THE FIRST CONTACT I had with the brothel was the result of a final instinct for survival, or perhaps for self-destruction, depending on how you look at it. I’m not sure, but I think we human beings always try to preserve ourselves. So I prefer to believe it was the first option that took me there.
What I found was very different from the glamorous picture I had in my imagination. The girls turned out to be little Cinderellas, except that they never lost glass slippers, but a part of themselves. There was a huge contrast between how innocent some of them were and the way they made love to their clients. This physical contrast stupefied me.
I was one of the oldest, and knew what I was doing. A lot of them worked in the brothel to earn as much money as possible – not because they needed to, but because they hated the idea of being poor and thought you could buy happiness with banknotes. Above all, I was looking for affection and to try to recover my self-esteem, but deep down we all had the same wish: to find love.
Two thirty in the afternoon.
At last I had got out of the boarding house. I was walking along the street, counting the slabs of pavement, incapable of thinking straight about anything.
This morning I bought a newspaper and cut out an advert for a luxury establishment offering the most beautiful and elegant girls in the city. I didn’t think twice about it, but called at once to see if they needed any new people, because I was interested in working with them. They told me the address and asked me to come in the afternoon.
I wanted to get there was quickly as possible, to see this world I had so often imagined. I visualized myself in a luxury apartment filled with silk drapes, dressed in a transparent nightie, with themed bedrooms and jacuzzis in every bathroom.
Ten to three.
When Susana opened the door, I excused myself, saying I must have come to the wrong address. She said no, I had come to the right place, and showed me in.
Susana was a small, fat, ugly redhead. She was holding a cigarette in nicotine-stained fingers. Worse still, all her teeth looked like jagged black rocks about to fall out.
‘Surely that scares the clients off?’ I thought.
‘Do you smoke?’ she asked straight out, without so much as a ‘hello’.
‘Yes, thanks,’ I said, taking a cigarette nervously from her. My hands were trembling, and this was the first and only time she offered me a cigarette, because I soon became the person who supplied her need for tar and nicotine.
In spite of the fact that I knew exactly where I was, I still did not know for sure whether I was there out of a sense of vengeance, because I was so disgusted with men and what they have dangling between their legs, or because I needed affection and a boost to my self-esteem, not to mention my money worries. I suppose it was a mixture of all those reasons, and in addition I’ve always thought of myself as a liberal-minded woman, so the idea of becoming a prostitute did not cause me any great trauma or frighten me.
‘If you just wait a minute,’ Susana said, looking me up and down, ‘the boss will be here. Then she can meet you personally. I’m Susana, the day manager.’
I suddenly noticed something on the floor by the door to the apartment. It was a lemon, with matches and a lit cigarette sticking in it.
‘It attracts clients,’ Susana explained, laughing. ‘It’s a bit of witchcraft. Cindy taught it me.’
‘Cindy?’
‘A Portuguese girl who works here. I’ll introduce you to her. She’s got all kinds of tricks, and they all work.’ Susana seemed very convinced of this.
When she showed me into a small room where the only furniture was a bed and an oval mirror surrounded by lights, I suddenly began to feel afraid, as if something dreadful might happen to me. I had a knot in my stomach, and a strange feeling that I could not breathe. My mouth was dry as dust.
‘You wouldn’t have a glass of water, would you?’ I asked Susana.
‘Yes, sweetheart, you just sit on the bed and wait for the boss, and I’ll bring you the water, OK?’
She seemed a good sort. She looked awful, but there must have been some reason why she was in here.
The room was ghastly: the complete opposite of what I had imagined. The walls were covered in a peeling yellow wallpaper, while from the ceiling hung a pink curtain presumably intended to give an air of intimacy and old-fashioned luxury, but failing to do either. Several of the lights around the mirror had gone out, but I could not help staring at myself in it. I suddenly felt myself falling into a kind of mild schizophrenia that was taking me to a different world, one where the language of words had no meaning, where everything was measured by the body and its sensations. The woman reflected in the sad mirror was someone I did not know. I saw the face of a woman who has landed somewhere she was not meant to, but is determined to make it on her own in spite of everything. The stubborn face of a woman who wanted to justify this choice to herself at all costs.
‘Here’s your water,’ Susana said, coming silently into the room. In her other hand, the filter-tip was almost burning her fingers.
