15. London Bridge is Falling Down

I face my thin, gangly opponent at the other side of the court. It smiles weakly and shrugs it’s shoulders, palms up. Harmless.

I am panting, I have been moving for 18 hours in 38 dg heat without break or food. The dizzier I feel, the harder I push.

We serve for the first set; focused, rhythmically I pull back, drop my racket face, grip, then hit. Each movement represents one syllable of one man’s name. The only man who has ever moulded me to him, not one of the 17 alias’s – but His actual name, the one the Private Investigator gave me. Over and over and over, I breathe out each sound and expel each letter.

Drop
Grip
Impact

We are half way through the 4th game before my challenger scores a point. I win the match 6-0, 6-0, 6-0.

Of course I fucking do.

1 year ago, I would not have had the courage to do this; I would never have shown my strength to a man in such physical and obvious ways. Today, I am not ashamed of my aggression, my desire to win, to destroy a fragile ego, but today has been a new level of hostility, even for me – this is un-lady-like.

The Thin One starts to walk toward the net, I believe he wants to shake my hand, congratulate my overwhelming win. I stand a distance away from it,  heaving to get my breath, blinded by my salted sweat. I stare directly, but hear another’s voice; hissing, angry, wanton.

I open my left palm suddenly; my racket drops to the ground, The Thin One frowns disapprovingly. I slowly turn 180dg, as dozens of sunglasses simultaneously turn towards the scene. I leave everything I came with, and walk off this court to mumbles and suburban gossip. I will never indulge this opponent again; my tolerance for weak men has expired.

When I woke this morning, my blood was not my own. It was at the mercy of another. I get up, go to the gym, I want to run outside but I am waiting for the humidity to rise and the HK sun to burn. I keep walking; I drink a steaming coffee and start a 30km hike in 95% humidity. Every step is heavy, and the heavier it becomes, the more I fight.

I have a plan of course; it’s in percentages. I am belonged right now, at 100pc, I have to sweat that out. Today I will decrease it by 10pc , in another 6 days, it will be down a further 60pc. I can cope with that, I can function at 30% obsession. At 10km when my mouth is dry I refuse myself water, at 15km when my long sleeves are drenched, I will not take them off. At 20km my skin is sandy and my fingers shriveled. At 22km my chest stings with pain, and I decide I will always accept pain over hurt.

I know our time has come, I’m avoiding the conversation.

Love that never becomes rooted in the every-day becomes epic. I have the choice of having Him every day, but I want epic. I am not ready to return to mundanity. To someone’s pocket. I like to be a shiny new thing. He has changed me, He has created something that cannot stay….

“The problem with us Emma, we meet at the wrong time”

I don’t reply, I don’t want to know that this is true, I cannot let him go, so I do something I have never done before. I ask for help

Calmly I whisper into his sleeping ear

Will you help me ? Will you  help me to let you go ? Please?

___________________________________________________
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA8AfQaUnXM

I keep, going to the river to pray
Cos I need, something that can wash out the pain
And at most Im sleeping all these demons away
But your Ghost
The Ghost of you
It keeps me awake

A New Chapter

10 pieces of advice for dating a Gigolo.

1. You will get bored because they will always be late.

2. Wear Comfortable clothes

3. Don’t think much about your knickers, they’ll be coming off very soon

4. Eat before

5. The hotel is important, pick a nice one

6. If they ask for extra money – say no

7. Whatever name they give you – it’s not the right one

8. Go to their area, don’t make them come to yours (see advice number 1)

9. Ask whatever questions you like – the answers are brilliant

10. Do not do advice number 9 – More action, less talk.

14. Once Upon A Time

He is back. And I have won.

Like I said, I always do.

“ I am sorry for my mistakes” he says “I will pay you back all the money, just give me some time”

The phone rings and bleeps and lights up at me repeatedly. I don’t answer; I stare remotely at his letters of grief. His own memorial service. Look at what you have lost. Look at what you have done. I was real, and now I’m gone.

So. What now?

For months I have waited, waited for him to come back to me, not because I’m paying him, not because his conscience dictates, but because he wants to. Because I didn’t imagine all that has passed.. I’ve waited for him to come back and prove he wants me. And now it is so.

The article will come out in two Sundays, The editor’s waiting for my final review, and the pictures. The pictures. Kept casually in my closet at home, I haven’t looked at them since they were delivered. I wonder what the impending uproar will look like, I think about the legals, the embarrassed clients. I wonder who will get involved, remind myself to check my indemnity insurance.

I try to forget him. I go to bed with another, but I want to rage at the averageness of it all. Mostly I rage at myself. I am exhausted; I no longer know what is real or imagined, truth or fiction. I have lost my mind and the comfort of self trust.

So yes, I have won. But what exactly is the prize ? I have given up on him. So much has come to pass that my memory now is not of his voice or his skin, it’s of angry phone calls, twisted arguments. But still I have won. There is comfort in that. Self reliance, it’s a skill I’ve honed from birth.

