We were chatting about N's love life, what else is new? It looks as if things are decidedly Off with off-again on-again girl. I find people who are incapable of making decisions irritating in general - and her irritating in particular. Especially knowing that she still expects him to drop everything and come round as and when she wants, take her out for a meal and morose conversation, then drop her back home without so much as a blowjob. Some women have no shame. 'You need to think about where this is going,' I said. 'You're letting her set the tone and you just go with it. She's using you, and it's not right.'

'Yeah, I knew you'd say that,' N said. 'But I have this theory. The Quantum Theory of Relationships.'

'You are going to have to explain that,' I said. 'I'm in the bath, it's brain hibernation time.' After a nighttime run, especially in winter, nothing hits the spot like submersion in a hot bath. Nothing. Not even sex.

'Come on, you're a clever girl. You know what I mean.'

I wiggled my toes in the bubbles at the far end. The cat was sitting on the bath rack, eyes half shut, enjoying the steam. He swiped halfheartedly at my feet. 'Know what you mean? Honey, I barely know my Lavoisier from Courvoisier.'

He laughed. 'In a nutshell, it's this. You can't observe a relationship without changing it. If I stop to think about the whys and wherefores, it's destined to fail. I'm happy to let what happens happen for the moment.'

'I like it. Is this another one for N's Little Book of Relationships?'

'Yeah, okay. That brings us up to, what, two pages now?'

'Short enough the get it out in time for Christmas.'

'Now you're talking.'

You can fuck right off and you know who you are.

Seriously, what is your major malfunction? Is it because you're envious? Insecure? Crowing about our comparative Amazon ranks on Facebook and Twitter - how childish is that? Is being an author just not as exciting or relevant as you imagined it would be? Welcome to the real world, sister.

If you can't see the value in a diversity of voices being recognised as those of genuine women - not ONLY yours - then honey, you have a lot to learn about both feminism and empowerment, the sort of knowledge that comes from deep and radical living, not parroting some shite you saw on the flyleaf of a Germaine Greer two years ago.

And what you can't seem to handle - really, can't handle at all - is that at the heart of it we're on the same side.

That is right. You are on the same side as the whore, because we are both writing about modern women and the choices they make, and why. I write about sex, real sex, and money changing hands doesn't make it less real than yours. The ways in which people use and abuse sex, how women use sexuality and what it does - or doesn't - do to their lives as a result. I am as entitled to do so as you are.

But it is far easier, it would seem, to attack what you refuse to understand. Which is a pity because infighting only serves those on the outside who would put all women's sexuality into a pretty little box.

What I write about is something every depiction of prostitution in this country in recent years has not been permitted to say. There will be no comeuppance. There will be no guilt and shame. And most importantly, there will be no white goddamn knight. Sounds a little like your memoir on dating and mating, no?

Myself, personally, I am enjoying life. Neither in spite of nor because of my past but because I choose to. It is a happy and productive place right now and while an unprovoked attack like yours is unwelcome, it isn't going to keep me up nights. There are other things doing that job at the moment...

Because the series had to pull its punches at the crucial moments, because no one else wants to say these things, I can: I will. I am unrepentant. I make no apologies for my past or what I write. And my future will be no worse than yours as a result.

In the last series, there was an episode in which TV-Belle had a disabled client. Unfortunately, it was also the episode in which her boyfriend inadvertently learned what her occupation was, which was a pity. I thought the issue should have had the freedom to stand on its own rather than be overshadowed by the relationship storyline.

At any rate, I had similar experiences. In fact many sex workers have. Not all, but there is a significant compassionate component to what the job entails. I don't simply means this in massaging a banker's back so he forgets what the FTSE is doing sort of way, though that is important, but being able to compartmentalise (an essential trait for any successful sex worker) also means being able to put aside your own initial reaction to someone and trying to see the encounter through their eyes.

As I've said before, it's a customer service position, not a personal fulfillment odyssey.

