The Girls

by Chloe Higgins

  Unlike at Tilda’s, where she did the organising and I rarely saw a client more than once, here I quickly develop a catalogue of preferred clients. William, a eunuch; Lucas, a man with a bedridden wife; Elijah, a graphic designer with a penchant for cocaine and the budget to afford it and me; Oliver, an accident survivor with a prosthetic limb. They are my favourites. I genuinely like them; I am fascinated by their lives, and they just happen to pay me for sex.

  I work an extra day for them; other clients work around me.

  By this stage, I am living part-time at Graeme’s place. When Graeme and I first started working together, I’d never take a job unless he was home. He’d do the admin—the photos, the adverts, the internet chats—and I’d smoke weed in the back courtyard and then do the job upstairs. He’d take a cut—maybe 20 per cent, I can’t remember now—in exchange for the organising and free rent for the two or three nights of the week I slept there.

  Eventually I tire of weekend and evening work, preferring to spend the time out with new drug-taking friends, sitting in gutters listening to electronic music and inhaling from dirty bongs passed around the circle. Because Graeme works weekdays, I begin seeing clients without him. He still does the ads in the evenings, then I take the texts and phone calls, lining up whatever jobs I feel like doing on the day. Working alone without Graeme in the room next door is probably not the safest choice. But I take the risk and do so without much fear. I have often been told I am naive.

  If I wake up sad, I stay in bed with my phone switched off. If I wake up okay, I smoke a bong with my morning instant Nescafé on Graeme’s back pergola, then scroll through the backlog of texts and voicemails, and send a bunch of messages giving the available time slots for that day to a couple of interesting people.

  My mother is starting to get suspicious. I have told her I am working as a live-in babysitter—a half-truth which helps explain my absences to a certain extent—but I am still constantly lying to cover my tracks. One night, I call and tell her I have a house to clean for fifty dollars. She asks how much I got paid to babysit today.

  ‘A hundred dollars,’ I say.

  ‘That seems steep,’ she replies.

  The first time Lucas turns up, it is a muggy Tuesday afternoon. It is too hot to smoke cigarettes in the backyard and so, between clients, I sip sugary orange juice inside while trying to study. I am thin now, having slipped from my usual size ten down to a size six or eight, unable to eat more than a single pizza slice because of the amount of weed I am smoking. It’s true that the drug is famous for giving you the munchies, but that’s only if you’re a casual smoker. When you smoke throughout the day and into the night, it has the opposite effect and suppresses your appetite. I am proud of my new figure but when I mention it to Graeme, he says, ‘I dunno, Chlo, I think you looked better with curves.’

  Lucas comes dressed in a button-up chequered shirt and loose-fitting jeans. His hands look sunburnt and have lines carved into them. He speaks softly, as if he came straight from a plant nursery. When I ask what he does for a living, he says, ‘My wife is sick. She has cancer so I look after her now. I don’t work anymore.’ He doesn’t tell me where his wife thinks he is when he visits me.

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ I say afterwards, feeling clever and funny, as I walk him down the stairs.

  It’s easy to think of grief as a psychological condition rather than a physical one. But anyone who has experienced the hollow, heart-wrenching panic of extreme grief knows how much physical trauma can stem from psychological loss. I am struck by a quote from Bessel van der Kolk. In his book about how trauma is physically stored, The Body Keeps Score, he writes: ‘For real change to take place, the body needs to learn that the danger has passed’.

  But the danger of ending up old and alone has not passed. Even if I do find and commit to a life partner, if they are male, loneliness is not an unfounded fear. Statistically, men die younger than women.

  One Thursday, William the eunuch comes to visit.

  He knocks and I stand up from the kitchen table, where I am studying for an exam on the biology of the brain, a mandatory subject in my psychology degree. Although my state of mind doesn’t let me get far, I make small attempts to read between clients.