I refuse to see him, refuse to meet. And he leaves Hong Kong. Again.

When he is gone and I am left here, there is a peace .. The race is over, the clouds have cleared, but the problem is, he’s not with me, and I miss him.

“Come see me” he says, “Come stay with me. No money”

So I do it. I get on a plane and fly to Singapore. I fly to see him for myself, to stand on our level playing field and look across into those slate eyes and find the answers I’ve been looking for.

“I thought you wouldn’t come”

“I always do what I say I will do”

We meet up with some business friends, we have drinks, we go back to the hotel. And still I haven’t said a word.

“What do you want with me ?” He says

“Nothing”

“Why don’t you take me for yourself?”

“Because you cannot be taken”

The moment the door opened and I saw him, I knew everything he had told me was true. My judgments were correct. Yes he took my money. And the reasons he took it were good ones.

I start to fall asleep after my shower, the bed, so soft I’m melting, all the rage in the last months, the scheming, the plots, the money, the grief, it’s melting out of my very body and I am resting for the first time in as long as I can remember. He is beside me tonight, different now ,and yet, exactly the same.

His kisses are comforting and familiar, they remind me that we are the same person, my body is sleepy and heavy as he pulls me as close as it’s possible to pull another human being. He whispers into my ear

“Tell me you want me “

“No” I reply, “I’ m sleepy”

“Tell me you want me” he repeats

“I don’t want you to work”

Now there is a hint of urgency in his voice as he says again,

“Tell me you want me. Tell me you like me. Please”

I take his face in my hands, its dark, but I feel him staring at me.

“I love you. I love you for everything you are today, and everything you could be”

There is no more talking now, the night silences us in a cocoon of warmth that runs through my shoulders and drenches my cells, they have been waiting for him since the very beginning. They have been waiting since I was born.

I wake up at 3:15am and look at his outline in the dark for a long time. I think about these past months, I think about the SCMP article. I run my fingers over his hands as he sleeps next to me. I feel the ridged and fractured thumb nail he has. It happened when he was around the same age as my son. No one told him how is happened, no one cared, no one paid any attention. He had a mother who didn’t even notice that her baby’s nail became so damaged that it would be disfigured for life. I think of my dark haired blue eyed son, I think of his tiny thumb nail, what could happen to cause such trauma? I imagine the pain, see my son crying, and no one noticing, I have to swallow hard to control my tears.

I thought about my Hong Kong. I thought about how lucky I have been, these last few months, the situation this man put me in, it has brought about more sweetness than I have ever been privy to in my life. It has been a blessing. I think of the friends that I will go back to in two days. How they are waiting for news on this weekend. How they rallied around me without a word of judgment this year, when clearly judgments should have been passed. I think of the money they gave me without criticism or humiliation. I am grateful. I have people to look after me now, I have people I want to look after. I have warmth and laughter and solidarity in my life. I wonder who he has to go back to, I wonder how much kindness he has seen in his life, I suspect none at all.

I have so much to come back to here in Hong Kong. I have escaped a childhood I hated and found a tribe to love. And with this front page expose for SCMP ?  – what am I doing to him? Is this my contribution to his world.  Is this the lesson I want to teach my son, betrayal with betrayal. Get or begot? To prove this man right ? That no one can be trusted. ever  ? He is a reflection of my own self; Who is to say that I am good and he is not, that he should be punished because I decide. The man lying in front of me. He’s just a man. Not a devil or a hero, not pure or evil. A man. Flawed. Perfect.

I realize I am his friend.

With that simple fact, the decision is made. The article will be pulled, the photos shredded. It doesn’t matter if he knows it or he doesn’t, I need to know it, I need to wake up and know I’m a decent friend who gives good things to the world, not more hate.

______________________________________

The plane back to Hong Kong is a happy one, Taylor Swift is playing, and I am a different person again, I am light, I am young – how much can change in a year. How much good can come out of something that is so hard.

When I land, my phone is bussing with messages from him
Are you okay ? I was worried, I hadn’t heard from you.
Yes, yes, I really am – thank you for a lovely weekend.
Thank you Emma – for everything.

I walk out into the breezy hot perfect Hong Kong sun, I close my eyes and Smile.

I am home.

The End

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJtDXIazrMo

I’ll let you set the pace

Because I’m not thinking Straight

Love me like you do

13. Sing a Song of Sixpence

We are the same, He and I….

Money.

It means everything when you don’t have it, and not much at all when you finally do. But, for people like us, the ones who were baptized into the Christian waters of scarcity, there is nothing at all complicated about it. For these babies, the certainty soaks the infant soul in our shared Church of shame. There will be no indulgent discussions for us. For people like us, it doesn’t mean access to luxury, it doesn’t represent enough and a bit more, fun or dull. Money isn’t the difference between peace and worry, pretty and ugly. No, for us, in our world, money means one thing, and one thing only.