I was still staring at myself in the mirror, but Susana’s entrance brought me back to reality with a bump.
‘Hi there,’ I heard a voice with a gentle English accent say from behind Susana.
‘Hello,’ I replied, anxious to discover the face that fitted such a kind voice.
A small dark pregnant woman held out her hand to me. I was astonished. How come such a pleasant woman, about to have a baby, was the madam of a brothel like this? I had never imagined anything of the sort. It was the last thing I had been expecting, and I even found myself disappointed not to be faced with a man looking like a truck driver, and covered in tattoos. The newcomer’s obvious gentleness and vulnerable condition did not seem to fit at all with such a decadent atmosphere.
‘I’m Cristina. I’m the owner.’
‘Hello, I’m Val.’
‘Susana tells me you want to work with us.’
‘Yes, I’d like to.’
‘Where have you worked before?’
‘You mean, in this kind of work?’
‘Of course. What other brothels have you worked in?’ Cristina insisted.
I did not know whether to lie or tell the truth.
‘I’ve never done this kind of work before. This is my first time.’
Cristina and Susana both stared at me, and I could see from their eyes that they didn’t believe a word of what I had said.
‘Are you sure you’ll be able to do it?’ Cristina asked. ‘Our girls here are very professional.’
‘I can try.’
I said this so firmly that Cristina seemed convinced.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘Susana, have we got a dress she can wear for now?’
‘Yes, but I think it’s Estefania’s. If she hears we’ve borrowed it, she’ll be mad at me.’
‘Go and fetch it. I’ll take the responsibility. This girl here can’t receive any clients dressed the way she is.’
‘You mean I’m going to start right now?’ I said, beginning to panic.
‘Didn’t you say you wanted to work?’ Cristina replied, smiling broadly.
‘Of course, it’s just that I never imagined it would be so quickly.’
‘That’s the best way, believe me. Otherwise, how long are you going to wait? There’s a very good client waiting in the salon. He comes every week. If he likes a girl, he spends two hours with her. So it’s up to you. He pays a hundred thousand pesetas, and you’ll get fifty thousand.’
‘OK!’
Susana came back in with a long red transparent dress, deeply cut at the front, and the lingerie to match.
‘Try these on, sweetheart. But hurry up, the client is waiting,’ Cristina urged me. ‘I’ve told him we have a new girl, a model who’s only in Barcelona for a few days. He’s dying to meet you.’
‘Fine,’ I replied, stepping out of my jeans without a further thought. ‘What do I have to do with him?’
‘That’s up to you,’ replied Susana. ‘He’s a bit of a nuisance because he’s drugged to the eyeballs. In general though he doesn’t want the whole works, because he’s impotent. A good masturbation should keep him happy.’
‘I’m to masturbate him for two hours?’
‘No, not for two hours,’ Cristina said, laughing. ‘Give him some foreplay, a massage, whatever. It’s up to you to arouse him. Come on, get dressed and don’t worry, everything will be all right. And put some make-up on, you look very pale. Our clients like their women well-turned out. The opposite of what they have at home. Why would they want to pay a woman who looks exactly like their wife?’
‘I see,’ I said, pulling on the dress.
With the dress on, the image I could see in the mirror did not look all that different from someone who had done herself up to go out on a first date with a man. I was reassured, but my heart was still beating furiously, as though it were terrified.
‘See how gorgeous she looks in that dress!’ Susana exclaimed, drawing her boss’s attention to me.
‘She’s fantastic!’ Cristina agreed. ‘You’ve got a lovely body, you should take advantage of it. A bit lacking around the breasts perhaps, but you can sort that out when you’ve got your first million!’
I didn’t appreciate her remark about my breasts in the slightest, but I wasn’t going to let her see that. It was no time to get into an argument.
‘If you play your cards right, you can earn a lot of money. You’ll see, you’ll get on fine with us. Get along with you now, we’ll talk afterwards.’
Susana took my hand like a little girl, gave my make-up the once-over, then took me to a salon I hadn’t seen before. The decor was similar to the room I had been in at first. There was a big chintz sofa and next to it a glass coffee table with copper legs shaped like vines. A few copies of Playboy lay open on it, as if someone had been flicking through them. There was a single matching armchair in the far corner. Two doors led into the salon: one was painted white, the other was a wooden sliding door. I guessed this led to another bedroom.
