Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Sunday 7th March 2010. 44 new drawings. Total drawings 221
Cycle off later than hoped for in the direction of Spitalfields to draw in the swanked up flower market. Get to Cannonbury and notice back tyre is flat. Phone emergency services (aka huz). Gentle and Bright Eyes arrive fifteen minutes later, relieve me of the bike but cannot give me a lift as the car is full. I walk on and thankfully the nearest bus stop has a bus to Liverpool Street. Spitalfields market feels too closely defended, conspicuous security and all spaces taken up. Head for the smokers outside the pub opposite. First models are van drivers from Essex. A plop of pidgeon poop falls directly into the beer of one man. They insist that this is illustrated in the drawing. Draw group from County Durham, one of who is doing an MA in journalism and wants to write article. Inside the pub I spot pretty girl with friend and make request. She is Irish. She says that it is somewhat ironic that I am drawing in The Ten Bells because this was Jack the Ripper ‘s Pub and the pub where the girls he murdered used to hang out. I think I am spot on. She refuses to be drawn because she does not agree with prostitution full stop. I am relieved that we can leave it at this, because I am not trying to change minds I am merely canvassing support. I draw masses of keen people many of whom stop their discussions and sit very nicely for me. Among them is a micro banker who has a cousin in her fifties in Australia who is a dominatrix.
Monday, 22 March 2010
Saturday 6th March 2010
International women’s day is coming up on Monday. I decide to go to the march, but am not sure of the route. I ask a taxi driver if he knows of a Women’s March. He says he doesn’t and he hopes ‘there ain’t one. They should bloody well shut up and leave the roads alone!’ I go to Trafalgar Square and find that the marchers are due. The event is called A Million Women Rise. Just before 3.00, the sun comes out and the women arrive from the northeast corner, baring red banners, chanting and whistling. The march is not actually that big, perhaps a few thousand. They barely fill the front of the square. The theme of the speakers and singers is violence against women. I sketch a number of portraits but get a higher number of refusals than I have had before, as many as one out of three. Many are concentrating on the speakers and do not want the disruption. A woman from the group Object speaks about the great victory that has been achieved through the forthcoming changes to the law that will criminalise all men who seek to buy sex on the streets. She says something along the lines that all paid for sex is demeaning, is exploitative, is rape. She is speaks in broad, sweeping terms with great hope for those who will now, as a consequence of these changes, be released from their captivity to better lives. She is followed by a woman who for ten years was a prostitute on the streets as a consequence of drug addiction, who was appallingly treated and demeaned and attacked for being a prostitute. She spoke with gratitude about her rehabilitation and her conviction in work as campaigner focusing on changes to the rapacious content of vicious video games that are commonly played by teen-age boys. These speeches are powerful, there can be no doubt about the dangers of street prostitution and that the most vulnerable are likely to be the most violently abused.
I do not know many sex workers but at least one I know enjoys her work, has done it for years and never encountered any aggression. I have heard via the English Collective of Prostitutes, of women who may or may not like their work, but who clearly wish to continue doing it and be protected by the law rather than be at risk from it. The new laws provide the police with carte blanche to arrest men buying sex whether the women wish it or not. In Sweden where this model of deterrent has been in force for some years, and also in the UK, where it has been trialled, prostitutes report that they are in more danger because they do not have time to assess potential clients, they are forced to jump into cars without discussion and this can mean the difference between an agreed transaction and an attack. The laws governing soliciting and curb crawling have been tightened on two occasions in the last sixty years but this tightening has not proved to be effective; the practices always continue. There is a horrible market place here: between those who need money desperately and those who want to buy sex. Incriminating one side as a means of deterrent is not going to make the otherside’s urgent need for cash go away: it will mean that there will be less cash in circulation, greater pressure to locate it, greater exploitation to get it and resorting to other means such as mugging and burglary. It seems simplistic and highly unlikely that reducing the number of men prepared to pay for sex on the streets will make the women who sell it simply decide to give up the game and go away. Where is there to go to anyway?
I feel distinctly at odds with the crowd in Trafalgar Square and move away to more receptive pastures outside the freezing National Portrait Gallery. I draw some feisty, punky girls who have come down from Bradford to see some bands. One of them had heard the woman from Object at her College: she said she disagreed strongly with this speaker’s argument and like me, had left the square.
I treat myself to tea and cake at the National Portrait Gall and then roam into Soho. IQ has advised me where to go.
Flat 1
I am welcomed by EB into a bright backroom with a kitchen area and a big sofa. She is my age, maybe younger, somewhat rounder and has a very typical, suburban London working class feel. She is the kind of person who I have met at the school gate, the kind who would be a playground helper, a car boot seller, a child minder. The kind of women who would help with fund raising events at the school and be sure to get her kids there on time (more than I can do on a good day!). She was well up for the Drawn Petition and encouraged GB to do it. GB was wearing purple silk undies with black lace and a pink dressing gown. She was tall blond and strong and fulsome, with exaggerated eyeliner and a long curled fringe. She was an Albanian from Greece. She was in good humour, she phoned her boy friend, he was not so sure and cautioned her which seemed reasonable enough. EB said that GB was full of herself (it was obvious she thought she was the cat’s whiskers) and had simply phoned her boy friend to ‘big the drawing thing up’ and affirm her self-importance. I think her assessment was correct. Still, I gave GB the rather good drawing I had done and did another less revealing portrait in profile which she was happy for me to take away. I then draw EB.
