13 Men Who Bought Me: Ch 6: The One Who Wasn't A Man.

Note: This is a series. The prologue can be found here and the catalogue of all the posts is here. These pieces can be read as standalone pieces but you will get the best out of them if you read them as a series.

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Chapter 6: The One Who Wasn't A Man.


"Is this really what people do to keep their marriages?" I leaned upwards from the couch and asked Guru.

I had just gotten a strange request from a potential new client. A woman had contacted me to hire me as a birthday present for her husband. Evidently, he had a long-standing fantasy to have a threesome, and it had never come to fruition even though his wife had been completely on board with the idea throughout their marriage. She figured that his fortieth was the perfect time to make that happen. Knowing that at best that would have been a one night thing, I quoted an exorbitant pice. I expected it to not come to pass, people had enquired about that specific service before, but they never came back. Unicorn hunters don't like to buy the blood.

"I don't know," Guru responded as he squeezed my toes, "I never had a threesome with my ex-wife, but I don't think that was the problem."

I was stunned. He had never mentioned that he had been married. I sat up and moved closed to him.

"You were married?" I asked him.

He looked at me, in his eyes I could see he was doing the math on how much of himself he ought to reveal to me and just how much he should hold back. Perhaps, in another relationship, the reserved nature of our communication would have been an issue, but the nexus of our love was that it lived agressively and explosively in the moment. Guru never told me what we were going to do the next day, I never told him what I had done the previous day. There were never any promises of what may come tomorrow and never any revelations of what had come yesterday. It's not that either one of us were really secretive people, we just regarded all information as equally important. I knew, for him, failing to mention to me that he had once had a wife, meant as much as failing to mention what he had for breakfast.

"I guess," he started, softly, "It was many years ago, you were probably still wearing your hair in pigtails back then."

"I never wore my hair in pigtails," I told him, "Was it before you started...you know? Selling women?"

He laughed and pulled me onto his lap.

"I don't sell women, I rent them," he joked, "It wasn't before, it was during, she..worked for me."

"You married a whore?" I asked him, "I had no idea I was in love with a stereotype. Did you make her stop? After you got married, did you tell her she couldn't be a whore anymore?"

"No, I didn't," he told me, "I would never do that but she...she wanted me to do that, I didn't know, she never told me, she insisted that she would make her own decision."

"Why didn't she tell you that?" I asked him.

"Some things, Savera, people only say when they end relationships," he said, almost sage-like, his temples started to twitch but the rest of his face remained so calm and stoic, I still don't really know how he felt about his marriage.

"Do you think there are things I would only say at the end of our relationship?" I asked he.

He looked at me intently again, he cocked up one side of his mouth, and turned his head to the left. I could see the questions pass through his brain: Did I think about that? Did I really wonder about what would sound the death knell for us? I didn't, but I don't think I've ever believed in forever, and it showed.

"Not really," he responded, "I think you're too honest for your own good."

"Are you ever going to get married again?" I asked him, for the first time ever wondering about his roots, and his human side.

I did know about his childhood, but I had always regarded his family as characters in a story that would never come to life and may never have really been. A young Guru seemed to me almost fantastical, a figment of his own imagination that he shared with me on occasion. His mom had died, or vanished, before he could learn to walk. His dad, a rustic and crass man, ran one of the largest farm-equipment companies in the state, one he had inherited from his father. Guru had grown up in the South, and his father's wife, a dark-haired woman much younger than his father had been his primary caregiver for as long as he still lived with them. He had told me a story once, of being called in to her in the bath, as a young boy about to come into puberty, when he was searching for her to ask for some money to go to the theatre with him friends. She'd told him that he could only have the money he earned and over the course of the next few years she taught him how to earn that money with his mouth, between her legs. I wasn't sure what to say of that story, but it explained why Guru had never attempted to please me with his mouth. Maybe it even explained why he made a life out of selling the sexual services of women and why he loved them. On the inside, Guru was one of us. He was a whore. If you watched him closely and long-enough, it was visible in everything he said and did.

He ignored my question about marriage.

"Have you ever had a threesome?" He asked me.

