As Belle de Jour goes public, the author of ‘Unzipped’ (available on this site) lifts the lid on his world.
Portcullis House is the ultra-modern building of MP’s offices next to Pugin’s nineteenth century Parliament. The attractive, young MP’s researcher books the restaurant on Friday when she is allowed to and I buy her lunch at a client’s expense to agree the letter her boss who I know well will send on the issues I’ve raised. He will do this for no personal reward but because he agrees with the campaign. Afterwards, I leave her at the transparent security doors, descend into Westminster Tube and forty or so minutes later am having sex with an equally pretty Czech student whose number I have got from an ad in the local paper. Both women are charming and I much enjoy my working day before I return home to my wife of twenty years. This is the kind of experience I recount in more detail in ‘Unzipped’.
My wife, ‘H’ in the book, does not specifically know what I have been doing but nonetheless I have her permission – sort of. Earlier visits to lap-dancing clubs were great for me but a pain for her: I return home late, all fired up – the girls truly are gorgeous – when all she wants to do is sleep.
So at a respectable Tory dinner, she gives me permission to stray – “you want to go out and bonk other women, I’m going to let you.” are her exact words – on the basis that this will maintain our marriage: I don’t impose on her and my needs are met.
The number of people one can discuss this with is clearly limited but I think more wives know – and give permission – than people think. They are intelligent women who know their man’s libido and that Westminster provides ample opportunity. They allow it, however, only provided certain privately-agreed rules are kept: my wife’s were to continue to respect her, nobody in or near our social circle, nothing in the marital home, that I am discreet and don’t let our teenage sons find out. I have mostly kept to these rules. There’s one other very important rule, an absolute commitment to safe sex: condom use all the time is part of my marital bargain.
And as my wife expects me to be out most nights, it’s easy to slip away for an hour or two to see one of central London’s many prostitutes or working girls as they prefer to be known. I am not alone. Men I have shared girls with include those who stand to represent you in Parliament at bothWestminster and Brussels, and the new breed of ministerial ‘special adviser’.
There’s an amusing, unwritten convention. There’s nothing, at least that I know of, in the immediate area of Whitehall and Parliament Square, and I’m certain the police deliberately keep it that way but seven minute’s walk away in Victoria or Mayfair paid-for sex is just a phone-call away. A typical evening ends with a few drinks after which desire and opportunity can combine. Policy discussion gives way to horniness. But this can also happen at lunchtime or in the afternoon as working girl’s hours are roughly noon to the small hours.
All this means one can have regular sex with several women. Party conferences in Bournemouth, Blackpool and Brighton offer maximum scope. Away from wife and family and with many representatives wandering between hotels and parties into the small hours, I have had sex with six or more different women in less than three days, sidling off between chats with Ministers at receptions as champagne gives way to sex before returning at midnight or one o’clock for more booze.
Though, unlike some, I don’t do drugs: sex is my thing and prostitution is legal, drugs are not. I have discussed prostitution policy just before going to one and entertaining her with the conversation!
Ironically avoiding relationships and paying for sex are safer. As politicians have found throughout history, get to know a prostitute, fall in love and you can be exposed. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, theMayfair courtesan, Harriet Wilson blackmailed both king and Prime Minister over her memoirs, prompting the Duke of Wellington famously to tell her to ‘publish and be damned’.
Jeffrey Archer discovered the importance of telling the truth on this subject at least to the courts when his relationship with a prostitute led him to commit perjury. Defence Minister, John Profumo lied to the House of Commons about his relationship with Christine Keeler who was also sleeping with the Russian naval attaché. As Mark Oaten found out when he quit the Liberal Democrat leadership race after being outed for sex with a gay prostitute, you can become very vulnerable. A good solution is to try to go with women who have as little desire for publicity as you do.
Though the media and public are reluctant to acknowledge it, power is an aphrodisiac and you should expect those who aspire to lead and rule to be testosterone-fuelled. Mediaeval kings, dukes and counts are renowned for their numerous mistresses. Some of our aristocratic dynasties descend from royal courtesans. Charles II was notorious for ennobling the off-spring of his bed-mates such as Nell Gwynn.