A tradesman is welcomed in. ‘What have you got for us tonight? Underwear?’ asks GB. ‘No’ he replies, ‘DVD’s.’ He sat down to show them. Another man came by. He was a tout; his reward, a tenner per customer he brought in. One arrived, but decided not to stay. Another arrived and disappeared into the bedroom. GB marched in but came out after about four minutes, washed her hands and continued filing her toenails.
EB told me that recently there had been there had been problems with the police. They had been raided and forced to close. They had turned to ECP who had helped them fight in court to re-open the premises. She said they had been on a march to the houses of parliament. ‘You remember the march?’ she asked GB. EB told me that even the mighty giant Westminster Council had failed to identify the owner of the building. ‘There are things we do not know’ she said, ‘and other things we have to be careful about’. She had never been on the game herself but had worked in the flat for years and took considerable pride in it. A couple more men arrived but were turned away. She said that they had taken down the posters and removed the neon signs that had always been there, to placate the new PC on the beat. What more could they do? Just before Xmas a gang of black youths had come up. They demanded their money back and threatened to burgled them. EB no longer opens the door to black men. ‘It only takes one bad apple’ she said. The gang had done over a number of flats near by but it was hard for them to report this to the cops.
I asked about prices. ‘£20.00 straight sex, £30.00 sex and blow job, £40.OO sex, blow job and position’. ‘Meaning?’ I ask naively. ‘Well you know, on top or suchlike’ GB replied. She preferred customers who stayed for longer. I asked about the rent on the flat. It was surprisingly low, but there were a lot other substantial expenses that the girl had to meet. My impression was that both EB and GB were positive about their work. No way was GB unhappy, on the contrary she was lively and enjoyed being the centre of things. EB phoned around and gave me the address of another flat near by where I could draw.
Flat 2
Up stairs we sat in a large darkened front sitting room, the maid NB on the sofa, and I on the floor opposite the amazingly lovely BB who also sat on the floor in spotted fleece dressing gown. Nothing about this girl said “tart”. All the sexy, exaggerated underwear in the world could not cheapen her; her make up was understated and pretty. She was quiet, dignified, intelligent and serious. She did not speak much English but she was learning it fast. She was 23 and married. Her husband had come here first to work on a building site and got a serious hand injury and was no longer able to work. She had stayed at school till she was 18 but something had prevented her finishing. She had intended to do nursing but had fainted during a ‘practication’ in the morgue. She did not want to be with dead bodies. She was doing this job for a few months for money to buy a house. ‘My country very beautiful, but no jobs’ she said.
She went to answer the door and then came back into the room; he wants face kissing she said. NB went to door and sent the client away. She came back into the room. ‘No’ she said, ‘No way. Mental problems, you can just tell’. NB was from a Jewish family in the North East. She had been a working girl and now lived up there but came down to London to work week on week off.
Flat 3
I went into a café to get a sandwich and then went to see EB’s good friend IB in another flat nearby. Oh she said, I could have made you toast and she offered coffee straight away. I was tired; the room was warm and cosy albeit grotty. I sat on a small sofa next to a laptop. IB sat in arm chair in the corner and RB, skinny, white skinned women with long black hair hopped up and down, presenting herself in the corridor in the age old style of doorway hookers, coolly looking the punters straight in the eye, quoting her prices and asking for a yes or no as though she didn’t give a damn.
I stayed for over three hours with these two and as I walked back out of Soho to find my bike I realised that I truly had been in a movie. One where a stranger arrives to draw portraits, a strange activity which enables time for reflection and extraordinary tales to be told whilst all the time witnessing at close quarters the nightly transactions of the world’s oldest profession. These two made a fine pair, the one with her great stories, strong views, sharp humour and world wariness. The other, keen, theatrical and happy at the disruption to the long tedium presented by the curious stranger with her intriguing skill.
IB is in her fifties and has done the job of ‘maid’ since her thirties. She had been a prostitute when she was younger, but not like this. “At the high end’ she said, ‘if you know what I mean’.
Her story is a priceless, a one in a billion, jackpot of a tale that could easily be made into a film if it was ever written up. For twelve years, she lived a glorious, luxurious, exotic life in a family at the topmost echelon of international society. It is not the purpose of this blog to disclose or even indicate where, for whom or what: this is IB’s tale to tell to the world when the right person comes, offering the right deal. But I can tell how it came about.
IB made up her mind to be a hooker when she was 12. ‘It was one of those wonderful black and white movies that did it’ she said. She came to London when she was eighteen having had only one boyfriend. She linked up with a friend who was already a hostess and went to work in the nightclubs of Mayfair. Over the next few years, she worked at all the best. There was only one instance when she felt scared and this did not concern sex but a very nasty prank involving a loaded gun. She managed to escape great danger using her wits. The next day the wealthy young perpetrators brought her back to the club and explained that it was just a bit of fun, the bullets weren’t real and she gave them what for. One day a friend suggested they hang out at the Dorchester. She remarked on an ashtray full of stale butts and removed it sharply. A well-dressed man noticed this action. This was her exit from active service as a hooker and her entry into a world of untold wealth, respect and satisfaction. She spoke of many places and people. I could only goggle.
