Twisted

  But Lena isn’t going to let go. ‘You know, Jul, you must talk to somebody, get help, besides you know we are always there for you.’ She says this as if she is my therapist and I am some kind of mental patient.

  Now I don’t even try to suppress my irritation. ‘I am fine, Lena, just smoking dope sometimes. Not a big deal! It’s not like I am some kind of junkie! Relax! Stop listening to Natalia! And just make sure you use condoms, so you don’t repeat your previous mistakes.’

  15

  It is a few months since we left Ukraine, but it only took me a few hours – not even days – to adapt to the grown-up world. I feel so cool and easy. I enjoy my financial freedom; I guess that is the first thing that changes any child into an adult. I love the fact that I am in charge. The unknown future and its responsibilities infect me with a bit of fear and rash excitement.

  The only paradox that can’t stop stirring in my head is why on earth am I so morally comfortable with what I am doing? I do not feel ashamed or dirty because I am a pro.

  Don’t get me wrong: I am not trying to promote this job, even though it can be the best recipe for many women for how to find the damn G-spot. We all know that practice makes perfect. I am not going to be insincere either and tell you that I fuck for money because I love sex. I do love sex, but the clientele does not come from my imaginary perfect world. The guys who are more often part of my reality are ugly, fat, smelly or sweaty. Hookers usually aren’t in a position to be picky, because they have already made their choice – the money. What’s more, this trade wouldn’t be my first choice if there were other well-paid jobs available. Trust me, if teachers earned the same as sex traders, I would not hesitate to change my clientele from adults to the under-aged.

  So, this is not an attempt to find the merits or reveal the evils of this profession, or to justify my choice. It is about my curiosity. I am curious about my ease with what I do.

  I don’t think it is my sisters’ fault, although they did set an example. I was okay with this even before I learned what kind of job they did in Luxembourg. The first time I had sex in exchange for the agreed-on-in-advance amount was when I was sixteen.

  During the summer holidays, my school friend Sveta and I took jobs as waitresses in one of the resorts on the Black Sea. It was a great opportunity to get tanned, hang out and make a little bit of money. We made friends with all of the staff, including three security guards – who, although a lot of fun, annoyingly hassled us.

  Once, the barman, Sergey, called both of us for a little chat. ‘Dolls, would you like to make some extra cash? There are two men from Moscow. They want some fun, but because their wives and kids are here too, the fun must be quiet and decent. They saw you two on the beach and liked you. Tomorrow they are going fishing on the lake and would like you two to join them for few hours – one hundred dollars each,’ he finished, and smiled.

  I looked at Sveta. She was stunned. After a pause she threw ‘No way!’ at Sergey with disgust, and left the bar. Sergey confidently followed her leaving with his eyes, and a sarcastic ‘Sure, princess. Go! Eventually you will get fucked by one of those callow guards anyway …’ He turned to me with a questioning look and added, ‘… for free, of course.’

  It was a surprise to me, but I didn’t rise in revolt from the proposition. What was even more shattering – I totally agreed with the barman.

  ‘How safe is it?’

  ‘They are normal dudes; if they weren’t, I wouldn’t handle the negotiation.’

  The next day, at about ten in the morning, one of them picked me up in his latest-model black Mercedes, a few kilometers away from our resort as we had agreed. I had never been taken for a drive in a car that stylish. It took us fifteen minutes to get to the peaceful glade with its small lake, where his friend, it turned out, was already fishing – for real.

  ‘I will give you another hundred if you do my friend as well,’ my driver announced with ease, as if we were talking about the weather. ‘Your choice; we will not force you to do anything.’

  It took me some time to convert two hundred bucks into hryvni. The sound of the anxious pulse in my head slowed my brain down. Nevertheless, the amount was equivalent to four months of my salary as a waitress, with tips. I tried to calm myself down; I made sure that my voice stayed firm and replied, ‘Okay, but one at a time.’ He nodded ‘No problem,’ then asked me to undress and to move to the back seat.

