Page 29

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Juri

After dinner, I sat at the dining table, editing a few photos, when Luca caught me off guard.

“Can I interview you?” he asked out of the blue.

I looked at him suspiciously. He had just finished cleaning up the kitchen and was standing by the dishwasher with a wet cloth.

“Why?” I asked.

“For inspiration,” he replied in a casual tone as he put the cloth away and headed to the coffee maker. “Already forgotten? You’re my muse.”

His sudden enthusiasm scared me. For a week, he hadn't mentioned a word about it, and now, after the bombshell dropped, he brought this up. I rubbed my forehead in contemplation.

The conditions were clear, though. No videos. Just audio recordings. He had agreed to that. So technically, it shouldn’t matter to me. But was I ready to face his questions?

“Please,” he pleaded, wearing a puppy-dog expression I had never seen before.

I should remember that.

“If the questions get too personal, you can always refuse to answer,” he added.

“Is this for your project?” I asked, crossing one leg over the other. “I thought you wanted something about back rooms …” I didn’t need to continue. The connection Luca tried to make was clear even to me. I sighed. “Alright, fine.”

“Yesss!” Luca pressed the coffee maker button and disappeared into his room. He emerged with a phone cable, notepad, and pen. With a cup of coffee in his hand, he sat down at the table with me, beaming like a Christmas ornament.

“What? Now?” I asked, taken aback.

“Yeah … Or do you have something else going on?” He furrowed his brow in confusion.

“Don’t you want to prepare first?”

“I prefer to do things spontaneously and approach them more intuitively. That way, I get more out of it compared to overthinking it beforehand. Best example of this is the concept,” Luca said, shrugging mischievously.

Since when is he so focused?

Automatically, I reached for my pack of cigarettes. “I … uh … I can’t do this without smoking.”

“We can make an exception.” Standing up, Luca opened the window and placed the ashtray between us on the dining table. “It’s okay. Hector has smoked cigars before.”

Damn …

“Do you want a beer?”

I could only nod at his thoughtfulness. Everything was happening so fast, so I lit a cigarette and took a deep drag.

“Here,” Luca said, handing me a beer.

He had taken one for himself too but drank his coffee first. I watched him suspiciously as he plugged in the phone and leaned it against his water glass on the long edge.

It made sense because the cable was a bit short.

By placing it like that, the microphone was aimed at me.

Even though the camera pointed away from me, an unsettling feeling crept over me that I was being filmed.

“Just relax. Forget about the phone. Look at me.”

I cleared my throat and sat up straight.

“Is this the first time you’ve been interviewed?”

“Of course,” I said, tapping the cigarette over the ashtray.

“Really? You’ve never been questioned about anything before?”

I furrowed my brows. “Well, I’m constantly questioned. And then … I tell people what they want to hear.”

“People? You’re talking about your clients?”

“Mhm …” I didn’t want to say more about it, so I took another deep drag from the cigarette. But Luca wanted to know more.

“What do you tell them?”

“Well, it depends. With new clients, I have to first figure out what they want to hear. I know my regulars pretty well by now.” I bit my lower lip and paused.

Then I looked at Luca. Before I knew it, he had engaged me in a conversation, and I wondered how much information I should disclose here.

I toyed with my lip piercing, weighing the response.

I tapped the ash again and cleared my throat.

“There are clients who are genuinely interested in me. Who I am. What I do. What I’m interested in.

Others pay me to be someone else for them. ”

“Do you like the job?”

The incredulity in Luca’s voice threw me off a bit. Whatever I had tried to make him believe earlier, he apparently hadn’t bought it. I stared at the beer bottle in front of me, searching for the right answer, because even I knew I had deluded myself a lot in this regard.

“I don’t know. Sometimes.”

In my head, memories of encounters with clients were rushing through. Good and bad ones. The experiences I gathered were unique, but I could have done without at least half of them. I swallowed and bit my lip again.

“Juri?” Luca pulled me out of the whirlwind, and I glanced up. “You don’t have to answer the question if you don’t want to—or can’t.”

I nodded slightly, irritated by myself.

“I can imagine the job isn’t safe. Aren’t you scared?”

That question even brought a smile to my face. It’s not like I had a choice. “There are rooms with an emergency button. Plus, I don’t do everything.”

“What do you mean?”

“Um … Nothing involving blood. I don’t let myself be filmed, pissed on, or shat on. No groups. Threesomes only with clients I know well. Um … Yeah …”

“How do you choose your clients?”

I stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray and took a big gulp of beer. When I set the bottle down again, my hands reached for the cigarette pack, needing something to hold onto.

“They find me through an ad.” I paused for a while, but Luca said nothing. He could see I was carefully weighing my next words. “They text me. Mostly on WhatsApp. With a photo. Then we chat a bit. If I have a bad feeling, I’ll pass.”

“And how old are your clients?”

“Forty and up.”

“Why?” Luca seemed puzzled. “Doesn’t that gross you out?”

“If you want to talk about disgust, then you should know it has nothing to do with age.”

“But … you have sex with older men. I mean …”

I shook my head. “Sorry, but that’s not how it works. If you want to conduct a serious interview, you should keep your opinions and emotions out of it.”

“I’m sorry,” Luca said at once. “The thought of you with these strange men … It just messes with me.”

“Many of them are nice. And everyone has their quirks. People are different. I know many who lead normal family lives, with a wife and kids at home. Once a month, they come to me to live out their fantasies. Older men don’t pose a risk to me.

