Miranda Courtesan - An excerpt from my novel Blood, Skin, and Ink

This is an excerpt from my novel Blood, Skin, and Ink.

This excerpt is a flashback to her early days in San Francisco. She has gotten a job as an exotic dancer at a San Francisco club at the age of seventeen. (Using a fake ID when she applied for the job!) In this scene she starts the crossover from dancing and exhibitionism to one-on-one sex work.

Blood, Skin, and Ink is the story of a woman who’s been to Hell and back so many times she’s lost count. A sex worker, a teenage runaway running from the law, a wild rock and roll musician, and a barroom brawler, Miranda is a six foot tall Devil Girl, trying to find her salvation by trying to turn her back on her wild life of booze, drugs, sex, and chaos.

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     Miranda walked around the backstage at Mirianʼs House of Ecdysiasm. She was going through her outfits, the ones that she left at the club. She tried to decide what to wear as she walked around, asking for help with her makeup.
     She did so while completely naked.
     There was one other dancer who was also walking around completely naked. Most were dressed or semi-dressed. Miranda had gotten so used to taking her clothes off that she almost never noted her state of dress or undress as she walked around the club. A few times she had even walked out into the club lobby, completely naked, because she wanted to ask the manager or another employee a question.
     Many of the dancers helped her out. They showed her how to apply makeup, a skill that she had not bothered to cultivate during her runaway days. They showed her some simple dance moves while emphasizing that most of the clients were really interested in simply seeing her undressed rather than assess her dance skills. A few of them gave her tips on handling troublesome clients, letting her know what she could do to try and diffuse a difficult situation with aggressive and inappropriate clients, how to settle problems without having to call for the bouncer.
     At first, she spent most of her time dancing in the general area, the one with the pay-per-minutes windows. Occasionally she would do private room sessions, where it would be just her and one customer separated by a window. The customer would make requests for poses and acts as they pushed bills through a small opening in the window. The general policy was that clothes did not come off until the client gave a tip, and if they had specific requests you asked for more tip money. Many clients would ask for poses, or for her to expose certain parts of her body. For extra tips she would play with herself, rubbing or grabbing her breasts or fingering herself. Eventually she started bringing toys into the room and would use them on herself for extra tips.
     She began to acquire regulars, some of whom had specific quirks and likes. One young professional only wanted to stare between her legs as she kept them spread apart. He tipped generously as long as she held that pose. Another client, a dowdy man who actually wore a bow tie and had extra thick glasses, kept tipping as long as she continued waving her feet at him, occasionally pressing them up against the glass and slowly wiggling her toes. She also had one bear of a man, a very large older man with stringy gray hair and a gray beard, who would give her constant tips just so she would listen to him talk about his life. He never once asked her to take anything off or perform any acts. She did take off her clothes, since she felt obligated to, but she never once got the impression that he was interested in looking at her. He only wanted an ear.
     She had plenty of obnoxious clients as well, such as young men who would hoot and holler and call her crude names. She had a few who would ask her personal questions such as where she lived, what her favorite sex acts were, and some who would ask her for her phone number or email. She always answered, usually with false information. She did give them a phone number, but it was the number for the club.
     She began doing private room sessions more frequently, as she made more money from one-on-one sessions, but she had yet to do any backroom work.
     All of the women danced. All of them did some one-on-one booth work. And some of them did backroom work.
     Miranda asked some of her closer dancer friends about the back rooms, since the backroom dancers seemed to be making the most money. They confirmed what she had already suspected. It was the place for sessions that crossed the boundaries of their established work duties which involved such things as hand jobs, oral sex, and occasionally full-service intercourse.
     They explained to Miranda that if she did take any clients to the backroom, it was up to her how far she wanted to go, that she could explain to the client what she was willing to do and how much extra she would ask for. She only had to give the club their backroom cut.
     Miranda was reluctant to try backroom work. The only thing that prompted her to consider it was the extra money. She was doing well enough with dancing work, but she was thinking about what she could do with the added income, such as buy better clothes for clubbing and playing shows, as well as get some extra money to buy more things for her and Sussyʼs apartment.
     She was also hit with a completely foreign concept. She surprised herself when she thought about it.
     Saving money.
     Saving money for her future.
     The future was not something she had ever thought about. Throughout her life all she had ever contemplated was the now: trying not to make her parents angry, yet again, trying not to get picked on and bullied at school, trying to find food and shelter to survive, and all of the other stark details that had made her life go from one imperative moment to the next.
     Thinking about her future was something foreign to her.
     And it made her shudder.
     It was also the one issue that prompted her to take a client to the backroom for the first time.
     He was a software engineer, a rather squirrelly and nervous fellow. He was one of her semi-regulars, someone who came in at least a few times a month, specifically to see her. He had once asked her about a backroom session, but he never brought it up again after she turned him down.
     She offered him a backroom session because she did not find him the least bit intimidating. She was not worried about him getting out of hand or becoming difficult. She decided he was a good first client for her first backroom session.
     His pants were down. His half erect penis was flopped over on his crotch.
     “Iʼm a little nervous,” he stuttered.
     Miranda wrapped her hand around his penis as she instinctively held up her left hand and placed it against his face. He let out a breath and then groaned. She felt his member swell up in her hand. A couple of gentle squeezes as she caressed him with her other hand and he was soon fully erect.
     Miranda felt a quick wave of revulsion at the sounds he made and the mess that was created when he climaxed. She did her best to smile and seem pleasant throughout.
     She brightened up when the squirrelly engineer gave her a very large tip.
     She was impressed and surprised with how much money she had made with one backroom session.
     Going backstage to clean up, her roil of thoughts made her mind go blank.
     Looking around the backstage at the clothes, the other dancers, the makeup mirrors…
     The place simply did not look the same.
     It was as if she was there for the first time, again.

