I Slept with a Pimp

I was never one for foreplay, so I thought I might make a good prostitute. Not your old run-of-the-mill hooker, but an escort. Someone who spent evenings attentively listening to businessmen in expensive restaurants and then went to a hotel room and fucked for cash.

I was intrigued by the plethora of ads in the classifieds, luring women with promises of $1,000 a night to be made as a 'high-class companion' or ‘discreet escort’ (they were never, I remember, 'hot babes'). I could do that, I thought. I was a mostly out-of-work actor. I didn't have a boyfriend, I needed the money. And there was a part of me that was genuinely curious about how it worked. I think every woman knows that, if she really had to, she could sell herself for sex.

I rang one of the numbers and said I was interested in applying, if that was the word. After taking down details like age, weight and hair colour, the mellifluous male voice on the phone said it was important we met. We arranged a rendezvous for the next afternoon in a donut shop in one of Toronto's less salubrious neighbourhoods… mine, actually.

I wore a tight top, short skirt and no underwear. I was on a dare with myself. I walked the half block to the cafe and when I walked in, it was busy, but I knew who he was. Silk shirt, black hair slicked back, expensive watch, leather filofax… he could have been a Saudi software salesman.

He asked me why I wanted to do this and I said that I had fooled around a bit with phone sex (which was true) and was open-mindedly looking for other challenges, or some-such vagueness. I tried to switch the conversation around, to ask him questions about the business. This didn’t go over well. At first he said I was a policewoman who was trying to entrap him. I felt a bit insulted, as if I didn’t look alluring enough. Then he accused me of working for another escort agency and wanting to steal his business. I was faintly flattered.

After about half an hour, we'd both finished our coffees (no donuts, it didn't seem appropriate), he said, “Ok, let’s go for a drive." As we walked out, it occurred to me that I had told no one what I was doing, who or where I was meeting, and was about go off with a complete stranger. I got in the car.

As we drove along the lakeshore, doors locked, air conditioning blasting against the sweltering summer, he put his mobile phone in the cradle and switched on the loudspeaker. He kept looking at me as a series of women left messages:

“Hi, I’ve finished with Ron and am going to take David now, upfront blow."
“Listen, Mr Mike wanted anal and I told him that is not what was discussed, so am waiting."
“Hey babe, a bit slimy Stephen but that’s what he likes, extra bucks for you."

I knew he was gauging my reaction, seeing if I was uncomfortable, so I didn’t say anything and tried to keep my expression relaxed. “What do you think of my girls?" he asked. “They seem pretty busy," I said. He laughed and then suggested we stop for a drink. We went into a bar and I ordered a white wine. "Ahh!" he said, "You're not a cop because you are having a drink!" He ordered a Coke and we sat down at the back of the empty bar.

He began to talk more about his girls, how he knew them personally and how he spent time with them, individually. He said a good relationship was really important and that each girl had to feel very comfortable with him alone. He emphasised that before the girls would work with him, he needed to have time with them intimately.

“You see, I have to be sure that they can do it. Do you think you can do it?" he asked. “Do you think you can have sex with a man you have just met? Do you understand what I am saying?"

I knew then that this was the test. He wasn’t going to put his girls on stage unless he was sure they could sing. I understand, I said. Sure, I could have sex with you. Now? he said. Now.

Some girls prefer a neutral space, like a hotel, he pointed out. Some prefer their own environment. Whatever is best for you. He was solicitous, as though he wanted to ensure I would be at ease. So we drove back to my flat.

We had sex on my sofa, we did not go into my bedroom. He didn't ask, I didn't suggest it. I took my own clothes off, he took off his. We didn’t kiss, but he did go down on me, expertly. I came. He put on a condom. The actual act took less than five minutes. It wasn’t rough, it wasn’t romantic, it was rudimentary.

Then we sat at my kitchen table, drinking water. He began to open up about his company. How the girls always met the man first, at the office, and clarified exactly what was wanted and the price. This was paramount, the man could not ask for extras later. Location was then arranged, one of the office apartments or the girl’s own place; he preferred the former. I expressed surprise at the lack of swish dinners in the itinerary. He said that was a myth. His girls usually did three or more men a night, there was no time for supper. Men don’t want all that shit.

The girls’ safety was important, he said. There was a whole ‘ABC’ system, where the girls phoned in with updates: A was to let the office know they were at the agreed locale (they’d phone and say something like, “Hi Andrea, just checking we’re on for lunch tomorrow"). B was if something was worrying, like the guy hadn’t agreed to hand over the cash first, a must. C was if there was a real problem…

“But there are never problems. My girls are professional,” he said. “You just made one mistake. You took all your clothes off before me. Always get the man’s clothes off first, then you’re more in control. Now, can you start tomorrow? I think you’d do well, a sexy blonde." It was his first compliment — sincere, but sly. I agreed I could start tomorrow and he said he’d call. He shook my hand and left.

Home alone, I pondered what I had done and realised I felt no shame, no guilt. All I felt was a quiet kind of triumph: I had proved that, if I had to, I could sell my ass for money. If this had been a movie, I would have jumped in a shower and scrubbed myself clean. But I felt no need. Neither did I phone a friend. I didn't feel emotionally damaged and I wasn't lonely. I went to bed and read a book.

