Outcall

I’m seeing Circus Guy again. Fidgeting in the hotel room, using the internet, already set up with candles on the bedside table, little cookies (last time he hadn’t eaten), condoms size XL and wearing my nifty beaded net chemise. I’ve got Peggy Lee on the CD player and spoke enough Arabic to the desk clerk for him to upgrade the room to a Deluxe King. (For the record, “Shukran” is enough.)

I’ve tried on four outfits, different permutations of bra and panties and cover-up, it’s the first time I’ve met a client without being fully dressed. He’s a little shy at the door, I’m right by the elevator, there’s a woman going up. Unlike me.

The outfit ends up off in a flash – I join him in the shower and scrub his back, using the soapsuds to massage him in long, even strokes. I kneel in the shower and take him into my mouth, remembering that he likes slow, lazy head, firm but tender, just mouth, no hands blocking the view of his rather large cock. More than halfway on him gags me, normally I’d use my hand around the base, but hey, different strokes…

We go to the bed, the spread still on (I always remember J. throwing the bedspreads off first thing into the room, “They’re covered in hooker juice!”) and I spend more time on his cock, first sideways, his hand stroking my ass, then kneeling between his legs, his hands in my hair, his hands gently on either side of my face, definitely there but not pressing, guiding me to hold still as he slowly fucks my mouth.

“Your turn,” and he guides me to kneel over his face, adjusting the pillows. The headboard is exactly the right height to rest my forehead on my folded arms, look down at his face, eyes closed, thatch of thick silver hair, smooth skin the color of the café au lait in Madrid, where I kissed Beautiful Girl and fear stopped me from so much more. I’m over him, he’s very good, his tongue on me as slow and firm and tender as his cock was in my mouth. He reaches up behind me and rubs my back, his hands are strong and soft, it’s beautiful, I can’t believe no-one’s thought of it before. There is a moment, perhaps fifteen minutes along, when the sensation is building and it’s just the right amount of intense and he slides his lips around me and gently sucks my clit and I realize, oh! This is what all the fuss is about! This is why guys are so into head, this is what they feel, why the ultimate fantasy is me or her or Britney Spears on the first album cover, looking 14 and looking up.

I almost came.

I put the condom on him, XL the right size, last time it was awkward. I ask him how he wants me and we roll over, he slides into me slowly in mish. I tease him, ask him if he wants my legs by my ears, he’s surprised I really can but it’s only a novelty for him. Roll over to cowgirl, I’m feeling very, very good, not insane-crazy-intense but slow and soft and brimming over.

I say, “I think I can come, and I’d like to, if that’s ok.”

“You come away,” he says, and the familiar motion, rubbing my clit on his pubic bone, the feeling of his wide cock slightly scraping the front of the entrance, the tip pressing hard into my cervix on the backstroke, his legs a little too bent but all right all the same, and then the soft shouts of release, trying to be moderate, trying not to frighten him, and he still says, “Wow, you’re crazy.” Maybe porn is all a lie and the rest of the women in the world are arriving in silence, their bags bumping gently in the porters’ hands, their heels clicking softly on checkerboard marble, not even echoing in the vaults of the station ceiling, while I alone am Auntie Mame stepping out of the open touring car, flinging back a boa of dead and glass-eyed animals, hollering, “I’m here, boys, get the gin!”

He swivels in me again in mish, we’ve done the complicated rollover without separating twice now, and God, he swivels like Big City Lover (My racist brain: maybe it’s a black thing, this swiveling, how would one research that? And if it is a black thing, where do they learn it? Standing on corners in hoodie shirts, “yo, man, you got to swivel in the bitch”? Shut up, dumb white girl brain, shut up, your privilege is showing). I feel him pulse in me and he comes, silently – perhaps he’s the maroon-suited porter, gold braiding and a little cap, but no, it’s his time, his money, his privilege to have the white woman on her knees, over, under, tell me again I remind him of his red-haired mother and no empty tree limbs in sight, nothing ready to bear fruit.

We lie together for a long time after he teaches me how to gently remove a condom with a warm wet “washrag”. My (monthly) blood is rusty on the cloth, if he was all white it would show. I don’t think he notices as I sponge him off.

My head on his chest, we talk – the first time he saw me it was cold and I wore layers and a hat with a feather and rushed him to the circus, and he thought I looked like Cyndi Lauper, that I was a little crazy. I tell him, I have lots of crazy, and I’m here to give him some, he needs some crazy in his life. He asks me:

“Why don’t you have a boyfriend, why don’t you get married?”

Pause. I should have a line here...

Pause. I like this guy, I like seeing him, I’d like to tell him...

Pause. Yeah, but I’m a whore.

“Well, how much about me do you really want to know?”

I don’t remember his response.

“Actually, I’ve been married for twelve years.”

His look asks the next questions.

“No, he doesn’t know. We have an open relationship. I’m not monogamous. It’s not in me.” We talk about people having different levels of sexual need.

He says, “Maybe if my wife paid more attention to me, I’d...do this less.”

He had a girlfriend for five of the first seven years. She lived in the same building, he’d call her at 3AM, go downstairs, “she’d answer the door butt-naked and we just went at it…she had a foldout sofa, we fell down between the couch and the head of the bed and just kept going. Took me about a month to get used to how tight her, (pause, uses same word I used as least offensive choice), pussy was, used to come just like that. My wife was upstairs asleep, didn’t even know I’d gone out, thought I was in the other room watching TV the whole time. Only time she wanted to have sex was when she wanted to get pregnant, go-go-go for a month or so, then back to once a month. Same thing again, all the time ‘til she get pregnant again, then back to once a month.”

I went two years once, I think but don’t say. It’s not my turn to reveal.

He likes that I’m low-profile, I don’t see many people, I don’t get into petty spats on the board (arguing on the internet, Special Olympics, we’ve all been there). He jokes that if I’d ever like to see him for free, he’s up for it. I tell him I’ll never see him for free, but we’ll always have a nice long appointment and I’ll never charge him more. We’re at two hours from the time he arrived, nearly three from when we thought we’d start, it ends up at two and a half.

I want to be open, to tell him more of the truth, to truly connect, but I still count the money he lays down. He is slightly offended. We kiss, I tell him I’m eager to see him again, to spread some more crazy around. He wants to see me again, when he can afford it. And then he’s out the door and I’m in the mirror, touching up the lipstick so the girl I see can walk across the parking lot to the restaurant where Ramen Guy is waiting.