This is a normal day.

 

Britney wakes up, and has a quick shower or a long bath, depending on how the previous night turned out. Her rose-scented perfume is expensive, and she wears as much of it as she wants to. She doesn’t particularly like the smell, but her dates do, and that’s what really matters.

 

Afterwards she gets dressed. A calf-length skirt with stockings underneath, a camisole top with a cute little sweater, and fuck me sandals. By the time she’s thirty she thinks her feet will be rougher and more twisted than a ballerina’s, but the effect is worth it. She loves shoes, heels platforms boots clogs, and when she was younger and stupider sometimes she’d spend half her pay on shoes alone. Now she’s smarter, smart enough to know that you buy the shoes that are gorgeous but won’t kill your ankles or make you trip when you’re playing someone’s fantasy. Guys like the shoes; some of them want to see her just in heels, or once, just in Mary Jane’s.

 

She redirected him to Mandy.

 

Eggs and bacon. Or a bagel. Britney doesn’t eat very much—never really has. When she was younger she exercised a lot, took dance classes at the local recreation center, and back then she ate like a pig, but then her legs got big and strong and muscular and she had to stop before she started getting the fag customers, the ones who are gay but won’t admit it, so they just pick up the butchest girl and fuck her extra hard to make up for it, whether the fucking is literal or not.

 

They never tip well.

 

Still, Christina was the one who got them most of the time, because she was the tough girl, and she liked them. She said they were someone to talk to, at least, and she got at least one of them to come out to her.

 

He has a boyfriend now, and he and Chris are probably still friends.

 

After breakfast, Britney goes shopping, or reads, or goes to the movies. It doesn’t really matter how she spends her day—none of it matters. She’s heard all the bull about how a prostitute is more than her job, but that’s all bullshit. Britney just wastes time till nighttime when she starts working again. Sometimes she has dates during the day, but they never seem really real.

 

Work is Madame Madonna’s House of Blondes. That’s not the real name—Britney could look on her business cards if she really cared, still remembers it as something like Diamond Escort Services—but it might as well be, and that’s what everyone calls it anyway. Madonna is her employer’s real name (fucked up Catholic parents) but everyone usually just calls her Madge.

 

Madame Madonna’s house is a literal house. Most escort services aren’t—they’re businesses, offices, occasionally warehouses—but Madge is in the habit of picking them up young, girls who have no where else to stay and so usually end up at the house. None of the clients know, of course, but Mandy and Jessica both live there, and so does Madge herself. The only one who doesn’t is Britney, and that’s because she just hates the idea of it, all of them in one house, lending condoms and tips on how to get him off quickly but well, so he leaves a big tip. Just like a fucking brothel. She lived there for four years before she finally got her own place, a nice apartment just two blocks from the house, but she still has a bedroom at Madge’s where she stays if any of her clients take too much of an interest in her.

 

When Britney gets to Madge’s, she checks in with Joey, the guard, and he lets her in with a smile. Joey is a sweetheart, a real doll. An actual friend to all of them, instead of just an employee.

 

Britney sometimes wonders about guys who work with prostitutes. Some of them honestly believe they’re just “dates”, with no fucking involved ever, and some of them think working for an escort service entitles them to a free date, with as much fucking involved as they want. Joey appears to be neither type. He certainly flirts enough, but he used to work for Darren Hayes’s male escort service too, even though he’s hetero as far as Britney can tell, and he never asks any of the girls out. He’s kind and polite and is willing to protect any of them with his life. Joey is who they take along when a date seems untrustworthy; Joey is who they call if they need someone to follow them home, play their boyfriend if they need it. Joey never asks about their dates, but not in a disgusted way, just…unconcerned.

 

When she gets inside, Britney checks in with the other girls. Jessica is usually doing her nails, or watching TV, or singing gospel in her bedroom, and Mandy is usually curled up in an armchair with a book, or homework that she eagerly throws off if she has a sudden date. Britney hugs them hello and then checks with Madge to see if she has any appointments.

 

If no, then she’ll hang out with the girls and watch movies.

 

If yes, then she’ll slip up to her room and put on one of her costumes. Decide what the guy’s fantasy is based on memory or Madge’s descriptions, and become the part. She is ingénue, flirt, wife, girlfriend, whore, model. She is everything.

 

On a date, she doesn’t speak unless spoken to, and she doesn’t think unless she has to.

 

When he fucks her, she’ll stare at the ceiling and count the money in her head.

 

When the date is over, she’ll pull her dress back on and they’ll drive her back to Madge’s place. She always waits till the last possible second to ask for the money, when she’s opening the door to the car and kissing him goodbye with all the passion of a parting lover. Nine times out of ten they get flustered and hand her too much cash, like she’s a girlfriend that they’re giving money too for a new outfit. One guy actually said, “Don’t worry about paying me back, baby,” and she had to restrain herself from punching him.

 

She goes inside and gives half the money to Madge, and then she takes a cab back to her own apartment. Changes her clothes, washes her face, brushes her teeth. Lies down in her own bed with its perfectly clean sheets, and feels like she might as well still be lying in the back of a limo with her skirt pushed up around her thighs.

 

This is a normal day.

 

END