Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution (6 page)

body to a man, it's selling her body to one man for the benefit of another. There were several different elements to his operation. One of the main ones was stripping. He organised strippers countrywide and in a very short time I was one of the most in-demand strippers on his books. Not because I was a good dancer (I wasn't) but because of my youth and physicality. Myself and others packed out hallways from Dublin to Tipperary for him on a weekly basis. Speaking of Tipperary, I remember one particular show a few of us did in Cashel: driving into that place was the mother of all shocks. The streets were absolutely plastered with huge posters advertising our arrival in neon green, pink and orange, so we knew we were in for a lively night. The pub was like a converted barn inside and that was very apt given that the men in it behaved like a herd of animals. To watch their carry-on you'd think they'd never seen a pair of breasts or a woman's arse in their lives. This was typical behaviour countrywide, by the way, and certainly not confined to the men ofCashel. I had similar feelings towards the stripping as I had towards the prostitution. It seemed like there was a trade-off in swapping one for the other for the night-it was a case of more eyes on you versus fewer hands. That's not to say that sometimes you wouldn't have to contend with both, because sometimes you would; some men took great pleasure in grabbing us and mauling us and humiliating us publicly to , the maximum possible extent. I knew one girl who had a man's fingers shoved inside her vagina in the middle of a show. She ran from the floor screaming and in tears. Needless to say, the man who was supposedly paid to protect us was nowhere to be seen when these sort of things happened. A lot of people, including women, view stripping as some sort of harmless fun. Itisn't. Itisn't harmless or fun when your heart is thumping out ofyour chest in the middle of a crowd offifty or sixty drunken men, all roaring vulgarities and obscenities, and you're there, slowly peeling off the only layers that exist between you and them-your clothes. It is thoroughly psychically invasive. When I think back to the evening I arrived on Leeson Street, in the autumn of 1992, my mind keeps pulling me back to that first moment I looked at the picture of the cat winding its tail round the leg of the tripod, because it sent a ripple of negative energy through me that I didn't understand. The image, I later came to find, signified the nature of what went on there. It was a pornographic studio. I can't remember how many men photographed me there, and I actually don't want to know. The set-up was that a man would arrive with his own camera and a blank roll of film. He'd pay a set amount, . I think it was ninety pounds, and when he was done photographing whichever girl he'd selected, he'd do whatever else he wanted to her, for an additional fee. He'd then give the roll of film to the pimp, who had it processed, God knows where. Someone was in on the operation obviously, because this was in the days before digital cameras. The photographs had to be processed somewhere, and most of the girls in them were under-age. I remember one man in particular because he didn't seem interested in taking explicit photographs; this was unusual. He told me to pose any way I wanted and never instructed that I take my clothes off. I remember sitting balanced in the window ledge, with my head resting against the wall and my chin tilted up and closing my eyes as though I was deep in thought, and suddenly I was deep in thought, and I was imagining that I was a model; that it had all worked out in the modelling agency and I was just doing a day's work. The click ofhis camera brought me back. He told me that it would be a very beautiful photograph. I felt injured; violated in a new way. He had caught something ofthe real me on his roll offilm. That was a new sort of lesson in never letting your guard down. Some women have no problem with pornography. Well, I do. I know from having been photographed in sexually explicit poses that there is a lotmore going on behind those glossy graphic images than most people take the time to consider. It is a demeaning exploitative business that is hugely damaging to women, both within and without the industry. In the on-going effort to sanitise pornography we are told that it is 'sexually empowering' and a form of'sexual self-determination'. For me, this was no truer of being photographed, naked and posing than it was true of being fucked, naked and posing. I worked alongside a half-a.dozen girls at that time, all in their mid-to late-teens. Some I'd known from the hostels and others I'd been introduced to by girls I'd known from the hostels. What we did in that freezing-cold seedy basement was the same