I hadn't been paid (if he had offered money, I would have taken it) and I hadn't asked what his cut was. He had said his girls could make up to $500 a night. But that was five guys or more. It wasn’t a fortune. The whole scene seemed pretty labour-intensive. Escort really was just a euphemism.

When he called the next day, I said I was really sorry, but I had changed my mind and wasn’t ready for the job at this time. He seemed genuinely sad and said he hoped that he had not offended me in any way. He wished me luck in my future career. It didn't help… my acting pursuit never took off and a year later I gave it up and moved to London.

I am now eight years happily married. My husband knows about that night and is unfazed. It was long ago and no big deal. I tried the world's oldest profession on for size and it fit. I just decided not to keep it on.

A version of this story appeared in The Guardian newspaper under the title

'A Day in a Different Life'

The Alsatian Barks: Confessions of a Door Bitch

What do Morrissey, Bjork and Sebastian Coe all have in common? They’re all people I’ve kicked out of Soho House. I used to be a nice girl from Toronto who didn’t even know what a private members club was… then I found my Inner Nazi and, known as The Alsatian, I ruled the right-of-way into London’s most popular one.

But this isn’t a tell-all of who snorted what line with who in what loo – although at one point Soho House had such a reputation of being a coke haunt for celebrities that the club was ‘visited’ by the local police. I was about to ask for their membership card when they showed their ID… I tried not to smile when they stated officiously they had evidence that cocaine was being consumed at the club because people sometimes (gasp!) ‘went into the toilets two at a time’.

This was before our culture sank into its current quagmire of celebrity adulation and there wasn’t the daily photo assault of powdered-up TV presenters and other faux-fame-heads leaving nightclubs at 3am in every bloody newspaper. Consequently, people did literally say to me, ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ Well, in fact, Mick Hucknell’s manager pointed at him and said ‘Don’t you know who he is?’ Which was just embarrassing for everybody. Or, like Janet Street-Porter, they heard what they thought was my American accent and assumed I knew nothing about the British media…. actually, Janet, I do know you are director of the soon-to-be-dead L!VE TV but you’re not a member and you’re still not coming in! (And I’m Canadian.) Of course, I didn’t know everyone. Once Lionel Blair came in and as he left, I told him effusively how much I had liked Oliver! (The musical was written by Lionel Bart, who is dead.)

Sometimes because of prior promises and string-pulling, famous people who weren’t members were allowed into the club on a one-off basis. And you know, the old adage is true – the less famous, the more foul. Mick Jagger asked me my name, Jason Patric called me a rude bitch. By then, I had developed a hide thick as a prairie buffalo when it came to name calling. The more drunk and more desperate to get in, the more decidedly people would insult me when I thwarted their party plans. My favourite was ‘Vinegar Tits’, shrieked by one of the myriad media-babes I threw out nightly – I thought of putting it on a t-shirt.

My ability to flush out even the most forceful blagger became legendary. Jack Davenport (pre-This Life fame) came in once, insisting he was Benjamin Bates (son of Alan). I knew what Ben Bates looked like and I knew he was a member and I knew this pretty-boy parvenu wasn’t him. We had a rather heated exchange about this obvious inconsistency and eventually he backed down, turned and left, tail between his legs, disgruntled date following, obviously not planning to let him between her legs later. A member who had been watching our row said afterwards: ‘Thank god you held your ground. He is not Ben Bates, his name is Jack Davenport. I’m a casting director and I auditioned him today and let me tell you, he didn’t get the part!’

Another time, an odd-looking old man came in and claimed he was Stanley Kubrick. I knew he wasn’t. Not because I had seen a picture of Kubrick lately (who had?) but I sensed Soho House on a frantic Friday night would so not be the kind of hang-out for that very reclusive director. I asked him to leave. Shortly after, a couple came in with a camera, very excited, saying they were filming a documentary about this man, Alan Conway, who conned his way into London clubs pretending to be Stanley Kubrick. ‘And you,’ they exclaimed, ‘are the first door person who didn’t fall for it!’ My glory was only slightly flattened when the owner of Soho House, Nick Jones, wandered by and when told the tale, said guilelessly, ‘Who’s Stanley Kubrick?’

But after a couple of years, I tired of the relentless robot-like routine of denying ersatz members entry, chasing out the sly slags who slipped past me, trawling the club at 4am for the stuck-fast barflys and frankly, making a feeble salary. I enjoyed chatting with the core club members who were directors, actors, writers, musicians – not stars as such but legit artists. But this only highlighted the lack of creative juice in my life. So I quit. Nowadays, with the surfeit of private clubs and public celebs, it’s a scene I’m seldom seen in. Famous people are no more fascinating than unfamous ones, and no-one is interesting when they’re excessively inebriated. My only regret from my time at Soho House is that when Chrissie Hynde came in I didn’t call her a pretender. But hell, she probably would have thrown me out.

Weather or Not Girl

Whenever I tell people I used to be a TV weather girl, I am either met with prurient pity, like I was some sort of wanna-be media slut, or excessive interest, tinged with a snigger. What is it about reporting the weather, especially if you are female, that is so damned funny? You are actually imparting information about something that affects everybody and, deep down, everyone is interested in, yet it’s always television’s joke job.

