Leigh - From Suzanne's Interviews

I also came to realize that my education in sexual practice has been very limited when clients expressed their preferences and the other women helped by forewarning me of the various mens' likes. I was only barely acquainted with oral sex and putting on a condom with my mouth was an entirely new art. I'd never had anal sex and never used the word "fuck" or any profanity when making love, so all this expanded my horizons as I acquired the arts needed for customer satisfaction in my new career. While I never used those words in normal conversation, except in telling a risque story to my colleagues, it was liberating to feel less bound by polite convention.

The days became weeks and life seemed to be going well for me. I dressed as if for work on the days I was supposed to be working and collected a mob of kids to take to or from school on my days off. I explained to my family that my work hours had been reduced to part time as the reason I was able to do other things. I had more money to secure our future and to get my kids a few possessions that their peers from two-parent families had, as well as so much more time to devote to them. It made me realize just how much I'd been missing while working the longer hours.

During my vacation times at the beach house I had the opportunity to meet an increasing number of men in a casual, social situation and found that it was easy for me to enjoy the uncomplicated sexual encounters which arose, sometimes more than once per day. Most of the blokes were married and I soon became aware that their wives likewise slept around with the same men with whom I was enjoying intimacy, apparently by mutual consent for the time there on vacation. Likewise, the high-school seniors and college kids seemed to have free rein to carry on a fairly promiscuous love life with their peers at the age of consent. It caused me to wonder whether or not Pamela was into things too.

One morning Cam asked me to collect her kids from school with my burgeoning afternoon flock. It seemed that her conventional, catholic guilt was no longer a sufficient shield to undertaking harlotry in the face of a certain slide into poverty. Her disparaging attitude towards those of us who'd been selling our sexual favours rapidly evaporated as she quickly became an enthusiastic whore who clearly enjoyed her work.

"I was afraid I'd get to enjoy it," she giggled to me later, "and guess what."

After several days absence for feminine needs, I returned to work to find that Tessa and Julia had been replaced by new receptionists, later hearing that they'd moved to sex work a couple of evening a a week to fund their university costs. They were only barely older than my daughter and the thought of her doing that horrified me, even her discovering my new career caused me to cringe inwardly. The chance of being discovered seemed remote, so I got on with my new life in vice.

Almost a year after starting my new career my widower father developed an incurable tumour and fell into terminal decline. We'd never been close, but I felt duty bound to be there at the end and travelled interstate to be at his bedside.

Things were rather more protracted than I'd expected and I called Suzanne to say I would be staying longer than planned. Imagine my horror at hearing my young daughter's voice answering the phone at the house where I sold my favours, my very worst nightmare, then all the questions which arose as to how she'd found her way into that situation. I couldn't leave my father at that stage of his illness, but was reassured at Pamela's telling me she had no intention to get into sex work, although it did occur to me that she would say it what ever her intentions were. I crossed my fingers. Having time to think as I waited, I reflected upon the women I'd met in a quite hectic year of change, changes I'd experienced and in others. I'd had a real fear of Pamela discovering my new occupation or, even worse, wanting to emulate me, but because I realized that I'd found enjoyment in what I'd undertaken and real companionship, perhaps I'd be churlish to deny her what I had. When I thought of the young students Tessa, Julia and the girls who'd followed them in their progression into sex work from reception, the change from giggly teen to a more confident, genteel maturity was significant. I wasn't, maternally speaking, entirely happy with the idea of my attractive, intelligent child being a prostitute, but it was her choice and, in the working situation I'd been employed, there were advantages for her. All the same, it would not be easy for me to work the same shifts as she and having to see her go off to bed with mostly older men to entertain them with he body, but she was an adult and I couldn't presume to dictate to her.

When I finally arrived home I waited until the younger kids were in their beds asleep before broaching the matter of Pam's employment.

"How are things at work?" I asked her pleasantly.

She looked surprised, obviously expecting confrontation.

"It's pretty good, in the main. I'm doing sex work in the evenings now. I get more time for study than I did as a receptionist. Study is still number one on my priority list, as we were for you when you took up the job following your firm's collapse."

"You discovered that, and what I'd got into?"

"Yes," she told me, "by accident, really."

She outlined the circumstances and I saw how easily my subterfuge had become unraveled. In her situation, and in today's more easy-going moral climate compared to that in my youth with no longer any legal impediment to practicing in sex work, I could see that I'd have probably felt an attraction to following my mother into an occupation which gave her back an aura of dignity and happiness.

"So you're satisfied with the job? Will you continue 'til graduation?"

"Definitely," she told me. "I want to make my own way in life, but I will help the other kids get a good start too. They don't need to know, although I just see it as a job, like the other girls of our generation. It's a far more attractive proposition than working in retail or fast food shops. Like Tessa put rather crudely, she'd rather work on her back than on her feet all day."

We both sniggered at that.

"I can't say that it's what I had in mind for you, but as long as you're satisfied with your lot, I'll have to accept your decisions as an adult."

As things transpired I finally shared shifts with my daughter and, apart from feeling some initial discomfort, we eventually found a happy camaraderie in our shared enterprise at having stepped beyond the societal norms in making our way in the world. It seemed nice to be so naughty, the kind of women which polite society frowns upon, and having the temerity to enjoy it without shame.

I've continued in my whoring career for another ten years now, putting my children through tertiary studies and giving them a comfortable home. Being more than comfortable in this lifestyle and continuing to be in demand with the clientele, I really can't see myself retiring in the near future while I still have my health and the looks to be attractive to those men who want my services. As Wendy told me on my first day, it wasn't romantic, even humdrum on occasion, but it was something I could do well. While I went into it out of sheer desperation, a very bad reason to do anything, it proved to be a good decision for me and mine despite the unintended consequence of seeing my daughter take to it as well.

I'd also allowed myself to enjoy many casual sexual encounters during our long family seaside vacations during the school and college breaks, my appetite for physical intimacy not diminishing as I got older. I think Ms Hollander was probably correct about that. On a few occasions Pamela and I even shared an insinuate interlude with previously unacquainted men while swimming and sunbathing nude in remote coves near our holiday home, often with a group of couples and single pairs who were usually newcomers to free-love.

While my other children didn't embrace prostitution, they did get into heterosexual intimacy with gusto at the appropriate age, indicating a hereditary need for sex in our family. I did nothing to discourage their enjoyment of a wide and varied sexual experience, advising them how to partake safely and to enjoy their partners. My youngest's eighteenth birthday was her chance to make up for all those years of abstinence, which she did, while the rest of us made new friends and I made four. It wasn't exactly an orgy, but it was certainly a freewheeling affair.

Pam achieved her doctorate and worked overseas before making a respectable marriage to a very nice, good humoured and equally well-educated man who knew nothing of her past. Our younger student colleagues mostly went on to professional careers after completing their studies, although we received the occasional nostalgic visit from a few over the years.