thing we did out on the streets; we took the only thing worth taking out of our circumstances, the opportunity to put roofs over our heads and food in our mouths. This was the only 'empowerment' evident in our lives. One seventeen-year-old girl I worked with (a survivor of child sexual abuse) had left her flat, newly pregnant, because her landlord kept trying to have sex with her. She reasoned that if she was going to be sexually harassed by older men, she may as well get paid for it. It was a reasoning many of us arrived at. The consistent reality of being exploited by men in more socially powerful positions could not be abated and since we could not escape it we 'chose' to frame the terms ofthat exploitation as financial, since those were the only terms open to us that could have been of any practical benefit. The attempt to frame prostitution as 'sexual self-determination' simply doesn't hold up, because our decisions were not sexual, they were economic. The sexual element was endured, not enjoyed, and ifwe had been in any position to exercise true self-determination, our pimp would have had an empty brothel and our clients a whole pile of blank rolls of film. Because I've been on the other side of the camera, I honestly wouldn't and couldn't have a relationship with someone who had a current porn habit. For any woman who finds porn distasteful I would consider it good advice not to allow anyone to convince her otherwise. Sometimes honouring who we are as people necessitates framing the boundaries of what we're prepared to accept. I have experienced the damage and degradation of stripping and pornography. These are not harmless industries. Theyare not, by the way,distinct industries: they are partofthe same one big prostitution machine; a mechanism which actively reduces the worth ofwomen and does so by placing their commodification both at its apex and at its core. Chapter9~ I THE INTERPLAY OF DEPRAVITY

(We) know more about sexuality today. We may be no better at controlling or humanising it, but we do understand how fragile and complex it is, and how mysteriously prone to disorder and disease ... In spite of the claims made by sexual utopians in the 1960s, sex is never value-free, never without its human and emotional consequences. RICHARD HOLLOWAY, ANGER, SEX, DOUBT AND DEATH 0 ne thing I have not heard prostitutes or former prostitutes publicly discuss is the inevitable interplay of depravity that exists between prostitutes and their clients, but it is absolutely central to the job. It is as much a part of prostitution as chalk once was to the teaching profession and just as essential to the performance of their work. The interplay of depravity between a prostitute and her client takes on a dizzying array of forms and an infinite number of nuances. These work in combination with each other in a busy spirit of production, and they never produce anything but depravity in a new and different form. Depravity here is self-propagating. One of the ways this depravity manifests itself is in the strange interaction between a 'mistress' (or 'madam', as I sometimes insisted on being called) and her 'slave', which is in fact a sort of co-dependency of depravity, in that each relies on the behaviour and responses of the other to bring about perverted interactions which are required to cause arousal for one and payment for the other. I worked as a dominatrix for a good portion of my prostitution life, so I am experienced in the ways that men and women relate in this area of prostitution and the reasons why they must, and what is to be gained for both by doing so. This is complex; there are more psychological layers here than an objective observer might suppose. What you do when dealing with less common requests as a prostitute (and most particularly with a sexually submissive client) is to ascertain as closely as possible exactly what it is this man wants, and also what he needs, because these two requirements are very important and also often very distinct, though he may be unaware of the duality of his requirements. You figure out both what's missing; what the actual lack is and also what he perceives that lack to be, because as I said, the man may be confused on that point; and consequently you make it your job to fill both vacancies. There is no point satisfying either one or the other, you must satisfy both. In this way, you generate repeat business. You cannot be slipshod in your approach here: to satisfy a want and neglect a need is to create a situation whereby a man will have ~ niggling underlying sense of frustration and discontent and you will see him for a short time before he moves on to somebody else. To satisfy a need and neglect a want is to ensure he will visit you for a time-frame that is considerably shorter, as his wants are more apparent to him than his needs; you must first identify