Making Beds in Brothels

by Adam Brock

  He lived alone in a huge Queen Anne style house, four storeys high, overlooking a beautiful private garden off Sloane Street. Mitchell had once scared me shitless, as I sat quietly reading beneath a magnolia tree, when he fell out of one of the manicured bushes after climbing the wrought-iron railings whilst steaming drunk. A blue plaque attached to one of the houses nearby stated it had once been the home of one of George III’s many profligate sons’ mistresses. It didn’t go unnoticed by myself that her status and my own bore some comparison.

  We shared delicious lunches – prepared by Octavio, the Spanish houseman, who lived in a small room off Andrew’s basement kitchen – often utilizing beautiful Georgian silver inherited from an ancestor who was ambassador to the Russian Imperial Court, while sitting in the first floor drawing room on Empire furniture, reputed to have originated in the Château de Malmaison, home of the Empress Josephine, Napoleon’s long suffering first wife. I spent hours entranced by his collection of Indian Mughal art and his superb John Piper paintings.

  I loved art. I would then, and still do now, seek out the local art gallery in any new town. I spent a lot of time in the small but exquisite Wallace Collection on the coincidentally named Manchester Square. One painting in particular caught my eye: Louis Féron’s The Temptation of St Hilarion. The work depicts the eponymous saint as a dour hermit who desperately attempts to resist the voluptuous charms of a curvaceous brunette who is tormenting him. Food, wine, gold and other rich earthly delights surround him.

  St Jerome wrote of St Hilarion that “Satan had tickled his senses…”, which I found hilarious. Satan had certainly tickled mine. I was giving into all my earthly desires. And why not? I didn’t think it would ever end. I thought I would be young forever. I didn’t think, at that time, that one day there would be a reckoning – a bill to pay.

  Swept up in Andrew’s money, and by the luxury, I denied myself nothing. He would take me shopping in Harrods, just a short walk away in Knightsbridge, let me purchase books on his account at John Sandoe’s on Blacklands Terrace. I enjoyed trashy tabloid biography, and he often recommended what he thought I should be reading instead, such as Lady Antonia Fraser or Nancy Mitford, guessing correctly that I would learn something while not being intimidated by their writing style.

  We would dine at Scott’s, the lovely fish restaurant in Mayfair. I was a long way from the pie and chips and bag ladies of the steamy old café in Chorlton Street. God only knows what the good customers of that august establishment made of me, looking about twelve, and octogenarian Andrew. Andrew would often turn up in his gym clothing, which was no problem for me but mortifying for the waiters and other lackies. He was so insulated by his great wealth that no one dared bat an eyelid.

  I recall once seeing, standing outside Scott’s, a famous television presenter. He was screaming at a frightened-looking woman, his face pushed right up against hers in a way that was reminiscent of my father and at odds with his seemingly easy-going TV persona. I cannot remember if seeing this triggered anything at the time, I suspect it did as it is an unusually clear memory for me.

  It was a different world from what I had known, and I enjoyed it for the time it lasted. Andrew’s geriatric fumblings were enough to pay for my room at the Trebor and I didn’t work during the time of our agreement. It allowed me some rest, something I desperately needed from time to time. Unfortunately, my growing hedonism and his sobriety were at odds. We would argue about my drinking, and so we went our separate ways.

  Mitchell was entirely different. He fostered friendships with punters from long before our days a La Casa. It wasn’t unusual to find a couple sitting, in his tiny flat in Manchester, either side of Ellen having a cuppa or a vodka coke.

  He was ‘friends’ with one guy, Steve, for years. Steve had been in the army, then became head chef and caterer in one of the big hotels in Manchester. Now retired, he lived in a small flat in Salford. Even though it was very relaxed and informal, Mitchell’s friendship still came at a price. I suppose his formula of the long game was more successful, often paying more dividends than my shift work. I had breaks; a hiatus might last a year sometimes, until poverty drove me back down to London. Mitchell never stopped; he was committed to the game, and there was always a man somewhere on the slow rinse.

