By GEORGIA WESTGARTH
SHE goes by ‘Lacey’ and she’s been a prostitute for six months – but all she wants is order back in her life.
“Routine” she calls it, a sort of structure that the sex industry has thrown out of her life.
“All I want is to have routine and responsibilities again,” she said.
“You become slack in this job, you can always ring in sick when you want and you become quite disrespectful – I can’t wait to have that again, that’s the hard thing about this job.”
‘Lacey’- her working girl name – currently resides in Cranbourne, but has spent the majority of her adult years backpacking with her best friend, two of those throughout Australia.
The 27-year-old from northern England has been caught up in the secretive and often corrupt world of paid sex for four years.
She has worked as a prostitute in Australia in two stints, for a total of six months – having returned to prostitution after separating from her husband of three years.
“My best friend and I were backpacking and we were doing fruit picking for our second year visa in Shepparton and we came to Melbourne and had no money at all,” Lacey recalled.
“We learnt that brothels were legal here because in the UK they’re not – so we thought we’d give it a go.”
It was something Lacey never saw in her future, and she has decided it won’t be for much longer.
“If I was doing this job and just getting by that would be soul destroying but because I know it’s just a little stint and I’ll have my life back like I did before, it’s easy to get through it,” she said.
“But it’s not a bad job, it’s not.”
Lacey worked at a brothel in Seaford for her first three months on the job and said she surprisingly liked it.
“I thought it would be like mismatched furniture and mattresses on the floor, but it was beautiful and the girls weren’t junkies, they were lovely,” Lacey said.
“We went for an interview and actually we mocked it at first.”
Lacey, a believer that “sex is for love” shocked herself and her best friend after her first shift.
“We decided if we don’t like it we’ll pin it as a one-night stand and we’ll walk away because we’ve always lived on no money, because we’re backpackers that’s what we do,” she said.
“My best friend had always slept around, I’d had two boyfriends and never had a one-night stand, she told me that I wouldn’t be able to do it.
“But it was so strange, she didn’t like it and I liked it.
“I have never had a problem with a client, they’re very versatile and they’re paying good money and I make them happy,” she said.
Lacey later met the man she would marry in a brothel bedroom.
He was a client and would book Lacey up to four times a week for up to four hours at a time for a month.
“My ex-husband was my client – that’s where I went wrong,” Lacey said.
But he only paid to have sex with Lacey once – all the other visits would be spent chatting.
“My best friend was seeing her partner, now husband, at the time and I guess I was lonely – we became friends, for six months we met up outside of the brothel and would chat on Facebook.
“He initially booked me for sex but because we got on so well it developed.”
Now broken up for reasons that cannot be recounted, Lacey decided to start working again as a prostitute at the Garden of Eden (GOE) in Dandenong and says she loves it.
“I love the GOE, we’re like a family,” she said.
“It’s just a job, I’m making somebody happy at the end of the day.”
But Lacey revealed she couldn’t do the job without using protection.
“The difference between doing the job and not is the condom for me,” she said.
“If I had no condom then that is actually doing the job, and I couldn’t do it mentally – thank God for the condom, it makes me a lot of money,” she said, laughing.
Lacey sends money to her mum to pay for the care of her cat, and apart from paying rent, saves every cent.
In between clients Lacey surfs the net and talks to the other girls, or washes the towels.
With a background in caring for those with learning disabilities, Lacey said she couldn’t wait to return home to start a routine.
“I’m saving to go back to England for good.”
Lacey’s message to those removed from the industry is this:
“People are very quick to judge, but people that are on this side – both men and women – are open-minded.
“Everyone has sex behind closed doors, that’s why we’re all here on this earth, so as long as its done safely and you’re doing the right thing I don’t see any problem with it.
“We’re all human beings.”
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