Venice Backstreets

OK, I’m a slut (Single Lady Under Transformation). Andrea’s falling was Raphael’s rising. Raphael was amused by my thinking he had given my name out. And the thought that I was fucking other men loosen Raphael up. He no longer had to fey disinterest. We could now have fun. And fun we had. Raphael had a particular fixation. An unusual fetish of putting large candles up his ass. I became his courtesan, the woman he could share his secrets with and we played with his candles. This kind of stuff you don’t do with everyone. So we became good buddies after this. The one problem for me was still how to make a living in Venice. I brought this up for the fourteenth time with Raphael. “You should become a courtesan,” he casually says to me as though he telling me I should get chicken today at the market. Matter-of-fact. A natural conclusion. “A courtesan?” I asked. “Yes, a courtesan. All women want to be courtesans.” “Really? And what’s so great about being a courtesan?” “Freedom. They are free. If you get married your husband can tell you what to do. He can spend your money. A courtesan, in the old days, was a very educated woman. She specialized in the art of seduction. She dressed beautifully and men adored her. She made a lot of money, she could become rich.” Well so far he didn’t say anything that didn’t sound great. “A courtesan is just a fancy name for a whore,” I said. “No, there you are wrong. A whore is cheap. She’ll sleep with anyone. A courtesan chooses her lovers. They supply her with money and she supplies them with love,” he answered me. “You mean sex.” “There is sex, yes, but there’s so much more than sex.” “Well, all that is very nice but that’s five hundred years ago. There aren’t courtesans anymore.” “Yes there are. And you could be one.” I looked at him dumfounded. Was he serious? Could he really be suggesting this to me like a career choice. So funny, when I was going to college I didn’t see a major in Courtesan or would it be Courtesaning like Accounting or Marketing. An American girl in the twenty-first century becoming a courtesan. I don’t think so.