  Graeme has suggested I ask clients to knock in case neighbours hear the bell. Will knows the routine by now. I open the door and we smile as he steps into the open-plan living area. We hug, him bending slightly, me on tiptoes on the cool tiles.

  ‘Good morning, madame,’ he says, in a half-joking, half-serious posh accent.

  The first time we met, I liked him right away. He was gentle-natured and softly spoken as he explained that, until a hundred years ago, the wives of kings sometimes had a eunuch as a friend, or slave. The position was highly sought after and revered: it involved chaperoning her while shopping, keeping her company, advising her and sharing her bed for whatever reason she requested—warmth, company, sex. A true eunuch had his testicles removed, although Will had not. ‘He was,’ Will said, ‘a girl’s best friend.’

  As we made our way to the bedroom that first time, Will explained that during our eunuch role-play, my pleasure was the priority. Internally, I cringed. Of all the acts this job requires, foreplay focused on me is the most difficult to bear. There is something about the roughness of intercourse that makes it easy to disconnect from my body during the act. Hand jobs feel outside of me, and far less intimate. But having someone’s fingers on your vagina while their face is centimetres from your own is much more personal. It requires a level of performativity that is difficult to fake. The performance of sex can be so loud, so outward and visible, that you can sound vaguely in the vicinity of sexual climax and be fine. But faking enjoyment of female foreplay requires nuanced control of tiny facial muscles: you cannot disconnect from your body. Any time a client says, ‘Your enjoyment is important to me’, I cringe.

  On several occasions, Will and I play out this fantasy for an hour or two. It doesn’t occur to me to ask why. I have a mental image of him sitting upright on his knees. He is in the centre of the bed, the white sheets, white walls and decoration-free room around us. He is naked and slightly stocky. His skin is pale and moist. His penis is plump, the surrounding area stripped of hair. He is waiting for a hand job. Beyond this, my memory of Will is gone. Perhaps through grief, or the marijuana, or the pain of remembering doing things I did not want to do.

  At first the sex work was fun; it was an adventure, one of many solutions I’d found to fulfil a newly heightened curiosity. But by this stage it is a matter of survival. I can’t bear the thought of having to work to someone else’s schedule and I don’t know what else to do. It gives me ownership over my time, and so I keep going longer than I should.

  I am blown away when I read an essay by the Professor of Literature James Krasner, ‘Doubtful Arms and Phantom Limbs: Literary Portrayals of Embodied Grief’. It explores the idea that the bodies of our loved ones become incorporated into the mental maps we keep of our physical selves. If we wear a piece of jewellery constantly and don’t often remove it from our body, our brain will incorporate the necklace or toe ring into our sense of ‘body’. In this way, our loved ones’ bodies become like an extra limb, one we don’t distinguish from our own. I read the lines:

  A collapse also occurs when we realize our dead loved one is not beside us—we suddenly know that we are physically alone . . . Imagistic memories linger in the mind, but touch cannot linger. Grief centers on the contrast between lingering images and nonlingering bodies.

  How do I make sense of this?

  The most stressful part of selling sex is the secrecy. This plays out in two ways, one more difficult than the other.

  Number one: it must appear as though we are getting to know one another, but we must not—at least I mustn’t—reveal our true selves. It is a cliché: the man who acts like he is paying for intimacy but is actually paying for control. This is a c
areful balancing act of authenticity and secrecy.

  I have begun seeing Elijah regularly. Had we met under different circumstances, I might have been attracted to him. He is young, five or six years older than me. He is ambitious, entrepreneurial and doing well, as evidenced by the ample supply of cocaine he brings with him (or, quite possibly, he is a drug dealer—he will never know the truth of me, I will never know the truth of him. I only see him within the confines of my work bedroom). He is polite and funny, and so good-looking that I wonder why he is paying for sexual intimacy. But then I remember: he’s paying for intimacy on his own terms.

  We spend half the session talking. We flirt while clothed, chat about his week at work, and, after having sex, go back to cracking jokes and making fun of each other. But then he begins to ask questions.