‘There’s a suite in there,’ explained Susana, as proud as if she owned the whole place. ‘That’s where the client is. You’ll see it later on. And this is the bathroom,’ she opened the white door to show me. ‘Now, take a seat and I’ll bring the client in.’
She knocked gently at the wooden door, then opened it a little way, so that I could not make out what was inside. Then she vanished, as though swallowed up by this mysterious room. I heard whispers and could hear the impatient protests of a man, annoyed because he had been made to wait so long. My heart was racing.
A few minutes later, and Susana came out again. Her cheeks were flushed.
‘I don’t like going in there,’ she said, giggling behind her hand. ‘The client is naked. Go in when you like, sweetheart, he’s paid me.’
She showed me the banknotes in her hand.
‘I’ll give you your cut afterwards.’
As she left the room she shot me a knowing look, and I was surprised when she added, ‘Enjoy yourself, sweetheart.’
I stood at the door for a moment, holding my breath. I was not worried about going to bed with a stranger. What really scared me was the thought that he might not like me; my self-esteem was absolutely at zero. I thought it would be a tremendous failure if I was rejected the first time. I made up my mind, and knocked firmly at the door. A voice shouted, ‘Get in here! Otherwise time is passing and we won’t have done anything.’
When I stepped inside, I found him lying on his back on the bedcover, totally naked. The room was too dark for me to make out his prick properly. He looked quite young, thirty-five years old at the most. What Susana so proudly called the suite was nothing more than a bedroom with red velvet wallpaper, thick curtains that kept out all natural light, and a king-size bed. On either side of the bed was a table like the one in the salon, decorated with bronze naked female figures eating grapes. The whole of the wall opposite the bed was a mirror, giving the distinct impression that this was a Parisian maison close. I thought this kind of place would have changed over the years, and done away with such typical bad taste.
‘Let me get a good look at you,’ the client said, getting up from the bed. ‘You’re new, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. I’ve just arrived.’
‘That’s what they all say, and that they’ve never done this before. Then you run into them in all the agencies in Barcelona. But maybe you’re telling the truth. I haven’t seen you before. If you’d been working anywhere else, I’d have noticed you. Shall we have a bath together?’
He went over to the jacuzzi in the corner of the room and turned on the taps.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked, feeling to test the water temperature.
‘Val,’ I replied, still not moving towards him.
‘That’s nice! I haven’t heard it before. You’re a foreigner, aren’t you?’ Then he added, almost inaudibly, ‘Like all the rest, anyway.’
‘Yes, I’m French.’
‘French and not exactly a talker. That’s good. Girls usually talk too much and it’s all nonsense. I’m Alberto. Come over here so I can see you better. You seem very shy.’
‘No, I’m not shy. It’s just that this is such an odd place.’
‘I get it,’ Alberto said indulgently, then stepped into the jacuzzi. ‘Take your clothes off and get in with me.’
I must admit that the idea of taking a bath with a strange man in such an overused installation revolted me a little, but what choice did I have? If I’ve decided to do this, I have to go the whole way.
I undressed quickly, rocking my body to and fro in the borrowed lingerie in order to get up my courage faced with this stranger whom I had nothing against, but who, for the moment at least, could not arouse any passion in me.
‘Wow! You French girls are something else. Come and move like that in the water, will you?’
I got in next to him. The water was very hot, and I hesitated before sitting down. Alberto grabbed me by the waist and pulled me to him.
‘Come here. I want to feel you.’
He began to fondle my breasts, soaping them with the bath gel he had squirted into the jacuzzi. Then, under the water, his fingers started groping between my legs. In spite of my liberal views, I didn’t really know how these things were supposed to happen. I was a bit taken aback by the situation: whereas before it was me who chose the men I wanted, now my opinion did not come into it. They were the ones who decided what was going to happen, and paid to get it. That was what I found hardest to accept: that my opinion did not count in the slightest.
There was very little light, but it was enough to see the excitement on Alberto’s face. I felt the exact opposite.
‘Why don’t we get out and go to bed together?’ I suggested all at once, standing up and wiping the foam off my arms.
‘OK! But just so long as you let me have some Colombian salsa,’ he replied, standing up in the jacuzzi.
‘Salsa?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Of course! Do you want to dance?’
‘No!’
‘Ah . . .!’ I said, and before he could say anything more, I wrapped myself in a towel and went off in search of Susana and a salsa CD.