  The slow rinse was how Mitchell, consciously or unconsciously – I was never certain as to the level of intention – systematically cleaned out the guys he was involved with.

  Consider it like this: a one-off encounter would feed you for the day. A man on the rinse would not only feed you, he would pay your rent, provide your transport, put food in your cupboards, buy your clothing, pay for your booze and drugs and put spending money in your account.

  Because it was gradual, they didn’t feel as if they were being robbed when they were told that, “My mam’s been burgled – I had to give her my wages. You couldn’t pay my rent and council tax this month?”, all said with his limpid brown eyes focused on them, promising fleshy gratitude later. I imagine few realised what was happening until it was too late. And Mitchell was nice at first. They felt they were helping him, providing him with what he needed.

  Steve was drained of everything, his life savings, probably tens of thousands before he died. Eventually he lost his flat.

  Mitchell was ruthless when it came to money. But guys loved him and they wanted to be around him. He was sociable, chatty, intelligent, and had grown quite disarmingly handsome. He was by far the better looking of us two and made friends much more easily than I did, and that translated in his relationships with punters.

  The thing they didn’t know was that he had an almost pathological hatred of them. I knew this because I was so often with him when they left, when his demeanour altered dramatically. “Is there any fucking whiskey in that kitchen?” he’d ask, shaking with pent up rage after spending an extended period in the company of one of his blokes. I would pour him a large Jameson’s and coke, and it would take a while for him to come down. Then he would be completely morose, his face white and pinched, until the spirits started to work their magic. “Fucking bastards…” he would mutter darkly into his glass, looking at his feet, the drink shaking in his hands.

  I think he was the better actor of the two of us, much more convincing, even though I could lay it on. He really despised some of them and kept it so well hidden that they didn’t have a clue till he went on the turn. All that seeming fascinated by the men’s conversation, smiling coyly and submitting to their sexual demands. And not just for an hour or two, like me; his performances were sometimes all-day everyday matinées. He was living with them, socialising with them for weeks or months at a time. It was inevitable that something was going to give eventually.

  ‘Going on the turn’ was a phrase you associated with Mitchell. You were never sure when it would happen, usually when he was plastered; it would all come flooding out and his rages were something to behold. Fists, furniture and anything else went flying. Having been the focus of his temper myself once or twice, it really was terrifying when he lost it. I usually scarpered sharpish at the first signs.

  Surprisingly, his punters were not put off. I suspect some of the men derived some type of masochistic pleasure from it. I saw more than one of his ‘friends’ with black eyes. Whatever he was suppling in the bedroom drew them back like a moth to a flame, again and again.

  For me Mitchell’s relationships were a source of friction between us. I was never happy when he would turn up to the pub with some old geezer in tow and I didn’t like the intrusion into what I considered my private life. I was usually only mollified when he’d tell me that whoever it was would be picking up the bar tab.

  Chapter 19

  A few weeks after I arrived in London, Mitchell joined me. He was looking tanned and well, having just left his job as a Club 18 – 30 holiday rep in Spain. There had been an altercation with his supervisor over whether they had seen him adding a tot of something alcoholic to his morning coffee. Not being swayed by Mitchell�
��s pleas of outraged innocence, the supervisor suggested that a sniff of Mitchell’s breath might solve the mystery. This didn’t go down well at all.

  Hearing police sirens in the distance, Mitchell grabbed his belongings and took the first flight back to Britain and, feeling it was probably better to lay low for a while, he flew directly into Heathrow and jumped on the tube to Earl’s Court.

  Having already settled into the room down the hall from me at the Trebor, he knocked on my door, and threw himself on the small bed. “So, what’s the malarkey with this La Casa then?” he asked. He wanted to know what to expect, how much he kept from the room fee, what the other guys were like, did he know anyone. La Casa was neither the streets of Manchester nor the Let’s Go. It was a very different set up and I wasn’t sure it would suit him. If Mitchell didn’t like a place, he didn’t hang around; only time would tell. I told him Patrick was there, and it took him a moment to remember who I was talking about. I warned him about the Lithuanian menace, in the hope he wouldn’t punch one on the first day, and I tried to drill into him the importance of not upsetting the door whore if he wanted to work. I told him, without much hope, not to drink on shift. He pulled a face, but told me he would try to behave.

