A Synthetic Illusion

By Christian Clarke

Get ready for the ride of your life as you are exposed to the world of elite prostitution.
Mick a forty year old hospitality professional takes a job as a driver for one of Melbourne's elite escort agencies.
His recreational drug use escalates to drug abuse. With a need to feed his new habit he is lured into the seamier - but much more lucrative - side of prostitution and is driven, against all his natural instincts, to cross boundaries hitherto unthought of.
Through his journey you will discover how a world with NO RULES or BOUNDARIES can corrupt us at any age....
"They say LOVE makes the world go round, but MONEY and DRUGS can spin it into frenzy"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Clarke
• Release date: Jun 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9780992276805

Christian Clarke

My name is Christian Clarke. My passion is writing about extraordinary events in ordinary peoples’ lives. I like to refer to myself as a METHOD AUTHOR, a term that originates from method acting which was founded by Konstantin Stanislavski (1863-1938). Method actors are often characterised as immersing themselves into their characters, to the extent that they continue to portray them even off stage or off camera, for the duration of the project. That's the sort of commitment I portray with the characters in my books. After an amazing career as a hospitality professional- restaurateur and Melbourne party boy I decided the party was officially over.... From a very early age I dreamt of being a writer, but my hectic lifestyle had never allowed me the opportunity to realise my dreams. There is a famous quote I've always loved "you only live once, but if you do it right once is enough" so one day I decided to throw caution to the wind, I hung up my designer suits and started my writers journey. Buckle up for a roller coaster ride of emotions -you'll laugh, you'll cry and at every turn you will question and think.......

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

It’s another Monday afternoon on the bustling, busy, cosmopolitan Chapel Street. The traffic is bumper-to-bumper. Chapel Street is known as the fashion capital of Melbourne. Major Australian and European designer flagship stores line the busy strip. By night it is famous as a restaurant precinct. Its hundreds of restaurants, bars, cafes and nightclubs come to life with a myriad of tastes and variety to suit the most discerning patron.

One of the most prestigious of the restaurants is the always-busy, Saloni (Greek for Lounge Room). Its décor is exquisite: twelve-foot ceilings adorned with huge crystal chandeliers; feature open fireplaces surrounded by lush chesterfield couches; and the main dining room offers reproduction antique tables and chairs. It has a seating capacity of two hundred. Ornate mirrors and exquisite art line the velour walls, giving it an overall feel of turn-of-the-century French aristocracy.

Its extensive menu featuring everything from European delicacies to Middle Eastern dishes is complemented by its fine wine, French champagne and its cocktail menu. The highly professional staff dressed in black designer clothes are hand-picked for their chiselled features and perfect bodies (girls for their ability to wait tables in five-inch heels and flawless make-up). The kitchen staff can get away with looking a little less than perfect. However, even they are not immune from the wrath of Mick.

Mick is the general manager of the restaurant. All the staff, menu, furnishings and even bar stock is hand-selected by him. God help anyone who doesn’t perform to his satisfaction! The owner, Stavros, an older Greek man, has very little say in any of the operations. He had bought the restaurant twenty years previously and had basically run it into the ground. However, in the last few years since Mick’s arrival the place had turned into a multi-million dollar business.

Mick had been in the industry his whole life. Some people are made, others born. He was born into hospitality. His parents had owned restaurants since they had come to Australia in the sixties. At 19, Mick had been put in charge of the family business which he had run for thirteen years. He could do everything from cooking to waiting tables to cocktails. However, his greatest asset were his PR skills. He was the type of person who could make you feel you were the centre of his world. You would think you were the most important and fabulous human being on earth. Patrons would flock to the restaurant. All it would take was a smile from Mick for them to feel as comfortable as if in their own home.

Mick was turning forty in a few months but his appearance told a different story. He was five feet ten inches high, had olive complexion (being of Greek background), flawless skin which glowed with its solarium, deep-chocolate tan, very stylish dark brown hair with strategically placed blond foils to emphasise his tan, perfect teeth professionally bleached, and lips full of botox that gave him a fashion-magazine look.