Survival.

To hussle? This is to choose life.

The relentless pursuit of cash, of more, it isn’t greed, it is conditioning.  To fight, to take your clothes off, to kiss when you want to vomit, appease and bend to the will of another? This is how you get the hell out of your childhood when your fellow parishioners are drowning like maggots around you.

There will be no journey of quiet desperation for us.  The  decades we endure from  our birth to our death will be filled with a force that is never-ending.  Forever the divide between passion and anger will twist and break, we will pursue everything with the same intensity. When you work from the day you are born for every basic need, when you grow up surrounded by people who have more, when there’s no such thing as safety, everything in life becomes about your human hunger, and all these roads of starvation end up at the same place – Want.

My life is never quiet now. Even in the dark, when the baby is asleep, and the lights of Hong Kong are off, my memories of our conversations come back to me in big jigaw pieces, easy to put together.

All over the world, he builds up his audience, announces his arrival, works & leaves.

“Why do you leave so quickly” I asked once

“It gets boring, I don’t like to stay in one place for too long, the customers become difficult, fall in love, cause trouble”

My minds eye remembers the last time I saw him, so long ago now. On a clingy Hong Kong day, he meets me on the side of a grimy central street, as I give him the final tranche of cash, I meet his gaze and realize he has been staring right at me, outrageously, defiantly, I recognise the self-righthedness of a scheme in progress; Silently I say to him –

Go on – prove me wrong; I know you won’t.

He knows what I’m thinking, and still he takes the money

and still I give it to him.

As the weeks go on, my plan goes as it should, the temperature begins to fall in the city, I start to dress my baby boy in warmer clothes. I have hours at night where echoes of my past intertwine with the sound of his voice and the light of my phone messages. His stories and lies become more fantastical in tandem with my own unbearable self-hatred. A thought ruminates until I can’t ignore it. It wakes me up at night in a pool of cold sweat. This feeling I have, it’s not anger at him, it’s anger at me.

I should have worked harder.

The nightmares that wake me are memories.  I am 11 years old, I have snuck into the local school chapel. I had survived the first decade of my life, I dip my head and hold my palms in a prayer of thanks to the Catholic God that I fear.

He who shall lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

“I will be good” I promise, “I will do good, every day, with everyone I can.  I am sorry” It was an atonement. I was apologising for being evil, I was asking to be foregiven for all the trouble I had caused by being born.

If I’d done my job better this time round,he  would have felt safe enough to tell the truth. Sometimes it’s okay to want money, not for a noble cause, but because you are exhausted from a life-time of never having it.

So yes, there is revenge, but, I too must pay a price.

We fight these days.  Fire on fire. One of us will get burnt. Another message full of rage and spite flashes on the phone. My mind goes numb except for an ongoing white noise. Blankly I walk into my kitchen, I open the side drawer, search out the new box-knife in it’s clean cardboard packaging, I push the blade open and purposely grind short red ridges into my albino wrist, carve out repeated shapes of small perfectly controlled squares. The scarlet droplets burst though my thin white skin, the scream of my nerves silence the shrieking in my lungs. This change in pitch is a welcome, fleeting relief.  For a moment I am distracted. I rub crystal salt into the cuts before covering them with oversized bandages. The pain, a continued reminder of my sins, of my worthlessness.

A few more days pass and I must take the baby for his final vaccination – as I reach for the door handle to leave the room, the doctor will kindly point and ask – “what happened” and without a moments hesitation I reply with an exacerbated smile and roll of the eyes

“Oh – dammit, I burnt it with the iron !”

He nods in sympathy as I begin to walk out of the room

Do you need something for it?

I start to giggle and reply – “Perhaps more hours in the day and a new brain ?!”

The doctor laughs in unison and as I shut the door I remind myself again: –

We are the same, He and I

_______________________________________________

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYUaSKQLfjg

I had a vision I could turn you right
a stupid mission and a lethal fight
I should have seen it when my hope was new
my heart is black and my body is blue

12. There was a little Girl who had a Little Curl.

I have been underestimated my entire life… what was once my Achilles heel, has become my greatest asset.

Did you really think I wouldn’t have this covered Baby?

Something happens when you grow up in the pit of cold and fear; aware that you are an irritation by your very existence, a jagged thorn in the side of the people who are meant to love you. It takes years, but one day, a day of no particular importance, you make a decision that changes your future. It’s straightforward – there are no tears, no dramatic declarations in a drunken stupor, no witnesses; but that day, sitting on the floor of your bed room, you make an unbreakable promise to yourself. You write it down even – in small, bold, black writing…

I will never be ignored again.

A few weeks of concentrated effort and It’s a surprisingly easy turn-about. You change your name, get a better job, drop 2 stone, grow your hair long, dye it, dress … just… right. It’s incredible how much easier life is like this. And the men? They become predictable, funny little things, they bend and twist to your glee, just how you expected.

