Mephisto and Me - 3

By Lily Edwards

The adrenaline's starting to flow, I still get horribly nervous until I'm actually in the room and the guy has accepted me.

I have to get up. Have to wash off the past four days. Have to somehow hide this goat girl inside an elite glamour girl worth paying for. I know I'll still walk into the job feeling like I've got bits of goat stuck all over me.

Jesus, if the guy only knew the reality. I'm still flat on my back in an old pair of trackies and a daggy jumper with egg down the front of it. I hate that this is me, I hate that I've become this disgusting cliché.

Later I will understand that I needed to let it get this out of control so that I couldn't hide from myself anymore. So that I would be forced to ask for help.

For now though I reach for the pipe.

Now that I've given myself permission to have it I wonder why I waited so long. It's loaded with a full point; the pipe is filthy but the ice is pristine crystal in the bottom. I love this ritual. I melt it slowly with the flame thrower, these lighters are such a give away in a girls bag, but I like whipping it out to light the client's cigarettes or to show I know what I'm doing when I'm having a session with Max and his mates. The crystal melts into clear liquid and I lick my finger and dab it on the bottom of the glass pipe to cool it, swilling it around the bottom to spread it evenly. It dries quickly forming quartz coloured crystal in the bottom of the bowl. Its looks like it will be good stuff…lots of fat white smoke.

I gently play the flame under the pipe, holding my thumb over the top of the bowl until smoke fills the entire chamber. Lips to the pipe I slowly begin to inhale. My rib reserve breathing training from Drama School has paid off and I am able to take in a massive amount of smoke.

I note the irony.

This isn't what I had in mind at the Academy when I was training my body to be a finely tuned instrument…I was thinking Shakespeare in The West End, London. Not crack pipes in West End, Brisvegas.

I fill my lungs to capacity and hold it in, sucking more and more air down on top of my already full lungs. I hold it in till I'm dizzy. When I exhale only a wisp comes out. Good. Got it all. My head is already starting to rush.

I take two more long tokes.

Better put it down. Don't want my heart to explode.

The night ahead seems like an adventure now. Heart racing, I stumble out of bed and into the bathroom. Time…what's the fuckin time? Not enough time.

Now I'm in a desperate scramble to get myself looking hot. It's a matter of pride. I knock over things, scrabbling around trying to find a razor and shaving oil. I feel like I'm in one of those dreams I have where it’s like I'm blind drunk and I cant see where I'm going and can't get my legs to work properly. Getting ready for a job can be like an Olympic sport. I start to sweat.

Thirty five minutes later I'm tiptoeing down the front steps with my heels in my hand. I don't want to wake the woman who lives down stairs. A few weeks after I moved in I received a warning from the real-estate; they'd had a written complaint about noise coming from my apartment. Specifically, "Excessively loud laughter and the sound of high heels on a wooden floor."

I haven't had had much occasion for excessively loud laughter lately.

I don't like doing the wrong thing. The letter from the real estate made me feel horribly lonely. For some girls sex work is a crash course in assertiveness training; it was like that for me at first. Now it exacerbates my already guilty conscience. I don't want to be a pagan outlaw.

I tiptoe down the stairs clutching my huge work kit stuffed in a Louis Vuitton satchel and Buddy, looking sleepy and resigned in his pumpkin bag.

Matt, the driver has an amused smile on his face. He doesn't mind that I'm late. He's happy to see me working again. He's seen a lot of girls come and go. He knew before I did that I was unraveling but I know that he likes me more than most of the girls. I ask him lots of questions and let him do his job. I make a show of leaving my money in the car with him to show I trust him. He humors me and my neurotic relationship with Buddy, allowing him to sit on his lap while he waits for me to get out of a job.

"Its pets as therapy," I joke. "A healthy workplace initiative."

Sometimes he has to go off to drive other girls when I'm in a long booking. On these occasions Buddy is returned to me smothered with the whiff of other women's perfume. I imagine them holding him quietly as they are driven to their jobs and I wonder if he can smell their fear.

© Lily Edwards 2007

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