Mattress Actress (6 page)

A sister-in-sin who had moved to Sydney, Tracy, got in touch with me. It was great to be able to talk openly again. She was two years older than me, and we got on famously. I was intrigued at how long she must have been in the industry, as her contacts seemed to go
way
back. We had a bit in common, she had been brought up in the right suburbs, taught to drink from the right glass, even to use the right fork, but this was where the similarity ended. She hated the entire middle-class respectability that I longed for. Tracy had a one-year-old child, who lived with his father’s parents. Tracy’s ex was doing a brief stint in jail for armed robbery. But, as Tracy liked to boast, ‘he only drove the getaway car, he wasn’t the one holding the gun’. Tracy was most definitely the black sheep of her family. All of her sisters were educated and her mum was a Martha Stewart wannabe, while all six foot six of her dad was pure military. It did infuriate me that she didn’t appreciate how good she had it.

Tracy knew this guy, Tony, who owned a brothel called La Belle Femme. Tony was nothing like I expected, but still a pleasant surprise and a change from the ballsy women I had been toiling under previously. He kept staring at me and I could see he was torn between the obvious fact that I was underage and my potential to earn him copious amounts of money. He gave Tracy and me some shifts and we made him and ourselves a small fortune; well, compared to what we had been earning. Mind you, we had no real competition—most of the other girls were old and on heavy drugs. They were what I call ‘hookers’: they had been doing it for years but were no further ahead in life. Tracy and I must have seemed like a breath of fresh air to all the clients to accidentally fall on our doorstep.

Brothels tend to be hierarchical in the big cities and La Belle Femme was definitely the Target of brothels. It was one step above Kmart, but a far cry from Myer, and David Jones was nowhere in sight. I was so naive that I assumed the other working girls there must have also had night jobs, which is why they spent half their waking hours falling asleep. They would slowly arouse when the doorbell chimed. Little did I know that they were heroin users. Every seedy parlour also had at least one or two Asian workers who didn’t speak a word of English. Once again my naiveté brought me to the conclusion that they were over here learning English or trying to make some money to send home to their families. I later noticed that every day, the Asian woman who worked at La Belle Femme would be driven to work, walked to the front door, and collected on the dark side of a double shift by a very large Asian woman, who would very quickly commandeer her prized pay packet.

The fact that the Asian girls would take risks for a few extra dollars made them unpopular with the local girls. The theory goes that if one girl offered a client a service that is potentially risky, she was placing all the other girls at risk. For example, if a girl offered a client ‘natural French’ (head job with no condom), that client would come in the next week, select one of the locals and expect the same service, and if we refused he might get all bent out of shape and aggressive. Or worse still, infect us with a disease he’d contracted from a previous encounter. This was a regular problem, not just for health risks but also for girls having to return money to clients after they had taken up a considerable amount of our time.

I recall one such client selecting me. I took him into the room, took his cash, returned and commenced my routine, a ten-minute back massage while I was straddling him naked. When I rolled him over and attempted to put a condom on him for the French service, he protested: ‘No, no, no, I don’t want to fuck you yet.’

When I explained that he had to wear a condom for French he was up in arms, claiming that he had received a natural service last week from another girl in the same room for the same price. I assumed he was confused by the varying time rates, half-hour versus three-quarters of an hour. He was not confused at all, and went on to describe the girl who had been so generous. Sure enough, it was one of the Asian girls. A lot of times, too, a client would describe one of the non-Asian girls, who we would later discover had a drug problem. My client marched out to the receptionist and demanded his money back, which she reluctantly gave him, leaving me with nothing to show for my time and exposure. Needless to say, whoever had been responsible for the client’s earlier bare French was quickly shown the door, under a loud protest of denials. This was the problem with the low-end establishments or, as I now refer to them, brothels. The lower the risk to the girls, the more I am inclined to call them parlours.

The seedier the parlour, the seedier the client unfortunately, but at this stage I was yet to find an alternative work venue. I didn’t know that high-class establishments existed, or high-class clients for that matter. In hindsight, I am appalled at the calibre of weirdo that frequented La Belle Femme.