  Before we started, my employer quickly took off his shorts and T-shirt, rolled a condom over his cock, and, before climbing into the car, wisely covered the leather seat with a beach towel.

  We started with me on top of him. Very soon he got tired of my flat chest and lifted me up, turning me around at the same time. He pushed my head down, squashing my face into the leather that was now stripped of the towel, and bonked me from behind. He was rough but didn’t hurt me; more importantly, it didn’t take him long to come.

  As soon as he was done, he mumbled ‘Good girl, stay where you are,’ put his shorts back on, and walked away towards the lake.

  When his friend came to the car a few minutes later, I was lying on my back, bashfully covered with the towel. The friend was cool as a cucumber: he smiled, unzipped his shorts, wrapped his swollen member in rubber and climbed on top of me. It was my lucky day: he was even faster than his friend. Ten minutes of rhythmical rocking in the missionary position and I was free to go with two hundred bucks in my pocket.

  The barman was right: the ‘dudes’ were ‘normal’, and one of the security guards did screw Sveta after all … for free.

  When the summer ended and we went back home, Sveta started to complain about pain in her throat and discomfort when she urinated. The blood test showed the clap and a few other X-rated infections. When I asked her if they had used any protection, Sveta wiped her tears and blubbered in embarrassment that he had told her that he’d put on the condom, but it was dark and she couldn’t see. She was too shy to check with her hand.

  That summer story didn’t shape my views about life: the barman’s words were not news to me. So, I look for answers in the earlier stages of my life, but can’t find any clues in my childhood either. We grew up in a friendly, strong and intelligent family; our parents had a healthy relationship. We were raised on Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky and steeped in the concepts of integrity and fairness. I think that my I-am-okay-with-being-a-pro attitude is simply a consequence of my observations of everyday life.

  For example, my schoolmate Marina liked Anton from our group, but dated 24-year-old Misha who had his own business and decent wheels, and who picked her up after classes once in a while. That made Marina feel cooler than the rest of the girls in our class (including me), and successfully substituted Anton’s great sense of humor.

  Another good example was our neighbour, Dasha, from the fifth floor. She was my mother’s kitchen-small-talk friend, and came for coffee and a few cigarettes almost every day. Most of their conversations ended up being about Dmitri, Dasha’s husband, who, according to her, was a rare type of dickhead. He’d been involved with another woman for almost two years. On each visit, Dasha complained that she was tired of the life that was built on the lie, that she didn’t even love ‘the bastard’ any more, and that she would have left him long ago if she had anywhere to go other than her mother’s small apartment. Her mother lived somewhere on the outskirts of Kherson and drove her mad. These were good excuses for Dasha to continue living a life of no self-respect and constant complaints.

  I saw many of these examples around me every day: because of social, economic and other circumstances, including low self-esteem, a fear of change, the belief that they didn’t deserve better, or simply to gain any sort of advantage, women often entered into – or stayed in – relationships for reasons other than love or sexual attraction. My curious logic may not have been developed at the time, but I could not see the difference between this type of relationship and one in which women honestly named their monetary price.

  I saw so many of the
se ‘love affairs without love’ that I became used to the concept and formed my okay-with-being-a-pro attitude. As I see it, the only difference between any hooker and our neighbour Dasha is that the former’s ‘labour hour’ is the latter’s lifetime.

  16

  I go to work in an annoyingly nasty mood. No wonder I am pissed off – besides the hangover from the previous night’s booze-diving routine that doesn’t want to simmer down, and although it’s 5 p.m. and it still feels like my body has been thrown from the fifth floor onto the driveway, five minutes ago I received a text from one of my regulars.

  Oh yes, he is one of the first clients whom I can proudly call ‘my customer’.

  The chap is in his fifties, in good shape, not bad looking but a repulsively unpleasant and sleazy man. He lives in Paris and, of course, is married. Two or three times a month he comes to Luxembourg for business and pleasure. When we first met in the club, about three months ago, he acted like a real gentleman: asked some neutral questions about my family and my life, trying really hard to show that he was interested in me, and not sex. He kept throwing lines like, ‘Oh, all three of you are beautiful sisters! Your mother must be a gorgeous woman!’ or ‘You are an intelligent woman, Julia, you shouldn’t be working here ...’

