Free Universal Carnal Knowledge Pt. 46

There has been one other tragedy. In the middle of wild and exciting sex an apparently fit and healthy client of about forty suffered a heart attack. He died instantly. The girl had to call the police, who it must be said were very discreet and understanding about it. They even spared the widow's feelings by telling her that her husband had been found dead in the street. The girl was deeply distressed, even though she was in no way to blame. Gina's suggestion that she use it in her advertising was unworthy of her.

The girls have also, of course, suffered more mundane misfortunes unconnected with their work. One or two girls have lost close relatives; one girl was mugged in the street; another came off her motorcycle in a daring attempt to swerve across three lanes of traffic in the Haymarket, fortunately suffering no worse than cuts and bruises. On each occasion it was heartening to see the way everyone rallied round to offer emotional and practical support.

*

Speaking of advertising, as I was a moment ago, reminds me that the girls have developed a variety of methods of bringing their wares to the attention of the paying public. The internet is very important, of course; and the girls tend to link their sites to each other so that potential clients (to say nothing of cheapskate voyeurs, out for nothing but a cheap thrill) can, so to speak, wander around the Stable to see what takes their fancy. You have to display the merchandise, naturally, and a surprising number of girls seem to be happy to show themselves in the most blatant way with no attempt to hide their features. Others conceal their face by cropping it or electronically blurring it or, like Fran, by ensuring that their hair falls artfully across it. And word of mouth, from client to client or by recommendation from one girl to another, is maybe an even better form of advertising.

My girls do not resort to cards in telephone kiosks; nor, of course, do they walk the streets seeking trade. Having said that, however, it has to be admitted that there is a certainje-ne-sais-quoiabout a working girl. This is not a simple matter of their dress or appearance; my girls look great and dress well but not so as to stand out from the many other attractive women around London (a city, by the way, singularly well furnished in this respect): it has more to do with their aura of confidence and assurance, and the fearless way they will meet a man's gaze. At any rate, it is a quality to which some experienced punters are sensitive, so it is not entirely unknown for a girl on her own in a shop or bar to be the subject of an approach; nor is this unwelcome if the man is reasonably subtle about it and is willing to embrace the financial consequences as well as the girl.

This sort of contact shades imperceptibly into the activity known as "fishing", in which a girl will go out to some likely location with the intention of getting herself picked up by a wealthy man who is, in the initial stages, entirely unaware that his allotted role is that of potential client. He, poor sap, is under the impression that he is making a great hit with this sexy young woman, and she will lead him on with every possible encouragement until he suggests they slip off somewhere together, at which point she breaks the bad news that for this service there will be a fee. Surprisingly often, I am told, the man takes the disappointment in his stride and after a brief negotiation the deal is struck and matters take their normal course. Even when the man withstands the girl's powers of persuasion ("I promise you I'm worth every penny": this with a wriggle of indescribable sensuality, a dazzling smile and such a wicked glint in the eye), the parting is almost always on amicable terms and the girl goes her way with a slinking walk designed to heighten the man's awareness of what he has passed up.

One of the reasons the girls enjoy "fishing" is the exciting possibility of capturing a man for whom this is an entirely new experience, someone that has never before paid for sex. Once such a fish is hooked, she will spare no effort to give him the experience of his life: his first time maybe, but, if she has anything to do with it, far from his last.

One day Olga, a particularly adept angler, was round at my place preening herself on having thus corrupted a businessman of nearly sixty who, until he set eyes on her, had over thirty years of blameless marital devotion to his credit. Since that day, she told us proudly, he had seen her twice more plus at least three other girls whose numbers she had given him. On hearing this story Fran characteristically felt a qualm of conscience, and said so. Olga shrugged.

"Is good for business," she said. "Increases customer base."

At such cynicism Fran shook her head sadly. "Oh, Olga, that's an awful thing to say. Isn't it, James?"

"Well," I said, "it was certainly a tart remark."