As she was telling me this, she was also commenting on the evening’s goings on. There was not enough business. Half the time she told RB not to bother getting up for the men she was watching coming up the stairs on the security screen. Subjecting a girl to undesirable clients is not in the interest of the maid or the house. The maid needs to keep her girl safe, well and motivated works only for tips. She commented on the sleazy surrounding. It is deliberately kept seedy she said, the customers like it. These men are not coming here for the decoration. I commented on the tacky high-heeled shoes lying on the floor. ‘Oh! You’ve got to wear them’ she said, ‘its expected, house rules. We’re strict. Condoms, no alcohol, no underage …’
Unlike the 2 girls in the other flats, RB is single. She lives in the flat of a friend of hers who had this job before her. Her only companion apart from IB is her mum back home with whom she frequently talks on the phone. Her mum is a washerwoman, her father a builder. She stayed at school till she 18 but was not interested in it. She is 21. She will stay here till she has saved enough to buy a house back home. She was happy to sit for a drawing and appreciated having someone else around. She smoked quite a lot. After each client, she noted the fee down in a little book. She was paid twenty-pound notes mostly. Her clients are expected to clean themselves with a wipe before she enters the backroom; she rarely spent more than five minutes with them before washing herself in the bathroom basin and coming back. Looking at her takings for the day, she got irritated. ‘This job fucks with your head’ she said. ‘I want to do something better. I want to do porn. It is better’. IB said it wasn’t. They could abuse you and there are no condoms in porn.
When RB was seeing her next client, LB commented that RB gets restless and has these turns. ‘She is not earning as much as she hoped. She wants more customers. That’s what she is here for. This job is not for everyone’ she said. ‘You tell those who will be OK. It’s in their eyes. To be a prostitute there is one thing that is very important; you cannot be afraid. If you are frightened of the work, you will not be any good’. RB was not frightened at all. She was bored and who could blame her. Her shifts are three weeks on, one week off. Hours and hours go by with very little activity. But the house sets the rules and the girl has to abide by them.
IB has some property back home. After her wealthy patron died, she lived and married in America. But that was a long time ago and I do not know the exact circumstances which led to her becoming a “maid” in her late 30’s which is early in maid years. She said this work suited her, she liked it. She had the know how to set up a brothel, but she couldn’t be bothered.
IB has awarded me an honorary title. This is LB, which stands for Lady Bollox.
I do not know many sex workers but at least one I know enjoys her work, has done it for years and never encountered any aggression. I have heard via the English Collective of Prostitutes, of women who may or may not like their work, but who clearly wish to continue doing it and be protected by the law rather than be at risk from it. The new laws provide the police with carte blanche to arrest men buying sex whether the women wish it or not. In Sweden where this model of deterrent has been in force for some years, and also in the UK, where it has been trialled, prostitutes report that they are in more danger because they do not have time to assess potential clients, they are forced to jump into cars without discussion and this can mean the difference between an agreed transaction and an attack. The laws governing soliciting and curb crawling have been tightened on two occasions in the last sixty years but this tightening has not proved to be effective; the practices always continue. There is a horrible market place here: between those who need money desperately and those who want to buy sex. Incriminating one side as a means of deterrent is not going to make the otherside’s urgent need for cash go away: it will mean that there will be less cash in circulation, greater pressure to locate it, greater exploitation to get it and resorting to other means such as mugging and burglary. It seems simplistic and highly unlikely that reducing the number of men prepared to pay for sex on the streets will make the women who sell it simply decide to give up the game and go away. Where is there to go to anyway?
I feel distinctly at odds with the crowd in Trafalgar Square and move away to more receptive pastures outside the freezing National Portrait Gallery. I draw some feisty, punky girls who have come down from Bradford to see some bands. One of them had heard the woman from Object at her College: she said she disagreed strongly with this speaker’s argument and like me, had left the square.
I treat myself to tea and cake at the National Portrait Gall and then roam into Soho. IQ has advised me where to go.
Flat 1
I am welcomed by EB into a bright backroom with a kitchen area and a big sofa. She is my age, maybe younger, somewhat rounder and has a very typical, suburban London working class feel. She is the kind of person who I have met at the school gate, the kind who would be a playground helper, a car boot seller, a child minder. The kind of women who would help with fund raising events at the school and be sure to get her kids there on time (more than I can do on a good day!). She was well up for the Drawn Petition and encouraged GB to do it. GB was wearing purple silk undies with black lace and a pink dressing gown. She was tall blond and strong and fulsome, with exaggerated eyeliner and a long curled fringe. She was an Albanian from Greece. She was in good humour, she phoned her boy friend, he was not so sure and cautioned her which seemed reasonable enough. EB said that GB was full of herself (it was obvious she thought she was the cat’s whiskers) and had simply phoned her boy friend to ‘big the drawing thing up’ and affirm her self-importance. I think her assessment was correct. Still, I gave GB the rather good drawing I had done and did another less revealing portrait in profile which she was happy for me to take away. I then draw EB.
A tradesman is welcomed in. ‘What have you got for us tonight? Underwear?’ asks GB. ‘No’ he replies, ‘DVD’s.’ He sat down to show them. Another man came by. He was a tout; his reward, a tenner per customer he brought in. One arrived, but decided not to stay. Another arrived and disappeared into the bedroom. GB marched in but came out after about four minutes, washed her hands and continued filing her toenails.