I hadn't. I don't know how that had happened. I wasn't sure how I felt about them. All around me, all my life, I had seen the obsession men had with this concept and something about it profoundly offended me. I had been with women, and eventually, I would even come to love one, but making love to a woman to the satisfaction of the male gaze seemed offensive. I know that I spent my life willfully objectifying myself and my body for men, but there is integrity to that, there is no integrity to packaging sexual intimacy for a man. There is no integrity to perpetuating the idea that sexual connection between women existed only a cock.

"I haven't," I told him.

"Actually, I haven't either," he said, surprising me twice in one morning.

"Do you...want to?" I asked him, to me that was like asking someone how they took their coffee, I didn't want to admit that the information was relevant to me, and the potential to change how I viewed them.

"Not really," he started, "Not exactly, anyway, I don't want two women to have sex with each other and myself at the same time."

"What does that mean Guru?" I asked him, "Why did you put it like that?"

"I guess I'm wondering if it would hurt you," he said, "I want to see if it would hurt you to watch me with another woman."

At that point, we had been together for years, but I had never asked him if he still slept with other women, I just assumed that he did. It didn't hurt me, I just thought it unreasonable that he be loyal to a whore.

"Does it hurt you when I sleep with other men?" I asked him.

"That's your job, I think about it as I would about you going to an office every day," he said, and he meant it, most men don't, but he did.

"What if I slept with another man for the pleasure of it?" I asked, playfully, attempting to find buttons I could push, "No job, no charge, just attraction."

He grabbed my hair and yanked them so hard my neck cramped instantly.

"I would kill you, Savera," he said, so calm it seemed as if he wanted to erase the physical violence of his threat from my mind before I could commit it to memory.

"Really?" I asked him, genuinely alarmed at the intensity of his feelings, "So you don't..sleep with other women?"

He looked at me like I was an idiot. Like I had just asked a doctor to tell me how to locate my knees.

"Of course not," he said.

"So we're some kind of...monogamous?" I asked him, "You're in a monogamous relationship with a whore?"

“Don’t goad me, Savera,” He said.

I told him I was sorry, I wasn’t, but I did recognise that in our relationship he led and I followed. He threatened and I complied. He told me what to do and I obeyed. In some ways it was quite like a marriage, at least the version of marriage I have come to dread, but there was a fundamental difference. He never told me who he wanted me to be, I couldn’t ever fail him by being myself, my morality was never up for judgement.

The next day I heard back from the woman who wanted to gift a threesome to her husband. I didn’t respond to her for hours, which isn’t like me, I am a fan of promptness and effective communication. The truth is, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to participate. Something about it felt immoral to me, I asked Guru about it. He didn’t understand exactly what the difference was to me, he couldn’t grasp why it was okay for me to put a price on parts of my body, but not on the experience of being one of two women. When he put it like that, I wasn’t sure I really understood it either. In the aftermath of talking to Guru, I was so muddled by my own ideas that I just agreed to do it. I figured, it’s twice the money, I could use half of it to buy all the books on Feminist theory that may help me understand exactly what prostitution felt empowering, but threeways did not. It didn't matter though, I had already agreed to do it.

I met them for dinner later in the week. They wanted it to feel natural. I wonder sometimes whether people pay more and more money to whores to feel less and less like they're with whores. You know the concept of the Girlfriend Experience? I don't understand it. When I eat Indian food, I don't want it to taste like sushi. When I order a tall, black coffee, I don't want it to smell like a latte. Why would you want to hire a hooker and want her to behave like your girlfriend? I sort of understand the allure of that to someone who doesn't date much, someone who is single and has no prospects, for that person the relationship aspect of sexuality may have more allure, but most of my clients were married men. What did they want with a girlfriend experience? My theory has long-been that it's a classist, elitist and somewhat bigoted way of saying you are looking for a prostitute that is a "normal" girl. You wouldn't look at her and immediately know she is a prostitute but most prostitutes I know fulfil that condition, the ones qualified to provide the GFE are often English-speaking, educated, able to blend into elite social environments, the girlfriend experience is about social class and the still prevalent stereotypes of how a sex worker presents. Regardless, I didn't care so much about meeting them for dinner first, I understood that this was a celebration for them. Unlike most of my clients, this seemed to come from a place of joy, not shame.

