Work Trip (Part 4/8)

(CW: Sexual assault coming up in full story, not this part)

On these trips I alternate between a fizzing restlessness and a calculated torpor, saving energy for when it will be next needed. The necessity to profit can become a prison, compelling me to stay inside waiting for the phone to ring. As fruitless as it seems to go through the motions of tourism, even if for an hour or so a day, it prevents the circling anxiety pervading, as well as decreasing the probability of a boredom induced wank, spending sexual vigor I don’t have to spare.

I wake early, before the day can be of much use to me. I cajole myself into exploring the city, even if just to increase my step count. Despite it being so early, the sun floods down the long avenues. It prickles like an arched cat’s back. It bathes, burns and soothes simultaneously. Its summer and the sun chokes every east west street, blindingly bright when emerging from a shaded alleyway. Adelaide feels designed to meet human needs without grace, nor more than a cursory inspection as to what those needs are. The central green space, too large to be cozy, too small to feel expansive, and too bare to hold any illusions to disguise its size. At all times of the day it seems awkward and unused, except for the instances some event is held in one of its rectangles, often bulging between the confines of the large roads. Whoever designed this city had delusions of its impending importance, or a disdain for pedestrians. The narrow moat of greenery around the center is another example of working better on paper. You are never far enough away to escape the cars, and it isn’t wide enough to feel like a destination, just a strip to walk along, flanked by wide roads that while never particularly full are always impossible to cross. It’s a squat and boxy city. I wander aimlessly, taking new roads, in case something perks my interest. But it’s a halfhearted exploration, I know I’m not really open to any spontaneous diversion. I’m only there to not be in that room. Absent-mindedly I open and close Grindr, start conversations I know I will fade from. I can’t explain to everyone why I’m flakey, and go through the predictable series of questions, often judgments, and too frequent explanations that I’m not asking them to pay me. I often surrender to my worst impulses. Any calorific pleasure is fuel for fucking, I tell myself. Something has got to make me feel good, the pleasure machine has feelings too. But this morning I know I'll be bottoming so I ignore the pastries and stick to black coffee.

It is 10am and client 2 is due to arrive. The steady stream of enquiries and confirmations that have come in over my first night in Adelaide has calmed my nerves somewhat. Although the anxiety of not getting clients is quickly replaced by the anxiety of having clients. Client 2 is Greek, closeted, and married. 99% straight, or maybe 95%, he’s quick to inform me. Whatever that means. Too discreet to share a photo, considerate enough to share a physical description and naive enough to not remove his first & last (and very distinct) names from his whatsapp profile. I don’t even have to narrow my search, his linkedin pops up from the name alone. He’s handsome, which is a bonus. In the text exchange before he seemed shy to discuss sex, and it requires quite protracted extraction for him to tell me he wants to fuck me. How quaint.

Having searched my mind for any lingering internalised homophobia and found myself remarkably clean (hold for applause), I still must admit there is something erotic about a “straight” client. Not through any proximity to heterosexuality, but their own struggle with themselves creates an anxious anticipation they can’t conceal. Their pleasure is heightened due to the dearth before. The release and subsequent clamour to regain composure plays a cosmic drama across their face - planets of their self conception crashing into one another. It’s fun to have that effect on someone. And to think of the weeks, potentially months of agonising and looking at the menu and deciding on me as the one with which to betray their self image. It’s also vaguely teenage and therefore nostalgic, which adds charm when, as so often happens, their sexual technique could use some refinement. Theirs is a ravenous desire shovelling down food without chewing, reassuringly simple, and simple to please. But this is the cause of their incompetence, the desperation exhibited in how deep they thrust their tongue down my throat. They’ve convinced themselves they can be fully sated, if they eat the experience deeply enough. Get it out of their system, just the once.

This is accompanied by its doppelganger, conscientiously bookending the experience with shame. The fixed downward gaze of a guilty dog in front of the mess he made. No eye contact before or after, and a goodbye that’s always awkward. I want to hold them down and smile and say it doesn’t have to be this way. But for now, for them, it does. There’s a degree of tragedy to the crystallised form of someone’s innermost struggle being a set piece so well rehearsed to have spawned stereotypical beats. A scruffy polo neck and a balled handful of notes. A tense scan of the space they’ve entered, preparing justifications as if the wife would spring out of the closet. Switching the phone to airplane mode, but not before I’ve clocked the background photo of their child. And usually just their child. The sex normally ends the same, with the gasp of a new world opening, a wretched clarity recontextualising a whole life. Then I execute the quick close: sweeping up the pieces with a squeeze, small talk for footholds to gather themselves on, a hand on their shoulder guiding them to the shower. While they wash away the traces, the room is expunged of signs of what had occurred moments before, a grace for their guilt. I’ll extract the cash from their wallet, gather their belongings and place them close to the door. I’ll even dress myself, if I’m in a generous mood. Although I sometimes enjoy standing naked, shameless, merciless, engaging them in bright chat as they look everywhere else to not have to reckon with what they’ve just done. Finally I send them on their way with a smile that refuses to engage in their dolefulness, or see it as a deeper grief. As often they aren’t ready to be seen. On occasion if the hour’s not up I’ll indulge a well trodden unpacking of “what this means”. So often they’ve decided nothing, and just want to be shown a path of how to get to that conclusion. I can’t offer that, but a soothing voice can be heard to say whatever necessary. This pattern, the dam that inevitably breaks, only for the water to inexplicably resist its momentum and hold itself back, while the scrambling architects work to paper up the wound with cinder blocks and false promises. It’s miserable and tragic and infuriating and boring. Other times there is no going back, and my heart hurts and I'm happy for them, and sorry for their wives.

