Twisted (12 page)

The constant repetition and the long working hours don’t help me to keep my spirits up. In moments of deep self-pity, and with a strong desire to break the cycle and walk away, I remind myself about one customer I had while working the day shift in Sexy Girls …

He was about 60, tall and thin, and worked as an auto mechanic. His hands were always dirty; he smelled of sweat, as if he’d never been in the shower; and his mouth had a set of yellow stinky teeth, which often smirked on his badly dented and tanned face. He always ordered one regular Coke and stared at the big screen, covered by constantly moving genitalia. If I was really persistent, in exchange for a
piccolo
and right by the bar, he would dig my pussy with his two fingers, scratching it with his nails, under my skirt, so nobody around would notice …

These revolting, vivid images always help me to appreciate what I have – no, what I
don’t
have – to deal with while working at the peep show!

There are plenty of upsides to this new, unusual employment
(yeah, as if drinking and fucking some freaks is a usual kind of job)
, especially my relative sobriety.

I don’t drink, and have stopped going out after work, because the long hours and the stress of all the exercise make me quite disciplined. I’ve forgotten when I last used heavy drugs, including cocaine. The only reward that I allow myself is the joint that I draw on every night while lying in bed (I was lucky to get a tiny, cupboard-sized room with space for only one bed, so I don’t have any roommates to complain about the smoke), with the lights off, watching the smoke curling through the street glow, melting in my happy –
oh, and usually very coherent –
place.

I have another pleasant surprise when I work out how much money I’ve made, considering my absolutely useless beginning. In three weeks I made the same amount as I made in the cabaret in a full month. Without a doubt, I decide to stay at the peep show for the next month, and am really looking forward to seeing how much I can make using all my newly acquired tricks and skills together with my open-minded attitude.

I even find a fun part of my occupation – watching the customers, discovering how freaky the freaks can be – and wonder at the certainty that I will never stop wondering.

Except for one incident, when I ended up puking in the toilet because of one degenerate client: while masturbating, he bent over, slid his asshole apart, scraped the shit out of it using four fingers, ate it off his palm, ejaculated into the same hand, then polished the cum off like it was a delicious topping to the brownie he’d just eaten …

Yuck! I still cannot forgive myself for not turning my face away or just closing my eyes and protecting my future life from these disgusting memories that keep on flashing through my head.

Generally, the weirdos don’t bother me. I do what I have to do: play sexy, climax once in a while and keep observing the pure deviation.

The guys like Lena’s new adorer, who likes to wear women’s stockings, don’t bowl me over any more.

Ha! Red stockings …? How about the pink G-string on the big, muscular guy who looks like the Commando starred by Arnold Schwarzenegger that can literally hold only one of his balls? Or the full set of white and lacy lingerie, including bra, and the pre-staged game in which the dude bends over the chair assuming the doggy position with his back to me while I menacingly shout at him, ‘You dirty, little bitch! I am going to nail you right now …’ while he frantically masturbates until he discharges, enjoying his humiliation.

Then there’s this other nutcase who masturbates without touching his tool. He takes his pants off, unbuttons his shirt and lifts his arms behind his head. He starts moving his body, violently throwing his penis against his stomach and hips. Um … how can I describe it? Imagine your garden hose, with the water turned to full pressure, that you’ve accidently dropped on the ground. Vivid, isn’t it? The extrovert whips himself with his own dick until he comes, while I play with myself, watch him, and pretend that I am extremely turned on by his routine.

Also, there is a Russian guy, Ruslan. He is one of a kind, as well. When he called me to the private cabin, he asked me not to take my clothes off and to do nothing but simply talk to him.

Yeah, can you believe it? That’s never happened to me before!

He hates cabarets, because, as he explains to me, ‘Each time I’ve been to one I’ve ended up trying to escape from another drunk girl who’d got all upset and personal because I didn’t want to sleep with her.’

It sounds suspicious. Why wouldn’t he want to have some ‘fun’ instead of talking? I bet his tool is not working.

