Just finished reading this one, and I can happily recommend it to you sleazebags. Canadian artist Chester Brown tells about his experiences with prostitutes who don't like being called prostitutes, i.e. escort girls, as a part of his everyday life. From the beginning, it's all very pragmatic -- Chester does not want to be in a relationship BUT Chester wants to have sex with girls. After doing the math, he comes to the conclusion that a $200 date every two weeks would be roughly what he spent just to be in a relationship (with no guarantee of sex).
Brown kept track of when he dated each girl, and they are all accounted for in this book. The monotony of the every-two-weeks-dating is reflected in the art, and since Brown decided to exclude most personal details about the girls, even to the point of not even showing faces, you don't get any of the more intimate side of the john experience. Sexually, Brown comes off as very basic -- blowjobs + fucking, and that's all there is. So, the various encounters with the girls are not what you remember most after reading the book.
* TERB = Toronto Escort Review BoardThroughout the book, Chester discusses various legal/moral aspects of prostitution. He is arguing against the concept of romantic love etc etc, and you do get a lot of talking heads and word balloons... Brown's style is stripped down but effective, I'd say. Brown is 100% clear that he wants prostitution (at least in Canada) to be decriminalized rather than legalized and regulated. In the book, he mainly discusses this with his artist pals Joe Matt and Seth, and his ex-girlfriend.
The last part of the book is a pretty hefty collection of writing on prostitution, as well as a ton of notes explaining minute details of the story. Some of the notes are great, like when explaining that yes, he really did say "I'd like to have vaginal intercourse with you" on his first pay-date, ha ha! Even Seth contributes with his notes after having read the comic. I found this comment of his to be pretty spot on, if you have followed the careers of Brown and Joe Matt (who has never made any secret of being a porn hound)...
All in all I found Paying for it to be courageous, flawed in some ways, but very much worth reading if you are at all interested in probing an analytical john's mind.
