himself. I shouted at him, swore. He didn’t say much, just handed me this letter he had written and walked away through the drizzle. Peace, is all he asked. How can you, I thought? But my erstwhile lover sometimes has no decency. He is a wild, dark-haired man. My late lover who angers me so much I once almost tried to hire some thug to go and break his legs. I suppose I read too many crime books.”
Her insides ache. She goes to sleep.
A few days later, Katherine almost collapsed with pain while serving behind the hotel bar. The head barman sent her home and she went to see a doctor. She had a bad infection. No doubt someone on that crazy film shoot. At least it wasn’t Aids. All the money she had saved had to pay for the necessary antibiotics.
Vicky has gone. One morning, her clothes and belongings were no longer there. On her own, Katherine could not afford the rent.
She looked at her face in the bathroom mirror. Her brown eyes seem dull. She has spots. She took a long bath, soaking in the warmth. The hairs above her crotch are growing back, hard, wiry, the shaving had irritated the skin and she squeezed some yellow pus from a small pimple there.
She packed her clothes in a canvas tote bag, leaving the legal pad on the dresser. She had only managed to write a few pages. E for effort.
Once on the highway, she hitched North to Seattle. Not one driver made a pass at her during the course of her journeys up the coastline.
They seek her here, they seek her there, they seek her everywhere, but Katherine hides her shame among the deep forests of the Pacific Northwest, reaches the Seattle hills and the vast expanses of blue water that surround the city. She takes up smoking. It rains a lot. On clear days, she gazes at Mount Rainier looming over the horizon of the Seattle skyline. On the way here, she has lost most of her clothes, and barely has enough to keep her warm as winter approaches. But she still holds on to the sheer silk lingerie from Victoria’s Secret, even though she has no occasion to wear it any longer, living as she does in tight, soiled tee-shirts, an old brown leather waistcoat, a birthday present from her lost husband, and patched-up jeans.
She moves like a white ghost through and beyond the sexual pale.
There’s an advertisement in the local free paper. An agency is looking for entertainers. Good pay. Open mind required. The first job she is given is to jump out of a massive cake at a party for a group of Microsoft localizing editors celebrating the completion of another software development project. She is given a skimpy outfit, all glitter and vulgarity. She emerges from the hollow cake. They’re all so young. Boys really. She steps out and dances on the table top. They holler and cheer like frat boys. She shakes her butt, tweaks her nipples inside the thin fabric of the oversize bra, and then pulls her small tits out to another triumphant roar from the boys. Later, she smears the remnants of the rich cream from the cake all over her body and allows the drunken technicians to lick it off her. Very few actually take advantage of her, barely a tongue or a hand ventures lower down. After she has cleaned up, she joins some of the guys for a friendly drink. They’re rather boring. Even here, most can only discuss computer lore. One of the young men stares at her behind thick round glasses. She goes home with him. He’s clumsy but gentle and she stays with him for a fortnight. He buys her small cute presents, a teddy bear, a bracelet. Katherine doesn’t like cute. He’s besotted with her. Gets a small ring, some special alloy that means a lot in computer land, proposes marriage. He doesn’t care about her past. Loves her. Will make her happy. It’s never an option for Katherine, Martin is kind but he just has no poetry. She leaves his condo without even writing him an explanatory note. That’s what I do to men who worship me. You should have known.
She is used and abused.
In a vacant car lot next to the Egyptian Theatre, she gives blow jobs for just a few bucks. The men come in all shapes and sizes. When they lower their pants or open their flies, she smells the evil in them. They come unwashed, young and old alike. She retracts the foreskins and licks away the smegma, swallows them with her eyes wide open. Soon, she has a regular clientele, all modestly content to be fellated by the tall English chick, who will eat cock to their heart’s content, but no she won’t fuck. She doesn’t do that, dear. She could open an art gallery with portraits of men’s appendages. Soon they all taste the same and she grows used to the salty streams coursing down her throat. They like it when she swallows and some pay her more.
