Wendy Vaizey's "My Scandalous Sex Life" in Literary Potpourri

A smartly dressed woman is pressing her briefcase insistently into my bottom, whilst slightly to one side a Japanese man paddles his legs until he propels one half of my body forward into the back of a girl with a maroon ponytail. She is so small that he hasn't seen her and wonders why I don't move forward, hence his futile paddling. In response, the girl braces her legs against the platform and shoves herself backwards into my chest. I stagger back into the Japanese man, catching a gust of his sea lion breath mingled with Scotch, just as the woman with the briefcase brings it sharply forward again.

Thus skewered, I wonder why the doors have not opened yet. It is the type of mechanism where a button sometimes has to be pressed to activate it, and regular Central Line travellers press the button anyway to try to save time in case the doors don't open automatically, but the man standing in front of the button is clearly unfamiliar with the procedure because he just stands there waiting for the door to open. It feels as if we stand there long enough for the women to lose their looks and the men's hair to start receding. We jostle impatiently.

PRESS THE BUTTON, TOSSER! I think as the cluster grows restless, and as if he has heard me, the man presses the button and we surge inside, sprinting down the aisles to secure seats as the doors close. I am on my way home.

I am too far back to get a seat, so I hang precariously from a strap that I can only reach with the ends of my fingers. The bottom of a tallish man behind me presses neatly into the small of my back and the slack feel of it makes me queasy, as does the coughing of the man in front of me, which disturbs my hair. I wonder if either of them realise there is a woman standing between them, since I am dangling well below their eye line and their bodies sort of curve together over the top of me.

At Waterloo station I pound through several hundred metres of white-tiled tunnel. OUT OF MY WAY, FUCKFACE, I think as a girl pulls out in front of me and then stops without warning. If I miss the next train I will be stranded for another half hour, but I make it in time and by legging it up the steps two at a time and running along the platform to the end of the train, I even manage to find a half-empty carriage with seats to spare. I slump down into one of them. Another day, another very few dollars, not enough, surely, to be worth it, not enough to be one of these living dead. It is the late train and I look around at the careworn faces, many of which are being stuffed with crisps, hamburgers or Mars bars.

The later trains, though less crowded, always smell worse, filled as they are with exhausted people who, no matter how rich or entrepreneurial, still smell at the end of the day like frightened animals after twelve hours of transportation, whose breath is fetid with overbrewed coffee, or a day without time to eliminate or hydrate themselves. The women mostly smell of a characteristic, sweet, musky smell that I think of as pre-body odour, the smell of a deodorant working overtime.

It is another black night in another relentless winter. The heaters in the carriage churn hot air out onto our feet, which nestle among newspapers, crisp packets and melting chewing gum. It is 9.30pm and I still won't be home for at least an hour. There was no time to buy anything to eat; everybody else is probably also famished, or drunk, or filled with synthetic food. No wonder they don't look good. I can't help feeling that I was unknowingly sold into slavery and somehow I have to regain the initiative.

At Clapham Junction another load of stinking commuters piles into the train. A man in a bulky winter coat looks right and left to assess the choice of seats and then makes his way towards me. DON'T SIT NEXT TO ME, YOU FAT FUCKWIT, CAN'T YOU SEE THERE ARE SPACES EVERYWHERE? They always sit next to me, even when there are loads of free seats, they think, small, girl, blond, plenty of space for me, blond, compliant, submissive, small, girl, I'll sit next to her, that's what they think as they walk down the carriage towards me when there are plenty of other spaces, spaces where they don't have to sit next to anybody at all, but I'll get them, I know what they're thinking when they sit down and spread out their capacious thighs to cool their genitals, I know what they're thinking when they stick their legs out to make me feel barricaded in, I know what they're thinking and I'll make them pay.

The man sits next to me. He is vaguely familiar, I probably see him every day without really noticing. Women I don't mind, women don't take up so much space, their presence is less abrasive, they don't smell so bad and they don't pick on me. If they sit next to me, it's because there are no more seats left, and even if there are, they don't encroach on my space.

As people evacuate at suburban stations, still the man in the bulky coat does not move away. If anything, he moves closer. He opens his newspaper over me, breathing loudly. The train is emptying as we penetrate deep into inky Surrey, and there are unoccupied seats everywhere now, opposite and to either side. I consider moving myself but he's on the end, it would be easier for him. His sleeve rubs against mine, his leg rubs against mine and he stays where he is.