In this next section we see Miranda seven years
later, a more experienced and savvy escort.

This takes place later in the work.

Sitting back in her new high-rise studio, she looked down at her new chest.
She was still healing from the breast implants she had gotten. She had scheduled the surgery well in advance, making sure her calendar was clear for the procedure and her recovery.
Some of her regulars were disappointed that she was out of action, and had let her know about their disappointment. She had not told anyone that she was getting enhancements, preferring to surprise her regulars.
She did tell one of her clients, the polite and friendly software engineer, who went as far as trying to talk her out of it, trying to let her know that she did not need such enhancements to keep her career going.
She thought about him as she thought about the rest of her regulars. There was the older man who always wore suits and ties, and who acted like a proper gentleman until he was naked. There was the dark-suited salesman who always went through the basics and did not talk very much. Then she had a younger man who always tried to talk to her about new, weird, and especially kinky ideas that he wanted to try, more than half of them which she turned down.
There was the big burly man who seemed to her to be more working class in his dress and manners, but he always had plenty of money. He always humped her hard and was spent and finished before his time was up, but he always tipped really well. Then there was the tall and slender businessman who always acted quite self-conscious and shy, even though he was one of her more frequent clients. She was not sure why he was always so self-conscious since she had seen him naked more than a dozen times.
They were her new regulars. Many of her previous regulars, the ones she had gotten to know through the club, could no longer afford her new rates. Occasionally she would feel some guilt, and had even considered giving them a break on sessions, but she was simply making too much money with her new clientele. She did not want to double back.
She was determined to never go back, to never have to live on the street, or in abandoned warehouses, or have to put up with a guy just to have a roof over her head.
Miranda never wanted to go back to that.
She would do light vetting of her new clients, asking them what they did for a living and other advanced questions before agreeing to meet up with them. She would also always make sure she knew what they wanted in a session, clarifying the session details before meeting face-to-face.
Her encounters always took place in hotel rooms or homes, and occasionally at a local BDSM house where she could rent a space. Only after she had gotten to know a client well enough would she allow him to visit her at her home.
She was confident enough in her skills that she did not want to emphasize accessories, but as she built up a clientele, she found that requests for toys and special clothing and other objects required her to diversify her general supplies. She bought new clothes, including light colored clothing, very skimpy clothing, and clothes that were easy to remove. She invested in some leather wear such as leather tops, leather skirts, leather panties, and even invested in a leather harness, even though she felt awkward wearing it, particularly because of her wide hips.
Even though she did not bill herself as a dominatrix she still bought some soft cuffs for restraining clients, even though she had not gotten too many requests for such activities. She did buy a blindfold just in case, and she even thought of buying a riding crop.
She had gotten to know more than a few colleagues who specialized in bondage and domination. She was curious and willing to try bondage as the thought of tying up men until they were helpless was appealing to her, but she was not so sure about the sado-masochism part of the lifestyle. She was worried that if she tried her hand at erotic violence she could get carried away.
There were too many ways she could be triggered into truly hurting someone. She knew herself well enough to know that.
She also started collecting electronics: vibrators and vibrating wands, sometimes to use on a client, and other times on herself. She also collected some dildos and considered the idea of investing in a strap on phallus, as some of her customers had requested penetration sessions.
She had gotten to know some of her clients well enough to let them cross a line or two. Her general rule was that she did not allow clients to perform cunnilingus on her, or use toys on her such as vibrators or dildos, but she had become familiar and comfortable enough with a select few clients that she allowed them to cross that barrier.
There was the well-dressed middle-aged businessman who always gave her financial advice, and had done so in a way that was not at all condescending. She was surprised that he was able to give her solid advice, and gave her the kind of info she needed to set up accounts, along with his very helpful advice when it came to managing the money she made off of an underground business. She let him use toys on her, including her Hitachi Wand, and she let him penetrate her with some of her rubber dildos. She was surprised at how skillful and gentle he was, to the point of slowly bringing her to climax.
Then there was the software engineer, the one who listened to a lot of the same bands as she did. Rarely did she have a client who knew as much about music as herself. He looked like an engineer rather than a clubber however, with his plain haircut, glasses, and beard, but he was most definitely different from her other clients. He was the only male client of hers who was allowed to go down on her.
He was also the only other male client who could bring her to climax.