Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution (8 page)

prostitution experience, as the term 'escort' does, but rather discounts\t\ entirely. These are lies, pure and simple. I never tried to sugar-coat what\ I did, no matter where I was working or how much I was getting paid for \ it. Similarly, while working as a stripper, I never referred to myself as a 'dancer', exotic or otherwise. I heard these terms at the time, both in the media and in the brothels, and when I heard them they always seemed to me to serve the same purpose, which was to seek to paint a deceptive veneer ofrespectability over what we did. For the women involved to use terms like 'call girl' appeared particularly stupid to me, because to do that was to admit that you were not prepared to face yourself or others with the truth ofyour daily experience, and if you were not prepared to do that, was that not an admission in itself? Did it not say something, and say it very clearly? I felt that the women who preferred to call themselves escorts and dancers were even less happy with their lot than the women who'd tell you they were strippers and whores and hated the whole business, because at least the women who weren't afraid to call a spade a spade weren't indulging in self-denial. At least they were not afraid to look the truth of their experience in the face. If you look at something and say you find it distasteful your sense of disgust is probably less potent than that of the person who refuses to observe it at all. As to the myth of the high-class hooker, this particular myth persists, in the main (like most myths in prostitution) because it suits the men who pay for sex to believe it. Many like to assume that when they call an escort agency, a higher class ofvagina will arrive at their door and, as an afterthought, that there'll be a higher class of woman attached to it. The notion of the high-class hooker is propagated by those who profit from it, because it is the simplest way to maximise the market. Women in escort prostitution buy into the notion that they are somehow better than their street-walking sisters because class-ism exists in all of life. Whyshould prostitution be any different? There is a notion in and of the sex industry that you 'can't work up the ladder'. That is to say that it is not possible to begin working on the streets or in brothels and then move on to escort agencies. This notion is commonly held. It is commonly held nonsense. I know that because my 'career' followed exactly that supposedly impossible pattern, and also because, though unusual, I was not alone. Interestingly, I found that misconception usually held among those prostitutes who had only ever worked the 'high end' of the market. This is an important point to note because, of course, it means that the notion is held and circulated in the main by those who have no experi.ence of having done what it is they are claiming it is not possible to do. Women who've always worked in the area of escorting wouldn't know how easy it is to enter that arena from 'below'; they've never had to make the career shift. It is possible. I've done it myself and I've seen it done. It is bizarrely easy, considering how 'impossible' it's widely perceived to be. In fact, it's as simple as making a phone call. The notion of impossibility here is another example of the myths, or falsifications, of prostitution. Many of the women who enter prostitution at its high end do so out of desperation, but many of the women who begin prostituting themselves on the streets do so out of destitution. There is a difference. For this reason, socially disadvantaged women like my younger self fill the streets and the brothels and middle-and upper-middle-class women fill the escort agencies. But the transition from one to the other is entirely possible and for all the comments claiming it not to be, I've yet to hear anyone posit what type of obstructions are in place to stop a woman 'working up the ladder', or how they contend these supposed barriers operate. Certainly women from the streets are not welcome to apply for positions in escort agencies, being seen to be in possession of the lower-class vaginas I've mentioned already, but any woman with a whit ofsense will simply keep her mouth shut about that, as I did. The obstruction here, if there is one, is in the beliefof the myth of the high-class hooker. Buying into this erroneous belief is possibly the biggest obstacle to any woman exercising social mobility within the prostitution world. As to social class among the prostituted, I met advantaged middle.class women in prostitution and I honestly couldn't understand them. I just couldn't get what they were doing in brothels at all. (I always referred to the apartments escort agencies are run from as brothels, because that's what they are. The only time I broke with that tradition was when I referred to them as whore-houses with the intent to rub some of the women who referred to what we were doing as 'escorting' up the wrong way.) My problem, my incomprehension, was in what they were doing in the business. Itmade no sense to me. They were privileged. They were educated, only to second level usually but even so, I am talking about �ell-to-do fee-paying private schools. They seemed to have had other viable choices open to them; they could have gone to university, they could have gone to work in daddy's business, but yet here they were in this awful place doing something they clearly hated and that obviously made them miserable. Why? Well, there is no universal answer to that. The answer varies from woman to woman. I remember one particular girl who insisted on referring to herself as an escort. 