But First Date, I suspected, was nicer than that. Much nicer. “You promise?” I could hear the smile in his voice.
“Guarantee,” I said, smiling back. samedi, le 24 janvier
It is the Chinese New Year celebrations. This is not something I would usually know, except today on leaving an appointment the client gave me two gold-foil-wrapped fortune cookies. I didn’t think fortune cookies were particularly traditional, but enjoy the thought that perhaps a randomly chosen slip of paper in a cookie holds the key to one’s future. It’s no less likely to be true than looking in the back of the Metro, anyway.
The first fortune read:
You will receive a cheerful call next week. which amuses me no end. Was that meant to be the next week after the fortune was printed, the week after the cookie was opened, or just “next week” in general? A pedant could thus claim that if said cheerful call does not materialize between now and the 29th, it was in fact meant to mean next week.
The second fortune read:
You will appear on television in the next year. which is at once more frightening (bloody hell, I certainly hope not) and yet subject to the same restrictions as the first fortune. If I don’t appear on TV in the Year of the Monkey, then clearly it will be during the Year of the Cock.
For completely unrelated reasons, I am now looking forward to the Year of the Cock. dimanche, le 25 janvier
An odd side effect of this job is the sensitivity to personal smell.
I don’t usually shower straight after the appointments. There’s one regular client who bathes me at his house with a sponge and almond soap, but I tend to wait with others and shower at home.
So I may be walking out to a cab, or going up the stairs of my flat, and catch a whiff. Not of sex, not specifically-just someone’s scent. The smell of their skin or hair or hand cream that rubbed off on my skin and clothes. Sometimes it’s mixed with my own smell as well, and I know as soon as I can I will undress and sniff the creases of my clothing.
Will I remember these men if I smell them again? They say scent is the most powerfully memory-associated of all the senses. And that it is also the most neglected. It is so ephemeral. You become quickly tired of strong odors, but can’t get enough of the tease, the slightest waft of an almost-remembered association.
The Boy smelled strong but not unpleasant. He used to sweat incredible amounts. After a long session in the bedroom he would lift himself up, sweat dripping down his back and chest. The smell was light, the taste salty; sometimes I would lick him dry. Even a bit of heavy petting will cause droplets to come out on his back. One touch and his palms go damp. He swore high and low that I was the only woman to have had this power over him. I joked that he must be part dog: a panting animal.
Crossing the street I smelled a cologne that must have been the same as the psychoanalyst used. I remember touching the smooth green bottle in his bathroom. One morning I put on a pair of shoes that inexplicably reminded me of a client from earlier in the week. Did I think at the time “This man smells of leather/old sneakers/sweaty socks”? No. But there was a deep note of similarity, and by lunchtime, I had to take them off because I couldn’t stop thinking about work.
But these were both recent, and no test of long-term memory.
Sometimes a man will walk by who smells of A1. We’ve been friends so long our intimacy seems like an epoch ago. He smelled of hot sand. I am always tempted to follow these people wherever they are going. To catch their elbows before they disappear into the crowd at a tube station, or scribble a note to slip into their pockets. I want to know what scent they use. To ask what right they have to smell like what, for me, will always be sex itself. lundi, le 26 janvier
N has a friend, Angel, who is also a working girl. I see her around occasionally-we share some of the same haunts.
I’ve always admired her figure but never really wanted it. All womanly curves have been banished in favor of narrow thighs and a perfect arse. She’s a sculpted triumph of engineering, all legs and long hair, and toned to within an ounce of her life. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to wake up one day in her Versace-clad body. It possibly would be the worst thing in the world to actually try to achieve that shape.
I was out and about a few nights ago and nipped to the ladies’ to reapply lipstick. Unhappily, it was one of these ultramodern places with a troughlike sink where the water splashes everywhere and a too-narrow mirror lit obliquely from below reflects the space between your collarbone and chin. Flattering to exactly no one.
Having ascertained that the toilet was designed by someone who hated women, I turned round to see Angel crouched on the floor, sobbing. I almost didn’t stop. She hadn’t seen me yet. But something about the fragile bow of her heaving shoulders made it impossible to walk away. “Are you okay?” I whispered, kneeling beside her.
It all came out in fits and starts-first man trouble, then family problems, then a recent surgery gone wrong, then the reason for the surgery. It turned out Angel was the victim of a notorious attack several years ago. It was the anniversary of the incident.
“That was you?” I whispered. She nodded. “I’m so, so sorry.”
She showed me the cuts from the reconstructive surgery she’d been undergoing, just at her hairline. I hugged her gently. I told her about my last few years, losing family and futures, how sometimes you feel like a cork tossed around on an ocean. How being told to buck up and stiff-upper-lip it often makes things worse. Yes, the world really is an unfair place. Yes, these things are sent to try us. No, you don’t have to smile all the time, every day. How it wasn’t her fault.
I stayed in there almost an hour while people walked in, walked out, stepped over and around us. Then Angel stood up, straightened her clothes, ran a brush through her hair. And while I didn’t expect this was the start of something beautiful between us, I thought perhaps there had been a connection made. Not mates watching telly on a Friday night and scarfing chocolate. But maybe a gentle, unspoken acknowledgment. A subtle nod across a room. A sorority of two.
So I saw her again last night. Another club, another toilet. I said hello. And she utterly blanked me. I ran straight to N, wounded by the snub. “Yeah,” he said. “I would have a lot of time for her, but she can go from needy to brittle in about ten seconds, and you never know which one you’re going to get.” mardi, le 27 janvier
Rang the manager to discuss upcoming work schedules. She was giggling too much to talk, which is distinctly not in keeping with her Eastern-European-glacial-uber-babe facade.
“Er, are you okay?” Maybe I caught her at a bad time, or in the throes of gleefully administering cracks of the whip to laggard customers, or something.
“Darling, have you heard The Darkness?”
“Yes?”
“Oh, they just crack me up. They are so funny.”
“Mmm. Well, in their way, I suppose.” Perhaps I am excessively judgmental in believing that anyone who looks like the bastard child of Robert Plant and Steve Perry via Austin Powers’s dentist has no business as a rock god. “Is it okay if I have Monday and Wednesday nights off until further notice?”
“Of course, darling. Take as much as you need.” She then broke into a warbling rendition of “Get Your Hands off My Woman,” which was marred by the fact that her falsetto was singularly incapable of approaching the stratospheric heights of the original. I sincerely hope she wasn’t prancing around in a pair of lace-up white PVC trousers at the time. Then again, there would probably be unheard-of prices for such a performance (if indeed it hasn’t already become a regular feature of the Spearmint Rhino oeuvre).