To a teenage boy, Pigalle is a different world Wandering around the red light district of Paris as a teenager taught me all I need to know - about teenagers, not women, says Laurie Taylor in his weekly column. As far as I was concerned Ken Marshall knew more about French prostitutes and what they got up to than anyone else in Liverpool. He knew, for example, that French parents would routinely send their teenage sons to prostitutes so that their first experience of sex would be far happier than the messy back-alley encounters he'd recently endured with such local unsophisticates as Josie Rimmer and Maureen Dillon. He also knew from talking to his brother, Vinnie, who was in the Merchant Navy, that French prostitutes were sufficiently proficient in every sort of sexual technique to constitute a veritable wonderland for teenage boys like ourselves who grudgingly became used to regarding a breast fondle or a knee tremble as the best that could be hoped for on an average night out in town. So naturally I stayed close by Ken's side when we embarked on our first night out in Paris. FIND OUT MORE Hear Laurie Taylor's Thinking Allowed on Radio 4 at 1600 on Wednesdays or 0030 on Mondays Or download the podcast here "Look as though you know what you're doing," he told me as we walked into our first bar in Pigalle. It wasn't the easiest instruction to follow, because although I'd casually Brylcreemed my hair, undone the top button of my check shirt, and carefully positioned a Capstan Full Strength in the corner of my mouth, I couldn't resist the feeling that at any moment all these trappings of nonchalance might fall away and I'd be revealed as nothing more than a randy little schoolboy with a rather nasty pimple underneath my left nostril. But I did my best to follow Ken's example and seated myself next to him on the nearest banquette. "Now, don't forget what I told you," he whispered. "When a woman comes across and sits by you, don't buy her a drink. She'll ask for champagne and when it arrives, it will really be fizzy water but you'll pay a bomb. So just sit still and play dumb." Thigh stroking We sat and waited, sipping our drinks. And then, almost as though Ken had whistled them up, two very attractive young women in tight skirts and dangerously low tops wandered across to our table and squeezed themselves between us on the banquette. "Buy me a drink, honey?" said my girl. I could hardly speak: a prostitute, a lady of the night, someone who knew how to actually do all those things one had only heard about, was not only sitting at my side, but was now moving her fingers slowly across my thighs, across the coarse black cotton and rayon mixture of my John Collier suit. "Buy me a drink, honey?" If I'd had my way I'd have bought my new girlfriend every bottle of champagne in town. But Ken was already indicating that it was time to go. She did propose 'a night of bliss' for about £10

Reluctantly I followed him outside. "See what I mean," he said triumphantly. "Dead beautiful girls and a free touch-up. Told you Paris was fantastic." "But why couldn't we stay," I stuttered, following him down an alleyway. "We couldn't afford girls like that," he said. "They're only for Americans. We have to find somewhere much less grand. And remember don't try to get off with anyone just yet. The prices go down after midnight." The rest of the night, as defendants like to say in court, was more or less a blur. We made our way, via glass after glass of cheap pastis, to the lousiest dive we could find in the back streets of Pigalle. ("You can't get any lower than this," said Ken, as we stepped over a sleeping drunk to gain access to the bar). It was in this grubby, sweaty place that I danced or rather lurched across the sticky floor with a woman called Monique who struck me at the time as the most beautiful woman in the whole world but who Ken told me was "an old slapper". Naughty treats She did propose "a night of bliss" for about £10 but by that time I was too exercised by the problem of putting one foot in front of the other to contemplate any more complex physical activity. "Great night out, wasn't it," said Ken, the next morning. "But we didn't do anything," I said. "We didn't get a woman." Ken dismissively waved a hand across his half-eaten croissant. "No, but we got a good idea of what you could do if you had the money. Just think of it. All that sex out there. Just waiting." It was that picture, that impression of Parisian nightlife, which I took back with me to England. It was that picture of licentious ever-available sex which I laid on my friends for years afterwards. If anyone ever asked if I'd personally availed myself of any of the naughty treats I so vividly described, I'd give them an old-fashioned smile. Anyone like me, who's savoured the exotic delights of the back streets of Pigalle never again has to prove his worth by answering such obvious questions. Below is a selection of your comments. Very entertaining. I'm surprised the scriptwriters of the InBetweeners weren't inspired by it for a plotline.

Mike, Hong Kong In the late 70's I played in a rock band and we played a few gigs in Paris, our manager booked us a hotel in Pigalle. I had no idea it was a red light district until we were being shouted and whistled at by some ladies in a nearby building! What an amazing place.

Ian, Benfleet, Essex Very accurate. I vaguely remember something very similar happening to me on my first visit to Paris when I was 16 and on a visit to France from school just after the war. A lot of water under bridge since then - as I am now 80. The custom of French parents paying a prostitute for their son's first sex is also common. I was with French friends, very respectable people, when the mother gave her son the money for this purpose at his 18th birthday party. No one thought it strange and everyone cheered.

Michael Dwyer, Shipley, West Yorkshire, England Sorry, what exactly is the point of this story? Randy teen gets randier after encountering Prostitutes in Paris? Perhaps I'm missing something but I thought this was the BBC, not Huster online.

Neil Brady, Dublin, Ireland Romanticising the sex industry is a dangerous thing and I'm surprised to see the BBC encourage it. I work helping sex workers to get out of this industry and I think this is a distasteful, insensitive little article, written without a thought as to what the women involved might have thought upon being confronted with the miserbale possibility of having to flirt with this spotty teenage oik. Shame on you, BBC, for giving him a voice.

B North, Leeds Pigalle struck me as a lurid place. Even on the main streets a stones throw away from the Moulin Rouge, I was struck by the cheapness and the lack of class it exhibited. I would never normally visit a red light district in any case, but I at least expected Paris to still retain some bohemian spirit. I dread to think what such places are like in less beautiful cities.

Steve, Bury I am puzzled by the publication of stories like this on BBC. It appears sympathetic to the idea of fathers procuring sex for their sons, but I recall a news item last week where a father in the UK acquired a criminal record, inclusion on the sex offender's register and a ban on contacting his own son. Society is sending out mixed messages and I'm confused.

anonymous, Scotland



Bookmark with: Delicious

Digg

reddit

Facebook

StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable version