MISS MAKEOVER; MEMOIRS OF A CORRECTIVE SEX THERAPIST Suki Greene (as told to Mark Ramsden copyright MARK RAMSDEN) TAMING MEN FOR PLEASURE AND PROFIT In literature, comedies end with a marriage. In life, tragedies begin with one. SUSAN GODLY – MISS MAKEOVER’S MONICKER My name is Susan Godly and I'm a sex, drug and alcohol addict. The only thing I'm ashamed of is being called Susan, and there was nothing much I could have done about it. I blame the parents. My name is almost ‘Sue’s Ungodly’, sounds the same anyway, and that prophecy came true when I was a teenage Satanist. Of which, more later Susan is the name C.S Lewis chose for the older sister who is supposedly too grown up by the end of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. She likes make up and, you might want to sit down and have some smelling salts handy, nylon stockings. Yes, sheathed female legs, otherwise known as the sign of the beast. Anyway, Miss Makeover seems better than Susan to me. And it would make my mother cry. Like most things worth doing.   MARRY IN HASTE. RESENT AT LEISURE A good drama needs conflict. It sets the characters against each other, gives us a chance to see them in extremis. So I can't complain really. My marriage was a joke and my divorce is a tragedy which will continue even after my death. My child is growing up seeing how much his parents hate each other. Such people tend to reproduce the bickering blueprint they grew up with. "Man hands on misery to man/ It deepens like a coastal shelf/ Get out as soon as you can/ and don't have kids yourself." Thank you, Philip Larkin, a man so utterly terrified of death that he froze in its headlights. As for the ultimate sentence of death - 'I do' - no woman could ever drag him to the gallows. Whether his life on death row was any better is debatable.  You might as well get married and have done with it. Or so I thought, till I tied the knot - around my own neck. After a few good months I spent the next few years gradually suffocating. And when the end came it was anything but merciful. I had thought my friend Vicky had suffered the cruelest end to a relationship. To get out of being in a relationship with her a scumbag journalist had pretended he was dying. Enough about her. I was dumped for an older woman, the sort of muslin-fetishist who leaves grey streaks in her hair, on purpose.  Maybe that stripy look is attractive to raccoons or badgers. Quite why a red-blooded male like my ex succumbed to death by home-made yoghurt I will never know. Perhaps he was just mithering for mothering. Bullied by her breasts. Pinioned by a pair of paps,  In case you’re wondering I overdo alliteration as a tease. Perhaps hoping that some long gone English teacher will drag me over his knee and spank me. And if makes crusty creeps like Kingsley Amis spin in their graves then so much the better.   Sorry. I just prefer fooling around with words or indeed doing just about anything rather than facing my real problem which is… WILL I GET MY CHILD BACK? This is the plot. The only story I'm interested in, anyway. It might be one of those questions that require a simple, unequivocal answer, like the alarmist headlines that can all be answered with the same two digits. "Was Diana Murdered?" "Will There Be Another Ice Age?" "Do half-human lizards control our destiny?" No, No. No. (Thank You, Amy Winebox) I suspect it may be the same answer in my case. My ex-husband was awarded custody because I am a sex worker who occasionally takes recreational drugs. Or, as judges and the tabloids might have it, ‘Kinky Sex Hooker Mum was drug addict!“ Well. I could clean up. I could give up sex work. You’ll see. MY MAN MAX: MOODY MARAUDER     My Man Max is a handsome rascal. A lovable rogue. Tall, dark, handsome and hands on, just where you need them. Big money, big ego and a big weapon in his pants. He cannot be wounded beneath the waist. And tell him he's not feminine or sensitive enough and he'll drown you with caring, sharing psycho-babble. He probably learnt it just as a means of keeping the female engine running smoothly, but at least he has learnt it. How many men would even bother trying? He loves fast cars, any sort of engine he can tune to work better. Maybe I'm just another mechanism, something else he can control. Maybe so, but as he has very sensitive fingers I can live with it. There is a catch, needless to say. He's not around very often. There may be other women, although he says there aren't. He's too busy doing something stupefyingly boring for big bucks. Or racing his cars against other laddish millionaires. If not quite a bastard, Max is definitely the tantalisingly unavailable devil we ladies often saddle ourselves with. Surely I can tame him? Puncture his ego with a few sly barbs? I am skilled at filleting men and removing their backbone, which I then sharpen and use to harpoon the next victim. Max is different. His real thing is cars. (What real man’s real thing is women? Damn them!) If I was a Porsche it would matter if I had developed a worrying noise in the gear-box. (Look, I don't know or care if Porsches have gearboxes. All I know is that his is cramped and he's always trying to drive it too fast. It’s more trouble than a catwalk model but at least it doesn’t answer back so he likes his Porsche. Even if he does cheat on it with a Bentley and a Jaguar. And a garage with two Ferraris in it.)  So he’s everything I want but he's not here often enough. There's too many nights when I sleep with a teddy bear. Too many nights when I'm awake and the flat is full of wide-eyed users - ‘friends’, using my body, using their drugs. Which I might, er, join in a bit with. Just to keep them company. He could rescue me, protect me. Marry me and make me happy for ever and ever. But he needs his space. Other cheating men smell of perfume. He smells of oil. And money. So he's flawed. I still love him. MASSAGE WITH MY MAN MAX My Man Max pours more lavender and calendula oil into my hot, foaming bath, a deep golden blend enriched with soy and avocado. His manly musk mixes in with the fragrance of well-scrubbed Miss Makeover - on heat but trying my best to look aloof. He rubs my shoulders with his strong hands, nuzzles the nape of my neck, whispers some lewdly poetic praise into my ear. "Down, boy!" I tell him, although he's making me purr. "I missed your scent," he says. "Your soulful eyes, your smile." After that it gets too spicy for print. Besides, it's intimate, just for him and me. My, it's hot in here. Steamy, too. He must be wilting in his tux, although his starched wing collar remains stiff. Limpness is not an issue with My Man Max. He’s hard when he wants to be and soft when I need cuddling. When it comes to a good cosseting he’ll cherish you till you’re red in the face, sighing for mercy. He’s an Alpha Male, yet emotionally literate. Such a combination is not easy to find but you can create one. Although, the Goddess knows, You’ll need patience. And a firm hand. I get the faintest rasp of beard growth as he whispers some sweet and salty sex talk. My Man Max makes the average razor ad Adonis look like an alcoholic rough sleeper but they have yet to invent a razor that can tame his testosterone-crazed stubble. Still, if you want a real man you have to take the rough with the smooth. His blue eyes sparkle as he leans in for more wicked whispering. “Stop it!” I tell him. Even if I wasn’t giggling he would know I mean ‘Carry on! And crank it up, big boy.’ He’s just back from a City of London function, hence the tux. Something painfully boring yet massively lucrative has just happened to his firm of arbitrageurs. Sorry, nearly nodded off just typing ‘arbitrageurs’. I’d sooner listen to a weepy drunkathon from my mother than attempt to explain what he does. My Man Max plays with pretend money, which turns into large amounts of real cash, some of which he spends on me (although far too much of it goes on sports cars.) Rich, rugged, racy; he’s still under thirty and yet he is not an arrogant bastard. How often do you get that combination? I could call him a toyboy, as I am on my fourth twenty-ninth birthday. However, I look up to him in more than just height. He's very smart, without being condescending, masterful, without being overbearing, macho, without being brutish and sensitive without being a big girl's blouse. He's a bigger-brained Pierce Brosnan, tough as early Sean Connery, suave as Roger Moore, smart as Timothy Dalton – all without the wearisome codswallop that comes with real thespians. Maybe he's Bond without the balderdash. Men like him and women lurve him. Some would find his good looks boring, perhaps even gay. Until you notice the intriguing scar down the side of one cheek. He changes the explanation for its existence as often as he upgrades his computers so I'm assuming he has a dark secret. And, by the twinkle in his eye, the other guy probably ended up worse. My Man Max puts a manicured hand into the bath and swirls the water around, wafting up aromatic bath oil over us both. He strokes my belly in slow insistent circles. Drifting downwards, sailing slowly into port. It doesn't take long before my eyes are closed and he gives me a brief taste of what is to come. So handsome. And hands on. Just where you need them. His busy fingers stroke and soothe, rubbing me softly. After a brief sojourn somewhere private he withdraws his hand and dries it carefully. No Mess Max, the only house-trained male I ever knew. “I’ve fluffed the duvet, mixed your Pink Lady, prepared a Cole Porter playlist." Could he be after something? Well, he may very well be in luck. I can't give in that easily though. It's the rules. Men should be wrong-footed as often as possible. Which I'm usually happy to do. And then My Man Max opens his mouth and that deep, wicked, manly rasp turns me all gooey. "'You'd be so nice to come home to'. 'Easy to love'. 'I get a kick out of you'." Three of my favourites. I was a cocktail pianist once upon a time. Then I was Andrew Lloyd Webber’s West End bitch for a while, churning out his synthesized pigswill till drug addiction and various personality disorders terminated any further chance of employment. He often made secret visits to check up on his little darlings and my slapdash keyboard work (a little the worse for lunchtime cocktails) reduced him to tears, the big girl’s blouse. Well, if I achieve nothing else in this life I can still retire happily. Cole Porter was a genius, as opposed to a fortunate bumface. With risible hair. My Man Max once flew me first class to watch a Porter show on Broadway. He’s so considerate. For the moment I stay calm, raising an eyebrow, checking in the many mirrors to see if I look inquiring as opposed to imperious. Max understands my moods. I don’t need to shout. The Pink Lady turns out to have enough lemon to be tangy but not enough to make you blanch. "I forgot the cherry," he says, "Sorry." "Stuff the cherry," "Very well, Ma'am." A mock bow, a hint of a smile. I toast his very good health. If only he wasn't away so often. If only he wasn't married to fast cars. You think he pampers me? It's nothing to what those bitches get. He might massage me but they get their bodies rubbed and oiled and buffed and...I’d rather not know what else he does to them. He leaves on some unspecified errand. I subside back into the water and let it wash away the memory of idiotic clients and the hard ache of missing my son, which is never too far away even during a severe pampering. I picture My Man Max and me on our wedding day. St Paul's Cathedral or Brixton registry office? And should I have my mother sectioned before the ceremony? I recall our last lovemaking, the strangled sound of his release, the sigh of his gratitude. For once he wasn't in control and that's my fierce pleasure. Unmanning him for a brief moment. He walks past the open door, naked, his tight, taut bum crying out to be nibbled. To be teased and tweaked. That does it. I was never too good at delayed gratification. I want him. I want him now. I step out, towel off quickly and walk towards my cherishing. Fill me up. Up to the brim. MISS MAKEOVER'S MINIONS: T-GIRLS and KINKY GUYS "She seemed to me to be a man in woman's clothes". James Boswell on the Chevalier D'Eon, an eighteenth century transvestite. More and more men are getting in touch with their inner female. Unfortunately for their wives this is not a woman who wants to help with the housework. She is not a mate who wants to share her feelings over a vat of Chardonay. Most men's transgendered persona is a butch nymphomaniac who dresses like a streetwalker; someone who wants sex all the time and hasn't the slightest interest in chocolate. She doesn't watch soap operas or give a stuff about the tragic death of Princess Diana. This is not female life as we know it but a recent evolutionary development: the less than divine androgyne. Today I have a rare prize specimen kneeling in front of me. "Celia", attractive enough but I will still call him by his real name: Giles. He’s a kinky bloke really, not a t-girl who could ’pass’ for a woman. Whisper it softly but he looks surprisingly like what he actually is, an investment banker wearing one of my blonde wigs, some of my best blusher and his own pair of pink Janet Reger silk knickers. This slinky lingerie is turned back to front to accommodate his ample reproductive tackle, slightly tumescent because he loves to dress. Perhaps it’s my scent, my pheromones, or the proximity to a real Goddess. But he's a man, a punter, a two-legged pig. He's probably snuffling my perfume up his snout right now, perhaps trying to recall my most intimate scent. Very occasionally I allow him to pleasure me orally. But not too often, mostly because treating him mean keeps him keen. And also because he's rubbish at it. In addition, I just don't fancy him. Which is a shame as he's rich and would leave his wife tomorrow. But then married men are damaged goods. Once we have domestic bliss he will start to hate me instead of his angelic wife, the one he tried to put on a pedestal. So never mind eternal bliss (or married drudgery as it often turns out), let's get back to sin: sweet and sultry, hired by the hour. We are listening to some contemporary classical minimal music, an Arvo Part piece designed to bring mystics closer to God. Giles is sincere in his worship, but I suspect he's the Goddess he seeks, I'm just set dressing. Impudent boy. The City of London is deserted at weekends. I'd love to be walking the streets, watching the first leaves fall, stopping for a coffee. But I'm walled in, buried alive in my own rubber dungeon. Newcomers love the mingled smell of heavy leather and rubber, the obsessively neat rows of implements. The teasers and tweakers. The strokers and strikers. Much as I love the tools of my trade, I'd prefer to watch three Audrey Hepburn movies in a row while eating Greene and Black ice cream. But there is no rest for the wicked. He's very aroused. My shiny red six inch heels may be doing it for him or it could be my fully fashioned stockings with the thick rear seam. Why someone his age is crazy about an item of hosiery popular during the second world war is beyond me. Just as the dreams and desires of a genetic girl will probably permanently remain a mystery to the kneeling worshipper before me. His entire body is hairless and his annoyingly trim legs are sheathed in white silk stockings each of which has a pretty bow at the top. I walk behind him, preferring the rear view of the male wherever possible, even when they are not wearing clumsily applied lip liner. His bottom is small, tight and taut: very spankable and a tempting target for a strap-on. If I even hint that this might happen he will be groveling at my feet, literally kissing the carpet I walk on. I have forbidden him to kiss my six inch stilts, just to keep him keen. Those heels certainly took some mastering. Or should that be Mistressing? As usual, he is gagging for it, quelle surprise. But it's best to keep him waiting. Satisfaction may pall but desire is eternal... Being a woman I’m not in so much of a hurry. And men in drag don't always do it for me. This is the tranny trauma, most of them are heterosexual yet most women like real men. Most wives won't stand for this sort of thing, a good looking man in expensive lingerie with his bum in the air gagging for a good stuffing. Well, more fool them. It's one of my favourite hobbies even though strap-on sex usually doesn't make women come. It's difficult getting enough reverse thrust somewhere near the clitoris, but just being in charge is often enough for me. That, and the sounds of his groans and whimpers. You'd think today's women would like the power reversal. We have always been able to fuck men up but now we really can fuck them. And who would say they don’t deserve taking down a peg or two. Even the ‘Goddess-worshippers’ (yeah right...) those men who secretly think they can be better women than we can. After all, we were only born with vaginas and a sweet tooth. You need a man to do anything properly… Excuse my somewhat jaundiced air. It's probably because I am paid to bring out the women inside my clients, some of whom may indeed one day pass as women, and the vast majority, those who would be refused admittance to a club for bull-dykes. Some of this latter group could strike a match on their chin stubble but that isn't going to stop them. They have decided, often in their forties, far too late, that it's time to make their move. Giles’s inner bitch is a slinky minx with a sharp tongue. The woman on the outside, the one I'm stuck with, is a bulky bloke in knickers. Crude, lewd, and interminably long-winded. Caught between his own desires and most women's indifference.   "Please! Please!" Oh, sorry. I had quite forgotten 'Celia', who is rampant. Even with a bundle of crisp new notes in my silver collecting dish, a replica of the Holy Grail with various occult glyphs emblazoned upon it, I had quite forgotten I am supposed to be working. I try not to think about his bottle of champagne, chilling in the fridge. Delicious fizz which I will dispatch while dishing the dirt with various cyber-friends. Or tucked up with choccies and remote control. If they've gone to all that effort of providing us with hundreds of cable channels we might as well watch them. It's good manners, really. His voice has gone whiny. His eyes are like a whipped spaniel's. Why won't Mistress give me what I want? More sweets, Mummy! I dressed up so nice for you! I'll do anything! All for you! He is of course doing it for himself but most of them can't see that. He is worshipping the Goddess: which is me on a good day. Or he is actually becoming the Goddess, which is him, taken with a very large pinch of salt. To my male clients these transgendered moments are much more important than feeding Africa, saving the planet or doing the housework occasionally. The feel of silk knickers on an engorged member is much more important than helping other people or being less of a bastard occasionally. After all, this is a new way to have sex. Transsexuals, pre or post-ops are usually hoping that mincing up their genitalia and rearranging the results will magically reprogramme their memories and ensure a trouble-free future. And they say real women are unfathomable... Some of these ugly ducklings may yet become swans but many will suffer. Luckily for him, Giles is just a greedy bastard, a kinky bloke. "How do I look?" he asks, in a voice not remotely female. He looks like a tanned, taut stud muffin with a tragic compulsion to crudely burlesque females in lingerie. Best not share that with the group. I talk hair and make up for a while, one eye on the clock, mentally preparing a shopping list for later. To be fair, he looks almost passable - except for the muscles, the big hands, the Adam's Apple, the stubble peeking through his foundation and his blokey stance and walk. And the voice. Apart from all that, and the big bulge in his panties, he could pass. His fantasy life is actually a tragic waste of abundant testosterone, an adequate brain and a handsome face on a buffed body. You don't find all that in one package all that often. Giles is 'happily married', in other words his adultery has yet to find him out. Why can't he come here just to worship my great gate? (as the Taoists say, although mine is of course a cute crevice, a pretty little pocket). Then, after the first hour or so he could shag me senseless over the back of the sofa. Ah well, there is no such thing as a free lunch. And hardly any clients you really fancy. Just as many men could be improved a discreet touch of make up, even more could benefit from a gag, not for the purposes of reinvigorating stale relationships with dark sexual ritual but to get them to finally shut the fuck up. Right now I'm being told all about his recent experiments with eye shadow. It's even less interesting than Giles monologuing on mainframe computers. And why Giles knows more about it than anyone else.   "Do you like this new lipstick?" Oh. Am I finally required to say something? He looks as vulnerable as a friend asking if she looks thinner. "Yes," I tell him. No one else will ever see it so what does it matter? What lipstick goes with stubble anyway? There he is with his great big dick and pumped up muscles, and he yearns to be pretty. Do men always have to take everything? They want the best jobs, all of the money, all of the duvet and now they want our superior beauty. Giles carries on primping. He's got a mirror, what does he need me for? His femme persona is obviously the most important artistic breakthrough since Stravinsky decided to outrage the bourgeoisie with The Rite of Spring. Or since Bob Dylan decided to play the harmonica like a drunk elephant while groaning random lyrics about something or other. There are several flaws in Giles's reasoning, none of which are apparent to him of course, a heavenly being created from Uma Thurman crossed with Marilyn Monroe. And certainly not just a male pervert wrenching female underwear out of shape with his hairy, lumpy body. He starts to play with himself, eyes closed. I'm getting impatient to see the back of him. Or indeed any part except the glistening head of his penis. I walk over, slap his hands out of the way and guide him very close to his destination. "No!" he says, damn him. He turns himself round and thrusts his rump at me, whining piteously. I'm also over familiar with his bottom - admittedly admirably tight, pert and hairless but perhaps shoved in my direction a little too often. "Please! You said you would!" So I did. It's showtime. I ease Wesley Snipes into my strap-on harness. I christened my prong Wesley Snipes for he is big, black and beautiful, just right for shagging some sense into this mewling bitch. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. When I have completed the usual damning critical scrutiny - wrinkles? unwanted hair? burnished helmet of Louise Brooks hair still flawless? - I see a woman totally in command of a strong yet submissive man. He would do anything for me now, as long as there remains the chance I will fill him up, stimulate that male pleasure gland his wife is too prissy to play with. I felt triumphant the first few times I rode hot, horny hunks. But every time you turn your hobby into a job it becomes a grind. And not in a good way. To be honest, Miss Makeover looks tired. She needs a massage and some serious pampering. But there's no rest for the wicked. Ride on, my girl. Ride to victory. I lube him up and press Wesley between his tight little bum cheeks. I watch his face in the mirror. It twists with fierce joy as I gently enter. Then he needs all his strength and resilience as the going gets tough. He's gagging for it though so when I order him to masturbate I don't have long to wait. Soon after he has come I manage two minutes of social chit chat before bundling him out, politely but firmly. I need a drink. I need Ice Cream, Audrey Hepburn, chic elegance in general, breakfast in Paris and...if I had it all I'd still feel empty. And hurt. I ache all over. My brain hurts and, as always,  my heart yearns for what is unlikely to happen – the swift return of my son. My ex-husband sent him away to a public school because I am an unfit mother - so he said. "Don't think about it," advised a behavioural psychologist - after five sessions costing as much as twentyfive grams of my beloved sparkle - enough ketamine to tranquilize the runners in the average Grand National. Which may have been a more productive use of the money than receiving useful advice like that.  "Don't think about it." Dad used to corpse laughing at Tommy Cooper videos where he said "Doctor, it hurts when I move my arm." "Don't move your arm then." Maniacal laughter. Well, it hurts when I think about my son. 'Don't think about it then.' H'mm. I'm alone now, thinking about not thinking about it. There's also nothing to shield me from the reality of my ‘sordid, seedy sex work’. (copyright some frigid broadsheet harridan who could probably do with a week as one of 50 Per Cent’s bitches.) I ease the cork out of Giles's bottle of Champagne and aim it at a picture of Noel Edmonds I keep on my kitchen dartboard. Pop! Fizz orgasms over my glass, not a mingy little champagne flute but a humble tumbler because I don’t want to miss a drop. The cork misses Noel’s smug smile, his silly goatee, all of his minging mug. I drink the fizz – which I’m not supposed to be drinking, come to think of it, and put on a pair of fluffy slippers which have Lisa Simpson’s face on. They help remind me that girls are cleverer than boys. Not that I need much reminding with a job like mine. "Yes"! sigh my aching bones, freed from the cruel torture of six inch heels. I might have missed Noel today but I often get him right on the snout. It’s a hard life. Show business. Or therapy, perhaps. But someone has to do it. Giles once said he loved me. Except he was rock hard at the time. And being cranked very close to orgasm. Anyone can love that feeling. Maybe he does love me, more likely he loves love and himself as the great romantic. . “Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of existence.” Erich Fromm, a once modish psycho-babble writer. Yes. We all need it. But isn't this just like priests saying that God is the only answer? Quite right, my dears, if you don't mind God not existing. Well, I still believe in love. No twelve step group will ever get me to kick it. My clients also live for love. It's a passionate, burning flame. And it's renewed every time they look in a mirror. Maybe someone should have told them, and men in general, that you’re supposed to love someone else. “IT'S ONLY A PUSSY. NOT THE CROWN FUCKING JEWELS" says Geezer Hardnut, a lovable hound, the sort of shaggy-coated mongrel that shouldn't be allowed on the bed but wins you over by being especially cute. Perhaps I'm skirting the real issue. He is indeed pretty for a big tough guy but his inner thug is never far from the surface. Which turns me on. He's an attack dog. One I can only just keep under control. My mother liked hooligans so maybe we've got more in common than I thought. Geezer runs the provisional wing of Fathers Need Justice! (North Kent No Surrender! Branch). Yet he just can’t quit marrying people. He’s a big soppy dog with some lovable traits but why would anyone put up with this mongrel when My Man Max is around? My Man Max is not around. I should probably put that on a macro key to save me the bother of typing it so often. At least Geezer is generous with money and goodies and he’s right here,  with his cropped hair, well-defined muscles and too many designer suits - the great nancy. He has some frightening tattoos dating back to his previous incarnation as a Top Boy for some Neanderthal football gang. These days he has renounced violence. Except for money. Or when taken suddenly drunk. He is a successful entrepreneur, an alternative alchemist. I’m trying to give him up. But, like his product, he’s addictive.   "Who are you getting married to this week?" I ask him, having decided his ego needs puncturing. "You can mock. Marriage is a beautiful institution." "You should be in an institution," I tell him. "How much maintenance are you paying?" "None!" says Geezer. "Posh girls like their bit of rough. They had to pay to get rid of me."   Of course. Geezer never loses. So he keeps telling us anyway. I’ve seen him cry over his kids. But we don’t talk about that sort of thing. Just in case it sets me off. “So I’m just another posh girl.” “No! You’re bloody lovely, you are. I love you.” So he does. But right now he’s bathing in the warmth of a few double brandies. And can I compete with the blazing sunshine of his self-love? It must be nice not having to go anywhere else for romance. Just get up, look straight in the mirror and there you are: the object of your affection. You might still have to buy yourself little presents, just to keep yourself sweet. But then you can keep them all to yourself. Well, maybe he’s just young and justly confident of his fit bod and genuine machismo.  (He’s a real man, and there’s not many of those about). I only wish my mother could see us together. It might just finish her off. With any luck. The shaven head, the chunky wrist bracelet, the pumped up physique and the broken nose might indeed be a little de trop.  For your average suburban snob. I don't like his gold wrist bracelet come to think of it but it never seems the right moment to mention it. Besides, where else can you find a real man who actually likes women? Most hunks are only interested in shagging each other. Geezer's not only well-endowed he knows what to do with it. He also loves to lick. He's quite happy down there, listening to me squealing and screaming. It may be because he's a control freak, and he just likes making things work - cars, computers, women - probably in that order. But, he isn't My Man Max. And he isn't the Honourable something or other, the sort of chinless berk my mother would prefer.  “’It’s only a pussy, not the crown fucking jewels.’ Make a good book title, that,” says Geezer, trying to wind me up. He’s all too aware that I’m a writer, no longer published and touchy about it. (Although the discovery that you  could earn a book advance in a week’s sex work softened the blow somewhat.)   “What women need to know. By a man. Stop holding us to ransom. ‘It’s only a pussy. Not the crown fucking jewels.” There is a pause. As I am giving him enough rope to hang himself with. Geezer is on the verge of repeating his latest piece of homespun wisdom, perhaps awaiting opposition, or a tired smile and a weary ‘yeah yeah ‘. I pour him another balloon of brandy, wiping and tidying the bar area in my kitchen as I go. I avoid my reflection in the mirror. Trying not to see the solitary, fussy old bat I am fast becoming. Even though my ex-husband rarely comes here he reserves the right to complain if it’s not neurotically tidy. Until recently I thought ketamine was a valuable  evolutionary tool which would enable a link between divine entities and mankind. When I’d got over the initial thrill, which took months, I still thought the vivid visionary trances it produces were an essential Shamanic tool for exploring consciousness, both before and after death. As K is disassociative it makes the average acid trip look like a vicarage tea party. (Mong DJ voice. “Hey! It’s acid. On Acid!” ) It’s certainly the most comprehensive alternative reality system I ever discovered and I’ve tried a few. Be that as it may, if you take a substance also used as a horse tranquillizer too often your flat gets as funky as the average stables. Right now. I’m giving it up. No more three day binges for me. I didn’t buy any today. Not yet anyway. Geezer doesn’t like me on it. He can’t take the constant k-hole blackouts, the lunatic conversations, the many near death experiences, not of all which are euphoric. He’s a lightweight. Actually, he’s a control freak and they can’t be doing with time running backwards and out of body experiences before lunch.  That’s why he likes his Charlie. Which doesn’t always do him a lot of good. So why do we take it? 'Ketamine! I think I found the clitoris of my brain!' So said Charlotte, an exotic dancer, escort girl, masseuse, militant sex worker and Wise Woman against the War. Incidentally, we don’t say ‘witch’ any more. Only because she’s way too beautiful to be a crone. Otherwise, she’s a witch. One they haven’t got around to burning yet. She did a Tantric stripagram outside an arms dealers conference at Canary Wharf. She’s a good looking girl and I bet she stopped the traffic but the war goes on. As it always will. Meanwhile we party. While everywhere else burns. Well, we tried marching. One million of us. And nothing happened. Perhaps we just didn't raise enough tantric sex energy. We obviously have to go to more parties,   She once tried to turn me on to nitrous oxide, which I thought superfluous to requirements while publicly K-holing in a Limehouse dive. She’s insane. Yet even she knows how to use K in moderation and I never will. "Thanks, babe," says Geezer, receiving his brandy with as much grace that a naked man with a large glistening semi-hard penis can muster.  And I'm dumb enough to treasure that 'babe'. I get sloppy and sentimental when told to 'mind the gap' on the tube. At least somebody  cares about me. "Then I'm going to do another book,” says Geezer. “'And bumholes are tighter too.’" Most amusing. I could say, 'and you should know' but then hard men can be a little touchy about situational homosexuality. More of them than you might think are bi and fighting it and some of the straight ones have experienced male rape in various prison and army settings. As rarely seen in geezer chic gangster pics. This is the secret no one wants to know. Real men like it too.    "Sounds like a great movie," I tell him. "Who will play the bum-hole? Hugh Grant? He's getting a bit old to play you, isn't he?" "Oh Har Har. No. I want Danny Dyer." "Who?" "He was in The Football Factory." Which he made me sit through. And his other movies. Recall is swift and painful. Mr Dyer is a good actor,  at least whenever playing a cockney knob who likes footie and fighting, preferably for no other reason than youthful brutishness. His characters never stop smoking, other than to take a refreshing gulp of ice cold lager or a toot. He wears jeans, trainers, zipped up cardigans and bland anoraks that inexplicably cost two hundred quid. And he’s a role model? How much stupider can New Lad culture get?    The broadsheets are always bemoaning the death of the British Film Industry. All you have to do is make a film about yobs kicking each other and you're laughing. (sorry ‘Larfing! Having a right tin bath!’).  All the way to the bank. I look at Geezer and ponder the cultural chasm between us, much worse than the usual moat dividing men and women. “Why are we together?” I ask. Geezer says something very rude indeed in reply. It could be interpreted as a slur upon my honour. Oh well. I say some very rude things back and Geezer pulls my knicks down and starts doing what I want. What we both want. “You love it. You love it, you filthy bitch.” I don’t love this particular phrase, as it happens, but it seems to stoke Geezer up a treat. He keeps on stoking my fire. And on. He doesn’t stint himself. Or me. Once we’ve scraped ourselves back down from the ceiling there’s a lovely, long cuddle afterwards. And he says some soppy stuff he keeps for me alone. It could be worse. Perhaps if he was unavailable I would yearn for him and I would be in love.  Like he is in love with me. Because, ultimately, I’m unavailable to him. As it is I’m bitching about a coupling that works. Love is a bitch. Is this love? Well, yes, sort of, but not while My Man Max is still a contender. Geezer knows I’m spoken for. But he’s persistent. I’ll give him that. I suppose I’ll miss him when the time comes. I’ll worry about that later. Sufficient to the day the troubles thereof, said some Galilean hippie. And he was dead right. MY MAN MAX: 'TIS A PITY SHE'S A WHORE Second date. Already lost count how many times we have feasted on each other. Ooh we're greedy. Greedy gannets. Gluttons. My place. I'm in the damp bit. He has an arm around me, holding me tight. Why do other men neglect this essential courtesy? Because they need to get up and hunt, having planted their seed? Because they are terrified of being trapped, believing a post-coital hug constitutes a legally binding proposal of marriage? It couldn’t be because they are thoughtless, clueless clods. Would it really kill them to stretch an arm up, prop us up onto a warm, slightly fast, heartbeat? Seems so.  "This is a very nice flat. Are your people well off?" he asks. Crass question. But it still demands an answer. We are now in a minefield of class and money. The wrong answer could finish my future. He thinks I'm a freelance pianist. Which I was. Then, briefly, an ‘acclaimed novelist’, for a publisher who couldn’t afford to bribe the stores for prominent rack space. My Man Max probably knows that scribblers do not live in flats like this. Well, you might go into a first marriage with a few white lies. I certainly did. You're a fool if you do that twice.   "I'm a Transformational Sex Therapist," I tell him. His eyes pop. About time too. You can have too much suave nonchalance. So he's rich. I'm richly experienced, well-travelled, in the know. "I've never heard it called that before," he says, still scandalized and still not hiding it very well. That's funny, but only because I like him. If a creep had said it, looking to ruffle my feathers, it would have been knee in the nuts time. Try hiding your reaction to that tried and tested testicle tweaker.   Well, he'd seen the dungeon by now. There's so much equipment in there I am obviously seriously deranged, or a professional. Probably both you may be thinking. If we're doing straight psychology, that pre-historic nonsense about paraphilias and syndromes, I'm obsessive compulsive, in sex as in everything else. That's maybe why I keep on collecting equipment, long after I have enough to satisfy every need. But don't listen to the shrinks, those fifty to eighty quid an hour sleepwalkers. It's only a few decades since they declassified homosexuality as a disease. As you may know the incidence of sexual harassment from shrinks is ridiculously high, something like ten per cent. You might as well see a real sex worker and have done with it. Speaking of which. "You don't mind?" I tease him. "How do you cope?" he asks. He’s not that thrilled actually. "I'm a Domme. Some of them I don't even have to touch. Besides, it's fun dressing men up. And giving them a good spanking." Very uncomfortable silence. Not happy at all.  "It needn't be all horrid, like at school."  The silence goes cold. I've pressed the wrong button. Got to scamper quickly back out of the dark, horrible memory I triggered.   "Of course, a real relationship doesn't need that. That's just fun. Romance, love, is something else." It's way too early to say the L word. Most men would have their trousers on by now, stumbling about trying to get dressed in the dark. It's usually a great way of getting some me time. Clears the flat in no time at all. "I'd love romance with you," he says, kissing me. I'm so glad we got over the first hurdle that the kiss spreads into a a major cuddle, a hot huddle. He said that word! Maybe not in the right context but he definitely said it. Maybe my work is holding him back. But I can’t give up who I am for him. Can I? MISS MAKEOVER’S MAKEOVER: LIFE COACHING BY GIT-BOY GEEZER I’m staring at myself in a mirror lit by lights bright enough to extract a confession from the hardiest of spies. “You look great. You’re too good for them,” says Geezer, about as convincing, and as miserable,  as an episode of Eastenders.   “Can you say it like you mean it?” I ask. He carries on squirting decongestant up his nose. This brand does contain speed but it’s still a peasant’s way of getting high. But then, he’s a peasant. Some most unattractive snufflings later he remembers his duties. “You’re gorgeous, hun.” Well. I wouldn’t go that far. The face staring back at me is indeed attractive. Forty winters have yet to 'besiege my brow',(I am currently celebrating my third twenty-ninth birthday). The said dread winters may yet 'dig deep trenches in my beauty's field' but we now have much better make up than whatever was available to Shakespeare's beloved bum boy.    If only I didn't need so much time in front of my mirror, just to achieve the same result. The last person I need to see is the mad tart caking on the make up. And why bother? When most men would shag the rotting corpse of Andrea Dworkin. It's got a pussy, hasn't it? What's wrong with you? You queer or what? “You look fine,” says Geezer wearily. “Don’t ever take up life coaching,” I tell him. “You’d starve.” My Man Max would know how to feed me with some sincere, spontaneous compliments. All git-boy Geezer can come up with is the palpably insincere ‘Have you lost weight?’. Weight is one of the few things I’m not neurotic about. The Class A diet has always worked for me. You could chop out a line with these cheekbones. But when does 'thin' turn into 'haggard'? When preening I am aiming a little higher than what a mere man might like. I wish to be judged by a jury of my peers. I need hardly tell you their criteria is not whether I look attractive to men but whether I terrify anything with a dick. Breasts must be thrust up and out, cleavage deep, waists squeezed into corsets and lipstick must be red and gleaming. Which simultaneously attracts and repels the enemy. I tease and tweak my hair. I could soften up and let it loose but I prefer this tight, dark helmet. Louise Brooks with a touch of evil. I like to be in control. I spend a long time putting on and taking off make up. Until it looks like I have no make up on. My skin is presentable but if the eyes are the window to the soul then mine need cleaning. “Tight lace me please, darling.” Geezer is always keen on this duty, taking a sadistic glee in ‘doing me up like a kipper’. You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, and you can't wear this corset without cracking a rib. I have achieved the cavernous milky-white cleavage, pretty good considering what little I had to  work with. My waist is tiny, my rear view is discreetly saucy, debonair yet screaming out for a fondle.  My face is perfectly made up but I look upon the wreckage of my soul and despair. Just one look and you know this broad has been through the wringer. Where are my shades? I can do chic zombie as well as anyone else. I put on an enormous pair of wraparound 70's sunglasses, just about right for Miles Davis after a three day binge. All this just for one fat, old client. They don't deserve me. Geezer starts to fiddle with various of my erogenous zones, which is a sort of compliment I suppose. Too little, too late though. Where oh where is My Man Max? MY SON’S FISH RECTANGLES Josh, my son,  once asked for fish rectangles rather than fish fingers, having learned the word that very day. Once, aged five, having been woken for an early morning flight, he stretched wearily and said, "I'm rather a man of rest." He still resembles the young Anakin Skywalker but is banished from my sight till my rather less pretty and witty husband will let me into his presence. Josh even used to create conceptual art that was worth looking at, unlike the rubbish the grown-ups produce. But then computer games intervened and all he wants to talk about is incomprehensible strategies and cheats. Even I wouldn't bother playing a game where you just cheated to get to the next level. Listen to me. Women would never cheat to win. Well we just might. If it was real life and there was a prize worth having.    I'm supposed to be an unfit mother yet his new wife who, never let it be forgot, has streaks of grey hair, on purpose, also meditates to nature sound records. Well there's one nature sound I'd like to make, right in her ear. Meditation! My tight, taut ass. (Did I mention hers is rather flabby?) Maybe my husband is practising to be a pizza chef, kneading her great buns of pendulous flab.   I should stop being bitchy, (easier said than done). This would probably garner me more sympathy if it was about how great my son is rather than how awful my ex is. And his gargantuan-bummed wife. Just think what fun we'll have on step five when I'm supposed to write down every crime I have committed and present it to my sponsor. I tried to have someone killed. Never mind eh. I'm going to get some photos out in a minute. Actually having a lot of photos of him around the flat very quickly proved too much to bear. You just can't take the loss all the time. Even drugged she-demon whores like me need a break from the continual misery and the lust for revenge - for my son also resembles the author of my misfortune (a clue, it's one of the parents and it's not me.) SOD GOD: HUGGED BY GRINNING CHRISTIANS I am still attending Narcotics Anonymous, kicking and screaming. Actually sat like a sullen teenager, refusing to ‘share’. Too many grinning Christians, too few atheists (who don’t preach at you) and too many hugs. Most people arrange their lives so that they never meet evangelical Christians. I voluntarily go into church halls where recovering addicts are instructed to ring beginners and talk about God. I’m still clean or bingeing, as I have been since I was thirteen. I usually don’t need much of an excuse.  A difficult client, too many easy clients, (which means I actually am a whore instead of an artist slumming it temporarily) a phone call from my mother. I don’t need much. Just a wedge of notes in my hot little hand and I’m off, banging on my dealer’s door. He receives me, as he generally does, without a shirt. So, a great fat fuck, with a hairy flabby chest, eating ice cream straight out of a family sized carton. Yet he patronises me. Because I get high too quickly. Because I need this stuff too much. Because I lose it in public.   This is the real degradation. The company you keep. BELLE DU JOUR I read Belle de Jour's weblog and find it to be as credible as a Jeffrey Archer novel. The first post depicts a world where a client quotes from Martin Amis's London Fields and a sex worker recognises the quote instantly. While pigs fly across the sky behind them. Genuine quote follows. "I want to write my name in come all over you," he said. I smirked. "You can't fool me, you nicked that line from London Fields." He looked at me strangely. Oh no, I thought. Better watch my mouth. "Amis fan?" he said idly, pulling himself with one hand." Genuine quote ends. This putative punter is not the only one pulling himself with one hand here. It’s rare to find a woman who wants to read Martin Amis never mind a female sex worker. Or a woman who can mention his name without spitting feathers. And a client looking for erotic ideas in Martin Amis? His bleak and pitiless view of sex is more likely to inspire castration than a trip to your local sex worker. And we're supposed to believe this fairy tale? The supposedly cute Bridget Jones twitter soon palls and you will probably want to strangle the nearest kitten. Pink, pretty, pukey. Of course I’m not jealous of her success. Or her film deal.  How dare you… TOP TIPS FOR CLIENTS Sometimes I think my customers have a book full of handy hints. It probably reads like this.... 1 Take enough cocaine to make yourselves temporarily impotent then talk endlessly about this utterly unexpected phenomenon. Then take lots more powders and potions, (Don't worry about the excess poison which will be drained off by heavy sweating. You'll be able to smoke many more cigarettes than usual so make sure you have plenty to hand.) 2 Why not take fifteen years off your age on the telephone? This will give me the chance to say, “You're thirty nine? I’m sorry to see that a sudden and unbearable shock has caused your hair to turn white. MEN: WHAT THEY WON’T TELL WIVES OR GIRLFRIENDS My shades protect me through another terrible London journey. My mobile runs out of credit just as I reach the foyer of a certain hotel. This one is named after one part of London and situated in another. Which leads to the usual panic attacks. I might be Mistress of the Universe . It doesn't mean I can read a map. Excuse the lapse into 'I'm only a girl'. I'm a lovable ditz' territory. I was only two minutes late as it happens but you can't leave it any later as many of these clients are no longer in the first flush of youth. Any later and they might well be stone dead. The concierge lets me call a man whose second name I can't remember on the hotel phone - which doesn't look in the least suspicious. Oh no. I am greeted by a pleasant enough guy and a fully stocked mini bar. We compare divorce tragedies for a while before I realise that this smart, funny and warm gentleman can get all the social chit-chat he needs from work and family. It's only me who's missing intelligent conversation by virtue of frightening all my friends off. Even with my ups and downs softened by some legal brain drops I am still a little intense.   I glove up and rootle around inside his ass for a while he lies there groaning with gratitude. Why won't (many) wives do this? Is it really beneath them? Even men, those scrofulous dunces, have learnt about enemas and squeaky-clean anal hygiene these days. So they can't complain it's disgusting any more. Although the issue, as ever with wives, would be "Why isn't this about me? Why is it about him?" Well, let's face it. Most men would rather watch the football and most women would rather watch soap operas. A plague on both their houses. As usual, just giving someone a straight foot or back massage has them groaning louder than the average orgasm, quieter than his when he eventually comes anyway. Is massage really so difficult to learn? Or can't wives and husbands be arsed after a while? Probably the latter, I suspect. Bored, selfish, lazy married people. Where would we sex workers be without them? YES. BUT YOU’RE NOT HAPPY, ARE YOU? Happy? Are you? Well then. Doing transformational sex therapy pays the rent and Ecstasy makes me genuinely happy, for a while, while doing me very little harm. Or at least nothing that can’t be fixed by Clomipramine - a kinder, gentler old school Prozac. Check it out! My son is at a good school. I see him in the holidays and at visiting hours. My ex is getting on just fine without me. Never had a moment's regret. Probably because the house is tidier. And, joy of joys!, my son will not grow up like his mother because...er, depression and addiction genes will magically disappear without my physical presence. That’s sorted then. And my ex moved in his grey-haired crone for mutual massage with whale song on the stereo. Fade up veggie wimp band like Coldplay on the soundtrack for Happy Ending. Until I kill them both. This isn't a joke or an idle boast. I need a hitman. Or some poison darts. Or I could hire an obese whore to sit on his head. Which would be non-erotic asphyxiation, a new one for the obituarists. Geezer Hardnut knows real villains. Very bad men. He just laughs and ignores me when I try to hire a real one. But I'll find a way. You'll see.   MY MOTHER THE FILM STAR My mother was a film star. The glamour! The excitement! She was an English rose in feeble sixties comedies, the girlfriend of Berk Dogarde or some other handsome but not especially heterosexual leading man. My mother was not so much a siren, more a Swanee Whistle, or a kazoo. She lasted a few movies as a sort of not quite frigid fiancee, which in those days was enough to set the cinemas on fire. Although supposedly comedic you'd need a balloon full of nitrous oxide to get sustenance from this thin gruel. You could only tell where the punchlines were from a burbling bassoon or a yakking clarinet. Often there weren't even punchlines, just some pleasant whimsy, wish fulfillment for an audience who wanted their own disastrous marriages to be light-hearted. I still like her films. Happy couples driving along half empty London streets in open-topped vintage cars. Men in bowler hats. Cheery costermongers waving at happy young married couples. All absolute cobblers, of course, but then so are today's  serial killer gorefests. Where every sexual encounter leads inexorably to prolonged torture. My parents' marriage was as frightfully nice and winsomely jolly as one of her anodyne movies. Apart from my mother's taste for gin and Teddy Boys. And lorry drivers. And pills to stay awake. And pills to go to sleep. Then some pills to make the daylight shift go a little smoother. She never did get her chemistry experiments right. And her tastes eventually became so depraved my father couldn't cope. She joined a Gilbert and Sullivan society. Endless renditions of light opera killed off any love or indeed respect my father might once have had. They maintained separate bedrooms, like the Queen and her Greek sailor boy. My father spent a lot of time in the City of London doing something he hated which paid for my education and a house in Dulwich. They decided to have children very late by the standards of the day. So they were both permanently exhausted and bad tempered. Although it may have been their work or just playing house together. My mother screamed a lot. My father simmered, boiling over once a year, when whisky took the brakes off. He thought valium was for housewives  and the only self-improvement books available in those days were called "Chin up, old man. Crying is for Girls!" or "Pull Yourself Together! You Big Pansy!".   They sent me to an very expensive extremely religious academy for young ladies where I was taught discipline, with the aid of various implements some of which I now use to make a living. I was taught to be a cold bitch and also to play the flute and the pianoforte well enough to become a galley slave in various West End theatres  till my drug consumption got the better of me.   Child hood trauma? Early on I walked in on my parents having sex. The caterwauling had woken me up. Is that why I'm insane? Maybe it was my marriage that drove me mad. Or maybe it was the divorce. There should probably be more self-help books on how to get divorced. We have far too many on how to meet a partner and get hitched. Let's face it. Marriage is difficult, divorce is impossible. The cold winds of hatred seem to get chillier as the years go by. Least I'm feeling the cold even if my ex-husband doesn't seem to mind. Is this ice-age all the more uninhabitable because we were so very much in love? Otherwise it wouldn't matter. It's not hard to imagine what a fat, fatuous agony aunt would say. "You have to 'move on', lovey." I don't want to 'move on'. Because of my child. Not because of my husband. If he was to drop dead, retrospectively, it wouldn't matter. However, 'moving on' would mean leaving my son behind. Yet bickering with my treacherous ex means my son will grow up thinking men and women hate each other. Which just isn’t true. Is it? MY MAN MAX: THE OTHER WOMAN IS A FERRARI He has only one flaw. Fast cars. Making a dick  of himself with other plutocrats on a long dangerous road. It’s called the Gumboil rally or something equally silly. They race all day and party all night. It seems to attract posh tarts as well as rich boy racers.   It costs about thirty grand to enter, then you need a Ferrari and a string of five star hotels. They get by on very little sleep despite a great deal of champagne being consumed. It’s just possible some may resort to something stronger than pro-plus to make it to the finishing line. There’s no dope test to worry about. You’re a dope if you entered in the first place. That’s what he’s doing right now. Risking his neck. Perhaps dipping his wick. The other woman is a Ferrari.    ENOUGH MDMA TO TURN ANNE WIDDECOMBE RANDY "You'll be inundated by public school boys. City guys." So I was told when I decided to make my pleasure - kinky sex - into a profession. Hearing the words 'public school' and 'city' I was starting to think big bucks. I hoping to be offered rows of tight, taut buttocks. Which would just require whipping into a frenzy before I vanished clutching handfuls of cash and thoughtful gifts of champagne and jewellery. As usual reality is failing to live up to expectations. I was expecting Hugh Grant lookalikes. I would have settled for bald muscled mutants roughly my age. I get sixty-something 'boys' with bellies hanging on their knees and whining subs long past their best. Today's client is thirty five - actually thirty-five not 'hopelessly optimistic client thirty-five' - and still dresses as a schoolboy, presumably having never overcome the horror that he enjoys being caned. I shouldn't be complaining really. If he overcame this problem he wouldn't need transformational sex therapists and I would be out of a job. Lad with Lucre has a riverside flat containing a bar with a fine selection of spirits all with their own optics and a monstrous plasma screen. There is no sign of a controlling cunt who wants to redecorate every six weeks. Or move her mother in. In short, and he is not especially large, it's Lad Heaven. There's only one problem. He has to pay for sex - even though he is in a meaningful relationship. Perhaps because he is in a meaningful relationship. This man - overgrown boy, really - is relatively young and very comfortably off. He could arrange for the occasional enthusiastic amateur. But is he willing to undergo speed dating, online flirting, staggeringly expensive restaurant meals and sitting through relationship movies and pretending to like them? Perhaps it's quicker and cheaper to order in sex. Is this so shameful when Captains of Industry and Hollywood film stars do it? Jack Nicholson has always been able to find his own women. So why would he pay for sex workers? "I'm not paying them for showing up. I'm paying for them to leave". That may sound cold. It is cold. However, whether our parents' endless proximity-induced bickering was an improvement on this new realism is debatable. Lad with Lucre is a charming host. So much so that I had quite forgotten why we were till he informs me it's time to wear his school uniform. My face must have fallen for an instant at this revelation. He's too smart and good looking to need the uniform as an excuse. However. He's a management consultant who earns stratospheric amounts of money without having to shove his fingers up strange men's fundaments. If he wants to be a bald schoolboy then let's get this show on the road. He wants forty-eight hard cane strokes in units of twelve over about twenty minutes. This is strong medicine. But then he's already dosed himself with enough MDMA to turn Anne Widdecombe randy. He can take it. What he will feel like tomorrow is another matter. Beaten, bruised and with a motherfucker of an ecstasy comedown to cope with the day after. When he will be back at work. Yikes. Let's live in the present, always the best option yet so few people avail themselves of it. If I may dip into my twelve step mantras, perhaps inappropriate while I'm pissed: tomorrow is a mystery, yesterday is the past and today is a gift called the present. He assumes the position, bent, bare-bottomed. I complement him on his taut, shaven ass for a while before trying a few warm-up strokes. As he's Scottish, and they feed them broken glass in their porridge up there, he doesn't want a warm up, just a half bottle of whisky in one, as it were. We're using one of his thick canes, which impart a restful thump rather than a spiteful sting but even so, this is heavy duty. And those boring dungeon drones Enigma on the stereo aren't going to help that much. Not against twelve hefty whacks with a thick rattan cane on bare buttocks. (Memo to the kinky sex community: Enigma is not the only trance music ever made. There are others. Generally given away free with DJ magazines if you don’t know how to rip it off the internet. Still, as it generally puts me in a foul mood, eager for vengeance, perhaps it does serve a purpose.) He makes no sound. I whisper some mild roleplay admonishment but, as usual these days, I would rather be myself than a bad version of someone else so he'll have to make to with therapeutic caning rather than a punitive flogging. Time for him to grow up, perhaps? In twenty minutes I have delivered the forty-eight strokes accurately. When he has brought himself to a climax, taking himself in hand turned modestly away, he compliments me on my accuracy. We then get mildly drunk while laughing hysterically at the sort of management-speak he has to use to earn a living. Until I have forgotten what time it is and am wondering whether we should go to a nearby tranny bar, where all manner of stimulants are available. All of a sudden my nostrils need feeding. He looks surprised. "You're an escort," he says, reasonably enough. I suddenly feel shameful and pathetic and it's time to go. The next day I apologise for being a drunk and he laughs it off. I never get another call though because there's another million escorts advertising, many of them East European, most of them much cheaper and all of them with one significant advantage: it will be the first time. MURDERING THE FATHER OF MY CHILD Geezer is old fashioned in some ways. He won't use bad language around ladies. Although he'll use it around me - bloody cheek. I’ve only asked him to find a contract killer. Again. Eventually he stops swearing  and tells me about Svetlana. Geezer Hardnut has done a few genuinely wicked things in his time. So when he tells me not to mess Svetlana Bedny about I have to take it seriously. "But she's only a girl," I say, quoting one of his favourite witticisms. Least I think it's supposed to be funny. He squares his shoulders once more. Looks past me as if to make sure that the Russian mafia is not about to swoop and then starts speaking very quietly. "She's..." He twists his moth into a tight ball, breathes deeply, cracks his knuckles. Finally the muse speaks. "She's...oooh....vicious! She's vicious! She'll follow you anywhere on earth. Never mind the fucking Mounties. She does not rest till she gets her man."   “Sounds like what I need. I want him dead.” “I know you do.” I look at him for a long time. I want this doing. He faces me down. Big, strong and silent. And he knows Svetlana. And she can get my son back. They’d have to give him to me if my ex-husband was dead. "You don't look anything like a geezer bird but you act like one sometimes," he says. “I’ll take that as a compliment. I get things done. Is that what you mean?”   "Sorry,” he says. A man saying sorry? How often does that happen? He is so sweet. “You’d better be serious about this,” he says. “I am,” I tell him. “What type of name is Bedny, anyway?” “Dunno. Russian, maybe?” I’ll get him for that. I do the condescending irony, not him.   “I wouldn’t mix business with pleasure if I were you.. She’s…” He’s screwing his face up again. Looking for the words that will say it as well an another grunting, groaning ‘Ooooh!”. “Vicious?” I offer. “No. She’s fierce. Fucking fierce. Just leave it. It’s always more trouble than it’s worth.” I stare at him. And realise he’s speaking from experience. My boyfriend’s a killer. I don’t want to tell you this. Because I’m a little ashamed. But I had to have him. Right there. Right then.   THE MALE ORGASM. VASTLY OVERRATED? A client orgasms and instantly loses his silly, vacant grin. Oh. Fuck. Back here again. I wasn't sorry to see the high dissipate. Not after a few hours of feverish masturbation and endless wheedled instructions. ('Squeeze my nipples! Squeeze my nipples!'). The guy was Brazilian, perfectly chiseled physically but a little flabby in the brain. He was however impressively focused on his needs and not shy of communicating them. Occasionally I would tire of squeezing these giant hat pegs as hard as I could. At which point his voice would become whinier and more dictatorial. 'Squeeze my nipples! Squeeze my nipples!' Cocaine makes men even more obsessive and annoying, particularly when they are verbalising very familiar fantasies and English is their second language. This one was still young enough to use it to intensify actual sex rather than as a means of revving the wheels without ever getting the engine in gear. He remained hard throughout the afternoon which eventually became too much like hard work. A barmaid pulling pints for a couple of rugby teams would have had an easier time than I did - wrenching away at that tireless truncheon with little effect. I'm in femme fatale mode currently, raven black hair slicked down and parted perfectly in the middle. But no-one can look cool and elegant while slaving over a hot slave-boy all afternoon. My cheeks may be hollow, my skin cadaver-white, my lips red as a freshly-flayed client. But a glance in one of his many mirrors confirmed that my forehead was covered in what us ladies call perspiration. This was far too much like manual labour. I became a corrective therapist in order to avoid work and here I am getting hot, sweaty and far too bothered. Did I abandon a promising career in order to yank men's privates around? No, I abandoned show business for love. Although my love of illicit chemicals turned into a marriage made in hell. Actually, why don't I just write 'turned into a marriage'? It's hardly a secret any more how these mutual slavery contracts turn out. Eventually some thick pre-come appeared and I was able to froth it up into a smoothie. It was hard to suppress a heartfelt "Thank Fuck for that!" Earlier on, some slow and clumsy roleplay featuring one of his transgendered personae triggered such an intense fit of boredom in me that he was caned much harder than he should have been. But then great hulking geezers wanting to be pre-teen convent girls is about as convincing as an episode of Eastenders. I usually persuade clients that a warm up is infinitely preferable to swift and savage brutality but this one deserved punishment rather than pleasure. Usually it's possible to trace the severity of a caning by watching red weals blossoming on previously flawless skin. It was hard to know whether I was being too severe and his pain threshold was higher due to drugs. I laid on as enthusiastically as a sexually frustrated nun. Hopefully it would start to hurt when the sex and drug high wore off. As it was the silly grin stayed all the time we played. Then the orgasm triggered sadness, as it sometimes does. The 'little death' is not always fulfillment. For male sex addicts an orgasm means someone's just run off with your stash. Drug addicts discover anew every day that their alternative reality inexplicably disappears leaving them with some crumpled wraps made out of lottery tickets. A sex addict's dream dissolves into the uncomfortable reality of the presence of an unsuitable partner. At least Mr. Hat Peg Nipples, having paid for my services, could discreetly suggest it was time to leave. I had hung around for a good twenty seconds at this point, judging it might be rude to have dashed for the door before he had wiped himself clean but I was already edging towards my clothes and looking forward to an evening gorging myself on Green and Black's Dark Chocolate with Real Cherries. After a two hour soak in a cleansing bubble bath. And the ritual sticking of pins into my Jeremy Clarkson voodoo doll. This unpleasant little gargoyle is not an accurate representation of that bigheaded bag of bollocks, just a teddy bear in denims. It's good to have something to vent your feelings on, as I'm sure all wives will agree. Actually, just getting out of earshot of this guy was going to be a form of orgasmic release for me. Coked up clients and their fantasies on an ever repeating ten second loop can quickly become tiresome. Perhaps too many orgasms depletes the body of zinc, leaving men listless and depressed. Or may have done once upon a time in China on their lousy rice diet. Maybe this is why Taoists used to think that semen retention was the path to eternal life. The sperm less full body orgasm can be learned in a week, clenching the muscles that stem the flow of urine. Can most men be bothered to learn this? Leave it out, mate! The footy's on! If you already do Kelvins - male pelvic floor tightening muscle tightening exercises - you will find this easier to master. Who says I hate men? I'm giving away information which will make them happier. Those of them who can read anything other than SAS memoirs or computer manuals... "ARRANGED MARRIAGES? THEY'RE ALL ARRANGED MARRIAGES. ARRANGED BY WOMEN," says Geezer Hardnut, smoothing down his very short hair. Which was already flat. Then he squares his shoulders to adjust the hang of his raw silk jacket, setting his wrist jewelry agleam.  We have been discussing the holy state of matrimony. He's right, as it happens, but I’m certainly not telling him so. So I'll just call him a 'misogynist', which is now mandatory, whenever any man criticizes any woman, whether justified or not. Now we can 'move on', the instant panacea for all known ills.    "Have you ever heard of a man arranging a marriage?" says Geezer,  who will 'move on' when he's good and ready. We are in a hotel bar awaiting the arrival of two clueless optimists, otherwise known as the bride and groom. They have decided to invest a small fortune on one day of dressing up and faffing about. Mary Kenny, that tireless spokesperson for mediaeval bigotry, recently defended the insane practice of splurging out on bogus high society weddings, which has now spread to normal people, who probably shouldn't be spending fifteen grand on a day out. "Every woman should be queen for a day," she wrote. Female columnists generally condemn men as childish but it's apparently all right for women to torch an insane amount of money so they can pretend to be a fairy tale princess for one day. If I had decided to spend fifteen to twenty grand on drink and drug abuse, which may indeed have happened, although not in one day, I would be listening to the usual crap about being selfish or irresponsible or unfit to bring my own children up. I suppose Mary Kenny will also be relishing the six months of misery preceding a wedding. Lists, rows, stress, fruitless dieting, shopping, tears and finally!: the shearing off a man's balls in front of his peers. I take it all back. The symbolic de-bollocking probably makes the whole thing worthwhile. Geezer is saying something about us seeing more of each other. After all he has been through he wants to try monogamy once more. Perhaps that’s why he asked me to this wedding. I’ll leap into his arms and let him carry me off to a life of constant worry about imminent arrest and long custodial sentences. Just because we have good sex. I don’t think so, dear. I am drinking a Virgin Mary and trying not to think about drink, drugs or casual sex. Or love or indeed anything else I need more than the marriage of two grinning idiots, which is what I've got. "When did a man last arrange a marriage?" Geezer is asking, before finally noticing I’m not exactly dancing on the tables with glee. "Are you all right, babe?" "Of course I'm all right!" I snap, then remember you're not supposed to sear someone's hair off with a reply. "Sorry," I say. And order yet another Virgin Mary. It's only spiced tomato juice but, whatever I'm using, I always need more of it. More, right now!  I stop only when I've had too much. Geezer is starting to look concerned about the state I'm in. Sympathy from Geezer hurts more than anything else. I'm supposed to be patronising him. "Men used to propose," I reply, remembering men on bended knees. Men in restaurants hiding rings in souffles. It happens in the movies. Some men must have proposed once upon a time, surely? In my childhood. In a fairy story perhaps. I had to ask my ex to marry me. He said yes straight away but it's not the same, is it? Some handsome prince he was. "I don't know anyone who has proposed," says Geezer. "Anyone except women, of course."   "Why did you keep getting married?" I ask. He’s done two stretches already. And the way he’s going he’s going to be an old lag. Stir crazy. Institutionalised. "Love. What else is there to live for? You have to be in love," he says. Christ, he's going to burst into song in a minute. Just as long as he doesn't tap dance on the tables. "How can you live without love?" he says, spreading his arms. "Love is the answer.  And we have to bring up children. Somehow." H'mm. Who is this 'we'? If we are talking about child care it usually isn't Geezer. Well, I'm familiar with the problem. You can't do much parenting when you don't actually live there any more. And then the twit who caused this situation says, "You don't care about the children." More grinning and actual, genuine happiness from the wedded ones and I switch to vodka. It doesn't help. I just get more sentimental about the happy couple. And all the other people who were still in couples. The drinks come round again and again. We dance. We laugh. Then I had a few lines with Geezer. And some more with someone else. The champagne started to flow. Then some bad things happened. I don't remember so I can't tell you about them. Vomit may have been involved but I'm nearly sure it wasn't mine. I won't get invited to the happy couple's next weddings anyway. Should they be silly enough to marry again after the inevitable divorce. I suspect it was something worse though. Perhaps involving a blow job given to the bloke who gave me some extra big, fat lines. Perhaps deep throating made me throw up. Which is not lady like. I don't process cocaine well. I don't like my behaviour on it. That's why I never buy it. Something happened because I've never seen Geezer that angry. He said he’d spank me when and if I ever sobered up, long and hard, good and proper. I told him he wouldn't because he's a poof. I remember him speaking very quietly when he said my bottom would be red raw, I remember getting wet, then frightened because he meant it. He was cold-eyed yet a little sad, as if it really was that old cliche, he didn't want to do it but I needed to be taught a lesson. He told me it wasn't going to be sexy, not at all. He didn't answer me as we waited for a taxi. Then he poured me into the cab and paid the driver.    "You're a fucking disgrace!" he thundered. I started giggling which made his face go even redder. Then he resorted to his standby mode, "Fuck off, you cunt!"   I finally shocked a man who was once top boy for a leading hooligan firm. Good for me. GAY MARRIAGE. DO ME A FAVOUR. I’m alone, sniffly from drug withdrawal and self-pity and have no recall how the flat got this foul. After cleaning up blood and various other bodily fluids from all over my flat I hate myself for a while. Then I hate some other people. I throw up yet again then pour my last bottle of champagne down the sink. I take to my bed to drug myself with television, the only thing my bruised battered body can take. My brain can’t quite take this though: the Gays are still clamouring for marriage. Civil Partnership isn't enough. This from the one sector of society who can do whatever the fuck they want, whenever they want. Are you quite sure, guys?  Oh well, more lambs to the slaughter. And more money for the sex workers who will be required to keep the show on the road. When monogamy palls. Which it will. Just had to take a break to have a little weep. I miss My Man Max. Postcards aren't enough. I want all of him. Next to me. Inside me. Not just the occasional e-mail.   Here’s his latest postcard. Milan. “Wish you were here. You’d look so good in this season’s clothes. It’s all Gypsy chic.” I thought that was last year but maybe the Italians are doing it again. Who cares? A heterosexual man who is interested in what his lover wears? And not just in the sense of ‘shining up the trophy wife’.  What fresh heaven is this? “I yearn to be with you. Not long now, my darling.” Bring it on, buster. The sooner, the better. I’m happy for at least…two minutes. Is that as good as it gets? Fleeting happiness about something that hasn’t actually happened. It really is better to travel hopefully. Arrival is for suckers. PHILIP LARKIN: BALD GIT SURROUNDED BY WEDLOCK JUNKIES Time they made heterosexuality legal, grumbled Philip Larkin, complaining about some namby-pamby liberal outrage, probably the abolition of the death penalty for sodomy. "But they have made it legal," said one of the wedlock junkies he was embroiled with. "It's called marriage." A bit too legal, he grumbled. He was afraid to die so spent about fifty years avoiding life. He was afraid of marriage so got trapped in several love affairs simultaneously, all of them stickier than marriages, where at least the boredom factor is such that you can get your head down for a good snooze. Marriage used to mean thirty years kip where you didn't have to worry about courtship or looking good. You had to remember anniversaries and endure family visits and you could be somewhere else most of the time anyway. Listen to me. Rewriting history so that marriage, which drove me mad, or madder, seems like a workable solution. I would marry My Man Max of course. But he won't do it till I clean up. Even then he might baulk at the responsibility of having children. Which he might in any case want to have with someone else. Someone who isn't a drug addict. Or a sex worker. Which is why I find myself, after a very shaky, weepy day in bed, entering one of the city branches of Narcotics Anonymous. It's a room at the back of a church. The ceiling does not cave in as I walk in. The Great Whore of Babylon has been welcomed back into the fold - if I want it, which I'm not quite sure just yet. This time might be different though. I'm going to get a sponsor, do it properly. I'm not supposed to tell you what happens in here but I don't see why I shouldn't. I'm still serious about cleaning up. Which is going to get me my son back. And My Man Max. We'll get married. Which will certainly teach him a lesson. Any day now. HOW I MET MY MAN MAX I was a cocktail pianist on a cruise ship. Circling the Mediterranean, playing Cole Porter tunes while fending off advances from guys old enough to be my grandfather. In general, young people can't afford to go on cruises so you're stuck with retired people - the bereaved and the lonely. (Not a bad title for a soap opera. ) It wasn't unusual for a passenger to croak and then be wheeled off at dawn. Wouldn't want to spoil the fun for the other doddering pleasure seekers. My mother is one of these golden age gadabouts, a real Saga lout.  Never happier when herded onto a coach with a load of people she doesn't know in order to travel hundreds of miles to look at other old ruins. Perhaps she has been reading too much Jack Kerouac. A Mediterranean cruise can be entrancing - at first. Eventually the perfect sunsets and imperfect passengers start to grate. Even in two week doses this can quickly become irritating, seeing the world's beauty spots through a haze of Ouzo - the cheapest available anaesthetic. "Excuse me, is this seat taken?" An educated English voice. Deep and confident. I turned to look into an intelligent suntanned face, not unlike Superman but with a touch of wickedness. This might have been because he was dressed as a pirate, (Pirates! Excuse me while I swoon...) but then the costume didn’t quite suit him. He looked and sounded too straight. No, he had a bad boy gleam in his eye, all the more attractive for his aura of wealth and intelligence. But his hair was cut short enough for a Hollywood Golden Age hero - the sort of man who could fly a plane,  rescue a fair maiden and swing across a room from the nearest chandelier. This was the first time he painted his lustrous image on my retina was worthy of all the superlatives you've got - and a side order of fries. Tall, confident smile, enough muscles to bulk out his silly frilly shirt  pirate's outfit he was wearing  but not enough to mark him as a gay gym bunny. Or insufferably vain. He must have known he was handsome, as the mirror would show him a male model's face every day, but it was soon clear that he somehow managed to forget this when conversing with the rest of the human race. Perhaps it was easier for him as there was a full moon. I was also fully drunk.  He would have looked just as scrumptious even without the champagne cocktails.   We sat. We talked. We strolled on the deck. I played the piano for him and he came up with some intelligent requests. A visit to a Rat Pack show had converted him to sophisticated songs so his enthusiasm for my set was genuine. As were the hungry kisses we exchanged. Things might have got really rude except my idiot cabin mate Serena Smart happened along the top deck just as he was about to slip a hand inside my skirt. Least I hope he was. I was stood on tip toes squirming myself against him so he had certainly been encouraged to be a little less gentlemanly and a little more piratical. As it was we just talked and swapped numbers. Before swapping London numbers and a chaste kiss good night.     "He’s perfect," I later sighed, no longer conscious that the Ouzo was talking for me. "Oh my God! He's really got to you!" gloated Serena Smart, the least appropriately named person I have ever met.  She was dumb as dung and about as calming as the young Ruby Wax, and just as likely to find tension or neurosis where none had previously existed. "Oh my God! My period's ten minutes late!" "Oh my God! Mercury's gone retrograde!" "Oh my God! I've got skin cancer!" "Oh my God! Oh my GOD!!" Yet another redundant American import. Anyone who uses it should be shot at dawn. The blindfold should be converted to a gag. For we know all too well, what their last words will be. I might be spending too much time on this pen portrait of Serena Smart, but that is what the Goddess wished that summer. Far too much Serena and far too little of My Man Max. Perhaps some of my passion was having to wait several weeks before the first date. But it was mostly him: head, shoulders and everything else above his rivals.   FISTING A SOLDIER BEFORE LUNCH   I’m clean and sober – just. Still in the white knuckle phase. Holding on grimly. Expecting to be blasted off deck by a typhoon of anger and resentment any day soon. At least concerned Christians are trying to help me. I have little leaflets full of brainwashing mantras from NA, and straight people ringing me constantly to repeat various magic words. I suppose it’s like being a teenage Satanist. You can still wear black but things get better instead of worse. I have survived one day of no drink and no drugs. However, sixty meetings in sixty days is recommended. That’s as may be. I have an ex-soldier to fist. Oh well. I am steeped in sin. Doused in depravity. Won't anybody save me from this life of torment? Priests, politicians and journalists all condemn sex workers - while using their services as often as they can afford. They are paid liars. I tell the truth, even while I'm working. And I am ethical. People come to me claiming they wish to experience extreme humiliation, pain and torture. 24/7 slavery is a common yearning. People so frazzled by the demands of contemporary life that they want someone else in charge - for ever.   Why am I telling you all this? Because NA is making me feel guilty? Surely not… So. My clients come to me for a vital transformation, a fierce life affirming ecstasy in many cases. So what if they’re addicted to me or to ratcheting up their sex drive. Although, it has to be said that some of these people hate themselves. They ask for services that couldn't possibly do anyone any good. They make me feel queasy and I'm used to these sordid requests. Am I ‘chem’ friendly? Because it's not enough to have someone rootle around inside your tightest orifice with a number of bulky objects. They want to be hopelessly trashed too. Then there's the people who want to discuss 'yellow' and 'brown' - which I don't deal in. "Have you thought of seeing a psychiatrist?" I feel like saying. "Have you thought of a hobby which would get you out in the fresh air? What about Canoeing? Or Mini-golf?" But that would be foolish. I sometimes persuade them to have sex that is good for them. Rather than the hideous torture they imagine they want. Today’s pre-lunch service was typical. It was quite a sight: a fit, chunky squaddie on all fours, naked, hairy and covered in cheap, faded old school tattoos. His 1950's gents haircut hadn't been seen in London for a decade - unless on a visitor from the frozen north. He was gagging to be fisted. But it was soon clear that the ex-soldier, a veteran of two horrible wars and several fierce Dominatrices, could not take more than a few of my fingertips. He was scrupulously clean, and eager, but he could only take a sound knuckling, fisting was out of the question.   “Jesus!” he kept saying, at which point I realised I had been mistaking his groans of agony for signs of pleasure. Well, at the present rate of progress towards fisting it would have been the next millennium before I  got my fist in. This from a man who has faced Iraqi tanks and friendly fire from Americans. Or, as he put it, "Friendly fire? Murder, more like...". Oddly enough this tough guy, not a strap-on virgin -  was in agony after just three of my knuckles. Memo to fledgling sex workers: they don't like it up 'em. Even if they say they do. By kinder, gentler means I got him off eventually and we sat down for a good old heart to heart. As his conversation is actually interesting, and not a series of ludicrous boasts about his job, possessions or sexual prowess, he gets close to being an ideal client.   He's good looking too. So why does this young man, a genuine hero, have to pay for sex?  Because his wife/girlfriend/significant other won't be dirty. For some reason far too many people are squeamish about sex games that turn a lot of people on. Oh well, more money for us sex workers. Jerry, my ideal, is clean, courteous and punctual. I couldn't possibly fall for him but then I don't want to. I've already got enough unrequited love for a lifetime. I won't need any more. Jerry was a squaddie and is now doing something just as dangerous where you get paid properly. It's something industrial, too dull to describe. He told me but it was like listening to my mother talk about gardening so I couldn't retrieve it even with hypnosis or truth drugs. It's something to do with trying to stop industrial fires breaking out. Then risking his life to put said fires out. For which he gets a fraction of what anyone in PR gets for selling us reality show celebrities and Pete Doherty. He had claimed to be big and burly and so he was. Burly as the proverbial brick outhouse and just as solidly built. There was also a spare tyre which he had constructed from fry-ups and lager but that's real men for you. It's rare to find a six pack on straight men, although they're standard issue on Muscle Marys. His new job was less exciting. He told me but it was like listening to my mother talk about gardening so it probably couldn't even be retrieved by hypnosis or truth drugs.  It’s something hazardous and industrial, trying to stop fires breaking out.   Twenty minutes into his combat experiences and I was starting to feel a profound, all-embracing contempt for our rulers. The  Christian Prime Minister who sent him to war, who claims his full expenses allowance for a house he doesn't even live in, In his constituency, where he rarely goes. This is not illegal - just stomach churning when the same man is happy to throw council estate women in jail for minor infringements of the tax credit system, which is in any case impossible to understand even - especially - if you're administering it. Listen to me. This isn’t Panorama. Or Newsnight. (“Go Jezza!”) Now Paxo could sort me out. He could give me a right imperial stuffing. And I’d make him less grumpy. He just hasn’t met the right woman yet. Speaking of The One, the illusion we all have that some perfect partner could sort us out, Squaddie was once really annoyed because some mad women could only keep up 24/7 slavery for week before packing it in for something like marriage. Where is that implacable harridan who will reign over the slaves eternally? Well, it certainly isn't me. Up to my old tricks of trying to get subs to stand on their own two feet. "I want to be humiliated, given CBT and forced oral," they say. I give them what they want of course. But very gently subverting their expectations. Liberal Democrat Domming. Making suggestions. Which we all know are sensible. Unfortunately most people still prefer power-mad dictators, which his why there are way too many submissives and not enough dominants. Maybe that’s because the submissives have most of the fun. Who, given a choice, wouldn’t rather lie down and let someone else do all the work? Unfortunately many of the dominants are twisted fucks who just want revenge. Absolute power does corrupt absolutely. If you do venture to a fetish club you will see some extremely spiteful domming, often done to make some fat cow feel better about herself. Maybe what I do is anarcho-s/m. If that kindergarten political term didn't conjure up beards, vegetarianism  and communal body odour. I'm offering tyranny-free fisting. And proper cafetiere coffee afterwards. Let's call it egalitarian power play...it's exciting but no tears before bedtime. I tell my client all this and more. Till his eyes glaze. "Oh no! I've got to get to IKEA," he says, glancing at his watch. "Taking your wife?" I asked, silkily, meaning, 'your wife must be dragging you there. I hope she's in an especially indecisive mood'. "Nah! You don't want women along, do you? Everywhere you go they're saying 'That's nice. Let's buy that. That's nice.' You'd never get out of there." Well. Really! I suppose I should thank him for his refreshing candour. He's on his feet now, chaste peck on the cheek, the door's open and there's his back. Shouldn't have opened my mouth. He just wanted an excruciating pain in the arse. Not my life story. MY MAN MAX: ROMANCE IS ALSO A FETISH Romance is also a fetish. I keep my love for My Man Max fresh by preserving a few holy relics. I have a shirt of his I never washed. There's still a trace of his scent, his body blend of coriander deodorant and manly musk. Some girlies look good in their man's shirt. He's much bulkier than me, burlier than the proverbial brick out house, so I look like a kid dressing up in Daddy's clothes. Looking at him I can hear his voice, smell his mix of very little Calvin Klein Eternity, sweat, sex musk and enough testosterone for the average Rugby team. (Actually, as Rubgy players seem to spend a lot of time getting drunk and showing each other their bottoms perhaps I should withdraw that libel.). He's so masculine even a unisex after shave can't make you question his sexuality. It's been a decade since there was an advertising campaign which pushed attractive Alpha male sexuality at the public. If the self-hating Soho admen ever wanted to follow up on their Gillette campaign ('The best a man can get') they could just hire Max. He's conventionally handsome, also rugged enough to earn respect from other men. He goes to work in a crisp white shirt where he earns lots of money. The only thing's missing from that earlier ad is a baby to dandle on his knee. I'd have his children. Maybe not just yet. but then I don't think I'm ready. And neither does Max. Which may be why he's constantly driving around rich men's playgrounds like Monaco and St Tropez. Maybe he wants an heiress. Or a model. Or, gulp. someone younger than me? Say it ain't so. FISTING TIPS FROM SCARLET FEVER AND MISS PLUM    I’m two-timing my girlfriends. Scarlet Fever is in one instant message box and Miss Plum is in the other. Like a typical addict I have to have too much of everything. One brilliant online conversationalist just isn’t enough. It has to be a threesome. I have been intimate with them both for the regulation two times each – once at their place and once at my home. Which is polite, I think. Anything more would be too needy or smacking of lesbianism, which, as Dame Edna points out, always leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. They both taste wonderful, all over, front and back, but it’s better to have friends than lovers. Leads to less bloodshed. They both courteously listen to me wittering on about My Man Max for a few sentences each. I try to restrain my from telling Scarlet Fever to take her anti-anxiety medication for the hundredth time. And fail. Which always makes her upset. But what can you say to a terminally anxious person who has a six quid a month cure for anxiety sitting unused in her bathroom cabinet? Maybe she’s too anxious to take it. Whether sixty fags and a gallon of tea are an adequate alternative is debatable. Then Miss Plum informs me that one of her many men has taken offence over some triviality.  “Is that the blog where you called him a self-pitying wanker?” I ask. “Honestly! He won’t talk to me now. Some people…” She’s joking but not really. Many people’s default setting is now transmit rather than receive. Miss Plum is set to World Service Broadcast. Here is the news. There is the public blog – scandalous enough to destroy reputations, careers and marriages. And there is the private blog. Intimate details – length, width, distinguishing marks, whether Madame gushed or not. (Female Ejaculation, this season’s must have) Funny noises her vibrator is making as it reaches the end of its useful life. (Probably groans of relief as they head for the knacker’s yard. If she rides her rabbits as hard as she rides her men.) Some say you can judge the insanity of a woman by the number of her cats. Miss Plum is a two-catter. Not incurable but definitely on the sick list.   It’s the usual dichotomy. I’m the hardest Domme bitch on earth. But I’d give it up instantly for a real man. Meanwhile any real men who may be lurking about are on their third divorce and unable to fund her corset and shoes habit. Not to mention Breakfast at Tiffanys, with matching jewelery, real leather and real furs, caviar and everything else out of season. If it’s expensive she wants it. She’s one of the most efficient money-torching systems I have ever seen, enough to make the most fat-headed, fat-walletted city boy slink off home, credit card hid somewhere dark and inaccessible. Although knowing her wicked way with a strap-on there won’t be much point hiding valuables where the sun don’t shine. Scarlet Fever, in the other message box is complaining that no one will treat her as a lady. I once saw her orally pleasured (‘licked out’ as she would have it, the mucky mare) on a dance floor. I’ve lost touch with the Tatler crowd, Society and all that archaic nonsense, but as far as I’m aware that’s still thought to be a faux pas. However, anyone would react the same given enough pure mdma and ghb. She’s hauntingly beautiful, but also haunted. Early on I tried exorcising her – love, massage, sympathy - but it’s a job for a professional. Call Ghostbusters. Or the Vatican. They might know someone who can handle the job. What the ensorcelled see are: big blue eyes, hollow cheeks, bones impatient to rip through their thin flesh coat. Enormous red lips. Do we need a female Mick Jagger? Well, we’ve got one now. Her blonde hair and prominent cheekbones also recall Kate Moss - before she’s been crusted with make up. Before she’s been retouched. Council house siren. In which there is no shame: Mummy and Daddy didn’t give her a flat in Chelsea so she’s marooned somewhere tubeless, where hoodies cluster like poisonous mushrooms. Then there’s the child, beautiful, intelligent, but also a little vampire sucking her future away. No wonder she goes for it whenever she can get out. Last night I saw her suck a man as porn stars do. The difference being the man - no porn star, far from it - yelped as his pierced equipment was strongly sucked throatwards then disgorged then all the way back again before he could find the breath to protest. Easy, partner. Steady as she goes. I can’t do normal sex in public, or, making love if you want to be girly about it. But I can watch. It’s a little bit like watching people dance. Do they know what they look like? Would they do it like that if they had seen themselves? Even our sex play now comes from pornography rather than from…well, what should it come from? We have to learn somewhere.   Martin Amis, Little Miss Bossyboots, has a typically pretentious phrase for this. ‘The obscenification of everything.’ Which is clunky. I know he’s being deliberately ugly, apparently proof of being cleverer than everyone else, but the phrase itself is obscene. Anyway, the old dear is referring to sexual overkill in the media and the general public’s rude clothes, behaviour and language. Some of which might be justified. Much as I hate the entire Jade Goody clan I couldn’t see the benefit of Big Brother showing a mother footage of a young man orgasming onto her daughter. Or showing it to us. It’s almost enough to send you back to Jane Bleeding Austen.    “What about me?!” screams Miss Plum, who isn’t used to be being ignored.  Sorry. Kicking and screaming to be let out of the other message box is Miss Plum. I’m sure she won’t mind me saying this (“Yes, I bloody will”) but she is a lady of fuller figure. She’s ample. Sufficient for a good slap-up meal. Having gorged on her lovely big titties for a luscious hour or so I feel I can say that. As my mother was a cold, small, thin, thin-lipped misery it’s nice to be able to suck on the breasts of a woman whose laugh can shatter glass. I wouldn’t ring her up if you have a hangover – or at least hold the receiver a little way from your ear if you do. I tell Scarlet Fever about this fisting fiasco. She has to one-up me of course. "Kinky Steve prolapsed last night." "Nice," I message back. In America people are routinely called assholes. Kinky Steve practically is an asshole, an ever-ready anus, an orifice, a hungry, dark void waiting to be filled. He spends about an hour with an enema bag before venturing out so this process is not as distasteful as you might think. He's as clean as a whistle - one which had had an extremely thorough enema and a bloody good polish afterwards. Even so. It might be some time before Martha Stewart, queen of graceful living, does a programme on the correct rubber gloves to wear for fisting. ("Elbow length of course, if a thing is worth doing it's worth doing well!")   "Me and Miss Plum did him." "At the same time?" "Yeah. We shook hands inside his bottom. It was an amazing feeling," "It took guts, I suppose." Sorry. James Bond might have said it, I suppose. One day, when they get round to showing prolapsing onscreen he probably will. Although the only way anything so gross could get on a cinema screen would be if it had have been caused  non-consensually. Anal rape or any other form of torture is fine. Anal sex is usually not allowed or has to be part of some grueling ordeal - Brando in Last Tango, spilling his guts metaphorically as he reached inside for his real childhood traumas, just as Maria Schneider was invading his ass.  Apparently people are stretchered out of Chuck Pahlinuik's readings of Guts, a story where a masturbating teenager meets a gruesome fate after some anal play with a suction pipe. Hope I didn't spoil this important cultural experience for someone. Perhaps they shouldn't let so many nerds into his readings. Perhaps this culture should grow out of horror as a genre and the diversity of sex could be celebrated. Next thing I will be telling you it would be nice if the President of the free world could speak English. Or if there was a cure for cancer. Or if men and women could get on. Then we'd all be pointlessly happy. What would God have to laugh at? SUN OR MOON WORSHIP? SECRETS OF THE GREAT WRITERS   Fledgling writers are sometimes keen to learn the daily routines of professionals. Perhaps if they lived in the South of France and wrote three hundred and fifty words a day before getting pissed and shagging other people's wives, occasionally confessing their sins before committing them again as soon as possible, they would be Graham Greene - The Shit in the Chateau as Philip Larkin called him. Jeremy Reed, a pervy poet who dabbles in erotica, starts every day by raising his pen to the sun, perhaps an attempt to draw its fire. His poems are very good although I wouldn't know where to put myself if I saw him live, apparently he throws tinsel in the air between verses. He wears make up, digs gender bender pop and has been described as an 'effete pseud' by none other than Andrew Motion, the most boring poet laureate in history, the dullard who blackened Larkin's reputation by depicting him as some sort of Hull-based Jack The Ripper. (he liked spanking magazines and had more than one girlfriend. Move over Caligula...) Reed has also written some supercharged pulp for lunatic fringe publishers Creation - most of whose books reads like an orgy in an abattoir - but it is his dedication to his art that interests me. He writes poetry every single day in multi-coloured inks, the more lurid the better. (Greens, reds, purples. Maybe someone should make him some perfumed ink.)   