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  ‘So yes,’ resumed Natalia, ‘the words – no prostitution – were like balm for our exhausted nerves.’

  My sisters wanted to believe this fib so badly that they forgot about their conversation with Irina, who had, after all, confessed about what kind of ‘dancing’ she performed. Moreover, the sign in Russian next to every private room – ‘Throw condoms into the crapper only – NEVER INTO A WASTEBIN. Management.’ – that was aimed at the girls in case of a police raid, didn’t make them think twice.

  ‘Imagine, Jul, our faces, when in the middle of that first night the rhythmical beat of the couch against the wall in the private room next to our accommodation, accompanied by dull pants and sighs – soprano and baritone in unison – woke us.’ We rolled with laughter again.

  Suddenly I fired it off: ‘I am going with you this time.’

  They froze for a second and then exclaimed as one, ‘No way!’

  I started gabbling something about being mature and capable and responsible and I don’t remember what else.

  ‘It’s a bad idea!’ exclaimed Natalia

  ‘It wouldn’t be the right place for you, especially not after what you went through three years ago, Jul …’ Lena shook her head while looking away.

  ‘What does that have to do with my future plans? I can’t believe you brought it up, Len! So now, because you cannot deal with your guilt issues you are going to seal me in a jar and store me in a cool and dry place so I won’t get hurt again? Is that your plan, Len? To keep me safe, turning me into a pickled gherkin? It’s my life and I will decide what to do with it …’

  We argued all night long, until Natalia lost her temper, screamed ‘Over my dead body!’ and stormed out.

  7

  Guess what … two months later, three of us are flying to Luxembourg.

  Natalia could not stop me, but she did make sure we were going to work in the same place, a cabaret called Sexy Girls.

  The hot August day is in full swing when we land. We grab a cab and go straight to the club.

  Lena asks the driver to pull off next to the four-storey apartment building with the red sign above the entrance. The billboard with pictures of half-naked girls arrests my attention. Despite the girls’ cheesecakes being covered with a glass panel, most of the photos are faded and have curved yellow corners from the merciless sun.

  We force our luggage through the doorway and stop in the poky hall. It has a door on the left to the club area, a wall-sized mirror on the right and stairs further down the hall.

  While Natalia and Lena are looking for a manager to get the room keys, I avidly peer at the dark bar, taking in every detail. The day shift is rolling. Waves of excitement and fear rage through my body when I think about working here … in just a few hours … tonight!

  It’s difficult to make out much – after the bright daylight the place looks absolutely pitch-black. All I see is a small group of girls sitting silently on the curved sofa; two men accompanied by sexily dressed girls at the bar, a few steps away from each other; and one sleepy barman. The cigarette smoke and slow, quiet music make them look like a bunch of zombies.

  My sisters come back with the keys, and news that there is only one room available with two beds; the others are half-occupied.

  It’s a real sweat to push the luggage up the narrow, steep stairs, all the way to the fourth floor. The second contains the private rooms, and the third and fourth are the girls’ accommodation. As we reach the top, a door on the left flies open. A woman stands at the threshold with a glass of wine in her hand.

  ‘Oh, look who’s here! Natalia and her daydreaming sister! Welcome back,’ she exclaims in a hoarse and bumbling voice. Then she points at me, discourteously: ‘And what is it that you have dragged in with you this time?’

  Natalia haplessly sighs, and then greets the woman without even looking at her. ‘Hey, Masha.’

  She is in her thirties, almost two meters tall, with a strong but beautiful face. Despite the time of the day, Masha is already quite intoxicated. She’s wearing a knee-length, pink, slightly wrinkled kimono-like robe, which exposes her athletic legs.

  Something tells me Masha used to play basketball … a lot.

  Natalia turns to Lena and says quietly, ‘You and Jul stay in this room; I will have to share with this one,’ and nods towards Masha.

  ‘Wait, wait, wait!’ The ball hawk struggles to pronounce the words. ‘I don’t want you in my room!’ She punches the air with the glass of wine and spills some on the decayed linoleum. ‘You are crazy with your early jogging! You will wake me up every goddamn morning! I would rather stay with the puny one!’ She punches again, this time towards me, and spills more wine.

