Dear Mr Andrews – a sugar dating memoir by Lotte Latham – is published by Guts Publishing. Featured here is an extract from the book. To read the full thing, order a copy from the publisher.
When I arrived in Berlin, my plan was to have no plan.
At first this escort agency called Rubenesque dangled in front of me as a bit of a joke. An agency for fat girls. I thought about it. Was it really any different to having a man stealth me for eighty odd quid?[1] The agency took 30% but I was in a country where I didn’t speak the language and so it seemed prudent to lean on a middle-man. I figured that if I was ever going to try proper escorting it made sense to do that in Germany where it was less taboo and more legal[2]. I wrote to them expressing my interest. They got back requesting an interview.
I found myself in the leafy suburbs of southeastern Berlin in a bright shop decked out in royal blue carpet tiles and slash blinds. It was called Fotowelt.
The glass doors were etched with a frosted logo and the walls emblazoned with posters making offers such as:
“Lose 50kg… with FotoFX”
I sat at a table waiting for Peter, the man behind the well-oiled machine of niche sex work. I’d expected to be hustled into a windowless office with two or three shady looking men peering over a pile of biscuit crumbs. I’d anticipated flecked partition walls and the smell of a microwave kept within a confined space. But it was more like an estate agent’s office. There was even a bowl of nut fondants near the door.
Peter came across like a car salesman; encouraging me to improve my German for maximum yield and reassuring me the company was one hundred percent solvent. Sex was not important to him. It was a mere formality.
He told me, in a business-like manner, that the company was built on a foundation of respect and dignity. He described how the owner had discovered ‘the fetish market’ and untapped goldmines within people’s dark fantasies. He shook my hand and gave me a contract to review. I didn’t sign on the spot. He said I could take all the time I needed then booked me for a photoshoot that Saturday.
On my return, clutching my signed contract, I expected to see Peter again with a photographer or colleague. Instead, Hans answered the door. An older, bronzer, squinting kind of a guy.
He was the owner and liked to photograph all of his girls personally. It was his favourite part of the job. He invited me in and showed me to the same seat. But he wasn’t welcoming like Peter had been. He looked at me with suspicion.
Hans printed off a double-spaced list and handed me a ball point pen. Realising how little German I could speak, he switched to English. It was a ‘ja/nein’ questionnaire of sexual favours. When I was done ticking boxes, I handed it back to him. He paused and said:
“It is imperative, if you meet a client (he cleared his throat) ein Kunde and you feel you cannot follow through with something that you’ve ticked yes to on this list, then you must cancel the appointment within five minutes. Or else it becomes very (he wrung his hands mafioso style) tricky for us.”
I don’t personally believe in sexual imperatives and was vexed to hear the swollen concern in his voice over my ‘Prix Fixe’[3]. It had been my understanding that although sex was implicit, technically the clients paid for the time not the buffet.
“Any questions?” he said.
“What’s Natursekts? Is it like sex outdoors?” I said as I ticked yes.
“Nature’s Champagne. That’s what you might call Golden Showers.”
On hearing those words being read aloud by a serious German man, I stifled my laughter. It felt like an educational guide to Dirty German. He read on.
“Fuss Erotika. You haven’t ticked this box — but it is only for feet. You maybe misunderstood?”
“No, I understood. I’m just not really into that.”
He stared at me perplexed.
“Why not?”
“Does it make a difference?”
I didn’t like my feet and could think of nothing worse than controlling my disgust as I watched someone playing with my dwarfish leg stumps. I have the kind of soles that take on an iodine stain and my callouses are perma-hardened through neglect.
“Lesbian. You might have to actually do this if the man desires to see you with another woman. Will you be able to follow through?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And lick her too?”
In a city that sported sexual liberation as a tourist attraction, it seemed archaic that the concept of lesbianism might only exist hypothetically for male consumption. This being said, Hans was hardly a modern man.
“Rasiert. Your answer will not work. You have to choose between shaved or not shaved.”
“I wax.”
“Could you shave?”
“No.”
His forehead twitched as he circled my answer several times then chose the ‘nonrasiert’ box.
“The problem is, I don’t know quite where to put you. Rubenesque is for fat women and you are not that. But you’re not the size of our normal Salome girl either. Does Devot from our Bizarre range appeal to you?”
Devot, or being submissive, extended beyond my comfort zone. It seemed a bit too intrepid to line oneself up at the abattoir of paid pain. I declined in favour of Rubenesque. I was quite endeared with its golden glow, its calligraphic cursive and depthy cleavage header. It seemed operatic[4].
I followed Hans to the back room. It contained: a Hollywood bulb-frame mirror resting on top of a laminate table, a coffee machine, and a sofa with yesterday’s rubbish bags leaking into the cushions. It smelt of musty teabags.
I didn’t know what to wear for my shoot. The other girls seemed to be wearing mostly lingerie so I brought my favoured under-items (bought for me by Mr Castle circa 2016).
“Where are your business clothes?” Hans said.
I looked at him confused and he pointed to some glossy portraits of buxom wenches in blazers and tight skirts.
“You must own some business attire. All of our girls are professional.”
Something about the way he sucked air through his teeth gave me the impression he was pretending to be more difficult than was necessary—maybe in order to yield obedience. I disrobed under his attentive gaze and declined his offer of assistance with my suspender straps[5].
I am wary of pimps. The summer before I had been chased by a street pimp across a children’s playground. I had been watching in fascination as the hookers on the K-damm walked the curb in black underwear, neon fishnet body stockings, heels, white hot pants, and chokers. The bold costumes were striking but it was their movement that interested me most. Each girl chose a car and walked the length of it with such assertion as to create an 8-step catwalk, clucking at young male passers-by.