I always preferred the moon to the sun but I'm not keen on creeping about the garden holding up pens at the dead of night. I thought of wiping my keyboard with a pair of Eva Vortex's knickers which still smell of her perfume. (Bought off her website. If anyone's wondering about a grown woman behaving like a fanboy she is well worth a look. If you like impossibly beautiful transsexual fetish Goddesses...) She was my desk wallpaper for a while. I do have a model of Thoth, the Egyptian God of writing blue-tacked to my keyboard, come to think of it.  (Which may be as, er, eccentric as Mr Reed.) And a fat lot of fucking good he's been to me, the beak-faced berk. ("Is this wise? Insulting the oldest God of writing?") I take that back and from now on I shall raise my pen to the moon-topped Thoth every day. Before surfing around aimlessly for the next sixteen hours, squeezing out the occasional sentence, which is more likely to be pervery than poetry and giving up as often as possible. MARTIN AMIS: BREASTS OR BOTTOMS? Apologies for returning to the Priss Prince once more but he was my husband’s favourite, also a stick he used to beat me. I might have been a published writer but my husband had read Gabriel Garcia Marquez (although not since university) and kept on with Martin Amis even through the embarrassments of Night Train and Yellow Dog. This meant he was qualified to tell me where I was going wrong.   Mart’s latest ribtickler is a tragic novel set in the Russian Gulag. Having tired of using the Holocaust to show off he is apparently still desperate for posthumous fame as ever. Choosing this very serious subject helped win him a more respectful reception this time, in addition to being much better written than any other recent fiction. Thankfully he can still write about the physical attractions of women, something he has experienced unlike the Holocaust  the Gulag. As usual there are many excellent sentences and great gallows humour. “Two youngish prisoners strolled past at a donnish pace, one with his hands clasped behind his back, the other ponderously gesturing. “All I care about in the end, the second man was saying, “is tits.’ “No, said the other. “No, not tits. Arses.’ “ The book contains further evidence that Mart, like his father, prefers breasts to bottoms. There is a delightful new way of praising the fuller figure. The narrator’s object of desire is described as resembling the Americas, two huge land masses separated by Panama, a very thin waist. One reviewer interpreted this as a Brazilian bottom and Californian breasts. Even if this is yet another Nabokov retread we can always do with a new way to worship the female form. Page Three stunners don’t do it for me but this does, “When she walked everything swayed. When she laughed, everything shook. When she sneezed- you felt that absolutely anything might happen.” Otherwise, it feels too much like a lecture. Mart’s been to the library. Good for him. And a novel hinging on a letter somebody decides not to read for decades may make Professors of Literature swoon but is surely essentially bogus – for those of us with more pressing problems than which heiress to marry next. However, the words sing and at least it reminds us to quit bellyaching. So I’m a drug-addicted sex worker who’s missing her son. At least I’m not doing thirty years next to the arctic circle.   MY MAN MAX: NUDE EXCEPT FOR A WING COLLAR AND BOW TIE Another of the holy relics, a photo of My Man Max nude except for a wing collar and bow tie. He's serving me breakfast in bed; fresh smoked salmon, cream cheese and champagne, begels. He is curtseying and pouting in imitation of some dumb waitress yet still manages to retain his masculinity: perhaps due to the dangling dick, still wet with my juices. I didn't have to feminise My Man Max. He was already emotionally literate. Maybe because he races fast cars and earns a fortune, in an industry which reveres caveman behaviour, he can occasionally let me be in charge. Although, ultimately, we both know he is top dog. And I'm his bitch. (actually a pretty poodle with a pink ribbon and a diamond collar.) Whereas he is secure enough to pamper me without seeming too subservient the clients haven't a clue.   The cruel irony for sexual slaves is that their fawning idolatry quickly cloys. It also devalues them as people, how often do you revere the person who begs to kiss your ring or drink your wee (Goddess Juice, as it is sometimes dignified)? Added to which many slaves have not looked after what little Mother Nature gave them. I don't know why all slaves over a certain age tend to be unappealing fat fucks but it sometimes seems as if there is a factory churning them out. Perhaps they're trained like Sumo wrestlers, three hour breakfasts then a little light exercise before another heart busting chow down. Except those guys are tough. Slaves tend to be just lard buckets, neither use nor ornament. Unfortunately these are usually the first men to disrobe in a fetish club, very soon nude except for a cock ring through which some very unexceptional genitals have been threaded. It is distressing that they should publicly masturbate. It is tragic that they should do it while wearing sandals.    I put the photos back in the wooden box, think about mounting them in a special photo album, then get sidetracked thinking about mounting My Man Max. The longer he’s away the worse it gets. He’s the disease and he’s the cure. And it’s always too long till the next fix. A THREESOME WITH MIKE TYSON It’s risky doing out calls but then drugs don’t buy themselves and I have been getting through a great deal of sparkle lately. I arrive at Feeble in Fulham's flat and find it is covered in kitschy poetry, framed and hung at eye level. . "I wrote those," he tells me. "I'm a poet." "Really? What do you think of Philip Larkin?" I ask. "I'm better than him," he says, with no trace of irony or indeed of intellect. He's a poet. Although there's no poetry books to be seen in the flat or indeed any other books, magazines or newspapers. "I wrote several books," I tell him. Which is true. And someone else published them. I didn't have to print them page by page and then hang them at eye level. He has absolutely no interest in this, of course. But then poets are spectacularly nuts, even by writer standards. This is the dolt who told me he has a 'great body'. Perhaps this is poetic license. The 'great body' turns out to be a fair amount of unstructured flab and a lot of body hair, some of it grey. Presumably it feels 'great' to him. I take out my rattan canes while he talks, sterilise them in front of him. He tells me his disciplinary fantasies. I resolve to fulfill them. It soon becomes clear that he can't even bend over without looking like a collapsing sack of cement. He eventually kneels on his bed while I very gently cane his white doughy buttocks. He can barely take anything above the warm-up. Very quickly he’s into age regression. He then wants some anal rummaging which I don't particularly fancy as he was too tight to pay for it. Incidentally, clients, whining is neither endearing or an effective negotiating technique. There's always 'Tyson' though. This black buttplug is as thick as it's vicious, as broad as it's long. Just the job for some punitive anal massage. I have it wrapped and lubed and distending the dolt's rear doorway before he can raise a whimper of protest. There are some moments of deep pleading but even this can't make a man without an erection come. Thirty-Nine? Fifty-something, more like. He asks for a hug. I seriously consider ramming Tyson down his throat but manage some maternal comfort - that is to say, a brief bony clinch and some cold, thin-lipped disapproval. Then it's time to vanish. The cab arrives. He lives near a football ground. Which gives me a rare opportunity to see a lot of men with terrible bodies, hair styles and clothes all drunk together. Perhaps my client was right. Compared to this lot he does have 'a good body'. My therapist told me I had many unreasonable demands. Although none were as unreasonable as his bill. At least I provide my clients with a service - physical and mental therapy which actually works. Shrinks get the same money for nodding occasionally and cultivating foul beards which are in themselves grounds for committal. But maybe it's me who needs the strait jacket. What right do I have to attractive clients? In any case, who needs physical beauty when I met a poet who's much better than Philip Larkin? And we had a threesome with Mike Tyson... TATTOOS, BLACK MAGIC. SHAMANISM   Trying to write with blue ink instead of black is an insult to the creamy white paper in this Moleskine notebook. I’ve gone to all the trouble of finding a purple slub silk notebook to write in, with pages as soft and tempting as Miss Plum’s bum. Blue ink just doesn’t have the dark majesty required. I suppose red ink would leave marks a little similar to those left by a whipping. Perhaps I should get a custom made flail with my signature in the tip. I could sign my name with each whip stroke. A small brand to sizzle my signatures into a nice, juicy rump might also seem like a good idea except that it’s pointlessly cruel and brands expand and fade. They’re more trouble than they’re worth unless you’re some sort of Modern Primitive fanatic, never happier except when wearing nine heavy constricting neck rings or undergoing the Native American Sun Bear ceremony. Is this the appropriate time to relate that a tattooist I knew underwent suspension from a tree by hooks in his bare flesh – after being starved beforehand. He experienced many religious revelations during a day of ecstatic transcendence. He also saw a huge McDonalds sign written across the sky. And eventually became a heroin addict. So much for the healing power of Native American tree hanging. Actually, it’s a relief to know it doesn’t work, at least not permanently. I didn’t fancy having my back forever scarred by bloodthirsty savages. (Surely ‘Native American Shamans?’ Diversity Ed.)  I finally stopped my collections of tattoos and piercings before it threatened to get out of my hand. I’ve already had enough to make my mother cry, I’m glad to say. I’ve got a red dragon on one arm, fiery crimson actually. It’s leery and lurid, lively enough to breathe eyebrow-singeing fire all over you, There’s a small phoenix on the other side of my forearm. We found out that the dragon and phoenix symbolise yin and yang in China after we had done them, which we found enchanting, having done far too much acid and E that year. Well, there’s more but the most vitally transformative tatt was definitely replacing a wristwatch with a moon tattoo, inside a red triangle, afloat on foaming blue waves. This was borrowed from Aleister Crowley’s tarot deck. It’s brought me closer to the Dark MoonGoddess who rules my life but has made me a little lax regarding punctuality – what the boringly rational sometimes refer to as ‘late.’ Oh well. Just another addiction to add to the list. MY MAN MAX: WILL SVETLANA SEDUCE HIM? Another photo. Shirtless, well defined pectorals waxed perfectly smooth, face handsome enough for a bum boy model except for that intriguing scar. We have just made love. He's smiling confidently at me. A bottle of champagne in an ice bucket, champagne flutes on a silver tray, Debussy on the stereo, Is he too good to be true? Well, if he spent less time abroad on business or risking his life with fast cars he probably would be. He is still a man though. A bloody nuisance who won't listen to what is good for him. Which is a little more domesticity and a little less playing the field. Do I detect infidelity in certain sheepish smiles? Pauses a millisecond too long before replies to certain searching questions? Love is a flame that sometimes burns too bright. Or maybe My Man Max is too hot to handle.   Should I spy on him? No I shouldn't. I might not like what I find. You're quite right. It would be a most foolish thing to do. Dangerous and foolish. I ring Svetlana and tell her she can have a few hundred quid for expenses. All she has to do is try to pick up My Man Max. She doesn't say, "You're crazy. You're going to ruin your relationship." She then screws another fifty quid out of me. "I drink only the best champagne darling," she says. I give in, resolving to cane her all the harder when next we play. Although considering that is what she insists upon this it will won't be much of a revenge. Good therapy for me though. What if she does seduce him? I'll forgive him if he tells me. But I'll ditch him if he doesn't.   WHATEVER HAPPENED TO YOUR TWELVE STEP THERAPY? Well, you’re not supposed to tell anyone about it. Plus it’s quite hard. Never mind giving up drink and drugs, they want you to be happy. Happy? They do. I’m not making it up. Then there’s all this forgiving people. And the confessing. How am I supposed to confess to conspiracy to murder? To my sponsor, a nice woman who probably reads Catherine Cookson and watches The Bill? Actually I could do with a surrogate mother. To replace the real one who was usually bit busy. Or more in need of help than I was. “What about relationships?” my sponsor asks.   Is this the moment to tell her I have two boyfriends and two girlfriends? Or that I’m bisexual? From what I’ve seen of NA it’s probably never the moment to tell them you’re sexual, never mind bisexual, or a sex worker who engages in sex for fun. They prefer you to give up sex, sorry, relationships for two years. Perhaps I could up my dose of anti-depressants enough to switch off my sex drive. It may well be the only solution for some people, as emotional hangovers are as painful as any other kind. Teenage Susie – my inner brat - sometimes points out that modern life only seems to be tenable with one pill to brainwash you into happiness, at the cost of switching your sex drive off, and twelve step to control whatever stray hankerings you may have left. But you can’t keep getting high for ever. (“Why not?!” Excuse me, I just have to send teenage Susie up to her room.  After I have smacked her legs. “And I want that room tidying young lady!” Such language! She didn’t learn those words from me.)   So, just for today, I’m not cured. I probably never will be. I’m recovering. There is a twelve step group in America called Emotions Anonymous, for drama queens. Perhaps romantics cut off from their supply should start one here. But the cure is My Man Max, He’s all I need. But he needs his career more than me. Why doesn’t he ask me just to hop on a plane. I’d be good. I wouldn’t cause a fuss. I’m starting to sound like the sub worms who want to live in my hall cupboard. Geezer’s written. Again. There’s some unanswered phone calls too. But he’s chasing me too hard. He’s supposed to be a tough guy not a snivelling wimp. I write My Man Max another email. One that’s a little too angry perhaps. But we can’t go on like this. I can’t anyway. Let’s see how he copes with my suicide, That’ll show him. MY MAN MAX: THE ULTIMATUM The next day Miss Plum rings to discuss Celebrity Big Brother. After a mere quarter hour of energetic babble I'm starting to wonder what she is taking. If it's only anti-depressants I want some. Mine just stop me crying. I could do with this effortless flow of confident chirp.  "...and he absolutely refused to do any of the tasks. Who does he think he is?" She's referring to an actor who may well be hankering after the days when he was paid to act. Now he's stuck in a human zoo where the other inmates are chosen for their freakishness and their bickering skills. Many people can't get enough of this sort of thing. I might have been one of them once but recovery is making me impatient with dumb inadequates. They won't let you read or watch telly in rehab apparently. That's why I'm never going to rehab. You won't get me doing group therapy with a bunch of losers. Which reminds me. It's high time I got to another Narcotics Anonymous meeting. I flick through the list of London meetings while Miss Plum does a passable imitation of an especially repulsive Big Brother inmate, the sort of graceless cretin who gives half the country the chance to feel superior while the pond life can hail her as their Queen.     “She’s a moron. What’s the attraction?” I say. “You’re no fun any more,” she says and the conversation winds down quickly. Am I becoming a therapy bore already? Do I seek ‘growth’? Will the reliance on gossip eventually become something I can pity? And will my only friends be those who recite twelve steps mantras? Speaking of which, I’m not supposed to worry about anything that doesn’t matter. All I have to do is get through to the end of the day. Clean and serene. Or drugged only by radio 4. Opium for the middle class masses. But how can I relax when My Man Max won’t  be honest. I know he wants me. He just won’t say. Or he likes torturing me. Or he’s just a man – an emotional cripple. Preferring to buff up a bonnet rather than share his feelings. Fear. Face Everything And Recover. I’ll write to him. It’s time I apologized for yesterday’s intemperate email anyway.  Never mind I’m not supposed to be having relationships in recovery. I jab my ‘puter awake. She responds slowly and regally, like the haughty bitch she is. (“How dare you call me a ‘puter? I’m a Macbook! And I need more memory!”Don’t we all, darling...)   "My Dearest Max, I cannot bear to be treated in this cold, unfeeling manner. I need a commitment from you. I need to know exactly what our future is. If you don't respond I'm leaving you for..." I can't write 'Geezer' in a text to My Man Max. He already thinks I'm beneath him. Perhaps a sensitive thug called 'Geezer' is just my level. Why don't I use his real name? Because I don't want to go out with anyone called…I can’t tell you. So Geezer it is. He's my bit of rough. And I am now officially my mother, who liked Teddy Boys and Squaddies and builders and just about anyone who wasn't my father. “I’m leaving you for a good, decent man who will look after me. Someone I already know.” There, that will show him. I press send, then  immediately start to yearn for the one invention we all need, a programme which will retrieve unwise emails. The email is a needy embarrassment. But never mind that. I’m nearly my mother. If I settle for Geezer I’m getting off on roughness. Just as he gets an extra bang from banging something posh. Now I’m complaining about two people being successful fuck buddies – which is enough for gay men. Why isn’t it enough for me? Because I want love, romance, moon in June and a man I can trail around the shops with me. Someone who can understand my moods and put up with them. Geezer offers solutions when all I need is sympathy. I suppose he also wants me to be more grown up than I can be. I look in the mirror and check it isn’t my mother looking back. It isn’t. Yet. Mommie dearest. My future. I say no, no, no. This really wasn't the sort of insight I was looking for from sobriety. Let me count the differences between us. She had gin, I have, well, too many substances to list here and a sex addiction which dwarfed hers in addition to being a whore. Sorry for scandalising any sex workers who may be reading this but when I get depressed I tend to call things by their proper names. Mustn't be depressed just because the love of my life isn't replying to texts, calls or e-mails. Well, I don't need a man to fulfill myself in this post-feminist era. So why don't I pick up someone younger, smarter and richer and use him as a plaything for a while? Partly because he probably wouldn't want someone with red-rimmed eyes and a snotty nose. I can't stop crying. During my last binge I forget to renew my anti depressants so I have been living real life these last few days. Regular visits to renew prescription: result happiness. Forgetful ditz gets too loved up to visit doctors: result misery. Misery by the bucketful.     