I have never forgotten the look of shock on the face of a very straight-laced and somewhat sheltered friend of mine when he discovered that the attractive, charming and well-educated women he found me having a drink with were prostitutes (not for lack of a better word or even euphemism).
I have always had friends from the sex work industry and at some point spent so much time in their company. A pimp drinking in the same bar and managing his business took me for a rival and was beginning to get aggressive. In fact, had one of my friends not explained the situation to him, who knows how it might have ended?
Anyway, my friend had an image in his head, created mainly by cartoons and cops and robbers TV shows, I suppose, of a ‘commercial sex worker’ looking a certain way.
To his mind, as he explained later on, ‘a woman of the night’ was supposed to wear a short skimpy skirt, fishnet stockings, red high-heeled shoes, cheap perfume and more make-up than was healthy or wise for that matter.
Instead he found a very pleasant, attractive woman of the sort he claimed ‘I would take home to meet my mother.’ By that I guess he meant she didn’t have a tattoo on her forehead proclaiming she was, in the words of Rudyard Kipling, ‘a member of the oldest profession.’
I sat recalling the look on my sheltered friend’s face recently when being regaled with a story of how the financial controller of a big firm had to figure out how to pass off an invoice from an escort service requesting payment for services rendered.
Apparently, a group of the company’s leading clients had been treated to an all-expenses-paid weekend at a very flashy hotel and during their stay, had decided to sample the delights of the local nightlife.
A hotel concierge (I’m told they always know where the action is) had been prevailed upon to make a call to an establishment that some might call ‘a house of ill-repute’ and organise for entertainment to be sent over to the hotel.
When the honoured guests left on the Sunday morning, the hotel, which by now had been invoiced by the escort service for the ‘entertainment’ felt it was appropriate to pass on the cost to the client and eventually on the Monday morning the financial controller of the host company found himself looking at a bill for ‘services rendered.’
He eventually managed to pass it off as some sort of legitimate business expense, entertainment or some such, but still had to explain it to his company directors, some of whom took a very dim view of shenanigans with ‘call girls’.
While doing a little research on the matter of prostitution or harlotry as a former colleague might have said, I found that in South Africa as in Kenya, prostitution is illegal but is widespread and practiced openly.
I also came across a website for an escort service founded here in SA by a European migrant (some prefer to call them expatriates) explaining how the service works.
So for instanced there was advice on payment; “I prefer my clients to handle all financial matters directly with the agency either by bank transfer or credit card (+4 per cent). If you still decide to pay cash, please bring the agreed sum to the meeting inside an unsealed envelope.”
The escorts from this business were referred to as ‘social companions’ and the business owner (or Madam as others might say) advised clients further to: ‘Please hand over the remaining amount agreed upon to your companion at the beginning of the date.
In order to avoid misunderstandings, your companion will take a quick look inside the envelope once it has been handed over. This is merely a formality, and after this, nothing stands in the way of a memorable time!’
I was impressed by the effort taken on the SA website to appear classy instead of sleazy and when I decided to research escort services ion Kenya I found them to be quite the opposite, appearing more like the sort of women my straight-laced friend had in mind at the beginning of this story.
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