Best of Asian Erotica, Volume 2

One of the friends had managed to go to the airport with Liana when she was flown back. The poor thing had cried the whole time while waiting to board, according to this friend. She also kept insisting, over and over again, that she really had this boyfriend, really: a real, true boyfriend, kind and generous, cute even, the kind she had always dreamed about meeting. And then she did, and he had become her real boyfriend.

At this, I could only nod and choke out a few words. “Yeah, I believe her. I think she definitely had a real boyfriend. A girl as pretty and sweet as that, she could have had anyone she wanted. Really.” I then thanked them for their help, said I had some things I had to attend to urgently, turned and rushed off. When I got back inside my apartment, I slammed my fist against the wall. And there was something harsh and stinging in my eyes for awhile.

Needless to say, my kitchen floor has never been so clean again. And I have never once since then known such pure, uncluttered happiness. Really.

The Service Provider

John Burdett, Thailand

1

Penny would never have described herself as a lady of the night, and, since she was white, British, and never walked the streets, neither would anyone else. In her heart, though, she admitted that for quite some time she had lived off men who would not have paid her expenses if she had not rendered a reasonable performance in bed.

She felt no guilt or degradation, only a mild anger. Not toward men.

If anything, it was feminism she blamed for her situation. She adhered to the outdated female archetype who, in past times, settled down with a big-hearted man who forgave incompetence in housekeeping, cooking and the acquisition of money in return for an infinite tolerance combined with an unlimited affection for him and their children. In her dreams, she saw herself in a big untidy house with a big untidy garden (probably Bloomsbury between the wars: she had a fondness for history), a husband with a comfortable beer gut and scruffy kids who chased each other around the house and loved her.

But in the twenty-first century, the chances of meeting any guy with a decent income who was not stressed out of his brain were as remote as winning the lottery.

So, in the way of the English today, she lived for vacations. Through hints and prods, she had induced all of her last five boyfriends to take her on holiday, three times to the Med and twice to Morocco. The ending never changed. She would give him a great time, and through subtle female techniques ensure that he relax, let go, share his heart. She would assure him she was not looking for a marriage that would enable her to grab half his assets. Once he was suitably mellow, she would even allow herself to start to love him. Then the vacation would finish, they would fly back to London and within twenty-four hours he was a stressed-out, insufferable maniac all over again.

The last one had differed only in that she had seen failure coming. It had been her first time in Greece and, despite the excessive tourism, the islands had seduced her like nowhere else. She told him she didn’t want to go back. She just couldn’t face London anymore. She was sorry. He seemed to understand. He even financed her for a couple of months and flew out for a weekend, which she made sure was as dirty as could be-pulled out all the stops, so to speak, rolled, licked, sucked and humped the nights away until she felt as if she’d worked out in a gym; but they both knew it was the end of the affair. Keeping a mistress on a Greek island was almost as financially ruinous as marriage itself

So she hung out first on Crete, then on Mykonos, then on Lesbos for a few months until money started to get really tight. She became almost blatant about her pickups, made it clear that although no way was she on the game she was rather short of the readies if you know what I mean, love … And so made her way slowly west.

She knew that in Gibraltar there were Brits with dough who worked there. It seemed ideal, and only twelve miles from Morocco, where she had had a great holiday with number … Well, she’d stopped counting, but it had been a great vacation.

She was disappointed. The Brits on the Rock were of the yobbish, loutish sort, many of them army or ex-army. Only by chance she made a contact who got her invited to a party given by a man from South London who was a prince of offshore gambling. It was a big, loud party in a big loud mansion in Sotto Grande, which is where rich Gibraltarians invariably live.