I try to calm myself. Home, I'm on my way home to my husband Angus who will wrap himself around me like a warm bath, who will feed me and comfort me. I hardly ever see him, except when we're asleep. We are far too tired to have children. This job is killing me, it's taking everything I have and more. They are spooning out my marrow, day by day. It will be years before the house is paid for. I'll be dead well before then if I carry on this way, dead from the bonecrushing fatigue. People can console, of course. I love Angus, and I even love my colleagues; we protect each other fiercely and support each other with gallows humour and vodka. But in the end we are each alone. So this is my life: work, train, sleep. I can feel it killing me.

DO YOU WANT ME TO BLOW YOU? He looks round, astonished, and I realise I have spoken aloud. Sorry? he says. My mind is stilled by fear for a second, and then I think, yes, sorry, you will be sorry. Do you want me to blow you, I say again, and I can see his interest is kindled and his face is opening into a question mark. In the loo, I say, two hundred.

It's pushing it, I know. You can get blown by a weary child for Ł25 at King's Cross, but they have no choice and this man wouldn't dream of going there. I may look weary too, but I also look clean and prosperous with my new raincoat and briefcase. The man looks clean enough himself. He clears his throat. I only have about eighty, he says. I think about it for a nanosecond, my mental arithmetic is excellent, I work for an investment company after all, but I want to retire sooner rather than later. Forget it, I say, and try to look out of the window into the shiny blackness, but can only see the bright reflection of the inside of the carriage and the man's dumbfounded face. His face is quite kind, and I see that he wears a wedding ring, like me. I slip mine into my pocket. We travel in silence, and the carriage is almost entirely empty and still we sit together and his thigh brushes against mine. He has given up all pretence of trying to read his Evening Standard.

At Woking he stands up, retrieves his briefcase from the luggage shelf. I watch his reflection in the window. He turns to go, and then pauses. Tomorrow? He says. I can get the money for tomorrow, be on the same train. OK, I go. I can always change my mind.

But I don't and the next day at the same time I make my way to the yellowing Formica and porcelain toilet, its floor sticky with urine, where I stand and listen to the sound of the train. After a few moments there is a knock on the door and I let him in. Foolishly, he brandishes his briefcase and there is no room for both of us and his big coat in the tiny compartment. I pretend I have done this before and I know what to do, for which he looks relieved. I take his case and his coat and hang them on the door. The money, please, I say, and he gets out his wallet and hands me a fold of money. I don't count it. You'll have to use a condom, I tell him. OK, he whispers. There is no seat on the loo, so he has to stand up and I unzip him. He is already hard and I try not to look at his penis as I roll on the slimy latex and put it in my mouth. The rubber squeaks against my teeth like a strawberry flavoured balloon and he bends his knees and comes very quickly, with a grunt. I perform the courtesy of removing the condom and handing him a tissue. Now his movements are relaxed as he tucks his penis back in, and he wants to chat. How long have you been doing this? Not long, I say. What's your name? But you won't tell me your real name, will you, he says. I'll call you Natalia. Can we do it again some time? That was an introductory offer, I say. If you want to do it another time, it'll be three hundred. Two fifty, he says straightaway, as I knew he would.

That's the amount I want, I have decided that two hundred is too piffling. A hand job isn't worth the price of a tube of hand cream, but if I manage two blow jobs a day, five days a week, allowing for holidays I will make almost fifty five thousand in six months. Still not work I'll enjoy, admittedly, but after only six or seven months of that I can pay off the house and maybe start a little business, perhaps a garden design business. It depends how quickly I can build up a client base. We return to our separate seats. All I'm thinking is, I'd like to take credit cards, but it'll get too complicated; I'd have to register as a trader, pay tax and so on, so that's out.

The second one three days later is another middle aged man with a kind face, a wedding ring and crinkles around his eyes. He says he is called Jeremy, and tries to caress me as I suck him, stroking my hair and neck and shoulders. Sweet of him, but rather beside the point. There's no point in trying to make things nice in the sharp-scented little toilet cubicle. I'm at home by 10.45 and my husband feeds me a heat-up meal. Rub my shoulders, I murmur to him before we go to sleep.

The next day, with Jeremy's Ł250 I invest in a mobile phone with a messaging service, and have some plain cards printed, Natalia Wilson and the mobile number. I pick and choose my clients carefully, and I can only approach them when the train is empty. I change carriages daily in case there are some observant regulars who always sit in the same seats, although to be honest most of them are in a world of their own. Kind, tired faces are important, men who just want some relief and diversion, and as a sideline I amuse myself by picking out, wherever possible, men whose choice of reading material I approve of.

I imagine the horror of making an unwelcome proposition and being arrested at Waterloo Station. But the thought makes me laugh, too, because after a certain amount of recklessness you realise nothing really matters as much as you thought it did. I chortle to myself, imagining the face of my managing director when he is told about my moonlighting. I would of course call a press conference to explain how badly paid I was by the lean mean investment machine.

