In the pub an attractive middleaged woman is sitting by herself laughing at something on her phone at a volume that seeks to advertise her amusement.
"Something's tickling you," I say, and she invites me to sit down. She tells me she's an offshore tax advisor -- "avoidance really". She's likeable and kissable. She'd come from her Dad's funeral. "I'm fed up with crying. Tell me something else."
She wanted to show me a picture of herself, and I got my face ready to fake interest in some dreary scene involving a child, or a wacky drunken night out with the girls. It was infintely better. She's sitting crossed legged on the bed, in black high heels, stockings and suspenders, a red camisole top. There were a couple of failed attempts to send it to me. I repeatedly took her phone off her, enlarging the picture, combing it. "Not bad is it?" she said. "For a fifty-seven-year-old." "It's a bit more than not bad. You look fucking gorgeous."
We go back to her flat across the road. She gets us some drinks while I rack up. She's new to phet and quizzes me about what it'll do.
Any moral doubts about employing a prostitute were confirmed in the hours that followed. She's not a tax advisor, but in her word, a "hooker." "I have these fat, ugly men, and I do that just to pay the rent. It's... wrong." She veered between contextualising stories of her past, tearful self-disgust and regret, during which it was impossible not to feel for her; and checking herself, pressing me to continue a story to get her mind off it.
"Are you staying then?" she said. She wanted to show me her tits, and undid her top to show me several grand's worth of work. They were gorgeous, but my fondling was rationed. In the bedroom, she issued me with pyjamas. I put them on, disappointed, and in that sexless costume we went to bed, and wrapped round each other. I ventured a hand down from her shoulder, destination tits, but it was repositioned.
We got up at twenty past seven. "No," I said. "I'm not drinking till half past. Standards love." We spent some of the morning in amusing video calls with Faye, a cigarette-voiced friend of hers and her new boyfriend, during which we hatched one of those half-serious drunken plans to go on holiday together. "I've not even seen his cock yet," she said. "Not through want of trying!", I interjected. "He was like Mr Tickle last night." "Mr Tickle? I have to say, Faye, that's the first time I've been compared to a Mister Men character whilst attempting sexual intercourse."
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She said she charges £150 an hour, which is the amount that the central Bristol call girl I got in touch with charged. I wondered if this was indeed her, but although she's on the same site, her alias is different.
We went back to bed. "No touchy feely," she said. I lay gloomily awake, staring at the curtains, and composed a little speech which thankfully went unsaid. "So, you're allowed to touch me but I'm not allowed to touch you. I feel like a limp rag doll. I like you, and I find you sexually attractive, and I'd like to express that physically." The weight of my own rationality depressed me.
Late in the afternoon, I got up, and left her a note. "Esther, I am so glad I met you. I'm your friend now. Keep in touch X." Tonight she sent a text saying "I LOVE YOU" nine times.
My knack of meeting women who are interested in sleeping with me -- literally -- continues on its reliable, frustrating course.