PTSD

The Aftermath – 24 December 2000 – 7.55AM

Soul Destruction - Diary of a London Call Girl

My body is rocking. The floor is hard. My bones feel crushed. I open my eyes. I’m in the bathroom of my hotel suite. Lorna’s kneeling next to me. Her hands grip my shoulders. She’s shaking me.

“Stop! It’s hurting.” I look into Lorna’s eyes. They’re bloodshot. Her face is slightly red. Maybe she’s been crying.

“Thank God for that.” Lorna strokes my hair. “I didn’t think you were going to wake up.”

“Neither did I.” I didn’t want to. I close my eyes. My plan didn’t work. I wish the hand on my head was my mother’s. Keeping my eyes shut, I imagine it is my mum whose fingers are running through my hair.

“Did you do that on purpose?” Lorna asks.

“Yes.” What does it matter now if I tell her the truth?

“Did you do it because of what we were talking about last night? Your babies.”

“It’s not just… There’s more to it, a lot more to it.”

“It still hurts me, you know.” Lorna talks to the sink. Her lack of eye contact irritates me. “I was sixteen when I had my abortion. That’s eight years ago, but it still bothers me.”

I thought Lorna said she was seventeen when she had her termination. Maybe I’m not remembering correctly. I don’t want to talk about dead babies again. I don’t want to think about them. I need to get control over my thoughts. That’s what’s got me into this desperate state. I don’t want to get so desperate again that I try to take my life.

I remember Shelley overdosing at Len’s house. I was so angry with her. Now I’ve done the same. All the years I thought I wasn’t like Shelley, I’d come further in therapy, but what difference has that made? Me and Shelley are the same. I wish she was here. She’s the only one who understands me, who really gets me.

“I nearly called an ambulance,” Lorna says.

“Why didn’t you?”

“I was worried I’d get done for murder if you died.”

Oh, so she’d have let me die to keep her freedom. Of course, she would. She doesn’t owe me anything. She doesn’t know me. It was only a few days ago we met. Well, that’s good to know, in case I do try this again, that she won’t be calling for help.

I push myself to sit up on the bathroom tiles. The hardness hurts my bony arse. “I need some water.”

Lorna leaves the bathroom. She returns a moment later with a bottle of water. She hands it to me. As the water passes my lips, I realise how dry they’ve been.

“You don’t look so green now,” she says.

“I need a ciggie.”

She leaves the room again, quickly coming back through with my packet of cigarettes and my Zippo. I pluck a cigarette from the packet and light it. If I can’t die of an overdose, perhaps I’ll die of cancer. I was hoping for a much faster and less painful death though.

My forefinger and middle finger are scorching. I look at my hand. The cigarette’s burnt down to the butt. I don’t remember smoking it. I stand up and drop it into the toilet. I look in the mirror above the sink. I look a mess. My blonde hair is frizzy and knotted. My skin is as blemished as a boxer is bruised. Inside, I’ve taken a beating.

I turn on the shower, waiting for the water to run hot. I pull my Versace dress over my head. I step out of my knickers. I take off my bra. A syringe falls to the floor. The syringe I filled with one-half of my lethal injection. So I only took half last night. No wonder I didn’t die. I want to take the shot now but I can’t let Lorna know I have it. I stash the syringe in my pink toiletry bag. I’ll have it later.

Suddenly, I remember where I got the syringes I used last night when I made up my hits. One of them I stole from Lorna’s handbag. I don’t know if it was new or used. And I don’t know if that’s one I’ve just found or the one I used last night. I might have caught Hep C or HIV. I get into the shower. If only I could rinse away potential diseases. I can’t exactly ask her if she’s clean. I’ll need to get myself checked.

Lorna opens the shower door and steps inside. “Shall we go to the beach today?”

“Could do,” I reply.

“There’s a party on tonight. Let’s go there. It’ll cheer you up.” She squeezes shower gel on to the sponge.

“I’ll see how I feel later.”

She turns me around. She makes circles on my back. My chest is pressed against the cold wall tiles.

“Today, gorgeous,” she says, sliding the sponge between my legs, “I’ll look after you.”

Plotting in the Melancholy – 23 December 2000 – 5PM

Soul Destruction - Diary of a London Call Girl

My day at the beach has been awful. I’m still here. The sun is still blazing hot. And I still want to die. The night is what I’m waiting for. I’m looking forward to seeing Lorna later. My plan is to prepare my own hit myself. Then I can overdo the heroin and overdose. That’s my plan. I just need to think of a way to convince Lorna to allow me to do it. The last, and the only, two times we’ve used together, she’s been the one to do it. She’s the one who scores. So, she holds the smack. She asks me for the spoon. Then she does the mixing and the drawing up into the needles. If I can keep hold of the spoon and ask her for the smack, she might give it to me. That might work.

All day I’ve looked out for Mickey and I haven’t seen him once. I’d thought last night he’d come to the Radisson Hotel especially to see me. But after giving the matter more thought, I realised it would’ve been coincidence. He didn’t know where I was staying. He must’ve just been passing by and happened to see me outside. “Beautiful,” he called me. He probably calls all the girls “beautiful”, just like I call everyone “love”. Doesn’t mean I love them. Doesn’t mean he thinks I’m beautiful. How could I have let myself dream like that? It only ends in disappointment.

My skin is so sore after scouring it this morning. I had to remove all traces of Gaslighting Greg from my body. And I had to do it with nearly boiling water and shower gel on a rough sponge. It feels like I’ve taken layers off. I probably shouldn’t be in the sun now. Not when I’ve thinned my skin like this. It’s red and blotchy. That doesn’t always happen to my skin after a job. It must be because Greg’s the first punter I’ve seen in the last few months. I wasn’t as desensitised as I usually am to that dirty, invaded feeling. I had to scrub for about an hour before I felt like he’d been erased from my body. Probably best Mickey’s not here. I don’t want him to see me looking like this.