At one point, the elfin girl walking the length of a BMW stepped aside as an irritated man retrieved his car. With a disgusted look, like she’d soiled it, he turned his key in the ignition and drove away. She didn’t seem to notice but instead moved along to the next parked car and invested her presence there. Hand on one hip, hissing at the competition, she unapologetically created an obstruction in the cycle lane.
Slumped over the electricity box, I watched for hours. Then I got up and followed one of the girls who seemed separate from the rest. That’s when a man started following me. A wiry, messy-haired, hunched-over man with brown teeth and a white t-shirt. He was clearly in pursuit of me, so I sought refuge in an eerily empty, air-conditioned furniture shop.
After five minutes, I re-emerged with a lemonade. He was still outside waiting for me. I crossed the road twice to affirm his chase wasn’t fabricated in my mind. Then I started to panic. Reasoning that it had been my own fault and he was just trying to chase me out of the area, I tried to stay calm. Maybe he thought I was a non-uniformed police officer. Or worse, maybe a Christian. Or a vigilante. Or he just didn’t like me. I took a brisk right into a children’s playground.
With my breath quickening, I looked behind to see if I’d shaken him off but, if anything, he was closer. Maybe twenty feet away and reaching at something in his pocket which I feared to be a knife. The sand pit became an obstacle. Where my step had been light on the tarmac my feet now dragged in the dunes. I trotted with my knees high and my skirt pulled up, then took one last look over my shoulder, bolted the thigh-high fence and legged it the last two hundred metres to Schwules Museum, Berlin’s LGBT gallery. Thank God for the Gays! I paid for a ticket and ran into the Queers in Theatre exhibition as fast as possible. Thinking, rightly, that the pimp wouldn’t follow me into a queer space.
Hans leafed through his selection of flocked-rococo backdrops then walked over to his office and pressed play on the stereo. That Amy Winehouse song ‘You Know I’m No Good’ started playing. I asked him about the record in an endeavour to make small talk.
“You like British music?”
“Oh Amy, she’s a true artist of our time,” he said and began taking pictures. “London is where the heart of rock and roll is. I want to go back and explore Amy’s Camden. I feel I have only seen the tourist’s city so far and I know there is so much more!”
Hans stretched his arms above his head between shots. He took long breathes to help his creativity marinate. By the third or fourth outfit change he was grabbing at a pair of braces and a captain’s hat. Then he reached for a plastic venetian mask and a biker-jacket. It was no surprise he was angling at a retro look with my tacky ginger dye job and set hair.
He changed backgrounds from black to white to red, asking me to throw my head back in the throes of rapture. I am not a natural before a camera. In fact, I find it invasive and never have any idea where to look without buckling my lip at the last minute. However, I understood that unless I responded favourably, I’d be there all day, so I pretended I was a glamour model — straddling boxes and flicking my hair whilst provocatively placing my hand over my crotch.
Under the hot lights, I noticed my nipples were puffy. I tugged at them and tried to perk them up a bit. Hans walked over to the fridge and grabbed me a can of lager and a Rotkäppchen miniature[6].
With a beer can on one breast and a mini champagne bottle on the other, we took a break. There was still one more shot, which required a bottle of coconut body oil. I slipped into the bathroom and poured it over myself. Mixed with the smell of hairspray, it was like the Malibu-breath on an underage drinker. The poses were lit up at the edge so the contours glowed, causing most of the bulk of my thighs to blend into the background, somewhat misleadingly. This was what Hans called his ‘boudoir lighting’.
When it finally ended, I reclothed and joined him in the reception to flick through the album. We agreed on a short list and that my face would be hidden or blurred for privacy. I nervously waited through the weekend as they promised they would contact me to proof my page before going live.
Having heard nothing from them, I went online to check the Rubenesque website. There it was: my plus-sized profile live, with no blurring, and several full-frontal face shots. I had been described in lusty German as:
“Lady Lotte — Charmingly submissive with an interest in Jujitsu.”
[1]Stealthing: removing a condom without consent, which is considered rape under UK law — just sayin’.
[2]Prostitution in Germany is legalised at national level but is heavily regulated locally. Most regions have designated areas where sex workers can operate and fines for non-compliance. Berlin is the only city free of these restrictions, but in 2017 (the year I moved there) a bill called “Prostitutionsgesetz’ or ‘ProstG” was passed making it compulsory for prostitutes to sign up to a register. I never did for fear it would come back to haunt me.
[3]‘Whorearchy’ is a term describing the discrepancy in pay and working conditions between so-called ‘high class’ and other sex workers. According to the House of Commons 2016-17 Prostitution Report: “Sex workers have an average of 25 clients per week and an average of £78 per visit.” This has never been my experience. From a place of white girl privilege, and thanks to my posh accent, I have mostly been paid into the hundreds and have never taken more than two or three clients per week. I’m sure that escorting has as many iterations as workers but I have never been paid for ‘the act’ explicitly but rather for my time.
[4]After establishing Salome, a successful middle-of-the-range escorting site, Hans branched out into the older lady market with Eleganza (escorts 35+ in various degrees of mummy to dominatrix). He then established Rubenesque for men who like Dicke Titten and roomy behinds. Snow-Bunnies was his barely legal range of teen sluts, the most expensive girls on his books. Lastly, he launched Bizarre for anything else fetishistic, including two transexuals and a lesbian couple with a truncheon.
[5]Hans would have fit in with any red-light district world over. A pimp through and through.
[6]Rotkäppchensekt is the DDR equivalent of cheap fizz. I love it! The dry one is very tasty but the sweet original is like Babycham. It comes in a neo-classical red and gold packaging with calligraphic label. Very Rubenesque!
Lotte Latham is a professional Hedonist <3, Artist, Sex Worker and Author of newly released memoir Dear Mr Andrews (Guts Publishing 2023). Check out her website, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
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