This is what gets me about the debate about prostitution, this speculation of
motive as if it were some profound secret that only a team of crack shrinks
can unlock. “Why did he do it?” “What did he feel?” “How could he? Why would
he? But he had a girlfriend!” “Is his penis microscopically small?” “He must
have harboured subconscious murderous thoughts towards his mother.”
For six years I was addicted to prostitutes. All the symptoms were there: the
racing pulse; the hyperventilation; the inability, when the red mist of lust
descended, to walk away; the exhilarating high before and the crushing low
after; the cack-handed attempts to blot out shame, if only for a few minutes
- usually by buying more sex. Why did I crave prostitutes like a crackhead
craves drugs? Because I wanted to feel nothing; oblivion feels good when
you've had a bad day at work, or are hung-over.
First, let me explode some myths about Johns. Things that I have never been:
ugly, unemployed, smelly, intellectually subnormal, illiterate, uneducated
or proud of what I've done. Like most people, I can be decent company and I
can be an idiot. I've always had a good, if distant, relationship with my
family (hand on heart, I can tell you that I like my mother) and I've had
girlfriends most of my adult life. I'm young (35) and married, thank God, to
a woman who knows about my past and whom I'd never betray. It's true I used
to drink too much and, like the urge for cigarettes, the urge for paid sex
evaporated only when I dried out. All addicts crave that headspace where
nothing else matters. I'd get there with alcohol, and when the next day the
hangover began, I'd get there again with sex. The hedonist's dilemma, I call
it.
As a teenager I was packed off to an all-boys boarding school, where I was
lonely and hated the group mentality. I lost my virginity at 15 but, like
many boys of my background, my primary sexual relations were with the women
in porn magazines. I emerged from school a man of average height and of
average temperament, if a little intense sometimes, with a below-average
ability to relate to the opposite sex. My problem wasn't that I couldn't
shag women; I just couldn't talk to them. My first time was in Amsterdam on
my 18th birthday. I was drunk and high and with six friends from school who
had decided that a brothel was on the agenda. Did it feel like crossing a
line? Not really. I couldn't get it up and, afterwards, when the collective
bragging began - the word “stallion” was bandied about - I lied. I remember
thinking: “That was worse than popping my cherry!” The experience didn't
leave me craving paid sex. What did remain were the lessons I'd already
learnt from pornography: that women were there for one thing.
I don't know where the statistic that one man in ten has used prostitutes
comes from. I'd say that 50 or 60 per cent of men have been to one at least
once. I don't think most men like to talk about it even among themselves,
but every now and again somebody lets something slip, usually when drunk.
She was a “nice Swedish girl” or “good” or “professional”. “Good” means that
she acted it all out and hid the fact that she found you abhorrent. As for
“professional” ... A friend told me about a place he went to in Chelsea:
there were two women there, watching Friends. “Choose one,” he was told. He
had found it unprofessional that the girl he hadn't chosen was obviously so
delighted to have wriggled out of sex with him. “She just skipped off,” he
told me.
You have to be deluded to think that a prostitute likes having sex with you.
But you appreciate any woman who lets you suspend your disbelief. A “good”
prostitute doesn't look at her watch in the middle of proceedings, or let
you know that in paying for sex you have become everything that women hate
about men.
Why do men go to prostitutes? To shag, is the short answer. It's a mistake to
associate paid sex with feelings. Better to associate it with a lack of
feelings, a big frightening void, an inability to communicate sexually and
emotionally with a partner. Shagging a prostitute won't sort out emotional
problems. You don't lie there pouring your heart out or wanting to save her
from her miserable life. Why does a man need a prostitute if he's got a
lovely girlfriend at home? No matter how beautiful the woman he's sleeping
with, he just wants someone different, and then wants someone different
again. Someone to take him out of his current reality, of which self-hatred
is a decisive aspect. I never have sex with the same prostitute more than
once.
By the time I had sex with a second prostitute four years had passed. I was in
Central London, hung-over, and saw a card in a phone booth. A thought passed
through my brain: “If I ring that number, I could be having sex in five
minutes.” Suddenly the desire to have sex became so physically overwhelming
that I was having difficulty breathing. Ten minutes later I was on a thin
mattress with an older English woman. It was an unmemorable experience but,
given the alcoholic mess that my life was becoming, the physical act was
comforting. For maybe eight minutes life became a bubble, a bosom and a
womb, a room full of cotton wool. And then I'd come to and there was a woman
I didn't know leaving the room and always, without fail, the smell of
bleach.
By the time I stopped using prostitutes, I was teetering on the brink of
triple figures. At my worst I was seeing three women a week, usually in Soho
where, at the time, you could buy full sex for £20. The urge to have sex was
always worst when I was hung over. And anxiety is a great aphrodisiac.
I've walked out only twice - once when the prostitute turned out to be 50-odd,
once when I found the girl chained to the bed (I didn't know if it was real
or part of the act). And that's another myth about this business, that a
punter will have a Richard Gere moment and rescue this woman from her
misery. What are you going to do, give her £5,000? Some women I met I
couldn't believe were working as prostitutes. One German girl was very
educated - something bad must have happened to her. I did try to find her
again to give her the number of a friend who could get her work, but the
place had been shut down.
Some men claim that they go for the conversation but, come on, you don't go to
a brothel to talk. “Hello,” she says. “Hello,” you say. “Where are you
from?” “Naples”, she replies. Like a prat, you say: “Oh, I've been to
Italy!” “Where are you from?” she asks, with zero interest.
“Er, England.” That's about it.
The longest conversation I've had was spent talking about what she did at the
gym. But mostly you don't speak. To get you in the spirit of things there
might be a hardcore video blaring from a TV set. In the back of your mind
self-disgust mingles with the conviction that you're not that bad, she's had
to sleep with worse. Prostitution is a degrading experience for both
parties. As a punter, it's not good for your self-esteem, and costs quite a
lot. More likely than not, you've got problems. And more likely than not, so
does she. A prostitute on Berwick Street once told a friend that he reminded
her of her ex-boyfriend and as “a treat” she didn't make him use a condom.
He was drunk, of course, and wildly frightened afterwards. Was this her
revenge? Was she messed up? Did she have HIV? Did he now?
There are few totally happy addicts; we tend to feel like outsiders, which
makes us do what we do. But when I went to AA I saw a room full of people
just like me. I was all alienated, and suddenly here were these people
telling me that they felt exactly as I did. They described the five, ten, 15
minutes before the drink or drugs or poker game or woman when you go mad,
when you think, I can't not do this. They described the state of mind, the
“I shouldn't do this”, the breathlessness when it's happening and the
pathetic shameful emptiness afterwards. They described mulling over the
potential consequences - and doing it anyway. They described feeling unique
and isolated. After a while I realised the most shameful truth of all: I
wasn't different at all.
Interview by STEFANIE MARSH