both and then satisfy both, and in this way, you guarantee your own fiscal return. These wants and needs cover a spectrum that is truly vast and ranges from the obvious sexual proclivities to emotional and even surprisingly practical types of facilitation that would be considered far outside the usual remit of what's expected from a prostitute. It is mildly amusing to me to imagine how this process would be referred to in another sector: 'client satisfaction' or 'customer relations' perhaps. You employ these methods, of course, only when you're dealing with a man whose repeat business would be particularly acceptable to you. The only times I ever employed this approach were when a man was a transvestite or a submissive. It is not a method to be used wholesale. It would be of no practical widespread use because there are many instances where you would not wish to see a man on a repetitive basis, regardless of how much it might enrich the financial side of your life. The interplay of depravity here, as it relates to the prostitute's con.tribution, is in the wilful manoeuvring necessary to mirror the requests and requirements ofa psychologically fragile male mind. Manipulation is quite necessary. In fact, with this type of man, it is mandatory; the ability to carry it out is simply a requirement of the job. This is not evidence of some sort of prostitutes' autonomy. It is evidence that this type of client must recognise in his 'mistress' the actions ofa master manipulator. There is one reason for this: it arouses him. It is not, truly, at its core, about the woman being in control; it is about the man's need to perceive her to be. In my own life, I have worked with a plethora of men who exhibited these tendencies. For example I had one particular client, I'll call him Donald. He saw me regularly for about three years. I met him when I was still on the streets, at seventeen, and he continued to come to me for a few years after that. Donald was the very epitome of the client who wants to be dominated. He appeared to revere and worship women to truly bizarre proportions and spending time with Donald was a study in the converse dynamics of power in prostitution, because, although it might have looked as if I was in control to the casual observer, since he was controlling the purse-strings, the ultimate power was always Donald's. There is a lot of sense in the old adage: 'He who pays the piper calls the tune', but neither he nor I would have ever dreamt of making reference to that. To do so would have been to destroy the fabric of the rapport between us, which would have cost me money and him his erection. Donald venerated women in a negative and unhealthy way. He did not simply treasure them; he dignified them by debasing himself. The same was true to one degree or other ofall the men I met who liked to be dominated, but Donald took this sexual proclivity to the highest degree. He begged and nagged to be used in every manner imaginable, from having his time and effort taken for granted to being kicked, whipped and beaten. He would call me up regularly in the evenings and beg to take me to dinner, and even the first time this happened, without ever having to be instructed, I instinctively understood that his particular penchant would not be satisfied unless I gave him clearly to understand that this was a very great chore for me; that suffering his company for an hour or two was an imposition and an insufferable inconvenience. We had many conversations that went similar to this:

Me: 'How dare you? How dare you impose your worthless self on me,as if I had nothing better to do with my time than look at your simpering face? Well? Well? How dare you?' Donald: (stuttering and incoherent with nerves) 'I'm sorry, Madam, I mean, Mistress, I mean Madam: Me: 'You know, or ought to know, BETTER by now than to call me Mistress. I'm not some marriage-wrecking floozy!' Donald: 'Madam, Madam, I'm so sorry, Madam.' Me: 'You haven't answered my question. I am w~iting, and you know how I hate to wait.' Donald: 'I'm sorry, Madam, I've forgotten the question: Me: 'Well that's no surprise, you being the fool that you are. The question was HOW DARE YOU presume I've nothing better to do than grace you with my company?' Donald: 'Oh I'm so sorry, Madam, I'm so sorry. I am only calling because I thought you might be hungry and need someone to take care of you and feed you, Madam. I would hate to think of you hungry or needing anything you hadn't got, Madam: Me: 'I never need anything I haven't got my dear, because I have half. a-dozen fools like yourself ready to rush around and fetch it for me .

. Where are you?' Donald: 'I'm parked across the road, Madam.' Me: 'Lucky for you: Donald: 'Oh, you know, I never keep you waiting: Me: 'You never keep me waiting, what?' Donald: 'Sorry? Excuse me, Madam?' Me: 'You never keep me waiting WHAT?'

