Making Beds in Brothels Read online

  The charity had originally been established in 1985 through the instigation of Father Bill Kirkpatrick and Richie McMullan. They understood the need to provide services for male sex-workers living in the Earl’s Court area, often, like myself, living in fairly vulnerable circumstances, without a permanent address and in cheap hotels, hostels or other temporary accommodation. British bureaucracy demanded a permanent address before it was willing to provide you with support, which made it difficult to obtain even basic services such as a GP or Social Security.

  Streetwise offered auxiliary support services that get overlooked when you’re in the sex-work bubble. We could access medical care, counselling. They offered housing and benefits advice, and even a laundry service.

  We could also get advice and support about moving on from the profession, although they were always careful to stress that their main concern was the welfare of those actively involved in sex-work, and they never attempted to push people out of prostitution. Not pressuring male sex-workers to exit the business is vitally important. I was extremely sensitive to who I allowed around me and untrusting of the motivations of people I allowed to support me. Had I felt they were interfering in my life, it’s unlikely I’d have continued to engage with them, meaning that one lifeline of support would have been broken. Trust with our support services was vital.

  Recently, I was looking at some research on the sexual health of male sex-workers in London and noticed that the work originated with Streetwise. My curiosity was piqued and I read the paper in its entirety. Twenty years earlier I had taken part in the research that I now held in my hands and I found this direct link to my past very moving. It was an amazing organisation and should have been the prototype of many more. Sadly, it was a victim of government spending cuts that lost its funding and closed within a few years, a great loss for the many men who relied on it.

  My main motivation for attending Streetwise was the home-style cooked lunch served several times a week. Home cooked food was something I craved, and it was usually simple but wholesome, pies, stews and soups. The West Indian woman bustling about in the kitchen, who prepared all the food, would call out, “You want some chips with that lovely?” She was one of life’s angels, her smile from the kitchen always beautiful, warm and genuine. Those smiles kept me going, they were every bit as sustaining as the nourishing food.

  Such considerations as diet and exercise, and the support of the workers at Streetwise, contributed to maintaining both my mental and physical health. This was a business where not taking care of the product, in other words ourselves, was counterproductive. If I was going to survive and thrive, I had to take self-care seriously.

  This particular day I was dining at Benjy’s. Benjy’s was franchise of greasy-spoon type cafes that sold low-priced meals. It was the type of place that no one looked at you twice if you came in alone day after day. I have a clear recollection of the stickiness, tackiness of the menus and white and red Formica table-tops, the smell of bacon and hot lard mixed with the pervasive smell of cigarette smoke. You went to Benjy’s chiefly for the cooked breakfast: bacon, eggs, sausage and a slice of toast. I still remember the cost – three pounds fifty for a small cooked breakfast and coffee. A more substantial offering included chips and beans, for four pounds ninety-nine.

  Your coffee was refilled limitlessly, although one cup of the strong, chicory heavy brew was enough for me, anymore made me anxious. The other customers were usually labourers working on the roads, Australian backpackers, or American tourists travelling on the cheap.

  Quite often there were solitary old ladies. One regular face was a woman aged about seventy, usually wearing two or three coats; the top-coat was an expensive vintage tweed covered in brooches, some cheap, while others suggested a more refined provenance. She sported dirty white calf-leather ankle boots and, pulled low over her face, a woollen knitted hat of the tea-cosy type occasionally worn by the very elderly. Scarlet lipstick bled into the lines around her mouth as she muttered to herself. A tress of grey, yellowed-blonde hair escapes from beneath her hat and scattered around her feet was an assortment of plastic bags from Waitrose or Harrods, alongside string bags bulging with tattered newspapers and soiled clothing.

  The overall effect was not of poverty, but rather of dereliction, neglect and hopelessness. She may or may not have been homeless. She could in fact have been the daughter of a baronet living the life of a recluse in few squalid rooms overlooking one of the squares, a portrait of an Edwardian society ancestor sharing the noisome space with piles of yellowing newspapers and half a dozen cats.

