Part 2 of the prostitute post...

I did some market research last week, not for myself, but more like the kind where you get paid hard cash to talk about washing powders, socks and cat food. On this occasion, the client was a well-known brand of contraceptive and the discussion, predictably, my sex life. By some kind of divine intervention, serendipity or perhaps just sheer co-incidence, the venue was the exact same one that I have booked on several occasions to interview people about virginity loss. Same room, same table, same chair, different interviewee – me.

All I had to do was to sit and answer questions about love, relationships, intimacy and ‘female empowerment’. Now, perhaps you think I am going to tell you about how hard it was, how tormented I felt by the turning of the tables and about my fresh resolution never to interview anyone about the vagaries of their intimate lives again. Think again. Like many of my subjects, I found the experience strangely pleasing. The mental equivalent of tidying cupboards, it felt much like putting my house in order and an altogether not entirely unpleasant way to spend a couple of hours. The cash helped push things along too.

It did make me cast my mind back to someone I interviewed in this very room, almost a year ago to the day. It was 90 degrees outside in the urban jungle, (I know, I know), and the heat rose to fill this Soho attic with a wet, sweaty intensity the like of which I have not experienced before or since. Cold drinks were drunk, surplus to requirement clothing removed, but it was no good. I didn’t help matters by turning off the fan. Yes, I turned off the fan. It was loud and I knew I couldn’t incur the wrath of my transcriber by allowing it to leave its word-destroying whir on my tape. I didn’t want to, believe me, but when you’ve got one shot to get a story you want, you’re not gonna waste it.

The air was thick like treacle as I attempted to wend my way to the heart of an unusual story. It’s owner was a married man in his early fifties - who has never had sex. At least not the penetrative type, the kind we use to mark the ‘loss’ of virginity and the universal step into adulthood.

It felt like a cross between caporeira and a boxing match as we sparred and I sought to find a way to deliver the line. The one question that would unlock the padlock to the puzzle and unleash the answers we both wanted to hear. I don’t think I got there on that occasion. This was a man at the beginning of a big journey. Agreeing to tell a stranger his innermost secrets was probably the first step, but it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying on my part.

As I bought the interview to a close, I thanked him for taking part. ‘Thanks for allowing me to grill you’, I said, without thinking. I laughed, because if his internal organs were not lightly poached by the intensity of the heat, I would have been very surprised. I had literally grilled him alive.

Fast-forward a year and it’s a different story. Rain is involved but we won’t dwell on that, and I am in the hot seat. As we finish up, my interviewer and I discuss my own research and I mention some of the people I still hope to interview.

‘Oh, if you’re looking for a man who lost his virginity to a prostitute, just give the office a ring’, he says.

‘How do you mean?’ I ask

‘Well, it’s a market research company isn’t it. They can find you anyone you need, of any demographic. Just ring them up and tell them what you’re looking for, pay them eighty quid and they’ll find him for you.

Uh? You mean it’s that easy? After all this, it turns out that I can order exactly what I want from an instant catalogue of human experience?

I am pleased. But strangely downcast. In that moment, I am hit with a blinding truth. I enjoy the search. I like the twists and turns, the ups and downs, the highs and the lows. I have no idea what is around the corner but the possibilities thrill me, excite me, because when you do find what you want, you know you got there all by yourself and it feels fucking great. I may yet take him up on his offer, but for the time being, the game remains very much on. I am still searching for something quite specific. I will know exactly what it is when I find it.