I was a final year student in my product design degree. I had always wanted to be a product designer. My goal was to become one of the key designers for Ferrari and Lamboghini as sports cars and racing cars had always been my passion. I loved looking at the beautiful shapes and forms and colours that presented the cars with such grand gestures of speed and power. The art of engineering was also one of the things that I admired. Most of my girl friends could not understand why I wanted to become an automobile designer so much. They all thought it was a boyish thing to do. Most of them were either studying to become beauticians, or singers and actresses.
I guess the passion and enthusiasm came from my childhood memories... It was actually quite a strange association, but it was partially due to my emotional neediness as I was growing up. I grew up with my mum as a single mother, I never knew my father. He left mum even before I was born. I was always curious about him but never dared to ask as I didn't want to upset my mother. The first time that mum sat me down to tell me about him was when I turned 13. Apparently he was the lead singer of a very popular rock band, and they were high school sweet hearts and he was the true love of my mum. Unfortunately mum only found out she was pregnant right after he went on a tour around Europe...sadly he never returned. They'd lost contact and mum was heart broken. Her parents were not supportive and she was judged and blamed by lots of people around her. It was very hard raising a child on her own at the age of 19. She found it hard to find work, and life was getting tough. Then the opportunity came about when mum was approached by one of the high class escort agencies in London.
All accommodation paid for, and she was promised to only do incall escorting with respectful and rich clients. As a child I never understood why there were all these different men coming to our house at different times. I was always told to stay in my room, lock my door and never came out until mum came to knock on the door. Some of the men were very kind and friendly with me, they would bring me Barbie dolls and candies when they visited. When I reached the age of 11, there was this man that I called uncle Mark, who became totally smitten with mum. He would come around to pick us up in his sports car and drove us around the city. Some days when he stayed over he would take me to school in the morning in his bright red Ferrari and all the kids at school would eye me with jealousy like I had the biggest lollie pop in my hand, and that used to make me feel pretty good.
That was how I fell in love with sports cars. I felt safe and taken care of when Mark drove me to school, I guessed a part of me associated the whole act to some kind of fatherly love that I never received. I loved being driven around in Mark's cars. He had a whole collection of sports cars and I used to nag him to take mum and I out on the weekends just so I could be driven around. Mark stuck around a few more years, then I never saw him again. I moved out of home when I turned 16, while mum continued working as a high class escort.