  She was kin to the bag ladies of my native northern city, the women who sat all day slumped over a pot of tea in the Chorlton Street café, although this one probably originated from better stock. It wasn’t unusual to hear clipped upper-class English spoken by the apparently impoverished. Like the dregs of Russian high society after the revolution, they lived on in the basement flats, bedsits and garrets carved out of their former homes. In Earl’s Court, social distinctions extended beyond the norms, blurred even to the very margins of society. You took nothing on face value.

  Chapter 16

  I returned to La Casa as directed, the next morning. Being inveterately early, I turned up at 11 am, a full half hour early. No one answered my knock, so I waited and eventually heard someone clattering down the steps behind me.

  A diminutive, slight guy appeared, wearing a translucent netted top exposing huge brown nipples, skin-tight jeans, flip flops. Over his shoulder was a huge holdall, his hair, presumably a syrup of figs – wig, was an extraordinary confection of jet-black dreadlocks, shaped like a dandelion clock with the texture of polyester carpet pile.

  His skin was the colour of clay, the result of being thickly plastered in heavy foundation. When the daylight gave me a better look, I saw his skin was ashen, white under grey, with heavy stubble pushing through the make-up. He had attempted to pencil his lips in some shade of coral pink, but it hadn’t worked, just drawing more attention to his thin lips. His eyes were hidden behind a huge pair of black sunglasses.

  “What are you waiting out here for?” he asked in a thick Northern Irish accent. “I’m new,” I replied. “I’m starting this morning”. He tutted, “well ya can’t wait here… come back at eleven turty.” Getting a closer look as I left, I could see that his eyes, thickly eye-lined behind his sunglasses, had the look of lightly poached eggs.

  That was my first meeting with Maxwell. He was there on my first day, at eighteen, and saw me off on my last day thirteen years later. I never worked out how old he was, because his wrinkled hands looked older than Methuselah’s and suggested a more advanced age than was at first obvious. He never changed; same wig, pancake, same style of clothing.

  I was later warned by the other guys to be wary of him. He was a frustrated, failed sex-worker. The great prize that no one had ever wanted. As he hadn’t been able to scrape a living on his meagre charms, he became the door whore. This was often the case, that those who couldn’t make ends meet selling themselves ended up working on the door, cleaning, and doing menial but essential tasks. There were others besides Maxwell over the years, but Maxwell always returned. He was second only to Alberto, and he was a terror. He was fine if he liked you, thankfully, and despite our inauspicious first meeting, Maxwell deemed me a friend. I was very lucky. If somehow you offended Maxwell, and the ways you could were long and varied, he would starve you out.

  It was Maxwell who dealt with the customers. Alberto was front of house, but Maxwell introduced the boys. The customer would point to a guy, “He looks nice, can I book him?” Maxwell would look glum, roll his tinned-peach eyes and say, “I wouldn’t, he’s got terrible haemorrhoids,” or just whisper “Syphilis!” and shake his head.

  This would go on day in day out, until the guy left. Many of the men working at La Casa desperately needed the money. It was their only income. We all knew it happened, and why, but you didn’t complain for fear he would turn those eyes in your direct
ion next. You just shook your head. “Let that be a lesson to you all boys,” he seemed to say, grinning, as another guy left.

  We always knocked on the door. The bell was for customers. That was the first piece of etiquette that differentiated civilians from the non-civilians. On arriving at La Casa, at eleven-thirty sharp, you walked straight down the long hallway, rucksack over your shoulder, and always on time. There were only twenty boys on a shift so if you arrived late and the list was full, you were told to come back for the second shift, at 6pm to 2am. You’d want to get in the shower early, as some of the guys used the shower head as an enema and just left their shit sitting one the shower floor. The next person would scream in disgust, “Which one of you fucking animals did that?”

  Clean and fresh, you sort your face. You’ll be standing under bright lights and imperfections stand out a mile, so you need to take care of your complexion. I used E45 cream, then Revlon medium matt wash-off fake tan, nothing else. Dressed and polished, you sit on one of the hard benches that line the walls of the two small rooms, you wait for the others to arrive.