His body was that of a twenty-five-year-old athlete’s: tanned and athletic without looking like a body builder and his dress sense was immaculate. He treated work as a fashion parade. While all the staff were ordered to wear black, he wore the latest season’s fashions. In his youth he had had a brief stint as an actor and catalogue model but couldn’t cope with early mornings so stuck to what he knew best: hospitality. He ran Saloni like a small communist country: his way or the highway. He never raised his voice, but his mannerisms — his famous eye-roll when he told you to hurry up or the pursing of the lips when you’d forgotten to do something — could tell a thousand words. He reserved his icy, cold stare for when you knew you were in big trouble. His deep, blue eyes would turn almost white and you froze just as if Medusa had turned you to stone.

On the other hand, when you had had a good night and the restaurant had turned over four hundred patrons without any major fuck-ups, he’d make all the staff feel as though they had just cured cancer. Twenty-four staff all prayed he’d arrive in a good mood, because his mood reflected on every staff member.

Away from work he was completely different. He would party like a rock star and could work any room like a professional socialite. But this side of him was for his select group of friends who were all as delusional as he was. Mick never took a day off and found it odd if someone only wanted to work fifty-five hours a week. He didn’t consider himself a workaholic — just committed. The truth is, his way worked; the restaurant was booming. It was constantly getting fabulous write-ups in Vogue and The Melbourne Times. Dining guides and tourist magazines hailed it as a ‘must-have’ experience in Melbourne.

The owner, Stavros, was a friend of the family, so when Mick sold the family restaurant, Stavros immediately offered him the position of running Saloni any way he wanted. It was an absurdly generous offer, so Mick took it. He worked hard to turn around the downward trend the restaurant had taken and, after two years of constantly changing staff, furniture and menu, it became one of the most popular eating spots in Melbourne. He advertised, invited all the B-grade celebrities he’d known through his acting and modelling career, and created an ‘elite’ clientele to suit the elaborately furnished restaurant he had created.

It was no time till this two hundred-seat restaurant was booked out three months in advance, even in the early parts of the week. Saloni opened at 5 pm every night but the kitchen staff were there at 11 am for preparation; floor and bar staff arrived at 3:30 to set up; and Mick fronted up at 4.45 sharp every afternoon. He inspected every area of the restaurant from preparation in the kitchen to the polished cutlery in drawers and then proceeded to open the large, double doors announcing to all the staff that the restaurant was officially open. He could orchestrate the entire running of the restaurant from anywhere in it.

Usually, he walked around doing the meet-and-greet of patrons and was issued with at least a dozen invitations a night to join tables. On the rare occasion he would sit at a table to which he’d been invited, the floor staff — who were also very well paid — knew to pay special attention to that table so as to avoid one of Mick’s famous looks.

The staff were all petrified of disappointing Mick because they knew he was one of the most well-known people in hospitality, that his reputation reached far and wide. If he liked you, he could get you in at any restaurant, café or hotel in Melbourne. But if he didn’t like you or you didn’t meet his high standard of service or dress code, you’d end up working in some crappy café in some outer suburb for minimum pay.

Mick dealt with the floor manager, kitchen manager and bar manager. Most of the other staff he didn’t even know by name. On the other hand, he knew everything about the clientele: what work they did, their children’s names and everything in between. But his favourite patrons were gorgeous girls, and you could always tell when he was interested in one because he’d spend the whole night sending her champagne or cocktails and, at the risk of sounding clichéd, he always got the girl. He wasn’t in a relationship, mainly because he couldn’t love anyone as much as he loved himself.

His friends were a varied cosmopolitan group but in appearance they were all clones of each other: good-looking, well-dressed and obviously in well-paid positions. He seldom mixed business with pleasure, so the staff of Saloni, some of whom had been with him from the start, had seldom or never seen him outside work. On the odd occasion when he did attend a staff member’s birthday, he seemed almost human. He laughed, he joked, but most of all he consumed large amounts of cocaine. His intemperance and seemingly schizophrenic persona therefore, did in a sense, have a cause. At work he’d always be ‘coming down’. Did he think he had a problem? His perception was: I’m a drug user not an abuser.