EB told me that recently there had been there had been problems with the police. They had been raided and forced to close. They had turned to ECP who had helped them fight in court to re-open the premises. She said they had been on a march to the houses of parliament. ‘You remember the march?’ she asked GB. EB told me that even the mighty giant Westminster Council had failed to identify the owner of the building. ‘There are things we do not know’ she said, ‘and other things we have to be careful about’. She had never been on the game herself but had worked in the flat for years and took considerable pride in it. A couple more men arrived but were turned away. She said that they had taken down the posters and removed the neon signs that had always been there, to placate the new PC on the beat. What more could they do? Just before Xmas a gang of black youths had come up. They demanded their money back and threatened to burgled them. EB no longer opens the door to black men. ‘It only takes one bad apple’ she said. The gang had done over a number of flats near by but it was hard for them to report this to the cops.
I asked about prices. ‘£20.00 straight sex, £30.00 sex and blow job, £40.OO sex, blow job and position’. ‘Meaning?’ I ask naively. ‘Well you know, on top or suchlike’ GB replied. She preferred customers who stayed for longer. I asked about the rent on the flat. It was surprisingly low, but there were a lot other substantial expenses that the girl had to meet. My impression was that both EB and GB were positive about their work. No way was GB unhappy, on the contrary she was lively and enjoyed being the centre of things. EB phoned around and gave me the address of another flat near by where I could draw.
Flat 2
Up stairs we sat in a large darkened front sitting room, the maid NB on the sofa, and I on the floor opposite the amazingly lovely BB who also sat on the floor in spotted fleece dressing gown. Nothing about this girl said “tart”. All the sexy, exaggerated underwear in the world could not cheapen her; her make up was understated and pretty. She was quiet, dignified, intelligent and serious. She did not speak much English but she was learning it fast. She was 23 and married. Her husband had come here first to work on a building site and got a serious hand injury and was no longer able to work. She had stayed at school till she was 18 but something had prevented her finishing. She had intended to do nursing but had fainted during a ‘practication’ in the morgue. She did not want to be with dead bodies. She was doing this job for a few months for money to buy a house. ‘My country very beautiful, but no jobs’ she said.
She went to answer the door and then came back into the room; he wants face kissing she said. NB went to door and sent the client away. She came back into the room. ‘No’ she said, ‘No way. Mental problems, you can just tell’. NB was from a Jewish family in the North East. She had been a working girl and now lived up there but came down to London to work week on week off.
Flat 3
I went into a café to get a sandwich and then went to see EB’s good friend IB in another flat nearby. Oh she said, I could have made you toast and she offered coffee straight away. I was tired; the room was warm and cosy albeit grotty. I sat on a small sofa next to a laptop. IB sat in arm chair in the corner and RB, skinny, white skinned women with long black hair hopped up and down, presenting herself in the corridor in the age old style of doorway hookers, coolly looking the punters straight in the eye, quoting her prices and asking for a yes or no as though she didn’t give a damn.
I stayed for over three hours with these two and as I walked back out of Soho to find my bike I realised that I truly had been in a movie. One where a stranger arrives to draw portraits, a strange activity which enables time for reflection and extraordinary tales to be told whilst all the time witnessing at close quarters the nightly transactions of the world’s oldest profession. These two made a fine pair, the one with her great stories, strong views, sharp humour and world wariness. The other, keen, theatrical and happy at the disruption to the long tedium presented by the curious stranger with her intriguing skill.
IB is in her fifties and has done the job of ‘maid’ since her thirties. She had been a prostitute when she was younger, but not like this. “At the high end’ she said, ‘if you know what I mean’.
Her story is a priceless, a one in a billion, jackpot of a tale that could easily be made into a film if it was ever written up. For twelve years, she lived a glorious, luxurious, exotic life in a family at the topmost echelon of international society. It is not the purpose of this blog to disclose or even indicate where, for whom or what: this is IB’s tale to tell to the world when the right person comes, offering the right deal. But I can tell how it came about.
IB made up her mind to be a hooker when she was 12. ‘It was one of those wonderful black and white movies that did it’ she said. She came to London when she was eighteen having had only one boyfriend. She linked up with a friend who was already a hostess and went to work in the nightclubs of Mayfair. Over the next few years, she worked at all the best. There was only one instance when she felt scared and this did not concern sex but a very nasty prank involving a loaded gun. She managed to escape great danger using her wits. The next day the wealthy young perpetrators brought her back to the club and explained that it was just a bit of fun, the bullets weren’t real and she gave them what for. One day a friend suggested they hang out at the Dorchester. She remarked on an ashtray full of stale butts and removed it sharply. A well-dressed man noticed this action. This was her exit from active service as a hooker and her entry into a world of untold wealth, respect and satisfaction. She spoke of many places and people. I could only goggle.
