Written by Highest Kite
My face as an escort is the same one I wear as a distant sister, a flunking student, a stubborn daughter, a woman on the bus on her way to a client, and I believe this is the root of what’s been eating at me. Lately, everything is going downhill: the pay, the work, my patience. And, I no longer enjoy myself.
There are few permanent pleasures in life and the memory of a great fuck is among them; if only for reference. Because I’m a sub or I’m tapped in the head, I like pacifying carnal needs. There is a ritual in the pull from and back into life during the moments of an orgasm: I can almost taste the other person’s inner self and their energy is all colors at once. Writing this is diluting the magic but I do enjoy being the magician. When a partner is rising with me, I like for them to be understood; as if our bodies are dispensing what would rather be stored away. And when we’re finally resting in post-coital calm, I like to dream we are on a wide, still ocean and I’ve been sailing the boat we’re on all along. But I no longer experience this and do not enjoy the teasing, the soft speaking, the dull dates, the haggling over my prices and the outright unexpected. Here are a few things that I could not have foreseen.
Some nights ago, four successive events occurred that convinced me I should quit sex working. Two of these incidents were videos shared with me by clients, another was a suspicious question from a classmate in Uni and the last was a direct text from my sister. While I was making supper that evening, standing by for the heat to thicken a pot of beef stew and cook ugali all through, a message arrived on my Telegram–the preferred platform where I’m more active and because I’m not shy, I’ve used my name; it shows up on the Mpesa messages anyway. I didn’t have to pause and zoom in frames of the clip Bob, the client, had sent of him, his friend Peter and I.
I keep thinking I’ve been so lucky it doesn’t make sense. On the day I sexed the pair, the men in the video had been nice enough to ask how I was doing every five minutes and because we had drinks, the fucking had been easy. They paid me up front and I concealed my face before navigating one greedy, and one needy lover. A few minutes past five, still buzzed and on the way back home, before the COVID curfew, I unfairly contrasted my day with any other twenty-two year old’s somewhere in the world, learning how to cut into bodies and brains; how to do neat cornrows and box braids; how to write mind-fucking prose and poetry yet here I was, on the bus without a stereo because I needed the quiet from the noise in my head saying I’d just had my first threesome not for love as I’d always imagined, but for money.
Money, money, money! Because of money, I was unsure how to receive, react and reply to the second video I received on the same night I watched myself (R) with Bob and Peter. Before the clip, Festus, the second client, had so far been the average creep: shows of me masturbating were not enough. Heenough., he wanted close-ups of my thighs, my nipples, my neck, my shoulders and even my short hair. I thought it was alright, to a point, because one, he compensated fairly and two, seemed a private man. For most of the photos, I’d stand outside in the sun and edit selfies to fit his request. I really didn’t mind but each time he asked for a session, I kept making excuses and couldn’t decide why. But with the video of him standing and peeing inside a bathtub of what looked like a hotel room, I knew right away I would not be going forward with seeing him or this line of business; not anymore.
The first or second episode of The Boondocks has a teenage girl testifying to R. Kelly relieving himself on her. I was worried for her then, and I’m just as worried for me now, but fuck though, is that what a squirt is? Letting out amounts of self on lovers’ chests, pelvises and upper thighs? Am I being a hypocrite? Still, I do not want to judge Festus for his fetish. I’ve watched shows like Sugar, Euphoria, and listened to my friends, the news, the world… I know things could be much worse. For example, any of the four single (or the couple) clients I have seen hitherto could easily have sold my liver and kidney overseas. Any one of them could have been sick and I’d have been played. Many terrible visions could ultimately come true in my career and I could end up a statistic; but didn’t I begin this to be in control?
The third convincing incident was the curiosity of a classmate who had been asking me what I was up to exactly when my videos went up on a Nairobi Hook-up Channel on Telegram. We’re supposed to be friends, this classmate and I, and I could have told him what was going on but this is personal; any and all business partaking my pussy is mine. However, for days now, our conversations and his posts revolve around women having it easy. All we have to do is find and marry a husband and henceforth, all our plight is his and we are free. I’ve told him this is nonsense and to fuck with him, that night, I asked why his mother runs a local tavern in the country while his father is taking his second family’s first born to high school as soon as learning resumes. His reply was that he’d been too young to remember what the first marriage was and afterwards, he proceeded to ghost me, albeit only shortly because before daylight the next day, while I was turning and debating if I should go out for a smoke, I found a text from him asking why I couldn’t wait until after graduation when he had a paying job and the means to cater to me; why was I sharing what was his?
I did not reply because I did not care and honestly had other things on my mind. I am not judging this friend for curbing his desires via Telegram porn, so why am I in mandate to portray his Madonna? We are not dating and the thought of being a saint that needs saving irks me; sometimes, I suspect I experiment with being wild just so the border of what and who a woman is expands and moves further from the center of motherhood and angelic perfection. Ultimately, all this is secondary to what is taking the bulk of my mind: a simple text that I received from my sister saying,
-R, I know what you’re doing…Stop! Just STOP!
I love my sister but doubt anyone, including her, believes that I do. I’ve been told I’m jealous of her because I am of a darker skin shade, because I always got lower grades or because I’ve grown up lean but maybe, while we were children, the adults around us needed to dim my light to feel bright about themselves. The result of this is that we do not have a relationship, in any way. We don’t talk about boys, or compare braid styles or what thrift stores have value goods, nothing. Ultimately our relationship is of the firstborn and the secondborn. If she gives me a directive, I follow it. So when she asked to borrow my phone a while ago, I simply password protected my camera, my photo/video storage and all my social apps. It didn’t occur to me that she could ‘clone’ my WhatsApp on her laptop or that, for days, she would have to witness my business transactions, conversations and negotiations with clients who wanted videos for as low as a hundred shillings.
I am sure she did not watch any of my work but the fact that she knows what I am filming is enough of an excuse to give myself permission to quit before she threatens to share what she knows with our folks and out of anger, I let her do so because this is my life. Because she won’t face me, and neither will I initiate the conversation either, she’s been sending me more texts along the lines of how shocked she is at my impossibly careless ways, how ungrateful I am to the family and how unbelievable it is that I can do something so desperate when I am neither homeless nor unloved or alone.
–This is not who you are! Another text says.
But this is who I am: a woman who loves sex. This is my choice: trading sex for pay. Today, I plan on closing the accounts but already, I’ve received four new requests on Telegram and one regular lead on WhatsApp. The only sure way of dealing with this henceforth will be to block all numbers and usernames who make requests. The would-be clients will only move on to the next practitioner because Nairobi is Nairobi and teeming with sex workers. For the record, I’m quitting because the work is not as lucrative as I’d drawn up and I feel like my conscious self is floating above and outside my body watching me film, post, talk and fuck for cash. I know she is rooting for me, because she is me, in whatever way, even if it is to redirect me towards myself again, always up to no good.
