Making Beds in Brothels Page 5

  I suspect, in part, it has to do with its context, which is largely within the perimeters of Manchester’s Gay Village. The Gay Village is a pleasure district, dominated by the Rochdale Canal. It’s been home to the city’s gay bars since before World War II. The bars and clubs follow the line of the water, which curves slightly, and at night appears like a slick black ribbon, reflecting the lights of the bars. At the end of summer each year Manchester’s Gay Pride draws hundreds of thousands of people into the Village. It is one of the chief generators of revenue each year for the city. I suspect the great and the good don’t want a shadow drawn over their cash cow, one that might negatively impact their investment. Money is king in the city and why taint the party atmosphere by introducing something unsavoury?

  For years afterwards I would see the paedophiles who paid for sex with me propping up the bars in the Gay Village, in the Old Reform, O’Malley’s Dog and other pubs, chatting to their friends. They are probably still there now, only older. I’m certain many are still actively pursuing sex with another set of children, and will continue to. And that people know who they are and look the other way.

  We were child prostitutes. I say ‘we’ because I wasn’t alone, there were quite a few of us, including myself and Mitchell of course. One I remember was a young bi-racial kid called Patrick. I recall Patrick because our tracks crossed again later. He was outrageously camp, the same age as me with a strong Wythenshawe accent, Wythenshawe is a vast sink estate, one of the biggest in the country, situated in the farthest southern area of the city.

  Patrick claimed he was already a veteran on the streets when I met him at fourteen; that he had been around since he was nine or ten. God only knows where his family were – he was just another feral kid like the rest of us. He trolled (his term) the public toilets looking for punters, and particularly worked around the public toilets in the Arndale shopping centre bus station. The station was on Withy Grove, close to Shudehill, built on the site of the 14th century inn, the Rovers Return, possibly a half-timbered fragment of the larger Wythengreave Hall, in what had once been the medieval heart of Manchester and was now just a seedy run-down street, home to many of the city’s second-hand book shops. Their windows proclaimed “Magazines, Books, Comics, bought, sold or exchanged!” but, in reality, they specialised in selling the then illegal hardcore pornography discreetly from under the counter. These shops eventually became obsolete with the legalisation of the pornography industry in Britain.

  Patrick had an outgoing personality; camp and outrageous. He would stain his already generous lips a deep berry purple from a large bottle of lip gloss, applying it with an extravagant flourish, then smacking his lips together, he would say grandly, “I have earned a thousand pounds today... I’m going to live in Spain!!!” Taking a swig from the bottle of pop he was drinking he would add, “My bags are packed and I leave tomorrow!” When you spotted him a few days later, he acted as if the conversation had never taken place. We were all fantasists; it made the reality of what was happening to us bearable, and no one cared anyway.

  There were many more children. Some came and went after a day or two, while some lasted a few weeks. Others became veterans, like me, Mitchell and Patrick, continuing to work for years, while it was still feasible anyway, spending our formative years learning the trade of selling ourselves and graduating into professional, adult prostitution. Most didn’t survive long, some devolved into drug addicts, some went mad, killed themselves, or ended up in prison; others went on to live relatively normal lives, even having families. I recall seeing one guy I had known out with his missus and kids and they looked absolutely normal. My mind boggled that anyone doing what we had done could live a normal life.

  Chorlton Street, runs from Minshull Street, close to Manchester Piccadilly train station, down Bloom street and towards Princess Street. The area was laid out, in the late 18th century, in a grid plan that largely remains unaltered. A few Georgian pubs and houses remain dotted along the street. They were built for the artisan weavers of the burgeoning industrial city. In the 19th century the area became dominated by the grandiose warehouses of Cottonopolis, although even these Italianate palaces were dwarfed by Thomas Worthington’s vast Neo-Gothic Crown Court, which in 1995 had recently been extended, nearly doubling its size.

  Chorlton Street bus station originated in 1950, in one of the car parks that took over areas once occupied by buildings bombed during the Second World War. In 1967 a large multi-story car park had been built, with the bottom floor taken up by the city bus and coach station. It was open on each side, but remained semi-dark even on a bright day, so you could pass through it easily on foot and, being a bus station, such perambulations passed unnoticed, in other words, it was a suitable venue for clandestine activities. To the right of the station were the ticket offices, a café and the public toilets. It was here, and at the corners of the street outside, that young men would congregate to ‘rent’ themselves.

  Rent boy is the colloquial term for young men who prostitute themselves on the streets, bars and other public areas in Britain and other English-speaking countries. Rent boy suggests a certain demographic, usually working-class deprived men of the inner city. Some activists gall at such terms as a prostitute or rent boy, claiming they are reductive, and prefer to project the moniker of sex-worker, suggesting that these men are engaged in some legitimate employment and therefore their activities should be regarded as work. I don’t disagree, people have the right to self-define as they see fit. I prefer to call the boys of the street what we called ourselves, and the men and boys who worked the streets of Manchester were rent boys.