Which brings me to one client in particular. Because he was seated on the bed when I arrived at the hotel, I noticed nothing unusual about him. He did seem slight, but one gets used to all types of body sizes and shapes in this job.

'The money is on the desk,' he said, and I slipped the envelope in my bag. Never count the money in front of the client.

He asked me to undress to the level of underwear (requested: bra, stockings with suspenders, knickers over the suspenders - so the stockings could stay on during sex). I did this.

Then, he asked if I would undress him.

And that was when I noticed. The odd angle of his uneven shoulders, his narrow chest, the gouge-like scars. I didn't ask, he offered nothing, and I ran my hands over his body with no hesitation. He asked me to swing his legs onto the bed, and when I did, I saw the walking sticks next to it for the first time.

That client did not reach orgasm but enjoyed the sex. We talked afterwards, he about his upbringing in Africa. His hair was thick and dark and when he said his age I could not believe it. He was much older than he looked, far older than my father! I could see in the moustache and cheekbones a man who, had his health outcome been different, might have been a dashing RAF pilot in some other world. I continued to stroke the unusual topography of his body, lightly over the lumps and odd moles, harder when I reached his (still semi-erect) penis. He, correctly, identified where I was from based on the pronunciation of a single word that came up in conversation. I can't remember if this encounter is in any the books... on the blog, he was mentioned only in passing, and not because of disability. We talked about holidays, about sunshine and the sea.

This is what comes to mind when I read people like Harriet Harman describing selling sex as "truly medieval" and "just so wrong". For her, presumably, her sex drive is constrained neither by opportunity nor the form of her body. She can and, I assume, does have sex as and when (and if) she wants it.

Other people are not in the same position. And surely denying them access the human touch is short-sighted and "truly medieval". I do not believe for a single moment, however, that these campaigners against sex work have a single ounce of compassion for the trafficked women they claim to want to help, so perhaps asking them to have compassion for people who, simply by fate, happen not to have the freedom or opportunity for a fulfilling sex life so many of us take for granted is far too large a request.

So Home Secretary Jacqui Smith wants to 'tackle' prostitution.

How adorable. How naive. How certain to garner column inches. And to utterly fail in its stated intent.

Quite apart from whether it is right to criminalise the act of selling or buying sex - which you can assume I am against - there is the question of what effect, either beneficial or detrimental, attacking the sex trade may have.

I am no great fan of prohibition. In some cases, it can work on a limited basis - the handgun ban, for instance, is easy to enforce because handguns are difficult to obtain and nearly impossible to make. Alcohol prohibition, as demonstrated in the US in the early 20th century, was more difficult: it does not take a genius to make your own spirits. In short, effective banning depends on the ability to completely stem the flow of supply in the hope that demand will dry up as a result.

Whether this is the either a right or effective way to approach a social problem is for better minds than mine to decide - in my opinion, neither situation justified the scale of the response, and neither result was something that could not have been achieved through better means.

Following on from that, how, exactly, can one effectively police the selling of sex? We all have sex organs and (those of us not touched by the credit crisis at least) money. If I, in my home, have a verbal agreement with a man who did not meet me through any advertisement, who then offers me money, how is anyone going to know? No, what this will be doing in effect is policing not prostitution in general, but streetwalking in particular. In other words, targeting the people who are most likely to be at risk of drug abuse and other problems.

The intial idea is to 'name and shame' kerb crawlers, and to impose harsh sentences on men who use the services of trafficked women. As opposed to the more logical route of, say, imposing harsh sentences on those doing the trafficking, which would be difficult but worthwhile. In other words, what Mizz Smith is proposing is shooting at a blank wall and drawing your target around the hole.

We know where this will end, naturally - it is no secret that the real agenda of Harriet Harman and Jacqui Smith is to criminalise prostitution as a whole. By dressing up the early stages in faux-concern for exploited women, they are doing nothing more than putting lipstck on a pig.

