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

I watched my lips grow fuller, redder, wetter. Much darker than I imagined, almost purple, as I’ve seen the head of a penis do so many times. The aperture itself widened and gasped. I could hear its gentle smacks like a mouth opening and closing as my hand rubbed faster and my hips moved less gently.

The effect was of watching myself on television. I suppose it must have been for him as well-he paid far more attention to the reflection than to me in the chair. I wondered why bother with the expense of paying someone to masturbate when there was no interaction, then realized. He wanted to be the director.

But as I approached the point of no return I would slow down and readjust my position-ostensibly to give him a better look or varied position, but really to keep myself from coming.

It was remarkably difficult to keep from setting off the hair trigger for most of the hour. He sat on a bed, then knelt on the ground, coming closer and closer to the mirror, occasionally making requests regarding the speed and action of the vibe or the location of my free hand-but didn’t touch. When he came, it hit the glass, sliding thickly over my reflected image onto the carpet. jeudi, le 5 fevrier

I came in soggy and grumpy, having been caught in a sudden burst of rain in Ladbroke Grove and without my umbrella. I’d been out to meet a man for a date, and let us just say it hadn’t gone well. There were three missed calls, all from the manager’s mobile. I rang her back. “Hello, sorry I missed you earlier.”

“Not to worry, darling.” The manager, for once, was not listening to horrible hair-rock. “You had a booking.”

“I went to meet someone for lunch and forgot my phone. Anything interesting?”

“This very nice man. He always asks for you.”

“Ah.” This has happened about once a week since I started working. “The French one?”

“He is such a lovely gentleman.”

“Yes, and he always gives less than an hour lead-time on a booking. I can’t get out so quickly.” My house is too far out of Zone 1 for that. “I presume you gave him to one of the other girls?”

“Yes. But he always asks for you, darling.”

“Tell him to give me more notice next time, okay?”

“Mmm.” There was another voice in the background and the manager went oddly quiet, then whispered, “Sorry, have to go! Nice talking to you, goodbye!” She has a boyfriend who doesn’t know what she does for a living. It seems odd to me-but then it’s her job that is illegal in the UK, not mine.

Text from First Date soon after: Torture Garden. What think you?

Well, if he’s trying to keep my interest, he’s certainly doing well. I am so there with bells on. Clamped to my nipples, of course. vendredi, le 6 fevrier

Walking through a tiled corridor to the District Line at Monument yesterday. A busker was there, playing Dylanesque riffs on a guitar and making up lyrics about the people walking past. and I said, my friend, there will be a woman / and she will walk by you / and you will know her by her white suit and pink shoes / there will be a beautiful woman

I couldn’t help but smile, looking down at my shoes. Dusty pink peep-toed courts. Very forties or seventies, depending on how you work them. and my friend, you will know her / you will know this woman by her smile

I kept walking, but laughing the whole way, and looked back to grin at him before turning the corner. samedi, le 7 fevrier

N came round after the gym to help with the cushions. By “help” I mean “sit on them whilst I boil the kettle,” which is helpful in its way, I suppose. Someone has to make the first stain on the upholstery.

(By which I mean nothing ruder than spilled tea. You sick creatures.)

N’s eyes lit on the cushion-squeezer-cum-paddle immediately. When I came back with the steaming mugs, he was already doing a few test whacks on his thigh.

“New piece of kit?” he asked.

“Came with the sofa,” I explained.

“Class.”

One of N’s other exes, the one who broke his heart, has started turning up at the gym intermittently. I notice it’s never a time he’s likely to be there. Sometimes I linger in the locker area, listening in case she talks to anyone. Knowing her current situation would carry a high premium indeed. And if she knows who I am, she hasn’t acknowledged it. I’m not certain whether to tell him yet or not. We were only halfway through the tea before the conversation turned, as it inevitably does, to her.

“I don’t know whether to just call her,” he said. “If she’s seeing someone new, I’ll feel rubbish; if she isn’t, I’ll wonder what the point of us breaking up was.”

“You know, when someone decides it’s over there’s nothing you can do.”

“I know. I just thought, finally I have everything sorted, finally I-holy fuck.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Look out your window.”

I did. A residential street, cars parked on the opposite side. Some house lights on, some off. Almost-invisible droplets of rain blown sideways, showing up as a shower of orange under the streetlight. “Yes?”

“It’s his car. It’s your ex’s car.”

I squinted. The eyes are not quite what they should be these days, but I don’t drive and have readjusted my notion of “normal newspaper reading distance” to approximately two centimeters from my nose. But yes, it looked awfully like the Boy’s car-Fiat, V reg, half a block down.

An inadvertent shiver. It was cold by the window and I pulled the drapes. “Lot of cars like that around.”

“Wasn’t there when I parked,” N said. “None of your neighbors have one.”

I turned back toward the sofa, unfolded my arms, picked up the cup of tea and sat down. “Mmm. I don’t think so. I don’t know.”

When N left an hour later, the car was gone, anyway. dimanche, le 8 fevrier

So: it is the mid-eighties. Sometimes in the summer my mother leaves me with a Jewish youth group on weekdays. Usually we hang around a community center, playing board games or being forced into strange sports no one knows the rules of, like korfball. Sometimes we take trips.

One time we go to the beach in two minibuses. It’s not a warm day, but the beach is a treat (we are told), so we mustn’t waste the day (we are also told). A teacher at school once brought back a bleached starfish from her holidays abroad, so I spend the day walking barefoot up and down the shore looking for one. Of course there are none. Some other girls are sitting cross-legged in shallow water, pretending to shampoo their hair with sand. They ask me to join them but I don’t. It looks too cold.

We are brushed down obsessively by the leaders before being allowed back in the buses. But there is still sand in everything when we come back, so the adults order the girls into one room and the boys into another to change out of their swimsuits and shake out their towels. Between the two rooms is a cloakroom-cum-corridor, and the boys don’t realize, but two older girls go to watch them change.

I didn’t get to look. Not from want of trying: the older girls were tall enough to block the view, and wouldn’t let anyone else near. They described what they saw (inaccurately, I later realize). For years after, I believe the male member has a spiraling ridge going down it, the physical equivalent of the verb “to screw.” When someone’s older sister has a boyfriend, she is “being screwed.”

There is a popular song all the older girls like, and they argue about who loves the singer most, whose name would sound best with his. His protestations of asexuality are meaningless to them. No, not meaningless: they make him harder to win. He is as separate from the boys around us as a person can be. He is beautiful, antique, otherworldly, and from Manchester-and if we know anything, it’s that Manchester is far cooler than where we are.