But my sweet husband is another matter, and not a suitable target for black humour. How could I ever tell him that I saw no other way out? I was at the end of my tether, and desperate remedies were called for? I could have told him exactly like that, I suppose, but only before I had started blowing off men in train toilets. Some nights I come home and its too late to eat but I feel sick in the middle of the night because I haven't eaten all day, and he tries to make me drink hot chocolate because it's the only thing I can keep down. I comfort myself with the thought that after a few months I will transfer the money into our joint account and tell him it was my annual bonus.

There is something addictive about my new sideline though, the long process of selecting a likely man, staring at him until he looks at you and then waiting to see if he looks away or responds. There's an incomparable adrenaline rush when a tryst is made and I stand and walk down the carriage with the man's eyes following me.

Peter is a morning client and younger than usual, but I let that pass because he is reading Proust. I have noticed that morning clients tend to be more cheerful and optimistic, as well as cleaner, whereas evening clients are often desperately seeking oblivion. How are you enjoying the book, I ask when he locks the door of the cubicle behind him, and he looks at me as if I am mad. How much for proper sex, he says. Five hundred, I say, plucking a figure from the air. Nobody has asked before, and I think it's because most of the men are married. You're more expensive than a week's cocaine, he says reprovingly, I hope you're worth it. But he seems able to afford it. I think he works for an advertising agency or something and I'm surprised that I'm his type, but then I realise that we're not talking marriage here. From behind is probably easier in this small space, I say. No, he says, sit on my lap. That way you get to work for your money.

I slide up and down and Peter is having fun. He grasps my thin shoulders and throws me around like a bin man throwing rubbish bags into the back of the dust cart. He doesn't care about me, he isn't even thinking about me and that gives me a certain freedom to enjoy myself after years of solicitous men who hover around like over anxious waiters to ask how you're enjoying the meal. And I'm usually just as polite because as soon as they want to know if I'm ready I say yes. I can't bear to keep anybody waiting, it's the way I've been brought up. But although he is holding me tight Peter has forgotten all about me and I can set off alone down the hall of collapsing columns, because I don't care about him either and I know he can never break my heart, even if he decides to break my face.

Afterwards I cry on his shoulder until he peels me off and sits me on the loo because my legs are shaking. That was great, you really put yourself out, he says, and pays me Ł563, a tip of 12.5% rounded up to the nearest pound. I sit on the loo snivelling for a little while, then get dressed, hoist my bag onto my shoulder and continue my journey to work.

At this rate I will be able to repay the loan for my house in a few months, but in brief moments of lucidity even I can see that this is not the way to do it. Each day I am more tautly strung and more exhausted. When I hear about crazed gunmen spraying bullets around hamburger joints before turning the gun on themselves, I understand how it happens. The explosion of self disgust, the knowledge that your life is worth nothing and so nobody else's life can be worth anything either. I am haunted by nightmares in which I open the door to the little toilet cubicle and in walks my husband, or a colleague, or my father, or the British Transport Police. I half wish for it.

My books are full now, every slot is taken and I have my regulars, most of whom, at my urging, are paying double to have full sex with me now. Some of them can only afford it once a month. I don't enjoy the sex, which is strange, because I have frequent orgasms. The men love that, it gives them a glow of stud pride even if it is an afterthought, and you can see them wondering what is wrong with their wives. I will never unwrap the mysteries of my body and its warped sense of logic.

This is the worst year of my life. I am voluntarily making my suffering much more intense, in order for it to be much shorter; a painful, life-saving amputation, rather than a slow death from gangrene. Angus has had to turn into a kind of nursemaid, soothing and stroking and cosseting me when I get home, coaxing me to eat, holding me until I fall asleep and getting me up in the mornings. I hope he will never know why I'm so shattered.

I will get through it, I tell myself, trying to justify everything as usual. It is not as if I am a weak-minded person who will have to continue working the trains because of overspending, or someone who will have to carry on because of drug addiction - and Peter has offered me plenty of substances. On the other hand, I understand people who spend money and take drugs to blot out the awfulness of what they're doing. No, I have not spent a penny of the proceeds and I will stop as soon as I reach Ł60,000. In a strange way, it has improved my commuting, because every time a man walks towards me on the train now I don't feel anywhere near as hostile as I used to.

COME AND SIT HERE YOU POOR SAP, is all I am likely to think, because he is probably a walking wallet about to buy my freedom.