He thinks I’m a good girl. He thinks I’m in love with him. And I am, but I will ruin myself to destroy him. I will set fire to everything I have built. Burn at the stake of Hong Kong’s Chinese whispers. And I will win. I always do.

I open the laptop, and I start to write. And this writing, this is my voodoo doll. Each strike of the keyboard, a pin prick and whispered spell. 10,000 words I have written over these months. That’s twenty, 500 word weekly columns. So this is what I will do, I will write, I will write till I have a nice following and then my friends at SCMP & Time Out here in Hong Kong will run the final entry. The expose if you will. They are waiting for me, I am in demand – what fun.

The man on the end of the line? The late night phone call? That’s my Private Investigator. They are cheap here in Hong Kong. Even the Americans.

So. Every time anyone googles for a male escort my story will appear. Our story. First he will be exposed, and then he will lose his business. All of it. His clients – the ones I’ve got photographs of – that really straight looking Chinese banker? The ugly wife? The odd little daughter of the billionaire from Shanghai ? They will make sure of it. I will haunt him, just as he haunts me. He will not do this again, he will not do this in my Hong Kong .

But first ? first I need him here.

So I will work, and I will write, and I will wait. He will come back to me, and then ?

then : –

I. Will.End.Him.

I mean, what’s the point of a love affair without a proper goodbye?

Manners maketh man, after all – right baby ?

____________________________________________________________________________

I’ve got a long list of ex lovers
They’ll tell you I’m insane
But you’ll come back each time you leave
Because I’m a Nightmare
Dressed as a day dream

11. Mary Mary Quite Contrary

He is gone. And I have… somehow…given him everything I have. Everything.

I look down at the speedometer on my car, I’m travelling 140km down a 70km highway.

What has happened to me? I have woken up, and my world is in chaos.

I knew I wouldn’t get the money back. But it hadn’t occurred to me that he would leave Hong Kong. That he would leave me. But of course, a man like this? A man like this knows how to disappear.

I sit on my certainty for a few days, numb and crazy.

I have a booking with the therapist. Another of Hong Kong’s most expensive professionals; another at the top of his Game. It seems I have surrounded myself with high-priced men. I hear my mother’s voice as I enter his room – “No need to drop standards now Darling”

His filing is still on the floor, and for the first time in 3 years it doesn’t irk me. It doesn’t nibble away at my insides for the entire hour, like a greedy little rat.

I don’t care.

That’s when I know I’m in the shit. I have always cared about the filing before.

His desk is a mess too; It’s hot in this office and smells of the boy before me. He drinks Coke Zero when he should be eating

I simply don’t care.

He’s talking, but all I can hear is the crushing of the can when he finishes it. I’ve never noticed how noisy that crushing is, as loud as a car dump. I remember a Gigolo story, chasing down a husband who owed him money, pinning him against a wall and squeezing that spindly Chinese throat “I came in your wife’s mouth” he spits “and she asked for more”

I come back to the appointment; watch this familiar doctor’s mouth moving.

“Yes, he could be a troubled athlete Emma, he could also be a Sociopath. You must, you absolutely must, disengage”

The words are chiming in my head, repeating themselves to the rhythm of a church bell.

Why doesn’t he throw it away now? The can. There’s none left, turn away from me and throw it in the bin. Why doesn’t he hang his pictures on the wall? Why does the clock face me, and not him, I wonder where the tissues are kept in this tiny, storage challenged office.

My Mother is back – “don’t be rude sweetheart” so I switch back on, pay attention, like a good little girl.

But it’s too late now; the session is over.

As I walk out of the room, he says I can get in touch with him if I need to. That’s the second time I know I’m in the shit. He’s never said that before.

As we shake hands I meet his eye; I almost say it out loud –

“You saved my life. And look how I’ve repaid you”

Over his shoulder, just behind the desk chair, I can see my mother barking at me – “Don’t be dramatic” My thoughts have embarrassed her, she is growling, hurrying me out of the room.

When I get home, I Google what it is to be a Sociopath and my body jerks in shock.

‘They lie, even when they don’t have to. Does not fit stereotypes for gender, race, ethnicity, religion, age, sex or career. Could seem foreign, bisexual, older or younger, pious, wealthy or poor, but may also just seem un-placeable’

Fuck.

Then? Then I start laughing, I’m laughing so loudly that my baby starts laughing just looking at me.

I WAS SCREWED BY A SOCIOPATH

I roll around on my oversized bed

GAMED BY A GIGOLO

I look at the ceiling and start kicking my legs like a toddler being tickled

I have so little money left, that I cannot buy petrol for my car, I have 5 days to find cash to pay my rent, the fridge has milk and eggs but nothing else.