Before I moved to London, I was a reporter at a station called CHAT-TV in the small, comically-named town of Medicine Hat, Alberta. This involved attending tedious town council meetings where lots of boring phrases like ‘farm subsidies’ and ‘land tax deregulation’ were bandied about, or picking up the morning police reports, most of which were filled with who got busted for driving drunk the night before. My weather presenting duties seemed positively glamorous by comparison.

For five minutes (or more, if the sports guy was still finishing his joint in the john), I had the camera to myself as I stood and extemporised about the chances of rain tomorrow. No tele-prompter soother for me to suckle, I had to draw deep into my improv well and deliver an off-the-cuff and always upbeat monologue, ensuring these important aspects were covered:

1. temperatures today, tonight and tomorrow (with informative asides if unseasonably cold/hot)
2. in winter, number of inches of snow that had fallen and/or will fall with cautionary remarks about icy sidewalks or cheery ones about snowmen
3. in spring, number of inches of rain that had fallen and/or will fall with cautionary remarks about umbrellas or cheery ones about good for crops, etc.
4. the wind-chill factor: if slightly high, could give zen-like aphorism that ‘it will feel colder than it really is’, if really high, could go whole hog and say face would freeze off
5. heat or humidity? nature or nurture? Maple Leafs or Canucks? (good way to hand over to stoner sports guy)
6. and - if I was feeling especially clever - sunrise and sunset times!

While presenting this steady stream of facts, I had to stand in front of an invisible map. Viewers could see a map of Western Canada behind me, all I could see was a blank blue wall. Nonetheless, I rattled away, pointing assuredly at cities like Edmonton, Vancouver and er, Moose Jaw. This technical trick was called ‘chroma-key’. I still can’t really explain how it works. I still can’t find Moose Jaw on a map either but I can tell you its average yearly rainfall.

Where did I get all this information? Why, from Dave at the ‘weather office’, located in Medicine Hat’s miniscule airport. I began to look forward to my daily chats with Dave. From what I assumed was his vantage point in an air traffic control tower, Dave would warn me about incoming cold fronts, low pressure systems and one day, something called the Alberta Clipper.

‘Can you see the sea from there?’ I joked. ‘No,’ said Dave, ‘why?’ ‘Never mind,’ I said. Dave was a serious chap. ‘What shall I tell our viewers about the Alberta Clipper? I’m guessing it’s not a boat.’ ‘It’s a fast moving, snow-producing system that originates in the Rockies. It moves quickly, often bring gusty wind and arctic air,’ said Dave, who knew his weather systems. I just knew that I had to tell everybody it was going to be bloody cold that night.

Actually, I wouldn’t say ‘bloody’ because that’s not really an adjective in Canada, unless you are describing a hockey fight. I wouldn’t say it in England either, because it’s a swear word and weather presenters in England never, ever swear. No, cursing might give away the fact that the weather in England is well, awful. English weathercasters are the nicest people on the planet and masters of the euphemism.

So instead of saying that the sun will appear for a milli-second in mid-afternoon, there will be sunny ‘spells’. Instead of noting that the skies during waking hours will be a monotonous, un-ending, suicidal grey, it will be a ‘dull day’. If it has been raining solid for a fortnight, over 2 weekends, one of them a holiday, they will still be smiling and saying ‘A light drizzle may be hampering picnic efforts today!’ You have to admire them really.

And admiration, not admonition is what weather presenters deserve. Appreciation instead of mockery, please! If you’re a weather woman, it does not mean you failed the audition to be a Shopping Channel presenter. If you’re a weather man, it does not indicate an inability to interview footballers about defence strategy. Weather presenters are not naff, they’re necessary. Now, don’t forget your umbrella.

My Dirty Shopping Secret

I knew I had a problem the other day when I had to meet a friend and had half an hour to kill. I passed by the shop and thought, ‘Mmm, I’ll just poke my head in and see what they’ve got...’ An hour later, I rushed up to my mate patiently waiting on the corner. She looked at the bag in my hands and shook her head. “Where was it this time?” she asked. “Waterstones? Borders? Don’t tell me you went to WH Smith??” “No, Oxfam” I said. “It’s ok, it’s a charity book shop!” My girlfriend looked at me in despair. “Why can’t you just be into shoes like normal women?”

It’s true, somehow I missed the meeting where you learn how to pronounce Manolo Blahnik properly and debate the difference between kitten heels and wedgies. Where you practise not fainting at the prospect of spending £300 on a pair of shoes. Where you don’t question why shoes are so… well, important. Or maybe I was there, in a corner, reading a book and not paying attention.

Time to confess… I am just not interested in shoes. Give me a choice and I’d rather be reading Mary Shelley than shopping in Shelleys. I am more interested in Patrick McCabe’s latest novel than Patrick Cox’s latest line. Surely a worthy sign of intellectual ambition I ask my feminist sisters? Apparently not…I keep having to defend why a hour browsing in a bookshop is a bit weird whereas no-one blinked when a friend of mine brought 12 pairs of sandals for a week in a Bali resort that was advertised as ‘barefoot chic’.