As she was telling me this, she was also commenting on the evening’s goings on. There was not enough business. Half the time she told RB not to bother getting up for the men she was watching coming up the stairs on the security screen. Subjecting a girl to undesirable clients is not in the interest of the maid or the house. The maid needs to keep her girl safe, well and motivated works only for tips. She commented on the sleazy surrounding. It is deliberately kept seedy she said, the customers like it. These men are not coming here for the decoration. I commented on the tacky high-heeled shoes lying on the floor. ‘Oh! You’ve got to wear them’ she said, ‘its expected, house rules. We’re strict. Condoms, no alcohol, no underage …’
Unlike the 2 girls in the other flats, RB is single. She lives in the flat of a friend of hers who had this job before her. Her only companion apart from IB is her mum back home with whom she frequently talks on the phone. Her mum is a washerwoman, her father a builder. She stayed at school till she 18 but was not interested in it. She is 21. She will stay here till she has saved enough to buy a house back home. She was happy to sit for a drawing and appreciated having someone else around. She smoked quite a lot. After each client, she noted the fee down in a little book. She was paid twenty-pound notes mostly. Her clients are expected to clean themselves with a wipe before she enters the backroom; she rarely spent more than five minutes with them before washing herself in the bathroom basin and coming back. Looking at her takings for the day, she got irritated. ‘This job fucks with your head’ she said. ‘I want to do something better. I want to do porn. It is better’. IB said it wasn’t. They could abuse you and there are no condoms in porn.
When RB was seeing her next client, LB commented that RB gets restless and has these turns. ‘She is not earning as much as she hoped. She wants more customers. That’s what she is here for. This job is not for everyone’ she said. ‘You tell those who will be OK. It’s in their eyes. To be a prostitute there is one thing that is very important; you cannot be afraid. If you are frightened of the work, you will not be any good’. RB was not frightened at all. She was bored and who could blame her. Her shifts are three weeks on, one week off. Hours and hours go by with very little activity. But the house sets the rules and the girl has to abide by them.
IB has some property back home. After her wealthy patron died, she lived and married in America. But that was a long time ago and I do not know the exact circumstances which led to her becoming a “maid” in her late 30’s which is early in maid years. She said this work suited her, she liked it. She had the know how to set up a brothel, but she couldn’t be bothered.
IB has awarded me an honorary title. This is LB, which stands for Lady Bollox.
Tuesday, 9 March 2010
Friday 5th March 2010
Spend all day trying to get away to draw. Phone rings again. Gorgeous is feeling faint and the school says I have to collect her. I am suspicious and deliver her some paracetamol.
Eventually I get to Shepherd Market meeting with MW to discuss the show. The gentlemen artist who is currently exhibiting in the gallery and has shown there on three separate occasions says there has been interest in my fliers and people agree with him that interesting as the petition is, it should be displayed in the back room as it is a discrete back room subject which may not be well received in this neighbourhood. He said, “This really isn’t a red light district anymore, its very respectable.” MW and I weigh the pros and cons of his argument. He has a point, and I may have shot myself in the foot in terms of gaining commissions for family portraiture but there is no changing direction now. I resolve to give the 2 best walls of the gallery and the window to The Drawn Petition.
After, I draw an Algerian restaurant manager and two of his staff and then a couple who are romancing under a tree in the courtyard. They offer me Champaign. They laugh when I tell them about the artist who said this was not a red light district, and they direct me to the ads in the phone box. I draw them together, they work for a law firm and say they will invite people, but I cannot get a card from them. I tell them that I had the intention of going into the walk-ups but it is too late now. They say do it, but do not show your letter.
The entrances to the walk-ups have red lights as do the windows of the flats but no sign at all that is visible from the door way. In the daytime it is easy to miss them. Further up the stairs are hand written posters for ‘lovely new girl’ etc ‘NO Rush’ is emphasized. There are also more coloured lights. It is truly seedy; cheap and neglected.
I show my letter with its Red Umbrella logo and the flier. I get:
1. An interested reception at the first door opened by late thirties Russian lady who speaks good English and takes the material for consideration.
2. Recognition from the next old lady who says that she has a Thai girl who has a leaflet and wants be drawn, come back during the week.
3. Head shaking from an old croan who acts as if she does not speak English.
4. Suspicion from an elderly Caribbean lady who takes the papers form behind the security gate.
5. A lovely warm welcome into the sitting room by a soft, well-spoken English woman with a kind smiling face.
Shortly after, she bustles me into a small kitchen/store room and sends in EP. EP is 28, she comes from a small village in Hispanic Europe and lives in a small town in Scotland where she works in a nail bar. She has come down to help out a friend who has had to take time off. She sits as any other sitter would on a pile of boxes and I crouch against the sink. The main thing is that like so many of my sitters, she has not been drawn before and is curious and happy to oblige. The drawing is very sweet and certainly reminiscent of 19th century French drawing, but EP does not look wan or pitiful. Come to think of it, neither do a lot of the girls captured by artists of 19th century Parisian nightlife.
After, the Maid comes in for a chat. We agree she should be called IQ. She speaks in a hushed confiding tone. She is a pensioner from West London; She has never been a prostitute and comes in to earn a little cash to feed her five rescued cats. She says the job keeps her in Flea powder. I have now met 10 maids. I now know enough older, poor working class women to say that none of them are getting rich on the back of immoral earnings. She tells me that last year, the police put up denigrating posters in the square referring to the presence of sex workers. Then, when it was not her shift, there was a raid. It was brutal, and terrified the girl and the Maid. Their surveillance cameras on the stairs were smashed and money removed. When this was raised in court, the police denied it. Nothing was found to incriminate the girl or the Maid.