And what would be the problem with that, you might say. Give someone time in custody, with access to the various social and mental health services, and that might get them back on their feet.

Ah, there's the rub. I have known a few streetwalkers - years before I went on the game myself. If you're familiar with my books, you will know these as the women my (misguided, optimistic) father was trying to 'help'. A fair number of them were occasional drug users to full-blown addicts and some were homeless; nearly all were single mothers. I came away with a few interesting points of knowledge:

1. If you go to prison with no intention of reforming when you get there, all it provides is a great place to meet new drug connections for when you are out again.

2. Separating a woman from her child, apart from cases of child abuse, is possibly the most detrimental thing that can happen to both of them.

3. Never get your hair dyed in prison. Never.

Call them whatever you like - party flats, evening pumps - but every euphemism for non-heeled shoes sounds like coded swinging terminology to me. Slip a sexy Ferragamo on my foot? Are you certain I don't need a license for that?

For those of you who may have been under the impression I've seen and done it all, here is a list of things I've never done. Note that not all of them are likely, or even advisable, to do. I have never...

• eaten a pork pie, coronation chicken, or a scampi (whatever that is). I don't remember ever having had a banger, though it's possible I did and have since purged the experience from my memory banks.
  
• had a threesome with two men (preferably bi). Definitely have not accidentally done so and purged the memory of the experience afterwards. This upsets me probably more than it should.
  
• tried drugs, apart from:
  a. the time in book 1 when a client was using poppers, and I'm not sure that counts, and
  b. alcohol. Obviously.
  
• been to Liverpool. And until a fortnight ago, Wales would also have been on that list.
  
• been able to remember my mother's birthday. I am usually good with dates, so this is particularly unusual.
  
• found negligees exciting. Let me see, you want me to take off my clothes, put on clothes, then take those clothes off straightaway? And what was the problem with good old knickers, stockings, and bra again?
  
• imagined what my wedding dress might look like, or what my children's names would be, or what my first name would look like next to someone else's surname. (That said, in the last 24 hours I have identified an ale that should be served at my wedding, should such event ever occur. Priorities, people.)
  
• chosen mayonnaise when salad cream was an option. Ever.
  
• caught my parents having sex. And now they're divorced, never will. Whew.
  
• been attracted to a man who didn't, at least in some small way, remind me of my father. In its most basic incarnation this usually translates as significantly taller than me.
  

You know those 'I'm a PC... and I'm a Mac' adverts? Well, here is a variation on the theme for you:

My ex, the one known here as the Boy, is a PC user. I am a Mac user. This week, in a misguided attempt to win me back, he posted a birthday gift - a 320 gig external hard drive stuffed with the entire digital record of our time together. Photos, videos, the lot.

Only the Boy, he is not what we would call super tech-savvy. Because on plugging the drive into my Mac - fully intending to reformat the disk and erase over all of that shite for I am, if nothing else, disinclined to look gift horses in the mouth - I scanned through the folders to see first if there were any mementoes worth saving.

What do you think I found, alongside all the soppily renamed, weren't-we-great-together rest? Only the Recycle Bin folder, of course. Which he had neglected to empty.

Oh, PC. You really aren't very clever, are you?

And there were the real photos. The ones of him and that other woman, the one whose saggy, hippo-like form I'd found on my phone all those months ago. Here they were at his works do, him struggling to hold her aloft. Here she was in his bedroom, lounging in what might euphemistically be called a Rubenesque attitude. Here she was in an improvised toga at a fancy dress party, the mechanics of which garment seemed to rely entirely on the folds of fat under her arms to protect her dignity. Here was the rest of his holiday in New York, the week he spent there after I left, with... well, I don't believe you need to be told. Yes, here, in excruciating detail - as if the other photos weren't nearly enough - was the record of his other relationship with the potato-faced frump he judged superior to me.

So, how do you think I felt? Angry? Detached? Deflated? None of the above actually. What I felt was gratitude. Gratitude and happiness. It was as if a shadow falling over my life had suddenly retreated, showing me the beautiful day it was hiding all along.

