• I love to sing.
• When alone, I am usually listening to music or singing. The As and N are cruelly and repeatedly subjected to this. I always sing in the shower. Once, I forgot myself and started singing in a client’s toilet-when I came out, he was laughing. I love to sing, but am not a very good singer, alas.
• I love perfume.
Especially if it smells of citrus or lavender. I love smelling it (in small doses) on other people, as well.
• I prefer the texture of food to the taste.
Raw mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, sandwich pickle, and fudge all feel good to the tongue. Pasta, peanut butter, and cooked carrots do not.
• I can tell edible mushrooms from poisonous ones. Usually.
Admittedly, this is not a skill that comes into use very often. I can also identify most of the speedwell (genus Veronica) wildflowers. This is of no use to man nor beast.
• The day of my birth was predicted by my mum’s best friend.
Spooky.
• My dream dinner party would include…
William Styron, Katharine Hepburn, flip-flops, Noel Coward, Iman, cashew nuts, Alan Turing, Margaret Mead, Dan Savage, fruity cocktails, Ryan Philippe, and a dungeon.
• I don’t really want to work independent of an agency.
Regardless of what happens. The clients are vetted through them and (most) never even get so much as my phone number. I spend enough time on the phone as it is, and I’ve seen the manager having to take inquiries in public. I do actually have other avocations besides what is reported here. Managing my own appointments would cut into that.
• I still haven’t heard from the manager.
You would think she’d at least have the decency to ignore me on a sunny weekend.
• Je ne regrette rien.
If the textbooks are to be believed, this makes me a psychopath. If the glossy magazines are to be believed, this makes me an independent modern woman. dimanche, le 23 mai
The manager and I are still at apparent loggerheads. She hasn’t rung, and I haven’t tried to ring her. While I appreciate this sort of treatment may be a mainstay of all madames’ arsenals, I don’t half feel like calling her up to say, “Pardon me, but do you know who I am?”
Must resist the urge to smack-down, though. I always wondered why the profiles on the website were occasionally shuffled to put some girls above others. Now I suppose I know.
Ahh, the (relative) freedom. No particular desire to make or keep manicure/waxing/any other appointments. Though I daresay if the sun comes out and I go into the garden in a bikini, someone may be forgiven for coming at me with a lawn-trimmer.
Walking last night from a A3’s house to the tube station, I passed a shop festooned in the most horrible things ever: little plaster babies’ feet. Painted in pastel colors. Sticking out of the wall. Someone please assure me that the biological desire to reproduce does not signal the end of taste. It’s enough to put a girl off her vibrator for fear of being impregnated with jelly babies. mardi, le 25 mai
And still no word.
“I want out,” I groaned to N. The manager’s cold shoulder is beginning to wear on me. There are plenty of other outfits around, but the thought of going through another agency seems like another dead end. I’ve even gone so far as to pull out an ancient CV, think how it might be updated so the gaps in employment don’t look Grand Canyon-wide.
“Okay, but don’t leave just to sell out.”
I rolled my eyes. Aren’t we past the age where authenticity matters more than solvency? Everyone I know has a career, spouse, property, or retirement fund. Or several of the above. I questioned his choice of words.
“What is the definition of selling out?” he said. “Never do anything for money that you wouldn’t do for free.”
“I spend a lot of time picking at my nails.” It came out sharper than I expected. “Don’t think there’s a chance of a career in that.”
“Don’t be sarcastic,” N said. “It never suited you.”
There is, in the end, only one place for a woman to turn in her hour of desperation. When all else has failed, when the bank accounts are running from black to red to overdraft limit to carefully worded letters from the bank. She has to draw on every nerve she has and steel herself for the inevitable.
The job pages.
I started with the administrative positions. General knowledge of computers? Check. Organizational skills? Plenty. Self-motivated and hardworking? Sort of. Dedicated?
To what, scheduling meetings and faxing letters? Being able to seal envelopes and transfer incoming calls requires dedication now?
Maybe not for me. I perused academic posts instead.
Depressing. It would seem the higher the degree, the lower the corresponding starting salary. A2 and A4 are academics, and confirm my suspicion that research grants are a convoluted plan by the powers that be to keep clever people from thinking about things like world affairs. Why pay attention to politics and other matters of import when there is a?5,000 grant to be fighting tooth and claw over? jeudi, le 27 mai
I am determined not to give up, in spite of the fact that papers and websites suggest the London economy is based on exactly three things:
1. Copywriting and copyediting. Been there, done that… actually, I haven’t as such. Tried to be there and do that, and been turned down by everyone from scientific journals to World Walrus Weekly. The country’s finer philately organs did not even honor me with a rejection letter.
2. Temping and PAs (personal assistants). Definitely been there and don’t ever, ever want to do that again. Revisiting calloused fingertips from sealing billing envelopes at a stockbroker’s is a fate too depressing to contemplate. The abject degradation of having to collect someone’s daughter’s school uniforms from the dry cleaner makes scat play look a doddle.
3. Prostitution. Damnation.
I could stay in the business and go independent. It would mean never having to give up a third of my earnings to an agency again. On the other hand, it would mean vetting my own clients, taking calls all hours of the day and night, maintaining a portfolio, organizing security and… oh. Too much work for me on my own. There’d barely be time for scheduling waxes, let alone any other essential maintenance operations. samedi, le 29 mai
Letters. Applications. Download, print, fill in. Envelopes and stamps on letters I’ll probably never have replies to. And then, late yesterday afternoon, a call from a personnel department. They want to see me for an interview. A position I would love to have.
Shortlisted. And I know the list is extremely short. My chances are good.
That’s it-I’m off the game.
From the profiles on my agency’s website, it’s apparent that a lot of the girls-maybe not the majority, but a large proportion-are not from the UK. Eastern Europe, North Africa, Asia. Britain is doing a roaring trade in importing sex workers.
I don’t ask about their motivations for doing the job. It’s not my business. I wasn’t forced into working for the agency and hope they weren’t either. If the agency was really a stable of illegal workers under the thumb of an abusive pimp, they wouldn’t hire so many local girls.
Would they?
I realize that all that aside, I’m not really in a very different position from those Jordanian and Polish girls right now. Maybe they’re over on student visas and in extreme debt. Somewhere along the way, it was implied-not guaranteed, I understand that, but implied-that the reward for working hard at school and completing a degree was a reasonable career. Now here I am wondering whether a six-month appointment color-correcting magazine illustrations or assistant managing at a high-street retailer would be a better career move. And competing with hundreds of other graduates for the same paltry pickings.
But for now, I have shirts to iron and interview questions to worry about. lundi, le 31 mai