  Rent boy is something of misnomer; not all rent boys are boys at all, a rent boy can be a man of forty. Reverend Flowers, a Methodist minister and non-executive chairman of the Co-operative Bank, is by one those quirks of fate a former colleague of one of my university supervisors. The tabloids were filled with tales of his ‘drug-fuelled orgies’ with a series of ‘rent boys’ who were all in their late twenties and thirties. Since the infamous Vicar of Stiffkey, notorious in the early 20th century for his friendships with what were euphemistically referred to as ‘actresses’, the press has loved nothing more than reporting that explosive combination of clergyman and prostitute, and they reported the Flowers affair with the same self-righteous glee.

  After all these years I can still recall the haggard, ravaged faces, often toothless with their skin covered in sores, of the heroin addicts who worked Chorlton Street bus station, their emaciated, worn-out bodies barely holding up the shabby clothing that hung off them: torn shell suit bottoms hanging over the bony arses of their wearers. Their hands fidgeted constantly with the toggles that tightened the string around their waists, for fear their trousers might fall and expose the infected track marks of their groins and upper legs. These men were the lowest rung of a despised profession, pitied rather than despised by the other rent boys, who watched them wearily. Experience had taught us that these desperate men would rob us at the first opportunity.

  Surprisingly, while these men occasionally had people willing to pay for them, mainly they made their living begging or by being an irritant to the other working boys, pleading, “Lend us a couple of quid our kid. You know I’m good for it”. The more successful lads were often generous, slipping them a tenner, “just for a bit peace”. The generosity of prostitutes on the street, slipping money to each other if the day had gone badly, buying food from the Village Chippy for those who were hungry, was part of that hard life. I still saw these lost souls tottering around the Village years later, although thinned out by overdoses, AIDS and other occupational hazards. I like to think some survived and recovered, although I’m not overly optimistic.

  There were two guys (I can’t remember if they were brothers or simply looked related), who were both tall, well-built and well dressed. These older guys survived, not only by rent, but also by ‘taxing’, the colloquial term for robbing younger prostitutes of their earnings.

  I
remember the anxiety of seeing them appear on my peripheral vision, like sharks entering my territory. They watched out for who worked and who returned. They clocked guys leaving with the punters who paid well and would either wait for us to return or, if you were on foot, follow you at a distance. Then they’d grab hold of you, pulling you into one of the dark alleys, and demand your earnings. If you refused, a quick punch to the face followed by a punch in the kidneys ensured your compliance.

  You became adept at outsmarting them, dodging down an ally, or jumping on a passing bus. We referred to these men as ‘ponces’. They ponced off you, which was the equivalent of pimping, and there still strikes me as something beyond the pale about men who choose to earn their living that way. The people we feared the most were those working alongside us, and we considered them absolute scum, worse than the worst punters.

  The rest conformed either to the normal appearance of working-class men or ‘scallies’, wearing track suit, trainers and baseball cap or sometimes flamboyantly camp; we were a mixed bunch, mainly unremarkable in appearance. My defining characteristic at this time, was my extreme youth, I looked much younger than my fourteen or fifteen years. I was so slight and feminine looking, with longish blond hair parted down the centre, that I was sometimes mistaken for a girl.

  I spent my days wandering in an endless cycle: up and down Chorlton Street, onto Bloom Street and towards Canal Street, down the countless back streets, sometimes walking into China Town or down the tow path of the Rochdale Canal that ran alongside Canal Street, through the gay cruising area and onto Dale Street or Aytoun Street near the labour exchange. Sometimes I would stand on the street corner, for the entire world to see, in the hope that a driver would stop and pick me up, saying, “Get in ’ere lad, out of the cold”. I was on my feet till they ached, till my shins throbbed. The scandalised stares of the public didn’t bother me, they were the least of my worries.

  For rest and refreshment, we used the big old-fashioned café in the bus station. It was the type of steamy, busy café once ubiquitous across Britain: tables with Formica tops, screwed to the floor, and red plastic chairs, a set of condiments and napkins, menu above the counter. The food was simple: cheap home-cooked fare, meat and potato pie served with mashed potatoes and gravy, or a full English cooked breakfast. I fondly remember the egg and bacon sandwiches made with toasted bread.

  The waitresses were diamonds, always kind, always quick with a smile. Those smiles were as nourishing as the food, they kept you going, lifted your mood. Apart from we rent boys who frequented the café, so did other denizens of the street. Bag ladies parked their overflowing shopping trollies outside and, during bad weather, settled themselves down for the day nursing a cup of strong tea, while the waitresses quietly used to top up that cup all day and surreptitiously pass them a plate of toasted tea cakes or bag of stale buns, without a word ever being said, never asking for a penny. That’s how I imagine these street women survived; small acts of kindness by normal people.

  And by now I had company. Mitchell had joined me a few months earlier. He was curious about where my new-found wealth had originated. Suddenly I was flush, and came to Church Lane with pockets full of twenty-pound notes, cigs and booze for us all. I was ashamed of admitting it at first, but we were ‘bezzie mates’ by now and shared everything.