I don’t fall in love with them. I offer them a service, and they pay me for it. ”

“How did you get into doing this?” By now, Luca had switched to beer and took a long sip.

I thought about it, even though I knew the answer. Nervously, I lit a new cigarette. “I was … looking for love,” I replied with smoke in my lungs, blowing it out and shrugging.

Luca frowned.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not stupid. I know the difference. But back then, when this opportunity presented itself …” My thoughts drifted back to a life I had six years ago. A life dominated by violence. By beatings and torture. Again, I cleared my throat and tried to shake off the memories.

“My first client approached me on Langstrasse,” I said.

“I was out with friends. They were in the bar, and I was outside smoking. That’s when this guy started talking to me.

He offered me fifty bucks if he could blow me.

I could have told him I wasn’t a hustler, but I was curious.

Besides, I had nothing to lose, so I went with him. ”

“When was that?”

“About six years ago.”

“You’ve been doing this for that long?”

“Mhm …”

“Didn’t you ever want to do something else?”

I pressed my lips together and forced a smile. “I started an apprenticeship in the summer. As a chef. But the owner was out with a callboy and happened to see me with a client. That’s when I got fired on the spot.”

“That’s not right,” Luca said, puzzled.

“Hector said the same thing. But what can I do? Work another three years in a kitchen where nobody wants me? I have a bit of pride too.”

“Why did you still work on the side?”

“No one can pay all their bills with an apprentice wage.”

“And your parents don’t support you?”

I exhaled smoke from my cigarette. “No.”

Thankfully, Luca left it at that. “I’m sorry,” he said, pausing for a moment to drink his beer. “Do they know how you make your money?”

Something caught in my throat, and I swallowed hard. “There’s an unwritten rule,” I choked out. “Sex work and parents shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath.”

“Oh … I’m sorry.”

Suddenly, I felt hot. I took large gulps of my drink, hoping Luca would finally change the subject.

“Okay, so … How often have you been to the back room at Exil?”

The question came unexpectedly, as if it were his emergency question. I was so relieved by it that I laughed. Anything was preferable to talking about my family.

“Quite often,” I admitted.

“I thought as much.” Luca let his shoulders relax. “Always with the same client? Or different ones?”

“I have four regulars who like to get off on others. I usually visit the back room at Exil with younger clients, but there are similar back rooms scattered throughout the city.”

“Younger clients? I thought your clients were forty plus?”

“I still have two in their thirties,” I replied mischievously, winking at him. It was delightful to see how this confused him.

“Okay, and … they just watch the others … and then?”

“You want details? You’ve been there yourself and experienced how it works—for free!”

Luca swallowed and nervously shifted in his seat. On the other hand, I was finally more relaxed since we were discussing things; I knew about.

“Alright,” I said, feeling tempted to tease Luca a bit.

“I go there with the client. He orders a drink, and we chat for a while. He watches the others. I usually delay it as long as possible. I touch the guy, flirt with him, and watch him get hard. Then I start with a massage. Continue with a blowjob, but I don’t finish it. And so on.”

Luca scratched his head, appearing visibly uncomfortable. Or was it because he had just gotten hard? I grinned and looked deeply into his beautiful storm-gray eyes.

“You also have a voyeuristic streak,” I said. “I noticed that.”

“If that’s the case, then … I didn’t know until now.” Luca’s voice was weak, and he obviously made an effort to appear relaxed.

Satisfied, I extinguished the cigarette and leaned back again. “You don’t have to be embarrassed about it. I even find it hot.”

“What do you mean?”

“It turns me on to be watched.”

“That probably also explains your behavior in the bathroom.”

“And yours,” I retorted. “How many times have you jerked off after that in the last week?”

“Every time,” he admitted, managing even a faint smile. “I really thought you were just making dumb jokes. But then when I saw you with Hector … Fuck … Why did you do that? You said it was work, but I don’t believe you.”

“I feel so damn useless here, and after a week without sex, I was almost going crazy. After all, I’m used to having sex very often. I felt like a parasite. Then Hector joked that I could pay my rent that way. And so one thing led to another.”

“You don’t need to do that. You’re living here on my dime. If you’re having sex with Hector just because you feel guilty, then no, you don’t need to.”

“As I said,” I said in a deliberately deep voice. “I didn’t do it just because of that.”

Luca nodded in understanding. “Would you also have sex with me?”

I laughed. It was just like back then at Exil, when he asked me if I would also kiss him. I hadn’t done it back then, but it might have saved me a lot of trouble if I had. “Yes,” I replied monotonously. “I want to fuck you hard.”

“Holy …” he exclaimed. Disturbed, he shook his head and laughed. “You really call things by their names.”

“It comes easily to me,” I admitted, without taking my eyes off him. He had no idea how hot he was.

“Okay … uh … you want to … I’ve never … I mean … I’ve used a dildo before, but I’ve never been a bottom. Like you were with Hector yesterday … I think I’m more a Hector.”

I laughed out loud, then became serious again. “I won’t let you top me. Not for fun.”

“Is that another one of your rules? Like how you didn’t want to kiss me because I’m not a client?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then … I guess I have no choice but to …” He cleared his throat and licked his lips.

“Do you even know how adorable you are?”

“No,” he replied softly. “I really have no idea.”

“Help me to my room.” Finishing the beer in two swallows, I pushed myself up from the table. “I’ll show you.”