Screaming children and shouting parents have ruined the sleep I’d planned to have on the beach today. They’re still bloody at it. They’re doing my fucking head in. And there’s babies crying. They make me want to cry too, cry for my babies. Nearly all the working girls I know have dead babies. Some terminated, some stillborn. We all seem to have them. Just like we all seem to have been abused when we were children. I wonder if Lorna has dead baby too. I might ask her tonight.

I think of the wrinkly lady in her red bikini. “This is the life,” she said the other day. No, this isn’t the life. This isn’t the life I’d hoped for. This isn’t what I wanted to be when I was growing up. I wanted to be a princess. I thought I could be a princess. I remember a teacher in primary school, Mrs Matthews, telling me I could be anything I wanted. The babysitters used to say the same as well, “As long as you’re a good girl, we’ll make sure you’re a princess or whatever it is you want to be. Don’t tell because we have the power to make anything happen. Remember, we can make people disappear too.”

Tears well in my eyes. I feel their hotness roll down my cheeks, past the corners of my mouth, then onto my chin. I’m not making a sound. I’m good at keeping quiet. There’s people around me. I don’t want them to see me cry. I move so that I’m lying on my stomach. Now my face is hidden in my Betty Boop towel. I wish my mum was here. I’m too young not to have a mum. Maybe if I’d have told her what was happening, she’d still be here for me. I should have told. Why didn’t I tell?

“You were too scared,” says a little voice inside my head.

“Yes, I was, wasn’t I?” I reply.

“You’ll be okay. You can end it later when you see Lorna.”

“Yes I can. Thank you. I will.”

Gaslighting Greg – 23 December 2000 – 1.10AM

“You really let me down last summer,” Gaslighting Greg says as we lie in the four-poster bed in his suite. “If you do that again next year, I might find myself a new whore.”

“What are you talking about?” I take a pull on my cigarette. The only benefit with Greg is that he is also a smoker.

“You were a no show at Ascot.” His eyes squint as he looks at me. “Don’t pretend you don’t remember. You’ve already had a scolding for this.”

“Have I? I don’t recall.” So I was meant to be at Ascot, was I? And I’ve been told off for it already. Really? This is the first I’ve heard of it.

“Yes, you have. Don’t make me cross with you.”

I need to play the game. “Oh yes,” I lie. “I’m so sorry about that. I won’t let you down again, Greg. I promise. I’ll be a good girl.”

It’s times like this, I find it hard not to burst into laughter. It’s ridiculous, the things he says I’ve promised and not delivered. Some of it, surely, he must know I can’t possibly believe. I play along though. I can see he gets off on it – his feeling superior to me.

Earlier tonight, he ordered a rare steak for me in the restaurant. I’d asked for it well-done. I told him well-done before I went to the ladies’ room to reapply concealer to the abscesses on my arms. He insisted I asked him to order it rare. I didn’t start an argument. I apologised. That’s what I do. That’s the part I play. That’s the part he wants me to play. And as it happens, rare is exactly how I like my steak. He keeps me on my toes. But I’m quick enough to make sure I’m always ahead in this game.

I get on my hands and knees. I crawl down the bed. I take his penis in my mouth. This is how he likes an apology.

After a while, he says, “Are you ready for my big cock in your wet vage?”

Another lie. His penis is rather thin and short. Why he is under the impression it’s large is beyond me. And my vagina isn’t wet. When he went to the bathroom before, I squirted lubrication inside.

I sit astride his bluish-white body. The fat on his stomach wobbles with every thrust. “You cunt,” I shout silently in my head as I ride him. He’s repulsive. This is the repulsion I live in. The repulsion I choose to live in. What is wrong with me? It’s not like I need the three-thousand pounds he’s paying me for tonight.

He thinks the look on my face is passion. It’s anger, Greg. How can you not tell? I’m sure he sees lust in my eyes. It’s disdain and disgust. He’s like the rest of them. They can’t read me. I don’t know how I do it – give a different impression. I don’t hide my feelings when I fuck them, wishing they were dead. I don’t know how they can’t tell, how they can’t see it. What I do seems to turn them on. The angrier I am, the quicker they come. And that’s better – the sooner it’s over. Hurry the fuck up, cunt!

“I’m coming,” Greg says. His eyes are closed. His face is contorted. He looks like he’s about to do a shit.

My body shudders, suppressing a laugh. “I’m coming too, love. I’m coming.”

He squeezes my buttocks as he orgasms. I squeeze my pelvic floor muscles, faking mine with some added moaning. When his eyes open, I try to keep a straight face. He’s a joke.

As I lay silently in the bed next to him, I pity his wife. How does she live with a man like that? One night in his company is hard work. I have to foresee any opportunity he might have to gaslight me. How does his wife live like that day in and day out? My heart goes out to her. For a moment, I feel her pain. She must be so downtrodden. He’ll be playing those mind games on her. But when the other party doesn’t know they’re being played, it’s not a game. It’s psychological abuse. His poor wife.

The battle-axe is what he calls her. I mull it over some more and envisage an alternative scenario. She’s the one who wears the trousers. That’s why he feels the need to be on top when he’s with me. His ego is damaged by her controlling and manipulating ways. So he sees a hooker in order to feel in control, to feed and build his ego. In that case, poor Greg. He’s a failed gaslighter. He doesn’t have control at home and he doesn’t have control with me. He’s actually being controlled and manipulated by two women.

Greg’s fast asleep next to me. I won’t sleep tonight. I hate acting the girlfriend. The being out in public is bad enough but the sleeping in the same bed is the worst part. How does anyone fall asleep next to someone they despise?