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  And I was the only one who refused. He claimed it was a requirement to get my certificate, so I said, 'Fuck you!' and walked out. I've since practised my massage techniques on many guys and have nothing but good reports, so I hope he's reading this now!

  About a year later, I joined Nutrimetics, a cosmetics company that was kind of like Avon, and that led to a course in beauty and make-up. I learned all about facials, pedicures and make-up application, and I ended up selling cosmetics on the side, and doing really well out of it. I hosted quite a few parties where I would either do facials or make-up and it was fun for a while, but bugging people and suffering their frequent rejection in the search for a sale was not for me, so I eventually gave that up.

  I took courses in small-business management and Italian, and graduated from both with flying colours. I spoke very good Italian, too. ('Buongiorno. Che bella gionarta. Come stai?') I learned to write a business plan and found an investor to start my own clothing store, but that plan fell by the wayside for reasons coming up in the next chapter.

  While at CBA Futures, I also did a course in futures broking and trading. I can't believe I actually learned about bond formulas, since I'd been kicked out of maths class every day in high school for being a smartass! I discovered that I was really good at foreign-exchange and futures calculations, from just learning on the job.

  But my Pisces nature always got in the way of my advancement. I was always ready for a good time, instead of slogging away at a job or anything else. One of the absolute highlights of my time in Sydney was when the United States Navy came to town. My girlfriends and I had a blast for six days straight, hooking up with the sailors with their sexy white uniforms and those accents, and they were so sweet, too. I even got to go on the USS Independence, and for a little while afterwards one of the sailors and I stayed in touch.

  In my corporate-finance years, I did have three sexual encounters with co-workers (though only three in six years makes me fairly innocent, if I may so humbly declare) – and one of them took place right on top of my desk at the Lloyds Bank offices in the Governor Phillip Tower, after hours.

  It sounds like the kind of thing that people read in the pages of Penthouse Forum, but it actually happened to me. I was out on the town, having drinks with my co-workers at one of the many inter-office functions we attended. We were all very drunk, and I ended up dancing pretty hot and heavy with this one guy I worked with, who sat at a desk very close to mine. We both had after-hours access to the office on the 47th floor, so after the party ended we went up to the office and ended up fucking on my desk. Sex above the city – it was so hot!

  The next day when he came into work, he looked over and winked at me. We started seeing each other after that, but he decided to get back with his ex-girlfriend (I always seem to get the guys who are still stuck on their exes), which made things weird between us for a while. We didn't speak to each other, and then the separation became permanent when Lloyds Bank got taken over by ABN AMRO – a blessing in disguise as far as that relationship was concerned.

  Prior to that, when I was 16 and working in the dealing room at Westpac, I'd hooked up with one of the traders there. I'd noticed him always looking at me. Well, all the guys looked, but I knew he was interested, because every time I was alone or at the copy machine he would find an excuse to come over and talk to me. He eventually asked me out and I said yes.

  Alcohol, as usual, played a part. On a drunken night out, we found ourselves making out on the dance floor in some bar and then went back to his place to fuck. I dated him for a while but he wasn't really my type, so I broke it off . It turned out that he really cared for me, and I guess I broke his heart, which made it kind of awkward to go to work.

  The other time was with one of my close coworkers at CBA Futures. We worked on the same desk, and he was about to leave to go to college in Canada so we had a farewell dinner and drinks for him. We ended up drinking a lot and getting intimate at the table, followed by some dirty dancing and a trip back to his place. I swear, this guy had the biggest cock I'd ever seen – even bigger than most male porn stars I've been with. (Yes, even bigger than Billy Glide!) I remember that well: I was very sore the next day, because we'd fucked all night. We remained friends after that but haven't spoken for years.

  The odd thing, now that I think about it, is that almost all the guys I fucked had really big cocks. Maybe I was destined to be a porn star after all!

  Chapter Three

  LONDON

  CALLING

  For my 21st birthday, my dad and stepmum gave me the amazing present of a return ticket to anywhere in the world I wanted to go. This was perfect for me because the travel bug had really hit me, and it forced me to save up the spending money and make it happen.

  When I'd moved from Brisbane, all I'd wanted to do was see my dad, pick up the shattered pieces of my fractured family bonds and try to get a job so I could support myself and start a new life. I'd achieved all that now, and I'd had a great time in Sydney – mostly because of all the good friends I'd made – but it was time for a change.

  I was so excited about the opportunity to leave Australia, and I saved up for a whole year to be able to afford a full European tour. I was always looking up the different trips I could take on the Contiki website. There were so many options. In the end, I chose one of those big Contiki bus tours that went to 12 countries in 37 days, starting and ending in London.

  Arriving in London sure brought me back down to earth fast. When I got off the train from Heathrow, it was pouring with rain. I was carrying a huge backpack and had no idea where I was going. I remember that everyone was so rude. One guy was walking fast and got mad at me for walking slowly with my luggage. I was completely jet-lagged too, because I couldn't sleep at all on my 24-hour flight from Sydney.

  It didn't take me too long to bounce back, though, and I set off for my European adventures in the esteemed company of 50 fellow Aussies, four Kiwis and two South Africans.

