MIA WALSCH Money for Something: extract
This week we have an extract from Mia Walsch’s memoir Money for Something: Sex work. Drugs. Life. Need. It’s a lively, insightful, frank and at times harrowing account of a young woman’s experiences as a sex worker. Her mental illness makes it difficult for her to hold down a regular job, and sex work enables her to purchase the copious amounts of drugs that allow her to blot out the at times crippling effects of the illness. The ‘need’ of the subtitle can be read as referring both to Mia’s own needs – for drugs, and for the companionship of her fellow workers – and those of her clients: the Steves and Marks, the kind and the creepy and the outright frightening.
In this extract, Mia has just lost her job at an insurance company and decided to phone the number on the newspaper ad she’s been carrying in her wallet for a while: ‘Erotic massage. Good money. No sex.’ Here she sets off for her interview.
Extract courtesy of Echo Publishing
from Chapter 1
It’s the new millennium. I’ve just turned nineteen. I’m skinny and dark-haired and braless, tripping down terrace-lined backstreets towards the station and my sex work destiny in a terrible outfit. I’ve got so many, but imagine, maybe, a black halter top that’s really just a scrap of fabric, and a tiny miniskirt along with battered Mary Janes.
I’m in Newtown, the land of my dreams. To get here, I left home with fifty bucks and a bag, stayed with a friend for a week, then posed nude for a men’s magazine to get enough cash for a bond. I got a job at an insurance company doing admin, but yeah, you remember how that went?
Now I’m clack-clacking down the street to Redfern Station in my Mary Janes, leaving behind a neat little room full of kerbside-collection furniture, all mine for the grand sum of eighty dollars a week. I’ve got as much pot as I can smoke, not enough to kill every single feeling I have, but enough to try.
I am living the dream.
And I’ll do whatever it takes to keep the dream alive.
*
A nondescript door on a main street on the lower North Shore opens to reveal a dim stairway. I stumble-trip up and am greeted at the top by a heavily made-up blonde in a great deal of leopard print.
‘Hi, I’m Iris! Are you Mia?’
I nod, still blinking, trying to adjust to the soft-lit halls after scrambling through the bright sunlight outside. She walks me down a hallway punctuated with doors. Doors everywhere, all closed. Behind those doors must be where this ‘good money’ is earned, with ‘no sex’. If not sex, then what? Surely dudes don’t often part with the kind of money one would describe as ‘good’ without getting at least a little action. Iris is blabbering away as we walk, talking about doubles and day shifts, but I’m barely listening. I’m too distracted by the doors. Is real live erotic massage happening right now?
Finally, we reach the last door. A tall gorgeous woman leans against the jamb.
‘Hi Mia, I’m Serena.’ I shake her hand. It is soft, and later I will learn those soft hands are the culmination of many years spent coated in slick massage oil. Serena has nice nails, perfect hair. She has nice everything, really. She leads me into a tiny office, and we sit down at the desk. There is no natural light in her office – the window is completely blacked out. It could be any time outside. Or no time.
‘So, how old are you?’ Serena says.
‘Nineteen.’
‘Great! I’ll tell you a little bit about the business. Here at Slide, we offer a fully nude erotic massage service with body-to-body contact and hand relief.’
Hand relief ?
What on earth is that?
Hand-jobs? No sex, but yes, hand-jobs? That’s not so bad.
I mull it over a little and reason that it’s not as gross as having my hands immersed in filthy dishwater for eight hours, which is what many of my previous jobs entailed. She goes over the house rules (what on earth does ‘no extras’ mean?), hours (the late shift runs until 2 am), the prices and my cut, which is 50 per cent. It seems a bit of a rip-off seeing as the dicks will be in my hands, but I reason that they do solicit the penises towards my hands and also provide a private space for all this dick-grabbing to occur, trusting that there are actually rooms behind all the doors. I nod and smile.
‘You’ve got a great look,’ Serena says. ‘You’ll do really well here.’ I think I know what she means. I’m nineteen, but I look about fifteen. I’m tiny, I barely ever eat solids that aren’t ecstasy pills, so my baby fat has melted away. My hair is nice and shiny, and my mental illness is masked by my pretty smile. Even if it wasn’t, it doesn’t really matter.
‘When do you want to start? Tonight?’
‘Um, how about tomorrow?’
I need time to prepare.
I assume that men only want to pay lots of money to have their backs rubbed and their cocks pulled by what I think of as ‘real, proper girls’ who appear to actually care what they look like. I can do an okay job of pretending, but I’m not a real ‘proper girl’. I don’t own a single smudge of makeup or any matching lingerie. All of my undies are ragged Bonds bikini briefs and I haven’t worn a bra for months, since my boobs shrank along with the rest of me when I stopped eating. My clothes are wacky ensembles that I’ve collected from various op shops in Sydney’s inner west. I need time to craft a more fitting persona for the kind of person who trades sexual favours for money.