Of course I own shoes, I am not traipsing about barefoot, chic or otherwise. Let’s see, there are my trainers for the jogging I never do, slippers (well-worn), pumps (see, I do know some terms), boots (trendy knee-highs, so there) and um…another pair of slippers (reading is primarily an indoor activity). I was genuinely shocked to discover that sometimes women buy shoes and then never wear them. This is unfathomable… it would be like buying a book and then never reading it. Ok, I didn’t finish Will Hutton’s “The State We’re In” but at least I opened the cover and read the introduction. Apparently there are shoes in some women’s closets that are still in their box. It’s kind of cruel really.

But no more cruel than the torture that is having to buy a new pair of shoes. The annoying tradition of displaying only one shoe, which is invariably the impossible Kylie size. The tedium of asking the teenage salesperson to find your size in that strange storeroom in the back that no-one-on-pain-of-death must ever enter. The lack of reading material while you are waiting…

All right, perhaps I’m a bit of a bookaholic. But frankly, when I stack books up against shoes, those frivolous frippery for your feet come out wanting. Books have better:

Flexibility – you can only ever wear one pair of shoes at a time but you can have several books on the go – one for the bus journey, one beside your bed, one to read while the kettle’s boiling…

Money Sense – you never see 3 for 2 sales for shoes, now standard in bookshops everywhere

Health & Safety Records – no-one ever got a blister from reading a book

History – the world’s first seat of learning, the Library of Alexandria, was filled with books. Don’t think Julius Caesar would have bothered burning it down if it had been filled with shoes.

Presentation Skills – books are displayed in cases, shoes are still in the closet

Bonding Abilities – if you read a book you think a friend would like, you lend it to her and then talk about it together. No equivalent relationship development for shoes.

plus Bonus Brain Points – do you think people would have laughed at Imelda Marcos if it was discovered she had been hoarding 3,000 books?

There are some bad points to being a book obsessive. Birthday presents get a bit same-y. On my last birthday I was given 5 books, all of which I had already read. And books aren’t exactly romantic. I once brought a book while waiting for a date and when he arrived he looked embarrassed and said, “For god’s sake, why are you reading? This is a bar!” I never saw him again. He wanted a binge drinker – I guess my book addiction makes me a binge thinker.

White Whine Witch

I wish I could say that my foray into the world of witchcraft stemmed from a true desire to discover the potential power of paganism or release the goddess within but frankly, it was because I was broke. I was fumbling through the £1 bin outside a second-hand bookshop and came upon The Modern Witchcraft Spellbook by Anna Riva. “A spell,” Madame Riva said, “is an ‘instant miracle’ – a way to accomplish your objectives without work, study or delay.”

As I was tired of temping, didn’t fancy an evening course in IT skills and needed an immediate cash flow, I figured one small pound might produce one massive money miracle. I bought the book.

Back home, I found my cupboards were bereft of not only basic food stuffs but vital witchy ingredients:

To attract money: Take a square of green cloth, put in Borage, Lavender, High John the Conqueror Root and Saffron (or any four appropriate herbs), a few crystals of rock salt, and three silver coins. Tie with gold and silver thread in eight knots. Keep on your person or about the house.

What the hell is Borage anyway? High John the Conqueror - of what? Does parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme count as four appropriate herbs? Could I use table salt? When’s lunch?

I tried another spell:

To increase your wealth, soak the gold part of marigolds in water for three days. Add a few more marigolds each day. After three days pour in a little red wine and a white feather. Keep this mixture in your window until you have the amount of money you need.

Right, this meant buying flowers, waiting three days, and wasting precious wine. And the only feather I could find was a very un-white pigeon’s. I needed another method, one that didn’t ask for stuffing spices or unhygienic bird moult. Magic less prosaic and more enchanting.

And at the back of the book, after the increasingly esoteric herbal combos (Gilead buds and Tonka beans anyone?), Anna Riva had this final directive:

To call upon the forces that can grant your desires, you must cast a sacred circle. At the four points of the compass, place a symbol for the four elements. Then ask the spirits for help.

This sounded more promising. I enlisted the aid of vodka (without asking) and sorted out my symbolic circle.

The symbol for West, said Anna, was Water – easy, a glass of tap water (thought Perrier too pretentious.)
East – Air – um, a feather? Light as air… no, that meant back to the pigeon. I settled on an old Happy 30th Birthday (ok, really old) balloon, half-filled with Stolly breath
South – Fire – another cinch, a candle (beeswax, more organic)
North – Earth – not sure if muddy footprints on carpet count…. but then, quite pleased with myself, I found a moonstone (once kept under my pillow to ‘align my womanly cycle’ until I went back on the Pill)

Feeling a sliver ridiculous, but emboldened by booze, I walked clockwise around my circle-space and, stopping at each symbol, ‘called’ on the spiritual forces.

‘Hail, North, Power of Earth, bring the practical, hands-on element of money into my life ..... uh, cash, basically.

“Hail, East, Power of Air, help me to grasp the abstract, intellectual side of money so I learn to understand overdrafts and negative equity (not that I own a home or anything).

“Hail, South, Power of Fire, make me passionate and generous about money and unafraid to give it away to others, except chuggers.

“Hail, West, Power of Water, teach me to go with the flow, so that when money slips through my fingers, I know there’s always more where that came from.”