  Thankfully Mitchell settled into life at La Casa with no problems. The pair of us thrived. That first week all we did was work. We each worked a double shift, 11.30am till closing after 2am – we didn’t stop. We both had only a few changes of clothes and I had spent most of my savings on the room. We needed ready cash.

  The clients came thick and fast, as many as we could manage. Every time the light flashed on Alberto would shout “Adam, room two!” or “Mitchell, room three”. They were literally queuing for us, one after the other. Everything went into the bank, and we were being tipped handsomely too. Now we had money we relaxed a little and rewarded ourselves with a few days off.

  That night we dined at Balans, the local gay café bar. Mitchell looked handsome wearing his casual uniform of shirt and jeans, the arms of his shirt rolled up to his elbows, two buttons undone. I was starting to fill out slightly from the better diet. Having rested, my skin had taken back its sheen of health. I looked boyish and natural; my eyes shone green, my toned arms visible, the sun catching the golden down that lightly covered them. I have a sketch of me at this time that shows me sitting languidly, my head thrown arrogantly back, emphasising my jawline and muscular neck. The tight vest I wear outlines my short muscular body.

  As we ate our salads and polished off a bottle of chilled white wine. Some dining with us would have taken us for simply two good-looking young men about town. Others, locals, who knew the demi-monde of Earl’s Court, saw us for exactly what we were, two expensive prostitutes. Some looked at us with close to a shudder, disgust in their eyes. Had it been a less formal environment some might have attempted small talk and perhaps tried to arrange an assignation. We didn’t care, we were shameless, absolutely without shame. I have no recollection of considering the future at this time, no sense of uncertainty that this was ever going to end, that this was fleeting.

  As the months passed and our popularity grew, it wasn’t unusual for our bill to be taken care of by some admiring older gentleman, or a bottle of Champagne to be sent to our table. Cocaine was freely available. Due to our contacts at La Casa we often found ourselves on the guestlists of smart dance clubs in the West End. We were photographed by the gay press in the clubs and pubs, our image circulating throughout the capital. We lay back and let the power roll over us in waves. We were in our ascendency: we were the most popular boys at the choicest brothel, in the most fashionable city in the world. We had thousands in the bank, nothing or no one could touch us, and we revelled in it. We thought it would never end.

  Those first two years were, financially, the best I would ever have. I was a money-making machine. I worked as much or as little as I wanted, I had a lover, Jacob, a tall handsome Afrikaans lad of my own age. It was a zero-commitment relationship, and we made a striking couple. At that time, I would have claimed to be deeply in love with Jacob, that ‘he was the one’ and that no other man had meant so much to me. Truth be told I didn’t know what love was. I simply didn’t have a clue, and whatever I was feeling wasn’t the hyper-anxiety, obsessive ‘need to be with, at all cost’, that I imagined love to be. Men fulfilled a need for me like most other things, but I don’t think love came into it. Something inside was broken, a vital cog in the clockwork of my psyche that allowed such normal emotions as love to generate. I could act a facsimile of love, drawn from films, books and my observations of other people, but it was the love of the automaton, a skilled actor who specialises in a single role and, no matter how well acted, eventually the other person would catch on and that would be the death knell for the relationship. Eventually I cottoned on to my own emotional deficiencies and would sabotage ‘the romance’ as the first cracks appeared, saving my ego from the inevitable battering it took every time I was found out.

  Chapter 20

  After the 6pm shift ended, the money was doled out, “forty-five”, “forty-five”, “forty-five”, for as many times as we had worked. It was always counted out by Alberto in that staccato fashion to make sure there was no confusion, no claims of underpayment. We would then head up Levy Street, turning right onto Warwick Road, past the Warwick pub; a group of us, usually me Mitchell, Danny, and Patrick the Lithuanian Menace, with whatever British boys had been on shift, would head over the road to the Coleherne Arms for the 7pm Happy Hour. The Coleherne was our space, somewhere we could wind down from the stresses of La Casa. Here we would let our hair down, get smashed, and spend our money.