I need Geezer to shag some sense into me. Do I avoid him just because he chases me? If he was aloof I would probably chase him. Is this the depressing truth about the human condition? BAD SEX IN BRIGHTON Two days later and My Man Max hasn’t responded. I decide to succumb to Geezer's blandishments. ("Succumb to my what? You filthy cow...") I'm supposed to spend a weekend at his Brighton flat. Yes, it does sound a bit gay, doesn't it? You can tell him that if you like. I haven't quite plucked up the courage yet. For the moment, even while I am stuffing my strap on up him, we don't make those sort of jokes. Even while he's at the mirror adjusting the hang of his bespoke Savile row suit we don't whisper that only Gays care what they look like. He might well say that gangsters and footballers are often concerned with looking good. Except we both know that they are sometimes familiar with same sex experimentation that would shock their more conservative fans. Well, I don’t want to be the one who makes him snap. Geezer is a mad dog. On a short leash that could break any time. Why do I bother with someone who is clearly deranged, potentially lethal? Well…apart from the rough diamond face, the scars, the tattoos, the tight bum and the big, wide dick, he has lots of money, some of which he spends on me. He doesn't hoard cocaine, which is unusual, he distributes it among his lovers, tarts, and hired hands. Some of these tarts and hired hands are almost as gorgeous as Geezer himself. He’s a good time. And a good fuck. He’s slightly clingy but…then so am I. I must get rid of him though because he will never kick cocaine. I don’t even like it actually but it seems churlish to refuse when he’s chopping it out in front of me. I debate all this and more and then ring him. Which I hate myself for. Even If I haven’t returned the last five calls he’s supposed to be ringing me, damn it. I can hear desire and gratitude and romance in his voice. Also the sound of a pretty useful party. One that needs me to star in it. So I let Twelve Step go and fuck itself, and eventually arrive at his sea view flat to find Geezer with two Asian ladies - no competition as they could barely speak English. Who cares if they're good looking? Those uncomprehending smiles soon grate. And once I’m there they are paid off and packed into a mini cab. “I suppose you’ll want me to be Chinese now. Sweet, girly and unthreatening,” I say.  “Yeah,” he grunts. “Terrible isn’t it? Comfort, consideration and cunt. The lost art of pleasing a man.” “I please you,” I say. “You do. Come on. Please me. Pleasure me.” I nod towards the table. Where a small snowfall awaits my inner addict. I don't like coke but I find it hard to refuse when it's offered. I still can't understand what the fuss is about. A quick, nasty high that's hardly distinguishable from a quintuplet espresso with a plenty of sugar. Having said that I could usually do with a lift so...don't look a gift horse in the mouth. The key is moderate use.   “Don’t take too much you greedy cow,” he says. Charming. But coke whores have no right to dignity. I kneel to prey upon his offering, snuffling up until he slaps my rump hard. “That’s enough!” he says. The growl of authority and the smack on my bottom gets me wet. He’s so impatient that he rips my knickers while removing them. Soon I’m bouncing up and down on him while screaming out ‘Yes!’.   Then I repeat myself. Over and over again. Geezer stays silent. But he’s in hog heaven. Masculinity reinforced. Power tripping. Unaware that he’s my plaything. And that he is expendable. DAY THREE IN THE BIG GEEZER HOUSE   The two of us are still crushed in together, spied on by his security cameras. There’s always the possibility of being voted out at any time, by Big Geezer, so I am very fragile. My breath and body are rank, probably. I don’t care because there is ecstasy, booze and cocaine. We still fuck as he has a never ending supply of viagra to counter the coke. “I’m sore honey,” I tell him, as he pounds away on top of me, unable to come. Unable to do anything much except flog himself and me to more sweat drenched exhaustion. I have had many orgasms but I need a break. “I’ll make you sore, you cock-sucking bitch.” He’d never say that normally. Coke makes good people bad and bad people worse. It engenders evil. It dissolves, money, friendship and love. In small doses it can be the finest thing ever. Who ever took a small dose? When there was more close at hand? And so we come to the end of the stash. Beaten, bruised, about to face a difficult day of come down and guilt and nerves and agony and… “Got to work, babe. I’ll drive you to town.” Geezer is minding someone famous and annoying. Close Protection they call it. Perhaps Bodyguard didn’t sound pretentious enough. Will he fuck her? I’m getting jealous. One communal shower later and he looks strong and sexy. I still look like I should be queueing for the mobile soup kitchen but that’s another one of Mother Nature’s cruel practical jokes. Men recover quicker. Perhaps that’s why we women conspire against them so often. They have it too easy. ABI TITMUSS: PAGAN SUN GODDESS. GERMAINE GREER: GRUMPY GRANNY I’m weepy and coming down from E and coke. Needing a laugh and some human warmth I ring Robbie up. Shame our bodies never fitted together properly because we have simultaneous humour orgasms whenever we want. We lived together once and we're both still trying to watch every episode of Seinfeld ever made - which is more than enough for an ongoing telephone relationship. And he does leave himself open to a good tease.  He fancies Abi Titmuss! Just because she's a reasonably good-looking blonde who's, shall we say, gregarious? Friendly? Fun-loving? Although tabloid harridans have different words for these much misunderstood female attributes. “She’s a pagan sun Goddess, “ says Robbie. “The only glamour girl I ever heard use the word empathy, a refreshing change after Jordan and the current catch of plankton. In addition she likes having her bottom licked and will happily shag the pizza delivery boy. I'd sooner worship her than some pointlessly hot ball of gas like the sun.” This is what being single does to you. I can see she's attractive and harmless enough but why are men so easily pleased? Perhaps we’ll be shut of her soon. Although who can tell what barrel-scraping reality TV format might rescue her. Perhaps Celebrity Necrophilia. She slips into Bruce Forsyth's coffin the moment Old  Twinkly-Toes pegs out.  It's 'raising the dead'. Can she make a corpse come? Silent Witness with a twist, the first sex autopsy. Maybe not. Although they just bunged her in a play, regardless of  acting ability, which was just as stupid. Robbie is still frothing on about Abi, forgetting that other women's attractiveness is not a great topic of conversation when you're talking to females. "She's just a busty blonde," I say, perhaps narked at not being the centre of this conversation for a few seconds. "It's...common, really. All that tart with a heart stuff." "Oh yeah?" he said. "When was the last time you heard a glamour girl say 'empathy'. Leave my Abi alone." I let him have that one. Having got used to the screeching ignorance of Essex Girls in her business it did make a refreshing change. And Abi could be touchingly naive. "I was astounded at the lack of empathy from women writers," she said, when she was still getting used to the deluge of bile from female journalists. Barren Granny Germaine Greer is happy to tell us how much men hate women but the real secret is how much women hate women, especially traitors in the ranks. (Greer on Suzanne Moore for a start..."Three inches of fat cleavage and pink fuck me shoes." Yes, and...? While we're here, parked outside Granny Greer's ramshackle farmhouse where she screeches orders at her chickens, have we got time to mention her disgraceful book on why teenage boys are so sexy? And why they're just gagging for a taste of Greer? Can you imagine the fuss if Norman Mailer crawled out of his coffin long enough to pen ‘Teenage Girls: Pwhoar! Eh? I Would!  Wouldn‘t you?...’ She didn’t like either of her parents, none of her relationships lasted then she tried and failed to have children. What, precisely, are her qualifications for telling the rest of us what to do? Maybe women’s distaste for Abi Titmuss is that she will shag anyone. Men don't even have to pay for it! Not even a meal and a movie! For this heresy alone she deserves burning at the stake. Don't you realise that it's only permissible to sell your body for a husband or children? Or at least restaurant meals, clothes, jewelry, and a house if you play your cards right? You should never, ever  give it away, a charge Abi was guilty of, by her own admission. Shear off her hair and cover her in tar and feathers. Robbie rattles on about the extras on the Seinfeld boxed sets for a  while and I regret once more that he couldn't make me come whatever we tried. He was also a bit of an angry drunk who once raised his hand to me. Kinky sex is one thing but a slap across the chops is quite another, thank you. Maybe polygamy is the answer. I'd have Robbie for the conversation, Geezer for a good shag and wild nights out and My Man Max for all that, everything else and the moon on a stick. Except he's unavailable. Thank you, God. Moving in mysterious ways, yet again. The bearded old buffoon. MY MAN MAX:THE POSSIBLE SEED OF MY DESTRUCTION Should I have fallen in love with a younger man? (Probably not. Next!) But he's only five years younger. Is he afraid of when I will be fifty five and he will be fifty, probably still tanned, buffed up, rich and able to scoop up twenty-somethings whenever he fancies it? Well, it might just have entered his mind. Or he might be the first man in history not to be a complete bastard. Dream on, Susie. You sad sap. But I miss him. I need him. And I want him back...   . THERE’LL BE ANOTHER ONE ALONG IN A MINUTE Serena Smart used to say that men were like buses. There would always be another one. Whether this stopped her getting all weepy at the end of relationships is doubtful. Still, it’s worth saying to other weeping women. Plenty of fish in the sea. Maybe so. But the point of My Man Max was that he is unique. If there was an adequate amount of such fine specimens perhaps women in general would be less loony. We have to make do with second best. Or a handbag. Which is not and never will be a shag. A PROPOSAL FROM GILES   I’m used to men on their knees. Probably why I take very few of them seriously. But a proposal is always worth listening to. Till I realize he’s just been thrown out. He wants a nice central flat and a daily whipping. Well he can forget about that. “You can’t just…buy me! Fuck off!” I tell him. Which told him. “Well I won’t then. And I won’t see you again.” One less stubbly bum to whip. Boo-hoo.   He storms out, the effect slightly ruined by leaving his heels in the dungeon. He stomps back in and somehow manages to storm out gain, with even more hauteur than the first time. That’s self belief. That’s conviction, that’s…what I don’t have. I’d have caved by now and be begging for forgiveness. Even if I was right. Maybe that’s why people walk all over me. Like that bastard My Man Max. Who has yet to reply. He’d better be dead. Or he soon will be.   NAMING ONE'S VAGINA I was christened Susan. It’s plain but pretty. Whereas I am a Burlesque Queen, Mistress of the Known Universe and Surrounding Environs. I sometimes call myself Marissa which I chose because it's close to my middle name, which is too crap to reference here. All right, it's Marcia. And now you've stopped sniggering at the back we'll get on shall we? Marissa sounds cutting and exciting but actually means 'of the sea'  - which actually fits a water sign like myself. Yes, yes, say those in search of erotic thrills. But what do you call your pussy? Certainly nothing reminiscent of snooty little furballs who scratch the furniture. Although even that’s preferable to dogs, of course, the subs of the animal kingdom, just as likely to cling and whine as their manly equivalents. . Incidentally, Scarlet Fever has been known to use her crop very lightly underneath her cat's tail and she claims he loves it. Perhaps so. As I have no wish to be firebombed by animal rights fanatics  we will leave the subject of feline s/m, even if the greedy little bitch does consent. We’re supposed to be naming vaginas, a thankless task perhaps, as it is still the hated heaven, where men want to be above all else, till they’ve come and they’ve suddenly got to oil their cricket bats, inspect their stamp collections, anything rather than part with a hug.   Cunt is a little too blatant or in your face - and not in a good way. Pussy is too cutesy-wootsy. Minge is simply revolting as are many of the other male terms in common use. Vagina is too clinical so that leaves us sex-positive people with what? Vadge? Is this too homely? Probably. Scarlet Fever suggests Tallulah. Which is glamorous and also suggests a tongue teasing out the myriad folds seeking its way to the nub of all pleasure.  Least it better had to any men reading this. We're not just a socket for your rocket. Countdown. Blast-off. Oh, is it over already? We need pleasuring. Nurturing. Worshipping.   Venus glove, spasm chasm, lady garden – not bad but I’m sure there must be something better.  The search continues. Except for men. Who don’t care what it’s called. Or who it’s attached to. My sponsor says I shouldn’t criticize so much. We have to accept the world the way it is. We must grow up. Give up being your own boss and accept a badly paid job which involves being bossed around. What was  that naughty saint’s prayer? God, Make me perfect. But not just yet… I know just what he means. I ring My Man Max. I text Geezer. Neither is available. My sponsor thinks I should get down on my knees today, even though I’m not a Christian. Kneeling may instill humility in some but I’m still a miserable sinner, Kneeling just reminds me of giving My Man Max oral worship. He’s the only God I need round here and like the real thing he has created a world and buzzed off, leaving his followers to spend all eternity in a most likely futile wait for his return. Yes, well. There may well be My Man Max 2 – The resurrection – and this time it’s Eternal but I wouldn’t bet on it. Fuck it. I ring my dealer. At least he’s in.   "I'M NOT MARRIED, MISSUS, I'M NATURALLY ROUND SHOULDERED." Ken Dodd, who has never married. My elderly relatives had a stock phrase for 'flamboyant' entertainers like Liberace, in the days before everyone might have known he was gay. "They say he'll never marry," usually accompanied by a shake of the head. Why would any grown man choose to stay single? Ken Dodd managed to stay married to his audience and himself, which was probably the wisest decision as few women will tolerate not being centre stage. And now I have written a whole paragraph about a music hall grotesque who made my parents laugh. Probably because some of my childhood was happy and carefree. Usually whenever we were gathered round a black and white television set being entertained. Before sex reared its passionate yet destructive head. MY MAN MAX: SHALLOW PLAYBOY HIDING UNDER THAT CARING NURTURING EXTERIOR? Hairless back and peachy bottom, flawlessly muscular, ripe for biting or pinching. As yet he has no tattoos. I think he should have something tasteful, my name as a back piece would do. Having said that I don't like my birth name Susan and he has yet to find an affectionate nickname for me. Instant suspicion. Can he really value someone for whom he has yet to bestow an affectionate private nickname? Something just the two of us share? Is he, as I sometimes suspect, a shallow playboy hiding under that caring, nurturing exterior. Is the good guy the fake persona? BITCHCRAFT When romance has hurt you very deeply, and you have become a cynic, you find out very quickly that bitchiness pays. Especially now that many men have given up completely. They'll be your slave and pay for the privilege. They'll be your dog. They'll...I'd rather not go into too much unsavoury detail. Suffice to say that Dommes are usually corrupted by absolute power. After all, they're only human. ("No, they're not. My Mistress is divine!" some whining sub male, from a nearby floor.) One such supposed divinity is scene bitch Lady Camilla. I hope you'll forgive me if I pass on some damaging gossip. I realise neither of us likes to stoop to gossip  - it demeans us both - but as it's that big-bummed bitch 'Lady' (my aching sides) Camilla (cunt, more like) I hope you will indulge me. Lady Camilla's public image is supposedly upmarket. She charges rich swingers a lot of money for her parties at her tacky country house. (Which is In her name now her husband has signed it over in a fake bankruptcy ruse. I do hope no one will drown in the swimming pool.) She dresses up as Marie-Antoinette. Which is an impressive display - of utter vulgarity and tasteless opulence. Although I think the original Marie-Antoinette was a little less fond of stuffing herself with roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Neither did she have such a great, fat arse. Two humungous bum-cheeks that could serve as a family sofa if they weren't already required to seat Lady Muck. Did I mention that she difficulty fitting through a doorway if it hasn't been greased first? She's married to a dodgy car salesman called Barry. (Yes. Barry. His chosen nom de perve: The Fuehrer. He has a very large collection of Nazi memoribillia but is in no way a follower of the far right. He's just an enthusiast. Who will gas you if you disagree.) Get to the gossip! I hear you cry. Well, far be it from me to judge or criticise pleasure-seeking women. Who I would never stigmatise with perjorative words such as slag or slapper but I'm rather pleased to hear she's just been publicly spit-roasted by a pair of black chaps. Most lady-like, I'm sure you'll agree. Enough of tearing each other apart. The real enemy is men. The funny thing is the worse you are the more eager to please they are. So take the brakes off. Watch them freeze in your headlights as you hurtle towards them. Swerve at the last moment, slam the brakes on and they’ll crawl gratefully up and beg to be let in. Works every time. MY MAN MAX: MUCKY MISSIVE   Finally! An e-mail. From somewhere or other. When I last wrote I informed My Man Max that, in his absence, I would be masturbating, thinking only of him.   “Hey Bad Girl, afterwards you should march yourself straight over to my office where I can sniff your fingers and inspect your knickers. You may also need your temperature taking in both the English and American manner. Mouth and butt. No thermometer required...xM “ Well! I do declare. My Man Max. Master of the mucky e-mail.  No mention of lurve though. Let’s stop messing about. I want him to  use the word ‘love’ seriously. Even though what we already have is passing the time perfectly adequately.    