by Adam Brock
Edinburgh is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Its magnificent situation, walkability and historic associations make it very attractive to me. As is my habit, I packed lightly, taking only a book, a daily change of clothing, toiletries and walking boots. I had booked a room in a backpacker’s hostel, overlooking Edinburgh’s splendid Castle Rock.
I spent a couple of days walking the kirk yards, exploring Holyrood Palace, the museums and galleries, and I was sitting in the Cannon Gate Kirk, a beautiful and simply-furnished church, taking a rest from the summer heat, when my phone made the idiosyncratic tinkle of a message being received. With all the drama of the last few months I was concerned that something had gone wrong back home, and I checked it with some anxiety. The thought crossed my mind that I was about to be told to come home immediately.
Instead, I was delighted to be informed that I had been awarded a full scholarship and studentship by the University of Manchester which included enough money for me to live on for the period of my study. I felt elated and honoured by this. It was the best news I’d had in a very long time. I got down on my knees and heartily thanked God. This was something I had earned myself, honestly, through my own ability. I felt none of the ambiguity towards being rewarded that I had felt as a sex-worker. Feeling that I should mark the occasion, I celebrated with a slice of cake and pot of Earl Grey tea in a smart patisserie on the Royal Mile. I felt a long way indeed from the life I lived before. And for once, amid the light and laughter, I felt connected to the people enjoying themselves around me.
Chapter 27
God help you if you’re unfortunate enough to become a prostitute. The prognosis for most is dire. God help you, because it’s possible that only God can help you. If you survive the vagaries of the industry, on whatever level you are employed, you’re unlikely to be left unscarred, your life may end in tatters, the stain on your soul might seem indelible.
Prostitutes are stigmatised as a matter of course, and for male sex-workers that stigma can seem magnified many, many times over. Prostitutes have relatively short working lives, maybe five years maximum, then often years of drug abuse, alcohol problems, deteriorating mental health, or homelessness plagues them. Ultimately, the outcome is often an early death. I know this isn’t the case for all sex workers, some would valiantly defend their rights to work as they see fit and live normal productive lives while doing it, and I don’t discount that there are other perspectives than my own. However, there are many like me who have been through the mill and back, and cannot see any way out. Some choose the oblivion of drink or drugs. Others like the inquisitive and sensitive Danny, who simply could not live with himself, choose suicide.
This doesn’t have to be the case, because there is more to us than a negative prognosis. We sometimes need to be able to see there is more to life, that it need not end as it began. God, faith or belief offers this, and I admit it is easier said than done.
Sometimes my relationship with God seems to mirror my relationship with my father. Why does the omnipresent Deity, who ultimately oversees everything, allow me to suffer so much? If I deserve it and I’m being punished, are the words we are fed about a compassionate God who is radically forgiving, meaningless, empty promises meant simply to placate us? Presumably you can’t be both loving and drive someone into an early grave. I found it hard to quantify a loving God with one who oversees such misery and then expects praise.
The ultimate sting of death may seem preferable to death by a thousand stings, one venomous disappointment at a time; not fatal individually, but slowly weakening you over time till, eventually, death becomes preferable to living. And God expects thanks for this? Not unlike my own father who demanded thanks after beating us senseless. God says, I oversaw your abuse, you inevitably strayed due to the damage and de-normalisation of childhood trauma, now I’m going to punish you, perhaps till the strain becomes too much. But this is okay, this is the way to your redemption. I have already been to hell and back. If hell is redemptive, as someone once told me, then it’s a bitter cup for all of us who have already suffered it.
It might be counterintuitive, therefore, that so many sex-workers seek solace in religion. Even if it is regarded as a comedic trope: the fallen women, or in my case man, who finds redemption in the church. There have been enough kneeling, endlessly-praying, reformed Magdalens throughout the centuries to fill all the churches of Rome, countless times over. I know many might find my faith in God implausible, and some might question my sincerity. All I can say is that when you are hopeless you cling to any possibility that life will improve. And hope is powerful thing, a potent force. God offers hope, a means of envisioning a better life in the future. To be without hope is the most vulnerable condition I think a person can be in, the closest to physical and spiritual death, therefore maintaining an ember of hope within us is central to our survival.
For years I craved the security of a normally-lived life, a home, a place of sanctuary. I am yet to find that place externally. Hope is all I have and, even though I don’t cease to question why, I still cling to hope. I have drawn towards my inner self; that place inside me with impenetrable gates. The same place that kept my psyche safe from brutality, squalor and sin. For a long time that place was closed to me, so that I couldn’t return there. I didn’t realise that the key to my peace of mind was in the meditative practice of prayer. Prayer was how I eventually returned to that place called The Home. I find succour there. In that place resides the Lord, Jesus the Spirit. It is a safe place in a life of fear, of anxiety. The Deity resides in me, in the Home and I take every opportunity to draw myself close to the generating force. That same force repels the evil spirits of doubt, hopelessness, guilt, that plague survivors of abuse and sexual exploitation, ones that mock me, and try to convince me I am beyond redemption.