  ‘What the fuck!’ Lena sweeps in. ‘She is drunk, Natalia, there’s going to be a row.’

  I peek into the room, behind Masha’s back, who props one side of the doorway up with her shoulder and the other one with her hand. I spot the line of blow on the coffee table, as well as a small plastic bag of grass and an open bottle of wine. ‘Why not?’ goes through my head, and I say, ‘Don’t worry, girls, I can stay here. Besides, I do like sleeping late and will be only across the hall from you.’ I squeeze in, without even stooping, under Masha’s arm. God, she is a big woman! I smile to myself, but say only, ‘By the way, my name is Julia’.

  Masha closes the door, lurches towards the table, drops herself on the couch, temptingly sniffs the line and fills me in: ‘My name is Masha, and by the way, I am transsexual.’

  8

  It has been three weeks since we arrived in Luxembourg and two days since my unforgettable helmet story.

  I definitely feel less and less nervous as time goes by, but I am still dealing with some issues – like my childish fear of approaching and talking to strangers; the rejection phobia that is, I think, a common drawback for salespeople of any kind; and taking clients upstairs. After the incident with Lena’s Serega I think I will always expect the worst and feel more vulnerable than most. The easiest of the things I had to get used to was taking my clothes off on the stage in front of people.

  Who would have thought? Ha!

  Of course, I wouldn’t be able to handle my new life without the help of alcohol and drugs.

  Even though Natalia annoys me by skinning me alive for my regular and heavy consumption, I can never say no to my giant roommate.

  Masha has turned out to be a fun girl, as long as she doesn’t drink or dope. The booze changes her pretty eyes to mad and inflamed, her muscular but graceful body to rugged and impulsive. As soon as she hits it up, she starts to hate all the girls around her. Yes, she changed her sex, but still doesn’t feel complete: unlike the women, she will never be able to reproduce. I guess because my body looks more like it belongs to a ten-year-old boy, jumbo never really disliked me. On the contrary, I am her best buddy now; she shares generously with me.

  Masha’s hostility is just for appearances. She is mostly harmless. Nevertheless, the girls and many customers try to stay away from her. Once I even witnessed how she staggered, drunk, to a lonely guest who was standing by the bar. The guy was short, with an obedient look; he was sipping an appletini and shuffling on his feet from time to time while wiping the sweat off his bald head. She leaned over him, her dark shadow covering the counter. When he raised his eyes and met with her bull stare, Masha moved closer and slowly whispered ‘Heeellooo’ in her low voice. The misfit got such a fright that, standing right there, he peed in his pants and ran out of the club, embarrassed …

  Shame …!

  It is a slow night in the middle of the working week. There is a pair of drunk Portuguese men at the bar. While they are having a drink, another two girls leave with nothing, as the next two draw near to try their luck and convince the men to spend some money on champagne. Natalia and I had our turn earlier and all we could get from them was that in Lisbon they could shag all night for only €50.

  You can’t beat that, with a minimum here of €250 for an hour.

  There are al
so a few regulars in the club. One goes upstairs straight away with his favourite girl. Another one comes once a week to see Lena. He buys only demi-bouteilles, and always tells her that she is a special girl, that he respects her as a woman and will never treat her like a whore by taking her upstairs. In the meantime, the restless hands of this stingy fucker knead and squeeze every spot of her body, while his tongue is constantly deep in her throat, so she can rarely even take a sip from her glass.

  The night is quiet and boring, until Natalia’s legendary customer, Peter, arrives. As soon as he steps into the club, the barmen and all the girls light up. The next minute, even the boss and manager are on the floor, dancing the welcome-to-the-best-client-in-the-world dance around him.

  It’s simple. Peter spends so much money in one night that at his request the boss closes the club for the whole night and all girls entertain only him. The champagne flows without limits. In exchange, he asks for no intimacy of any kind, only participation in his weird fantasy.