He developed varicose veins on his legs which were causing him significant pain. Anyone else would have had them removed but the thought of being bed-ridden following the operation stopped him. The thought of the boredom of having to stay at home doing nothing was terrifying for him.

Mick had bought a stunning Californian bungalow in Kew — one of Melbourne’s most prestigious areas — which he had restored and paid off. It was complete with extravagant furnishings you’d expect to see in Home Beautiful. His BMW, bank balance, clothes and jewellery would rival any rock star, but he still wouldn’t take time off to relieve himself of his pain. He instead camouflaged it with cocaine and painkillers. Eventually, when the pain became unbearable he’d be out of the restaurant as soon as the kitchen closed at 10 pm in which case he would entrust a key to the floor manager, John, to close up shop.

John, an Italian guy who had left school at eighteen, had done a short hospitality course. At thirty-two he’d worked at most of the popular Melbourne restaurants but couldn’t find something he liked till he came to Saloni five years previously. In the beginning he thought Mick was schizophrenic but he later swore by Mick’s methods and procedures and aspired to emulate him.

He was a shorter, less attractive version of Mick, but what he lacked in looks he made up for in personality. He’d always appear happy: smiling and joking with the staff, telling them they were doing a good job. He ran the floor like clockwork and even though he knew the staff were petrified of Mick he tried to convince them that though Mick might be tough, he was fair. He knew deep down this wasn’t true, of course. He’d seen Mick fire a barman on the spot for wearing runners instead of shoes, even though the employee had sprained his ankle. Mick had fired another girl because she hadn’t appeared sufficiently tanned which showed when her top kept creeping up. Appearance was the key; if you looked good you could get away with a lot more. No one was allowed to eat while Mick was there so you either ate before he arrived or after he left. So everyone’s stomachs grumbled and their feet hurt. Mick was happy though.

It was 4.30 and everyone was frantically preparing for Mick’s imminent arrival in fifteen minutes time. Everyone had eaten, reapplied make-up, put on shoes and set the restaurant — the start of another week. The various managers had printed their rosters and placed them on the noticeboard for Mick to inspect, and everyone was waiting in anticipation to establish what Mick’s mood would be.

At 4.45 Stavros arrived instead of Mick. There was an awkward silence till Stavros announced Mick was in hospital. He’d decided to have the operation on his legs. Apparently, he had booked in weeks ago but as he didn’t feel he had to discuss his decision-making with anyone he had not informed a single soul except for Stavros who now had to step up and take charge till Mick came back. During Mick’s absence Stavros knew he had his work cut out for him to keep everything up to standard. He relied heavily on the managers of each section to pull their weight and keep everything in order. He had very large designer shoes to fill.

CHAPTER 2

The operation had gone well and Mick had been home for a month. He had daily conversations with Stavros. The restaurant was doing fine. Over three hundred get-well cards from patrons had been received but for the first time in years Mick felt an inner peace and calm he had forgotten existed. He realised hospitality for him had resulted in hostility. Having to keep patrons happy and staff working to standard had taken its toll on him mentally. He hadn’t done a single line of cocaine for the last month and was now seeing things differently. From the age of nineteen he had been in top positions running operations, and maybe now was his turn to take a lesser role. Maybe he was sick of being the boss, worrying about everything and in turn being thought of as a tyrant. He realised that maybe he needed something slower-paced and less stressful to give himself time to have a life. Work had consumed him totally and utterly for the last twenty years. Yes, he’d made money and yes, he’d made a reputation for himself, but at the end of the day it wasn’t enough. Maybe he just needed some time off.