  Blah-blah-blah …

  After twenty minutes of our causerie and a few glasses of champagne, he asked if I would like to join him upstairs, bought a bottle of Laurent-Perrier for €375, refusing to drink the shoddy swill the club sold for €250, and politely fucked me from behind. Before he left, he gave me his phone number and suggested that we meet outside of the club when next he was in town, offering a meal in a fancy restaurant, a room in a decent hotel and €300 for the night.

  This overture sounded like a top-notch bargain to me, until our first ‘date’ …

  My Frenchman is one of those characters who never lets me out of his sight. He never stops hugging or touching me, or, more importantly, kissing me, usually with his wet tongue deep inside my throat. No matter what! While walking in the street, driving, sleeping, showering or even eating.

  He loves to walk hand in hand through the Luxembourg streets and pull me every few minutes, clinching and grabbing me under the skirt or sweater, while constantly licking my mouth inside and out. Every red light we hit while driving to the hotel or restaurant he burrows through my tights and panties and plugs his fingers into my slit while searching with his tongue for my trachea. The bastard loves to join me in the shower, ignoring my protests and also insisting on us lathering and washing each other while, of course, kissing all the time … he never stops hugging me at night, groping my tits and my pussy even while I sleep.

  Oh, and the most annoying part is the restaurants. He always sits next to me, periodically squeezing my thighs and deep-throat smooching while still chewing on his food. Thinking about it makes me want to throw up instantly … He keeps on gazing into my eyes and saying ‘Je t’aime’9 while I fight the natural impulse to show the disgust on my face, smile instead and answer ‘I love you too’.

  Yuck …

  Guess what the most revolting part of our ‘dating’ is? Of course it’s sex. We fuck once or twice before going to sleep and usually twice in the morning – before and after breakfast. He cannot come without me stimulating his anus. Usually that involves my finger in his ass while he is fucking me on top, or sometimes he just climbs above my face and makes me lick his asshole while he jerks himself off.

  Yuck! Yuck! Yuck!

  After each of his visits I feel so squelchy and drained that the only thing that can pull me out of that depressed mental condition is intensive three-hour shopping therapy. A few hundred euro spent on shoes and clothes – that is the best medicine I’ve come up with so far.

  Back to the SMS I received from the French sleazeball … He is arriving tonight and is going to stay for two days instead of his usual one-night visit. It’s a Saturday night, so he will spend it in our cabaret with me. As soon as my shift is over, he will take me to some magnifique10 French hotel, outside of Luxembourg City, somewhere on the border with Germany, where we can ‘enjoy’ each other in full, until Monday …

  Fuck! That is at least 42 hours of excruciation for my mind and body!

  He arrives at the club and we move to the semi-private lounge. The only thing I can think about, while nodding and smiling to some boring stories he is telling with the excitement of an eight-year-old, is the 42 hours I am going to have to get through. I guzzle the champagne, hoping it will help me.

  Already pretty loaded with alcohol, I go to the bathroom where I bump into Masha. She looks at me and roars, ‘What’s wrong, my baby? You look like a piece of trash! Do you need some extra stimulus? It looks like the alcohol does not love you tonight.’

  ‘Masha, nothing will work for me,’ I weep drunkenly. ‘I can’t stand the sleaze-ball anymore! I don’t need a stimulant; I need something that will switch off my brain for the next two days!’

  ‘Let me think …’ moans Masha. ‘I have something that just might work for you.’ She leaves the restroom.

  A few minutes later, she returns with a small plastic bag with some blue pills in it, quickly hands it to me so my ‘beloved’ doesn’t notice, whispers in my ear, ‘Don’t take more than two at a time,’ and disappears.

