The Scorpion's Sweet Venom (4 page)

We'd already been in the room for almost half an hour. Though fast, both first and second rounds had been good. We had another
half-hour, but the guy wasn't showing any signs of wanting to go for it again. Lying next to me, both of us naked, he asked
if he could snuggle up to me. He got comfortable in my arms and there he stayed, playing with my breasts with his fingers,
running them up and down my tummy. He was the one who broke the silence.

I like to talk to my clients. I talk a lot and they end up opening up to me. The things I've heard . . . It's my psychologist
side. I'd like to be a psychiatrist, but I know I'll never get into medical school. But there's always psychology, closely
related. And that's what I'm going to do, when I go back to my studies. I'll never be at a lack for material. But that's not
what I was talking about . . . I'd read
Oedipus,
that book about the guy who's attracted to his mother, Jocasta. But I'd considered it nothing more than a Greek tragedy until
that point-blank confession. The guy and his frankness awoke my curiosity. We talked a lot and he told me his motherhad fallen
pregnant with him when she was very young, only sixteen. He must have been about forty-four, because, according to him, his
mother was sixty.

His attraction stemmed from his childhood (how Freudian can you get?). When he was still very young, his mother used to go
round the house in a bra and knickers, and was very relaxed about it. They bathed together and everything. This desire and
fantasy had stayed with him all his life. Even today, at his age, the guy is obsessed with the idea of having sex with her.
When we'd finished, he told me he'd give me whatever I wanted if I could get her to go to bed with him. I led him on and asked
for 10,000
reals.
I admit the money was tempting, but I hadn't the slightest idea how to convince her to sleep with her son. He told me how
he imagined the sex would be, how he'd take off her clothes, smell her knickers, lick her all over, the positions. A thousand
fantasies. Which remain in his head.

My desire to find out everything about life seemed boundless when I was fourteen. There were still things I wasn't clear about,
of course. One of them was my own sexuality. I'd already given a lot of pleasure to the boys I'd masturbated at clubs, I'd
held a lot of stiff dicks, but I didn't know if that was as far as pleasure went. I was curious to know what it was like to
come into contact with another woman's body. And I was also afraid. What if I was a lesbian? At that stage in life, things
are either black or white. If something's not black, it must be white. But I tried not to give it too much thought.

One day, at school, the boy who sat in front of me had a copy of
Playboy.
He started flicking through the magazine in the middle of the lesson, and I peered over his shoulder like a pirate's parrot,
fascinated by what I saw. I'd never seen magazines of naked women. These things never came into my house. Imagine the embarrassment
of buying one at a newsstand. I asked to see it. He lent it to me and I loved it. During the break, I didn't think twice.
I stole the boy's
Playboy,
stuffed it in my bag and took it home. I'd already masturbated looking at G Maga
zine
- which I'd bought often. But I'd never come looking at those guys with their hard-ons. Perhaps I'd finally come if I looked
at women. Bingo! After this feat my fantasy had to leave the page and become reality.

One day, two clients turned up together.

In the beginning, I didn't know who to pay attention to. I started by sucking one off, but the other came and knelt next to
his friend, so I gave them a double blow job. I kissed one, then the other. I wondered if something might happen between them,
as it often does with women in a
menage a trois.
But I realised nothing was going to happen between these two. Only the heads of their dicks touched, and even then only when
I held them together and tried to suck them both at the same time. A difficult mission . . . although not impossible.

The day-to-day life of a working girl has a very unglamorous side. I shared my tidy but simple room - beds, large wardrobe,
mirrors, impersonal pictures on the wall, like the ones you see in hotels-with four other girls. Nothing like what you see
in the cinema, for example, with those dressing tables dripping with costume jewellery. Since we also worked there, we had
to keep it clean. We took turns sweeping and dusting. Not all of them liked the housework, but letting the place get dirty
wasn't an option . . . Washing the linen and clients' towels was the launderette's job. But the girls had to change them,
otherwise they got revolting. Exceptthat (don't tell) it wasn't one sheet per client. Sometimes it was the same one all day
long, where several men had been. Smooth out the creases and
volla.
I was always asking if I could change the sheets. Since there weren't that many, and she didn't want spend much at the launderette,
the manager used to get angry and say no. Sometimes I'd spread gel on the sheet on purpose so she'd have no choice. She used
to tell me off, of course. But I didn't care.

The first time I moved houses was about seven months after I started working. Actually, the madam of the house on Alameda
Franca kicked me out, together with two other girls, because someone had told her we were smoking dope in secret. Although
I'd met some really nice girls, with stories very similar to mine, there was a lot of jealousy. After all, the girls are competition
for one another. That was why I'd never wanted to work in places like Cafe Photo or Bahamas. Just think! If it was like that
with just ten girls at the brothel, imagine a hundred! I also don't like the idea of having to solicit clients. Either they
want me and come to have sex, or I'm not interested. Since the most important thing in this profession is your body, there's
a lot of bitching between the girls. It's not easy to make real friends in this business. I've never worked in a company,
but I imagine it must be thesame . . . So when you're chosen by the client, you'd better beware, because this is when the
lid comes off. On one such occasion, a backstabber decided to let the cat out of the bag about the dope to make life hard
for me. It worked.

My return to the Franca house wasn't what I'd expected. The girls I knew were no longer there andit was all very strange.
I needed action, something new, a horizon. I was also depressed, a bit lost and really wanted to give up coke. I knew that,
if I didn't get my act together, I'd completely lose myself, with no objectives, just fucking all day long so I could snort
and smoke after work. In other words - the image of a sorry, worn-out pro who ends up alone on a street corner or hanging
out the window of an old house. I was determined to save enough money to be independent, without having to support some pimp.
So I'd have to work more. A girl who lived in my building told me about the 'Big Twenty'. A pat on the back for whoever figures
out the name. I was really curious to know how a girl could sell herself for 20
reals.
If it was about quantity and high turnover, I was all for it.

She took me to a place in Campo Belo. It had a high client turnaround, lots of tiny individual rooms, zero luxury - and hygiene.
A squalid, filthy fleapit. Imagine a room so small that the only things that fit in it are a rickety chair and a single mattress
on the floor with a disgusting sheet on it (that's only changed once a day). It's a quick fuck, ten or fifteen minutes. Express
sessions, 10
reals
to the pimp, 10 to the girl.

I really screwed things up at Bandeirantes in October 1999. I was fifteen. This time there was no turning back. There was
nothing I could do. I had the hots for a guy in my class. Good-looking, blond, white skin, he looked like an angel, with really
blue eyes. But he was so sleazy and full of himself that it spoilt everything. Until the day he came on to me.