One example of the laws that regulate how sex is sold in the UK is the prohibition of two people selling sex together. This is debated as a deterrent to brothel keeping which then restricts people from working alone or criminalises them and anyone who works with them (Brooks-Gordon, 2006). Still some advertisers do offer services for duos or agencies that would contravene those laws.
Ben/Sam, horny duo (32/27) good looks, WE, versatile, friendly skinhead types. Call 0956-[…] (mobile) between 10am and 8pm.
(Boyz, 10 January 1998, p79).
In these three examples, duos are used as an exclusive service, an inclusive service or an extra service. In the first example, Ben and Sam are only offering their service as a duo.
Whether they agree to negotiate otherwise is unknown. One possibility is to compare their ad from 1998 to more contemporary ‘personal’ profiles for couples who ‘only play together’.
Following the structure of propositional logic, I have categorised this type of advertisement as a conjunct proposition (conjunction) – when the proposition is available only if both subjects are hired.
Eduardo and Connor’s ad offers an inclusive duo service. They are advertising together but offer one-to-one service or can be hired together, for which they note there is a discount46. I categorised these as inclusive propositions. This describes the logic of ‘and/or’ statements such as inclusive disjunctions. Active Lad’s also offers to arrange duos but he is advertising individually. Individual advertisers can still be categorised as offering inclusive propositions.
As the ads for Eduardo and Connor and Active Lad both illustrate, there are multiple
inclusive propositions within individual ads, for example, such as options for in calls (clients going to the M$M advertiser) or out calls (M$M going to the client). In some advertisements, pairs of men promote other complementary differences like mythologised identities of Irish Connor and Mexican Eduardo or more explicit references to ‘versatile bottom […] total top’.
Philip, now 42, shares some examples with me that illustrate details about what it might have been like for an advertiser like Active Lad who advertised on his own but promoted the possibility of arranging ‘duos’.
Occasionally they did ask for other things, like one guy […] wanted me to have sex with other people, and I was really concerned about that. I was really concerned because I thought who on earth is this going to be? I thought some – he talked about some “young friend” of his from [the area] and this guy was a university lecturer or professor or whatever, and, and he, and I’m just imagining some awful little student that he’s, you know, got under his wing, and when I agreed to do this, it turned out it was some guy I used to have a thing with from [the area] who’d started advertising independently under a different name from his own, and I was delighted, I mean he was one of the guys I most fancied […] and so it was, it was just a delight to take extra money for the pleasure of fucking him, and I don’t remember what I did with the client, but you know it was putting on a show as well as involving the client (Philip, 42).
46 Their ad might also imply that they do other work or have other commitments during weekdays. The number of details and interpretations of multiple signs made difficult work of organising material thematically.
Philip’s emotions include some worry about who the additional person is going to be. His references to the language used by his client to describe his ‘young friend’ and the meaning he has associated with that because of the occupation of the client, ‘a university lecturer, or professor or whatever’. This might express disinterest in being involved in an unknown, already established power dynamic and one that feels inherently exploitative. It might also infer his disinterest in men who were unattractive to him, portraying the friend as ‘some awful little student’. His description disrupts a repertoire that would define youth as an
absolute preference over age; ahowever, at the same time his collocation of descriptive signs reinforces hegemonies of a masculine size as antithetical to the (post-)modern, academic
‘body’.
As a triangulation of other data, Philip’s interview also demonstrates the use of pseudonyms in advertisements, the relative anonymity of M$M and possibility of maintaining privacy with published ads – even within the queer community, and the intersectionality of identities.
The friend turned out to be ‘some guy I used to have a thing with [who] was one of the guys I most fancied’.
What I also take from this quote is an illustration of the fuzzy boundaries or fuzzy definitions of what ‘sex work’ is, even for one individual. Philip’s role shifts between having knowledge and a lack of information. His role also shifts from having sex with the client to having sex with another person for the client to watch and possibly also participate. Queer definitions of
‘sex work’ treat it as a synecdoche, in part because the definition of ‘sex’ is fuzzy and itself a synecdoche – as is ‘work’.
Examples of definitions of sex work that are queered and/or reinforced through my participants’ examples of ‘duos’ are these shifts into private live sex performances,
coordinating the logistics (where, when), resources (who brings the condoms and lube?) and
human resources of performances. ‘Guys turn up here to do duo jobs, they don’t even have condoms on them. “Oh, can I use yours?” You know, like you turning up without your pen, you know?’ (Quinn, 42). Other examples include performing in porn, viewing porn with clients and sometimes providing it.
Quinn expresses scepticism about how some advertisers balance the expectations of the clients for a ‘duo’ and their own motivations with proposing and performatively defining the service.
Like “Duo partner.” Please, please pay for me and my boyfriend to fuck together, with you in the bedroom, and you will feel like the third peg. You will feel like the odd man out there, you know. We’ll be having sex on your paycheck. We’ll do bits and bobs with you occasionally, but threesomes can be very, very hard to balance and duo partners, duos, when they pick their regular duo partner, that’s invariably, it’s
somebody that they like having sex with. And the client becomes the odd man out. So, you know, none of that works, as far as I’m concerned, for business. (Quinn)
There is a tension in what he says here. ‘When they pick their regular duo partner, that’s invariably, it’s somebody that they like having sex with.’ This fits and supports the repertoire that sex work can be enjoyable for M$M and disrupts overarching repertoires that sex
workers’ are only rewarded through material incentives. It also acknowledges tensions between competing hierarchies. There are hierarchies of attention and attendance to
negotiate, as well as priorities of performing, being interactive, negotiating and delivering the agreed service for remuneration, earning money and practicing self-care. I spend more time exploring these balances and tensions in Chapter 7.
In the context of Philip’s earlier accounts, it made sense to me that he had experienced a sense of agency and did not feel exploited by his experiences of selling sex. Much later in my analysis, however, I was struck by another interpretation of what he has said. Positioning the client and sex workers on binary spectrums of agency and structure is complicated by these narratives of men selling sex together. Philip gave me another example:
And then on another occasion that same chap asked that I provide two other young guys, specifically young he said, who he wanted me to fuck and I did and obviously on that occasion I got to choose exactly who I wanted. Not only did I get to choose who I wanted, but I got paid more for fucking, much more for fucking them and I kept a fee for arranging it. What do you do? It was very, very easy. [Laughing.] I’m getting sexually excited thinking about it, actually.
Philip’s story here still positions him as the sexually active ‘top’, and he constructs his position of relative power associated with being in his thirties with younger men whom, in this case, he arranges to fuck, gets paid to fuck, and keeps an extra fee for making the arrangements. Reading this example out of context of the others, my perspective shifts from the narrator to the younger men and their remembrance of the transaction.
Six of the men I interviewed discussed duos with clients in ways that both disrupt and fit dominant repertoires about hierarchical structures and coercion, depending on the
interpretation and standpoint. These illustrations help to develop my argument that (men’s) actions of defining performativity, utilising embodiment, and locating contact(s) interact together through multiple modes of embodiment and the ‘male body schema’ (Watson, 2000, p.117). Understanding the relationality of these modes is essential to understanding the complex patterns of practice, experience and rationale that fit into the larger categories of sex work or even men who sell sex. I continue to explore these interrelationships before
discussing how the A.D.U.L.T. model comes together in Chapter 9.