  First after in after me today are Madonna and Maxim, together forming the ‘Lithuanian Menace’. They were a double act of arch bitches, high definition cunts. Madonna is preternaturally beautiful: tall, white teeth, white skin, white blond hair, beautiful body, very effeminate, you can’t take your eyes off her. She exudes glamour and her clothing is luxurious. Her carefully bleached hair is kept in place with Gucci sunglasses, the double G’s visible behind her ears. She is wearing expensive white designer jeans, slashed to show her smooth tan legs. What I suspect is a woman’s white linen blouse is open to her waist, revealing a smooth lightly-toned chest and abdomen, and she has diamonds at her throat and on her fingers, you can tell by how they refract the light that they are real. She has a large beige Gucci holdall thrown casually over her shoulder and matching Gucci flip flops. Maxim is as ugly as Madonna is lovely, and by far the more vicious of the two. Like her sister she is tall, blond. Dressed simply in T-shirt and jeans her teeth are black from the rollups she incessantly smokes. Madonna will clean up, make a fortune, men love to spoil her, lavish her with money and gifts. Maxim comes in early just in case this is that one day in the week when he earns something. Both will cut you to pieces with their tongue. Maxim beckoning some unfortunate new boy over, examines her victim closely like some revolting specimen of insect, lifting her imaginary lorgnette to her eyes, and turning with disdain to Madonna saying in his long accented vowels, “I knew it… she’s even uglier up close.”

  Next to arrive is Danny: English, short, muscular, with an unexceptional but engaging face, wearing tracksuit bottoms and a Fred Perry T-shirt with collar pulled up around his neck, and smart expensive white trainers. We are dressed almost identically, except I’m wearing a pair of twisted Levi’s, which are all the rage at the moment. Danny is a native South Londoner, a nice lad. Gay but straight acting. He sits quietly looking contemplative and serious. He will become a pal of mine, sometimes a lover, and someone I go out partying with.

  Patrick was already working at the house when I started, beating me here by a few weeks. Momentarily unseen, he is sitting hunched over, chewing gum. He stares wearily into the distance. He is quieter than when I first knew him and I sit with him, curious to know what’s been happening. He tells me he’s living in a squat in the East End. He looks scruffy and his eyes are huge, black and dilated; the dead fish eyed look that I associate with men who’ve being working in the business for years. He has already been working in it for nearly ten years and he’s only nineteen. He tells me the only way he can sleep now is with heroin. His skin is so white it’s almost blue, and he is thin, fragile-looking; his thick black hair unkempt.

  There is nothing left of the once effervescent kid. All he does is work and use gear, and he’s terrified that Antonio will find out and sack him so that his only source of income will be cut off. And he’s right to be worried, the other boys are out for him – they are suspicious. Like me, working the streets in Manchester, lots of the men of La Casa have first-hand experience of drug addiction, and they don’t like having a drug addict in their midst. He makes them jittery; they think he will rob them at the first opportunity because that’s what experience has taught them junkies do. But Patrick is more terrified of ending up back on the streets. He has no intention of robbing anyone and does what he can to make sure they can’t get the ammunition they need to get him sacked. And the customers like him because he looks vulnerable and young, an intoxicating combination for some clients. Later, I will show him how to use make-up to cover the ravages, to use foundation and bronzer to make himself look healthier, and ensure he is well dressed, groomed, and eating properly. We have each other’s back. You need to know you can trust someone; that’s vital for our survival.