  I cut down on my drinking during the tour, mostly because I really wanted to see Europe rather than merely partying my way through it. I didn't make many friends in that time as a result, but I saw a lot and actually remembered it all. I pretty much sampled every kind of food and alcoholic beverage there was (well, my newfound sobriety permitting) and kept an account of the trip in my journals. I wish I'd taken more photos. I shot mostly video and my camera died halfway through the trip, so most of what happened stayed firmly lodged in my own memories.

  At first, I was treating these travels as no more than a great vacation, but somewhere on the trip I thought to myself, 'Well, what if I just work in London for a couple of years while I'm there? I could save some money and see where it takes me.' My Welsh roots made it an option, and the exchange rate at the time was about three to one, so any money I earned would be worth triple the amount in Australia. I guess, too, I was looking for some sort of escape. I was always trying to run away from something, which inevitably turned out to be myself.

  When the tour ended and I got back to London, then, I moved in with my grandmother in Eltham. She was my mum's mum, and she was dying from breast cancer. Granddad had passed away years ago, and I'd only met them both twice, when they'd come to visit us in Australia. Now, I would have the chance to get to know my grandmother a bit better.

  Being based in the UK meant I would also be able to visit my great-aunt and uncle and a bunch of cousins in Wales, whom I'd never met before. Despite my feelings about my mother, I have always identified very strongly with my Welsh heritage. Some of my relations were in the south, in Cardiff , and others way up north in Blaenau Fastening, Gwent (that's Blaenau Ffestiniog, Gwynedd, to the locals), where there's pretty much nothing around for miles but the slate mountains of Snowdonia. I couldn't wait to see them and to see a bit of the country, so I headed over there after about a week in Eltham.

  Sadly, it turned out to be very awkward meeting these relatives, because they were from my mother's side of the family and I got the fe
eling that they didn't really talk to her or know much about her. It was more that they were close to my grandmother.

  When I was there, everyone spoke Welsh in front of me, knowing full well that I couldn't understand it, and it seemed that my cousins didn't care to get to know me. (After all, they were living up there compared with me growing up in Australia, so I suspect they were rather resentful of me!)

  Being in northern Wales was a cool experience, though, because it seemed as if time had stood still. Today, Blaenau has a population of just under 5000 and is very dependent on tourism (thanks to the nearby Snowdonia National Park), since the slate-mining industry has been in decline for years.

  I also travelled to Norwich in England, to see my aunt, my uncle and my cousins, who were all really cool people. My aunt, who is my mum's sister, was so nice and caring and polite, very sincere. It was amazing to see how she turned out, considering how my mother was.

  Back in Eltham, I did my bit around the house by taking care of my grandmother, cleaning up and doing all the shopping and cooking. I sprayed ice on her sore muscles and helped her to get up and down the stairs. At the same time, I was very busy looking for work, visiting employment agencies and checking online and in the papers. I spent my free time making calls, attending interviews and going to internet cafes.

  But it turned out that the things my mum had told me about my grandmother were true, and she was even crueller than my mother. It made me realise what a terrible time of it my mum must have had growing up with her. She would talk on the phone to her friends and relatives in Welsh, and I could tell from her tone that she was slagging me off . Every now and then she would break into English and I would overhear her saying that I was always on the phone and on the internet and that I wasn't working. (Well, I was trying to find a fucking job, that's why!) I couldn't believe she could do that, after all I did for her. Before even a month was up, she had kicked me out on the street.

  In desperation, I got a job as a bartender in Hammersmith, but I lasted for only a week. I couldn't stand the 12-hour shift s with barely any breaks and I had to share a crappy little room with another girl. But then I was offered a job in International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) Broking at Salomon Smith Barney, and I told the bar manager I was giving him notice. He reacted by kicking me out too.

  What the fuck was going on? It was a recurring pattern in my life – everyone seemed to leave me stranded!

  Luckily, I had a friend from Australia, Mulvey, whom I used to work with at CBA. He was living in Putney, so he let me stay at his place for three months until I found somewhere of my own. He didn't charge me rent and even gave up his bedroom for me! (We're still friends today.)

  My new job involved making sure that everything relating to the trades from the IPE were put through the system correctly and that all the transactions balanced out at the end of the day. Underneath the glamour of all that fast money being moved around, I honestly didn't have a good time at all at Salomon Smith Barney. The main reason was that the lady who was training me was a complete nightmare, and she couldn't explain anything properly. She was always very stressed out, usually over nothing, and would take twenty cigarette breaks a day. I hated working there. I'm sure a plum job at Salomon Smith Barney sounds great to most people, but I didn't last six months.

  Some of the guys were cool, but several of them were sleazy. They talked among themselves, within my hearing, about how they could see my G-string. One of them even asked to buy my sweaty gym clothes, which really stunned me because he wasn't kidding. (I never sold them to him, in case you're wondering.) He was always making some kind of sexually suggestive remark about me and would talk to the other boys about what I was wearing that day. There were also times when he would get drunk and hit on me. I couldn't believe these guys! Back in Australia, it would have been the grounds for a sexual-harassment suit, but I didn't really know what the protocol was in the UK. I doubt I would have gone through with it anyhow, as I always prefer to sort my problems out myself.