God reveals himself in the answer that leads me away from the darkness. Sometimes the explanations come with the force of electricity, a cosmic blow to the solar plexus that leaves me with absolute clarity what my intention should be, how I have slipped, what direction I must take to a position of favour. I do not question the presence of God. The reality of God moves with crystal clarity within me. Sometimes the presence of God makes himself known in a single white feather, in the glancing touch of a stranger, or in the wing of a moth that catches the light in an otherwise black night, and reminding me how I am a small but essential part of the divine plan, that I have purpose, even if the part I am to play is not obvious to me or anyone else.
In that place within myself is a room, and within the room is an open French window, near which Deborah rests in a chair, waiting. She wears a simple floral gown, her long blond hair falling in loose curls to her waist, and she smiles at me warmly. From outside comes the smell of cut grass, children laughing somewhere in the distance, and I hear water running. Deborah takes me by the hand and we pass through the window, leaving the room. The blue sky dazzles and bees buzz in roses that surround the lawn. The warmth of an early summer sun beats down, and on the grass sits a man. He smiles at me with complete peace and sincerity, knowing all, seeing everything. I come to him in full knowledge that from him nothing is hidden. In the presence of Christ, I am washed clean. There is full recognition of everything that has been before, everything that has brought me here, to him. He bids me sit with him, while saying nothing. I look into that face that I have seen many times before behind my eyes, and sadness in Christ’s eyes, and curiosity, but love also, love and hope, hope which feels infinite. Your journey brought you to me, he seems to say. Feel no shame in what cannot be undone. With the realisation of what I am being told, the tears stream down my face.
Chapter 28
I understand now that the rigours of the furnace are what test the metal. And it is from these potentially destructive flames, that Truth is wrought. Do not disregard the path that brings you to the Truth no matter how rocky or unpalatable the path may have been. Christ himself dealt with the full force of public humiliation when he was str
ipped, mocked, and forced to bear his humiliation publicly in front of his community.
When people say Jesus was killed by the Jews, I believe there is an attempt to distance the reality of what occurred. Jesus was killed not by the Jews; he was a Jew himself in the fullest meaning of the word. He was born to Jewish parents, circumcised, raised in a Jewish home with all its customs, attended synagogue, lived like any other Jew. The Jews were not a separate identity from his own, they were who he was.
Rather than being tormented by some ‘other’, he was harrowed, tortured and murdered by people within his own community. His own people humiliated him, stigmatised him. His hell was envisioned within the place he called home, somewhere that should have been familiar and safe. And he was betrayed and denied by the people he called friends, people he loved, lived with, worked and ate with. This to me, and to many survivors of abuse and exploitation, is completely relatable, there is a kinship between our own experiences and Christ.
And that man who sits peacefully in that garden, welcoming with such equanimity those who seek him, is still the man torn open on the cross, the man abused within his community. He understands our suffering because he has tasted it himself, and his compassion comes not from an abstract idea of the worst that man can inflict on each other, rather it comes from tasting real suffering, real degradation. He is the sum of his parts and more. He is also a survivor.
This is my story, my confession, my attempt at an act of atonement. To understand how we arrive you must understand the journey we take to get there, for where I am now is not the place I was before. I am the same man, but also different. I am also at once the sum of my experiences and, at the same time, entirely different.
I want you to understand what I was before so that, no matter how embedded in sin and sinfulness you may feel, or how that is mirrored in your external situation, you understand that this path you have chosen is simply that, a path. That its outcome is yet undecided. That this path may be the one that leads us through his window, a positive defenestration this time, into a place of sanctuary, refuge, light and security. If you choose to alter direction, your path can take you to the Lord Jesus Christ, and no matter how low you may think you have fallen, there is always hope for you, for hope in Christ is eternal. I am only at the beginning of a new path. I still have many miles to walk before I am free from the shackles that weigh so heavily on me, but I live in hope that one day they will be cast off.
Take the example from Christ. Jesus turned to those beyond the pale as positive examples, and you can be an example, be that example. Come to him when you hear his voice; it is there if you listen. He loves you. Love is everything, it is eternal and ever abiding, and his love is without question or codicil, he loves you flaws and all. He loves you at your lowest and his love swells for you when you draw closer to him after being far away, when you return to his loving arms and return that unconditional love.
Epilogue
I hadn’t intended for this work to be about God when I began writing, although I realise now that God played a central role in my writing it.
It wasn’t until I returned home from Rome recently that it dawned on me fully what I was engaged in while writing this book. I had been to Rome before many years earlier as a tourist, this time would be different. I would visit during Lent as part of my fast and as an informal pilgrimage. I wanted to walk the seven great pilgrimage churches of that ancient city, the Vatican and other holy sites, to pray and think about what direction my life should take.
Rome that April was unseasonably cold and at other times swelteringly hot. My room in the hostel, situated on the site of Diocletian’s Library within part of his vast complex of Baths, was unheated and I was on antibiotics fighting an infection and felt dreadful as a result. Rather than spoiling my pilgrimage as it might have, it focused my attention on my main motivation for visiting Rome, which was prayer, leading, I hoped to full conversion to Christianity. I was still uncertain about how this conversion would manifest itself. Normally my attention might have been pulled this way and that by the distracting beauty of Rome, however my illness suppressed the desire to lose focus, my attention was purely driven by the task in hand. And as I travelled to one church after the next, I would kneel and pray.
