50 Quid and All for a Bit of Free Cake...

The news about The London Paper has inspired me have a root around in my old Facebook notes.

In April 2008 I wrote my first 300 word article for The London Paper's reader column (here is my second offering) but they never published it. I told myself it's because they can't print the word blowjob. So I published it on Facebook instead and now I'm publishing it here as well. Ha! That'll teach them for rejecting my ramblings. And now onto the main event...

50 Quid and All for a Bit of Free Cake...
April 2008

Two years ago I signed up to an escort agency, somewhat naively it turns out. Having graduated from university and getting nowhere on the job front I thought it’d be the perfect solution and all I’d have to do is accompany men to weddings and that meant free cake. Brilliant. After paying the £50 joining fee I was contacted saying there’d been a lot of interest in my profile and I’d get £1000 for an evening. I was amazed.

‘And I don’t have to have sex with them?’

‘Of course you do,’ the man scoffed.

‘Oh, but on the website it said no sex.’

‘We have to say that because it’s illegal,’ he replied patronisingly.

He then attempted to persuade me to ‘touch’ men if I wasn’t going to have sex with them. I told him I wouldn’t even if I was offered a million pounds. I was left feeling a bit silly and £1,000,050 out of pocket.

I had a few calls after that from clients themselves to whom I explained the no sex deal. They liked to barter, suggesting that perhaps we’d like each other. I wanted to reply, ‘If you’re needing to pay for sex I’m thinking that’s unlikely.’

Things went quiet.

A couple of months ago I had a missed call from a number I didn’t recognise so I called it back. ‘Do you do massage?’ Um no. Then the other weekend I received a text referring to me by my escort name asking if I’d be free for a date anytime soon. Instead of ignoring it I replied explaining how I’d naively joined the site. The negotiations began on his part and I had to explain that I don’t do physical contact and am purely company to which he replied, ‘So would that rule out some kissing and touching?’ I text back, ‘That would entail physical contact.’ I then received this: ‘So would a blow job or hand job be out of the question?’ Hmm let me see…

This week I have had two other men get in contact and yet I only paid for a year’s membership. Perhaps the website feels guilty about the false advertising. Tonight I decided to log on and on my profile it said, ‘I am signed up on a no sex basis.’ It appears men willing to pay for sex are not willing to pay for an eye test.

My Offering to The London Paper

Thought I'd send The London Paper kids a rejigged note I once wrote on Facebook to see if they'd publish it as every day they have a reader columnist.

I have a feeling they won't as it isn't particularly relevant to anything going on at the moment so I'll just publish it myself. Had I sent it in around the time Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens were doing their rounds on the red carpet then perhaps it would have made the pages of the free paper. Who knows? Well, here you go...

I’m broody, something you would have known had you been in Kew Gardens the other week and overheard me whispering to my friend’s girlfriend who I’ve only met briefly once before, ‘I’m worried I might steal a child.’ Had you only seen her face then you may have just assumed I’d escaped from a mental asylum.

Although I want nothing more than to pop a little munchkin out I'm not sure I'm prepared to bring kids into the world we live in. A world where people won't recycle because, 'There's nothing we can do to make a difference, it’s too late.' We can try though, no? No, because they're too lazy even though all they have to do is just put their paper bits in a different bin that I have placed in front of their workstation. A world where you have to hold a door open for a man who doesn't even say thank you. A world where kids are penetrating each other with jibes and knives. What was wrong with penetrating each other with kindness and condom-clad genitalia? It worries me that there will be no world left by the time my hypothetical child grows up and so it's looking likely that I'll have to forego having children because it wouldn't be fair to bring them into such a mean, corrupt and deteriorating place.

BUT there is a glimmer of hope: there must still be manners lurking about and kids that only use knives to cut up their dinner and do you know what makes me think this? Well I'll tell you… High School Musical, a film that for those of you who haven't seen it and all its follow-ups is enough to empty the contents of one's stomach with its high content of twee-ness and enthusiasm. This sickly film has broken box-office records and that tells me the world isn’t so bad if the youth of today can't get enough of a film that has me teetering on the brink of wanting to stab, if not someone else, then myself. You could argue that maybe it is the cause of all the stabbings but I can't help believing that it's a genuine love these kids have for the films that has the potential to get the world turning on a more positive and wholesome axis rather than it's current skew-whiff one.

Perhaps my womb is not redundant just yet...