One morning, Peter announces as he locks the door behind us that he has a girlfriend. I always though you did, I say. Et alors? Peter likes having a French-speaking fuck and tips well for it. This one is different, he says. I don't want to lose his custom with only a month or two to go; he has more energy than the rest of them put together so he books me more frequently, and always pays me more than he needs to. You don't know how young you sound, I say to him, and start to undo his belt. You don't know how cynical you sound, he says, grabbing my hand. I look him in the eye. Perhaps more mercenary than cynical, I say, tugging again at his belt. Sit down, he says, slapping my hand away, I'll still pay you.

I relax then, and we sit side by side on the toilet seat, having wiped away the hairs and drops of urine left by the previous occupant. Peter rolls two joints and we puff away. I start to giggle. Isn't it a bit early for this? I haven't had any laughing gas for years, I say. You do this all day long, don't you? says Peter. I've seen you sometimes in the evening. You must be pretty rank by then. That's why I like to get you first thing. I feel shocked that he thinks this. Certainly not, I say. I'm an investment manager. He looks puzzled. You have enough money then, so do you just do it because you enjoy it? That's why you're so good at it. Or are you building up some kind of shady investment fund?

So I tell him the whole story, with him giggling at its absurdity and me forced to join in. It's good to let my secret out. I tell him about all my clients and their strange ways, the things they expect me to do and say, I describe their richly varied penises and then I give him a rogue's gallery of impressions of half a dozen of them having orgasms, until he begs me to stop. We fill the compartment with our dope fumes and our laughter until the air is thick and vibrant. Just as I am wiping the moisture from beneath my eyes, there is a loud rapping on the door, too loud for a timorous commuter wanting to urinate, and I know my time is up.

We open up and it is what I dreaded and longed for. The British Transport Police stand in the narrow doorway, smarter than their Metropolitan counterparts in profoundly dark blue serge with red and white checked trimmings. A man and a woman, she in blond pig tails like fucking Heidi; their faces are veiled and humourless masks. Peter and I are ushered away.

Busted for possession and we'll probably get off with a caution, is all I can think as we leave the police station and I am so relieved, though understandably Peter is less impressed. How am I going to explain it, being in there with you? he says. I look at him coldly. It's the same for me, I say. He shrugs. Well, we'll just have to say we were sneaking a joint like kids in the toilets or behind the bike sheds.

In truth it is some time before the situation normalises. I am badly shocked, like a sleepwalker shaken awake. Angus is beside himself with concern, particularly since he has spoken to my boss and they agree that I seem to be absolutely exhausted. I cancel all my clients, claiming I have the flu. Next I weep in the doctor's surgery and he signs me off for two weeks while I decide what to do.

It is May, warm and gentle times. I have earned Ł45,000 and I am almost there. I need a total of Ł60,000 to be free of debt. What I want most of all is a holiday, even if it is just at home. I want no more latex condoms anywhere near any part of me. I have seen enough leaping, purple headed, blue veined penises to last me a lifetime, and even if I have become fond of some of their owners, I still find most of them pathetic. I know exactly what they want me to blot out for them: they are on the same train as I am, after all. Ł15,000 means sex 30 times, which will take 3 weeks, or six weeks of blow jobs. In reality, then, it is probably a month's work.

So back to work I go, and I know my eyes are glazed just like the King's Cross children. I earn every penny of my high fees in the sense that it costs me more than I earn. Peter doesn't book me any more but at least I can call him any time I feel depressed. It's the last hurdle, girl, he says, you're almost there. It seemed so easy at first when I was living on adrenaline, but the woman who found unexpected pleasure in these squalid encounters is no longer the woman that I am. I am taking no more appointments now.

It is my last afternoon and the client is Brian, a paunchy marketing manager with a passion for amateur dramatics. I bend over the basin and look at my red-rimmed eyes in the filthy mirror. Brian is sweet and harmless I have always thought, but he is displeased by my lacklustre performance today. Move, he orders, grabbing hold of my hips. It is ages before he comes and I remember that he always takes a long time, one of the few that does, it's as if I have to wring it out of him. We grind up and down, back and forth, and I am grateful for the rubber because I am drier than seasoned wood. The train clatters along and I clutch the basin and breathe deeply until he comes with strangled cries. Brian tells me I charge too much and underpays me by a hundred pounds. I can't be bothered to argue. I get off the train and look up to see the sky filled with damp, wretched vapours.

When I get home the first thing I do, even before I shower, is post my resignation letter. I had it ready ages ago. Then I fall into bed. I am still there when Angus comes home. I've resigned, I tell him. I paid my bonus in and I've resigned. He gathers me up into his arms and I bury my face in his shoulder. It's all over now, Cathy, he says. You've bought yourself out of it now and we can start again.

MY SCANDALOUS SEX LIFE

by

Wendy Vaizey