At the age of 18, I got my own flat and moved out of home for the first time.
Unbeknownst to me, my flat was in the middle of a red light district.
I wasn’t very street smart at that age. I was very naive about other people’s intentions, I’m sure some people would argue that I still am. When I thought of prostitutes, I imagined women hanging around the corner of streets late at night wearing black leather mini-skirts. I’m not sure where that impression came from, but it was quite different from real life.
One morning, I was walking to the bus stop to go to work and a perfectly normal looking woman approached me. She asked me if I had two £10s I could swap for a £20, which is the inverse of what people normally ask for if they need change but it was early in the morning and I’m not a morning person, I got my wallet out of my pocket to check.
She immediately snatched the cash from me, I didn’t have a lot of money on me, it probably was only £20. I got out my mobile phone and threatened to phone the police if she would not give me my money back.
She told me she needed it to buy nappies for her kid and started walking away as I pursued her. The next thing I know she was suggesting a trade, offering certain services in exchange for the money. I was quite shocked. I had a girlfriend and had absolutely no interest in some random woman on the street. I rejected her proposal and demanded my money back but she posted the money through the letterbox of a nearby house with blacked out windows.
Crap, I thought to myself, there’s no way I’m getting my money back now. I’ve been mugged. She told me that if I came back to the same house later that evening, she’d give me my money back but there was no way I was going to risk that so I just carried on with my day and put it down to experience.
This wasn’t the worst thing that had happened to me whilst living in that area, another time three lads kicked in my back window in the middle of the night and that was really scary because I had been painting the door and window cils so I knew the back door wasn’t actually locked and I’d have been completely defenseless if they wanted to enter and rob me.
It wasn’t my last experience with prostitutes either. Many years later, I was at a work internal awards evening. This employer was really good at throwing great parties and social events and on this occasion they had hired a large basement room at the Palace hotel in Manchester, for a black tie sit down meal and awards ceremony.
Before the main event, we were all gathered in a reception room with a free bar where there were violinists and other musicians to entertain us. A poshly dressed woman that I didn’t recognise approached me, I just assumed she was part of the venue staff and started talking to me and asking about what I do. I don’t like to be impolite to people, so I engaged in conversation even though it made me feel slightly uncomfortable. She was asking whether I had a partner and I spoke about my wife, that did not seem to deter her from the conversation, but I thought little of it.
Our head of HR came over and she asked the woman to leave. She must have seen what was going on from a distance and she stepped in and I’m glad she did.
It turns out it was a prostitute hoping to get some business out of me. When I realised that it made me feel bad. Why did she pick on me? Maybe it was because I was overweight? Maybe she just assumed because of my weight that I would probably be eager to get any attention from a woman I could? Maybe many of her other customers were like that? I don’t know, but it made me feel dirty. I didn’t make a fuss and I can laugh about the issue now. Sometimes my life can resemble an episode of “Some mothers do ‘av ’em”, the show where Michael Crawford played the hapless Frank Spencer, a man that walked from one disaster to the next to hilarious results.
Admit it, when you read the title of this article you probably thought that this was going to be some sort of seedy confessional of a bloke using prostitutes.
I’m not saying this to criticise men that do use prostitutes. Often what men really want is not just sex, it’s the “girlfriend experience”, someone to hold them, someone to smile at them, laugh at their jokes, make them feel valuable and important. All human beings want to feel needed and some men find it very difficult to talk to women, I think we should be compassionate towards those men (and women).
At the same time I do not condone sexual exploitation and human trafficking. That’s why I would legalise and regulate prostitution to keep everybody safer and remove the scourge of criminal gangs and pimps.
There is an assumption that men always want sex. That’s not the case.
I’m not saying that men never want sex and women enjoy sex too, it can be a great bonding experience and is an important part of the human experience. Nor am I saying that there aren’t damaged men that abuse sex (and women for that matter).
The world would be a better place if we assumed less and listened more! Moral panics are never the solution to complex societal problems!
Rant Over 