  Soon, Mitchell was walking the streets alongside me. This was a turning point as it made life much more bearable. I was a young fourteen, and Mitchell had just turned sixteen so was much more streetwise than me, having been raised in the city. He was tougher and much more willing to fight back, which meant I was in a considerably safer situation in his company than I had been on my own, and in those days he seemed to be genuinely looking out for me.

  Mitchell often waited if he thought someone was dicey. The punter would pull up in his car and Mitchell would pop his head round as I got in, letting the punter know, I’ve clocked you mate. “You just make sure you bring him back safely, like,” he would say, with some menace. To be clocked meant your face had been remembered and wasn’t liable to be forgotten if I turned up later, dead in a ditch.

  Mitchell had been given a small council flat after his sixteenth birthday. I didn’t blame him for escaping the insanity of Ellen’s, and the flat provided us with a base to bring punters back, and somewhere to sleep. I even had a key to the door, so I could get in when he was out. These were good times. I had a friend who felt like the kind of brother I had always wanted; one who looked out for me and was protective. We would drink sickly sweet alcopops, bought illegally from one of the many off-licences willing to overlook our youth, along with twenty cigs. Buying a portion of chips and gravy for me, chip barm cake for him, and putting the world to rights in his tiny flat; it felt like a haven for a while.

  Chapter 10

  My memory isn’t clear about how I initially met Mick O’Rourke, it may or may not have been through an escort agency being run out of one of the huge office blocks on Whitworth Street, off Oxford Road, by a coke-addicted southern guy. As to the legality of the business, several of us working there were clearly underage.

  Mick was friends with Mitchell, who was working at the agency with me. Anyway, Mitchell was staying occasionally at his flat, as his casual lover, among other things. Mick was an odd-looking person. He was in his mid-twenties, very tall, thin, emaciated even. He possessed the longest fingers I have ever seen; they were prehensile. He had some type of hypermobility, meaning he could automatically bend them into unnatural angles, which he often did while looking directly at you, I suspect as a means of intimidation. His head was small, vulpine, with a long slim nose, a triangular mouth that turned up at the edges, myopic eyes, and a scrawny neck with a large, prominent Adam’s apple. His fair hair was short and gelled forward stiffly. He had a peculiar manner and an odd inflection in his voice that made him sound cartoonish when he spoke.

  Mick was a bad egg. At this age I wasn’t a very good judge of character or quick off the mark with people, but I didn’t like Mick. There are bad people and then there are bad people. He had something wrong about him that I couldn’t put my finger on.

  It may seem unlikely but If you want to know about good and bad people, ask prostitutes. A prostitute who doesn’t develop a nose for people’s hidden character – for what they are not telling you, or what they actually want as opposed to what they are saying they want – isn’t going to survive very long.

  Not everyone I met was like Mick. Some people were positively saintly, and I’m not exaggerating. I met genuinely good people working in brothels, paying for prostitutes. Many wonderful people work in the support services.

  Serendipity often brought good people into my life. I might meet someone in the pub when I was sitting in the deepest depression wondering what the point was of going on, who I would find myself speaking openly to about my childhood or what I did for a living, and they would listen with such sincerity, compassion and perhaps reassure me, “Things will get better for you one day, Adam. Just keep going.” And that would give me the strength to go on, revitalise me, leaving me wondering if perhaps I had been the company of an angel. Never, since then, have I underestimated the value of a few kind words to a stranger; they have saved my life more than once.

  There are people who are careless; normal people, who can be unthoughtful, petty and dishonest; who have good and bad attributes, driven by the normal impulses, and who are good or bad to greater or lesser degrees. We are all like this. I, even at my lowest points, wasn’t all bad, and even when I feel as if I’m presenting the best version of myself, there is room for improvement. Most people are like this.

  Then there are those who take pleasure in harming others. I have met people who I would say are evil. Those who will watch you, knowing you have taken too many drugs, in the hope that some hazard befalls you. I once knew a man, a regular in the Old Reform bar in Manchester, who told me he purposefully supplied his lovers with drugs till they eventually become addicted, and then took pleasure in watc
hing their lives fall apart. What he did was promote behaviour that might lead to these young men’s death; playing with their lives. He justified himself by saying that the men deserved it in some way: that they were using him and this was his means of revenge. To me, this a definition of evil, and people who behave in this way are the ones to watch out for, those who set you up for a fall.

  Mick was one of these. His crimes were utilitarian – for money – and they were how he made his living. I believe they also satisfied a deeper need to harm those he met. Harm was part of his generating motivation; the degradation, destruction, corruption of the children and young men he used was part of why he was doing what he did, not an incidental side-effect.

  He was a professional shoplifter; that was one of many pies he had his fingers in. He could clear Boots the Chemist’s shelves of toiletries, strip rails of clothing, shoes, hair dryers, CDs, even kettles, microwaves and kitchen equipment. Anything portable found its way into his specially-prepared bags. His modus operandi went like this: firstly, he took great pains over appearance. Like most clever shoplifters, he always dressed well but inconspicuously. He was a consummate actor, you would never take him for the usual drug addict or alcoholic who was shoplifting to feed their addiction; no one would look at him twice because he had studied blending into the background and had it down to a fine art.