  ‘Did you grow up around here?’

  ‘Do you like university?’

  ‘Which university do you go to?’

  And I have to find a way to skirt near the truth so as to appear genuine:

  ‘Yes, ten minutes from here.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Macquarie University.’

  But I must avoid the truth in case he turns out to be a stalker, a blackmailer or any other combination of weirdo, and so I keep the real facts safe inside my head:

  Yes, half an hour from here.

  No, I’m too grief-stricken.

  Sydney University.

  Eventually, I stop replying to his texts.

  Number two, and the most gruelling: my mother prides herself on knowing where I am, how I’m feeling, what I’m doing, at all times. When we go to a family gathering, without speaking to me, without looking for me, she will know:

  ‘She’s in the toilet.’

  ‘She’s on the back veranda.’

  ‘She’s talking to Uncle Terry in the kitchen.’

  Having lost her other children, her eyes can’t help but follow me. And so hiding things from her is the hardest of all.

  The lying eats at my nerves: keeping two phones, making sure never to leave her alone in the room where the secret one is hidden. Returning her calls between appointments, trying to keep my voice normal as I say I am somewhere that I’m not. Dropping friends’ names into conversations to suggest my time away from her was filled by them, rather than by the random men I was sleeping with. Paying cash at the tollgates when I’m in suburbs I’m not meant to be in, because my father pays my ETAG bill.

  The secrecy makes me feel guiltier than the sex.

  (Both then and now, shame is a substance that constantly coats my body. It ripples through almost every part of my attempts to be authentic, to remember—or forget—the past, to relax into the present. I never felt the sex work was wrong; on the contrary, I found it fascinating. And yet, both then and now, the fear of others judging me badly leaves me feeling as if I am always on the edge of humiliation. Even today, when I no longer have sex for money, my sex and sexuality is still shrouded in shame.)

  I start seeing a client named Oliver. Oliver lives in a large suburban house an hour’s drive away. He books me for two- or three-hour outcalls, and I go over and park in his driveway, casual clothes over lacy underwear.

  Inside, he pours us a drink and we chat about our weeks. He wants the ‘girlfriend experience’ so I don’t mention any other jobs. I tell him about university, and babysitting, and what I’ve been doing with my friends. He tells me about work, weekend outings, and his thoughts on the latest political happenings.

  Afterwards, he leans over and kisses me. Normally, I don’t kiss the men who pay me. I saw this in a television show about sex workers once and assimilated it into my routine. I don’t know how to be a hooker, so I figure things out or make them up as I go along, usually with the help of TV shows.

  For Oliver, I make an exception after I’ve seen him a couple of times. We peel each other’s clothes off slowly, climb into his spa bath together.

  (Even now, writing this, I get wet thinking of him.)

  We slide into the water, naked. Keep flirting, lightly touching each other, slowing the lead-up to enjoy the water’s warmth a little longer. He likes delayed gratification.

  Eventually, he slides inside me.

  Later, I drive home with damp hair and a satisfied smile.

  I am as hungry for touch as I am confronted by it.

  Touch is the first sense we acquire. In the womb, a foetus develops touch just eight weeks after conception. Outside of a sexual interaction, I don’t know how to satisfy my skin hunger.

  I can’t help but cringe when I recall the last time I saw Oliver. We are sitting on the couch in his lounge room. It’s late afternoon, the sun shifting lower in the sky. The blinds are pulled shut, the inside of the house kept dark and cool by a heavy air-conditioning unit.

  I am telling Oliver about my living situation. I have decided I want to rent my own place. I have never lived on my own before, let alone rented a house.

  I have bought a fan, a toaster and a kettle although I have not looked at a single rental property, except for driving past a studio I am interested in.

  I tell Oliver a friend’s going to help me with the paperwork.

