13 Men Who Bought Me: C5: The One Who Owned My Hair.

Note: This is a series. The prologue can be found here and the catalogue of all the posts is here. These pieces can be read as standalone pieces but you will get the best out of them if you read them as a series.

......

Chapter 5: The One Who Owned My Hair. 

On the day I turned twenty-one, I cut my hair. I'd never been one for celebrating my birthday, not after my mother left anyway. Until she was around she would plan a trip for us each year, she'd take me to adventure camps and on houseboats, but after she was gone, my father would throw a party each year. It was a corporate affair, a dress would be delivered to my room or, when I got older, I'd go buy one myself. He would invite hundreds of people from work and I would pose in front of the camera as I cut the cake, and then, I would leave hoping to have a slice of cake later in the night but I could never find it. My eighteenth birthday was really the only one that mattered to me. It meant legal emancipation  and I had been dreaming of that ever since I was old enough to know that adults have rights. Each year after that, as January 13 rolled by, I wondered what I should do. If I should do anything at all. I had no friends, so I knew no party was ever coming. My mother did send me a pair of satin ballerinas each year, I kept them in my closet, in the vain hope that one day I really would learn to dance. There was little allure to buying beautiful things, my life was already filled with those and they meant nothing to me at all. I never told Guru when my birthday was and he never told me his, so I wasn't anticipating that he would celebrate me  

On a whim, I decided I would celebrate by cutting  my hair. I had very thick, long hair, yet another thing that I have gotten from my mother. She would put strange things in my hair when I was a child - cucumber juice, papaya pulp, flat beer, almond oil - you could find half the ingredients for a complex recipe on my head. I went to the guy who trimmed my hair every month and asked him to chop off all of them.

"Why would you want to do that to your beautiful hair?" he exclaimed, as if I had asked him to cut off his own finger.

He told me to reconsider, practically begged me, he tried to negotiate with me, explaining that he would cut them shorter, but going from hip to shoulder was too drastic.  He told me I would regret it. Eventually, it bothered me so much, I just left without the haircut. I felt like I was being manipulated and controlled by the stylist which is an odd situation that really only happens to women. Everyone knows better than you do about what you want and while we extol the women's movement, pledging our undying support to it, when it comes to women actually making choices that deviate from the most traditional of gender norms, we all feel like we've been personally deputised by the patriarchy to stop it. I never went back to that hairdresser after that day, instead, I bought a pair of very sharp scissors, and went home. I cut off my own hair, which I know is not the recommended course of action for good haircuts, but I didn't really care. I just tied them into a big fat plat and cut it off. I sat in front of the mirror for hours, leaning into the look. I ironed my shoulder-length hair until they were completely straight, put on more eyeliner than I do usually, I even put on a leather jacket that had been in my closet for years but I had never worn. By the time I was done with the indulgence in image, it was already time for me to leave to see a client. He was one of my longtime regulars, at that point, I had already been seeing him a couple of times a month for almost a year.

We always met at an apartment he kept in the city, it was almost barren, but it did have a working kitchen, electricity, a single sofa and a bed. That's way more stuff than I need to do my job. When I arrived he was already there, I went straight up to the sixth floor and rang the doorbell. The moment he opened the door, his jaw dropped to the floor. He cut me off as I greeted him.

"Savera!" He said, "What the hell did you do to your hair?"

"Don't you like it?" I asked, as I entered the house and dropped my bag on the sofa.

He looked at me and shook his head. It was so surprising to me, I thought I had never looked better yet repeatedly men seemed to be telling me that I didn't look as good as I used to. I was surprised at him. He was a very mild-mannered man. His family ran a temple-trust in one of the holiest cities in the country, from what I could tell, he didn't really work, as much as spent all his time networking, presumably to raise money for the philanthropic efforts of the temple, or maybe just to be able to adequately launder the money to offshore accounts. He didn't live in town and he would never hire a hooker where he lived, his wife was chosen for him through a long-standing familial agreement that was made even before either of them were born. He had four children, which to me seemed excessive, but I guess when you are rich you can afford to breed as much as you like, and when you're a man, you can afford to see your role as the mere act of impregnation and then check out of the life of your child until they are old enough to have a drink or engage in casual bigotry with you. I know for a fact that he was bigoted though. He asked me the first time he met me whether I was a "Muslim lady."

