T-V
T is for Taxis
I usually ring a minicab for the way out and find a black cab on the way home. Minicabs will not necessarily know where you’re going, and I’ve ended up reading their maps more often than not. Black cabs will get you somewhere smoothly, but might try to take you on a scenic tour to push up the price. Sometimes I hail a black cab on the way out, but can’t count on finding one near home except on weekends.
Collecting local minicab cards is useful; it wouldn’t do to always get the same drivers.
T is also for Timewasters
Theoretically, working through an agency should prevent ghost bookings: the people who express interest in your services and even go so far as to reserve a time and agree on a price. Only to find that they have meetings later than they thought, or the wife did come along after all, or he forgot the phone number (my personal favorite-this is what mobiles are good for, no?). So sometimes you will go through all the prep and end up on the shelf. At least you can reassure yourself that unlike in real relationships, it’s not you, it really is them.
U is for Underwear
Matching underwear, sexy and luxe. For looks, not for comfort. Early on, the manager emphasized the particular look she likes the girls to have: big, expensive, lacy pants. No thongs. More is more. Garter belts are cliched but a nice touch. Don’t invest in anything that will be difficult to get in and out of. It must be clean and well fitting; there’s nothing more unattractive than rolls of back fat or the dreaded double cleavage from an ill-fitting bra.
V is for Vagina
Keep it clean. If you don’t wax or shave clean, keep the hair trimmed. Look out for any odd swelling, redness, discharge, or discoloration, and if you notice these symptoms, get yourself to a clinic as soon as. Do those squeezy tightening exercises gynecologists are always on about. Men love that. samedi, le 1 ^er mai
The flat I’m staying in is within smelling distance of the city’s fish market. This in itself is not a problem. No cracks about whores and fish smell, please.
The major drawback to the location is the trucks that rumble in at 4 a.m. to drop off the day’s catch. The men standing off the backs of the trucks, shouting to each other, unloading. Then it goes quiet for an hour or so before the first customers start coming to market.
Still, it’s probably about time I started learning what rising with the sun is good for. Nabbing the best fish, for one thing. dimanche, le 2 mai
I went to the beach with a small group. There was me and one other girl; the boys sat slightly separate from us on the pebble shore as everyone stripped down and tanned on their towels.
The other girl is not a close acquaintance. A few days ago we were talking, and she asked my age.
“Twenty-five,” I said, knocking a couple of years off. She is nineteen at the oldest.
“Wow!” she said, looking genuinely surprised. “I never would have guessed.” I shrugged. When I was younger, everyone thought I was far older; now, the situation is reversing itself. “You know, you don’t have to tell people your age,” she said helpfully. “You could probably say you were twenty and people would believe it.”
Only if said people were teenagers. Bless her, though.
I was reading. One boy, a blond, was listening to music and singing loudly-and tunelessly-along. You couldn’t help but smile. Some of the other boys threw a Frisbee around and splashed in the shallow water. When they got bored with that, they came back to where we were lying.
The other girl, who was flipping through a magazine and listening to music, turned toward me. “Are my sunglasses very dark?” she asked under her breath.
“Yes, they’re quite dark,” I said.
“So if I was looking somewhere, you couldn’t see my eyes, right?” she asked.
“I couldn’t, no.”
“Good,” she said, and turned away again, facing the boys, her head propped on one hand. Gazing, I noticed, in the direction of a particular young man. Her own boyfriend had stayed at home. lundi, le 3 mai
The first girl I ever slept with was a friend’s girlfriend.
One of my close mates at university was a shortish, thinnish, good-looking ginger boy who loved Doctor Who and was a complete sex bomb with the ladies. I can’t explain why. He just was, and we loved him.
We called him “the Jew Boy with the Moves,” because this guy could cut up your brother’s bar-mitzvah-party dance floor like a hot knife through butter. He was all slinky hips and sultry looks, and by Jove, I had an almighty crush on him. I’d never had a go, though in the first year he made his way through every single one of the women in our group. It just seemed a boundary destined never to be crossed.
Eventually he settled down with one girl. And I couldn’t resent losing out, because his girlfriend, Jessica, was an uber-desirable petite vixen with caramel-colored shoulders and dark blonde hair that was always in perfect curls.
One night JB and Jessica invited me and my then-boyfriend to a club. It was a place I didn’t know in a part of town I didn’t go to. I didn’t know what to wear, and met the other three at a pub in jeans, flip-flops, and a thin black satin shirt, no bra. Jessica and I stood in the middle of the room while the men fetched our drinks, and I was suddenly aware that everyone was looking at us.
We sank pints and moved on to our destination. The club was a gay club. My first. It was a mixed crowd, being a Saturday night in a medium-sized city where the staff couldn’t be too picky with the door policy. There were boy couples and girl couples, gangs of students, old single boys looking hangdog at the bar and men dressed like women dressing like men’s fantasies of women. There were gold-painted cages, but no one dancing in them. I didn’t know where to look. My boyfriend, alas, did-at his feet. All night.
The music was not good, but it was frantic and loud, like all club music was then. JB and Jessica spun me out on the dance floor. They were, together, an incredible couple to watch. Just too tiny and cool for words. Her slightly bony shoulders wriggled suggestively-her back was bare in a sleeveless tie-on shirt. I’d been attracted to girls before, but never felt so free to just stare at one. It wasn’t out of place here.
JB took me to one side. “You know, she wants you,” he said. Was he kidding? This wee goddess? But as soon as he said it, I knew it was true, and it was like a switch had been flipped. I could imagine taking her to the toilets, tonguing her as she laughed and sat atop the cistern. I could imagine putting things in her, my fingers, the end of a beer bottle.
“She’s your girlfriend,” I said, aware as the words came out how whiny and awful they sounded.
He shrugged. He said he’d take care of my boyfriend. He said he did this for her a lot-picked up girls for her. I was stunned.
JB drove us all home. My boyfriend lived closest, thank goodness. Then we went around to Jessica’s house. Her parents were away somewhere, or asleep, or didn’t care, I never knew. She held my hand and we walked through her door, plain as anything. Her boyfriend waited until she waved back to him from the doorway, then drove away. Her neck was the most slender, tenderest I’d ever seen. Her lips were softer than any I’d ever kissed. mardi, le 4 mai
I walked into a shop in the late morning. The Sicilian sun was already high, driving people to seek out shady spots.
Colorfully wrapped Easter cakes sat on a shelf. I reached up to take one down, but even on tiptoe the sweet was just out of my reach. A man came up behind me. “May I help you?”
“Can I have one of these?” I asked him.
“It depends,” he replied. “Can I have one of you?” jeudi, le 6 mai
We sailed on to Croatia and I bought a paper for the first time in a fortnight. They are full of disturbing images, the sort that lead one to think about politics, war, and the politics of war, and how these acts have always happened except we could never see them before. How righteous indignation and backlash sometimes seem products of ignorance, because who could not have guessed this would happen? Did we really need pictures in order to know? Are we truly angry at governments for doing what we knew they would do?