Then, a last-minute flourish: I took a 1,000 lire note I’d inexplicably saved and burned it in the candle flame. I figured this symbolised my goodbye to the old money attitude, hello to the new Euro-me, kind of thing. Then I sat in the circle’s centre and envisioned myself with an overall sense of monetary well-being. When I envisioned an overall sense of the carpet burning, I woke up and went to bed.

The next morning, my flat buzzer rang, early. A bike courier thrust a clipboard in my hand and I signed for an envelope. Inside was a brand-new Capital One card with a £800 credit limit. Wow, I thought, this shit actually works!

Ok, I had filled out the credit card application and posted it weeks ago – the point was, I had a terrible credit rating and had been rejected loads of times. Yet, here it was, nearly a grand for me to spend, the morning after I had cast a money spell.

After a few days of over-excited shopping sprees, I embarked on further spell experimentation. Why not call upon the elemental forces to find me a proper job? Temp secretary work was slowly stealing my soul…. So once again, I cast my sacred circle – balloon, feather et al – and asked my spiritual guardians for some serious employment magic.

And then the phone rang. It was a recruitment agency, with a possible post at a start-up website. Ok, I had sent them my CV ages ago and it was just a job interview, but I still thought the synchronicity pretty startling.

Was I indeed a white witch? I thought it might be time to test the big broomsticks and ask for the ultimate – a man. I cast my spell, calling upon the elements to bring me a intellectual (air) but practical (earth), easy-going (water) but passionate (fire), brand-new boyfriend who was really, really into me.

And the next night, very drunk at a bar, I met Sebastian. Who was all of the above and really, really into me. And with this hat-trick of spells, I considered myself quite ready to open a coven.

But then….

1. I fell waaay behind in my credit card payments and had to cut up the card.
2. I grew to despise my tedious data entry job at the uber-trendy web company and had to quit.
3. I realised I would never get over Sebastian’s shoulder hair and had to dump him.

Spells, I learned, only work in the short term. And they only affect the material world; there is no guarantee how they will affect you personally. I thought I was waving a magic wand but I was only wishing for what I thought I wanted. And so I ended up in debt, jobless and single again. Oh well. Like the saying goes, be careful what you wish for, you might just get it!

Oh, and Madame Anna Riva? I wikipediaed her and her real name is Dorothy Spencer, she lives in the States and sells voodoo supplies. But don’t worry, I ain’t about to start sticking pins in dolls…. yet.

My Friends are in Publishing, I’m in the Pub

Some of the world’s great drinkers were successful writers – Hemmingway, Dorothy Parker, Charles Bukowski. I’m a great drinker who knows successful writers… who don’t drink. With tee-total friends like these, you totally don’t need enemies.

What are technically called black-outs I’ve always called white-outs – they always happened when I drank white wine and like the typing correction fluid, they obliterated any sensible thing I had said or done earlier. I decided to blame the wine industry. I became convinced that, since white wine had become such a popular drink with women, heartless grape growers were adding hormones to white wine so it would ferment faster and get distributed to dipsomaniac dolly birds double quick. And these growth hormones reacted with female hormones to create a volatile combination of tears, tantrums and tyrannic behaviour which I named WWW aka the White Wine Witch.

I checked in with a few female friends and they too admitted that white wine made them tipsier faster and prone to hysterical outbursts. One friend in particular was very interested in my theory, so much so that when she wrote her book on how she quit drinking and got a so-called life, she purloined the phrase and ‘www – white wine witch’ became the selling point of her memoirs and popped up in all her press releases and reviews. Grrr… when I saw it repeated in Cosmopolitan and other women’s magazines, I realised that my adroit moniker had entered the social lexicon with no credit to its creator. But what was I to do? Walk into a bar and demand a free glass of Chablis? ‘Hey buddy, you’re looking at the original White Wine Witch. Now pour.’

What I did do was go to her book launch, fork out 10 quid to buy the book, then walked up to her and asked her to sign it. ‘And please can you address it to Glenda, the original white wine witch?’ I asked sweetly. She looked embarrassed, mumbled something about how it was her publisher who had pushed the phrase in the press and scrawled what I had requested. I felt more benevolent after that, hung around the party (even she had to capitulate to intransigent book launch rules and have free booze) and departed with a tentative promise to meet up for coffee, it had been years.

Then I actually read her book…and understood why it had been years.

I realised the woman with whom I had once, for fun, mixed vodka and Berocca, had been squirreling away tales of my ‘nuttiness’ to enhance her new-found sainthood of sobriety. Now I don’t mind being referred to as the ‘Zelda Fitzgerald’ of drunks but it’s a bit rich when you are written off as merely a source for people’s party anecdotes and then are used for exactly that throughout a book. All the stories were there….the time I took my trousers off and danced on a table at a bar in Cannes, the time I smuggled ecstasy into Mallorca, the time I woke up in Barcelona and said ‘How the fuck did I get here’? Even the story about how I bought a KFC bucket one night, threw it at my husband, and wondered why there were chicken bones all over my Brixton flat in the morning. Shame she didn’t just stick to the international tales – perhaps it was making my life sound, god forbid, interesting as well as amusing.

But hey, she had written a book and I hadn’t. As Gore Vidal says, ‘Whenever a friend of mine succeeds, a little something in me dies.’ Gore knew that sinking feeling in your gut when a friend has done something you wish you had. Apparently there is a German word for it – Erfolgtraurigkeit – but don’t ask me to spell it, especially when I’ve had a few.