  What we did for a living may seem abnormal. Even I recognise, in hindsight, that I wasn’t making the best life choices. Still, we were what we were, and we were not stupid. We put a lot of thought into how best to exploit ourselves. We put serious energy into thinking how we could make the most money as easily as possible. Let me explain. It’s useful to think of male sex-workers as actors working autonomously within their market. Many prostitutes consider themselves to have ‘free agency’, and they regard their work as ‘sexual labour’, as a business, as work like any other type. Even those working in less enviable situations than I did – the women of the Trebor and Kenway Road – still have control over some aspects of their lives, even if it’s just choosing what clothing to wear. Commodification of the individual makes it possible to regard ourselves as any other product that is influenced by supply, demand or quantity. I objectified myself as a means of meeting market requirements; I adjusted my appearance and persona. Some attend the Earl’s Court gym to meet the high expectations regarding appearance of the luxury end of the market, thereby enhancing their market value, their desirability. I relocated several times to more economically verdant localities; if I wasn’t going to make a living on the streets of Manchester, moving to London with its high population and great wealth, plus perhaps less competition or a higher consumer base, was the rational thing for me. I went to considerable lengths to ensure my viability as a product.

  I believe that most successful men working at La Casa commodified themselves to some extent. My persona was very much an invented one. I was working-class but not the type of inner-city scally that I pretended to be. The sports gear, trainer’s baseball cap, hoodies associated with what are colloquially referred to as ‘scallies’ in Britain, might be thought of as ‘hoodlums’ by Americans. Taking on their traits was simply me marketing myself to the best of my ability to satisfy my consumer base. The British and Americans, who were the backbone of my business wanted a very definite type: good looking, masculine, young, working-class men.

  Baseball cap wearing inner-city youth, are massively eroticised in gay culture. There are thousands of pornographic films with titles such as Scally Boy Gang Bang or Hung in Hoodies III available on the internet. I was tapping into that market, and it paid off. People were buying into a product that fulfilled their fantasies.

  We developed back stories to support our acquired hypermasculine appearance. I could choose from a dozen imagined scenarios, usually built around some variation of being straight but desperately in need of cash, which the customers ate up. A good scenario could reduce the time of the ‘massage’ considerably, the customer often becoming overwhelmed by the excitement.

  We were the equivalent of a gourmet hot dog. Street enough to make the men feel as if they were buying into the ghetto fantasy, but without the risk of developing salmonella. That was the secret; they were just as safe as we were. We took good care of them, unlike the real deal scally rent boys of Manchester who might empty their wallet while they were distracted, or who might get aggressive. That was not going to happen at La Casa, where we were high-end top quality, tame scallies, rather than the more dangerous free-range ‘kosher’ verity. The hotdo
g without the pathogens.

  And this role-playing played a vital role in lessening some of the inevitable psychological damage. It provided us with a bulwark against the reality of our lives. Against the work and the trauma. Dissociative behaviour is most notoriously understood as the cause of multiple personality disorder, as famously parodied in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho by the knife wielding Norman Bates in the guise of his dead mother. In sex-work it is more subtle. Sometimes it presented in extravagantly fantasist behaviour, like Patrick spinning tales as a child. He wasn’t unusual, many of us lied without a second thought. Not only to the customers when telling them what they wanted to hear sexually, but we would also fabricate aspects of our lives so as to hold something back of ourselves. I didn’t want customers knowing everything about me. They had physical access to my body, but my mind was a different thing altogether. Lying, consequently, played an important role in keeping myself psychologically healthy, the problem being that these personas could take on a life of their own, running over into your real life and defining how other people considered you to be. When you were in the sex-worker bubble, you tended not to have the opportunity to switch off. You lived, slept, socialised and worked in a very small area, so it was easier sometimes just to stay in character. The risk is, that you inevitably lose yourself to a greater or lesser degree, when you live a lie over an extended period of time.

  Fem’s – effeminates, girly boys – didn’t do well in La Casa, with a few exceptions: those between the ages eighteen and nineteen did okay as youth always sold. Skinny, girly, pan-Asian men had their aficionados. And Madonna, she was so beautiful that I saw straight men look at her twice in the street. I was never quite certain to who Madonna appealed; she was a boy certainly, male at a chromosomal level, but radiated soft pink gorgeous femininity, not unlike Marilyn Monroe. She was intoxicating, and I imagine men who considered themselves not at all interested in men, or the feminine type of man, found themselves drawn to her charms, her gilded creamy white and pink abundance.