Donald: 'I'm sorry madam, I don't understand.' Me: 'Well that's hardly surprising, given the moron that you are. I don't know why I bother trying to train you. You really are an incorrigible fool and a total waste of my time; you do know that, don't you?' Donald: 'Yes, Madam, oh, I know, Madam. Thank you for putting up with me, Madam.' Me: 'Well it's more than you deserve. I was chastising you because you forgot to call me Madam when you reminded me that you never keep me waiting. Do not show yourself remiss in that department again. And now I can feel my heart softening towards you because you are across the road and I will not be kept waiting; you are a good boy in that department at least. You may take your madam to dinner. I will be out when I'm out, and you, needless to say, will wait until I am ready.' Donald: 'Oh of course, Madam, and thank you, Madam, thank you.' So this is an example ofthe interplay ofdepravity here; the way he debased himself by requesting to be spoken to like that, and the consequential and interrelated way I debased myself because it is not in my nature to speak to people like that. Donald's behaviour was simply wormlike. His perversion was in the desire to be treated as less than human. It was a desire that was depraved in its nature, and in facilitating it, I myself behaved in a manner that was depraved. This interchange is also an example of the prostitute's acquired skill of discernment; the way in which I had to abuse him thoroughly and then throw him a few words of comfort, before finally debasing him again. Donald wanted to be debased, but he needed to be comforted. Once this has been established, there is also the important matter of degree. How must the client's needs and wants be balanced, and when? This is the psychological tightrope a dominatrix walks in her working life, and she makes up for a lack of training by instinct and experience. The balance is always a delicate one, sometimes as delicate as steadying the head of a needle on a thread of spider's silk, and you wouldn't always get it right. I got the balance right with Donald, which was why he visited me for years. Forms of word-play similar to those above ran in constant streams between us each and every time we met. Of course, these conversations were theatrically extreme, over-the-top and ridiculous, but you can't afford to care about the ridiculous here; not ifyou care about getting paid. There is a lot of mental concentration required with a client like Donald. I was very aware of the ways he would try to provoke me and I played along with him always. In cases like the above, he often wouldn't have forgotten the question, or to call me 'Madam'; he would be looking for a good verbal tongue-lashing and it was my job to pick up on his cues so as to know exactly when and how to give it to him. Clearly Donald was a very confused and damaged man and it was a therapist he needed, not a prostitute. I can see here clearly an example of the negativity prostitutes are capable of emitting as well as receiving. There was something that should have been movingly pitiable about the sick 'this is a safe place to get hurt' sense of security that he exhibited with me. This is another essence of the interplay of depravity here: it is in both parties knowing they are doing each other a disservice and neither having the benevolence to care. Donald had been seeing prostitutes for years before he met me, nevertheless, the longer I saw him, the more deeply entrenched in his 'character' he became. I believe that his prostitution experiences began �o live inside him and to contort and deform his nature. Some might say that it is strange to think of prostitution as a living thing, but if by your definition of 'alive' you simply mean something that progresses and grows, then this experience could be said to be alive. Prostitution lives and grows, not just on a level that's global or cultural from country to country, but on a micro level; in each life it touches, it develops and evolves. I have seen the evolution of prostitution everywhere I have seen prostitution and I have never seen an example of this growth �d development that was in the positive. The interplay of depravity does not allow for that. It does not produce anything incongruent with its own character. In the case of Donald it is obvious how he was damaged by this interplay-but only because we live in a patriarchal world, where witnessing the submissive degradation of men is experienced as jarring, but in reality it is as depraved for men to abuse women in any of the innumerable ways they do in other areas ofprostitution, and the damage should be just as obvious. You might think .that, by way of us all being people, we might see something of ourselves in the lives of our clients. Some family-based practice, for example, that called to mind our own. We did not. We saw precious little to remind us ofhumanity in the private lives ofour clients. There are no such links in prostitution. The closest a prostitute will get to understanding anything ofher client's family life is by noticing a baby seat in the back of his car or feeling the cold metal of his wedding ring pressed against the inner walls of her vagina. All prostitutes have had this latter experience, as I have, and all street-walking women have had the former one, as I also have, many times. The mutual derision between prostitutes and their clients is starkly expressed in this experience recorded by journalist and political activist Julie Bindel: 'I visit Europe's oldest tolerance zone, often described by UK advocates of legalisation as an example of best practice. Unlike the zones that have been shut due to criminal. activity, this one, I'm told, runs like clockwork. At the Marco Polo police station in Utrecht, half an hour's drive from Amsterdam, I meet Officer Jan Schoenmaker, responsible for policing the zone. In April, he was part of a delegation that visited Liverpool at the request ofthe local council, which is keen to set up its own tolerance zone . . . Schoenmaker translates some graffiti on the wall. 