‘Great! Thursday nights are always busy. While you’re here, did you want to come and meet the girls?’
No.
No, I really don’t want to meet the girls, but I pretend that I do. I have this obscure terror of large groups of women, especially beautiful ones. It’s a fear mixed with awe and a little bit of lust. I’m always afraid that I might give myself away as some kind of imposter woman who also might want to kiss them and maybe feel their boobs. Because I do.
Serena leads me across the hall to another small room, a windowless box with doors on each side. It’s crammed with a futon sofa and looks like a femme-bomb went off inside. Lingerie, makeup and shoes are everywhere, with paths beaten through the refuse. I toe a discarded bottle of foundation out from underneath my foot. Sprawled across the sofa are four incredibly bored-looking women in their underwear. They are watching music videos on the TV opposite and they glance up at me.
‘This is the new girl! She doesn’t have a name yet. She’s starting tomorrow, so, Sandy, you can help show her the ropes.’ A blonde woman in a purple teddy nods dully, her long, tanned limbs spilling out of lace, arranged haphazardly on the lumpy futon. I can’t tell if this non-reaction is good or bad. At least no one is looking at me, which lowers the chance that they are judging me, or seeing me for what I really am.
Serena walks me to the door and tells me I need to pick a name. I’m too shell-shocked to make any decisions right now, and the name thing seems important. She gives me her mobile number and tells me to text her my name later that night. They need to start advertising the new masseuse. Advertise? Me? Why would anyone want to do that? I don’t even know what I’m doing.
*
Mia Walsch
Photo: Breeana Dunbar
A new name is like a second chance, the opportunity to be all the things I haven’t been able to be. Of course, I’m drawing a complete blank.
‘What’s a sexy name?’ I ask my boyfriend.
‘Jesus, I don’t know,’ he says, not looking up from his computer.
‘What says, “Pay me money to touch your penis”?’
‘Sharon.’
‘Come on! Help me!’
‘Sheila,’ he says, pushing away his keyboard and poking me in the ribs.
‘No!’
We go back and forth for a while, finally settling on Sasha.
It will do.
He thinks this whole ‘sex work’ thing is a bit of a laugh. He’s a lot older than me. He was my flatmate, but we started sleeping together right after I moved in. I have a terrible habit of doing things like that.
Our relationship involves smoking a great deal of marijuana, doing handfuls of other drugs whenever we can afford them (also when we can’t) and sleeping with as many other people as we can, often together. He’s a musician. Of course he is. He’s also a waiter. He’s really fucking smart and teaches me a lot of things. He’s also a complete arse. That’s okay, I’m a psycho bitch. We work pretty well together.
He will do.
His name is Leo. I simultaneously hate and love him. It’s my first relationship out of high school.
*
With the last of my corporate job money, I buy a new bra, some nice undies, and a sheer, black form-fitting negligee thing. Before my shift, I wander into the pharmacy and peer at the makeup shelves. Fuck, I don’t know! I pick a foundation and powder at random, then some mascara (the pink and green tube, that’s what I see everyone use), a little case of eye shadow and some light pink lip gloss. I’m sweaty and confused as I walk up the stairs, half an hour early. A different receptionist lets me in, a small Asian woman with a boyish figure and pixie haircut. Her name is Suzy and when she opens the door to the staff lounge to usher me in everyone looks up.
‘Um, hi. I’m Sasha. I’m new.’
They mob me.
‘It’s really nice to meet you!’
‘Is this your first shift?’
‘Have you worked before?’
I am overwhelmed but relieved that the pack seems to have already accepted me as one of their own. ‘No, I’ve never done this before.’
‘Oh, she’s a virgin! Don’t worry, we’ll show you what to do. You’ll do really well here, guys like that fresh look.’ This is industry slang for ‘old perves love teenage girls’. It’s my niche; everyone has one.
*
There’s a small room off to the side lined with lit mirrors. I take a seat there and begin to smear my face inexpertly with foundation. I have no idea what I’m doing – the last time I applied my own makeup was at my high school formal and I made a hell of a mess of it then too. Once I’ve done all the makeup parts I believe I’m supposed to do (foundation, powder, eye shadow, lips, mascara? That sounds right, yeah?) I put on my special fancy knickers, slip into the negligee and strap a pair of velvet platforms on my feet (the last time I wore these was to my school formal too). I’m sure in daylight I’d look a complete mess, but in the dim, soft-lit dressing room, I’m an exquisite creature. With my sleek dark hair, sexy get-up and shimmery pink lips I look incredibly female. I look . . . beautiful. Can I say that? Am I allowed to think I look beautiful?
From Mia Walsch Money for Something Echo Publishing 2020 PB 256pp $29.99
Like to keep reading? You can buy Money for Something from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW here or you can buy it from Booktopia here.
To see if it is available from Newtown Library, click here.