And now this “straight man” is at the door. He is a couple of inches shorter than me, compact and sturdy, the hair poking out of the v neck is robust and laced with greys. I felt that if he had his way he would have greeted me with a firm handshake, to assert dominance perhaps, or to demonstrate his masculinity. As I swiftly bade him inside I pulled him close to me with my free arm and squeezed him tight, tight enough to crack his back, my left hand grazing the top of his bum. As was my intention, the strength of the hug startled him, and as I released him into the apartment he stumbles back slightly, eyes on the floor. He looked momentarily like a forlorn child in a P.E kit, despite the hardening bulge I’d awoken. It’s too easy to destabilise him, but luckily for him I found his helplessness charming. My intentions were broadly benevolent, although it’s a game for my pride to see how much I can complicate a man’s life in just one hour. Although admittedly through coming here he’d already done that to himself.

It was clear he had prepared for the visit, and that ingratiated him to me. His cheeks looked freshly shaved, he was wearing cologne, and was chewing gum as he entered. After holding him in my gaze while he asked me dull questions he probably already knew the answers too: was it an airbnb, did I fly down, when did i fly down, I tried to exude warmth, with only a tinge of condescension. A degree of superciliousness was deserved when we were the same but one of us lived their life in mortal panic that people would find that out. It was also a protective barrier, to tell him I would not be infected by his shame, and a reminder to myself too. This job has taught me a lot about shame, how noxious it is, how it will seep in through any crack if given any opportunity. Once more I pulled him in to me, gripped his butt brutishly, rubbing our crotches together and grasped the soft pouch of fat at the nape of his neck, fixing the angle of his head between my thumb and index finger. He was paralysed, submitting like a kitten being carried around by this same bit of flesh. I forcefully kissed his neck and squeezed him, demonstrating my power; his powerlessness. Then once more released him, disorientated. I smiled, held my hand out for him to spit his gum into and with the other hand patted his butt, motioning him into the bedroom.

After this display of dominance I was ready to submit, as was his wish. Alternating between performative demonstrations of the two extremes sets the tones for the booking, lightening the mood, injecting some play into sex. This can be another disorientation for the straights. Often they’ve put such stock in rigid categories of masculine and feminine, and mapped them equally rigidly onto certain bodies and behaviours, the subversion of these can be almost sacrilegious. Sex has been a ritual of reconfirming these universal truths, and now it is its undoing.

I strip off my clothes and dive on to the bed, arching my back, presenting to him, while looking coyly over one shoulder. He shudders, a glacier beginning to splinter, then beginning its inexorable slide. He’s under, it’s unstoppable. His body wraps over mine, flooding his heat across my back, squeezing down so there’s not one part of him not touching a part of me. I crane my neck to kiss him, not an easy feat given his height, but we force our bodies to each other, scrambling, banging our lips and cheeks as we strain to consume. I give my legs out, splay out and we fall forward into the bed, which adds its groan to the pants and moans. He’s a responsive and attentive lover, and the time passes painlessly and quickly, with no rough edges to catch on. He surprises me, after the final clench and grunt, by rolling off and out of me on the bed, arms spread wide, faintly gesturing a place for me to nuzzle my head. I lay there and feel his racing heart beginning to slow, the rise and fall beneath me become shallower and smoother. My leg flops over his at the thigh, the soft meaty parts pressing together while my finger traces the underside of his chest. The stillness, breathing together in comfort is more intimacy than I expected from him, and his tolerance of it will stretch thin, once he becomes aware of how good it feels.

Something snaps, he starts with a jolt and instantaneously I disentangle our lower bodies. I prop myself up on my elbow, hand still on his chest, now backed up by my weight. I smile. The struggle is visible in his eyes but he keeps it in there, turns it inwards, falling back into that greasy oil slick of his own making. Now we are further apart than we’ve ever been. I am the manifestation of his desires and fears but I wear them without noticing, pick them off like lint, and flick them away without contemplation. Free from awareness of sin, yet epitome of the sinner. This can’t be allowed to fester in the room. Shower time.