'Ah, good for you: I said to her. 'I'm a whore myself: She was blonde and in her early to mid-twenties. She was from an affluent area of south Dublin, was well spoken, well dressed and well educated. She was also a victim of childhood sexual abuse, regularly self-harmed and by the time I last saw her, had progressed from the level of recreational cocaine user to a chronic cocaine addict. That girl had every privilege in life, except the one that matters most to a woman: sexual serenity. She hadn't ever had that. Not every middle-and upper-middle class woman who becomes involved in prostitution will have psychological issues that are so glaringly obvious, but I do not believe it is possible for a woman to wilfully involve herself in prostitution without there being some problem, sexual or otherwise, that precedes it. Everything I have ever seen in prostitution leads me to this conclusion. To know that women like the one I've just mentioned are commonly regarded as 'high class' amongst prostitutes just adds a new negative dimension to prostitution for me; it is the dimension of the preposterous and the absurd. Most prostitutes are from backgrounds ofdysfunction, just like I was, and,relive the turbulence of their early years in prostitution, just like I did. It\,,important though, in examining the backgrounds ofprostituted women, tq remember that not all childhood dysfunction is as obvious as mine was. Not all young girls from emotionally unhealthy homes have greasy hair and tattered, dirty clothing. Many of the women I knew in prostitution had far more disturbing childhoods than I had; they just didn't have the outwardly obvious symbolism of my own. Many of them \ didn't have the visible symptoms that serve as sure-fire indicators that something's wrong at home. In many instances in their childhoods, no doubt their skin was spotless, as would have been their clothes and hair; it would have been only in the eyes that you would have gauged something of what was going on at home. People who see prostitution as something which exists on a number of different, exclusive and distinct class-related levels are people who do not understand the interrelated nature of it, and some of the people ignorant of the shifting nature of prostitution are actually prostitutes and prostitutors6 themselves. The evidence of this variable nature in prostitution is something which, looking back over my time in the business, is dear to me. When In Dublin magazine began publishing adverts for escort agencies in Dublin city in the early 1990s, many prostitutes and madams who had previously worked solely in the area of massage parlours reinvented themselves as 'escorts' and their operations as 'escort agencies'. This worked especially well in the early days of the economic boom, because many Irish people were seeing enormous stylish apartment blocks being built for the first time. The shift from brothel worker to escort prostitute really is and was that simple. (In fact, in this internet age, many will find it simpler still.) The reasoning behind the 'upgrading' of brothel workers all across the city was equally simple: at that time, a woman working in a massage parlour could charge somewhere in the region of forty to sixty pounds; a woman working in an escort agency could charge somewhere in the region of one hundred to one-hundred-and-fifty. It is an economic reality in business that a customer is not disposed to paying more for a service than he has been used to paying, if there is no improvement or upgrade to that service. If a man walks into an escort agency and meets a woman he met in a massage parlour the week before, he will naturally feel disinclined to pay that woman several times what he paid the last time he met her; and if the transaCtion is Wherever a woman is prostituted, there are also the men who prostitute her. There is a word to refer to them, in the context of their actions, but that word is not in common usage at the time of this writing. Therefore I would like people to pay attention to the term 'prostitutor' in the body of this text. It has been delib-� erately included here to refer to those men who have, until now, carried out a specific behaviour without having to bear the weight of the term thnt ddcribes it. completed before he recognises her, he is sure to feel cheated, and of course he would, since he has just paid three times the price for the same 'service' from the same 'service provider'. This is the only common-sense reality upon which the myth of the high-class hooker rests, and it is of no relevance for two reasons: the first is that an aggrieved