We thanked each other. I went off to the pub and the sultry Latvian barman asked why I had not come earlier. He had distributed the flyers at the bus stop; perhaps this is how the Thai girl got it. My fur hat draws much attention from men. And I easily got my first sitter, a handsome young property developer from Berkley Square. He decided to bare his chest and undid his shirt. Cool. I was starving and went to get a sandwich. When I got back, I noticed that he had changed his shirt. It was now blue. It turned out this was a twin brother. When they were 14, they had to go and stay for an entire fortnight with the artist who painted portraits their entire family. They said it was absolutely grim.
I caught the eye of an attractive black lady at the bar. She works in a private sports club but is studying reporting, she asks if she can do an article on the show. This is two good things that RL bar man has brought to me.
I cycle onto Soho. Its horrible and daunting. Go into a book shop and look at art house porn by photographers such as Rankin. Prefer a book from thirties Paris. The pubic hair looks quaint. Go home.
Eventually I get to Shepherd Market meeting with MW to discuss the show. The gentlemen artist who is currently exhibiting in the gallery and has shown there on three separate occasions says there has been interest in my fliers and people agree with him that interesting as the petition is, it should be displayed in the back room as it is a discrete back room subject which may not be well received in this neighbourhood. He said, “This really isn’t a red light district anymore, its very respectable.” MW and I weigh the pros and cons of his argument. He has a point, and I may have shot myself in the foot in terms of gaining commissions for family portraiture but there is no changing direction now. I resolve to give the 2 best walls of the gallery and the window to The Drawn Petition.
After, I draw an Algerian restaurant manager and two of his staff and then a couple who are romancing under a tree in the courtyard. They offer me Champaign. They laugh when I tell them about the artist who said this was not a red light district, and they direct me to the ads in the phone box. I draw them together, they work for a law firm and say they will invite people, but I cannot get a card from them. I tell them that I had the intention of going into the walk-ups but it is too late now. They say do it, but do not show your letter.
The entrances to the walk-ups have red lights as do the windows of the flats but no sign at all that is visible from the door way. In the daytime it is easy to miss them. Further up the stairs are hand written posters for ‘lovely new girl’ etc ‘NO Rush’ is emphasized. There are also more coloured lights. It is truly seedy; cheap and neglected.
I show my letter with its Red Umbrella logo and the flier. I get:
1. An interested reception at the first door opened by late thirties Russian lady who speaks good English and takes the material for consideration.
2. Recognition from the next old lady who says that she has a Thai girl who has a leaflet and wants be drawn, come back during the week.
3. Head shaking from an old croan who acts as if she does not speak English.
4. Suspicion from an elderly Caribbean lady who takes the papers form behind the security gate.
5. A lovely warm welcome into the sitting room by a soft, well-spoken English woman with a kind smiling face.
Shortly after, she bustles me into a small kitchen/store room and sends in EP. EP is 28, she comes from a small village in Hispanic Europe and lives in a small town in Scotland where she works in a nail bar. She has come down to help out a friend who has had to take time off. She sits as any other sitter would on a pile of boxes and I crouch against the sink. The main thing is that like so many of my sitters, she has not been drawn before and is curious and happy to oblige. The drawing is very sweet and certainly reminiscent of 19th century French drawing, but EP does not look wan or pitiful. Come to think of it, neither do a lot of the girls captured by artists of 19th century Parisian nightlife.
After, the Maid comes in for a chat. We agree she should be called IQ. She speaks in a hushed confiding tone. She is a pensioner from West London; She has never been a prostitute and comes in to earn a little cash to feed her five rescued cats. She says the job keeps her in Flea powder. I have now met 10 maids. I now know enough older, poor working class women to say that none of them are getting rich on the back of immoral earnings. She tells me that last year, the police put up denigrating posters in the square referring to the presence of sex workers. Then, when it was not her shift, there was a raid. It was brutal, and terrified the girl and the Maid. Their surveillance cameras on the stairs were smashed and money removed. When this was raised in court, the police denied it. Nothing was found to incriminate the girl or the Maid.
We thanked each other. I went off to the pub and the sultry Latvian barman asked why I had not come earlier. He had distributed the flyers at the bus stop; perhaps this is how the Thai girl got it. My fur hat draws much attention from men. And I easily got my first sitter, a handsome young property developer from Berkley Square. He decided to bare his chest and undid his shirt. Cool. I was starving and went to get a sandwich. When I got back, I noticed that he had changed his shirt. It was now blue. It turned out this was a twin brother. When they were 14, they had to go and stay for an entire fortnight with the artist who painted portraits their entire family. They said it was absolutely grim.
I caught the eye of an attractive black lady at the bar. She works in a private sports club but is studying reporting, she asks if she can do an article on the show. This is two good things that RL bar man has brought to me.
I cycle onto Soho. Its horrible and daunting. Go into a book shop and look at art house porn by photographers such as Rankin. Prefer a book from thirties Paris. The pubic hair looks quaint. Go home.
Wednesday 3rd March 2010. 25 new drawings!
