Serena is such a strange mix of jaded and innocent, adventurous and shy, courageous and scared. I don’t know if I’ve adequately painted a picture of her for you. I suspect I have, but I’ll try again, just because—as you can never step in the same river twice—how I see her today might well be different from how I saw her when last I described her. Today, this is how I see her: tiny, maybe five feet tall, slender—if she weighs a hundred pounds, I would be shocked. She has long, brownish-blonde hair that hangs below her shoulders, bright wide hazel eyes, and a sweet, pretty, cute, and just slightly sad smile. And tonight, we’re off to the Chemistry sex party.
Her body does that thing I’ve written so many times about—yielding to my touch like an expensive sports car, needing just barely a nudge to move exactly as I wish. When we are together, the word “compliance” feels almost comically irrelevant. It’s not that she complies with me, or that she is compliant. It’s rather that she is almost like an extension of me, intuitively aligning herself with my wishes.
Serena does sex work. She does a lot of sex work. In this way, she and I are anomalies in one another’s lives. It’s been years since I had an ongoing relationship with someone who thinks of herself as, first and foremost, a sex worker, and Serena is the first such person with whom our relationship has transcended the client-provider dynamic. I say “transcended,” and that paints an imperfect and incomplete picture. I have paid Serena, as I’ve written, and I don’t pay Serena. Both of those dynamics have been present at various times. But given how Serena spends her days, given the volume of sexual partners she has, the frequency of sex she has, and my history of jealousy and envy, it’s kind of miraculous that I’m able to tolerate interactions with her. I mean “tolerate” in both senses—in the sense of putting up with, allowing, and also, in the sense of surviving, thriving.
She told me the other night that, in her life, she has sucked fewer than ten unsheathed cocks, and that none (other than mine) has been on a man even close to my age (and men my age, of course, represent a much higher risk of HPV than do younger men, because vaccination kicked in in for girls in 2006, and for boys a year later – reaching back in effectiveness to those born as early as 1980). It was that conversation that sent me off on this jag.
Serena’s young—but not so young. Objectively, of course, she’s too young for me, but she is authentically and genuinely a grown-up, nonetheless. Indisputably. And not just because sex worker years are something like dog years—not in that they age a person, but in that one racks up experience at a rate quite different from the rate at which those of us who don’t do sex work rack up experience. She’s jaded and cynical, but nonetheless optimistic and idealistic. As experienced as she is, she’s not wizened. And as experienced as she is, she remains somehow charmingly innocent.
Witness her relationship to the prospect of attending a sex party. She’s almost giddily excited, and scared in a way that reminds me of Isabel — Isabel, who in terms of sexual experience and world-weariness was so much opposite to Serena.
Mostly, though, Serena is fun. We like one another’s company – have had a couple of non-sexual dates that are, honestly, almost as fun as our sexual dates. We enjoy talking, learning from one another, comparing perspectives. And, together, we will, shortly, be in a very stimulating environment, sharing those perspectives with one another.
I can’t. Fucking. Wait.
