It was a banker’s stag night – words that seem to come with their own built-in
shudder. I had become friendly with a team of City boys whom I used to meet
in a bar. They were a laugh and when one of them – Lovely Josh – asked me to
join him on his stag night in Prague, all expenses paid, I said I’d go, even
though I didn’t know anyone that well.
Josh was known as Lovely Josh by both men and women. He was self-effacing,
witty and softly spoken. Women of his acquaintance seemed to regard it as a
mild tragedy that he was getting married. As it turned out, the boys called
Josh “Lovely” with heavy irony. They couldn’t quite believe that he managed
to sell women his public image.
Aspects of the stag night appealed to me – heavy drinking and staying up late
– and aspects didn’t – wearing a polo shirt with “Josh’s Stag” written on it
and visiting strip clubs.
In the light of what follows, it may seem strange that I’m actually pretty
prudish about girlie bars. Feminists in the Eighties used to bang on about
“the male gaze”: the idea that men exert power over women by looking at them
and judging them sexually. I was discomfited by the reverse: the female
gaze. The idea of having to make eye contact with a woman paid to take off
her clothes in front of me was repulsive. In addition, I find the stylised
moves of the women a turn-off, which is odd because I find them a turn-on
when someone whom I’m not paying performs them.
“I’ve got £30,000 to spend tonight,” said Toby, the best man, “and I’m not
going home until we’ve done the lot.” Accordingly, we ended up in the
classiest brothel in town. I was pleased to go. To me, a brothel was a
different proposition to a strip club. I mean, you actually do something
in a brothel. Plus, this was out of my league financially. It was a one-off:
I thought I’d be a fool to miss it.
There is a certain mystique to brothels. When you are a boy they sound like
places of impossible adventure and danger. I’d never been to one before: it
was something on my “to do” list. To me it occupied the same mental niche as
bungee-jumping: something I was nervous about, wanted to try but thought
that once would be enough for me. I was right on that last score.
The first wrong note was struck when we arrived. The place was on an
industrial estate and conjured up images of being done in by criminals
behind the fork-lift pallets. The neon sign outside seemed in some way a
metaphor – a lurid fantasy slapped on top of a rather ugly reality. I think
I had expected a belle époque frontage, Toulouse-Lautrec getting out of
a horse-drawn cab and a greeting from Yvette Guilbert in elbow-length
gloves; not the muscular gangster with half-sovereign rings who answered the
door.
We went up the stairs. I heard, from somewhere inside, a trans-atlantic/mittel
European voice saying, “I like the pretty girls”, with a stress on the
“pretty” that has stained my soul ever since. There was a brightly lit bar
in 1970s style, with a good-looking barmaid who could have fitted easily
into a cabaret in the last days of the Weimar republic. The interior wasn’t
exactly upmarket but was clean and unthreatening, like an airport lounge or
a chain hotel. We ordered drinks and the muscular gangster asked if we’d
like to see the girls. Josh rubbed his hands and said, “That’s what we’re
here for!”
First there was a count of who wanted to go for it and who didn’t. About half
the lads mumbled stuff about being married, which left about six of us who
were going to require at least one woman.
The girls were led in and, this being a “high-class” place, were quite
good-looking on the whole. I was, it has to be said, having second thoughts.
But it was then or never.
Josh picked a very good-looking German girl of about 18. I showed a deep
misunderstanding of the fundamentals of prostitution when I picked the ugly
one because I felt sorry for her.
I had thought that there would be a period of sitting around, maybe an
induction session while we were given a welcome pack and familiarised with
the location of the fire exits and drinks machines. We would then be led to
small bedrooms where we would absolutely not be expected to have sex with
these women in front of our mates.
The flight of stairs we were climbing was quite steep. It went up to a
mezzanine level, then turned before ascending again. The distance from door
to destination couldn’t have been more than 50ft. I was at the back of the
queue and it took me about 30 seconds, maybe less.
So 30 seconds is the longest possible time between Josh, who led the way,
entering the room and me joining him. In that fleeting gap, Lovely Josh had
managed to strip completely naked and begin full relations with the young
German girl not two steps from the doorway. He actually had one hand in the
air as if waving an imaginary Stetson, and glanced over his shoulder in an
expression of wild delight.
The sight of the delicate girl with this scrawny, pallid Englishman, his
floppy hairstyle shaking back and forth as if he were some frenzied
show-dog, banished any hope of stimulation that I might have entertained. In
fact, if there was a place where you could go to have memories erased, I’d
be there tomorrow.
It was only then that the central reality of prostitution hit me. Far from
being bohemian temptresses of the demimonde, these girls were victims of
economic circumstance and wouldn’t have gone anywhere near us if we hadn’t
being paying them. It made me want to run for it. I didn’t though. I just
stayed there.