I keep these thoughts to myself. It’s always better to get into the role of soul therapist than to rub my already tired and swollen pussy again.

The weirdos don’t take me by surprise any more, but I still struggle to understand why handsome young guys would visit such places. There are quite few of them. And I am not talking about pimpled high-school students, or the poor perverts whose childhoods, taking into account Sigmund Freud’s theory, I always tried to avoid imagining in order to preserve my mental well-being. I mean the guys in their late twenties or thirties, who definitely give the impression of some kind of success. Why would they come to a peep show in the first place? Why would they choose masturbation over sex, especially when they must have partners, given their fair looks and well-proportioned and functioning penises?

... Until, one day …

I had a private session with a very handsome guy with a very handsome limb between his legs. When I walked into the room, he stood right by the glass and asked me to do the same, holding me spellbound with his big, dark, far-reaching eyes. We were so close to each other that if there were no glass, we would feel the warmth of each other’s bodies. His gaze was deep and provoking. A wave of lust suffocated my body. He asked me to take off my silky lace nightgown, slowly, while he softly breathed how beautiful I was and gently brushed the glass as he would my body. I stood with my legs spread shoulder-width. With one hand, I lightly rubbed my clit; with the other, I followed his hand’s movement over the cold glass, caressing my flaming body. We both came at the same time.

I experienced a surprisingly powerful O, followed by the stream of hot tears that covered my face. As my body calmed down, my ecstasy became bitter sadness – one of my best sexual experiences had been sealed behind damn glass.

Interesting … what we find weird or freaky in the beginning can sometimes turn out to be very sensual and enjoyable. It actually doesn’t really matter why someone does this or that, as long as he or she finds pleasure in it without harming others.

Or maybe I’m totally turning into some kind of freak myself …

I’m surprised when, a few days after my psychotherapy session with Ruslan, he comes back to see me.

He takes a private dance, as he did last time, and spends 10 minutes on casual chit-chat. He asks a lot about my family and me. How I’ve got to Luxembourg and how much longer I am going to stay in the country. He seems charming, funny and sweet. When our session is over and he gets up from the chair to leave, he stops at the door, and, overcoming his childish timidity, asks if I would like to join him for coffee sometime and takes my number.

He is shy to ask me out – so cute!

We start meeting for coffee almost every day before my shift, in the café across the road from the club. We laugh a lot, talk about life and our families, about our plans for the future, sharing even the most unrealistic, and that is why embarrassing and never-spokenabout dreams.

For me, the biggest attraction of our innocent attachment (besides, of course, that he is smart, handsome, always light-hearted,
and
speaks my native language) is that my new Russian friend is not trying to get under my skirt. Our relationship isn’t going further than easy-going, joyful friendship and, sometimes, artless flirting.

I feel that I can relate to him. He also comes from nowhere and, just like us, he is trying to get out and have a decent life. Once, he shook me up with the fascinating and tragic story of his immigration from Russia to Europe, while he was still a teenager …

His mother, Ayshe, was Chechen. She was born and lived in a small village a hundred kilometers from Groznyy. His father, Bashir, died from a stab wound during some stupid fight when Ruslan was only three. Ayshe loved Ruslan’s father very much, and for a long time couldn’t get over her loss. But when the tragic news reached them, her parents breathed a sigh of relief. Even though Bashir was a good man and husband, his temper was easily inflamed. They suspected that he’d eventually get himself into trouble, and worried that the trouble may one day involve Ayshe and Ruslan too.

When the first Chechen war started, Ruslan was fourteen years old. It was then that Ayshe met a Russian soldier, Sergey, whose battalion was stationed temporarily near Ayshe and Ruslan’s village. The two fell in love at first sight. Their feelings were so strong that she ignored her parents’ warnings to stop her ‘outrageous sin’ (obviously, a love affair with the enemy was a betrayal) before it was too late: no one knew how dangerous it could become if the villagers found out about it.