'Dear kerb crawlers, we hate you men. We want to get as much money from you as possible.' A response scrawled opposite reads, 'Fucking whores, you must be fucked until you drop on the ground. We fuck and suck you until your cunt is very sore. Thank you.' JULIE BINDEL THE GUARDIAN, SATURDAY 15 MAY 2004 Prostitutes and their clients exist at the coalface of human contempt, and they remain there, too disinterested in each other's discomfort even to throw the other a cursorv Q:]ance. The exchange of money is often a moment of tension or embarrass.ment in prostitution. Clients themselves sometimes treat with revulsion the act of paying a prostitute. This is especially common in dealings between individual men and women who've spent years together engaged in the exchange. One man I had been seeing for a long time liked to indulge in the idiocy of hiding the money under the pillow and looking the other way while I put it in my handbag. Of course I'd accommodate that, or any other absurdity he could come up with, as long as all the money was pr~ent and correct. Also it should be noted that some men eroticise the point ofpayment and do so in a way designed to reinforce both the woman's subservience and the man's seniority. Some men would simply tug on the money gently as they were handing it over, so that I would have to expend a little more deliberation and energy in the taking ofit. This would alwayS' result in eye-contact and a knowing smile from h_im before he would loosen his grip. Some men are rather more flamboyant. I once spent the evening in the company ofa man who paid me one hundred pounds for the privilege. The privilege was all his. He paid me in five pound notes, one every twenty minutes or so, as openly and indiscreetly as possible, and with an audience. I endured the humiliation. I was sixteen years old at the time. Had I met the same man later in my prostitution life, I would have told him where to shove his fivers. Butyes, some men were uncomfortable with the moment ofpayment. Sometimes it became more complicated than that, and I suspect the deeper a man's sense of revulsion, the more difficult it became for him to appraise the situation honestly. Some men would, over a prolonged period of time, indulge the fantasy that I was there as much from a personal desire born of sincere affection as anything to do with money and they would make their position obvious by inviting me for drinks or other preludes to the sexual act. I hadn't any problem with that as long as I could trust my physical safety with them enough to take a drink in their company (which was unusual) and as long as they were paying me for my time, but to do so in a purely social sense, as was sometimes ,. suggested, was blatant nonsense. I was not in the business of playing 'let's pretend' when it came to the reasons I was there, or at least that's not what I had signed up for, but the truth is, in prostitution, you often haven't any idea .what you've signed up for until you're right in the thick of it, and besides, what you've signed up for changes as rapidly and regularly as it takes to get from one man to the next. It was a talking point among us women that some men would try to distance themselves from the realityofwhatthey were doing, so sometimes you would go for a drink and watch while they slipped money under your saucer or your beer-mat. Some men needed to do that and needed to be indulged in doing that, and it would not take a visitation from Sigmund Freud to figure out that they conjured up the charade because they found the truth of the situation so much less palatable. So we accommodated them in circumnavigating the truth; indulged the fiction of contorting this experience out of shape; played along with the denial element where necessary, but it wa.s always a strange and discomforting experience. The truth is that sometimes this charade was necessary because the reality was that this moment, the exchange of money, was so symbolic of the interplay of depravity in prostitution that sometimes clients themselves found it distasteful and difficult to deal with. Ofcourse there is something sad about that, and ofcourse a client who rejects his reality presents as a pitiable person; someone who, through his own fantastical enactments, has made it apparent that what he really wants is a relationship. These men ought to see that their desires will almost always be unreciprocated by the women they are paying, so they are wasting their time going to brothels in the first place. The bottom line is this: there is no sexual equality or mutual respect in the basic structure of prostitution and anyone who hopes to find a relationship there is on a fruitless search that is sure to end in disappointment. Where a prostitute plays along with these sorts of whims, some people might conclude that she is no different to the second-hand car salesman who omits to mention problems with the clutch, or the banker who points his client towards a savings scheme which is more in the interests of the bank. Some people would charge her with duplicity and fraudulence but excuse her by maintaining that, after all, there are many professions which operate on the capitalist ethos that as long as it is conducted in the name of business, we are all entitled to screw each other. But people who buy used cars don't ask to be lied to and people who frequent banks don't solicit expensive charades either; but the clients of many prostitutes do, and this is exactly what they do, and they know what they are doing, and they pay to be accommodated in doing it. When a prostitute plays along with this charade, it is for the purposes of the punter's own solicited benefit. Ifa prostitute is to be castigated for doing this then she is to be castigated for giving the man exactly what he's asked for, and paid for. There are layers of reality here, as in all of life, and another reality is that as the game is