  The Coleherne had been gay for as long as anyone could remember. Some of the older patrons remembered the drag shows hosted on Sunday afternoons after lunch had been served, in the decades after WWII ended. It was a well-established gay bar and usually buzzing. Since the 1970s the bar had attracted men from the leather scene and, although much depleted in the late 1990s by the AIDS epidemic, they were still a visible presence. At weekends you got a sense of what the place had been like in its heyday, with fully leather-clad bikers, and harnessed subs, vying for attention with the check shirts and leather chaps, and booted daddies. Many of these men worked in the city during the week, as stockbrokers, or investment bankers. While their dress and demeanour looked masculine and aggressive, their gossip reflected their affluent middle-class background.

  Eavesdropping on a huddled group of apparently virile masculinity, looking as if they had just spent the day toiling in a lumber yard or working the roads, one might overhear some very unlikely conversations: “We had Lawrence’s mother over the weekend at the apartment in San Gimignano,” says one hirsute man’s man, rugby shirted and wearing scruffy denim jeans, to a guy donning a builder’s protective hat, check shirt and tan boots. “She behaved appallingly as usual. I don’t know how he copes. She started on the bianco vergine before lunch, and by the time we had the digestivo she was so drunk she could barely walk… we practically had to carry her home…” The man coos in apparent sympathy, but his eyes are alive with malicious glee and mischief. He ‘simply lives’ for these vicious titbits and can’t wait to pass on the news of Roscoe and Lawrence’s disastrous Tuscan vacation.

  There was also a strong presence of London’s working-class gay community in the Coleherne, many of whom were living in flats or studios around Earl’s Court, and who spoke in the accents of Ireland and Scotland, or the dialects of northern England, although there were London accents too: Cockneys and those from south of the river. They were drawn to the area by relatively cheap rents in the subdivided houses in the area in the 1960’s, and relative nearness of low-skilled service jobs, such as bar work in the West End and wealthier districts close by. AIDS had a catastrophic impact on this community, even more so than in wealthier ones where there were more practical options, and where the men could afford to return home to their families. The poor community relied on each other for support, and on whatever serv
ices were available.

  The men left when I arrived were the remnants of a bigger community, still traumatised by the prevalence of death. And while the epidemic had slowed, it hadn’t ended yet and there was still a certain frenetic energy among them. They partied as if it might be their last night on earth, with a high intake of drugs and alcohol.

  Many of these survivors were on high-end Disability Living Allowance, which allowed them the funds required for that lifestyle. DLA or benefits, who had got what, how to claim something else or how to appeal an unfair decision were often the main topics of conversation as they sat in the dark recesses of the pub, smoking weed in booths around the pool table. I socialised with these men a lot; although they were older, they passed no judgement. Some had unquestionably worked as rent themselves in their younger days. Others just understood that we were a fact of life in the city, and that sex-work and Earl’s Court went hand in hand. Anyway, they had bigger fish to fry than us. We came and went with the seasons. Some might remain for a few years, but most were only passing through and therefore we were of only passing interest.

  I was friends with one of the managers of the Coleherne, a short stocky Australian guy. Alongside its louche reputation for prostitution and homosexuality, Earl’s Court was also synonymous with Australian backpackers, who came in droves from the 1960s onwards and often stayed. Mike was one such antipodean, having settled here a few years earlier. We became lovers, in a disorganised fashion. One afternoon he took me to one side and asked me, with some sincerity, if I wanted to quit Earl’s Court and move to Australia with him where he would pay my flight and take care of me financially. I declined, having been burned one too many times to risk trusting myself to men in this fashion. I didn’t think anything else of it until about a week later, arriving at the pub as usual and finding it closed. Curious I went over the road and upstairs to the Warwick and was told that Mike, along with, the Coleherne’s takings from that month were nowhere to be seen. It appeared he had been helping himself to the pub’s finances since day one, the full measure of his embezzlement only fully being uncovered after he had left. He had apparently returned to Australia and was now a wanted man. I had a lucky escape.