An ex-waitstaff of his, Nicole, an Italian model, a thin and tall girl, dark-skinned and beautiful, had called him and asked to go over and see him. She had worked at Saloni six years previously. She had fallen heavily into drugs and Mick had been forced to sack her. He had however, found her an appropriate job: a friend of his owned a lingerie restaurant in the city where most of his girls were drug-fucked. He asked her to come over for coffee.

Mick used to see her out in the clubs. He really liked her, mainly because she told him everything he wanted to hear — that he was hot, smart and successful. They had a brief affair but both realised they were too promiscuous to be tied down. He was happy she had called. Mick liked that she set her own rules and never worried about what anyone else thought so long as it made sense to her. Secretly, he wished he could have that sort of freedom instead of having to set boundaries.

When Nicole arrived her face glowed with her solarium tan. She had taken a make-up course when she was eighteen so she always looked as though she had just done a photo shoot. She had amazing cheekbones and the most alluring green eyes. Her hair was very long and black. From the back you would think she was Asian. Her body was long and lean, she was wearing a stunning Morrissey dress and he was instantly aroused. She was probably the only waitress who had worked with him to whom he still spoke. Nicole was in shock when she saw Mick. He was in his Peter Alexander PJ’s and ugg boots; his usually stylish hair had no product in it and was a mess. She made herself at home on the couch and they began to chat. Maybe it was the dress, or maybe her perfume or perhaps the fact that Mick hadn’t left his house in over a month, but after a bottle of champagne and a lot of flirting, Mick leaned in and kissed her.

Without hesitation, Nicole slid her hand down his body and grabbed hold of his cock which, by this point, was rock-hard. Nicole didn’t allow her constantly ringing phone to spoil the moment. The chemistry had always been there. Mick was so turned on. He hadn’t had sex in weeks. The passionate Nicole was driving him crazy. The most exciting thing about spontaneous sex at home, he thought, was that there was no pressure to perform or any hurry. So they took their time exploring each other’s bodies. After almost an hour of foreplay Mick thrust himself inside her. It was so warm and wet he was tingling all over. He thrust back and forth, harder and harder, faster and faster. Her body was now trembling to his every move. Her moans were becoming louder and louder. The quiet room she had entered had transformed into a pleasure dome for both of them. They both knew the sex was good as they climaxed simultaneously.

They were very similar in many ways. She, too, loved cocaine and designer clothes but most of all she was a huge flirt. When they had worked together they used to place bets on who’d end up going home with a patron. Eight times out of ten, she’d win. Her sexual appetite baffled Mick. He constantly asked himself why someone as beautiful as her was so easy. The answer was that from the age of five and right through her teenage years she had struggled with a weight problem; she had been the fat, ugly girl who never got attention. So, after her make-over she had compensated for lost time. Well, that was her story. The plain truth was that she loved cock. But she especially loved guys with money because Nicole had the age-old disease of champagne tastes and beer wages.

At about eight o’clock she showered and started re-applying her make-up. Mick joined her in the bathroom and watched as she styled her hair while sipping champagne and doing line after line of cocaine. She began telling Mick she needed it to stay awake. She kept offering him lines but he refused. All he wanted to do was go to sleep. She told him she was going to work and he assumed she was still working at Shameless, the lingerie restaurant where he’d found her a job years earlier.

Even someone as broad-minded as Mick was lost for words when she announced she was now working as an escort for a high-class agency in Melbourne. She’d been doing it for three months and hadn’t told a soul. After an awkward moment of silence, he laughed and told her it was the smartest thing she’d ever done. She loved sex so why give it away for free if people were willing to pay. She was shocked and relieved at the same time. She looked at this guy whom she thought was ‘such a cunt to work for’ and realised for the first time, that out of everyone she knew, she was comfortable enough to tell him. She wondered whether it was because they had just had great sex but then realised on reflection his life situation and attitudes had been forced on him. He’d been conditioned to excel at work, forced to look good as he was constantly in the public eye and obliged to take charge to make sure everything ran smoothly. But deep down in his heart of hearts — in a space in his mind he hadn’t previously visited — there was maybe a deviant looking to come out and have some real fun, break the rules and live life.