Some local prostitutes object to this outsider taking business away from them. They ambush her one night and kick her badly in the ribs and the face. Cut large chunks of her hair off, but she has wild curls to spare. She hurts for weeks and accepts the needle from some biker on Capitol Hill. It helps. Blanks out the hours. The memories. The guilt. The biker shares her with some friends. She needs the dope and indifferently becomes their plaything for a while. Deke, the leader, brands her, an inverted swastika on the inside of one thigh, she’s property. She sleeps with three bikers in one filthy bed, they take turns with her. The session lasts three days as they move from orifice to orifice like a sexual tag-team, violating her without feeling, playing with her like a raggedy doll, inserting objects, bottle tops, Swiss army knives, fruit. To keep her submissive they feed her the heroin. Needle marks, punctures on her arms would scare away the punters, oh yes they have plans for her, so they teach her to inject the dope into her cunt lips. The high is phenomenal.
My adventures as a whore, she reflects in a rare moment of lucidity. Might even be a book in it, she thinks. Kate in the land of cunt.
A businessman picks her up one evening while she is cruising Mercer Street. He’s good to her. Convinces her not to return to the bikers. Even accepts to provide her with the now necessary junk for her habit. He sets her up in a small apartment. He’s married of course. He visits her three times a week. Gives her some spare cash. She starts buying books again. But she’s too passive and he soon tires of her. Takes her to a leather club and offers her in exchange for some form of life membership. She is trussed up, whipped, fucked in the darkness by one man after another until she is sore and her lower lips actually blister, she can’t see any of them as a latex mask covers her face. She is roughly handled, fisted by men as well as women, tied to a rack, pissed on, slapped. In the cold morning they let her go. The businessman has taken back the keys to the flat. He’s out of her life. She wanders the wet streets.
There’s a reading and signing at the Elliott Bay Bookstore. It’s a British mystery writer. She once met him at a party at some conference she’d had to attend in Nottingham. He doesn’t actually recognize her but takes her back to his hotel afterward. She’s pleased to follow, having nowhere to go. He’s very full of himself, actually reads her a new story he’s working on once they’re in bed together. The story’s okay, but the editor in her does feel it still needs some more work. He’s obsessed by her arse, fondles it with genuine awe and affection, but draws back when she presents her damaged sex, and refuses to make love to her. Scared of catching something. He leaves her sleeping in the hotel room when he departs very early in the morning for his next gig in Vancouver. She has a mighty breakfast on the room. His publishers are probably picking up the tab, anyway. She smiles, the industry at least owes her this; she was bloody underpaid…
Her cunt heals. It’s a resilient body part.
She finds a job in a peep show cum strip joint on the corner of First and Pike, facing Pike Place Market where they sell English papers, only a few days old. She does a girl-girl show, anonymously Frenches these other chicks while the thin audience sip their microbrews against the roar of the rock music on the sound system. One of her co-workers takes a shine to her, but Katherine easily convinces her that on stage it’s fine, a job, but she has no further interest in women. The woman, her name is Judy, dolefully accepts this and they become friendly. Judy keeps on raving about the sheer beauty of Katherine’s body. It’s unusual, not common, she points out, you’ve got style, girl. She convinces Katherine to go in for a piercing. Judy sports a ring in her navel. The guys love it, you know, you’ll get much better tips. Body jewellery turns them on. In the basement of a record shop that specializes in vinyl, she slips her knickers off while Judy smiles at her. The heavily tattooed owner guides her to an operating table, lowers it and places Katherine’s ankles into stirrups. He rubs ice over her cunt. Says it’s better than an injection. His fingers part her and he presses against the thin hood of her clitoris, the membrane swells. Nice, he remarks. Nice and plump. As Judy, whose idea it all is explains, you’ll see Katherine it’s even more spectacular than the navel, hands him the sterilized needle and walks across to hold Katherine’s hand. The universe explodes inside her head when he threads the needle into and straight through her clit hood. Hold on, one of them says. The pain doesn’t last long. Fucking Jesus. Her lower stomach is on fire. She clenches all her vaginal muscles, breathes deep, relaxes one moment, breathes deep again, expels the air, her sphincter lets go and she feels a thin stream of shit extruding out of her back orifice. She blushes deeply. Don’t worry kid, the guy says, I’m used to it. But already the localized pain is less intense. She feels all wet around her thighs. God, has she also peed over herself? The guy wipes the black plastic table. He threads a small pearl onto the needle and it slides down to lodge itself between the fleshy hood and her bud. It’s beautiful, Judy exclaims. Suits you fine says the man with the