played, longer and longer over time, some of the imagined facets become real, or as close to real as is possible in this unnatural relational situation. She knows that, though her affection is not sincere, he wishes it were to the degree that he must have some genuine affection for her and so it is reasonable to assume he will never hurt her. A new and hesitant degree of trust has been established and her anxieties are somewhat assuaged. The upshot of this is that the usual tension of her environment lifts temporarily in his presence and this, experienced enough times with the same man, deepens her sense of security in his company. Eventually her anxieties are near-eradicated; she knows that she is safe from violence here, in this place, with this man, at least. In comparison to her other clients, it offers her something edging closer to respite, So she is relieved to see him when he calls. Sometimes, she will discuss small things but real things, and because of the very rarity ofher divulgences ~he will treat each ofthem like treasures of enormous value. For a prostitute who holds herself at the degree of emotional distance that I did, these fractured and flawed moments of connection are as emotionally close as a client will ever get. This does not mean that she does not resent him. She does, and she always will, and that's why he will never get any closer. There were a very small number of regular clients of mine for whom I would have felt something that mimicked distress had something desperately tragic happened to them, but those men numbered two or three out of God knows how many, and the distress I'd have felt would not have been the natural and wounding pain felt for a loved one; it would have been a misrepresentation, diluted and disjointed, like a forgery, a clumsy counterfeit of feeling. What I have always taken from this is that the normal human bonds of emotion cannot grow in a woman for a man who pays her for sex. It is not, in my opinion, a peculiarity of prostitution that some clients can and do form a deep emotional fondness for some of the women they pay (or at least for the people they believe those women to be). Itis something that further co~firms to me the nature of the offence. When human feeling runs in one direction only, there is a reason for that. The interplay of depravity in prostitution cannot be discussed without focusing somewhat on the unusual sexual practices in prostitution. It is remarkable how warped some people's sense of their own sexuality can be. I'll record an experience here. It was not one of mine, thank God, and to be honest I can scarcely imagine I'd have had the stomach for it, but here it is: a woman I know who worked in prostitution in Canada met a man whose penchant was for women's menstrual blood. He explained to her the origins ofthis: apparently when he was a young boy he'd been using the bathroom in his home and for some
reason he decided to rummage through the bathroom bin. He came across one of his mother's used tampons. It was soaked in menstrual blood. He smelled it and found the strange, strong pungent smell intoxicating in the sexual sense and then he went ahead and did the thing that was to affect his sexual life forever: he sucked all the blood from it. From that day forward he entertained the sexual desire to experience the smell and taste of menstrual blood. Menstrual blood, as any woman could tell you, is thicker, darker, and more pungent than the blood that leaks from the veins. The man was sexually entranced. His penchant led him to a lifetime of visiting prostitutes because he felt, for obvious reasons, that he could not share such a desire with the women he met in his personal life. And this really is one ofthe cornerstones that support the sex industry-the male insistence on oftloading onto another class of women perversions they cannot reasonably expect to present to the women in their lives. Here, women are very distinctly divided into the respectable and the contemptible, the decent and the disreputable, the revered and the reviled. In my friend's case, they would organise their meetings to happen only when she was in the heaviest part ofher period, this man and my old colleague, and she'd wear a tampon for at least a day before their meeting so that it was absolutely soaked in blood. He was always adamant that it needed to be 'thoroughly soaked: Then they would meet, she'd remove the tampon and he'd relive his childhood experience. The particular interplay of depravity between my former colleague and her Canadian client was this: she assisted him in debasing himself by facilitating his continuance of a foul and disgusting habit which would hold him at an emotional distance from every woman he ever met, and he assisted her in debasing herself by presenting this station to her which he would never dare present to any other woman. The interplay of depravity in prostitution is exactly that: interplay, because it runs in two directions which affect, reflect and merge with each other. It is required and delivered, sought and satiated, presented and accepted. Depravity is a master of its own renewal and regeneration and just as certain bacteria multiplybest in the damp, it finds prostitution a most hospitable environment. Because I worked as a dominatrix and with transvestites, I would have been privy to more 'traditional' perversion than women who refused to see such people, but another anomaly I ought to mention first: the ratio of street prostitutes who refused to involve themselves with unusual sexual practices was far higher than that of women who worked in the massage-parlour, brothel or escorting ends of the business. And another inconsistency which might surprise people: not all transvestites were interested in unusual sexual practices, beyond the obvious sexual pleasure which they all got from dressing as women, though a high number of them, I noticed, enjoyed experiencing women .as a domineering force and more than a few ofthem experienced 'golden "