The laughing hurts – I’m crying with the hysteria

And I’ve just spent HK $3,500 at the therapist’s

That one really gets me, I’m doubled up and can’t breath with the laughing. I can’t answer the phone when it rings.

Who cares.

It’s not him, so what does it matter if I never answer the damn phone again.

What does anything matter.

Later, I rock my baby to sleep, place him peacefully in his crib, whisper my love to him. Then I sit on the side of my bed for hours in the pitch black, straight backed, just like mother demands. Tomorrow I will be perfect. Tomorrow I will wear makeup. Tomorrow I will be thin.

In the darkness with only the sound of the air conditioning to distract me, I remember my second meeting with the Gigolo. I remember the new Hotel, the cold slate floors on my bare feet. I remember asking him what wine he wanted, pouring it for him as I let him talk

“ I don’t trust anyone” he said

I kiss him, I want to distract him, make him happy.

“Really ? Wow ! Well I trust everyone”

Oh.
I see now.
Well. There we go.
So it was always going to be this way.

Eventually, I stand up, I turn on a light, I find my phone. I dial another number for the first time in my life.

Whilst it’s ringing, I face my floor to ceiling window, I touch it as I say out loud in the darkness – to him, somewhere, out there, across the ocean and the seas –

“Well played my love. Very well played indeed. You have won the round – but who will win the match?

“Hello ?”

My late night call has been answered.

“Now” I think to myself. “let the games begin”

---

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_rZ9rHFwGY

You played me like a symphony
Played me to your fingers bleed
I’m your greatest masterpiece
You ruined me

10. Humpty Dumpty Sat on the Wall

“Baby I have a question, I want to talk business”

I’ve been waiting for this, I smile softly, sigh gently…

Men.

They always, always, want something. And they always snatch it, whether we give it to them or not

Hearts, Money, Dignity …

All of it.

Gone.

He’s been patient; now he wants his own suck at the teat. Now it’s his turn.

“Baby if I show you something. You promise you won’t be angry?” He is a child, sitting upright, alert. He is a hyena, watching, sniffing, ready.

“No. I don’t promise anything”

He ignores me and repeats “You promise?”

“No. I don’t”

But it’s coming anyway. It always was.

I close my eyes for a moment. I am on a beach, far, far away from this twilight hotel room. I am sitting on the golden sand, lame, mute. I’m watching that monstrous tide coming to engulf me. There’s no point moving. It’s too late. I’m already drowning. I have been since I arrived.

“Okay I get it for you” He springs in to action.

He has written a letter but I already know what it’s going to say.

The heaviness in my chest, the black oil sitting in my stomach, the self loathing that pumps through my DNA. It was forgotten for a time, with him, over these months, with the laughter and the comfort.

‘Just one more night’ I think, ‘can’t we just pretend? for one more night? ’

No

Now it is time to remember –

I am just a customer. He is a Gigolo.

---

Babe,

I have an question for you.

I want to ask you if can we doing one deal.

I have to buy 3 bikes and equipment, clothes, material for triathlon. I have one test in Thailand in 2 weeks to get the sponsor for Puma.

If i pass the test they will give me 5000USD per month + flight tickets + hotel during competitions for 3 years but my 2 bikes are very old and i need to buy it because Puma dont give it and i don’t any find sponsor to support me with the bikes cause is not easy to achieve it actually the companies they sponsor the champions Puma is the only company to sponsor new talents but first i have to pay for my equipment.

In change when we date we don’t talk about cash anymore independent of the time that you stay with me you no need to give me nothing $$.

After November i cant work as a male escort anymore cause i start all the competitions triathlon and 10km, 15km half marathon and 42km also in December i will get another sponsor from Standard Chartered being that for security reasons i cant work as male escort after i get the sponsor. I hope we date for long time after. i love to touch your skin i love to kiss you.

I will be very glad if you trust me and help me with my request cause i train around 2 years everyday to realize this dream.

Big kiss.

---

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNGozTgUAkI

I don’t know why I’m still surprised

Even Angels have their wicked schemes
And you take that to new extremes

Just gonna stand there and hear me cry
But that’s alright because I love the way you lie.

9. Rock a Bye Baby

“I come back”

It’s another statement – he does a lot of that now. How can it be possible? How does he know he will come back? I pay him, he comes when I call, and only then. Where has this confidence come from?

It’s 6am. I start to get ready for the day; he watches as I potter around, tidy up. My baby boy will be home from his father’s house soon so I pour milk into bottles. For some reason this intrigues my overnight guest – he stares in wonder without saying anything for a long time.

When I look over at him I can tell he’s not with me, he’s transplanted to another world, another place. His eyes are glazed, it is the first time I’ve seen them break, seen any sort of ….peace ? They seem to change colour, they are brown now, not black. What is it? Why now ? I stand there and wait, time slows down. I don’t move, I don’t want to interrupt him. I realize it’s been a very long time since he has been the witness to such trifling things, Innocent little routines of ordinary, everyday life.