To use another German expression, did I feel a twinge of Schadenfreude (delight in another’s misfortune) when I heard that shortly after being published my friend had a stroke? Um, a bit, and when she started to milk it for myriad newspaper articles, I realised all is fair in love and words.

Then there was the time I dated a Booker prize winner. Despite living in France for years, he didn’t drink wine or any other alcohol. We first met at a more minor literary award evening, pre-Booker, where he had scooped up a not-so-minor amount of 3 grand for his first book of short stories. He took me out to dinner and I ordered a half-carafe of wine. He had hot chocolate. When the bill came, he split it and then asked if I would pay for my wine, since of course, he hadn’t drunk any. ‘Where are you going?’ he said as I left the table in a huff. ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘Well,’ I explained frostily, ‘I’m going to the bank machine. I’m not the one that just won 3,000 dollars.’ He looked suitably abashed and agreed he could cough up the 5 buck cost of the carafe.

But when he sent me a letter, saying I should visit him and that, hey, he would pay for my bus ticket, but only if I went on a weekday because of the 10% discount, I grasped that here was a bona fide cheapskate. All that money he was saving from not drinking he was obviously not spending on the art of seduction. I mean, Maus, a graphic novel about the Holocaust, is obviously a worthy book but not one to give to a gal you are trying to bed. It was when he offered to buy me lunch at the all-you-can-eat-but-absolutely-nada-to drink Hare Krishna vegetarian buffet restaurant that I decided, successful writer or not, this boy was not someone I wanted on my bookshelf.

About a year later, he won the Booker prize with an odd novel about a shipwrecked boy and tiger. Perhaps tee-totalling is a trigger for your imagination. I’ll never know. All I know that, in the words of the cynical NYC band, Interpol: ‘Friends don’t waste wine when there’s words to sell.’

Mistress Bation

I blame Barry White. Ever since the Great Walrus announced to all living, listening women that he was 'going to love you all night long', women are under this weird illusion that great sex has to take hours and involve lots of scented candles and soft music. No it doesn't! No, Barry, you are not going to love me all night long, you are going to give me an orgasm in under 10 minutes, go to sleep, and maybe in the morning I’ll make you a cup of tea.

Or perhaps, like a true Freudian, I blame my mother. It was she who gave me the all-clear when, at 13 years of age, I started self-pleasuring. Although I didn’t call it that. I knew what it was really called – I wrote her a brusque note clearly stating the fact: I had started to masterbate and was that bad?

(The written missive was due to some shame; it wasn’t that my mother didn’t live within talking distance. I could have asked her when helping prepare supper but it just didn’t seem appropriate in the middle of mashing potatoes.)

Mum wrote back promptly: Dear Glenda, first off, masturbation is spelled with a ‘u’. If you are going to do it, please spell it properly. No, it is not bad but you will probably stop when you get married.

Well, dear mum was spot-on on the spelling, slightly off on the stopping point. Still, she allowed me to soldier on in my solitary pursuit of pleasure. And it was pleasurable… and also rather easy. I mean, I had read ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves’. It seemed most women took at least half an hour with a mirror while sitting in the most unglamorous position in order to obtain something I could achieve in under 2 minutes with a finger while lying on my back. Ok, occasionally, I had to resort to raiding my Dad’s dirty book collection (just the one, a rather odd anthology of Victorian short stories called The Pearl with lots of ‘bubbies’ and ‘frigging’… I picked it up thinking it was the John Steinbeck novel) which meant a bit of subterfuge and timing, but mostly it was wherever, whenever, whatever…. I really didn’t have to put a great deal of effort into the exercise.

I found that I could even eliminate the finger tool. Just by crossing my legs very, very tightly and concentrating very, very hard, I could very, very come. This gave me much amusement as this little trick could be done in public… in buses, in the classroom, in cars (great for long boring trips to relatives). Only an occasional flush of the cheeks might have given me away but you know, no-one ever turned to me and said, ‘Excuse me, miss, are you having an orgasm?’ Sometimes I wish they would have, just so I could have said, ‘No, I’ve just had one.’

I tried experimenting with shower jet-streams and found this upped the ante considerably. I realised that I needn’t stop at one orgasm. I realised I couldn’t! I began conducting experiments to see how many I could have in a row. My record was seven. Sadly, there was no-one with whom I felt I could share this particular triumph.

Then on a chardonnay-lashed hen night, some of the girls started giggling about vibrators. I was genuinely perplexed why a girl would need one. Imagine my humiliation when I expressed this thought out loud. Short of a demonstration, I couldn’t really explain my fast-finger technique. I began to get worried. Perhaps I was a weird onanist (I looked it up in the dictionary this time). Maybe the act of self-love shouldn’t be such a short one.

It was time to find a man.

Men turned out to be great. And grateful. Finally, someone who didn’t mind if they skipped foreplay! Who didn’t need to be caressed and coaxed into climax. Or called afterwards. Yes, I may have missed out on the modern courtship ritual of first date – film, second date – dinner, third date – drunk sex, like my other single friends. But we all ended up in the same position….. they just had to wait longer to be not called.