One such example still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand every time I think about it. He requested ‘body adoration’, like he was ordering a steak and kidney pie.

‘What do you mean you don’t know what I’m talking about?’

To this day he is the only dickhead to ever ask for it, so I don’t feel so stupid as I did on that afternoon. His definition of ‘body adoration’ was him lying on a bed masturbating while I licked him all over. Sounded simple at the time, and yet still repulsive. I insisted he have a good shower, but even with the assistance of Imperial Leather I could still taste old man with every lick. That was definitely one of the longest forty-five-minute sessions I ever had.

Tracy and I were out dancing one night when a man named Rozario came up to introduce himself. He claimed to be in the restaurant/nightclub business and told me that he was impressed with my dancing ability so if I ever needed work, I should call him. He spoke such broken English I was having trouble understanding him, particularly with the loud music.

I said we needed somewhere to live more than jobs, and as it turned out, he was just about to move into a flat above his new restaurant so the apartment he was currently living in would be sitting empty. He said he would charge us $140 a week to rent it. We went with him to have a look at the apartment; it was not flash, but it was cheap and required no ID or reference checks.

Within a week, Tracy and I gave him $280, and bought groceries and a few odds and ends ready to move into our new home. We were completely skint. Tracy spent all her wages on alcohol, when she did show up for a shift that is. Even when she was working, her hatred for the job was so evident that clients rarely chose her. What little money she had managed to save usually went towards new clothes that were out of fashion ten minutes after she bought them.

I, on the other hand, was better than an ATM, as far as my family were concerned. My mother wrote to me continually about how she had been ripped off financially, and how the phone was going to get cut off. I felt sorry for her, and sent money occasionally. She said it was a loan but I never saw the money again. My brothers, being teenagers, were constantly short of money and I couldn’t do enough for them. Perhaps I was making up for lost time, but whatever the reason, I was happy to spoil them. Don’t get me wrong, I still found a few dollars for my extravagances. Like most girls in this industry, my motto was ‘No bills, no work’.

We now had keys to a fully furnished unit, complete with towels, toilet paper, plates, cutlery and cooking utensils. It seemed too good to be true!

Rozario returned an hour after handing over the keys to say the plumbing and electricity hadn’t been hooked up in his new flat yet. He asked to stay with us until the next day. It was his house, so what could we do? We slept in one room and allowed him to use the second bedroom.

That night, as Tracy and I were sleeping he walked into our bedroom pretending to hold a video camera like you would when playing charades. ‘We’re going to make a movie,’ he said. ‘Here are your lines.’ He handed us a script he had written.

‘Rozario, we’re trying to sleep, we’ll talk in the morning,’ I said.

He went nuts and began screaming at us. ‘If you don’t read this script I’m going to beat the shit out of both of you.’

We knew he was serious and quickly realised he was completely insane. We had been set up. I began reading the script. Tracy refused and he threw a teapot at her.

The following morning he got up and couldn’t remember any of it. We asked him if he would be leaving that day.

‘Yes, I’m moving out today,’ he said. ‘Thanks for letting me stay, I hope I wasn’t too much of a bother.’ We left the apartment to do our day shift and when we returned we noticed that the lights were on. Rozario was still there.

‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.

‘The plumbers say my restaurant is going to take another two weeks to finish,’ he said casually. ‘I’m going to stay here.’

‘Can we please have our money back and we’ll find somewhere else to stay, until your restaurant is completed?’

‘No, you can’t have your money back, and fuck off for asking. You girls are stupid bitches. Don’t you know what I was playing at? Welcome to city life, you dumb whores.’

We left the house. We had lost all of our money, and we only had the clothes on our backs and the day’s work clothes in our handbags.

We stayed at the brothel over the weekend. Tony let us open the doors and take one hundred per cent of whatever we made. Tracy was unreliable but I had become good friends with Tony. I could have easily had a crush on him, but it was probably just a daddy complex. I was unfamiliar with older men genuinely being nice and generous and not expecting anything in return.

Monday evening I decided to try to talk to Rozario, but Tracy wasn’t interested in coming. Unless it came in a glass with ice or in a long amber bottle, I’d learnt, Tracy wouldn’t be interested.

