Ashley, a short story by Amber_Libra. Date added: 2012-07-04. Times viewed: 1947.
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- Intro: Ashley is a prostitute who works in a Berlin brothel.
Ashley
I get home. Well, back to the apartment that I am renting for a few weeks. It is always this way.
I look in the mirror and my eyes are different. My pupils are wider, as if I am on some sort of drug. My brown irises are more contrasting, shiny, a pale golden brown. A good night, a Saturday. One of the girls said that it is not always this good. I run the bath. Hot lather. The bathroom is the best thing about the apartment.
There are plants around the bath tub.
In Germany they call oral sex 'French kissing'.
Shoneburg, West Berlin. Shops selling bondage gear, gay porn. Black, shiny. Then green, parks, families, health food shops. Glamorous Turkish girls in groups, good-looking, loud Turkish boys. Modern, rebuilt, yet if you look carefully you can see the history, taste it, smell it. Remains of grandeur, whole streets survived, white angels intact, my door heavy, oaken. An ornate high ceiling, more angels, birds. Black with grey wings, a constant cawing, circling ahead above the high, high towers in the purple sky. Office buildings like forts with their large bricks and small, dark castle-like windows from the Nazi era. Steel, neon. Cafes, Latte Macciatos, fur-lined walls and men holding hands.
I have my own religion.
I am sacred. I am holy. I am feared. I have fear. Fear of disease. Fear of men. Fear of others finding out my secret.
We are different. We are loathed. We are misunderstood. We are wanted by men.
I have made an exchange. Money for sex. In society's eyes this is degrading. I am degraded. I am disgusting. I am sexy. Dangerous. Even admired by some. The image of the happy hooker. Like heroin, or gangsters, it has a kind of inverse cool. Admired by men.
Of course, though, I am not degraded. I have power. That is why we are feared. The oldest profession. It will never go away. It takes different forms.
A whore. A slut. A slag. Shunned and not viewed in terms of being a human being, of being a woman with needs and feelings. Just a prostitute, all labels placed onto a shadowy, stilettoed silhouette until the stereotype emerges from the darkness. A drug addict, a dismal life, someone to pity. Someone to hate. This is not to say that these stereotypes do not exist.
There are hookers who are married, who have children, who have been to university, who are at university and need the extra cash, who are young and carefree, who are rich, who are desperate, who are curious or just fucked up. High class, low class, escorts, girls standing on the street corner. It is all the same. There are different levels of lifestyle, danger, safety and acceptance. I have made thousands in one night and a few euros for half an hour. Hey, sometimes I even do it for free.
There are other types of sex workers. Strippers, those in the telephone sex industry that talk dirty for money- I have done both. Web cam girls. Can these people be put in the same category as prostitutes? Do they view themselves as being the same?
Right now I am Ashley, aged twenty seven, sometimes twenty four, a 'natural' blonde. Ashley, who does most things with a condom but will not do anal.
I do not feel experienced. With me it is an on and off thing. It takes different forms. The first time was over ten years ago. I was like a child then, overshadowed by it all. I still feel like a child now. I still fear men. I do not have full control over them. My new breasts are red from their kneading, their rough bristles, their pinching and pulling.
The house is next to a solarium, above a small restaurant. From the outside you would never guess what is contained within. The studio, which is a black and mirror lined room full of S and M equipment. It is not what everyone, most people are into, but you do get paid more for 'bizarre' things. Blau, grun, lila. The Gold room, the Silver room. My favourite is the Blue room. I seem to have most of my clients and my best times in there. It is not blue, however. It is mainly deep red, a double bed with a maroon throw and cushions, tasteful erotic pictures in black and white on the walls, red roses and petals strewn beneath them. There are more rooms, the apartments next door in the same building. These are just as beautiful. Curtains draped, a king-sized bed, always clean. The Tropical room has mirrors on the ceiling. There is another room that I have not seen. It is for when clients want to play doctors and nurses, full of surgical equipment and hospital paraphenalia.
The business is run by women only. They offer erotic massage and an escort service. We all have a locker. We are treated with respect by the house lady, who varies, who answers the telephones and greets guests. The house takes forty percent of everything that is earned. I am not earning a lot but in four days I earned the same amount, if not more money that I earned in a month in Prague working in two 'normal' jobs. I worked so hard there that I was constantly exhausted. I am still tired here, though, on my days off. Perhaps that is because I am new, or because I only got to Berlin a little over two weeks ago. However, the idea was that I would be free to do whatever I wanted on my days off. Freedom- that is what I was longing for. However, at the moment, the prostitution seems to be all consuming. It seems to be all that I think about; mulling over reasons why a guest chose one girl over me, feeling fear that I may have picked up some terrible disease from a man, wondering whether the redness of my breasts will recede. I hope my breasts have not been damaged for good, they cost me a lot of money. They are like two bruised apples. I have been to the solarium and fried them too, just for good measure.