It was while walking toward the Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem, a church of great antiquity and considered one of the most sacred of the seven pilgrimage churches of Rome due to its being built on soil imported from the Holy Land and the presence of three pieces of the True Cross, that I felt something sweep over me with such gentle force and warmth, with love and extraordinary sense of inner peace and innocence. Immediately I felt fully recovered from my illness and renewed and refreshed. I believe I was being told that I was on the right path, that my request would be granted. While I was uncertain about how this would take place, I was certain it would, and with that I left Rome satisfied that I was making the right decision.
One morning months later, I woke with the strangest sense of clarity. I had just received this book back from my proof-reader, it still needed some work on its editing, and I was reading and re-reading the text to try and locate problems in text when it dawned on me what I was doing. Whilst still achieving my initial goal of my promise to my sister, recording my experiences and raising a platform for male sex-workers, without knowing it my prayers had been answered long before I had visited Rome. Long before the desire for conversion had become concrete in my mind, I was already recording my pathway to full conversion. This project was part of my movement towards Christ, and what had been a difficult and sometimes traumatic reengagement with the past became something profoundly more important.
I haven’t seen Mitchell since that final time years ago, but I have long forgiven him. And in retrospect, with the wisdom of distance and maturity, I can think of him more warmly now than I did before I started writing this book. He was no worse than me, and I no better than him; we were both victims of the lottery of life and I hope he too finds peace in himself. I will always be there for him, I love him; and he knows where I am and he only need ask.
Perhaps of all the people I have struggled to come to terms with while writing this book the most difficult have been Mavis and Julian; and they didn’t harm me in any direct way themselves. However when you are in a position of responsibility with vulnerable children, then you should go above and beyond the norms, beyond what is required, to ensure their safety. I don’t know what the safeguarding policy was a Gay House at that time but it failed devastatingly in my case. I can only speak for myself, I don’t know of any others who might have fallen prey to the predators of the Empire State bar as a result of attending the youth group, perhaps there were more, perhaps this book will draw out other victims, even if it does not, one victim is too many. And my attending the group triggered in me a series of events that would have shattering consequences that have impacted my life and my wellbeing to this day. Had I never stepped foot in that place over twenty five years ago, it’s possible my life would have turned out quite differently.
That being said I recognise that their altruism was genuine. I don’t believe for a second they intended any harm to befall any of us. Perhaps it was their relative youth, the lack of structural organisation at Gay House itself, poor management, and simply naiveté as to the reality of life in a big dangerous city. My anger towards them both, as I pray for understanding and forgiveness, lessens. I don’t seek vengeance, just understanding and a firm promise that lessons have been learnt.
Chorlton Street bus station, in its old form, is no more; it closed years ago and was replaced by a smaller enclosed version to the rear. The café, a safe refuge for the homeless and a warm place of rest gone with it. The corners where we worked are fenced off now. Even the Empire State Bar is gone, renamed, perhaps as a means of hiding unwanted associations. Rumour has it that the entire place, car park, pub and everything else will soon be demolished, taking with it many bad memories.
The Lets Go and Boy Boy Club
has long closed for business but La Casa still operates on Levy Street, although much reduced in size and splendour. I called La Casa to see if it was still in operation and Maxwell answered the phone. He didn’t recognise my voice, but I recognised his immediately. He sounded cracked, strained. But then working in that environment for over twenty years would tell on anyone. And time and distance have allowed my feelings to soften slightly for Maxwell also. His life can’t be easy, and God knows what his story is, it possibly reflects my own. I never got close enough to find out. Perhaps, in hindsight, I should thank Maxwell for getting me out when he did. Perhaps he’s proof that angels come in all shapes and sizes.
Earl’s Court has lost its down at heel charm from the years gone by. Thoroughly gentrified, gone are the bag ladies, Aussies, dealers and hippies, as have the hostels and dosshouses, replaced by gastro pubs and Marks & Spencer.
All the gay bars are gone too, including the Coleherne, and that is a real shame. I never felt like an outsider among the leather queens and sex-workers, the transgender women, the freaks, the addicts and everyone drawn in by the bars and clubs that made up that close-knit community. I would have liked to spend some time among them now I’m in a better place and thank them for providing me with a sense of family, some worth.
Recently, I was staying in London on a break and, simply out of curiosity, I walked over to Earl’s Court one morning from my hotel. It was so early the sun was only just rising and the morning was just warming up, promising to be a glorious day later. I wanted to see what had changed and what little remained. I walked down Kenway Road, thinking of the past, when the door of one the few remaining cheap hotels flew open and a vision in torn tights and tatty sequinned dress, with long badly-dyed blond hair, fell out into the road. Some poor bedraggled transwoman prostitute finishing the night shift, just like I used to see in the old days at the Trebor. Not everything has changed then.