A FISHY TALE

Day 31 in the Big Sister house and Leanne’s in the bedroom…

Those of you (like my fans at Scottish Screen and the CIA, according to my stats) who think I spend too much time blogging might be surprised to learn that I’m writing a feature script. For months I’ve been doing the rounds of the city’s saunas and dancing venues talking to girls and punters about their lives. And while the tabs would have us believe these establishments are dens of debasement, where innocent young east European girls get exploited by the lorry load, it’s no more skanky or unethical than say, working for Standard Life, whose chairman also happens to head a brewery. Okay, the hours might be less sociable but at least the work’s better paid.

As one of the top stag party destinations in the UK, Edinburgh seems quite happy to play pimp to these premises. Since 1982 the city council has granted licences in exchange for a hefty cut in the form of local taxes. This makes good civic sense because saunas and clubs play their part in keeping antisocial behaviour off the streets. On that score, I think the city should invest in more public toilets – especially in this weather because the streets here hum like Something Fishy, the Broughton Street monger, at close of business. A new spin on Auld Reekie you might say.

Well, there’s two things that smell like fish and one of them’s fish. For the purposes of research I met up with Lenka (not her real name) who works out of a sauna a spit away from Lothian Road. Her story is she arrived here in February after being laid off at a baked goods factory in her Polish hometown. Tall and tawny blonde, she’s a lovely looking girl with a can-do attitude and could easily be mistaken for an attractive student. Her aim - to make money and improve her English. Lenka shares a flat with two other girls and in her spare time likes going to the gym and nail bars. She watches DVDs and shops at the supermarket. Just a nice, normal girl who happens to barter sex for cash.

Lenka’s shift begins around 6pm when she arrives at the shop. Depending on traffic, she’s often there until 4am, usually four nights a week, Thursday to Sunday being the busy time. Her co-workers include a nurse, a PhD student and a single mum – hardly your stereotypical hookers. While stories of exploitation are rife – of beatings, rapes, drugs and gangmasters withholding passports – they’re also sadly true. But not for a savvy girl like Lenka, who insists her sauna’s safe, certainly a lot safer than working on Leith Links or Salamander Street, an area where desperate girls work to feed their habit and put themselves at risk in more ways than one.

The punters are mostly harmless, Lenka tells me - lawyers, bus drivers, businessmen, tourists, divorced guys, sad men whose wives got ill or died. Some want to talk, some don’t. Thankfully though, the job’s not without some relief. The john who coughed out his false teeth mid-orgasm, for instance, or the 28-year-old stay-at-home virgin dragged in by his mother or the under-performing drunk groom-to-be who turned out to be wearing lingerie. Lenka’s seen it all.

When I tell her I’m writing a script she’s bemused. Why? It’s boring. It’s a job. It’s about the money, nothing else. Sounds like the film business, I tell her, but with fewer punters to tout to it takes longer to notice the pricks. She laughs. On a grand a week plus she can afford to. Good luck to her, I say, she earns it. Let's hope she gets a happy ending. Me, I just want to get to the end of the draft.