Every government has its sex scandal. The nineteenth century is riddled with them: The Duke of Wellington and Harriet Wilson, LordMelbourn and Caroline Lamb, Lord Palmerston, cited as co-respondent in a divorce case at the age of 70, the Irish nationalist leader Charles Parnell ruined by his affair with the actress, Kitty O’Shea. The twentieth is no different from Lloyd George to John Major and Edwina Currie while Labour continued the trend with Robin Cook, David Blunkett and John Prescott, though, perhaps proving my point, all these have mistresses rather than prostitutes.
As I tell in the book my wife‘s pretty logical about the whole thing. If I show a tendency to be faithful to another woman, she positively encourages me to screw around. A politician in love is more dangerous than one simply seeking sex as the risks he takes for the relationship and the likelihood of discovery grow ever greater, the longer it continues. And the costs work out about the same to take a mistress or girlfriend for a good night out and pay a working girl directly.
The London sex industry has certain common features. Basements feature a lot, possibly because they are harder to let than other floors. Curtains are drawn during the day and lighting is subdued. In more up-market places, colour schemes go for the sumptuous: lots of black, gold, burgundy and royal blue. On the bed is a towel prettily concertined in the middle to create a bow-tie shape.
What everybody wants is discretion for anything else and you and they are in trouble. So these places are good neighbours. All over town, if you know where to go, are discreet establishments quietly doing their business. I can quite believe Lord Lamont did not know he had let his flat, the basement if I remember rightly, to a prostitute.
What about the girls themselves? Again, abandon preconceptions.
Many now are students: in a world where it is virtually impossible to leave university without debts running to thousands, it is the easiest way for a good-looking girl to generate large amounts of cash with a minimum of time and effort. Blair’s government probably didn’t intend its higher education finance policies to stimulate the sex industry but they have!
Others see it as the way out of hard times. Two women I know became professionals to pay school fees. One a middle class white divorcee in her thirties commuted to a flat near Hyde Parkarriving mid-morning and leaving about 8 o’clock thus maintaining the illusion for both her daughter and the neighbours that she is like any other professional woman. In many ways she is. She picks and chooses her clients, supports herself and her daughter and declares her earnings to the Inland Revenue.
The other, of mixed race with a good degree and a body off the catwalk who worked off Regent Street, was made redundant from a high-powered job in insurance and could find no other way to regain such an income, at least in the short term. I know well the Public School her son goes to. Both women vote Conservative and we used to discuss politics over claret or champagne, before and after.
In fact, the qualifications and experience of many prostitutes are truly impressive: I’ve met a maid in a brothel with an MA in international relations and had sex next to St James’s Park tube with a banker with degrees in law and economics and an MBA, who is investing what she makes to try to build a property empire. Another was a Polish qualified actuary with a law degree doing it whilst she tried to find a job in the City.
Such women have as much to fear from exposure as any of their clients which is one of the reasons I never name names: it would be a betrayal of some wonderful people who give me a great time and with whom I have a tendency to fall in love. As my wife has said to me: ‘Oh dear, are you hurting yourself again!’
Of course, there is some trafficking, violence and exploitation but I am certain very much less than the opponents of prostitution would like you to believe. The industry is segmented like any other. These things occur at the bottom end.
At the other, it is a lifestyle choice by high-powered independent women who are quite the equal or better than their clients. In that sense, it is highly desirable that books like the ‘diary of aManhattan call girl’ and ‘Belle de Jour’ as well as my own Unzipped give people a much more realistic picture of how the sex industry really operates. The law must stop abuse and exploitation but not the activities of women like the one in Bournemouth who quietly told me that she thought she had probably saved more marriages than the local branch of Relate (excellent though we both agreed that organisation is).
I’ve had a whale of a time. I’ve slept with some stunningly beautiful women, been given sensual experiences which are out of this world and met some fascinating and clever people. You may be shocked by my saying so but, as one who knows both worlds intimately, give me the choice between politicians and prostitutes and I would now go for the latter every time. They are generally more honest and can have an understanding of human psychology which is second to none. The cleverest woman I know is a prostitute. As I have told her, she would make a great MP. In fact, some of them might be better at running the country than some of those who currently do. Shame, their profession and their pasts will stand in the way of their seeking public office. Still, hopefully, one day public attitudes may have changed sufficiently to allow this. If my book helps achieve that, then it has been well worthwhile.
Anonymous
Posted in Sexuality, Uk Politics