"Everyone has the right to choose, no?" He had asked, "Personally I don't prefer a Muslim lady."

I told him I was Budhhist. I told that to everyone who asked even though I have no god, no philosophy, no faith and no need for any of these things. I didn't even have a good enough reason to lie, I think I just like to make up stories for no reason other than to embody a stranger, see how they fit. There was no way for him to check, no need even, but every once in a while I would bring up a chant or a Buddhist philosophy I had read in a blurb in a magazine. The essence of character development is really about details and retention, I saw so many men but I was a distinct entity to each one of them, I played a distinct character with each one of them. It cannot be expressed with mere descriptions of clothes and appearance, there was depth to my characters, there was service to their creation. Each one, specifically tailored to the person I was serving. The character he seemed to enjoy was a loquacious Budhhist woman, a sensual creature who spoke softly and had the touch of a mother. Himself, too, he was a gentle man, he never pulled my hair nor pushed me down onto the floor. He barely even talked to me, partly because we didn't have a language in common, I wasn't fluent at his and he didn't speak any of mine particularly well.

I didn't respond to his disapproval of my new hair, but it bothered me. I took off my jacket and looked around for a task that may enable blander conversation instead. There was nothing there for me to do but him, so I walked up to him and took his hands in mine.

"It's been a while since I've seen you," I told him, "How have you been?"

He watched me, tilted his head to the right, and shook it like he was trying to shake a bug off his ear.

"You look so...different," he said, "Ladies..they look better in good long hairs."

"It will grow back," I said, running my hands over his chest, remembering the thick pelt on this chest and how it tickled my nose when I licked and sucked his nipples.

He liked that very much, so I tried to distract him by focusing on him. I kissed him and undressed him, performing the dance of accidentally ending up in the bedroom that I had perfected over the years. He couldn't get it up. I sucked and sucked on his cock, rubbed it in my hands, rubbed it against every part of my body but he couldn't get it up. That wasn't an issue he had ever faced before, normally, he was rearing to go almost as soon as we saw each other. I realised my hair had a lot more meaning to the people who bought me than they did to me, I thought of my image as something I could play with and modify at my will, but clearly, he was seeing something else. He bought me based on a specific image and I had changed that, without his knowledge, and in that, I had become the embodiment of a bait-and-switch. His entitlement to my image was so absolute, he could not fathom I even had the right to modify it.

"Is it the hair?" I asked him, finally, giving up.

"I don't like the short hair," he said, almost angry.

The way he spoke to me, it seemed like cutting my hair had been a personal affront to him, specifically. He kept telling me how much he had enjoyed seeing my long hair, falling down my back as he was inside me, and how it seemed like I didn't even care about his needs when I so carelessly made a decision for myself. It was in that moment that a harsh reality of my job dawned on me, I thought back to Anjali telling me that as she had gotten older, it had been harder for her to retain clients and it made sense all of a sudden. I wasn't allowed to change. I wasn't a person to them, I was just an image and in a way all the time I spent cultivating characters and personality didn't even matter, maybe they didn't even notice it. I wasn't allowed to get bigger, I wasn't allowed to modify the look that my clients had come to expect, I couldn't gain weight and any signs of age that I gathered had to be hidden in a way that no one noticed them.

"I'm sorry," I told him, unable to deduce my own ethics or morality on the subject, while the hairdresser's opinion on my hair had enraged me, the opinion of my client seemed more warranted and justifiable, but at the same time, it made me a little sad.

"I think it's better end this," he said, putting on his clothes.

I had lost clients before but they didn't tell you right in the moment that you would never be seeing them again and they certainly didn't give you a reason. This was one of the rare occasions where pretence had been dropped, he didn't want to see me again and it was definitely because I had altered my image.

"Do you want me to pay you back for today?" I asked him.

