God's Callgirl (44 page)

I had more luck with men who were supposedly impotent. Often married, they easily managed an erection and orgasm in the presence of an anonymous person who took the time to caress them with music, soft lights and unhurried touch, and who never said there was something wrong with them.

Skill plus caring
read my advertisement in the Saturday papers, though I didn’t have to advertise all that often. For one thing, I didn’t want to be too busy. Money, handy as it was, was seldom my first objective. If it had been, I should really have run a special kind of brothel, but that idea came when it was finally much too late.

Only one or two close and long-standing friends knew they were having sex with an ex-nun. I never capitalised on the financial advantage my past might have given me, because my new hybrid identity was too personal and sacred to me. My hands were gifted with an electric but soothing touch, a gift of the Divine that made my work so much easier, and it was enough to know that my clients seemed to feel particularly good. They often showed their appreciation with gifts of flowers, chocolates and sometimes music.

Mel, who came to see me regularly after he knocked off on a Friday afternoon, called my gift ‘the laying on of hands’. I looked into his wicked eyes, topped with untidy red hair, and guessed from his words that he had been a priest once, or had studied for the priesthood. Now a shoe repairer and a married man, he seemed to be short-changed by life somehow. Something in the depths of his eyes was always crying, even when he laughed.

One Friday, while he was undressing and getting ready to lie on the massage table, I confided that I had once been a nun. His eyes lit up hugely when I said this and he gave me the biggest, most cordial hug.

Mel enjoyed the leisurely laying on of hands as if it was a cleansing ritual, something that made his world whole again. His tiredness seemed to dissipate with every touch, until his skin was no longer sallow and a brightness came back to him. To me it looked like a halo of light around his smiling head.

MY CLIENTS WERE
often professional men with failed marriages who didn’t want the ructions of a divorce. They had adjusted to loveless home lives, looking to success and prestige in their work for the bulk of their satisfaction, and getting their sexual release and pleasure from anonymous women like me. Other clients’ marriages had simply collapsed—these were men with broken hearts and bank accounts, who would not easily expose themselves to the risk of losing more of their property by marrying again. It was cheaper and easier to pay a prostitute, who would never grow old and never nag him—what a bonus.

Some of my clients were simply addicted to sex. They often had a wife or girlfriend, but it was never enough. Luke was one of these men. A Catholic, he felt immensely guilty for his indulgence in illicit sex, but was hopelessly unable to get sex out of his mind. I have never met a more confused man.

Luke said he loved his young wife and hated to betray her, but sex with her was a routine performance without passion. He loved her so he couldn’t fuck her. For him to have unbridled sex with his beautiful wife would be to deflower something precious; the idea was repugnant to him, and impossible. Luke had swallowed hook, line and sinker the idea that sex was evil, and marriage hadn’t succeeded in sanctifying it for him—he was still thinking of his mother and the Virgin Mary when he turned to his
innocent wife. So he needed a whore to fuck, to take the pressure off his woolly brain.

The more he blamed himself, the worse it got. Luke confided in a priest, which he felt did him good, until the priest confessed that he himself was fornicating with a married woman.

Luke came to see me as often as he could—several times a week—so he was usually short of money. I took pity on him and drastically reduced my fee; his interludes with me were so maniacal, so short. The only thing that seemed to give him any kind of brief peace was another round of copulation in the arms of a woman he saw as the opposite of his virtuous wife. His frenzy was like a fervent prayer for freedom from whatever possessed him. I think he was grateful that I was a whore who didn’t scorn him.

I tried to make a deal with him. ‘I’ll give you a leisurely massage that you can enjoy and a relief massage, so you won’t feel guilty and you’ll get value for your money.’ He’d agree and then fight with me to have sex; he almost raped me once. I knew he needed help, but didn’t know what to suggest until I found out about a therapist who worked exclusively with men. I gave Luke the information, hoping he would act on it, but when I last saw him he was receiving phone counselling from a Catholic centre in Adelaide. I’d say that the devil doesn’t easily give up on his own.