It only took her a few seconds to put me straight. So I had been in the brothel less than an hour, and here I was with a client who had been with everyone in Barcelona and who was a complete cocaine addict.
I have never been attracted to drugs of any sort, although when I worked in the publicity agency, I saw people using them every day.
Susana put on some music anyway, and I went back into the room and lay down on the bed with Alberto. As was to happen often in my time in the brothel, we didn’t even bother to draw back the bedcover. Alberto started to sniff his lines of coke and finished off the whisky Susana had served him when he arrived. That’s quite an explosive mixture! I thought rather anxiously. Alberto’s eyes took on a lost look, and he lay motionless on top of the cover.
A short while later he told me to get to work, but as he didn’t even have the suspicion of an erection, I couldn’t get the condom on him. I was quite clear in my own mind: there was no way I was going to do anything with a stranger without one.
‘They’ll be no use,’ he told me, staring at the condoms I had put on the bedside table. ‘I don’t go for fucking. I only want you to give me a blow job, so there’s no risk.’
‘Let’s see what we can do,’ I said awkwardly.
I vanished for a moment into the next-door bathroom, saying I needed to pee urgently. I had a condom hidden in my hand, and when I got inside I took it out of its wrapper and put it on the tip of my tongue. I gently wet it with my saliva to warm the rubber up a bit, being very careful not to split it with my teeth. All at once it felt as though I had been doing this all my life. My brain was racing, trying to find an answer to the problem of protection. I didn’t want to have an argument with my very first client. That wouldn’t be a very good start to my career. I was hoping against hope he would not notice my little subterfuge.
He started shouting my name, and I hurried back into the bedroom. I was not looking forward to spending almost two hours more with a guy like him.
‘What were you up to? Time’s passing, and I paid for your services,’ he reminded me reproachfully.
I didn’t dare say anything in case he realized what I had in my mouth, so I just smiled back at him. He calmed down.
I spent all the rest of the two hours hard at work, but he never even guessed what was between my lips. It works, it works! I told myself, pleased at my spur-of-the-moment invention.
When his time was up, Alberto left just as he had come: out of his head on coke, and without ever having had a proper erection. But I had fifty thousand pesetas in my pocket, just like that!
‘What do you do?’ the brothel owner asked me, biro in one hand and notebook where she had written my name in the other.
We were in the kitchen, because there was a client in the small bedroom, and Susana was cleaning the suite.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked, realizing at once how stupid I was being.
‘Do you have sex with men, with women? French style? Threesomes? Greek? I need to know. The more things you can offer, the more work you’ll get.’
‘Oh, I see . . . well, with women I have no problem. French style, I always use a condom. And I don’t do Greek.’
‘That’s a shame! Greek pays twice as much. A hundred thousand an hour. Fifty thousand for you. What about threesomes?’
‘Threesomes?’
‘Yes, when the client wants two girls.’
‘Is that what you call it?’
‘Yes, when the client wants two girls from the same brothel. It’s less work because there are two of you.’
‘I don’t have a problem with that either. But I don’t know any of the other girls yet. I suppose it’s better to be with a girl you get on with, isn’t it?’
‘Of course. Though sometimes you don’t get the choice. As far as working hours go, there are several possibilities. You can work day or night. Or if you prefer, you can be on call all the time. If you work at night, you have to be here before midnight, otherwise Susana won’t open the door. During the day, we start at eight. If you want to be on call twenty-four hours, you can come whenever you want, but when you’re not here, you should leave your mobile on so we can call you. That means you need to be always available. If we call you for a client and you can’t come, we’ll find another girl and know that in future we can’t count on you.’
‘I understand. That’s normal.’
‘If you need any days off, you just have to tell us.’
‘OK. And what about when I have my period?’
Our conversation was interrupted by the appearance of a dark girl who swept into the kitchen dressed only in a tiny towel, revealing a fascinating glimpse of her pert buttocks.
‘Cristina, the client says he wants some different music.’
‘All right, Isa. I’ll put another CD on.’
Isa was stunning, though a lot of it was silicone. I could tell from the way she looked at me what she thought of me: ‘if looks could kill’. I introduced myself.
‘Hello, I’m new here. My name is Val.’
Isa turned her head contemptuously and swept back out of the kitchen without so much as a word.