I don't believe that is customary.  It is like paying a lawyer, whether you win or lose, the bill comes due, and so whether you get hard or not, you have to pay the whore, but in this case I felt like I had failed to realise that my fierce belief that I owned the entirety of myself was wrong. As much as I hate it, my clients had the right to expect I come to them as I was sold.  

"You don't have to do that," he said, "You keep."

He seemed embarrassed, maybe the embarrassment was about the money or the fact that he couldn't get it up. I left as quickly as possible to keep the conversation from getting any more complicated. I walked home instead of taking a cab, it was only five kilometres, and I had a lot on my mind. I wanted to be angry, I wanted to be angry because the systemic oppression of women through our bodies and how they ought to look is a terrible condition, but I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that he was right in his own way. After all, why did men pay me as much as they did? I did nothing extraordinary with most of them, the ones with fetishes and alarming demands were much more rare than the ordinary guys, and my sexual skill, though enthusiastic and well-developed, isn't that much different that a whore who charged much, much less than I did.   So really, what was the value I added? To the men who cared about about intelligence and social skills, I brought that, but let's be honest, the games I played were mostly only entertaining to me. The idea that the rich care so much about the right forks and degrees is a little bit jaded, I've been around the rich my entire life, if they think you are hot, they care as little about your "polishing" as a man in the street. No one cares about forks for themselves, it is only ever for the eyes of other people. The fact that I'm a whore, kept any kind of man from really taking me seriously enough to value me for my intelligence or social skills, it was an added bonus for which they would pay a somewhat higher price, but not as much as I made. Honestly, I am sure the privilege of my upbringing, education and English-speaking are a big part of why I confidently approached the highest-paying escort service I could find, I couldn't fathom anyone would pay lesser money for me because I was obviously so brilliant.

And as a whore, I am. I don't doubt that, I bring commitment and intelligence to sexuality, I do the job with maximum efficiency and madness, but I know that, why did I ever think that most men notice that? Why did I ever believe that I was being paid more because of the skill I bring to the table? It became so clear to me on that walk home, that all the money was because I look good from the side. My mom used to say that, she said that many people look good when you look at them from the front or even the back, but the truly gorgeous, the really attractive people, were the ones who looked good from the side. A side profile shows all your sins. That's what they had been paying me for. For the hours spent running at the break of dawn. For the clear and glowing skin I won in a genetic lottery. For youth. For the long, thick hair. For big, beautiful eyes. The real disparity in my income and that of a whore in the back-alley brothel may have been the luxury, but it was still a physical luxury. My value, to my clients, still lay in the physical experience of me and the physical experience of me still lay in conforming to every womanly stereotype above which I thought I had risen and even though I insist that I conform as an act of skill and service that ought to be compensated, but the fact that I cant modify any part of my body without losing value is a bitter pill to swallow. I cannot age without becoming cheaper.

When I got home, I saw Guru's car parked outside, we were more or less living together by then but the nature of both our jobs was such that we had to keep both residences and reserve the right to disappear for a bit without notice or schedule, the fascinating result of that was it was always a surprise to me when I saw him. I unlocked the door to see him seated on the couch, reading one of my books, it was an odd sight to see him read, I had never seen him do that. He closed the book and got up as I entered the house, and stopped in his tracks the moment he saw me.

"Fuck," he said, as soon as he saw me, "You look so fucking hot."

I think I expected him to hate the hair as well, but he walked to me as fast as he could, grabbed my ass and pushed me into the door. As he kissed me, I started to forget about the weight I had dragged home with me, and I left it at the door, when he picked me up and carried me to the bedroom. He took off his belt and wrapped it around my throat, pulling one end to choke me. He left his jeans on the floor as he backed me into the wall,  strangling me as he fucked my throat with his cock. His cock made me crazy, it really made me crazy, the mere scent of it acted like a drug that went straight to my blood, turning me into a massive pile of madness and need. I wanted him so far inside me, I had to give myself new depth just to be able to accomodate him. He picked me and wrapped me around his waist, pushing me into the wall as he thrust his cock inside me. He fucked me slowly, wading in and out as if to drive me crazy.

"Fuck me harder, please," I moaned into his shoulder.