SUN TZU MASTER OF WAR. SU-SIE MISTRESS OF MEN A business client bought me a copy of Sun Tzu, Master of War, a Confucian guide to battle tactics updated for today's business berks. Fat, bald men in suits who like to see themselves as wild warriors. (The same Horsemen of the Apocalypse who usually want 'a bare-bottomed spanking, please. And then I want to suck your nipples.' ) I flick through this timeless text and find out that it's not a good idea to attack uphill. Who would have thought it? Maybe I should write my own man-taming text. As I am Su-Sie, Mistress of Men (which is as hard as taking sweets off children. And involves the same amount of whining and whingeing. ) As some tiresome telly bitch recently said, mastering men is usually the same as training dogs. Why don’t I just try these techniques on My Man Max. Why am I pretending life is a Mills and Boon novel? They’re men. All too aware that, these days, they’re on the losing side. I suppose I could stoop to that. But why can’t any relationship be an equal exchange? THE PET MISTRESS "Hello, darling," says Bemused of Battersea, some sort of banker. He tried to tell me what type of banking this involved once. After a minute or so I told him I would charge double for any time spent discussing high finance. He looked hurt. So I told him he was a clever boy to earn all that money and his cute but stupid smile flashed up. He likes having his tummy tickled, does my little doggie. I'm not really his 'darling', though. As he well knows. Bad doggie. Apparently it's bad to punish pets as soon as they come home. They might start to associate coming home with punishment.  A little tweak won't do him any harm though. "Darling" I say, spitefully, rubbing his nose in it. "How's your love life?" Face falls, head drops, tail in groove preparing to slink off. "Well, I'd like to have sex without turning on my computer first." Very good. But too revealing. Why didn't he mention love? Instead of sex? Because he's a man. And they are hounds. "Come on. Handsome lad like you." Wry smile. Not convinced. "No one knows, or cares, what divorced Dads go through." He's right. I certainly don't. I put my brain on standby waiting for the end of his little mope. "If they told young people there would never be any more children. It's so painful being separated from your kids. And then having to see the person you hate most every time you see them."  He's still got money to spend on me. Which I had better not point out. What do men do with all this extra money they earn? Spend it on hookers, drink, drugs, booze, gambling, football and fighting. Well, at least they haven't wasted it. Or spent it on their wives or children... He looks sheepish, appropriately enough now we're in dumb animal mode. He's afraid of what he is going to say next. Plucks up courage, stammers, retreats then lets me have it. In a little boy voice. "Do you like me? Do you really like me?" There's no good answer. I'm not much of an actress. But that doesn't matter. Because this audience suspended disbelief a long time ago. He's buying my love and affection. News to me but that's what's happening on the other side of the footlights. In the audience. And it's time to get for curtain up.   "Of course I like you. You're my loyal doggie." This is what he pays me for. But he's trying to load up extra love and affection on top. Real love, not hired show business love. He wants to say more. I stare at him for a while and whatever it was gets ground down into his subconscious. He'll try again. Which will keep him coming back. Trying to buy me for real. I get his collar and lead and raise my chin to signal it is time. Very soon he is naked and on all fours panting and snuffling. He thinks he's being cute and adorable. I think he's a mongrel. For thinking he can buy me for real. For having bushy body hair all over, almost like a real dog's pelt. And for his stubby little erection. rubbing over my red patent leather boots. Any pre-come or even actual come would probably be good for the leather, patent leather being far too prone to cracking and requiring regular applications of Vaseline. But he hasn't asked and, what the hell, I feel cranky today. I grab him by the scruff of his neck, turn his disobedient rump towards me and start to deliver a cropping, no warm-up, just hot fresh pain. The crop has four steel rivets in its leather tip. It's very faintly stained and stiffened with his blood, which means I had to charge him for the implement which can now not be used on anyone else. Breaking the skin and leaving a lasting mark meant we had committed an offense, according to this lunatic government of war-mongering Christians. This is consensual activity, yet it illegal. I'll climb off my soapbox now. And stop looking up my legs. Naughty boys.    I don’t like to hear hounds whine or whimper so I stop the cropping just as he loses it. He’s slobbering with gratitude when he gets the cream, rubbed into his burning bottom, and he erupts when Mistress gets her rubber gloves round to his pride and joy. Men. Beasts of burden. Desperate to be our dogs. And never funnier when they are convinced they are in charge. MY MEDIOCRE MEN: SAD SAPS I COULD SETTLE FOR    I once shagged a man who had had sex with a household name sit com actress in the back of a London Taxi. Which dates him, as did all of his conversation and his 'distinguished' grey hair. This was my Daddy phase, until I realised that it was unbecoming to go out with men who like girls young enough to be their daughters. Plus you have to nurse them through their heart attacks and prostate problems. Peter was handsome, charming, intelligent and wholly unfit for life after the 1960s. He was educated at a time when composers were expected to produce impenetrable work that would drive their audiences to drink or suicide. (Incidentally, 'impenetrable' has reminded me of one of the greatest book titles of all time - more evidence that academics like Peter are actually dumber than the rest of us. "Penetrating Wagner's Ring" was published in New York 1978. You've already read the best bit.) I could forgive Peter the wild passion with S- - P------ who was an attractive young actress long before being typecast as an idiot in the sort of sit-com only the British could like. I couldn't forgive him a remark he once made about a bassoon. It was one of those weeks when there was (rightly) a national panic about the murder of a child by other children in inner city London. I was still playing keyboards in some West End shows and teaching private pupils. I had got used to the horror stories told me by those unlucky enough to be teaching in London Schools. Most teaching jobs had been dispensed with to make room for rap or reggae. Those who were still employed had to try to stop these poor misunderstood mites from stealing the equipment or maiming the staff or each other. (In order to gain 'respect'.) In this exciting era for inner city education came Peter C- who was going to start a private music school, fresh from his triumph of bankrupting himself and his partner by opening a rehearsal studio - a business that was now flourishing without his input. I had allowed five minutes of this talk, while we laid together in a warm, aromatic post-sex cuddle. He could shag, could Peter C. And play the piano. The problem was everything else. The midday news on Radio Three had just reminded us, even Peter, that some thirteen year olds had been arrested for the murder of another child. Then some pointless cacophony by Webern started - random chirps, tweets and bits of blustering bollocks played grudgingly by an orchestra full of musicians who hate this stuff as profoundly as most audiences do. Webern's entire output lasts about three hours. It seems much longer. He was shot by mistake shortly before the end of the Second World War. His few admirers think this is a cruel irony. His many detractors think it is poetic justice. "I love Webern," said Peter, before continuing to lecture me on the wonder that his non-existent music school would become, sounding much more animated than he had been during his recent orgasm.  Webern meandered on in the background, as irrelevant as an old man trying to subject others to the highbrow musical education that had pauperised himself and his family. "And, do you know, Susie, It makes me furious they won't teach the bassoon in schools."   I started to laugh. The sight of his hurt face, and the grey hairs growing out of his nose continued to amuse me. As did my own idiocy for falling for an old dreamer. I continued to laugh as he threw his clothes on, considerably miffed. It didn't take him long to finish dressing up as a posh binman - or 'bohemian', as he would have it. So I was still laughing as he left. In a huff. I moved on to someone even older with more money. Which Peter took to heart. For about as long as a piece of plinky-plonk Webern. Then he found some other young female twit and the cycle of failure, adultery and delusions of grandeur continued. And, to this day, there is still inadequate teaching of the bassoon in London. It makes me furious. The Pet Mistress All things considered I can see why some women become Pet Mistresses full time. Pets can’t talk, they just woof and snuffle. They lick your feet or anywhere else you’d like shining up. One doesn’t have to suffer the gross personal habits of most men as they pad off to their own doghouse for the night. What’s not to like? For doggie clients I wear red patent leather knee boots, skin-tight white jodhpurs and a white silk shirt. Too good for today’s pooch, perhaps.  Bemused of Battersea is some sort of banker. He tried to tell me what this involved once. After a minute or so I told him I would charge double for any time spent discussing high finance. He looked hurt. So I told him he was a clever boy to earn all that money and his cute but stupid smile flashed up. He likes having his tummy tickled, does my little doggie. “Hello, darling,” he says, which just isn’t on. I'm not his 'darling', or ever likely to be. As he well knows. Bad doggie. "Darling?" I say, spitefully, "How's your love life?" Face falls, head drops, tail in groove preparing to slink off. "Well, I'd like to have sex without turning on my computer first." Very good. But too revealing. Why didn't he mention love? Instead of sex? Because he's a man. And they are hounds. "Come on. What have you got to complain about?" Wry smile. "No one knows, or cares, what divorced Dads go through." He's right. I certainly don't. I put my brain on standby waiting for the end of his little mope. Bemused is leader of the North Kent provisional wing of Fathers United! A group of men who might have thought of the consequences of adultery before making it their life’s work. "Do you like me?” he asks, some time later. “Do you really like me?" There's no good answer. I'm not much of an actress. But that doesn't matter. Because this audience suspended disbelief a long time ago. "Of course I like you. You're my loyal doggie." This is what he pays me for. But he's trying to load up extra love and affection on top. Real love, not hired show business love. He wants to say more. I stare at him for a while and whatever it was gets ground down into his subconscious. He'll try again. Which will keep him coming back. Trying to buy me for real. I get his collar and lead and raise my chin to signal it is time. Very soon he is naked and on all fours panting and snuffling. He’s nearly as good as a real dog at fetching a tennis ball, getting much better at scampering and lolloping about. Who said men couldn’t be taught anything? As I make the mistake of turning my back for a refreshing slurp of Pernod on ice I get an intrusive nose snuffling at my rump. After cropping him for cheek I recall Scarlet Fever’s proud boast that ‘My dog sniffed Jilly Cooper’s bum!’  We’re all celebrities now. Needless to say she didn’t mind at all. A rainswept common and a wet canine nose just where you don’t need it. Absolute bliss, darling! I mind though, so he collects a few stinging slashes of the crop on the top of his legs. Which soon has him whining for mercy. Control reasserted I‘m ready to play again. He thinks he's being cute and adorable. I think he's a mongrel. For thinking he can buy me for real. For having bushy body hair all over, almost like a real dog's pelt. And for his stubby little erection. rubbing over my red patent leather boots. Any pre-come or even actual come would probably be good for the leather, patent leather being far too prone to cracking and requiring regular applications of Vaseline. But he hasn't asked and, what the hell, I feel cranky today. I grab him by the scruff of his neck, turn his disobedient rump towards me and start to deliver a severe cropping, no warm-up, just hot fresh pain. The crop has four steel rivets in its leather tip. It's very faintly stained and stiffened with his blood, which means I had to charge him for the implement which can now only be used on him. Breaking the skin and leaving some temporary marks also meant we had committed an offence, according to this lunatic government of war-mongering Christians. This is consensual activity, yet it illegal. I'll climb off my soapbox now. (And stop looking up my legs. Naughty boys.)   I part his buttocks and use the tip on his anus. I don’t like to hear hounds whine or whimper so I stop the cropping just as he’s starting to lose it. He slobbers with gratitude when he gets the soothing cream, rubbed well into his burning bottom. Once Mistress has her rubber gloves on his pride and joy it doesn’t take long. After he’s come I rub his nose in it, just to remind him who’s in charge.   Men! If only they were half as good at pushing our buttons. Instead of dogging us with their crude desires, begging to be our bitches now the future is female. Let’s face it, men are beasts so why not treat them so? What’s the point of trying to train them up as fellow human beings? It’s time women accepted their men will never become ‘Best In Show’ and accept them for what they are: lovable pets. IN PRAISE OF ROUNDER WOMEN My friend Miss Plum doesn't care about her ample poundage. Well, she used to. There was the usual teenage bulimia, the odd suicide attempt, slimming down to a skeleton on speed, then ballooning back up on a diet of Guinness and cream cakes. Right now, she's cuddly and curvy once more and fighting off the queue of slavering men. She has a serious rack and an imperious behind. Just in case no one had noticed those big firm hooters and her proud, round bottom, she likes to squeeze into gleaming corsets that give her a tiny waist. it also pushes out her aromatic cream-white breasts. Often men don't even realise they are addressing her cavernous cleavage. More fool them, for they are missing her soulful brown eyes, and a sly smile. It is only in the last few decades that stick-thinness has become a desirable body shape. Men have generally tended to lust after curvy women because they promise heat, warmth, sensuality, lasciviousness and perhaps a faint memory of maternal comfort too. Your average warrior returning from a particularly arduous conflict is looking for strong ale, sizzling steaks and a buxom wench with a saucy smile. He does not seek a thin chain-smoking misery with a head full of dieting tips. Have you ever heard men say "Look at the ribs on that!"? "Too true, mate, they’re sticking right through the skin." "Great bones! Really sharp!" "And that stomach acid and fag breath. Brilliant!" Big women may be seen as a downmarket embarrassment in a society bombarded with pictures of stick-thin models. But if you're too much of a snob to enjoy sex with a person of size you are missing out on the thrill of a lifetime. In terms of sheer quantity big women quite simply have more to offer. More curves, more heat, more scent, and often more heart. Whatever your particular obsession, and men tend to be divided into breast or bottom fanciers, a big woman will have more of what you crave -- more soft, jiggling flesh to luxuriate in. There  is no feeling like being queened by a big woman. You lie there, drifting along in clouds of her scent while she lowers herself onto your face. Some submissive men may want to see this as a humiliation but it needn't be. Lying there while a lover rubs her pussy and bottom over your face is a treat. And if the person smothering you in aromatic flesh should be facing away from you in order to gorge themselves on whatever you have to offer them, while using their fingers to explore and stimulate whatever else they can find...this should indeed be seen as a present for a lucky boy rather than some stern 'humiliation' scenario. AS COLD AS MARGARET THATCHER’S TITS The weather is as cold as Margaret Thatcher's tits. My boiler has packed up. The sub-Siberian chill necessitates wearing my fur hat, leather jacket and rocket boots indoors. As I live alone, apart from Geezer's occasional visits, I can dress how I please. I can also do as I please, without having to appear to be a simpering sex kitten at all times. (which I would be the instant My Man Max showed up. And I always look my best for Geezer. Who might be a bastard but he can fix cars and women. Temporarily, I'm afraid. I need more than his brute strength and big dick. I still break down and need another servicing from My Man Max.) Still, I'm a bit of a geezer bird when it comes to housekeeping. Or, let's be frank, I’m a drug addict. Once you are one of the select few who take ketamine before breakfast, the upper echelons, among the highest in the land, you can have soup in bed and let the crumbs fall where they may. I can swop Noel Edmonds for Sarah Jessica Parker in the centre of my dartboard and dot the wall around it with little dart pricks. K is intensely beautiful but it plays havoc with the coordination. Mind you, we could slim down those darts players pretty quickly on my k plan diet. Just wouldn't like to be around when  they got the horrors. Geezer was a bit of a handful on it, screaming his head off and careering around like a rogue elephant. Ho-hum. Still waiting for My Man Max to call. The irony is that I couldn't pick up the phone. Because I would sound like I'd drunk two pints of vodka or suffered a stroke. So why do it? Why indeed... I'll be back to twelve stepping later this week, trying to wear the hair shirt with the other drug failures. Clean and sober I have more time and energy for fixing things.  I can ponder the mysteries of the universe. Why, for instance, long after Sex and the City has stiffed, must we still have Sarah Jessica Parker? I know she can act but Samantha and the Airheads really gets on my nerves. At least Samantha (my Samantha) appears to actually like sex, the others just want to swap it for goods and services.  ("Just like you, you daft whore!"  Well, yes, but the difference is that I trade as a sex worker not as whatever these unconvincing woman are supposed to be.) The show's written by gay men and is indeed witty and gossipy as an enjoyable half hour's dirt dishing. But when was the last time there was a group of four female friends? Which stayed together for longer than it took for one person to get drunk enough to get bitchy? The chances of four such female friends all liking sex for its own sake aren't that good.  ("It's fiction, you drug-addled misery! You know, entertainment!") Well, I take your point and I shall refrain from mentioning the many behind the scenes feuds between the four stars. Female friendship? That lasts? My tight little butt, baby. It doesn't exist. Men aren't necessarily any better at friendship but at least their cut throat competitiveness is out in the open. Although it inevitably involves meaningless, trivial tests of strength;  Playstation battles, the smallest phone, the most annoying ring tone, the most expensive car.  Perhaps they should have set Sex and the City in the future and called it Science Fiction. I'd like to see Sarah Jessica Parker bald come to think of it. (Especially if I could shave her head. And tar and feather her afterwards). I'd like to see Samantha in a big head dress and a tight silver catsuit. The other two can be jettisoned to orbit Pluto. Right. That's settled then. Unfortunately I still want some K. And I always will. Never mind the euphoric out of body experiences. ‘Psychedelic heroin’ is also a very effective painkiller. And that's all I can feel right now. Pain.