I am the only English girl in the house. The others are German. There is one smiling Brazilian, her friend an older Portuguese woman, a sexy blonde Russian who wears tiny skirts, a Polish girl. A pale skinned, dark haired woman with Marlene Dietrich eyebrows and startling blue eyes. A svelte, overtanned Victoria Beckham lookalike in underwear. A Czech woman in her forties, two Asian girls, one from Mongolia, the other I am not sure. The women's ages range from about twenty to forties. Some girls are so young, they look too innocent. One sweet, blonde girl always gets changed back into a formal white shirt for when she goes home to her family.
There was one scraggy old hen who did not get any clients the other night. She wanted to travel back with me on the U Bahn. I was stressed out because I had sex with probably about six different men and then I could not find my locker key because she was rushing me to get changed. I have promised to give her the number of the escort agency that I know in Portugal. She wants to be an escort for high class clients. She cannot get any clients here, so I think her self-image is somewhat distorted. I do not like her. There is something weird about her. The way that she stares at everyone and giggles all the time. She would have been attractive if she was not in that environment, yet she just seemed desperate. Wearing a dress too short for her bad legs, taking too long in front of the mirror choosing which necklace to wear. We got on the metro together and I was angry because I still could not find my key, rummaging around in my bag whilst she giggled again. Looking around at the other people, catching a glimpse of myself in the black windows of the train, still wearing lipstick, slightly smudged, the taste of mouthwash, the smell of condoms, sweat. Exhaustion and mistrust. I got off at my stop and left her with a brief, irritable goodbye. I never saw her again.
I try not to be unkind to the girls. One girl, who has just turned twenty said that there are occasional 'bitch wars' amongst the girls. I do not care about that though, it bores me, I have been there before and I really do not want to get involved. The girl was telling me about how she has a boyfriend who has no idea what she does but she does not want to tell him because she told her last boyfriend and they broke up over it. Then she told me that I had really big feet. Yawn, yawn, bitch wars. I could have perhaps retaliated and said that she had a big mouth, or that she looked like a real geek with her glasses perched on the end of her nose and crouching over her book but I would rather stay silent. That is my tactic and I am only here for a short time. I cannot stand doing this work for too long.
Most of the girls seem friendly. Two of them like to play backgammon whilst waiting for clients. I read through the German fashion and gossip magazines, mainly looking at the pictures of Kate Moss, Paris Hilton, Brad Pit and Angelina Jolie. Apparently Mariah Carey's sister is a prostitute. Mariah Carey is really cute.
The client sits in one of the rooms. Each girl visits him and introduces herself and then he chooses. If I am not chosen, generally now, I do not care, or try not to care, unless there are not many guests and too many girls. I should not care because when I walk out the room I cannot even remember what they look like. If I am tired I am not chosen as often and there is one girl who I think always gets chosen over me. She is younger, wears less clothes than me and has been here longer. I get chosen a lot though.
If I am chosen, the house lady tells me and also which room, “Ashley, blau!” I go back into the room and ask him how long he wants. I take the money and write my name down on a form, along with the room, the amount of money, the time and then I have to write down the time that he leaves. The house provides the condoms. I put them in my bag. Every organised hooker needs a 'fuck bag'. Big enough, yet not too clumsy, to carry the condoms, wipes, lipsticks and whatever else a good hooker needs.
I go back in the room, ask him if he wants a shower, which is not included in the time, or a massage. When they go to have a shower I make sure there are no other clients around and when they have finished washing they press a bell on the inside of the bathroom door and I go and walk back to the room with them. I walk in front and can hear and feel an annoying click in one of my knees.
I put a towel down on the bed. We start stroking each other and the music starts. I am spiritually uplifted as my hands run over his back, my status as a prostitute clear and pure. I am relieved to have been chosen over the other girls, to have made some money. I look in the mirrors at our bodies together. I am slavish, a servant. I take the lubricant, the condom. Place the condom onto the penis.
Sex this way is never the same as with a lover. This way it is emotionless. The man is emotionless. I am emotionless. Perhaps, though, it is not lack of emotion but it is sex devoid of sexual passion, of erotic love. I have to be very sensitive to know when they have come, so that I can make sure I remove the filled condom from my body, as often they hardly show a sign, not in their faces, which I try not to look at, or their physical actions. Not like a lover at all.
However, Germans are renowned for their reserve.
Then, quite often, we have an ordinary conversation about his occupation, or Berlin, he may ask me questions about my life, or he may say that he is not usually that quick, or that slow, or that limp. We get dressed, I show him to the door with a friendly 'goodbye' . I change the towels and make sure that the room is tidy with no stains or wrinkles on the bed.
My role is subservient, like a maid, for straight sex. Customer service is important. I ask them if they would like a drink, if they need a shower, if they need another towel. Smiling, laughing, pampering.
This is a chapter from 'Superhooker (secret selves and the sex industry)'. Please click on 'bookshop' on this site and type into the Amazon search engine. Also available on Lulu.com.
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