Page 70 of Dirty Diana
“I just don’t want that to happen to you. Unless that’s what you want.” He dips his makeup brush in two different shades of red, then paints around my knife wound. “I guess what I’m saying is, whether you and Oliver stay together or you split, have the thing that’s just yours.”
He fans his hands over the wound to help the paint dry.
“Do you want some strangulation marks? Around your neck?”
“Why not?”
As Liam brushes on some purple and blue bruising around my neck, I look around his tiny, dark space, covered in makeup and rubber and sleeping cats. I can feel his pure desire to make something that he can call his own. I know this desire.
“Take a look.” He holds up a mirror. “Now you finally look how you feel.”
Chapter 22
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A few days later, I sit at my computer and upload a new interview to the Dirty Diana site. The page is simple and clean. Each story gets its own link, with just a first name beneath a loose sketch I’ve drawn, a silhouette of the woman being interviewed. This one is Carrie, one of my favorites.
I have a few fantasies. I’m not sure which one to share.
Tell me about your favorite one.
My favorite…I’m actually my age in my favorite. Usually I’m younger in my fantasies.
How old are you?
Sixty-one.
And where are you?
I’m at a brothel. I know. So old-fashioned. Maybe I’ve been watching toomany movies. It’s only my fantasy in my dreams. When I’m awake—well, it’s different.
What happens in the brothel?
Usual things. Lots of corsets and velvet and loud men drinking at a bar downstairs. There’s no one playing the piano or anything. But it still feels like something you would see in the movies…. Should we have another drink?
Sure.
Anyway, in my fantasy, I’m the only woman there. No one else is working that night. My boss tells me there are some sailors coming in that night. They haven’t seen a woman in months.
Does that excite you?
Not at first, no. I’m worried they’ll be disappointed. I’m the oldest woman there. I’m afraid that when they see me, they’ll ask for another girl—or won’t be aroused. All those destructive little voices. But they’re supposed to walk through the doors any second, so I force my insecurities aside and I put on some lingerie and a silk robe, and I wait for one of them to come in. I look in the mirror a thousand times and lie on the bed in a hundred different positions, trying to find my best angle. There’s a tentative knock on my door. And then he walks in. And he’s so young. Like one of those old black-and-white photos your grandmother would have carried. Classically handsome in a tragic sort of way. And he’s even more nervous than I am. I can practically see him shaking. So I stop thinking about how disappointed he must be and I start trying to make him less nervous.
I peel off his clothes until he’s naked. He’s already hard. A kind of hard I forgot about. Like he’s about to burst through his skin. And so I put him in my mouth. I feel him grow even more inside me. And I know he’s not disappointed because he moans in pleasure and looks at me in astonishment. I know how to please a man. And it feels so good to please him.
I work my hand around his erection and slowly at first then faster as I take all of him in my mouth and I hear him gasp in disbelief. I know that no one has ever made him feel this way. I love it, he tells me. You’re so good. I meet his eyes for a few seconds, tracing my wet lips with the head of his erection. I watch as he gives me permission, leaning in, then silently begging. I canfeel him pulsing in my mouth, and he tells me he’s close, so I slow down and draw it out as long as I can, moving him in and out of my mouth until he finally comes. And as I get up to leave he pulls me into him, pinning me against the bed with his lips, kissing me with such passion. But I have to pull away, I have another client in the next room.
I wrap my robe around me and walk next door. The man waiting there isn’t disappointed. He takes me in his arms and tells me how beautiful I am. How happy he is to see me. He opens my robe and tosses it on the floor. I push him onto the bed and climb on top of him. His mouth is open, searching for anything to suck so I let him find my nipples. I push into him, inviting just the tip of him inside me. He slides in and out of me, gasping in pleasure. I’ve never felt so desired. So wanted. And I get bolder and bolder. I stand up, leaving him writhing on the bed. I walk into the next room completely naked. I can please any man. I know it in my skin.
What about you? Who pleases you?
The last room I enter.
Who’s in the last room?
All of them.
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