  I have no idea what is in the bag but swallow a few tablets without batting an eye. And then it comes … the world around me begins to modify. My arms, legs and eyelids get heavier … my attitude shifts too – from distressed and jerky to I-don’t-give-a-fuck-what’shappening-to-me-at-all …

  Feels good … I love it! I decide to make sure that this wonderful state will not leave me for as long as possible and have another two. I feel cool as a cucumber for a little longer, and then blank out.

  I wake up the next day in my bed. I can’t remember anything: how I got here or what happened the previous night. There is Lena, sitting next to my bed with a worried face, and Masha, in a hyper state, doing some cleaning in the room and irritably answering Lena’s ‘should we take her to the hospital?’ questions: ‘She is going to be fine, Lena. You should rather go to the mall and do some shopping and let your sister sleep. Stop worrying.’ Judging by Masha’s tone, she isn’t saying this for the first time.

  Apparently what happened was that some time after I had taken the third and fourth hit of Valium, I’d grasped my Frenchman’s face with two hands, digging into his skin with my nails, and with an unblinking loony stare hissed something not very nice through my clenched teeth. Then, abruptly, dropped back on the couch. My eyes rolled back and white, frothy saliva started to come out of my mouth. Sleaze-ball got a fright and, while staring at me, kept shouting something like, ‘Are you okay, my angel?’

  What an idiot! Obviously I wasn’t!

  Masha immediately understood what had happened, and with an ‘I told you, not more than two at a time!’ pulled me into the bathroom, where she pushed two fingers down my throat and made me puke, removing the excess of the sedatives.

  When I’m finally able to switch on my brain and recalculate the outcome of the night, I genuinely smile.

  I didn’t make any cash over the weekend. The following day our boss barked at me, threatening to fire me if he found out about one more drug incident involving me. But I missed it! I missed the weekend from hell. I learnt that Valium and alcohol are not a good combination for my body. And that my sleaze-ball is probably angry, because I haven’t received an SMS from him.

  I wonder what I hissed at him … something tells me it was not sweet and pleasant, taking into account that it was not me speaking but my psyche that was freed from abuse and suppression.

  My joy doesn’t last long, though. A week later my phone comes alive with a text from him. It informs me that he is sure that I was just not feeling well and didn’t mean what I said. And that he’d be coming back the following week and would love to see me. Oh, and that he was having some difficulties with money and would not be able to pay me, but believed it
wouldn’t be a problem for us, because our relationship was built on genuine feelings …

  Yeah, right!

  I get ecstatic. My greed, my desire to make more money, always pushed me to handle one more bout of torture and prevented me from stopping abusing myself and ceasing our meetings. But thanks to his greed, I no longer have a choice. I write back that there is absolutely fucking nothing on this earth that could make me spend even an hour with him for free, and that when he talks about our ‘strong bond’ it makes me sick.

  He doesn’t respond. I spend another couple of days feeling sunny and energetic. I even forget about him. However, on the night he was scheduled to arrive in Luxembourg, his visit to the club takes me by surprise.

  Demonstratively, he takes another girl upstairs. On his way past, he throws something like, ‘Venal two-faced bitch!’ at me.

  I look at him and smile. ‘I know’.

  I think to myself that even if he pours a barrel of crap over my head right now, I would still keep smiling, because there is only one cheerful thought that keeps swinging through my head – ‘I am not the one who has to go upstairs with him!’

  Alleluia!

  17

  It is just another weekend when my sisters and I meet for our Sunday lunch, which we try to do regularly to catch up on the latest news, especially now that Lena is working out of town. Considering our habit of sleeping late, we never gather earlier than three or four in the afternoon, and we usually drag lunch out into the evening. As I’ve never had sushi before we decide to go to a nice little Japanese place not far away from where Natalia and I are staying. No cabarets are open on Sundays, so it is the only day during the week on which we can get together and totally relax without watching the time and worrying about when our shift is going to start.

  ‘I love this feeling,’ I say while Lena shows me how to hold the chopsticks, ‘of not having to rush to work after lunch … I wish I was the daughter of a millionaire.’ I sigh, losing myself in my delusional thoughts. ‘I wouldn’t need to work then …’