Quickie Fifty

"I say, why don't you try it," he asks, "why don't you try being queer? How do you know you don't need it? Don't listen to that bloody little womanizer, Lobo. He's just a damned fool. Look, do think it would damage our relationship if I sucked you off?"

Lawrence Durrell "The Black Book" 1938

So, this is the first away from Fuckeries sexpedition. Most posts I have entered regarding prostitutes seem to beget silence and I know that so many people have a strange and hostile view of the industry that is prostitution. I however, as a sex worker myself in only a few previous incarnations back, do not see prostitution as anything more damaging to our psyches then marriage, mergers and social movements.

I guess part of this fear of what prostitution represents is that men are paying (And it isn't entirely a man's world) for what they "should" be enjoying for free, and women are selling what should be desired for free, and somewhere in the middle money, an issue everyone seems to hold close to their hearts or bank accounts is being exchanged for sex. That's money, you know, those bits of paper we use to get things with? Or money, something people argue over mortgages about and who pays for dinner or who earns enough for that outstanding electricity bill, and who has spent what on what suddenly is used for this intimate sexual thing where normally a great amount of not money but emotions, feelings and lust are required in order to make it happen, but certainly not money ... it makes me think that it isn't prostitution and sex that are the issues with this industry, it's simply "money".

I had finished off attending a movie quiz night for the St Kilda Film Festival, they run it every year. The crowd was the usual mass of film freaks all looking like some deity had pinched their faces to squeeze every bit of fun out of them, the black sea of celluloid loiterers, fishbowl fanatics. I got fairly tanked on some free beers and wine shot my way by the table that had assigned me to play with them. Our team came last and afterwards I wanted at least one more drink, it was 10:30pm and on a Wednesday night nothing was open, not a bar or pub in the vicinity. This rather depressed me, as I stood on the fringes of all the cinema savvy edging their way home and not anywhere else, how sensible of them, how impertinent of me.

I walked around a bit but still found no establishment, not even a quiet rustic pub in which to sponge up one last beer, so I decided to make use of the Street Workers who I knew graced the shadows of this district. I have courted a Street Worker in this part of town once before and the feeling is rather exciting. I felt like Jerzy Kosinski scanning the crannies of life for something stimulating, I also whiffed the boring and conservative fumes of the film folk I had left behind. "They have some idea of what happens in the real world but they see it as untouchable" I thought, "All their experience exists within 24 frames per second", and a Street Worker waddled past me into the darkness but I kept on strolling. "What I am about to do would probably disgust and shock them yet they would happily enjoy the fat of it from a biopic of their favourite filmmaker", I saw one girl hanging around a corner, I was about to approach her, my copy of Lawrence Durrell's "The Black Book" in my pocket, but a young Spanish man approached her first, he expressed something loudly and urgent about sixty dollars, and so I walked the block to come back and see if they made a deal.

She had gone along with her "John" or in this case Juan. I walked back to the main road where I knew a few stood ready to dart off into the back streets in case of roving Cop cars. I saw a rather Scranky Aboriginal woman standing near a tree. As I approached her a silver hatchback pulled up. The door opened and she stuck her head in, but it seems no offer was suitable and the car drove off. I got nearer and she hailed me for a cigarette of which I gave to her. She then asked if I would like anything such as oral and I replied with "What's your prices?" She told me she gave pretty good oral for $40, and I said how about a quickie for a fifty, and she casually agreed, her manner like someone busily arranging flowers and settling on a satisfied arrangement with a few quick nudges. This made me feel somewhat solemn as the price was very low, very low for a fuck, almost too low for a fuck and I felt as if I owed her a good one to make up for the pathetic wage, well actually I was thinking that she'd get a half decent one in any case.

We wandered down the street and came to a block of flats that she seemed familiar with, there was a gate, she asked me to climb over it and let her through because her back was bad and she couldn't make the clamber. I jumped over with some help from her giving me a foot-hold which for some reason seemed oddly comical to me at the time. I let her in and she directed me to a small area that was fenced off where the rubbish bins of the apartments were. Charming I know, hanging out with a hooker amongst some garbage bins but there are a lot worse off situations to find oneself.

I asked her for a condom and dropped my pants. I wanted to get hard quickly, make it all "in/out" and go on my wicked, wicked ways. She was ferreting around in her bag, and then with one hand she pulled her tracksuit pants down. I immediately began fingering her whilst tugging at my cock whilst she was still bent over rummaging around her bag, at that moment I began having doubts about my interest in this particular venture. She couldn't find a condom and I was feeling rank at the scent of her cunt, she clearly had seen a few unfussy clients that night. Where is the rose water when you need it.

"I'm clean" she said, "I've just come out of Chemotherapy, so I've been checked all over", this admonition struck me as the icing on the sublime tragedy of existing within the margins of society. I told her I wasn't going to have sex without a condom which she immediately understood, and I told her to keep the fifty bucks. We walked along the street together and I couldn't but feel somewhat reflective at the predicament we all find ourselves in sometimes, thinking that these were not unpleasant sighs one experiences in life. She called me a "Darling" saying that she could now wrap up the night early and go home to look after her girlfriend, at least I gave her the chance to finish her night briskly without risk of a nasty client and then she told me that I would receive good fortune for having let her keep the money, it was like having a wizened Freya from Eric the Viking or Tia Dalma from Pirates of the Caribbean witch whore bless me, and that feeling was worth the small amount of cash I had given. It added the perfect touch to my departure.

I do enjoy experiences that make me think reflectively about the layers of humanity and how tied up we are all in our cozy nooks of perception. How "loaded" it seems this under-current of our world is yet without much ado the Army continues to march, Boxers continue to box, Prisoners continue to be imprisoned, Dogs continue to be pounded, Bullies continue to bully, and people continue to be people in all sorts of unfair and demeaning ways yet I agree with D.H.Lawrence implicitly with the statement "Most wives sold themselves in the past, and plenty of harlots gave themselves, when they felt like it, for nothing” – (Pornography and Obscenity), what he was getting at with what institutions stand for, and as a meta-narrative it is still important to think about because if prostitution had proper representation, it would be one of the most glorious industries in the world, without that, it just exists wayward with outlaw issues to contend with.