The romance between Ayshe and Sergey was intense but short. When the battalion eventually pulled out, all she was left with were her lover’s promises that he’d come back against all odds, and the suspicious looks of her parents and neighbours when her belly started to grow. Was he killed, or was she just another trivial love story that he’d forgotten about as soon as he left with the troops? Time passed; he did not show up; Ruslan’s mother couldn’t keep her pregnancy a secret anymore.

Eventually she told her parents everything. They knew that she would not be able to stay safely in the village if she kept the child. But Ayshe refused an abortion, and they decided to send her and Ruslan to Groznyy, to their only relative, Aunt Fatima, for good.

It turned out that Fatima had some – as she called them – ‘useful acquaintances’, with whom she’d kept in contact for a rainy day. Luckily the old woman was kind, and without hesitation used her contacts to help Ayshe and Ruslan to escape to Moscow. There, they met with some more of Fatima’s ‘useful acquaintances’, who helped to organise passports and refugee papers so that the two could immigrate to Europe.

The next few weeks were hell for fifteen-year-old Ruslan and pregnant Ayshe. Money was so tight that they had to change from buses to trains to hitch-hiking, almost starving every day. Ayshe’s labour started in Ukraine, when they were about to enter Poland. Luckily they met a hauler who helped them through the border crossing without problems or delays, and then took them straight to the closest hospital.

But another tragedy awaited them. The baby boy was stillborn. As doctors tried to explain, it probably happened because of Ayshe’s physical and emotional exhaustion. She was devastated. But she couldn’t afford to collapse under this tragedy; she had to take care of Ruslan.

For the next year they wandered throughout Europe, from one low-paid job and homeless shelter to another. Until one day Ayshe met an old man somewhere in Germany, who was looking for a live-in housekeeper to do cleaning, cooking and grocery shopping. His wife had died a few months earlier and he couldn’t cope on his own. He didn’t mind Ayshe’s son also staying with them, on condition that the boy went to school and spent his spare time helping around the house.

Things worked well until the old man started to intimidate the poor woman. First there were vulgar jokes and suggestions, then his harassment became more demanding and aggressive. The old man started threatening her: ‘I will go to the police and report on you and your bastard son, and you will go to jail or be deported back to Russia.’ He kept repeating it until Ayshe couldn’t resist anymore and let the prick climb on top of her.

Ruslan couldn’t understand why his mother cried at night, and why the lusty, satisfied smile wouldn’t leave the old man’s face. But it was not in his nature to question his mother and get involved in the adults’ lives.

With time, Ayshe complied, for Ruslan’s sake. She and the German even started living as husband and wife. Five years later she died of cancer. Ruslan left the house and never saw the man again.

He moved to Luxembourg, where he found a job at an IT company. In just a few years he progressed from being a clerk to a programmer.

My heart bled listening to that. The image of the boy who’d been through more at his young age than most people had experienced in a lifetime, tore me apart.

I hugged him tightly. ‘It’s all good now … it’s all behind you. You were a very brave little boy who’s grown into a not-so-smart but very handsome man,’ I teased Ruslan, and his face brightened with a smile.

It is the last week of our trip and I am busy packing. It turns out I’ve bought too many clothes and shoes during these six months.
Damn shopping therapy.
Half of my stuff doesn’t fit into my bags; I have to mail a few extra boxes to Ukraine. I’m doing all of these chores – including buying souvenirs for our family and a few friends, having goodbye lunches with some of my regular clients, and, most important, going to the post office to draw all the money I’ve made – with a great thrill and an irrepressible smile on my face.

Yay! I am going home!

I take off the night before my departure. Ruslan invites me to his favorite Italian restaurant. I look forward to a pleasant night with the person to whom, in just a couple of weeks, I have got so attached, even more so than to my sisters.

It’s an amazing night. As always, there is a lot of laughter, easy-going fun and interesting conversation about everything and nothing. However, I notice a shade of sadness on Ruslan’s face. Obviously, he is thinking about me leaving tomorrow. Both of us try not to talk about my departure. I think we both know that there is no point in planning anything or giving each other useless vows that neither of us can keep. It is unspoken, but we both know that we’ll try to keep in touch, and that if there is a chance, we will meet again.