It’s not often you find yourself invited to dine with a sex worker, her husband, and her client… but here I am, standing on a packed circle line train making my way to our rendezvous.
As I get off the tube, I curse the uncomfortable heels I’ve had to squish my feet into, and speed walk to an imposing grey building in London’s east end that’s home to a private members club.
When I arrive, a man in a perfectly tailored suit with slicked back hair holds the heavy wooden doors open for me and I make my way to the reception desk, where a gentleman in a neatly pressed jacket looks at me expectantly.
I’m here to meet Metro’s On Call columnist, Melissa Todd, who shares stories of her work as a dominatrix, along with her client William*, who is a member here. Oh, and Melissa’s husband too.
I don’t divulge all that to the man behind the reception desk, of course – although I can’t help but wonder if he knows the saucy secrets of all the members here.
After being ushered up some plush green carpeted steps towards the bar, I instantly feel grateful that I decided to take the stuffy dress code seriously – there’s not a pair of jeans in sight and the clientele are all in buttoned up suits and ties.
There’s of course not one bit of diversity either and I roll my eyes at the room of exclusively old white men, many of whom have probably never given a woman an orgasm.
Melissa and William are sitting in leather armchairs sipping some gin cocktail called a White Lady, and with the shake of hands, all formalities slip away.
‘I must tell you about my reporter friend,’ William says as he leans forward in his seat. ‘He used to work in Wales and had to cover a local case of a man shagging a sheep.’
The 85-year-old bursts out laughing as I shake my head – although regretfully it’s not the first time I’ve heard such a cruel tale. ‘The man apparently kept the sheep in place by putting its hind legs in his wellies,’ he adds.
I scrunch my nose and can’t believe the conversation has tumbled to such an x-rated and illegal topic so quickly. ‘Beastiality isn’t something I could ever understand,’ I say, thinking fondly of the fluffy little lambs outside my family home.
Right on queue, Melissa’s husband Issac* shows up in a nice suit, complete with an ear piercing and perfect politeness. He shakes William’s hand and I find it utterly bizarre he’s so at peace with the fact his wife of five years has seen that man’s naked bottom.
Oh yes, I should mention that William likes to be spanked by Melissa – so hard that he bleeds. (Although I wish I’d learned that after my pork belly main course, rather than on an empty stomach.)
As he’s telling me all this, I weirdly don’t feel uncomfortable or that I’m in the company of some slimy old man – a feeling I’ve felt more than I care to admit in the course of my life.
William is instead charismatic and fascinating and, at 85, he just wants to encourage people not to be embarrassed by what they enjoy sexually. His mother was a suffragette and he himself was involved in drafting the private member’s bill that led to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967.
My eyes practically pop out my head when, across the table, Melissa’s husband, who works in the religious sector, tells me he enjoys spanking people with her too – they’re even set to attend a spanking convention in Texas soon.
Throughout our time spent together, I can’t quite believe the civility and pleasantness that Issac and William exchange. When I glance over, the two are often engrossed in conversation – not a hint of jealousy emanates from either of them.
We move into the restaurant and my burrata starter arrives with a side of history, as William shares how he and Melissa came to meet in June 2022.
They were both mutual friends of Ariel Anderssen, a woman who had been brought up as a Jehovah’s Witness by her devoutly religious mother before turning to BDSM and masochism.
William had contacted Ariel to confess his kinks, which he felt at 83 he could finally explore after the passing of his late wife. Because Ariel doesn’t dominate men (she prefers to be submissive), she arranged a lunch to introduce Melissa and William so he could have his kinks fulfilled.
‘You know I was 83 when I realised I’d never tasted my own cum,’ he’d told Melissa upon meeting, and that was the moment she knew they’d be friends apparently. I think my criteria for friends is slightly different, although sitting across from the pair, it’s evident they have a pretty heartwarming relationship.
‘We got quite squiffy together over that first lunch,’ Melissa tells me. ‘William’s a big fan of squiffiness, particularly the White Lady induced kind’.
‘Two you’ll be under the table, three you’ll be under the host,’ William chimes in, and I laugh, putting my head in my hands.
After Melissa and William’s second hazy lunch since meeting, they went back to his house to play and now, the pair meet four times a year.
William tells me that he loves the scene in her book Ameri-caned where she makes a chap gush blood, and he’s desperate to recreate it, so the pair have recently introduced a safe word to their play, so Melissa can cane him even harder.
‘It’s so you feel safe to carry on hitting me. I want to be made to bleed. Please,’ he’d said to Melissa.
William also reveals to me over our ice cream desert, that he likes breath play too – where you purposely cut off your partner’s air supply for sexual arousal. Melissa laughs adding that it takes some courage to press a pillow over the face of an old man you greatly admire.
Following lunch, William takes us for a short tour around the old stately building. In the billiards room, I hear Melissa and her partner giggling as they reminisce about the time they had a passionate rendezvous amongst the cues and balls.
It’s clear how much they love each other and how much he has embraced what Melissa does for a living, something that I’m sure not many men would have the security, maturity and balls to do.
By the time we say our goodbyes, I’m already about two hours later than I’d planned to be and probably a bottle of wine deep.But it was all worth it, as I know that for the next 70 years, I’ll have the perfect anecdote about the time a sex worker, her client and her husband came to tea.
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