Grand and a Half by Cyd

"Diamonds, Candy, Pills

One Million Dollar Bills

you can try but you can't buy me"



For a grand and a half I can get:

New glasses

And in return, to be good for you, I get a manicure and a pedicure. Earrings to soften my face. In the peach coloured dress which matches my underwear set I still look like a boy in drag, but I turn my eyes into wide open tear rimmed orbs with thick makeup, I tilt my hips back in high heels and I replicate gender identity "fancy ho" for you tonight.

A harness and cock so I can be the one getting sucked off one of these days…

I trail fingers over your clothed flesh. I know how addictive a palm can feel rubbing over a thigh from W doing it to me during sleepy afternoons, and I replicate this move on you. I am playing you well, purring about made up loves that I anticipate you'll have an appreciation for - bluegrass music, european countries, noir cinema. Knowing enough about them to be believable, but not enough so that there isn't plenty of room for you to teach me. You keep ordering drinks, making me sniff out the fruits in this red wine or hint of orange and cloves in that $14 shot of scotch. I don't want to drink any more or I wont have the control of my body that I need, and with the nausea that's been hitting me for the last few weeks I worry that things could get awkward. I want to say "you don't need to get me drunk, you're paying for it, it's guaranteed that you get to fuck me"…but I'm getting paid so well to be more tactful than that. I'm told of the places we're going to go together - trips to Italy, a night at the opera, I will get an accordion for christmas. I feign excitement although I have no interest in you becoming my sugar daddy, I want this transaction to be completed as soon as possible. But I can't help playing the daughter role, blushing and giggling at my own bland naughtiness

A night in a hotel so I can scream and cry while getting fucked by someone I desire

The bartender is consistently rude to us, I'm sure seeing a brigade of sweating middle aged men with pouty young women come in every night leave him weighed down by complicity. You don't seem to get it, and every time he rebuffs engagement I have to make it up to you. I will soothe away every person you can't buy. I will glorify you're triumphs against a hard world. I will be interested and malleable to your words, but smart and independent enough that my coming around to your way of seeing things means something. I am yours.

A new bicycle to fly through these sweet expanding streets

In the hotel room you undress me quickly. I agonize so much about this, the energy and the money I spend buying girl clothes and underpants which have the ability to rip me to sheds when I'm feeling vulnerable, and it never really matters. To you that is, for me it's necessary as a spell to create a character for whom this is a workable reality. I forget what we check off first - maybe I give you a blow job, or masturbate daintily, or maybe you jam your fingers inside me. Soon though, you are fucking me in the front, tossing me in between positions, arranging my limbs to make my hole feel better closed around you. Something feels different. Usually I like being fucked by johns, it's physically enjoyable and signifies an end or at least an upcoming pause of pace. But the second that you cum, a spray of semen hitting my stomach and chest, it's a drop into a pool of doom. Your orgasm was magnificent, I've never seen a man have multiple orgasms before, but it's just a hassle now. I have to wait 10 minutes to ask you "so when did the condom come off?" You don't know where it is, it came off sometime during your years of pounding me, and so you know…you pulled out. I fish inside myself awkwardly and find a scratchy wad of plastic hidden in the crevice against my cervix. You show me a vasectomy scar, you say "I'm safe, what about you…you know I have a wife and kids" so accusatorial, because of course, I'm the whore. In the shower I assure you that I get checked every month for STI's. You don't say how you know that you are HIV-, just a gut feeling I'm sure.

My rent for my cold windowless room in a city I'm fascinated by

When my best friend had a condom come off on her client, she freaked out on him, made him give her more money and threw him out the door. But she was in a brothel, I'm alone in this hotel with all my possessions scattered around. I'm too tired and drunk to make those kind of assertive movements, and at the base of it - I am perversely committed to my job. To finishing everything cleanly and compatibly, to not rob myself of the option of seeing this client again. So I stay, I turn on the vibrator and suck in my cheeks over your flaccid stretchy cock and I spoon into your body and pretend to sleep for my bargained 7 hours. You don't stop touching me all night, all the time I hear it, on the tip of your tongue…GET UP WAKE UP YOU SAID YOU LIKE ME SO NOW SERVICE ME. 30 minutes to 8 I stretch and make my words slow and confused, I let you fuck me again while staying callous and cold in my body. You try to enter me without a condom under the pretext that we've already been there before, and I am so enraged, so FUCKING enraged. But I am almost out of there, I just have to make it through a little more, before you hand me a tip I go downstairs get a taxi and fall into my home.

Healthcare to change my body into something closer to my truth

W asks me how it went and I don't want to give him this answer. I'm embarrassed that I still don't know how to protect myself, that I didn't know how to be charming enough to never be compromised. He rubs my feet and gets me back into my body, asks me solid questions into those blank hard eyes. We go to his room and he holds me, how can the same touch from two different people produce such different reactions in my nerves and blood? We are entwined and I am so distant but getting coaxed, brought back slowly slowly. We start fucking, and for once I wear more clothes than him. He wears underpants and I'm in jeans done up tight, we stick the hitachi between us and grind each other. Neither of us infiltrating each others bodies, neither of us taking each others space. This kind of sexless sex is healing me, and I growl and swallow and whisper: "bite me, please mark me". I can never be bruised for work, so that customers have an untarnished surface, but now he rips into my neck, mauls my throat, it's so honest and real and desperately needed. It's fucking outside of working outside economic survival outside exchange. Maybe he asks me if that trick was worth it, maybe I just ask myself while our noses touch. The worth of money fluxes but of course. It's hard to see the real value in these stacks of bills let loose to spill out of my makeup bag, they have been debilitating addiction and fantastical freedom.

The chance to not work for a while

A couple days later I get an email from someone who does reference checks for workers, they are asking about this john of mine. I don't know what to say, I feel weary and sad about my experience with him, but I don't anticipate that it will necessarily be repeated. I don't want another worker to miss out on the cash from a situation I feel blameworthy for. I say that he is generous and easy, but this little thing happened… I get a prompt reply that he will be denied a booking, that a client KNOWS when a condom comes off and that since he has not demonstrated himself as being responsible enough to take the correct action about it, he is not responsible enough to see this sex worker. I'm a little embarrassed because I don't know that I wont see him again. I prioritize money over my mental health, I am a bad reflection on sex work because I use it to teach myself lessons in hardness. But it's also so good to be believed, to have someone unquestionably take that big of an action on behalf of an offense on her community. It makes me want to work clearer to be stronger to not need to submit myself anymore.