Memory Lane

Memory is a funny thing. 

It forms our identity - largely how we perceive our selves and our lives is based on what memories we've got stored. In the present our brains are constantly interpreting and recording our surroundings and events into pages in our story - our selves built on the past. Yet it can’t be relied upon, we know that testimony can be influenced, and how we recollect memories is often shaped by how we retell them, an internal ‘broken telephone’ if you like. 

It should be of no surprise that I have a shocking memory, none of my job requires recall. And as they say with brain power, if you don’t use it , you lose it. I guess that’s why I try to read regularly, to keep the rest of my brain engaged. This work does require brainpower much the same as running any small business would, and really fine-tunes your interpersonal skills, but other parts of the brain can remain pretty much as dormant as you want them to be. Part of my job is forgetting, it’s easier for me to keep my peer’s real names secret if I just forget them, same with clients. It doesn’t benefit anybody for me to remember my client’s name is John - it probably isn’t.
It’s worrying how quickly memory function fails, though it’s promising for my clients - no-one ever has to worry about their discretion - you can’t tell secrets you can’t remember (but who would I tell?). It isn’t for lack of interest - active listening is one of my best skills which is really useful in this work. But I don’t need to remember that someone walks with a gait or that their hair is blonde, any more than I need to know the sky was blue on Tuesday. It’s past information that doesn’t influence the events of tomorrow. 

But I’ll have little flashes sometimes. Like the one I had before I sat down to my laptop, of flesh meshing into flesh, their hand wrapped under my back supporting my neck as they urgently thrust inside of me. I remember the boar-ish groan as they cum (my audial recollection unlike the rest, is impressive) and how they relaxed onto me, with dewy sweat and a waft of underarm odour. That moment is crystal clear in my memory, etched into my extensive carnal past. But I can’t see their face, remember their name or tell you when I saw them. Just a mystery man from memory lane.

I was standing at the sink the other day peeling my boiled eggs (yes, sex workers also do the mundane), when goosebumps swept across my body as my memory threw up the sensation of small feminine hands draped across my body, as they fucked me with a cold glass toy. It’s vivid, she’s begging me to cum in a high sweet voice, her scent is annoyingly floral and her thrusts are accurate and overwhelmingly effective. Another nice little memory jolt from a scene somewhere on the shelves of the library of my mind. A book falling open on a page during breakfast.

 
It’s a terrible thing to admit to, that sexual memories are loosely scattered in my brain unattached to identities. I guess as my job is so sexually oriented, that those things become the least memorable parts of the work. I can do large parts of my work on autopilot - I’ve given thousands of blowjobs. I love giving blowjobs, and I like to think I’m always present and in the moment, but if I need to, if I’ve got a lot of shit on my personal plate, I can do that entirely automated while solving my personal issues in my head, without a client noticing. That’s the skill of a veteran sex worker - existing in two places at once. 
Yet, I can recall immediately the pained expression of a client who had lost their child. Their face and name is clear. I can recall the sparkle of, and colour of the eyes of the person whose virginity I took recently, and the shockingly chewed state of the nails of a workaholic regular. I seem to have catalogued clients into sections of fleeting moments of meaningfulness, and random facts about their lives they probably deemed unimportant. The sexual moments of our time together, probably what they deemed most important and they themselves probably have memorised by the second,  floating away from my mind like dandelion pappi, leaving only occasional sensorily busy moments planted behind. I cum every day, it’s a self care routine of a bodily function I’d do myself anyway, so doesn’t operate like a bookmark for me in bookings as much as I think people would like to believe it would.

I worry for my mind sometimes, what will become of it with a lifetime built of hedonism and deliberate carnal forgetting, so I busy myself with learning and reading, which adds nothing to my work life but keeps my imagination alive and hopefully keeps my recall off a ventilator. I fight against what trauma has done to a large part of my former life - a big blank spot I can’t seem to reach, nor am I sure I want to. 

They say our mind does what it can to protect itself, but in this case it's an overzealous German shepherd - down boy. I no longer need protection from what I live day to day, I long to remember it all, it would make people in my own life, not just clients feel a lot more special if I could just remember what it is we actually did on our first date, I’m sure it was fun though. I also find writing helps my recall, and where it doesn’t I find it helps me to at least reimagine the parts that are missing in a way that if not entertaining or sexually pleasing, completes a story that otherwise would simply be unfinished chapters. Perhaps if I reread it often enough it’ll become part of my natural recall, a part of my story that’s not quite fiction, not quite truth, with a memory that can’t bear witness either way. 

PETRA FOX

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