*

Virtually all the girls have among their clients a number of regulars and they are very welcome as providing steady and reliable income, but inevitably such a relationship can get out of hand and we have had quite a few cases where a client becomes fascinated by a particular girl, either sexually obsessed or emotionally attached. Sometimes he wants to rescue her from this degradation, and there have been a number of apparently serious proposals of marriage. Fran holds the record here, with three, which is striking since she is neither the youngest nor the sexiest girl in my Stable. But she is possibly the most serious-minded, she is very pretty, and she has a wholesome girl-next-door charm about her. And of all my girls, she is probably the one that looks least like a high-class London whore and most like the girl you take home to meet mother. It is this, I feel, that probably accounts for her high proposal rate (and I have personal reasons for finding it interesting, as I shall relate farther on).

At any rate, when a client gets too much attached to a particular girl we try to deal with him tactfully. The best way is to offer him a two-girl on favourable terms, with the girl he likes plus another. Not only does he have a good time; he gets a sharp reminder of what his girl is and how she earns her living, and usually this does the trick. But sometimes it fails, or maybe the client refuses to see any girl but the one he has fixed upon. In that case there is nothing for it but for her to sever contact, if necessary changing her number, swapping her flat with another girl and avoiding her usual haunts for a while. Sometimes it must break the client's heart, I know, but it is for his own good; and it beats the alternative often preferred by girls outside my Stable of stringing a besotted client along and ruthlessly fleecing him.

As for the girls, their devotion to me leaves no room for romantic feelings for any other man. However, it is clear that they like some clients more than others. I have found this very interesting. Good looks, for instance, seem to count for very little; in fact, girls say that after a short while in the business they hardly notice whether clients are handsome. Proficiency between the sheets, on the other hand, is well appreciated; and of course generosity with tips and gifts is also most welcome to all girls, although unduly flagrant attempts to buy their esteem tend to be resented (but not to the extent of rejecting whatever inducement is being offered – business is business).

Good personal hygiene is very important in a client, while politeness and a bit of old-fashioned courtesy play remarkably well with many girls. One girl told me how she was at a party and in mid-fuck with a guest when he realised they had not been introduced; hastily and rather breathlessly, they exchanged names andhe politely took her right hand and kissed it.She thought this was the funniest and most touching gesture and called everyone's attention to his lips pressed to her hand and his cock already within her. Not every girl would have found this quite so charming, but all the girls like clients that treat them with a little respect and above all make them laugh. Time and again I hear girls telling each other that so-and-so client is so sharp and witty, he said or did such a funny thing. I thought it was a quirk of my slightly unusual Stable, but Gina assures me that most whores feel the same. All my girls' clients get outstanding service, but what earns some of them that little bit extra is nothing more mysterious than the simple human touch.

*

The clients themselves vary enormously. They come from Britain or abroad, they are tall, short, fat, thin, black, white, impressively skilled in bed or wretchedly inadequate (although my girls pride themselves on getting the best from any man). They tend to be thirty-five or over, and in fact girls do not especially welcome younger clients, finding that they tend to be rude, offhand, and not nearly such good lovers as they like to think (although as with all these generalisations there are the exceptions). There is no upper age limit and we have a number of more elderly clients, at least one of whom was over eighty; I understand he needed some encouragement, but his eventual performance was deemed adequate. And, of course, virtually all clients seem to be either married or in a committed relationship. Some come to us because they get little sex at home or things are unsatisfactory in some other way, but many, perhaps most, appear genuinely to value their relationships and love their wives or girlfriends. They come to us for variety, to recall the touch of a younger woman, to taste forbidden fruit, or most simply (do not underestimate this) just for fun.

To me, candidly, the clients are little more than a source of income for my girls. I feel no jealously about the sex, probably because my own needs are so well catered for, but if I am frank I have to admit to twinges of resentment, not strong enough to be called envy but nevertheless perceptible, when it becomes evident that a girl finds one of her regulars likable or interesting. I feel guilty about this and try to suppress it, because I know how valuable regulars are in this business and it would be unreasonable to expect the girls to form no sort of bond with men with whom they are in such intimate contact. They have their human feelings after all; the only girl that I can honestly say shows no interest in her clients at all except as a source of financial reward and sexual pleasure (in that order of priority) is Olga, and although there is something impressive about her cynical ruthlessness it goes with a callousness that is definitely not an attractive characteristic.

