The Prostitute: Stellar Magazine
Title: The Prostitute
Author: Jonathan McCrea
Date: 24th September 2009
Publication: Stellar for publication
So the secret was out and now Gemma and Billy’s once perfect relationship was teetering on the edge of a cliff like a 16-wheeler in a Sylvester Stallone movie. Representing the accused, the right honorable Jonathan McCrea Esquire. “Gemma, good people can do bad things. Did you know Johnny Cash almost wiped out an entire species of condor in California? Or that Gandhi used to sleep naked with teenage girls? Even Malcolm X did a 7-year stretch for armed robbery in his twenties.” Billy, the man in the dock, is my long-time friend. His most heinous crime: having sex with a prostitute. Names and places have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent.
Let’s go back to the beginning.
My mate Billy used to be a bit of a madser. He had spent his school years boarding at an all boys college in Wales. As a result, he ended up being a little over-enthusiastic in his university years when it came to drink and drugs.
One weekend, on his first trip away with his rugby team, he went to Amsterdam. Starved of anything like the sexual history many of his team-mates were bragging about in the changing room, he ended up in the Red Light district. On a rainy Saturday, he paid a young brunette exactly 130 guilder for 20 minutes of her time. She smelt of menthol cigarettes. I know this because he confessed as much to me a few years ago when we were both completely frazzled after a long and boozy day. It’s something he regrets massively and we’ve never discussed it since. Unfortunately, his girlfriend of 18 months has just found out about it.
Gemma had actually called me about a recipe for Chinese chicken and somehow the whole story just came tumbling out.
“What really upsets me is that Billy never told me about it all this time”. I imagined what really upset her is actually that he slept with a prostitute, but I kept that to myself.
“Why on earth would he tell you Gem? What good would that have really done?” But she was getting emotional: “How can I trust him when he kept this from me the whole time? Have you ever?…” she left the question hanging in the air. “God, no.” I said, immediately regretting the force of my reply.
Whoever said that honesty is the best policy was a goddamn liar. People only ever confess to make themselves feel better and relieve themselves of guilt. Most of the time revelations about our sordid past have only one sure result: pissing off the people we love. This was a perfect case in point. “I’m just not sure I know who he is now”, she sniffed.
I knew what she was thinking. Gemma fell for Bill hook line and sinker. She never had to question her feelings and she always thought she knew his limits. They’re a great couple and I’m sure many people have told her exactly that. Then, after almost two years, she’s hit with this bombshell that makes her question everything she was previously so certain about.
“Of course you know who he is. He’s exactly the same guy you’ve been going out with for over a year. The guy who took you to New York for your birthday, the guy who’s been helping your dad install that fancy stereo system in his living room? ‘The guy who has never cheated on you or on any of his previous girlfriends. It was a mistake, a stupid mistake. Good lord, Gemma, if every guy was forced to tell the whole truth about his past to his girlfriend, we’d all be sleeping with prostitutes”.
Every guy has done things he wishes he hadn’t. I once dumped a girl on speakerphone with my friends in the room. When I was 19 I broke up with another really wonderful girl the day after she lost her virginity to me, partially because she got spots. It makes me wince just writing that. If I could go back in time I’d kick the crap out of my younger self for being such a total asshole, but I can’t. Read the papers: young men are incredibly stupid and incredibly immature. Luckily, some of us grow up.
“Look, Billy’s crazy about you. That’s why he didn’t tell you, because he’s ashamed, doesn’t that tell you something?” She seemed immovable. “That’s easy to say now” she mumbled. “So…what, Is this the thing that’s going to break the two of you up? Something that happened almost a decade ago?” She paused, and finally said “I don’t know” before hanging up. She’d forgotten about the Chinese chicken.
So here’s my Carrie Bradshaw bit. There’s no point in lying to yourself: there are things we can forgive and things we can’t. If you know in your heart that you can’t put something behind you as a couple, then you’ve got a real problem. But what defines us as a decent person? Is it our mistakes or how we learn from them? Is it how we were back then or how we are now? The defence rests.