Finally he nods in the direction of the baby bottles “ah – for your son”

“Yes”

He looks down at the floor, sagging into his own body like a little boy “You already have A Love”

“My son is the love of my life” I answer softly

Something has been playing on his mind all night. He wants to say something – but every time he starts, he stops – “no questions” he mutters and shakes his head. But now he begins: –

“In this house – your house, all these photos, you are not in them – just, other people. I watch you, you notice everything around you, when we in the street you look around, up, down. You listen to people, you see what they feel, even they don’t talk – You talk to old Chinese couple don’t speak English – you make them happy, I see it. You take care of people. You take care of me”

I wait, knowing he has more to say

He looks up at me- “Who take care of you?”

My heart starts pounding.

Fight or flight.

I feel sick. I don’t know how to answer.

Now it’s my turn to disappear.

I’m 13 years old. I’m 5 ft 6in. I weigh 82pounds. I hide in the library at lunch, avoid my friends on the bus, walk the 4 miles to and from school every day alone. I’m cold all the time. I wear at least 7 layers of clothes to pad out my body. No one pays any mind to my shrinking frame; I’m very good at hiding. I don’t sleep. My arms are covered in a bear like fuzz, my hair falls out in clumps. I eat tissue paper when the weakness overwhelms me. Every morning I tape a wide flat red ribbon from one hipbone to the other – make sure the ugly flesh of my belly doesn’t touch it. And it doesn’t. I have decided to stop drinking water, I tell myself it makes me feel heavy, but I know the truth. I’ve stopped caring about being skinny, ever since that clean, red ribbon made a safe bridge for me, from one side to the other, now I just want to slip over, disappear quietly, without fuss, no one will mind, no one will notice.

But I’ve been caught.

I’m trapped in a cramped, musty, teachers office, desperately trying to get her off the scent. Even then the irony didn’t escape me, it was only when I was disappearing that I was seen.

How has this happened? she’s asking “Who do you have that you can talk to?” ? The urgency in her voice, mirroring the desperation in my head.

I know I’m on dangerous ground that is spiraling out of my control.

“Who takes care of you?”

Fight or flight.

Just like today, 25 years later, with him, in this early morning light, I don’t answer. I don’t say anything at all .Until she wants to call my mother. Then I beg. I get down on my boney knees in terror. Beg her, with some magic, untapped strength, from that brittle starved body

“Please. Please. Don’t call my mother. Please”

I beg. I beg for my life. I will do anything to avoid the rage of my mother. If she saw this act of rebellion, the fallout would be worse than the death I see as comfort, it would be a burning fire of flesh. The blazen disregard for her public image, the audacity of defiance, the selfishness, the criticism of her parenting – written on my body for all to see – I would pay. She would make sure of that.

Finally, the teacher is persuaded – I promise I will eat. And I do, I eat. Not because I want to live, but because I’m too scared to tell my mother I’m dying.

The memory is moving away now, back to where it belongs, to the dark recesses of things actively forgotten. Now I start to return to this morning, just as he starts to walk towards me. It has only been a Nano second since he last spoke, but I have travelled a life time. He breaks through the last grips of my darkness : –

“You ask me all about my life, lots of questions, but when I ask you questions, you don’t answer me”

I mimic my best British accent “It’s terribly vulgar to talk about oneself darling” ….There she goes again…

He doesn’t like glib. As I try to push past him he stops me, takes my hand in both of his, looks at it, puts it on his chest – he tilts my face up to his with the other hand, It’s hard for me to look him in the eye, I am cringing, I can feel his warm chest rise and fall with calm rhythm, the opposite of mine.

“I see you. You are like me. You no need hide. You are good person, good heart, I can see. I will come back here, and one day you will let me look after you, I will show you, you are mine, you are my blood, I take care of you, you are safe”

He must leave this house. Now.

I wink at him and smile, start pushing him out the door –

“If you play your cards right baby, now out you go! ”

I make a point of handing him the envelope with his money, reminding him that I’m in control here. Not him. He looks away. I’ve hurt him.

I shut the door, my hands are shaking. I don’t make it to the bathroom on time and vomit so violently in the hallway that all the blood vessels around my eyes burst.

When the baby is dropped off, his father asks if I’m okay. “ A little too much wine last night” I answer with a wry smile.

I take my little boy in my arms, I can smell his father on him but I don’t care this time, I whisper in his baby ear, all day and all night “You are special, You are important, You are loved”. And all the time I hear another voice over and over in my head

You are safe
You are safe
You are safe

________________________________________________________________
https://www.youtube.com/user/sofiakarlbergs?feature=hovercard

I don’t understand
How you look and do
Like no one else can.

Little Bo Peep Has Lost Her Sheep …

“Why you don’t let me lick you?”

“No”

“Why?”

“Just…No..”

“You don’t like? I like!”

