Making Beds in Brothels

by Adam Brock

  Most fem’s aged out of it quickly or moved into transvestite prostitution, which was tough and dangerous, with always the inherent risk of violence when you performed as a woman or were transgender. I’m certain some of the transvestite prostitutes of the Trebor started out as male sex-workers who couldn’t cut the mustard as men. If you were camp and twenty-eight you were not going to do well, so most men toned it down and upped the butch. Once they were off shift, many of the great muscular hunks who worked beside me relaxed into quite feminine men. It was an act after all.

  I groomed myself to correspond to the masculine type. I kept my hair in a short back and sides, gelled forwards in the fashionable wet look. I was always clean shaven. I spent a lot of money on the best quality shaving products, so my naturally sensitive skin didn’t suffer from the rigours of the close shave I took every morning. My complexion has been amazingly clear throughout my life, and probably answered for some of my appeal. Body hair, by which I mean hair on the chest, wasn’t an issue at that time, but had it been I would have shaved it off as the other boys did. All other body hair was neatly trimmed.

  Just entering now is Louis, another English guy, who is very handsome. He came from Norfolk in the east of England, and is tall, athletic, with short jet-black hair, very tightly curled, and flawless white skin. Louis was an odd one. Something about him suggests he is cut from slightly better cloth than us. He is friendly and we speak a lot, but he never socialises like the other English lads, always taking the train back to Norfolk the same night. He tells me he is using his money to refurbish his house in Norwich. Sometimes you take such claims as this with a pinch of salt, but I believe Louis – there is an integrity about him. His clothing is always in a terrible condition; clean, but falling to bits. The jeans he is wearing now are torn, and the T-shirt paint spattered, and sporting more than one hole. Why he has chosen this lifestyle as a means of earning his money is mystery, I suppose that’s one of the great unanswered questions, why some men get involved in sex-work and some don’t.

  Pedro is flamboyant, beautiful of face, oiled black hair, with a lightly muscled body, the type that comes from hard work rather than the gym. Unlike Louis he takes meticulous care of his dress. Today he wears tight white jeans, a fitted black T-shirt and black leather boots that are massively oversized, with huge chunky treads. They have been partially encased in metal, the shiny plating being riveted into place with ornate stud-work. Apparently, this being 1999, they are the pinnacle of fashion in Rio de Janeiro. For me, they are an object of fascination, transforming the wearer into a type of cyborg from the ankles downwards, and making him unnaturally tall, which is especially hilarious in the low-ceilinged basement of La Casa.

  There is a stressed quality to Pedro. He is Brazilian, working in Britain illegally, and needs the money he is earning to survive. He parties a lot and has a high drug intake. He spends weekends in the nightclubs and saunas of the West End. The Brazilians use a lot of ‘special K’ or Ketamine, a horse tranquiliser that is beginning to supersede speed and ecstasy as the party drug of choice. The drug has an extremely peculiar effect, it is a downer, making the user feel completely disembodied from their surroundings. If you take too much, which is almost inevitable, you enter the ‘K-hole’, a lengthy period of introspective, internalised, hallucinating, where time doesn’t correspond with the real passing of time, so that you feel as if you have been gone for days, when in fact only an hour or so has passed. I don’t like the effect at all, and the hangover from it is horrific, making you look like the walking dead, with black hollowed-out eyes twitching left and right, and dead white skin. You can tell at a glance who has used it the night before, simply by how ghastly they look. Anyway, I think much of Pedro’s frenetic pace of life is down to uncertainty, every weekend partying like it’s his last night on earth.

  They had a high turnover of Brazilian guys, who moved on as they got their papers and found legal employment, or they eventually returned home. One thing I clearly remember is how often they would report each other to immigration as a means of revenge, asking me to read out the correspondence from the Home Office. As a result, immigration officials raided La Casa more than once, and as Maxwell kept them busy for as long as possible, the Brazilians, and others working without papers, squeezed out of the small rear window and fled into the neighbouring back gardens, over the walls, and away from immediate deportation.

  The nationality of most male prostitutes working at La Casa was Brazilian, sometimes nineteen of the other men on a shift of twenty. There were so many that they have blurred into one and, other than Pedro, I find it hard to recall any. They hung out together, rather than with the English boys. They had a shared language and culture and were a long way from home, so that was understandable. There was tension between us. Being the only non-Portuguese speaker in the room, day after day, took its toll, and there could be a lot of friction after a long day.

  Chapter 17

  The doorbell rings. Madonna yells, her accent strong, “Action girls… it’s time for our close up!”. The first client of the day has arrived.

  What happens next is quite a complex ritual – almost a ballet. First all the working guys who are dotted around the drawing room watching TV, or in the kitchen, move quickly into our designated space at the rear of the house. The door whore shuts the glass panelled door cutting us off from the rest of the house. We all gather into the area in front of the door, pushing ourselves into the places we think will show our beauty to its best advantage. We all believe that some corner favours us more, therefore improving our chances of working, and are often quite superstitious about getting to our spot, which involves a certain amount of elbowing.