When Matthew—a successful, talkative and brash lawyer—first came to me there was nothing wrong with him. Except that he spent so much time complaining about his wife and family—there was plenty wrong with
them!
But his disease, whatever it was—muscular dystrophy, perhaps, with progressive Alzheimer’s—caught up with him rather rapidly. The last time I pinned his nappy back on, he had barely enough money in his pockets for a taxi fare home. ‘I
don’t know where it all goes to,’ he simpered from between his thinning lips. I had my guesses, as I knew he visited regular prostitutes. Matthew had been married twice, both times against his own better judgment he said. One very hot day he took me to his house, where I swam in his pool while he watched from the shady pergola. ‘A mermaid,’ he called me, but wanted me to stand on two firm legs while he held me close. Matthew needed his hugs most of all.

Among my friends was a threesome of schizophrenics. They lived a few suburbs away and travelled together to save petrol. Mullet, the biggest of them all and probably the eldest, did all the arranging and talking. One by one, they came in for half an hour, paid me their pensioner’s rate, and waited for the others to drive home again. I loved these men. They were sweet, simple and undemanding, just grateful for whatever they received. Their bodies were not as muscled as other men’s, nor as self-conscious; they were more like big babies.

They usually came once a fortnight, but after a time I suddenly realised I hadn’t seen them for a while. I rang Mullet (he had left me his mum’s phone number, ‘just in case’). When he came to the phone, he started to lecture me in a high voice: ‘How could you do those bad things to blokes like us?’ Mullet explained that he now belonged to Jesus, and that I was one of the worst people on the planet, corrupting men and doing the devil’s work. I felt hurt, but understood.

A few months later, Mullet phoned to make an appointment, just for himself this time. He pretended that things were the way they used to be, before he’d developed a conscience informed by religion. ‘What happened, Mullet?’ I asked. ‘I’m a bad person, remember? You told me so. What do you want to see me for?’

‘I changed my mind,’ he said, sheepishly, and was relieved when I said, ‘OK, see you tomorrow.’

He started to enjoy himself with me once more, although I never saw his two friends again. I admired Mullet for taking a stand when his two mates were still embroiled in their guilt.

I suppose every hooker has her passionate lover. Mine was a very fit young dentist with no scruples about his enormous sex drive. From the moment I opened the front door to this whirlwind, the clothes started flying. I have seen the cliché many times in the movies, but Neville was no actor. In his own way, he too was addicted and possessed—the difference between him and Luke was that he did not have religion to torture his conscience. Ardour personified, Neville kissed me non-stop as he progressed us to the bedroom, undoing our clothes, dropping them along the way. It was nothing for him to come six times in an hour. I had to stop him when my fanny dried up from exhaustion, and push him towards the bathroom. He would leave with arms outstretched for more, his tie off, shirt still open.

Neville was one of the few people I ever kissed. I was incredibly cagey about kissing. It was a disappointment to many of my clients, but it was something I couldn’t explain. Kissing engages the mouth, the part of me that had been hurt when something was forced into it—perhaps that’s what it was. For me, kissing just had to be a genuine expression of
my
passion. Affection or friendship wasn’t enough; to give my lips meant that something more than an exchange of money for sex was going on—it had to be a partnership of equals. Equal lust, if not love. If my lips could not be sincere, then I might as well give up on integrity altogether. My clients just had to accept that when the extra
ingredient was missing, no amount of decency they showed me was going to persuade me to give them more than a friendly peck.

I WENT TO A
great deal of trouble to make my room pleasant, warm and clean and my massage table was superbly comfortable. I used quality oils, pink towels and I put poetry into my work with a background of classical music. Soft, pink light from a small lamp created intimacy and other-worldliness. It also did wonders for my skin, which takes to pink colours. Often I added a candle and a few flowers in a little vase. Once I repainted one room in French pink and bought matching curtains. When I didn’t like the feel of nylon under my bare feet, I had the room recarpeted in New Zealand wool. The owner of the house was aghast. Luckily I had stored the awful grey nylon stuff in a shed and threw it back on the floor before I vacated his property.

I had always had a soft spot for musicians, but to meet Pietro was to be taken by storm. Pietro, as his name suggests, was Italian; he was also exotic, eccentric, spoilt and, sadly, rather cynical. He was short, but carried himself well, as if dressed in silks of the eighteenth century. He was talented and tantalisingly good-looking, but, in spite of that, poor and unappreciated. His cynical response to the lack of recognition verged on the self-destructive.