And with regard to that old joke about men not knowing where ‘it’ was, I found they learned pretty damn quick when I showed them how quickly I could achieve results with it…. they became rather eager students. Especially fast learners then moved to the second level: spelling cunninglingus. No, that’s not right. Cuninlingus. No, umm, cuningling…. You see, I can’t spell it either. But then, I don’t have to. It’s only fellatio I have to worry about.

So I ignore pop songs where boys brag about their ‘all night long’ prowess… they’re manufactured tosh. And tantric sex sounds tedious… waiting nine hours to come? You should only wait that long for a delayed flight to Fiji. I don’t need to spend entire Sundays in bed, unless I have exceptional hangovers. For me, the most effective sex is short, sharp and spelled correctly.

Losing My Virgo-ity

If you can change your name by deed poll, can you change your horoscope sign too? I sure hope so because I am fed up with being a Virgo.

It began in my teens, when in true bookworm mode, I was working at a library. While shelving books, I picked one on horoscopes – I was born in early September, that made me a Virgo…what are they like, I wondered? Then I read these horrifying words: ‘Virgos often work in libraries and grow up to be wallflowers at parties.’ Eeek! I was already halfway there. At sixteen, with flood pants and geeky glasses, I had yet to be invited to a party but it was clear that way lay certain doom. According to the stars above, I had been cast as a four-eyed social misfit with excellent reading skills.

Further research was not encouraging. One book claimed each sign had two definite attributes. Let’s see, Virgo: Health and Duty. How dull is that? Made me sound like a nun with nose-drops. Definitely not a party animal. Oh, and look at Scorpio: Sex and Death. Only the two most important things in life. Perhaps, I suggested in a politely-worded letter to the author, we Virgos could do a swop with Scorpios…..give us sex and we’ll give them duty. Take our health and give us death….anything to make us sound less boring!

I never got a reply. I kept my library job until college when I chucked the specs and got contact lenses. I also started binge-drinking and sleeping with Scorpios. Not unsurprisingly, sexual relationships with people ruled by sex and death usually die. Probably not helped by my tearful telephone accusations when dumped: “Is it because I’m a Virgo?”

Then a friend who was a bit of an amateur astrologist said she would determine my rising sign. “Your rising sign is more important than your star sign,” she asserted. “Your rising sign is who you are socially, the persona you present to the world.” Aah, so the real me.

The rising sign is determined by your time of birth – I was born at 8.30 in the evening. As my friend checked my charts, I looked through her papers and began to fantasise. Perhaps I was really a poetic Pisces or a groovy Gemini. ‘Gemini shares the same ruler as Virgos, the quick-silver planet Mercury.’ Yet somehow, for Geminis, I learned, being ruled by this planet means they’re clever and witty, for Virgos it means they’re ‘intellectual and discriminating’. In other words, critical and picky. Oh, hell, who wants to be a two-faced twin anyway?

As it turned out, my rising sign was the very first sign in the zodiac, Aries. All rather exciting, as Aries are dynamic, energetic, positive, pushy, impatient, overbearing, bossy … oh dear. No wonder it’s the Ram. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be known in my social circle as a head-butter.

“Don’t worry”, said my friend. “Your innate modesty as a Virgo means you’ll never be that obnoxious. Or a boss.” Great, the natural tendency to downplay myself completely suppressed my rising sign’s obvious career prospects. That may explain why I’ve never bumped my head on the glass ceiling…

Despite being a Virgo, I eventually turned to that most un-discriminating of tools, the internet. After wading though 13,656,332 sites on astrology, I came upon, for me, a previously unknown aspect of the zodiac – the moon sign. ‘The moon sign represents instinct and memory and dictates one's emotional response to situations and experiences’. Yes, the moon would light the way to the true horoscope sign hidden sensitively inside me.

No complicated charts on the web, of course, just pop in your birth-date and birth-time and voila, your moon-sign is calculated. I only had about 30 seconds to fantasise this time. Perhaps it was my dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Perhaps I was really an idealistic Water Bearer – a purely independent thinker who championed the highest principles. I hope it didn’t mean giving up meat.

There it was, click on the link, print, your moon sign is…. Aries. What!! Again?? Will I never be shot of the brutal Ram? ‘Emotional outbursts are frequent with you due to your fiery temper and emotional impulsiveness’, I read. Then ripped up the report. Then picked up the pieces of paper (tidy Virgo). Then saw other ‘Moon-in-Aries’ included Pamela Anderson and Ellen DeGeneres. Mmm, a busty Canadian and a funny lesbian. I am not stacked and not gay, but I was born in Montreal and can tell a joke. Let’s see, a Virgo walks into a bar and says: “Ooh, the floor is really sticky, I’m leaving.” Sorry, that’s no joke, that’s my local.

But recently, I had a breakthrough. I was leafing through the Chambers dictionary (I know, I know, a typical tedious Virgo activity) when I came across the definition of Leo: ‘ Constellation of The Lion, the 5th sign of the Zodiac, the constellation was between Cancer and Virgo, it is now in the sign Virgo.’ Hurrah! I was wondering how star signs set thousands of years ago had relevance today and here was the proof: every horoscope sign has actually shifted one ahead!

Which means I am really a proud, dramatic fire sign… confident, entertaining and glamorous. Up there with other famous Leos like Zelda Fitzgerald, Jackie O. and Madonna. And all those nasty Scorpios I slept with? They were really um, charming Libras. And my husband, the generous, long-suffering Taurus? He’s really a…oh dear – Aries.

