We Offer Disappointment
by Rob PalkTimes have been hard for our business. Pornographic experience is so easily available. The internet hasn’t helped. And the crash sent a generation of hungry youngsters into the arms of the old. So we’ve had to branch out and to specialise. We offer the parts that porn doesn’t. We offer you reality at ten pounds a minute.
We offer you disappointment. We offer you faces that don’t look like their pictures, talk, so fluent in messages, that loses its rhythm in speech. We offer the moment when neither of you want each other and you have to make your mind up whether to leave or persevere, make the best of a bad thing. Decide how much you’re willing to lie, to her or to yourself. We offer the chance to not have sex, or to have it and wish that you hadn’t. If you ever wanted to lie awake in a strange room yearning for your own bed, well, we can offer you that.
I’ll tell you about our rooms. We have a good selection of rooms. No moody lighting, no plush. We offer a dingy first floor in a terrace bought ten years ago, the light avoiding the windows as though it can’t bear to look. We offer a room in a shared ex-warehouse, stuffed with vintage dresses, wine bottles, second hand books, acres of useless cushions and nowhere to sit but the bed. You’ll wonder who drank from the bottles and if they ever intend to come back. The walls in these rooms are the thinnest that we could build. Flatmates, all actors, will talk loudly about the washing up rota from just behind these walls. They will do this to make it more real. We offer a huge converted school room, old records lining the walls, a mattress on the floor. You will want to stay there but you’ll also know you shouldn’t, that this could never be your life. You’ll leave without really wanting to and have trouble with the gate. When you walk to a lit window to ask for help you’ll see another converted classroom and inside it a naked couple, about to fuck. As though the hot Sunday air had set the whole building at it, as though the laws were changed while you were inside and now nobody wears any clothes.
We offer authentic awkwardness for those with the money to pay. The effortful conversation after rushed-into sex. We offer a fuss about condoms. One or maybe both of you won’t know how to fit them on, neither of you will have any, or in the time it takes to rescue them from their foil the moment will have passed. We offer a walk to the local shop to get some, at least for the second round. The walk through the baking night, with this stranger chattering next to you, your come still on their skin. People will glance at you, knowing. We offer a rush to the loo or a fart at a vital point.
For a little money extra, we’ll make it awkward the next day. One of you will want to see the other again- it’s up to you which one. Or you can say no, you weren’t really looking for that and later you change your mind. You can have fun with the permutations. It’s allowed. You can even do it again, another time, and have it not be as good. We had to fire one girl for being better.
The main thing that we offer is the moment before kissing, the molecular shift of permission. The scrabble out of clothes and the first moment of nakedness, the first urgent clocking of hoped for skin. We offer your hands reading, trying to memorise. The taking stock of ankles, the neatness of her stomach, the curve of her throat. Tattoos you thought you didn’t like and now you suddenly do. We offer you kneeling, face down in her, as though you were bending to pray. We offer the clamber up her body, your mouth greased, approaching hers. We offer the parts that you don’t find in pornography, when you both of you find yourself laughing, and this person, this stranger, becomes suddenly important, actual, irreducible to an idea. We offer the moment sleaziness turns into something you weren’t looking for. It isn’t real. But it could be.
Our prices are in the catalogue. Phones should be switched off or kept on silent throughout.