With Pietro on my massage table, I allowed my imagination to gallop. As far as I was concerned, I was dealing with a man straight out of history. That huge mop of curly hair—a lion’s mane—(although Pietro was a fiery, self-opiniated Aries, not a Leo), those bold eyes, that sensuous mouth (wide but not too wide), the perfect teeth and that easy smile—it all added up to an imagined reincarnation of my beloved Mozart.

Trembling, I tried to calm my feelings; I was literally out of breath. My cheeks were turning an unusual shade of red and it wasn’t just from the exercise I was getting that late February afternoon. Anxious not to appear a nervous, shy, over-excited middle-aged woman, I grasped for my professional attitude. I concentrated on doing a good job on Pietro’s back and legs as he lay prone on my table, sinking into its softness. Meanwhile, the mystical nature of the moment continued…

I had recently seen the movie
Amadeus,
twice. I’d loved the reckless, mischievous side of Mozart’s character, and identified with his love of beauty, his mismanagement of money, and his fear of his father, even after his father was dead. The cinema had made the man and his music larger than life, and I had adored his tragic-comic brilliance.

Amadeus—I mean, Pietro—turned over. He opened one curious eye to see who was playing his body the way he played the piano. I smiled, hoping it seemed as if my feelings were under control, and he closed his eyes again. I watched him. He appeared deep in thought for a moment, then asked, ‘Do you know why people come to see you?’

‘I’ve got some ideas,’ I replied. ‘Can you tell me what your reasons are?’

Pietro’s answer was slow and languid and he kept his eyes shut.‘To be touched,’ he drawled, and in three words he had told me of the agony his body contained, as well as his present pleasure. There was a pause, then he added with a soft sigh, ‘To relieve some of life’s horror.’

Did he mean the horror of his personal life? Pietro was married—I had noticed the wedding ring amongst others on his exquisite fingers. I imagined a stormy love: he, too possessive of the woman he loved; she, jealous if he looked sideways at another woman…

Pietro interrupted my musings. ‘You don’t know,’ he said, but didn’t want to tell me more. He clamped his hands over his ears dramatically. It was a gesture so like Mozart’s—at least, as I imagined the composer had been—that it took my breath away. Perhaps he was hearing the doleful Piano Concerto No 27 creeping up on him.

‘Either you don’t like my music,’ I ventured (the soft bamboo music coming from my tape recorder), ‘or you don’t want to hear your thoughts.’

He replied that he liked the music; so what were the horror stories that he couldn’t switch off in his mind? I sensed in him the self-pity that comes with an addiction to exaggerated wrongs and bitter grumbling. Pietro had paid me in advance, mumbling that he couldn’t really afford this massage. Perhaps he could give music lessons to my daughter in exchange for the massage, I suggested. ‘I don’t charge as much as you do,’ he’d quipped, and didn’t take up the offer.

After he’d gone, I wondered where I’d got the mad idea that this man was a present-day Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The phone rang; it was someone I had met at a recent workshop, who wanted to have a coffee with me. It was merely a coincidence, of course, that his name was Wolfgang!

I HAD MY
regulars with whom I could be completely comfortable. Like Daniel, whom I privately called Dan the Great because he was a giant of sorts. On his first visit, he left a big impression on one side of my new massage table—a semi-circular gap the size of his larger-than-human bottom! It happened while he was dressing after his shower. Unfortunately, he chose to sit on the short edge of the
collapsible table to get his socks on. The table gave way instantly and Great Dan’s bottom followed hard, resulting in what I later called The Great Impression.

It was a testimony to the craftsman who made the table that it hadn’t given way when Dan had initially launched himself onto it at the start of the massage. I stood with my mouth open, taking shallow breaths in suppressed fear, as I made a hopeful calculation of Dan’s weight vis-à-vis my table’s load-bearing capacity. Getting off might be more of a problem, I thought, but Dan was a truly resourceful man. He figured out a coordinated way of rolling and turning that changed the daunting operation of removing a tonne of human flesh from the horizontal to the vertical into child’s play.