  There were so many things that I just didn't care for about London. Firstly, as everyone knows, there was the freezing-cold weather and the rain. I felt as if I could never get warm outside, and everywhere I went it was boiling hot inside, which was so ridiculous to an Aussie girl like me.

  Secondly, there were the crowds – I couldn't move without someone bumping into me. This seemed to suit some people just fine, though, because I actually got felt up on the Tube by some guy in a business suit. It was rush hour, on the way to work, and the train was jam-packed. I was standing, holding on to a strap with one hand and my purse and umbrella with the other. I was dying of heat in my big coat, and the guy standing next to me – conveniently crushed in like the rest of us – said, 'It's like a pack of sardines, eh?'

  I said, 'Yep.' And the next thing I knew, I felt his hand try to get around my umbrella and my purse. He wasn't interested in stealing my money; he was trying to get his hand under my coat!

  I thought, well, it is kind of crowded and maybe I'm imagining things, so I moved a little to try to brush him off. But he kept doing it. I elbowed him really hard but it didn't stop him and I didn't know what to do. He still kept on and I kept trying to move away but there was nowhere to go. Finally, the train stopped and I pushed my way through the crowd. I got off at whatever station it was – I didn't care! I was totally freaked out. I couldn't believe what had just happened. Ever since then, I get panic attacks when I'm in crowds. We all drive in Los Angeles, so I can't even imagine catching a crowded train these days.

  Then, thirdly, the food in London was just not to my liking. They heaped mayonnaise and cheese on every sandwich. I ate a lot of crap, except for the soups, which I loved, and the pub roasts, which were great. You can get a good meal if you have a lot of money to spend in a fancy restaurant, but there was little that was cheap and good. I did eat a lot of Indian food, which I thought was the best food in London. It was relatively affordable, too, and to this day I still absolutely love Indian food, although those creamy sauces are very fattening.

  And that leads me to my fourth and final problem – the sheer cost of living in London, which was (and still is) absolutely outrageous. I don't know how anyone with a regular job can survive there. Everything, from rent to food, is so expensive! Why would anyone pay eight pounds for a plate of fish and chips or sludgy pasta that you can make yourself at home?

  It was London that made me realise I was already so over the financial industry, and it was wearing me down and burning me out. It just wasn't what I wanted to do in the long run. I had always known it deep down, even when I was enjoying it more in Australia, but I never did anything about it because I was so comfortable with having all that money and all those benefits. When I was offered a higher position at Salomon Smith Barney, I found myself saying, 'You know what? I don't think I can handle it right now. This is not what I want to do.'

  I had really found the space during those last months at Salomon Smith Barney to 'find myself ' and decided that I still wanted to get involved somehow in the entertainment industry. So I quit.

  I had already found myself a 'modelling' agent through the newspaper prior to this, when I was looking around to see what other kinds of work I could do. Being too short for a regular model, I'd gone for the other option: soft core. The agent had found me some paid work doing soft core photo shoots, and I'd taken him up on it. I also did a soft core-porn-film shoot that he'd booked me on for the Adult Channel with three other girls. It was a bit weird because I'd never been with a girl before, but we really didn't do much other than simulated pussy-eating. Getting naked wasn't too hard at that point either, after the photo shoots I'd done.

  A lot of girls in adult entertainment get their start this way, getting half-naked for the cameraman before taking it all off for a live audience, and I wanted to see what that was like. I might've been insecure about many things but my body wasn't one of them.

  Sure enough, I went from doing still- and video-camera poses to dancing
nude on the chrome-pole stage. To this day, I can't remember the name of the club where I began stripping, but I didn't stay there long – it was just too far from where I was living. I don't even remember where it was located. I started there because it was the nicest club that I could find, and also because they took me in with no previous experience.

  I became friends with another girl who stripped there – she was a very shy girl. When we heard that the Spearmint Rhino club was opening up in central London, we couldn't resist. I remember the first time I walked into the Spearmint Rhino, on Tottenham Court Road. It was so beautiful that I knew I wanted to work there.

  I got the job by going in for an 'audition' – meaning I danced around the pole and got naked for them, so they could assess my competence. The Rhino was a 'longgown' club, just like where I'd started. This meant we had to wear long, see-through gowns when we were walking the floor, rather than skimpy little outfits, because it looked more classy. It didn't take too long for the long gown to become no gown, of course, because the Rhino, also like my first club, was fully nude. Other things the two places had in common were that we didn't get to choose our own songs, and I always had to get a bit drunk before I could get up on stage. I wasn't ashamed of my body, but I still got nervous. Sometimes, I would also do a little blow.

  When I started stripping, I didn't really know what I was doing, but I practised my moves when the club was empty and hung out with some of the other girls and got tips from them. I did enjoy the social elements of the job. When I wasn't on stage, I had to sit and chat and drink with the guys, which came very easily to me since I love to talk to new people, and I soon got the hang of it. Dancing naked for a bunch of Londoners: that does sound so strange after all those years in the financial markets, but the truth was that, for me, it was easy getting naked after a few drinks.