a xmas tale...

In the XMAS/NYE period of ’88 I met a very attractive, blonde surfy-chick at the Coolangatta Airport check-in queue whilst returning from a rare, financially successful, weekend’s bourbon/cocaine binge on the blackjack tables at Jupiter’s Casino. Sadly, ‘rare’ describes the financial success of this particular trip, rather than the frequency with which these self-destructive junkets tended to occur. Anyway, flushed with funds, still buzzing like a turtle from the narcotics and sporting a newly purchased ten-gallon hat which I’d hoped advertised some mighty gambling prowess, if not a sense of style necessarily, I boldly struck up a conversation with this girl. By the time we’d reached the counter I’d convinced her to keep company in the seat next to me on the flight. A double martini and two lines of coke later in the Qantas Club, I’d discovered her name was ‘Caroline Clay’ (‘Everybody calls me Cass…’) and that she was a 24 year-old real estate agent from Surfers Paradise, heading to the bright lights of Sydney to seek her fortune. Thirty minutes later, maybe somewhere over Port Macquarie at 28,000 feet, as I held a glass of champagne in my right hand and she held my wing-wang in hers, I generously offered her free accommodation for life, which my new ‘girlfriend’ graciously accepted with all the dignity manageable in the performance of a hand-job.

Upon landing in Sydney, we raced back to ‘our’ place for some thrilling first sex, after which she got dressed and headed into Kings Cross for some nightclubbing. I declined the invitation to go with her as I was not a dancer of any note and besides that had work the next day. She returned home at 7-00am, just as I was getting up, greeted me with a kiss, the offer of a blowjob which I gladly accepted, and was fast asleep when I left for the office. Ten hours later, when I got home, she was still asleep. I proceeded to cook my dinner/her breakfast, after which we had thrilling second sex, followed by cuddles and some thrilling third sex. At about 11-00pm I indicated I was going to bed, whereupon she had a shower and got ready to apparently go nightclubbing again. In a repeat of the previous evening, she cruised back in around 7-00am as I was getting up, we did a few quick laps of the rack and she was fast asleep before I left the apartment. This bizarre ritual went on virtually unchanged for five days, the only variation being the increasing degree of haggardness with which she greeted me each morning. By the sixth morning she looked ten years older than the girl I’d recently met; all the clubbing was starting to take its toll.

I inquired of Cass as to what she intended doing about getting her real estate career started in Sydney but the questions went unanswered. The nightclubbing however went on and her youthful visage came off accordingly.

I became a little suspicious…

One night, as she departed in the now familiar 11-00pm taxi, I decided to follow her from a safe distance in my car. She went straight to Kings Cross, alighted on Macleay Street and disappeared through a heavy, wooden door which may or may not have hidden a nightclub. I waited out the front for about five minutes, contemplating whether to go in and see what she was doing or simply go home and get some sleep. I was just about to drive off when Cass reappeared on the street, unsurprisingly (had I given it even the slightest thought) dressed in a denim mini-skirt, pink blouse tied off below her bongos and white, six-inch pumps. Superb; I was dating a hooker.

Now I should mention that I have nothing against hookers or hooking in principle. Having worked for eighteen years in the money market, I‘ve witnessed with my own eyes, amongst other various body parts, the miraculous sex-for-money-led economic recovery that took place in the 80s/90s. I say ‘to each their own’ and if franchising the comfort of your orifices is your profession of choice…well pucker-up then, Peckerhead…but having my ‘girlfriend’ fuck the indiscriminate orts and leavings of the sexual buffet for money (or for free come to think of it) is a ‘whorse’ of an entirely different colour.

Angry at being taken for a fool and slightly unnerved by the thought of five days worth of memorably unprotected sex, I slunk home to bed. The following morning I passed on the blowjob, scuttled off to the clinic for a complete check-up, which rather miraculously turned up nothing terribly disturbing other than elevated cholesterol, and spent the day preparing a break-up speech for later.

That evening, I gave Cass the speech, which spoke entirely of my inability to commit daily to a relationship and nothing of her ability to commit nightly to misdemeanours; I simply didn’t have the heart to let her know I knew. She took the news stoically, fortified mostly I’m sure by the reassuring words concerning her immediate future and partly by the shot of heroin she took shortly before I got home.

She thanked me for ‘everything’ and asked if she could move her meagre possessions out the following day, while I was at work. I agreed, passed on the offer of break-up sex and went to bed. When I got up, she wasn’t yet home from the previous night’s clubbing, however upon my return from work that evening, I saw that she’d made good on her promise; all her things were gone.

As I looked around the house, I felt a tinge of sadness, a sudden emptiness, though not because I was sure I’d never see Cass again, but rather because the cunt had taken most of my possessions with her when she went. In fact, she must have hired a fucking truck to fit it all in; TVs, stereos, tables, chairs, clothing, shoes, sports equipment, cutlery, crockery, paintings. All of it…everything that wasn’t bolted down; she must have spent the entire day there, with help, removing the contents of my apartment.

The ensuing insurance claim strangely failed to mention I’d left a heroin-addicted prostitute unattended in my place for a day...

(This story was first published a while back on Lombay's splendid site. I'm in the process of salvaging certain articles for posterity and dumping them on TWG. Aplologies to anyone from the old days who might have suffered through it before...)