It was in October 1997 that I first visited a prostitute. It was also in October 1997 that I should have realized too that my six and a bit year relationship with Sharon was never going to work.
Should
have realized...
It had been my day off and there had been no chores to do - just me, my thoughts, my fantasies, and my lust.
That August I had turned forty and with it a feeling, a dread, that time was running out. I had been dumped twice by Sharon during the summer but on each occasion, she had asked me back and because I loved her, was weak, I had taken her back. Yet my loyalty and devotion had seemed to mean nothing to her. In this miserable existence my only consolation was hedonism: the gratification of the senses.
Or was that, now reflecting back, just an excuse for my immoral behaviour. And is it not necessary to believe one's own lies all the more fully in order to deceive others more skilfully?
Perhaps another excuse would have been to say that I was in the grip of a mid-life crisis, but the truth of the matter was that my whole fucking life had so far been a crisis: childhood anxiety merely morphing into teenage angst.
In the lounge of the town cottage, I alone rented and occupied, I had picked up a copy of the
Daily Sport
which a punter had given me from the day before and I had causally left on the arm of my settee. I had flicked through it before getting to the 'massage' ads near the back with one advertisement in particular catching my eye - a blonde 21-year-old with a tanned 36-24-36 figure in Bournemouth.
Shaking, I had then rung the number.
A woman had answered to inform me that 'Tanya' was working and that there was no need to book. She had also given me the address.
I knew that what I was about to do, possibly about to do, was illicit yet it made the idea even more exciting.
I had then worried that there was a chance that I would get caught, exposed, perhaps be prosecuted and be publicly shamed; I had openly and frequently, mouthed off moral platitudes, and had condemned infidelity. I was in a dilemma.
I had then taken a shiny two pence piece out of my pocket -- tails I go, heads I don't. I had flicked the coin spinning up into the air before catching it with my right hand and slapping it down upon the back of my left hand. Gingerly I had then uncovered it - tails!
Without further ado I had caught a bus to Yarmouth which had connected with a ferry to Lymington, a train to Brockenhurst and then one to Bournemouth.
On the train to Bournemouth a group of school children had boarded and in a moment of paranoid panic I had imagined them pointing me out and singing: 'We know where you're going, we know where you're going!'
I'd managed to get a grip of myself whilst every second I neared my dirty destination and sordid liaison whilst on another level my excitement began to reach such a peak that I could feel my heart pounding.
Another wave of anxiety: What if I suffer a heart attack?