client is always welcome to walk out the door. The second reason this rule of business is insignificant is because prostitution, because ofits illicit nature, does not conform to most social rules or norms. Not being a legal profession, it is not regulated either, and it is unlike any other arena of industry in that the 'employers' (pimps and madams) make it up as they go along as far as their employees' (prostitutes') professional status is concerned. Their 'rank' or 'position' or 'standing' is something that has either been applied to them or they have applied to themselves. This elevated sense of status is applied, of course, with no legitimate qualifications to support it. For this reason, the notion of an exclusive 'high class' end of the market is a nonsense. I worked for two notorious Irish madams who both had decades of experience running 'low-end' massage parlours behind them before they moved into escorting in the early 1990s, like everyone else who had any financial savvy at that time in the Dublin prostitution world. . Prostitution can be a transitory experience; you can move around within it, but here is the catch: this only holds true for those women who believe that. The woman who believes that it is not possible to work in an escort agency because she is working on . the ~treets will stay on the streets. The woman who believes that working iJ/t a massage I parlour precludes her from working in an escort agency ~stay in a massage parlour. The classist attitude in prostitution is very clear. The women who have only ever worked in escort agencies h~e no doubts that it would be possible for them to work in the lower ei'd of the trade, but rarely do this, not only because there is less mopey to be made per client, but also because they scrupulously refuse to do so. It is not just about accepting less cash for the same 'servi~'; they feel that to work in these other areas of prostitution would in some way further diminish their dignity and would be somehow beneath them. I have . heard a lot of sneering comments along those lines from women who market themselves as escorts, but what they are unaware of is that their bodies are routinely used far more thoroughly indoors than custom would deem acceptable to the women on the streets. If women's bodily ownership in prostitution was to be measured, escort agencies are where the least of it would be found. The women I met in escorting who had come from brothels had a much more realistic grasp of the reality of prostitution than those who had worked exclusively in escort agencies. A sense of derision towards the myth of the high-class hooker was a commonality among them; they simply knew better than to buy into it. People who depict prostitution as glamorous usually view prostitutes against the backdrop of expensive hotel foyers; they imagine prostitutes as entering or leaving five-star hotels wearing sharp designer suits and high heels, the look set off with vivid red lipstick. I've walked into more hotels more times than I could count wearing sharp suits, high heels and every shade of lipstick. None of that changed what was going on in my heart or in my mind and none of it made any difference to the bodily experience involved here; none of it was of any practical benefit to my mouth, breasts or vagina. What was going on was the very same thing that was going on when I was lifting my skirt in a backstreet alley. The nature of prostitution does not charige with its surrounds. It does not morph into something else because your arse is rubbing against white linen as opposed to roughened concrete. Chaptern ~ PROSTITUTION'S SHAME,

VIOLATION AND ABUSE The practice ofdissociation which prostituted women employ to protect their sense ofselffrom violation is so similar to the dissociation employed by sexually abused children that it provides good evidence that the two experiences are similarly abusive. SHEILA JEFFREYS, THE IDEA OF PROSTITUTION I once had a client who used to wear a cotton ball strapped to his backside by way of a couple of strings fashioned together to fit him like a woman's thong. He took great pleasure out of pretending he was a poodle and wanted to be led around on a lead. This was no problem as far as I was concerned. He wasn't seeking to cause hurt with his odd fantasy. I brought him for 'walkies' round his apartment and instructed him to wear his 'tail' under his clothes for the pleasure I knew he'd get out of being my 'doggie' in public. Certainly this was a perversion by its dictionary definition, no doubt about that. But when I hear the word 'pervert' my mind does not call up men like this. Nor does it call up the men I've known who were aroused by household cleaning, admiring women's feet, dressing in women's clothes, or by the hundred.and-one other sexual penchants I've witnessed that would certainly be considered to fit the term 'perversion'. You can't work shoulder-to-shoulder with human perversion for years without coming to understand something of its/nature. Much of what is understood about human perversion is felt;i.Cis understood on a sensory level. In sensing the true nature of perversion, I am no different