Imogen Blue

It’s a black ford ute; the kind where the windscreen slopes so far back over the cab that I only gotta lean forward a little to see stars.

And I’m grinning. No hotel rooms available. The dude lives with his parents. Nowhere for us to go but here: nestled behind a building in a little block of darkness at the industrial estate. All around the ute are blank slabs of manmade structure and the occasional glow of orange street-lights. Rubbish in the gutters. No plants. No grass.

‘How’d you wanna do this?’ he asks, confused. He wants to fuck but it’s too awkward. Where can the thrusting and gyrating fit in the little cab with the low roof? How can it be done with dignity?

He’s missing something though. In my line of work, dignity means…

‘Get out the car,’ I tell him. At my gesture, he comes round and sits in the passenger seat. By the road, I slip off my undies and tuck them into my bra before clambering on top of him, giggling.

He’s frowning though. ‘This isn’t gunna work.’

‘Listen,’ I say, face inches from his. ‘Wanna know how we do this? Laughing. This is gonna be a little weird, but you can trust me when I say that confined spaces are no bother for me. You’re paying $300 because I know how to do my job. Laugh when it’s weird. Moan when it feels good. Deal?’

He grins. ‘Deal.’

I kiss him. His hands grope and knead and grasp around my body.

After a while, he says, ‘There’s a condom in the centre console.’

‘Nah,’ I respond, ‘We’ll use mine.’

Look, I’m no scientist so I can’t tell you exactly how it works (they don’t tell me how it works), but there’s something in the condoms they give us that preserves cum.

The grossest thing is though, and I don’t tell anyone this so keep your mouth shut, but after the guy finishes, I gotta stick the rubber in my bra. Keep it warm.

I don’t know what they’re doing with the stuff to be honest. I know it’s for the Island and for the women. Some of the girls say they’re stockpiling it. Some say they’re experimenting with it to see if the sperm can be genetically modified to only produce female babies. Some reckon they’re trying to create artificial sperm to take down there so we don’t need the men no more. Can’t decide yet if I’ll miss ‘em or not. I kinda like this work.

***

Tasmania has gone. Quarantined and abandoned. Has been for years. Don’t ask me how they did it; I’m not on that side of the revolution. I’m front lines.

Women are disappearing too. Not just like they used to either.

Lady in Coogee Beach hung her husband out to dry. Literally. She poured a whole bottle of nail polish remover down his throat, draped him over the clothesline and fucked off.

Most are quieter than that though.

I was doing this work way before they cleared out Tassie. I didn’t hate it then and I don’t hate it now. But it’s cool to know that it’s going somewhere, you know?

Before, I was just making men feel better, that’s about it. Bullshit them, fuck them, send them on their way feeling lighter than they did when they walked in.

Now, there’s something bigger. I’m helping. I’m working towards…

But it makes me shiver what some of the girls say.

They’re frightened, you know? I reckon some people aren’t sure if it’s right, all this.

They make up stories.

Like I don’t believe we’re harvesting cum to breed out men. Because we’re not like men. We don’t wanna do that same as has been done to us.

I just think we should have somewhere to go. Somewhere safe. I don’t wanna wipe out men; I just want the option of never clapping eyes on one again.

***

There’s one girl, Veronica, she’s real suspicious of it. Some of ‘em are. You kinda want us to be this united movement, like we all protect each other, but nah. Everyone’s scattered as they always been, trying to work towards the one thing for a million different reasons.

Veronica is white and skinny but she’s not thin because she’s healthy, just thin because she’s angry. Her eyes are hard, lips scowling. She wears her hair short and bleached blonde. Severe is the word for Veronica. But some dudes like that.

I’ve gone to the safe house to drop off the fresh sample.

It’s this blank old govvy house with grey, smelly carpet and white, bumpy ceilings. But you press on this bit of wall and a drawer appears out the plaster and steam seeps out and the light inside is red and warm and you drop your sample into its own little house.

And there’s always food and drink in the fridge. Fresh beds upstairs. A bit of company if you fancy it.

Not men though. We’re not allowed.

Veronica’s just dropped off a sample when I walk in. She’s sitting by the window, staring out into the street, furiously puffing on a smoke.

‘Don’t sit right with me, this,’ she says ominously.

One of the other girls, a dark skinned woman called Jess, appears in the doorway of the room, wolfing down a yoghurt before heading back out. She rolls her eyes at me.

I shake my head and grin because we both know Veronica’s a knob and she always does this.

‘What?’ barks Veronica, noticing, ‘I don’t get how youse can just go along like a couple of hungry dogs!’

I know a lot of girls who pass through here. And none of us smell like dogs to me.

‘Why’d you do it then, ay?’ I ask.

‘Need the money, don’t I?’ she answers. ‘Company pays more’n I make on me own. I just reckon…we all got brothers and uncles and a daddy. Not all of them are rapists.’

I chuckle. ‘Nah, you’re right. I got two brothers and a daddy. None rapists, far as I know. They’re just cunts.’

Jess laughs. ‘Fuckin’ ay.’

‘Yeah, well, women can be fucked too,’ Veronica snaps.

‘Fair play,’ says Jess, ‘But I reckon most times women are fucked, it’s because men fucked ‘em. Besides, it ain’t like Tassie is just for women.’

Veronica snorts a cruel little laugh. ‘Yeah, I love that I’m fucking meself dry for queers.’

Jess ain’t smiling now.

‘Fuck off, Veronica,’ I sigh. Heard it before.

She rolls her eyes and takes an angry drag on her smoke.

Jess steps out the doorway and into the room. ‘Nah, I reckon you should fuck off,’ she says, ‘The island ain’t a prison, bitch, you can walk out the same fucking door you came in. I reckon it’s time for you. Love your men so much? Go home and cook for ‘em.’

Veronica looks at Jess and I, hating us.

I raise an arm to point at the front door. ‘Go on then…’

***

I remember my mum once said to me, ‘If you’re a woman living in 21^st century Australia and you haven’t considered sex work, there’s something wrong with you.’

Because why not? If we’re good for nothing but our bodies, why not?

It works for me. And it’s gonna fuck them over in the end.

I never had a problem fucking ugly guys anyway.

They’re so grateful.

---

Imogen Blue is a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her practice-led research employs ficto-critical and magical realist methods to examine the sometimes-entangled philosophies of sex, religion, and trauma through a phenomenological lens. She is proudly Autistic and queer. Beyond the academy, she is raising a son, binding books, and occasionally dressing like a feral goblin fairy at raves held in seedy underpasses.

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