She kissed him good-bye and asked if she could see him soon when she was free. Mick’s cocky attitude returned now. He told her to make sure she rang first.

Now alone, Mick started thinking about what she had just told him and, once again, envied her world with no rules. Just then the phone rang: it was Stavros with another restaurant question. He switched back to work mode and proceeded to explain to the owner what he needed to do to fix the day’s seemingly trivial problem.

* * *

Two months had now passed and Mick still wasn’t ready to go back to work. Was it because he was still in pain as he claimed or the fact that Nicole was now coming over every second day with her wild stories and fabulous cooking? Nicole had found someone outside the sex industry to spend time with, someone who wasn’t judging her and giving her an outsider’s point of view — in other words, keeping it real. They’d stopped having sex because it was becoming a bit too domestic for them and neither one could handle it. Most of Mick’s friends were shocked that he and Nicole were hanging out so much, but they knew what he was like. Whenever someone new took Mick’s interest, he’d make them the centre of his world. He’d make them feel as though the sun was shining on them constantly, and then, when he was bored by them, they’d feel as though they were in a constant state of autumn, waiting for the sun to reappear. He got you so hooked and dependant on his company you didn’t feel whole unless he was with you. I don’t think he even knew he was doing it.

Mick was someone who told it like it was: black was black and white was white, but lately, he was beginning to wonder about those shades of grey. We’re here for a good time, not a long time, was the attitude he was beginning to take. Could it be possible to change at the age of forty? Or was he just having a mid-life crisis? Whatever it was, Mick was letting down his guard and seeing things differently. He wanted to ask Nicole what made her start working as an escort. So, after a month of dancing around the question he finally came out and asked her. She hesitated. She knew this was her chance to let it all out. She wanted to tell him her big, dark secret and this was her chance to get it off her chest.

The day she had opened the yellow pages and called the agency to arrange an interview was the lowest point in her life. She had just been sacked from Shameless for having sex with a patron in the toilet. She had been left with no income or savings, a maxed-out credit card, and worse: she owed $3000.00 to her dealer. The voice on the phone told her to come in immediately. She was interviewed by one of the bookings receptionists who, as soon as she had laid eyes on Nicole, sent her on a $500.00 an hour job at the Park Hyatt. Nicole had stayed there for six hours and collected $3000.00 half of which went to the agency.

So after her first day she went home with $1500.00 in her purse. Money talks and bullshit walks, she thought. It used to take a fortnight working as a waiter for that kind of money. The agency — situated in Lygon Street in a huge space on the second floor of a heritage building — had a reception area, a lounge room for the girls, toilets and make-up rooms, a kitchen with microwaves and coffee facilities.

Over fifty girls worked for the agency which was open day and night with no less than fifteen girls on for every eight-hour shift. It didn’t have the atmosphere of a brothel where girls fought for jobs; here the receptionists booked the jobs over the phone and sent out the appropriate girls. The clients ranged from international businessmen staying at exclusive hotels in the city, to the average Joe Blow living in the suburbs. Prices started at $200.00 an hour and went all the way up to $3000.00 an hour. The client paid the escort who kept fifty percent and handed on the remaining fifty percent to the agency. There were ten to fifteen drivers employed by the agency who were paid $10.00 to drop off girls to city hotels and $30.00 to take them to a suburb where the driver was required to wait outside the house. Drivers were paid $30.00 for the first hour and $20.00 for every hour thereafter.

According to Nicole, the drivers would usually park on Lygon Street. The receptionist would call them with the details of the job to key into their Global Positioning System (GPS) or to look up in their Melways Guide. The girl would then be sent down to find the driver who had been assigned to her. The receptionists were spread over two twelve-hour shifts: dayshift 6 am to 6 pm and nightshift 6 pm to 6 am. They were paid $20.00 per hour plus $2.00 for every booking they made.