They didn't seem to be at the restaurant when I got there , I gave their names to the hostess but she said no one by those names had booked a table, I was about to call when the woman came to get me. I suppose, using fake names well takes a little practise. She was gorgeous, though. She was wearing a black dress with a rectangular sleeve on one side, and no sleeve on the other. She had very straight hair, she smelled of something fruity that I could not identify as an actual fruit. Her body had a perfection that was lacking even in my mine, a thorough experience of womanhood, and as I walked behind her, staring at her ass, I had a thought for the first time in my life: Why did this woman need to hire a whore? I never think this about men, because I know it's not a lack of attractiveness that makes men hire whores, it's not often because they can't "get" women so they get whores, those aren't the same type of men, my suspicion is that the primary reason is because they can dictate to a whore how she felt about their performance. Clearly, my evaluation of women is different, though, I couldn't understand why she needed me to have a threesome. In different circumstances, maybe I would have paid her to have sex with me. Her husband was a nice man, but unremarkable, he looked good and he was clean.  The kind of guy who rides a bike to be edgy but prefers to get to work in his expensive air-conditioned car. Goes to the Netherlands because the idea of legalised sex-work thrills him, but spends all his time looking at Tulips instead because he hadn't anticipated being able to see the exploitation of women while he got his dick sucked.  I had to assume he was extremely rich because I couldn't see what she saw in him, she was magnificent, we talked so much at dinner, I forgot it wasn't a date.

We went back to the hotel they had booked. I was preparing myself to go into work mode, but the moment we stepped into the room, she came up behind me and grabbed me by the hair, pulling my neck to the side. She bit my neck, I had never been bitten by a woman before, it was better, women bite better.

"Say 'flail' if you want me to stop," she whispered into my ear.

It started to dawn on me that I wasn't the star, it wasn't my show, it was hers, and I was the prop. I didn't have to take charge of that situation, I had to let her do as she pleased. She pulled me by the hair to the bed and gestured to her husband to follow. As her shoes fell to the floor, he immediately began to kiss her toes, I followed his cue to her other foot. It is always strange to step inside the established sexual routines of a long-term couple, it's like walking into the second half of a movie. You understand some parts, but it's clear that a lot has happened with these characters without your knowledge. She leaned over and pulled me up to her thighs, I kept kissing them, it seemed impossible to stop. There was a headiness to the scent of her, like scent of freshly baked bread wafting through the streets, forcing you to hunt down the bakery. She parted her legs and pulled her dress off over her head, there was nothing underneath it, there needed to be nothing underneath it. She pulled my head between her legs and held it there with her hand in my hair. I couldn't breathe, but I don't think I wanted to breathe. I could hear her talking to her husband, as I licked and sucked her pussy, letting my face occasionally sit in it, because I needed a moment to catch up to my own responses. She asked him if he wanted to lick her pussy, she asked like a taunt, I wished she had been asking me that question, I think I wished I was her husband.

As he approached her pussy, she pulled me up to her face, I went in to kiss her, but she pulled me back, redirecting my face to her breasts instead. Her husband, clearly, was more adept at getting her to orgasm. Within a few minutes she began to shake and convulse, I sucked her nipple and she gripped my neck as she came. Within a few seconds, she slipped out of bed and stood before us.

"Take your clothes off," she said to the two of us.

The sexual energy in the room had been so intense a moment before, I hadn't noticed my clothes were still on me. As we undressed she sat in a chair, in the corner, and lot a cigarette.

"Kiss each other," she said.

After putting my mouth on her, he felt like a major downgrade, but it's a job, you have to do the job. He kissed like a hungry boy and as he kissed me he pulled me down to my knees, getting down on his knees as well. My hand slid down to his cock, it was half-erect, but no matter how much I rubbed and caressed it, it didn't get any harder. She finished her cigarette and walked over to us. In her presence, so close, I felt like we were drunk college kids, helplessly fumbling at each other's bodies in the pursuit of a pleasure we could not understand. She put her foot on his shoulder and pushed him to the ground. He lay there like a corpse, with a pained expression on his gave, I sat beside his feet, unknowingly waiting for instruction.

"Happy birthday, my boy," she said to him, putting her toes into his mouth.

His cock started to get harder. She gestured for me to take it in my mouth. As I sucked him he got harder and harder, but I suspected it wasn't my mouth, but her feet that were making it happen. She threw a condom at me, she really threw it, it landed on my chest and stuck there, I don't know why that made me feel cheap but it did.

