Anonymous - Belle do jour:Diary of an unlikely call girl

After a strained morning he wandered off to chat up the neighbor and palpate her shinier, better techno toys. There is no worse sound than the greedy giggles of a redhead displaying a PDA in juxtaposition with her cleavage.

I spent the better part of an hour scanning train schedules. samedi, le 10 janvier

We were exhausted from arguing all night. He had a train to make at London Bridge. I was meeting friends and we left the house at the same time. At the tube station, we sat with an empty seat between us. He pored over a map of London pointlessly.

A Northern Line tube arrived. The carriages near our end were empty. I jogged up and hopped on. The doors remained ajar a few moments. I sat and looked around-he hadn’t followed me on. I looked to both ends of the carriage. Popped my head out the door. The Boy wasn’t there. The doors closed.

I sat down again, put my head on the large bag in my lap, sighed. A couple of stops passed. People crowded in, some groups, talking. I got off to change at Euston and momentarily thought about going back. No, I figured, he’d be long gone. But I stood on the platform, waited through a few arriving trains, just in case. After ten minutes I gave up. Sat down across from a young Asian man, a girl wearing a headscarf and headphones, and a bored-looking blonde with her shopping.

Just before London Bridge a face popped in front of mine. I jumped. It was him. I was surprised, didn’t know what to say. This was obviously the wrong reaction.

“Oh, never mind,” he said, going to stand by the door.

“Where did you come from?” I asked.

“What do you mean? I’ve been here all along.”

“On this train? On this carriage?”

“Yes.” He sniffed, held the handrail, looked out the window as the train slowed into the tube station. “Thanks for screaming. Now everyone thinks I’m a mugger or something.”

“I didn’t scream. You just startled me. Are you sure you were on this train? You can’t have been.”

“I was standing right next to you the whole way.”

“No, I looked around. I waited at Euston. You can’t have been.”

He stepped off the train, onto the platform. A stream of people parted to flow around his bulk. “If you want to talk to me, get off and talk to me.”

I sat down again. “I can’t. If you want to talk to me, get on.”

“No, you get off.”

The doors started to close. I said his name, strained, my voice sharp and high. “Don’t be stupid. Come on.”

The doors closed, we pulled away. Last time I saw the Boy, he was waving.

I sighed. The train was almost empty. The blonde woman with the bags leaned across. “He was lying to you,” she said. “He got on the tube at Bank.” dimanche, le 11 janvier

Anal sex is the new black.

Hands up if you remember when big-name porn stars didn’t go there, when no one said it out loud, when the only people who presumably made regular trips up the poop chute were gay men and prostate examiners. A man who suggested his wife grab her ankles and take it like a choirboy was probably courting divorce, or at the very least burnt suppers for a month.

As with the mass amateurization of everything, though, anal has gone mainstream in a big way. Girls who used to ask whether you can go down on a boy and still be “technically” a virgin now wonder whether opening the back door still leaves you theoretically pure.

Hurrah, I say, because anal’s wonderful. Then again I had the benefit of being introduced to the practice gently and considerately over a matter of weeks, by a man whose desire for me to be able to take him inspired the necessary patience to persevere. He started with massaging and stimulating the anus, then moved on to inserting his own well-lubed fingers. It wasn’t long before small vibes were introduced. When we finally got to the main event, I was begging him to do it.

And other folks must be catching on too, because simply everyone does it these days. By the time it was mentioned on Sex and the City, all my friends shrugged. “So what?” they wanted to know. “We’ve been doing that for yonks.”

I fully anticipate by next year Charlotte Church will have a glittery T-shirt that reads “My Barbie takes it up the ass.” Maybe I should make one and send it to her.

Yes, anal. The new black. Out there is not so out there anymore. Last night N and I were perusing a top-shelf mag he picked up for me, one page of which featured a woman of grandmother age being fisted in both holes. And she was smiling. And, I wasn’t even fazed. Few things shock me, really. But there is one that always gets to me-every time.

I know anal sex is the new black, because my bloody mother just rang to talk about it.

But as long as I had her on the phone, I thought I could break the news about the Boy. To her credit, she didn’t say a thing until I was finished. “Poor little creature,” she said, and it was just at that moment I felt the first tears dropping. Yes. Poor, poor me. What luck I have such a sympathetic mother.

Who then made me wait on the line as she turned to tell the whole story to my father, verbatim.

They agreed I should go home for a couple of days. I was powerless to argue. lundi, le 12 janvier

My head fell further toward the surface of the table. I didn’t want the steaming mug of tea in my hands. I didn’t want breakfast. My mother sighed. She obviously wanted to say something. “I suppose at least each failed relationship raises my standards for the next one,” I grumbled.

“Honey, don’t you worry that someday your standards will get so high no one will satisfy them?”

If I had the energy to lift my forehead off the rim of the mug, I would have given her the evil eye to end all evil eyes. “I don’t even know why it happened,” I groaned. “I mean, I know why it happened, but not globally why.”

Father rattled his paper and looked concerned. “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he said. “He was probably seeing some other girl and just looking for a reason to end it.”

“Oh, that helps very much, ta.”

Come to think of it, maybe he was. Oh, there were a few times, a few texts, a few phone calls that seemed odd at the time. And one big thing, several months back. “You never surprise me,” he used to say. He said it often. Usually when we were in the throes of a gentle argument, when my attitude rubbed up against his ego and the first word someone said wrong threatened to tip everything into oblivion. “You never surprise me,” he’d say, and anticipating the coming list of Things I Have Done Wrong in the Last Year, I would go to another room and disconnect: closed door, television, toilet, whatever it takes. I already knew the list off by heart. It ranged from a brief period in which I went back to an ex, to less concrete items like whether or not I introduced him to other people as my boyfriend or as just a friend. Headphones on. One hour of silence would make him apologize.

I was in an expansive mood one morning in December. The sun was just coming up and, for reasons I cannot quite put a finger on, I woke with the birds. Never surprise you? We’ll see. I walked down to the Kentish Town train station and waited for a train on the southbound platform.

A taxi dropped me at his doorstep at the other end. The air was damp and smelled salty. It was still before nine in the morning. The back door is usually unlocked and I didn’t want to wake his housemate. I crept up the stairs and put a hand on the handle of his door.

Turned. No luck. Turned harder-Regency house, sometimes the weather makes the fixtures stick-no. Locked. I tapped on the door. Already my heart was sinking.

There was a noise of whispering inside. The creaking bed. “Hello?” came a whisper from the other side of the door. His voice.