  Usually, it is a picnic date with Natalia in an imaginary park. Tonight, he wants it to be a rainy summer day. She is his perfect girlfriend and the rest of the girls act like bees, squirrels, flowers or trees. We wear absolutely nothing but some accessories: feelers on springs, plastic animal dominoes, fake flowering twigs.

  Even Natalia doesn’t know if this is Peter’s rolling caprice, or if the guy is totally demented. Who cares, if it’s a quick buck and great fun?

  When the crazy night is over, at about five in the morning we all end up upstairs in the communal kitchen. We’re completely wasted and jolly. The kitchen is fairly clean but well-worn and cluttered, with mostly plastic or aluminum utensils and dishware. We make tea and sandwiches and interrupt one another’s yakety-yak, going through the highlights of the night and the other incredible stories and myths about our work.

  ‘I can’t believe how much I had to work to make this kind of money back home. I’m telling you, girls, at least three months for tonight’s earnings,’ one of the girls exclaims. We all nod with agreement, each one of us thinking about our own story.

  ‘Of course, these kinds of nights happen pretty seldom, and usually our activities are more disgusting and energy-consuming,’ Natalia jumps in. ‘Nevertheless, since I started doing this, I’ve actually stopped feeling as cheap and insecure as I did while I was doing a “proper” job ...’

  Masha interrupts Natalia by walking into the kitchen. She is unusually sober and in a horrible mood. She grabs a bottle of water from her shelf in the fridge and looks around.

  ‘What are you looking at, bitches? It was the worst night ever! I couldn’t even get drunk – had to hold the umbrella for those two brainsick fools all night long.’

  We all look down, trying to suppress our drunken, hysterical laughter, until she throws her ‘Whatever! I am going to sleep’ into our midst and goes back to her room.

  9

  Unfortunately, this kind of night happens seldom in Luxembourg. Usually the job is a case of simple perversion and stress.

  The owners pack the girls like sardines into their clubs, making the business unhealthily competitive. To keep the establishment optimally profitable, they ‘motivate’ the girls with an implicit rule, called a daily minimum norm: the €250 that each of us has to make for the bar per shift. There are no exceptions, even when there are no clients in the club. If we don’t make money, they do not pay us a salary; if we do not improve our trade in the couple of days that follow, they fire us and send us back home. This shady but tangible undertaking never gets mentioned in the contract – the girls are faced with these ‘terms and conditions’ only when they get to Luxembourg.

  Most of them are already jammed with debt on arrival: they pay the agent to organise access to the club (this usually costs between $500 and $1,000), and they pay for their flights, which include a trip to the Luxembourgish embassy in Moscow and the trip to Luxembourg itself – another $700 or $800. Obviously, they can’t simply look around and say, ‘Hmmm … I don’t like it here. I am going back home,’ then catch the next plane and face their creditors with fuck-all in their pockets. So, the ‘unlucky shift’, ‘quiet business’ or ‘difficult client’ options are, most of the time, simply not available. Instead, the dancers get so desperate to bag the damn champagne that if the customer asks them to do the Miller Plus2, each one of them would do it without hesitation.

  This setup results in another bummer: spoilt customers, or, frankly speaking, hard-to-please, twisted assholes.

  You may think, what’s the big deal? The girl is pretty, friendly, readily on tap. The customer is usually there for a reason too, which is not to check whether there are any new cocktails on the menu. Thus, the give and take between the parties should be free of complications. A case of joy and pleasure – he finds the best fit for himself and spends his time and money with the doll according to his fancy or capabilities.

  Sounds awesome, huh? But so fucking far away from the real, perverse, stuffed-with-freaks-and-cheap-desperate-whores-like-me place that is Luxembourg …

  In reality, to get picked, the girl has to be very creative. She has to be quick enough to get to the customer before the others. The best way to do that is always to face the entrance and never switch your brain to standby mode – not that easy, when the waiting time for a client can sometimes stretch to hours. The more vigilant you are, the better your chances of identifying and/or classifying the spender, and acting accordingly.

