Happy Monday *said in a not so happy monday voice*. I’ll be better after tea.
Hope your week is a good one and you win the lottery at least once.
Here’s yesterday’s Sunday Times Column. Hope it makes up for this being a Monday and all.
SEX SELLS – Paige Nick
I get a lot of crazy mail from this column. I think that’s what happens when you talk
about sex too much (or too little, depending how the letter-writer feels about sex).
Last week a regular reader, who is also a regular writer-in asked me how many emails makes one a stalker? I reckon once you hit double figures to a columnist you’ve never met, you need to seriously consider stepping away from the keyboard, relooking your friendship circle and medicating.
Anyway this lovely reader, who with only three emails is not a stalker yet, found an advertisement in the classified section of his local newspaper that made him think of me. So he tore it out, scanned it in and emailed it to me.
It reads: ‘076 0XX XXXX Paige – beautiful elegant white lady for upmarket gents. Pvt and shower.’
He wants to know if it’s me? Well I guess I am in advertising, which isn’t all that far from prostitution. He thought I might like to print the clipping out, frame it and put it on my desk. I wondered if he meant as inspiration, i.e. stay in school and don’t do drugs or you could end up like this. Or as aspiration, i.e. those who can, do; and those who can’t just write about it. Maybe if I practice, put in the hours, do my stretches and try really hard, one day I’ll actually get to do it instead of just writing about it.
Paige is a relatively unusual name, it could be me. Although I’d hardly call myself beautiful, maybe more ‘homely’, ‘characterful’ or ‘obviously intelligent’. And if elegant refers to the way I manage to spill anything that comes within five centimeters of my mouth down my front, then yes, I am very elegant quite often. Also I do shower.
Although if that was me in the ad, would I really be here doing this job too? Possibly, because I probably wouldn’t be very good at prostitution, so I’d have to moonlight somewhere to pay the rent. Ha, moonlighting, that’s funny, surely prostitutes looking to bolster their income daylight instead?
I’ve heard those girls can earn a fortune. Exotic dancers in particular can see thousands in a single night, tax free. That’s incredible! The most I make these nights is a cup of tea. Two if I’m feeling risqué, and don’t mind getting up to go to the loo a couple of times during the night.
We laugh and judge, but I seriously don’t think people give working girls enough credit. It must take major balls and a great sense of humour to be a prostitute, I’ve dated online, I’ve seen what their clients look like. You couldn’t pay me to sleep with most of them, although admittedly, some did slip through the net, I blame whisky.
Besides being brave and fearless, I suspect you also have to be smart, and relatively pretty too, which isn’t as easy as it looks. Hair removal alone must take up forty percent of their time. And waxing isn’t the most pleasant thing you can do with your pants off. I know very few women who manage to keep up with hair removal all year round, we’re all just so happy to see winter, so we don’t have to shave our legs for a couple of weeks. These women don’t have that kind of luxury. At least in the eighties they didn’t have to worry so much about their bush, but these days with Brazilians and Hollywoods being all the rage, the upkeep must be grueling.
So I was going to leave this other more beautiful, elegant, brave and fearless Paige’s real phone number in this column, I reckoned if she’s got the guts, patience, high threshold for pain and wherewithal to do what she does for a living, she deserves all the free advertising she can get. But then I thought I may consider moonlighting one day after all, and I could do without the competition.