"Get on his dick," she said to me.

I put the condom on it and lowered myself slowly onto him. I didn't feel full, I couldn't have, what I really wished for was her dick, her metaphorical or silicone dick, it's not about the phallus, it's the person it is attached to.

"You excited to get to come, loser?" She asked her husband, "Have you been longing for it?"

Like doing a cameo in the fourth season of a show, it felt like the cast could have replaced me with just about any other girl.

"Fuck him," said to me.

She put her hand back in my hair and the single point of contact made me feel so motivated to do well for her that I began to bounce on him like I never had before. Like a cheap, trashy whore. Like the stereotype.

"Fuck him harder," she screamed, intermittently, as he began to moan so loud.

He came sooner after. She told me to remove the condom and empty its contents into his mouth. I thought she was kidding, but he opened his mouth instantly, and licked up even those drops that fell around his mouth. Again, I wished I were him, and it had been fluids from her being emptied into my mouth. He lay there as she stood up, I stood up as well. She walked to me.

"I'm gonna..freshen up," I said, awkwardly.

'"I'll come with you," she said laughing, "He's useless now."

She followed me into the bathroom. As I washed my hands and face, and she watched me sitting on the counter. My hand kept slipping, holding her thigh, and I kept pulling it back, hoping she hadn't noticed it.

"You want to...do that again?" I asked her, finally, I needed to see her again, I just needed it.

"What?" She asked, "He may want to do it again, but I think he'll be asleep."

"Oh, no," I realised my mistake, I had forgotten, again, this wasn't a date, "I mean..you want to do that again with me? And maybe..someone else."

I don't know why I was saying all of that. It didn't seem wise or professional, it didn't even seem like I was being clear enough, she could have just thought I was trying to get her to hire me again.

"I like you," I clarified, "In person terms, I like you, I enjoyed that way too much. I want to see you..in other configurations."

"Is this how you date?" She asked, laughing, again.

"Not, never," I told her, "This has never happened before."

She stood up, very close to me, her fingers touched me between my legs, slipping inside me with too much ease, that conversation had made me so wet. She fucked me with her fingers, as I stood over the sink, every once in a while, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror, unable to recognise a creature that was so beside itself in desire.

"You really do like me, huh?" She asked, pulling her fingers away, and holding them before my mouth.  

She made me feel the same smallness as Guru did, but he made me feel weak from violence, she made me feel small by accessing a depravity I never showed. I nodded my head.

"I'm confused by it," I confessed, "I don't know what to do or say."

"Well I like you too," she said, "I didn't expect...you."

It was relief to know it wasn't just me that felt something, up until then I felt like an idiot, but hearing her say that lightened a load I didn't know I was carrying.

"I have to pee," she walked past me and towards the toilet.

I held her wrist.

"Do it on me," I asked, I had never anticipated asking anyone for that, "Pee on me."

She leaned over and kissed me first. It was a long kiss. Everything in the world disappeared completely, I wasn't Savera, there was no man waiting for me at home, the world wasn't my sexual playground, there was just that moment. The only thing that existed were her lips and her tongue.

"Are you sure?" She asked me, pulling away, holding my face in both her hands.

'i'm sure," I told her.

She asked me to kneel under the shower and pulled my head back. She stood over my face and as soon as her piss hit my face, I began to cry. Nothing about that moment felt like the me that I had known all those years. It got in my nose and my mouth, it didn't even taste bad, just human and underneath the warmth, a little pungent. As she finished, I was disappointed that it didn't last forever. She saw my sad little face and smiled.

"I'm going to fall in love with you," I declared, inappropriate and real.

"You don't even know my name," she said, shaking her head.

"What is your name?" I asked.

"Shreya," she said.

"I'm going to fall in love with you Shreya," I said.

She smiled but said nothing in response. Maybe she was used to it, there was something magical about her.

"What is your real name?" She asked.

"Oh my real name is actually Savera," I told her.

"You hook using your real name?" She asked, seemingly aghast.

"Well, yeah," I told her, "No one expects it."

"You're weird," she said, walking towards the door, and turning around for a brief moment, "I like you."

As good a place to start as any.