In Shepherd Market, I start to visit shops and the response is quite good. The Latvian/Russian barman in one of the pub models quite seriously for me. He gives me a drink and takes flyers. I look at the entrance to a walk up. I do not have the time to go in and am waiting to find out whether the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP) will read my letter of introduction and endorse The Drawn Petition. But this is going to take time. Every member of the Collective has to agree.
Westminster Council attempted to evict the sex workers of Shepherd Market on the grounds that they were using residential property for commercial purposes. The ECP helped the sex workers of Shepherd Market defend their right to remain in the flats in a Court case. The Judge found in their favour, there had been no change of use in ten years. Talk of David and Goliath. It is this story that eventually led to the Drawn Petition.
So I do not go into the walk ups, but rush north, collect Bright Eyes from playcentre, throw dinner his way and rush off to a rally outside Holloway Prison in support of the Yarlswood hunger-strikers which the ECP lady told me about. It’s bloody freezing. 25 drawings done in about and hour and a half.
Westminster Council attempted to evict the sex workers of Shepherd Market on the grounds that they were using residential property for commercial purposes. The ECP helped the sex workers of Shepherd Market defend their right to remain in the flats in a Court case. The Judge found in their favour, there had been no change of use in ten years. Talk of David and Goliath. It is this story that eventually led to the Drawn Petition.
So I do not go into the walk ups, but rush north, collect Bright Eyes from playcentre, throw dinner his way and rush off to a rally outside Holloway Prison in support of the Yarlswood hunger-strikers which the ECP lady told me about. It’s bloody freezing. 25 drawings done in about and hour and a half.
Tuesday 2nd March 2010
I have to go the hospital to get some medicine. I tell the nurse and the consultant about The Drawn Petition. He says I can come and draw the whole department next week, she says she will tell a journalist she is meeting. As I had been to the ECP the day before, I say that so many involved are simply mums, she cuts across me. “Nurses! Nurses.” She repeats “And students.”
“Now take this wipe and clean from front to back, then part your labia and urinate mid stream into the bottle.”
“Now take this wipe and clean from front to back, then part your labia and urinate mid stream into the bottle.”
Sunday 28th February 2010
Pump tyres, back wheel valve is jammed and all the air squirts out. Catch a lift with RS down to Camden and walk up High Street toward the Market. It’s grim, why do people want to come here? The only people standing around are community cops, everyone else is on the move. Case the Market, developers have wrecked it, there are almost no Londoners to speak of. I aim to draw UK residents only, legal or otherwise, this is a petition to the UK Government. So draw stallholders, all men and they lead me one to another, they are very surprised but modestly amenable. One says he occasionally goes to prostitutes and he is always open about this. He also said that he doesn’t particularly like it, it’s just a thing he does. He went to Amsterdam and thought it was a good set up. He is French, the kind of person you could happily have a thoughtful conversation with. His neighbour was a burley Scot, I love the drawing of him, it is very delicate. “Shepherd Market he said, Ah yes, I used to go there meself. Thirty years ago, half the houses parliament were down there of a night.’
Camden Market has become a shit hole and I doubt I’ll go again. Gorgeous (my daughter) has moved on to more interesting pastures. I am freezing and hungry. On the main road draw a female banker (cooperative, she says defensively) and her friend. Then go into The Oxford Arms. It is full of blokes. Most are watching the match, I go up to a guy sitting alone who is not watching TV and ask him if I can…I am disrupted by a voice from behind the bar, a woman, perhaps 28. There is no broaching her ‘Not in my pub you don’t’ she says. The pub opposite is nicer, but I cannot see whom to ask.
On the next Corner in an anomalous mock timber framed building surrounded by ominous modernism is ‘The Hobgoblin.’ This is a haunt of bikers and Goths, affiliates of the dark. It’s like stepping into the ‘Leaky Cauldron’. Real London drains away. I go to the bar to ask the bar maid whether I may draw. She wears black. Her hair is very dark, her skin, very pale. She has elfin eyes, arched brows and full, agile lips. She is from Transylvania! She says many girls from Hungary come over to work as prostitutes, she doesn’t know any personally but it is not unusual.
I join a girl at a table, she wears black, she has come down from County Durham in search of work. She is perhaps 19. She just wants to get some work. She is a good worker. She has GCSE’s including English and Maths and went to college but could not afford to continue. An Arab man has let her a room in his house at a reduced rent and she will help his son with English in return. She was attacked by a group of men back home, simply for being different: wearing black clothes and dark make up. It led to depression. Her mother tried to sabotage her flight south out of concern; she knows no one in London. She was at least in a warm and friendly place in this pub. The guy opposite her was cool to be drawn for the cause and I draw him asleep.
I return to the bar and talk with an even more striking bar maid. She has a strong, confident presence. She agrees to be drawn and tells me that she had a friend who worked in a Soho brothel for two years from the age of fourteen (she looked older). I ask whether this friend was an addict. “Yeah” she said. “An addict to Christian Dior, not drugs.” She said she had been very concerned for this friend and therefore accompanied her when she worked on the streets. They had been beaten up; it was scary. The experience had made her a racist for a while. She had been caught by the police holding her friends bag with all the condoms and the lube, she was terrified, she spoke truthfully to the police giving her name and address, but her friend had lied and she felt her liberty was in the balance. The police decided to let them off. She distanced herself from this friend and moved on in her life. She was self assured and clear about the issues. She said she would not do sex work herself for emotional reasons; boundaries, it was not for her.