As I let myself into the apartment with my key, I could hear a noise in Rozario’s room, but decided it would be best to go straight to my old room, get my gear and get the hell out of there. My plan went OK for all of five minutes. As I was packing, Rozario jumped me from behind, his elbow right under my chin, his hand ripping at my ear. With his other hand, he grabbed my key off the side table. At that moment I found my lungs. I screamed long and hard and loud.

Rozario was so startled that he took his hands off me and held them in the air. ‘Please don’t scream,’ he said in his thick Italian accent. He grabbed the key from his pocket, then with the sickest smirk you have ever seen placed the key down his pants. ‘I heard you come in, do you think I’m fucking deaf? I locked the deadbolt, now you can’t get out.’

‘Open the fucking deadbolt, you lecherous old prick,’ I yelled.

‘Come and get it with your mouth, whore, and while you’re down there, suck my cock.’

I snapped, completely lost the plot. I picked up a bottle of red wine from on top of the bookshelf, smashed it against the wall near Rozario’s head and waved it in his face.

‘Now open the fucking door before I cut your prick off!’ I yelled.

He got the message that I was deadly serious and opened the door as fast as he could, and there was a definite quiver in his voice now. Not that I could understand what he was saying, as he had reverted to Italian. I flew down those stairs as fast as my legs could carry me. Obviously too fast, as I ran straight onto the road and into the path of a taxi.

I don’t recall being hit. The next thing I remember is lying on the side of the road, a giant of a man cleaning the blood off my face.

‘Oh good, she’s alive, when the bitch comes around tell her to stay off the fucking road next time.’ Then the taxi driver got in his cab and left.

My Good Samaritan offered to drive me home, but I didn’t want him to know I lived in a brothel. So I grabbed my suitcase and purse and walked myself home.

The next day, Tony rang a few of his friendly police buddies on our behalf, and within ten minutes they were at the front door of La Belle Femme to make sure we retrieved everything that belonged to us from Rozario without incident. Once there, the police told us to go straight inside, get only our belongings and wait in the car for them. I followed their instructions to a tee. Tracy, on the other hand, decided to take liberties with Rozario’s portable stereo and the like. Rozario didn’t see her walk out the door with any of it; he was being detained in the bedroom. I could hear the police verbally abusing the shit out of him, after all, this was an unofficial visit. It wasn’t until Rozario started arguing back that the sound of beatings could be heard; for a second I even felt sorry for the perverted little prick. You could hear him pleading for them to stop.

Tracy was proving to be quite a headache for Tony. She turned up for work when it suited her and left once the disco was open. To add to that she had started ripping off clients while they were in the shower. Of course she denied it. Tracy also took great pride in insulting the receptionist, who was a transvestite. Tony had no choice but to ask us not to sleep at the brothel any longer, though we were allowed to keep working there. Why should he completely ruin a good and profitable working relationship? I didn’t know where we were going to go, if anywhere. But I understood his decision.

Our shifts started at ten in the morning, and finished at two the following morning so accommodation was usually the all-night discos. In the event I couldn’t keep my eyes open, I would usually let someone take me home.

I thought it was a bargain, for three minutes of sex—because let’s face it, that’s all it ever takes—I got a nice clean bed, a warm shower and, more often than not, breakfast in the morning. Sometimes if Tracy didn’t get picked up or vice versa, the one guy would get stuck with both of us. Some nights I wasn’t in the mood for dancing, screwing, men, noise or any company whatsoever, so I splashed out on a motel.

We were earning good money but we needed ID and references to get a lease on an apartment, none of which we had.

Tracy gave away more sex than she ever sold. To see her bring a man back to the motel was highly unusual; a football team was far more her style. I could not understand how she hated work with a passion, but could screw six men a night and be satisfied. At the time I put it down to not fully understanding sex yet. But now I think for her it was a power trip. They were all men of her choosing, so in a sense they worked for her, satisfying her every whim. She was not obliged to bow to their every demand, but they had to try to please her, after all, she wasn’t charging then, she was doing them a favour.