So I’ve given up on astrology and accepted the fact I’ll be a Virgo for life. I’m looking into numerology now. I was born on the 7th of September and we all know 7 is a lucky number…. or is it 3?

Paint the Town Read

I may be biting the hand that feeds me, but why another London paper? Why are there so many of the goddam things? Why, when I am still carrying around a London paper from two days ago because I hadn't quite finished the film review section, have I got two more?

It's bad enough having fortnight-old Sunday papers in my bag (because I really am going to read the personal finance special on ISAs), along with a hardback library copy of The Da Vinci Code (because I refuse to admit it's rubbish even by page 27) without having to fend off the free papers that are thrust at me. Of course, no-one really forces me to take them. I mean, there's not a sign on the 159 bus that says: 'pick up this free paper or you'll have to pay the non-Oyster fare'. I am addicted to newspapers and now my habit is being fed for free.

Of course, with addiction comes the inevitable guilt. Why haven't I booked tickets for the mini-film-festival at Riverside Studios featuring documentaries from Slovakia and Slovenia? (hmm, so they're not the same country…) Why haven't I booked a table at Tamarai, the new pan-Asian-fusion restaurant in Covent Garden? Why haven't I got any bottles in my wine rack? Oh, sorry, that's my other addiction…

The thing is, London is a fantastic place to live and there's loads going on, but free papers that highlight this wonderfulness, well, they're not helping. If you're like me and at the end of the working day, you can barely muster the strength (and the cash) to buy a ready-made meal at Sainsburys, photos and snippets of gossip about bolshie babes and beautiful boys falling out of the Cuckoo Club don't do much for your self-esteem. Look, the pages screech, there's an absolutely fabulous city out there, having the time of its life, without you.

So I read about the nu-cabaret with the transvestite mime in the clubs section knowing I'll never go because I don't have the clothes. And I know I don't have them because I read in the fashion section that fluffy shrugs and silk bustiers are in style and I don't even know what they are. Even if I stay in, I'll feel utterly un-cool because I won't be watching the director's cut DVD of The Ring (Japanese version) or I won't be listening to the alt-punk/emo CD by that band from Wisconsin. Or wherever.

So I am going cold turkey. No more free papers about mad-for-it London telling me to get a life. Even if you print this column, I will not read it. Honestly. Don't even tell me what day it will run. (Next Tuesday is good for me.)

Dreams of Sappho

I keep my wine on the window sill
And drink its chill
When I am ill
Or sick of being Ursula Undress
In a bikini on a beach
With Dr No Means No

Or is it Pussy Galore
Who purrs
And lets Gold finger
Her ambitions?

I want to be a girl in a Cure song
An artistic enigma
With rainy black eyes
Unconcerned with silent phones
Charlotte sometimes.

When it beguiles me
Chablis makes a Goddess
Of my desires
And I am unseduced
By the love of
Mortal men.

Rave

It took a whole one
To make me feel half as good
As the time before
Remember?
You felt it too
Because we smiled across the music
And I fell in love with you
And I fell
I’m falling....

God, I really like this song
I could go on all night long
Here it comes now – this part
Yes ! This and this!
(I wonder what time it is?)

It’s weird how you can have so much fun
Without really talking to anyone
Well, I was for a while
To that boy with the hat
I wonder where he's at?

Maybe I should get some water
My mouth is kinda dry
There’s usually some around
Oh great....oh hi!
(I know her from somewhere ....
Ministry? Meridian?
Maude? Maddie?)
Hey, what’s your name – oops, ok, thanks, bye!

Oh there’s that guy again
He looks like Clark Kent
Jesus, with that raincoat
He really looks quite bent

But I mustn’t be like that
We’re all one and beautiful
I must overcome all negativity
Everybody freeeeeeee -------------- e!

My senses are alert
So my mind can shut down
I’m on ecstasy and in a trance
Why think when you can dance?

The Beautiful Womb is Empty

I have a child-bearing body
But not a child-bearing mind
My hips will take in what men give me
But won’t push out what they leave behind.

Semen remains, sticky and sore
Dribbling down while he melts through the door
If you love him, swallow
If you like him, spit
But don’t be
like Peggy Lee
And ask – is that it?

A blow job takes nine minutes
A baby takes nine months.

And then: mews and cries and pukes and squawks and hollers
and shits and screams and wails and squalls
in the airplane

next to YOU!

And you’re on your way
to Montego Bay
With a new one, Brad
(Who’s great at pasta
And in bed, not bad)

You’re feeling slightly ill
Did you remember to take the Pill?
You know the one
designed to make you
Not a Mum.

Ladies, ladies do not fret
Life as you know it isn’t over yet
Ladies, ladies, try this ruse
When your biological clock goes off
Do as I do...
Just press ‘snooze’.

With Apologies to Dorothy Parker

Speed makes your skin crawl
Smack makes the walls small
Coke makes you paranoid
Acid drops you into the void
E turns your mind to mush
Cannabis is kids’ stuff
Fags make your breath smell
And crack, well, that’s just hell
I’ve done ‘em all
And know what I think?
All in all
You might as well drink.