto, I had always refused to go all the way and swallow. But because Ray was such a quiet, clean and well-mannered man and his penis wasn’t too big, I agreed. This would be a new experience, I told myself—and it was. I was totally unprepared for the violent, uncontrolled reaction of my own body.