  He nods, patiently. I explain that since I work at Graeme’s a couple of days a week, and with the money from him—Oliver and I have seen each other weekly for five weeks in a row—I should have enough to move out on my own.

  Oliver listens and says he thinks it’s a good idea.

  And then he stops calling me.

  Over a few months, Graeme and I develop a close relationship. In the evenings, one of us cooks and we stay up chatting before going to our separate rooms to sleep. He is probably an adept emotional manipulator, but he always makes me feel safe. It’s easy to think of men like him as predators, and perhaps he is, but he is also kind and thoughtful towards me. Perhaps he has saved me from worse fates.

  I go home to visit my parents every few days. Now and then, when Mum’s moping around the house because she has to watch some movie by herself, because Dad says he’s working, I sneak into Dad’s home office and watch him play games on his computer. He likes solitaire and sudoku. Occasionally he gambles too, but this is rare; it only happens when he’s angry.

  Recently, my father’s best friend of forty years died. They had matured into men together, meeting in their early twenties and then travelling between their home towns—Adelaide and Sydney—to partake in adventures. At his funeral, Dad got up and told the story of how they’d met, in November 1977. Rocky and his uncle were opening a pizza bar in Campbelltown and Dad was working in the hardware store across the road. One day, Rocky went in to buy supplies. They got chatting, and Dad helped him fit out the shop. When they each got married several years later, they were each other’s best man.

  In 2011, Rocky had a stroke. He suffered brain damage so severe he had to live in a high-care nursing facility for his last years. My father helped his family sort things out. Even now, when something goes wrong, it is my father they call for help.

  After the funeral, we go to the cemetery. We are staying with Rocky’s wife and six kids for a few days, sleeping, eating and breathing alongside their mourning. It is the first time we have lived so near to another family’s grief since the passing of our own girls.

  Their family is close. I watch them hugging, rubbing shoulders and holding hands throughout the service. When it’s time to lower the casket into the ground, the immediate family gathers in a circle around the hole and my parents stand off to one side. One of my mother’s hands clutches my father. Her other hangs limply by her side. I stand a foot or two behind them, unable to bring myself to step into the space beside her. She looks back at me. I can feel what she’s asking.

  Throughout the funeral, I observe myself being strategic about where I place my body. I hug my mother only when there is another set of arms encircling her arms, so she
cannot take my hand and leave me unable to separate myself. If I never allow that initial hand grab, the distance between our bodies can appear accidental, and hopefully she won’t feel rejected by her remaining daughter and I won’t contribute further to her grief. I want to be there for her, but I cannot force myself to hold her hand.

  One summer afternoon while I am working, a man with a thick beard and a turban knocks on the door of Graeme’s house.

  When I open the door, I am overwhelmed by the beard. It is dark and long, hanging to the gut protruding over his pants. I let him into the foyer, say I am going upstairs to change, and he can wait there for a moment.

  I return downstairs to the patient client. ‘I’m sorry, my period came,’ I say.

  The man nods. Says it’s okay, and leaves quietly.

  I’ve thought about this man many times over the years since.

  What was I afraid of? Why was I afraid? How must he have felt? Was that kind of prejudice something he experienced often?

  Years later, when I start writing seriously, I begin writing him into my stories.

  I’m sorry, I want to say. I was in the wrong. Please forgive me.

  I am ashamed of myself for turning him away.

  While the three of us are having dinner one night, Dad asks if I can pay him back some money I owe him.

  Mum scoops more mashed potato onto her plate and says, ‘But don’t do anything silly to get it.’

  I don’t know what I spend my money on.

  I don’t pay rent.

  I don’t have any car repayments. I saved for, bought and insured my first car when I was sixteen from the proceeds of my kids party business.

  I don’t buy many groceries.

  I don’t pay much for the weed I smoke. Instead, my friends and I buy a quarter, or an ounce—it’s too long ago now to remember the difference—and divvy it up between us, all chipping in to cover the cost. Other times, clients bring me a stick as a gift.