  The quickest way to approach the customer is called, jokingly among the girls, roller skating – you’d be surprised at the speed a girl can reach while wearing extremely high heels and moving elegantly, especially when she sees a high roller. Let’s take me, as an example: as soon as the client shows up at the door, I get off my chair and glide towards him before I even recognise him. Then, if – unfortunately – the guy wants to take a leak, I walk behind him to the bathroom, guard the door, and then accompany him to where he chooses to sit, making sure that I am the first to try my luck with him.

  After the girl wins the opportunity to talk to a potential purchaser, she has only five minutes to excite his curiosity, to make him choose her and spend his money on champagne.

  There are a few ways of doing it successfully.

  She can be irresistibly beautiful, with big boobs, long legs, a firm ass, long and shiny hair, a sharp brain, a great personality, knowledge of the language the client prefers to speak, a huge fan of anal and an antagonist of condoms. In other words, she has to be perfect.

  If this foolproof set of attributes doesn’t apply, the entertainer can diagnose the client’s preferences and secret desires before she approaches him, then provide whatever it is he needs – which means she has to be a psychic and a good actress. She must grasp what the man wants and transform, consistently, into a woman-vamp, innocent schoolgirl, or whatever it is that would match his fantasies. (Don’t forget: she’s got only five minutes)

  If the second scenario is also not applicable, and the girl doesn’t want to play Russian roulette with her small chance of guessing and fulfilling the customer’s needs perfectly, she also can promise him something extra. Let’s say hard-core anal, or that she will swallow his cum, or – even worse – that she will be a kamikaze and let him screw her without a rubber. Of course, many girls try to fool the client and not fulfill these promises of spicy undertakings, but most of the time the customer will complain to the manager, who always solves the dispute by deducting the amount from the girl’s salary.

  So, you have to be really smart, pushy and creative to be a successful hooker – oops, sorry: entertainer – in Luxembourg. Oh, and don’t forget the Miller Plus …

  10

  Both of my sisters are doing pretty well, compared to the other girls. I am actually impressed with Lena’s ability to bamboozle the clients and with Natalia’s readiness to do almost anything when it comes to money. It’s interesting; they both lack these qualities in real life and real relationships: Lena can never manipulate o
r control her men and always turns out to be the giver, whereas Natalia, after that blood-sucking affair with her boss, can never compromise or tolerate the shortcomings of her infrequent, and usually short-lived, relationships.

  The night Lena first introduces me to her craftiness is one of those ill-fated shifts in which nearly all of the girls have a good run but Lena and me. We are sitting, downcast, at the bar when two guys walk in and head towards us. We smile, introduce ourselves and learn that they are Paulo and Fernando, from Portugal, and that they don’t speak any English, or even French. The conversation is limited, but Lena doesn’t shilly-shally. She explains – with just two words, one finger and the menu – that one hour of sex upstairs costs €250 each and includes a bottle of champagne.

  The guys exchange a few remarks in their native language, then Paulo explains in gestures that they want tak-tak but they can’t pay that much and would like to have two girls for the price of one bottle. Tak-tak appears to mean sexual intercourse, which we interpret from the recognisable movement of his hips that follows each use of this linguistic unit. Then, Fernando proudly points at the menu and adds that they can pay for two demi-bouteilles if that would suit us better.

  Lena tries to suppress her irritation, smiles, and patiently explains to them again that tak-tak is possible only upstairs and that it is the club’s policy to allow only one girl for one bottle. Then she points at the area where we entertain for the demi-bouteilles, lilts ‘tak-tak … la-bas … pas possible3’ and apologetically spreads her hands as if saying, ‘Sorry guys, even if we wanted to help, there is nothing we can do, so if you want to fuck you will have to splash out’.

  They exchange a few more words in Portuguese, then Paulo clarifies that they are okay with not going upstairs, but that they still want tak-tak and they will pay the price of the demi-bouteille, pointing again at the menu.

  Lena wholeheartedly but almost voicelessly curses in Russian with a big smile on her face, saying something like, ‘You are stupid and tight-assed idiots who get what they deserve,’ then loudly announces, ‘Okay!’