BROTHEL DAZE.....

Little Joe never once gave it away.
Everybody had to pay and pay.
A hustle here and a hustle there,
New York City is the place where 
They say 'hey babe, take a walk on the wild side'...

It wasn't NYC, it was Sydney and the brothel was located in the inner city suburb of Surry Hills.
This was not the Surry Hills of today, with it's designer warehouse apartments, modernized terraced houses and swanky re-furbished office buildings.  No, this was the suburb caught between urban decay and demographic change that was slowly starting to take place.

A suburb on the very fringe of the city which was a mixture of warehouses, small factories and businesses, Tooth's Brewery and Rupert Murdoch's newspaper empire. Of old terrace houses, steep streets, narrow lanes, remnants of Sydney's original China Town still lingering in the form of household mahjong gambling dens, and noodle making shops. While some grand old colonial houses still remained, most were tiny, vermin infested terraces, many abandoned with drug addicts squatting inside them, or housing elderly long standing welfare residents. 

Everything about the suburb in the early 1980's suggested decay and abandonment.  Belvoir Boys, the brothel where I would work for two months was no different.  Located in a tiny, two up, two down Victorian workers terrace, with the usual kitchen and bathroom extension at the back, it was a seedy brothel, but also a haven from what I had just experienced.

Being raped did not have a hugely damaging effect on me.  Even though I can still recall the night and some of what happened, I was so out of it during the whole experience that I was able to feel neither pain nor fear.  Being dumped, penniless and battered in the early morning was what I remember most.  This is when the shame set in and also the resolve to never allow myself to get in that situation again, or so I believed at the time.

The brothel (a few years later I would actually work in a 'parlour') became my home and saviour for the next few months.  I won't go into detail about the clients as later I will devote a whole chapter to this area, but I do remember my first.  A middle aged man on business from the North of England.  He paid $20 for a head job and near the end asked, 'eee lad, is it alright if I cum in your mouth?'.

My favourite, who also became an almost daily regular, was a young wealthy guy from one of Sydney's elite families who always paid me double and also bought me gifts. Clothes, a gold watch, my first bottle of aftershave - 'Grey Flannel' - and often took me out to lunch or dinner.  The one I remember the most though was an extremely elderly gentleman.  He was dressed in an old baggy suit and used a walking stick.  For this reason we had to go in the front downstairs room, which was normally where us boys would sit during the day.

He took off his jacket and shirt, then his trousers, and then his wooden leg!  We did nothing but sit together with his arm around me while he talked.  He told me that he was married and had grandchildren and had been secretly gay all his life but had never had sex with another man.  We both cried when he told me he first realised when he was buried alive in the trenches with another young soldier in WWI for two days.  They had clung together, fearing death and while waiting rescue they had fondled each other and kissed.  After being dug out they never spoke of the incident again.

The boys I worked with were a real mixed bag.  A few like me from suburban working and middle class families, escaping the tedium of their school and home lives.  Some purely professional  who worked the job like it was a regular 9 - 5 office job, and some really sad boys whose childhoods had been filled with both physical and sexual abuse, often by their fathers or other close relatives.

During the days it was generally quiet, except on weekends, so we would mostly watch TV, go into the city shopping, or often spend the morning at Prince Alfred Park at the public swimming pool.  In the afternoons and evenings it was all go.  We were busy from early afternoon until around midnight.

I and another boy, Jeff, were the two most popular boys there.  He was 19, tall, blonde haired and blue eyed.  I was 17 (and looked 15) and between us we saw probably 80% of the clients.  One Friday night I serviced 9 clients in a row, only stopping to shower before going straight back upstairs with the next client.

I was earning anything from $40 on a quiet day to over $200 on a busy day.  That was an absolute fortune both for me and most people back then.  6 months later, I would be back living with my parents again and working in a menswear store from 9am - 5.30pm (9pm on Thursday nights and 8-12pm on Saturdays) and earning $135 per week!

A few blocks away, and frequent visitors, were another group of sex workers of a totally different kind.  They worked for HOD (the House of Dominance) which was a famous and much frequented B&D parlour in Sydney at the time.  These guys were earning double what we were, generally with little or no sex involved, but the work was certainly something you had to 'be into'.  Sadly most of them had really horrific stories of sexual and physical abuse, many at the hands of institutions where they had been raised, or placed.  

25 odd years later, the much respected private college I worked for bought this very same building to use as one of their teaching campuses - they were both shocked and amazed when I told them of it's former use!

We also had drag queens working at the brothel.  The first I had really met on a personal level. I was intrigued and surprised.  The only transsexuals I had seen were either on TV or performing at the clubs and these were the totally over the top, in your face type.  The queens working at the brothel were nothing like this, in fact, except that they wore women's clothes and make up they were pretty much the same as the rest of us.

On Friday afternoons all the factories in the area would close at 2pm.  There would be an influx of  'straight' guys all wanting to see a tranny.  Whether or not it's specifically true in all cases, but I was told that most of these 'factory' workers came because it was cheaper to get a head job from a tranny than a real girl.  It was also pre AIDS days so the fear which later caused a sharp decline in the sex work industry for a year or two wasn't an issue.  

It was so busy that often the boss would get me to dress up shortly before 2pm.  One or other of the girls would do my make up and I would work as a tranny for the next 4 hours.  It was really easy work, and most of the guys didn't care that I didn't have tits (either implants or hormonal), they just wanted a head job from a 'girl'.

So for two months I lived on the wild side.  Loving every minute of it.  The clients were all easy and it felt much safer being in a brothel than working the streets.  The boys became my friends and confidantes.  We shared our lives, sometimes our money and looked after each other.

Then one afternoon I was on an out call and I received the phone call about Billy.  A few hours later I was being interviewed at Darlinghurst Police Station and being told my life was in danger from one of Sydney's most notorious underworld figures.  The ironic part of it was, that one of the interviewing officers, would later become infamous for being one of the most corrupt and dangerous criminals in Sydney!  2 days later I was in a car with two of the boys headed for Adelaide......and a whole new life.