Laura put it very well when she was talking about her regulars. "It's so good," she said, "when I can just be myself when I'm with my one of my boys; it would be awful to have to act out my warmth or smile. I talk to them between appointments as well, it's nice when it's just a chat call, not a meet call. I like them for different aspects of personality; they're like one big collective lover, all the good things and none of the bad. We don't question each other, we accept each other: it's a strangely unconventional trust. We don't have to lie to each other. I know there's a wife or girlfriend, and he knows what I do. I know it's not perfect, but then again," she shrugged, "what is? Somehow it's more real than a lot of other lives."

I smiled at this little speech, and not only at the sentiment. I could not but reflect on the buttoned-up academic I met a year ago and marvel that it was the same person I was hearing speak of "warmth", "smiles", and "my boys".

*

Next to me the girls love their families, and after that, and far ahead of even the best-liked client, they love the money. Although I like women (as I hope this memoir has made clear), I have always found that in general they are, if I may be forgiven for saying so, a mercenary bunch; and in this as in so many other respects my girls seem to outdo the rest of their sex. I was entertaining about a dozen girls one day and, during a lull as I was getting my breath back, they were chatting about life in general and work in particular and one of them got several nods of assent when she remarked that the sight or even the mere thought of the redness of fifty-pound notes would have her insides tensing with arousal and her juices starting to flow.

This striking example of the conditioned reflex would surely have been of interest to the late Dr Pavlov.

*

Occasionally a well-moneyed client will invite a girl to accompany him on a trip and provided the absence is not for too long (for the girls love their London lifestyle) and the money is right (always a paramount consideration), the opportunity to travel and be wined and dined in some exotic location more than makes up for having to give undivided attention to one client for so long. But when an American businessman offered Olga a very acceptable four thousand pounds to spend a few days in an exclusive resort near Cancun, she devised a characteristically resourceful and sexy way of overcoming even this drawback. When, on the second day, after lunch at a very good restaurant, the client started making noises about getting back to the hotel for the usual reason, Olga, who had been much struck by the number of unaccompanied wealthy-looking men around, asked him to go on ahead: he had, she said, been such good and generous company that she wanted to buy him a present. As soon as he left she did a rapid trawl of the local girls hanging around the area hoping for business, selected one she was sure would find favour, and engaged her to go to the hotel and introduce herself to the client as the promised present and keep him busy for the afternoon. Paying the girl and impressing on her that she must take no money from the client even if he offered it, Olga promised her a substantial bonus later if he turned in a satisfactory report. Having thus gained her temporary freedom, she cruised around sending out availability signals. Naturally, as a stunning fair-complexioned blonde in a sea of pretty but rather samey latina girls, she soon attracted the attention she was after and was able to turn two rapid tricks at premium rates – she earned more from each of them, in fact, than she had paid the local girl – before she thought she had better get back to her principal client, who pronounced himself so delighted with his "present" that they repeated the arrangement with a different local girl the next day. So the client got two very nice Mexican girls at no cost to himself while Olga got some variety and, best of all, turned a very tidy profit. There are no flies on our Olga.

*

I have not yet mentioned the most fundamental change in my life over the last year. The seeds of this were sown one Saturday morning a month or two after my birthday party. I was still living at the old house. Fran was visiting, as she often did at weekends in view of her new status, and she and Wendy were downstairs while I showered with Alicia after a nice fuck. Alicia's overnight bag was already packed as she was going to see her parents in Worcester and the plan had been for me to walk her to the station and see her off. But she could see I was tired; it had been a warm humid night and, unusually, I had had trouble sleeping between fucks. So she insisted that I should try to get some more rest; she could, she assured me, easily manage the bag by herself. I yielded, and went back to bed. Before I dozed off I heard her calling "'Bye!" followed by the slamming of the front door.