I could have said, “Just not for me” and gone downstairs. There would have
been some mild ribbing, but who cares? Instead, though, my mind was
paralysed by the sight of Josh’s buttocks.
I went past quickly. The room was large and carpeted, with a few seats, an
oversized Jacuzzi, a large bed at one end and an open lavatory in the middle
of the floor. The bankers stripped off and went into the Jacuzzi with the
girls while I sat down, fully clothed, trying to regain my composure. I’d
had no idea that I would be expected to have sex in front of other men. I
find public showers embarrassing enough.
Two of the girls sat down next to me. One, whom I hadn’t picked, was very
attractive, pale and dark with indie-chick looks. The other – the one I’d
singled out – was OK but not my type at all: far too thin. What had I been
thinking of? Probably, in picking one whom I didn’t fancy, I was making some
sort of apology for being there, saying “It’s OK, God, I’m not a bastard
really”.
“Come on. Have fun,” said mine, pulling at my belt.
“I’d rather just sit here for a moment,” I replied, as some of the lads
climbed out of the Jacuzzi and began having sex with the girls – two on one,
in one case.
The horror of the evening was just beginning. After a brief go at starting a
bit of action with the girl’s help, I gave up and we just sat chatting for a
bit, me still half-naked (the wrong half). “Is there something the matter?”
she asked.
“I have a girlfriend, you know,” I said. I did as well, one I’d been seeing
for nearly two years and with whom I was living. I was prepared to unleash
my moral indignation on Josh – but I was no better. If you’re living with a
woman and have reached the stage where you can’t remember whose CDs are
whose, you have given the same commitment as if you’d walked up the aisle.
I did think about my girlfriend but, I have to say, from a practical rather
than an emotional point of view. The idea of giving her a dose of whatever
these girls might have didn’t exactly appeal.
Detrousered like some torture victim, I asked the girl about her life and
family and was generally much better company than I normally am on a first
date, when I tend just to talk about myself. The conversation dragged on, as
it does when you get talking to someone in a waiting room, expecting a
five-minute chat, and are forced to drag it out for much longer. There
really is not a lot a man can do in a brothel without an erection.
I should have said, “Thank you, ladies, goodnight,” and headed for the bar,
but I didn’t. I don’t know what kept me there, dying to put my trousers back
on but worried that I would be breaking some unwritten law. What was I
afraid of? Getting thrown out? I should have begged them to expel me.
Anyway, I stayed sitting in the corner making small talk with no trousers on
only for another seven hours, so it could have been worse.
What kept me there? A combination of things. The first was pride: I didn’t
want the others to start calling me “Floppy Mark” and I hoped that at any
moment things might spark into life. The second was that I was overwhelmed
by the sheer horror of the situation and quaking like a vole under the eye
of a hawk, fearing that movement might bring attention. I might be sitting
there still if someone hadn’t led me away.
At about 5am, when I hadn’t spoken to anyone for an hour and a half, Josh came
through and asked if we should get the two girls who were sitting near by,
chatting to each other in Czech, to do a lesbian act. One waved her hand and
said “I’m too tired”. There was a look in her eye, something that she just
allowed to creep from the corner, and it wasn’t unlike hatred.
At 7am the money ran out and the girls downed tools, so to speak.
As I left I waved goodbye to the one I’d picked. I will never forget the look
she gave me – “lower than contempt” about covers it. I had thought that,
because I’d treated her as a human being, spoken to her and not slept with
her, she might even have liked me. It was clear that she had regarded
chatting to me as a more onerous task than enduring my sexual attentions
would have been. I was an explorer in undiscovered realms of shame.
It would be nice to report that on the way back in the cab I finally got an
erection. I didn’t, of course, nor did I for about a week afterwards. I
think my girlfriend at the time suspected that I’d slept with a prostitute
and was trying to cover up a dose of the clap. I couldn’t tell her the real
reason – that I hadn’t slept with a prostitute or that sex had
somehow been corrupted for me by Lovely Josh. Seven hours in that
environment jumbles your mind and leaves you regarding all women as for
sale. I didn’t welcome that feeling at all and tried to dismiss it. It went
eventually but, like chicken-pox, it has left the odd pockmark.
Lovely Josh’s wedding was terrific. The bride looked gorgeous, the best man
said that the groom was one in a million and the bride’s mother cried.
I find it hard to judge him morally – after all, I was only an erection away
from joining in. In the end, the only thing for which I can unequivocally
criticise him is his taste. To me, there is something irredeemably tacky and
soulless about visiting a brothel.
High-class prostitution? There’s really no such thing.
*Names have been changed