“You don’t like – that’s impossible”

“I like – if I don’t want, I don’t do. Sometimes the Chinese women they very hairy, I don’t like, I tell them I have been to dentist.

“And they believe that??”

“Doesn’t matter if they believe, I don’t do”

“You are an international gigolo – you’ve got 17 websites for Gods sake – you’re a professional, you are pricey – for HK $15000 I suspect your other clients are wanting the full service..don’t they ask why you booked a dentist appointment the day they booked you ???

“Well if they look bad, smell bad. No. I don’t do – but you? You are perfect”

“NO” I repeat – I’m so embarrassed I’ve started to perspire from the heat in my cheeks.

He is laughing at me

“you remember the Chinese woman I tell you about, the one want me to marry her, the one she want me to have babies with her?”

“Yes” I nod, remembering when he came back from Singapore, glad he didn’t stay, surprised he turned her down – it seemed like a good deal.

“Well, she nice woman, I don’t want to hurt her feelings, so I tell her I like to lick pussy too much, I like to be Gigolo” – he beams with pride and then makes grotesque actions with his tongue and fingers. I cover my face with my hands.

“No No No” I groan.

Okay we make deal !  You give me 7 minutes, 7 minutes – that’s all – you don’t like, we don’t do again.

“Jesus Christ” I mumble, “I’m not even going to ask where that number comes from”

“Good!” He shouts “Deal” he claps his hands takes off his clothes, kneels down …..and begins ..….

8. Along came a spider who sat down beside her

“In November, when I give this up. You will stay with me – maybe we will get married”

I’m on the receiving end of a scolding; I told a friend how we met.

“I’m never getting married again” I reply flatly, “And certainly not to you”

“Ok – engaged then – point is baby, you never know the future”

I’m rolling my eyes in mock dismay, but the truth is, I love the way he does this, completely ignores my harsh teasing and battles on with whatever it is he has decided he wants; which, for the moment anyway, appears to be me …

“You used other Gigolos before? “ He quizzes

I laugh with shock

“NO! Do I look like the sort of person who calls Gigolos in the first place?! I shouldn’t even have one, let alone more!”

He doesn’t laugh, he stares at me intently, checking to see if I’m telling the truth, the feeling of the room changes, becomes serious – his kiss tells me that my reply was the right one.

“Now we don’t make fight baby, we make love”

“No – I’m hungry, I want dinner, you need to wait”

“No, no wait. Now”

“No”

“Yes “

He is different tonight, there is self abandon in his conversation, and insistence in his movements. He’s made up his mind about me. Tonight his intricate sensualism is replaced with something else, something raw and intensely human. He doesn’t even undress me – he uses one hand to pull me towards him, the other to tug my G-string to the side. I don’t know why, maybe it’s the familiarity, maybe it’s the wine, but this time he has buy-in, this time he is losing his control.

He pushes me onto the bed, I giggle and tell him again to wait–

“No. No wait – sorry”

His eyes are on fire. I luxuriate in it, I like that he is letting go and giving in.

“You tell me to stop, I stop” 

I answer with a slow hard bite to his bottom lip, just as he gratefully pushes himself into me so forcefully that there will be blood from me on the sheets; welts from my nails on his back. The next day my cheeks will flush during a client lunch as I remember his reaction – “I carry you in me now, your blood is my blood, you are mine, MINE”

He is so far inside me that I cannot move my hips. He begins to relax and I see him return to me, to us, to this room, this night.  He slowly moves himself backwards and forwards, enjoying me.

“One day I will cum inside you yes? You will let me one day, I will fuck you and then I will fall asleep inside you and then when we wake I will make love to you again”

When he is finished I draw myself up to hold his face in the palm of my hands. I’m intending to kiss him, but I freeze, I take a sharp silent breath and I feel my heart sting. I’m looking at his eyes, but there’s nothing there – I’m still staring into a well of Blackness. Darkness, Death.

It’s only then that I remember – this is just a job for him – he’s done all of this before – I am nothing. I am just a client. I am the money.

___________________________________________________________

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itydwcyywBc

And I would be the one
To hold you down
Kiss you so hard
I’ll take your breath away.

7. A Thousand Years

6. Mirror Mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all ?

He hates people, everyone except me, for now.

“I don’t trust anyone. Don’t trust no-one”

When he talks about normal women in Lan Kwai Fong his voyeuristic commentary unsettles me. I wrap my arms around myself as I listen from my chair, move my body away from him. He sits alone in Koh Thai restaurant on Wyndham Street, he attracts women

“Like flies” he growls,

They see a man, well dressed, alone and checking emails

“They think I’m rich, ohhhh poor lonely rich man” He bares his teeth like a rat, snarling with hate.

It is in this moment that I know.

In the very marrow of my bones, my gut says that I am safe, but that he is a killer; he has killed. Watched the life drain from another man, all the while expressionless, determined. Those strong hands gripped around a stranger’s throat, the knuckles straining white with the force. I wonder where, how long ago. Maybe back home in Chile, maybe when he was doing military service. Maybe not.