  This is when the magic begins. Coming down the hall we can hear Maxwell moving closer, chatting pleasantries, his flipflops clippity-clopping on the floor. He firmly pushes the door shut, with an audible click. The door is carefully sound proofed for the benefit of the client, so that he and Maxwell can discuss everything discreetly.

  There is a click and the room is suddenly brightly lit. The glass door in front of us, which initially looked like smoked glass, becomes an impenetrable mirror, through which we can see nothing other than our selves reflected back. In the darkness of the hallway, however, the customer can see each of us clearly under the bright spot-lights. We pull in our stomachs, pout our lips, predicating the duck face of the ubiquitous selfie by decades, as we try to make ourselves irresistible. A few moments pass. There is a sharp tap on the window, and the lights go out.

  Everyone deflates and a feeling of anxiety enters the room. Who is going to be the first room of the day? Being the first is almost talismanic, for it means you can relax – anything else will be gravy. Once you have that first client out of the way, everything will be all right. The anxiety is always that you won’t work that day. Being picked gets rid of that quickly, meaning the day passes better.

  Maxwell opens the door, “Adam, room one, condoms are in the cupboard.” I am new so I’ve been cleaning up. Everyone rolls their eyes, maybe hoping that another customer will come while I am safely out of the way.

  Being the new boy in a brothel was a mixed blessing. If you were young and attractive, those first few months would be the best you ever had, you could make thousands. But being a new boy was trouble for everyone else. When you led the house as top dog, someone else suddenly lost their position at the top of the pecking order. Whoever had been cleaning up before you, was going to lose a share of their custom. The most popular boy was always the newest and that naturally caused a lot of resentment. Although I had a good long spell as a top worker, eventually I myself felt that resentment as I matured and the customers chose me less. It was tough, and you couldn’t rest on your laurels for long.

  The days passed, punctuated by a series of doorbells. La Casa was very busy at this time. It was the place in Britain to go to buy your boy meat. The weekends and evenings were often packed, with customers queuing for their turn. That might strike you as odd, th
at a brothel could be fashionable, but every consumer product in life, and prostitutes can be regarded as one such consumer product, will cater to the needs of the market. And the market at that time wanted an exclusive package for those who wanted to pay for sex. La Casa had the market cornered and raked in the cash. We all benefited but, obviously, La Casa took the lion’s share.

  Men would clatter up and down the stairs all day and throughout the evening well late into the night. I often wonder what the well-heeled residents of Levy Street thought was happening. There was a cadence to it: the ring of the bell, the hushed chat, the click of the light, the call of the name. The boy would return, towel around waist. Seeing the door of the bathroom door closed and occupied, pulling a face Madonna would ask, “How long has that bitch been in the shower?”

  When I’d return after my customer, the day’s shift would be filled, by a mixed group of men aged from eighteen to veterans who were well into their late thirties. There were many nationalities represented at La Casa: British, South African, Australian, Polish, Hungarian, Lithuanian, some from the US, Thailand, Korea, Malaysia; however most, sometimes all, were Brazilian.

  The boys of La Casa sat around gossiping, some reading books or flicking through magazines. MTV was often on television, and they continually played Madonna’s song Frozen from her ground-breaking Ray of Light album, released the previous year. The boys, bored, changed the lyric to, “Your frozen, when your legs won’t open!” which they sang shrilly every time it came on.

  I hated MTV, which made me feel as if I were trapped in a hook. The same songs regurgitated endlessly in a stream that went around and around, day after day. It always seemed to be Madonna or the girl group TLC, or Whitney Huston. I cannot to this day listen to her song It’s Not Right But It’s Okay without being taken straight back to that time.

  Whitney’s vicissitudes, her drug use and lifestyle were the obsession of many of the boys. You could overhear gossip about her in three or four different languages. She was everywhere in 1999, the newspapers, television and in the hugely popular tabloid magazines. Sometimes it made me want to scream out loud. Eventually it would get too much for someone more assertive than myself, usually Danny, who would yell, “Turn that fucking telly over now or I’m warning you, I’m gonna put my foot through it!” He would get his way till he was chosen, then MTV was switched back on and the cycle started once more.

  Who were the men who frequented the services offered at La Casa? Most of them were not poor. The cost was not prohibitive but still largely drew in white, middle-aged, suited types. Many worked in the city. It certainly wasn’t the same mixed bag of blue-collar workers, those with money slumming it, or the creeps and weirdo’s who had bought sex from the rough and ready rent boys of Chorlton Street. This place was way out of that league, and most of the dubiously legitimate escort agencies too. It was a high-class establishment and attracted those who wanted a quality experience.

  It also drew in tourists, usually American, with fewer from European countries. American customers were very desirable. While the British might tip you handsomely, you couldn’t take it for granted that you would get anything, even from the wealthier ones. It was very hit and miss, and even the regular tippers were not consistent.

  The Americans, however, with very few exceptions, always tipped generously. Sometimes as much as two or three hundred pounds. And if one took a shine to you, you raked the cash in. And they were nearly always well behaved, clean and courteous. I think Americans have a better developed culture of treating service staff well – waiters, bar staff, cleaners, who they also often tip generously – and this translated into their treatment of us. That wasn’t always the case with British customers, who could be very rude and demanding.