The two owners were both ex-working girls, she explained. One was present on dayshift and one at night. The agency was making a profit of anywhere between $120K to $150K a week. They had forty advertisements in the yellow pages each costing $35K, as well as ads in every male magazine on the market.

Their advertising costs, she said, were obviously enormous but so were their takings. There were three receptionists on every shift. One responded to the $200.00 to $300.00 an-hour calls, one to the $300.00 to $500.00 calls and one for the $750.00 to $3000.00 calls. The older girls went out cheaper than the younger ones unless they were willing to do fantasies: golden showers, bondage, couples and so on, in which case they might get $350.00 per job. It was all about looks; if you looked good you got more bookings.

Mick listened to all this intently and of course agreed the better-looking you were the more you were worth; it made perfect sense to him. Nicole was new and that was a massive drawcard for her. Her lowest paid jobs were $500.00 an hour but she actually averaged $1000.00 an hour. On her first week she had cleared $8000.00. Her drug habit was now exceeding two thousand dollars a week and she was spending two thousand dollars-plus on outfits. If you look a million bucks you can make big money, she maintained.

She asked Mick when he was planning to go back to work and he seemed to be avoiding the question. That’s when she had her brainstorm. She asked him to come to the agency and drive her to bookings. She continued telling him she would look after him financially and it would be fun having a friend there. The drivers weren’t allowed into the office but she said between bookings she would sit in his car or they could go for drinks at any of the city bars while she waited for her next job. She strung him a good line, telling him she’d feel so much safer with him there. She played to his vanity by saying the other girls would be so envious because ‘Chanelle had the best-looking driver’, with the best car.

‘And who’s Chanelle,’ Mick asked.

‘That’s my working name.’

Mick preferred to think of it as her stage-name. Nicole went on to tell him that all the girls had working names chosen for them by the owners. They were what Mick called the girls’ godmothers. In Greek tradition the godmother chose the name of the child to be christened. As Nicole, she had been an impoverished waiter; as Chanelle she was an escort who was making thousands of dollars a week. The girls not only acquired a new name but a chance to make more money than they’d ever dreamed of. To someone new, it was a second chance at life. The owners, Mick thought, weren’t just godmothers, they seemed more like fairy godmothers. Mick told her he’d think about her offer.

After she left that night, he did nothing but think. He toyed with the idea: no responsibility, no staff to worry about. It felt too good to be true. He could watch DVDs in the car or bring his laptop along and surf the net or listen to music — just kick back and actually get paid for it. He wouldn’t have to dress up or put on his happy face and it would give him a chance to take a step away from the pressure of hospitality and learn to live again.

Mick’s big rule when it came to friendship was: reason, season, lifetime. He thought about his friendship with Nicole and why they had known each other for so long but had never been close until now. Maybe this offer she had just made him was the reason she kept drifting in and out of his life and this was about to be the season they spent together working for an escort agency. As for Lifetime — who knows? Very few of his friends had stood the test of time, but the ones who had, were his friends for life. Was Nicole another one about to be added to this elite list? Never one to be a huge risk-taker, Mick threw caution to the wind for the first time in years and decided to take the job.

Stavros couldn’t believe it when Mick announced he wouldn’t be returning. After many hours of trying to convince him to stay, he assured him that even if in ten years he decided to return, his position would be waiting for him. Mick was flattered; he might have ‘worked his arse off’, as he saw it, for eight years, but at least he knew Stavros appreciated it.

The only thing on Mick’s mind now was his new window of opportunity: to try something new in an industry he knew nothing about. It was scary and exciting all at the same time. Maybe the fairy godmothers were about to give Mick a second chance at life. He rang Nicole and within two days he had started.

CHAPTER 3

The day drivers could never find parking — the night drivers could park anywhere. As they were always in the car, they had no fear of being booked. Mick rang the agency number and told them he was downstairs. He didn’t require an interview since he had Chanelle vouch for him and the voice on the phone told him she’d be down in a minute.

An overweight woman opened