This edge to him is caustic, sharp enough to slice my skin. His eyes are still as cold as slate but his skin and arms are so warm that it is difficult to define him as anything at all; good, bad, kind, evil, straight, bi-sexusal, his accent is placeless, his lies half truths.

He tells me about one client, a shy Japanese women. She welcomes him with a decadent spread of food and tea but cannot make eye contact. She spends the entire 3 hours playing on her phone in front of him, he doesn’t help her, he plays with her, watches her writhe with awkwardness. It amuses him, to control his interactions like this.

Does he scare me? Yes. But it is thrilling to be adored by someone that hates everyone else, protected by a dangerous man; I wonder if this is how Mafia wives feel – worshipped, placed upon a throne. He will not hurt me for now, he still wants to please me, like a cat bringing a mouse to his owner. A son wanting a mother’s attention.

But the women in Lan Kwai Fong, my friends, the old me; our predictability disgusts him. Women like us, he reels them in, let’s them sit down, buy him a glass of wine. When they inevitably, and eventually, try to kiss him, he takes that moment to humiliate and throw them back into the sea, turning away, sneering at their averageness. She gets up, stumbles in shock back to her friends

“he’s gay”  she says,

as they watch him walk towards a taxi, laughing at another hour of fun, and gets into the cab to his next well paying client.

I understand now, that he only kisses for money. I wonder if he knows what it feels like to be kissed for no reason other than simple sweetness. I am sure many of his clients kiss him with love, I know I do, but he doesn’t feel it, he probably doesn’t feel anything at all.

This breaks me, this breaks me, because it is like looking in a window and seeing my own splintered reflection staring right back at me.

“You don’t know nothing about me” he will say later, furious with me

Oh but I do darling. I know everything about you.

_________________________________________________________

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfGokVgnJEU

I will twist a knife and bleed my aching heart, and tear it apart
I will lie for you
Beg and steal for you
I will crawl on hands and knees until you see
You’re just like me.

5. Three Blind Mice …See how they run

I absently spoon the leftover of my sons lunch into my mouth; it feels like sand, I spit it out.

This is my life now, numb, clouded.

I eat jalapeños straight from the jar in the fridge; they are the only things I seem to be able to taste. I buy 50 Shades of Grey on my kindle and give up almost immediately, it’s so …dull. I imagine this is how drug addicts must feel, obsessed with more; am I in heaven? Or am I in hell? I wish I was a drug addict, “easier & cheaper” I say to the kitchen wall.

I have already spent tens of thousands of dollars and I will spend more; I will spend everything I have.

I shop in my local supermarket and buy anything my two-year-old shows interest in, hazily throwing food into the trolley without looking. I meet another mother, she tells me how great I look, “what’s your secret” she asks; I mumble and smile. What a strange looking lady I think – she’s so… calm. I used to be like that, but now I am something else, now I am intoxicated. As I leave her behind the image of his bare stomach flashes in front of me – I can see the pores in the skin, the outline of his muscles , so flat and tight. Smooth and perfect. I feel a jolt of heat run up my tail-bone so instantly that I stop walking. In this fluorescent, air conditioned Hong Kong Park & Shop, I am suddenly heated through. This must be what lust is, I realize. The ability to stop me in my tracks, to overwhelm me so powerfully that I am not even in this reality anymore, I am just reliving the nights, over, and over. I can hear his voice when I’m talking, smell his scent when I’m walking. I haven’t picked up a book since I met him, or baked or eaten much at all. My plants are dead. Work is left undone. Everything is boring. I remind myself that this is his job, all of it. But I don’t care. I don’t care about anything except seeing him again;  figuring out how soon, when, where. My little boy looks up at me from the food trolley and I mindlessly smile and kiss him. I should feel guilty for diverting my attention away from him. I don’t. My sweet little baby, my son, my life, is now just a distraction, even an irritation. I let the him watch TV all day, the floor is covered in mess, he eats chocolate for breakfast.

I get home to find that I have bought the strangest of things, Chinese snacks that smell of fish, ‘apple’ juice that’s not been anywhere near apples. … I am sinking. So I do the only thing I know how to, and I start to write, all day for hours.  I write thousands of words, and finally, once the baby is in bed and the moon is making room for the sun, only then can I sleep. In my dreams I relive last night. I kiss his beautiful body and he is surprised, I don’t know why, who wouldn’t want to kiss it? It’s silky and stunning, smells like clean cotton sheets. As I move further down, he inhales quickly and gently pulls me up, looks me straight in the eye quietly questioning me, but I take his hands away, he is hesitant and wonders what I want –  “you can bite me if you like” but I don’t want to bite him, I want to heal him. I want to save him. I want to love him. ___________________________________________________ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YXVMCHG-Nk I can’t take my mind of of you