In point of fact it is one of the best and most timely gifts I have ever received. This proves, as if proof were needed, what sort of a man he is and how much better my life is now. While I will probably always be appalled to have wasted so much of my life and love on him, at least I got three books' worth of content out of the fucker. She can have the rest of him and good riddance. This is exactly what I needed, the final piece in the puzzle of letting go.

As an ex-sex worker, I am in a privileged position as regards understanding the difficulties of customer service. Granted, there are only handful of occupations in which the gratification of the customer is so literal and, um, obvious, but I imagine there are lessons learnt there which are generally applicable in the wider world of dealing with the public.

As a result I try to be - how shall we say - forgiving in matters of poor front-of-house. Some jobs are a bit shite and grind down even the sunniest of dispositions. I understand that not everything is directly to do with me, and sometimes the person on the other end of the phone is just not having a good day, nowt to do with me. But still:

- When I've stood outside my house for half an hour, and the minicab dispatcher insists two cars have been by already but I was a no-show, do you not think it might occur to her that she's been giving them the wrong fucking address?!? Alas, she would rather argue with me about whether I was in a position the cars could see than to doublecheck the address when offered it. I've spent a statistically significant portion of my life waiting on taxis; you, honey, are an undermotivated 19-year-old with no apparent communication skills.

- The Post Office. What universe do they live in where people are at home awaiting deliveries between 10 and 2 on a weekday? I took the morning off work to wait for a special delivery which they won't leave with the neighbours or let anyone else sign for, so you might think they would consider delivering said item sometime that day. Or give me an information number which does not cost the Bolivian GDP per minute to ring from a mobile, only to repeat recordings of the website address as read by Irene Handl on quaaludes. "Did. You. Know. The. Fastest. Way. To. [light nap] Arrange. Redelivery. [cup of tea and a biccie, dear?] Is. To. Visit. Our. Web. Site. On. The. Inter. Net..." [sound of me kicking chair out from under my noose]

As for Zoe la Williams, she's just bitter that I asked Erica Wagner to interview me instead of her. Witness:

No feminist - first, second or third wave - can endorse prostitution because disproportionately often it has a violated or dead woman at the end of it.

So presumably we can't endorse life, either, then. Cos we die no matter how smugly or self-righteously we live, dear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Actually, you know what? Fuck it. Gloves off. Mizz Williams is having a laugh at the expense of everyone who takes her writing seriously; she knows fine well I exist and am real, being as I am, after all, mates with her mum's neighbour.

So. When you have had a job that was not directly the result of growing up the pampered and privileged daughter of someone with actual soul, when you have ever had a job out of necessity rather than swanning around doing as little as possible to keep yourself in the manner to which you are accustomed, and indeed, when you have written a book for publication rather than taken a fat advance and pissed the money up the wall in a swell little cottage in the country entertaining your friends, then you, Zoe Williams, can stand nose to nose with me and criticise. Until then, you're just earning money off my immoral acts (should the local constabulary be notified?), or in other words, just a columnist-whore.

Something of a minor miracle: a positive review for the new book! And in a broad(ish)sheet no less. For those who wonder, incidentally, what I wrote about Stendhal, the piece is here.

I've been dead busy, and doing my best not to neglect this site or the Facebook - but a girl has to prioritise, nu? Still, it would be remiss of me not to at least post something this week. So if you please:

- visit this page: some work directed by (and starring) the very lovely Ethan McKinley, whose status as Belle's Internet Crush #1 is rock-solid for the foreseeable future.

- even if you're not friends with me on Facebook (am limiting how many I accept, after learning FB has an upper limit! Sorry...) you can still join my book club, where this month we're digging in to The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett. It's short, it's in the Wh Smith promotion, and it's well-written and funny - so what are you waiting for?

- ObLoveUpdate: yes, still on. Happy. Words can not express &c.