He carried me from the wall and put me on the edge of the bed, leaning over me to fuck me harder. I put my hands over my head and grabbed the sheets, he was the only man who could ever truly hurt me on the inside. He ripped me apart and I never could be whole in his arms. He kissed me as he came inside me and I tried to tell him I loved him with my tongue. After we finished, we just lay there for a few minutes, in that awkward position, his feet on the floor and my back against the edge of the bed.

"You look like a fucking assassin," he finally said into my neck.

"That's a good thing?" I asked him, laughing, as I slid out from under him to find a bottle of water.

As I wandered the room, looking for the bottle of water I was sure I had left there earlier that day, he got up on his feet and fished it out from under the pillow.

"I thought you would be mad at me for cutting my hair," I said to them, only in the moment realising that.

"Why the fuck would I be mad?" He asked, "It's your head, you can shave it all off if you so desire."

I don't know why I thought he would be mad. I told him the story of my day, and explained, as best I could, how losing a hairdresser and a client over the decision to cut my hair had made me feel like little parts of me were owned by various men all over the globe.

"First of all, Savera, they don't own you, I own you," he said, smirking at me, "And secondly, you're an idiot, you're the irreplaceable one in this equation, you lose one client today, you find a dozen more tomorrow, eleven of them won't even be able to afford you."

I hadn't thought of that. I hadn't thought of the fact that I was unattainable for so many men, I hadn't thought about how that gave me power in this situation.  

"Really, you own me?" I asked him, "You don't even care if your property drastically alters itself without your permission?"

He studied me for a moment, as if he was seeing something I cannot see in myself. My own image, I guess, I can never really see that, at best only an exact reflection in a mirror.

"Drastically alters?" He asked, rhetorical and condescending, "Darling, it's hair, it'll grow back or not, it doesn't change a thing about you."

Men.

"So, you don't care then?" I asked, "You wouldn't care if I gained twenty kilogram? You wouldn't care if I had fat legs? You wouldn't care if my skin was covered in zits? You wouldn't care if I pierced my lip? It wouldn't infringe on your ownership?"

He walked over to me, kissed me and shook his head.  

"Savera, do you want me to be mad?" He asked, "Do you feel a little bad that all these men seem to own you but I won't show you that I do in a way that you deem appropriate?"

I hated his terrible habit of being able to see through me. I felt uncomfortable standing in front of him at that moment, my skin felt like it was falling off me and he could see my entire life, from the inside. As a kindness, he walked away from me and sat on the chair by the window. I stood there for a little while longer, gulping excessively and feeling like he could see that I was gulping excessively. Finally I walked over to him, sat on the floor, and put my head in his lap. He stroked my hair.

"I love you," I told him, "It's mad but I really do."

"I love you as well," he responded, "And it's not mad, it's serendipitous."

He was always combination of alarmingly sensible, mindlessly violent and needlessly romantic, like a bar of chocolate with paprika at the centre, he tasted good and surprised me every single day. At any moment he could decide he wanted to show me he could shatter my heart and abuse my body, and at any moment he could shake me out of the despair in my soul.

"It's my birthday," I whispered into his knee, loud enough that he could hear me, but low enough that I could pretend not to have heard of myself.

"Why are you telling me that?" He asked, lifting my head up by my chin.

He was smiling.

"I don't know," I said, wishing I could look away from my ugly display of emotional vulnerability, "Maybe I want cake.

"Let's get you cake then," he said, standing up.

"You want to celebrate?" I asked, hoping he would say yes even though I wanted to say no.

"No, you do," he said, "How old are you now anyway?"

"Twenty-one," I said.

He shook his head and lifted me off the floor.

"So young to be so disillusionment and jaded," he said, "Come, let's get you cake."

"And then?" I asked, leaning into this moment of normalcy that had evaded me forever.

"Then we'll come back home, you'll take off all your clothes and do exactly as I say until you learn who really owns you," he said.

He did. I didn't lose any value to him, by being myself. The rest of them, they only owned my image, a wispy illusion, that flutters in the wind for a while, before it's gone forever.