‘Don’t pay any attention,’ the owner advised me. ‘Most of the girls behave like that at first. Especially Isa. Every time someone new arrives, she gets like that. She seems them as competition. She’s all right really. And she’ll get used to you.’ Then she added, ‘Well, back to business. What times do you want to work?’
‘Twenty-four hours,’ I replied without hesitation.
‘Good. That way you’ll earn more money,’ she said, jotting it down in her notebook without looking up.
‘So what do I do now?’ I wanted to know.
‘You can stay if you like, or go home. But the girls here take preference. If a client arrives, we offer him the choice among them. It’s only if he doesn’t fancy any of them that we call the ones outside. We have a photobook to show the clients so they can choose the one they want. Do you have any photos of you we could use?’
‘Not with me. But I’ll have a look. What kind do you need?’
‘Artistic ones. Your face, your body. But they have to be tasteful, we don’t want anything vulgar. We’re a top-class agency, remember.’
‘Of course. But I don’t think I have any photos like that.’
‘All right, but if you want to work with us and don’t want to waste any time, you should get together a photobook using a professional photographer.’
‘OK!’
‘Do you have one?’
‘One what?’
‘Do you have or know of a professional photographer?’ asked Cristina patiently.
‘No, but I can find one.’
‘Good. But just so you know, we work with a very professional kid who also does our website, if you want to use him.’
‘Oh, you do?’
I was surprised at how well organized they were.
‘Yes. Whenever a new girl arrives, he takes care of their photobook. It takes a whole day, outside Barcelona. I would go with you to supervise things.’
‘That sounds like a great idea. How much does a book cost, and how many photos do I need?’
‘A good book costs around a hundred and twenty thousand pesetas, but to you it would be ninety thousand. There are twenty photos in it.’
She said the amount as if it were small change.
‘Don’t you think that’s a bit expensive?’ I asked, horrified at the cost.
‘It’s not much for a set of artistic photos,’ Cristina said bluntly.
‘I don’t have any idea of the price of that kind of thing.’
‘Well, photobooks are really expensive, believe me. But it’s useful for your work. It’s absolutely necessary, in fact.’
‘All right. I’ll do it, but let me work for a while first so I can save enough money, then we can organize the photo session,’ I said thoughtfully.
‘Of course. So, would you like to work a shift as well? Day or night?’
‘At night, but I’ll have my mobile on twenty-four hours a day as well, so you’ll be able to call me at any time when I’m not here.’
‘Fine. I can count on you then?’
‘Yes, you can. Today I need to go home though. But I’ll keep my phone on, so you can call me.’
‘Good. Oh, by the way, at night you’ll meet another manager. Her name is Angelika. She’s a foreigner, but she speaks perfect Spanish. I’ll tell her about you. A piece of advice: never tell a client or any of the other girls here that this is the first time you’ve done this sort of thing. Nobody will believe you. And one last thing: today you didn’t do it because you didn’t know, but after you’ve been in a bedroom with a client, you have to change the sheets straight away. Susana will look after the rest. Come with me and I’ll show you where we keep the clean sheets. And the towels.’
We left the kitchen just as Susana came in, carrying the sheets from the bed I had been in with Alberto.
In the entrance to the apartment Cristina opened a large wooden wardrobe. Inside I could see a huge pile of sheets in one corner, and in the other stacks of clean towels for each girl to take as she needed. I noticed Susana was standing behind us. For some reason she had followed us from the kitchen, with her everlasting cigarette still stuck between her teeth. There was another wardrobe in the corridor, out of which dangled the strap of one of the girls’ nightdresses. Cristina noticed what I was looking at.
‘You can put your clothes in there. But be careful! You might not think it, but a lot gets stolen.’
‘The girls steal from each other?’ I said, taken aback.
Susana nodded. We all went back to the kitchen, and Cristina showed me how the coffee machine worked.
‘There’s coffee, tea, or chocolate. Just ask Susana. Each drink is a hundred and fifty pesetas. All right?’
‘All right.’
Of course, everything here had to be paid for. And I had to change my own sheets! I said goodbye to Cristina and Susana, and went out into the street. I was pleased to have made fifty thousand pesetas for two hours’ work, and told myself I was going to do as much as I could there. And despite my nerves before I had to attend my first client, I felt as if I had been doing this kind of thing all my life.