'I was sure he had a good view down the Mall to the palace. And I was sure he was saluting'
How do I find them? Well, it's not a science. It's hit and miss, good luck and bad. Friends, business colleagues tell me about theirs. I ask them questions, nothing obvious, but little things slip out that give me clues. And I look through the Yellow Pages listings -- for an interesting name or angle in their ads. And they've got websites now. Some of them put their photographs on the sites. I can get clues from those. I look at their eyes, their lips. I look at how they smile, or don't smile. It's the non-smilers who interest me most.
Some people might think it's expensive: I've kept a record: of twenty-six sessions so far at, say, about £150 a time, seven have been successful. We all -- well, most of us -- have our weaknesses: gambling, booze, drugs, porn. This is mine. And when I find them, the repeat sessions don't cost me anything. I go back to them until I get bored and want somebody new. Until I want to find a new body to try out. Anyway, they'd pay me. They have in fact. One of them -- Number Three -- gave me a car and a holiday in St Lucia. I was beginning to tire of him by then; that I had to spend two weeks in the Caribbean with him was the downside. I insisted on having my own room, which he was permitted to visit only when I invited him. His wife was away in Cambodia researching a vegan cookbook. Number Five gave me an apartment in Chelsea, which I sold without bothering to move in. I prefer Hampstead.
It takes only a few minutes to know if I've found one. There's usually something -- something in the way they look at me -- that gives them away. I have a uniform for the appointments. All these guys love a girl in uniform. It's a sober business suit in black or gray: a tight jacket, a white linen blouse buttoned at a lace collar, and a flared just-short-of-knee-length skirt that cuts a teasing line up my thigh when I sit in their leather armchairs and cross my legs. I see how they look at me when I cross my legs, and then I usually know how it'll turn out.
Most of them in their Georgian sitting rooms have you sit in armchairs now; only a few fuddy-duddy Freudians stick with the sofa scene. They sit across from you in their armchair, trying not to let me see that they're looking up my legs and wondering what my breasts are like. If I've figured them right, they'll get a rough idea before the end of the fifty minutes. I never take my bra off on first dates.
The sessions don't turn out identically -- how could they? -- but I'll tell you about one of them: my first fifty minutes with Number Five -- the one who bought me the £959,000 apartment, which I sold for £1.2 million -- was typical. I had to fill out a questionnaire before the appointment so he had all the basics, or the basics I chose to tell him. I had relationship issues, I'd written. He began by explaining how he worked, which was by asking me questions. He said some people found answering them honestly very painful. Then he said pain was vital to the self-discovery of inner truths and shifting to patterns of assertive and liberating behaviour.
'My job is to ask, yours is to talk. That's how we'll work together on a journey you'll end as a free woman -- the mistress, if you like, of your own destiny. Is that OK?'
I'd heard all this bullshit before, so I re-crossed my legs, lifted my skirt a little and in the cute girlie, gushy voice I knew he'd fall for, replied: 'Mistress of my own destiny. Yes, I do like that. That's OK.'
'Great,' he said, smiling timidly. Schumensky was his name, Kurt Schumensky. English, despite the euro-name. Forty-ish, medium-build, straight black hair, pale, clothes from Gap, glasses and kind eyes.
'You said on your form that you had problems with relationships. What sort of problems are they?'
'They don't last -- a week, sometimes a month or two, never longer than that.'
'Are they with men or women -- or both?'
I answered this with my girlie voice. 'Oh, only men. Not the other. I couldn't bear that.' I was lying, of course; I'm as happy with a woman in my bed as I am with a man slobbering over my breasts and labouring between my thighs -- sometimes more so.
'Is the breakdown, do you think, always the same issue, or have they been different, would you say?'
'The same, I think; every time. It seems to be about control.' I uncrossed my legs and let them open just a little -- then a little more until his gaze settled on the dark tunnel under my skirt as surely as a heat-seeking missile locks on to its target. 'The last break-up was terrible. He accused me of being a castrating man-hater. He threw things at me. I think he wanted to hit me.'
'And how did you feel about that?'
'I felt small and disgusting, a failure.'
'So when you assert yourself, you are repelled? Is that it?'
'Something like that,' I said, opening my legs wider until I was sure he could glimpse my crotch, which was wrapped in white silk undies. He took his notepad from the table at the side of the chair and put it on his lap. I was sure he had a good view down the Mall to Buckingham Palace. And I was sure he was saluting.
'Can you be specific?' he asked, trying to concentrate on my troubled love life instead of my channel of love. 'How, er, I mean, in what way do you want to bring your personality to bear on your relationships, these relationships, with men?'
'Well, these men, none of them want to recognize my needs, my desires. It's been all 'me, me, me' for them. And when I say, 'hang on, what about me, me, me' it falls apart. They can't stand it.'
He changed tack a bit, asking me about my childhood and wanting to know if I'd experienced sexual abuse. I told him I had.
'Can you tell me about it? I know it must be painful.'
'I was 15. He was the son of our next-door neighbours, who used our swimming pool. He was 17. I came home from school one day and found him asleep on a sunbed. He was wearing tight swimming trunks. Speedos they were, briefs, and I wanted to see what was inside them. It didn't look as if it was very much. He looked small. Anyway, I was curious. Well, why not? Scarcely a day passed at school when boys didn't offer me money or cigarettes to pull my knickers down for them.'
'And how did you feel about that?'
'I felt sorry for them. I took their money and ran, but it didn't stop them asking me.'