Back at the bar I ask another man who turns out to be a singer songwriter whether I can draw him. He says he used to be in the Liberal camp on the issue but following a programme on Women’s Hour last November, he changed his mind. However, he agreed to be drawn because what I am doing is good, opening up the subject for debate through art. He cautioned me that as an artist I should stand back and remain a detached observer. My friend EW said the same in an earlier discussion. But I am not only an artist. I am a wife, a parent and live in society, all of which compels me to take a stand. Is it the role of art or artists to simply observe from a position on a fence?
Next I draw a strongly built man (in black) with long gingery hair and an imposing beard. He is wearing mirrored glasses that keep the light out his eyes. He did not like light. I drew him in charcoal on a larger piece of paper, when he took off his glasses, I suddenly realized he was ten years younger, not ten years older than me!
The final couple invite me to their table and ask how much I charge to draw a couple together? He is wearing black. She is wearing some green. She is a designer and has worked for a number of sex-workers, including a French lady (size 14) who now in her mid forties sees her six former clients (one for each day of the week) as friends as they too are older now. She lives in Mayfair where one of them bought her a four-story house.
Camden Market has become a shit hole and I doubt I’ll go again. Gorgeous (my daughter) has moved on to more interesting pastures. I am freezing and hungry. On the main road draw a female banker (cooperative, she says defensively) and her friend. Then go into The Oxford Arms. It is full of blokes. Most are watching the match, I go up to a guy sitting alone who is not watching TV and ask him if I can…I am disrupted by a voice from behind the bar, a woman, perhaps 28. There is no broaching her ‘Not in my pub you don’t’ she says. The pub opposite is nicer, but I cannot see whom to ask.
On the next Corner in an anomalous mock timber framed building surrounded by ominous modernism is ‘The Hobgoblin.’ This is a haunt of bikers and Goths, affiliates of the dark. It’s like stepping into the ‘Leaky Cauldron’. Real London drains away. I go to the bar to ask the bar maid whether I may draw. She wears black. Her hair is very dark, her skin, very pale. She has elfin eyes, arched brows and full, agile lips. She is from Transylvania! She says many girls from Hungary come over to work as prostitutes, she doesn’t know any personally but it is not unusual.
I join a girl at a table, she wears black, she has come down from County Durham in search of work. She is perhaps 19. She just wants to get some work. She is a good worker. She has GCSE’s including English and Maths and went to college but could not afford to continue. An Arab man has let her a room in his house at a reduced rent and she will help his son with English in return. She was attacked by a group of men back home, simply for being different: wearing black clothes and dark make up. It led to depression. Her mother tried to sabotage her flight south out of concern; she knows no one in London. She was at least in a warm and friendly place in this pub. The guy opposite her was cool to be drawn for the cause and I draw him asleep.
I return to the bar and talk with an even more striking bar maid. She has a strong, confident presence. She agrees to be drawn and tells me that she had a friend who worked in a Soho brothel for two years from the age of fourteen (she looked older). I ask whether this friend was an addict. “Yeah” she said. “An addict to Christian Dior, not drugs.” She said she had been very concerned for this friend and therefore accompanied her when she worked on the streets. They had been beaten up; it was scary. The experience had made her a racist for a while. She had been caught by the police holding her friends bag with all the condoms and the lube, she was terrified, she spoke truthfully to the police giving her name and address, but her friend had lied and she felt her liberty was in the balance. The police decided to let them off. She distanced herself from this friend and moved on in her life. She was self assured and clear about the issues. She said she would not do sex work herself for emotional reasons; boundaries, it was not for her.
Back at the bar I ask another man who turns out to be a singer songwriter whether I can draw him. He says he used to be in the Liberal camp on the issue but following a programme on Women’s Hour last November, he changed his mind. However, he agreed to be drawn because what I am doing is good, opening up the subject for debate through art. He cautioned me that as an artist I should stand back and remain a detached observer. My friend EW said the same in an earlier discussion. But I am not only an artist. I am a wife, a parent and live in society, all of which compels me to take a stand. Is it the role of art or artists to simply observe from a position on a fence?
Next I draw a strongly built man (in black) with long gingery hair and an imposing beard. He is wearing mirrored glasses that keep the light out his eyes. He did not like light. I drew him in charcoal on a larger piece of paper, when he took off his glasses, I suddenly realized he was ten years younger, not ten years older than me!
The final couple invite me to their table and ask how much I charge to draw a couple together? He is wearing black. She is wearing some green. She is a designer and has worked for a number of sex-workers, including a French lady (size 14) who now in her mid forties sees her six former clients (one for each day of the week) as friends as they too are older now. She lives in Mayfair where one of them bought her a four-story house.
Sat 27 February 2010
We are invited for dinner. There is a HoD from a London college, I tell him about the project and he seems to concur with the decriminalization debate: safety, health etc. But then he tightens, he says he would be against anything that would further normalise the idea of prostitution as something acceptable. He would not want his daughter to do it and anything that would make it easier for girls to go into sex work was to be avoided. I felt as though I was talking in appropriately in polite society, but I am over sensitive. I thought it odd that a senior university teacher did know how common it already is for students to do sex work on the side and given this, was surprised that his primary concern was for prevention rather than safety.
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