I woke to the sound of women's voices. There was nothing unusual about that, but these voices were raised in argument. As I pulled myself together I realised it was Wendy and Fran. Obviously they thought I had left with Alicia, as intended, and supposing themselves to be alone in the house they were taking the opportunity for what diplomatic communiqués call "a candid exchange of views".

I could not make out what they were saying, so I got quickly but quietly out of bed and crept down the stairs.

"Fran," said Wendy crossly, "you can be maddeningly obstinate. Just stop arguing and do what I say. It's all for the best."

"It isn't for the best," insisted Fran, "and James would never agree to it, so please just drop it. I'm fed up hearing about it."

Wendy pulled rank. "I'm James's wife," she asserted. "Suppose you let me be the judge of what he will and won't agree to. And this is what he wants, I'm telling you."

"Has he told you so?" demanded Fran.

"Well, no," conceded Wendy. "It's not the sort of thing he'd say. You know how he hates to hurt anyone. In fact, I'm not sure he's even thought about it in his own head. But it's what he wants. Trust me, and stop being so stubborn."

"Stubbornness is my birthright," retorted a suddenly very Scottish Fran. "And I'm not taking this from you, Wendy. I won't do it, not unless James came in here and asked me himself."

This was a cue if ever I heard one. Without warning I threw the door open and found myself looking at two angry faces, shocked at my sudden appearance. I spoke to Wendy first. I was aiming for "kind, but firm".

"Wendy, darling, I know this is hard for you but if you have a problem you must talk to me. Don't have a go at poor Fran. And I'm sorry, darling, but you're completely wrong about what I want."

"You see?" said Fran, and stuck out her tongue at Wendy like a schoolgirl.

Wendy did not reply so I persisted. "You know what Fran means to me. How could you think I'd want to send her away?"

The two women exchanged a peculiar look. "But –" began Fran, and Wendy laughed.

"James, darling," she smiled, "I think you'd better tell us exactly how much you heard and what on earth you think we're talking about."

"I heard enough to know you're trying to tell poor Fran I secretly want her to go away."

"What I am trying to tell her," said Wendy slowly, as if explaining something to a child or a halfwit, "is that whether you realise it or not you want her as your wife."

For a moment all I could do was look mutely from Wendy to Fran and back to Wendy again. "You mean, instead of you?" I gasped eventually.

"Of course instead of me, unless they've legalised bigamy and forgotten to announce it," snapped Wendy.

Fran broke the ensuing silence. "James, darling, she's been harping on about this for weeks. I keep telling her I can't hurt her like that and she's wrong about what you want, but she won't listen."

"It's all right," I said. "I'll sort it out." I turned to Wendy. "So, Wendy, you want out? I suppose I can't blame you. All this –" I made a vague sweeping gesture that took in Fran but was intended also to encompass the dozens of besotted girls scattered across London and the south east. "It's not what you had in mind when you first took me on all those years ago. All right. I understand. I won't force you to stay. But I'll always love you, no matter what."

I was expecting tears but what I got was the sardonic look. "Very pretty speech, darling, but you're being ridiculous. Of course I don't 'want out'. I'll still be here, for as long as you want me. But I'm not the right wife for you any more. Fran is. Take her, darling. I'll throw rice at the wedding."

The whole idea was so totally unexpected that I refused to discuss it any further until I had a chance to think. But as I mulled it over, slowly it grew on me. I still loved Wendy and enjoyed her company (in bed and out) but I had to acknowledge that my feelings for Fran were growing stronger all the time. Over the next few days little more was said about the subject but all of us knew how my thoughts were tending.

Then, one day, I was visiting Fran's flat for the usual reason. After I had seen to all the girls, Connie and Gabby had gone to the kitchen to rustle up some food, leaving Fran and me to lie back and enjoy that lovely, dozy, post-coital feeling. Suddenly an awful realisation struck me.