  There were, of course, those who were outside of that type. I recall a young Austrian pianist who paid to see me overnight and took me for dinner. He was sensitive, attractive, and seemed more interested in my company than anything else.

  Loneliness brought many men down the steps into La Casa, those for whom the sex would be secondary to the conversation. We might finish after ten minutes and then spend the next fifty in conversation till Alberto knocked on the door to inform us our hour was over.

  Some would talk about their wives, children or boyfriends. Some discussed relationship, work or financial woes. It could take on the air of confessor and confessant, with the men believing – correctly of course – that what they told us would never ever leave those four walls. Who would we tell? It was an important part of the service, that ability to listen, to talk, to soothe them, and they would leave feeling emotionally and physically satisfied.

  Others came for more practical reasons. Bill was a regular of mine. He had cerebral palsy and would come to La Casa or I would visit him in his Southampton flat. His disability meant he could not meet anyone and was very lonely as a result. I often think about this intelligent man who would ask serious questions about my life and who, unusually, I often answered honestly.

  While the sex was important to him, he craved physical contact just like anyone else, but the companionship was his main motivation. I saw him for years, all through the time I was at La Casa. I got to know how to support him around the room, help him into the shower, and back up the stairs afterwards.

  I was fond of Bill. I recognised his need and that he was a good person dealt a poor hand, so if I could help him feel better, why not? It made us both feel human, and Bill was an angel in some ways: he made me feel as if there was worth in all the sordidness, that my choices were, at least, benefiting someone who really needed that interaction.

  There were lots of people like Bill, normal nice people, who hadn’t any means of satisfying their need for normal human contact. I dislike categorising all those who pay for sex as somehow predatory or deviant; they are drawn from as wide a pool as any other group of humanity.

  That being said, there were less pleasant people who visited La Casa, those who only saw the youngest guys and would ask me, “Are you really eighteen Adam, or are you younger? You look much younger… You can tell me.”

  We were all over eighteen, because Alberto was evangelical about checking people’s ages. I hated going along with their perverted requests, hated this type of sick role-play.

  Then there was an elderly priest, who would enter wearing his dog collar. He’d carefully remove his religious paraphernalia from his pockets, placing rosary, bible, pen on the table next to the bed in a neat row. I have no idea why, but every time he visited he did that same thing – before requesting to be whipped with the leather ‘spider’.

  The spider looked like the dolly mop that I remember older people using to clean pots and bottles when I was young except, rather than a bare wooden handle, it was leather and, instead of string or fabric, its head was a mass of strips of leather each with a tiny metal stud in the end. As I beat him senseless it crossed my mind as ironic that some people meeting us in the street and learning our respective professions, would have said I was the shameless one.

  Chapter 18

  The approach Mitchell and I took to our relationship with clients differed vastly. As long as men treated me with respect, and professionalism, we were fine. I didn’t dislike them. I fully understood the reasons why they visited prostitutes – loneliness, sexual desire, fantasy fulfilment – there were many reasons.

  Some spoke to me about their difficulties and I listened with absolute sympathy, for I understood pain and wasn’t hard hearted, but It was still work, and once the time was up, the session ended. I had no interested in them otherwise and if they wanted to talk further they could pay for another hour, just as they would with a therapist.

  I consciously kept my boundaries high, and the mixture of intimacy and apparent interest often made it hard for them to understand that our relationship was strictly professional. If I met a punter outside of La Casa, in one of the gay bars of Earl’s Court I frequented, which was not such an unusual thing, I would politely decline if they offered
to buy me a drink or instigate a conversation, “No thanks, I’m not working at the moment.” Most took that with good grace and left it. If they didn’t, I repeated it with increasing firmness till, finally, they got the point.

  With only a couple of exceptions, I kept business within the walls of La Casa. I didn’t want to extend the experience, and there was a cut-off point in the day for me. Most of the time I couldn’t even stand anyone being in my room. I recognise that I’m a pretty antisocial person and I rarely brought anyone back; never punters and only rarely a lover or one-night stand. The only person I could handle living with was Mitchell, and then only just, as we shared a room at the Trebor from time to time.

  One of those few exceptions was Andrew, who I had met on the day of my interview. Andrew was a member of a famous banking family from the east of England. Over the years I got to know him well, and for a time we had an agreement. I would only see him, and he maintained me well enough to pay whatever bills the Trebor generated and to let me live comfortably at leisure.

  This suited both of us, as it allowed me a rest and reduced his expenditure on me through La Casa. He had been booking me for days at a time and the cost was prohibitive. Andrew would inform me with a rueful smile that I was ‘more expensive than keeping a racehorse’. Naturally, without the house taking their fifty percent, I also benefited financially. I could charge him more than I had previously been receiving, while he still paid less. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement.

  Andrew was an alcoholic in sobriety. A terribly bored and lonely old man who did voluntary work at various places around Chelsea to keep himself occupied. He was still deep in grief for his lover, a famous theatrical agent lost to AIDS at the height of the epidemic, years earlier.