March 24, 2025 • 44 mins
Antonia Murphy knows more about sex than pretty much anyone I’ve ever spoken to.
Antonia was raising three kids, including one with a serious disability, in a small town in New Zealand when her marriage unravelled. A lot of women make big changes after divorce, and Antonia took that to a whole new level - she opened a legal, ethical brothel.In this shame-free conversation, Antonia shares the set of events that led her there, what she learned about what the women who worked at the brothel wanted and needed. And, of course, what the clients - almost all men - wanted and needed. And that can be surprising.
You’re going to hear stories about the men who were dropped off by their mothers or their wives, a surprising fact about the preferred age of the women, about the worst thing any parent can imagine happened to Antonia, and generally you’re going to be in the presence of a woman who looked at how you’re supposed to carry on, when you’re a divorced, regional mother, and said, F THAT.
You can follow Antonia on Instagram here
You can find her book, Madam, here
Listen to my conversation with Rachel Griffiths, who plays Antonia in the TV series, Madam, here.
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Mamamia's new podcast BIZ is rewriting the rules of work with no generic advice - just real strategies from women who've actually been there. Listen here.
CREDITS:
Host: Holly Wainwright
Executive Producer: Naima Brown
Senior Producer: Grace Rouvray
Producer: Tahli Blackman
Audio Producer: Jacob Round
Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to a MoMA mea podcast. Mamma Mere acknowledges
the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast
is recorded on. Ask for what you want, know your
ground rules, and do not budge. Age is experience, and
experience is hot and comforting and kind and hot. Say
(00:35):
what it is you need and ask for what you want.
It's not always about sex. It's about touch and connection
and wanting to be wanted, and for some people some
of the time it's as essential as breathing. But sometimes
it's about sex, of course. Just ask for what you want.
(00:58):
Welcome to a shame free zone. What a midlife madam
learned about sex from years of juggling, pimping, as she
somewhat ironically calls it, with the school run and a divorce.
If you have questions, I'm glad because this is an
extraordinary story of love and connection and lots and lots
of pretty honest sex, of what men want and what
(01:20):
women want and why A lot of the stories we
tell ourselves about all of that are nonsense. So please
just ask for what it is you want. Hello. I
am Holly Wainwright and I am mid midlife, mid family,
(01:40):
mid blush This is a first for us on mid Today,
I'm interviewing someone who's already been here sort of. A
few weeks ago, I spoke to the incredible Australian actress
Rachel Griffiths about her midlife sabbatical, about having been on
all ends of Hollywood, about actresses aging, about the role
she's currently playing on our screens, a woman called Antonia
(02:02):
Murphy in a show called Madam. And now today I'm
interviewing Antonia Murphy herself. Antonia was raising three kids, including
one with a serious disability, in a small town in
New Zealand when her marriage unraveled. She's going to tell
me today how that set of events led her to
(02:23):
opening an ethical brothel in a tiny coastal town. I
know it's not what everybody would do in that situation,
but hey, Antonia has a very specific story. Sex work
is decriminalized in New Zealand, so there was nothing illegal
about what she was doing. But that didn't mean there
wasn't a lot of judgment, and judgment is something we
do a lot of unpicking today from all sides, because
(02:46):
as well as understanding what the women who worked at
the brothel wanted and needed, she learned an enormous amount
about what the clients, and in this example, they're almost
all men wanted and needed. And that is a lot
more nuanced and complex than you might think. I promise
stay with us. You're going to hear stories about the
men who were dropped off by their mothers or their wives,
(03:09):
a surprising fact about the preferred age of the women.
About the worst thing any parent can imagine happening happening
to Antonia. And generally you're going to be with me
in the presence of a woman who looked at how
you're supposed to carry on when you're a midlife regional
mum and said fuck that. And of course you are
(03:30):
going to hear about what it's like to have written
a book about your life, have it turned into a
TV show, and for Rachel Griffiths to be playing you
in a version of your life. Here we go, Anthony,
your book is brilliant. You're a writer, of course, so
you obviously know what you're doing, but the story is
(03:50):
fascinating to put the audience in place, as it were.
Can I read the intro to an article that you
wrote in the Huffington Post back in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Oh sure, I think I know which one it is.
Go ahead.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
I think this article kickstarted a few things. I think
it was after reading this maybe that the TV people
contacted you. Is that correct?
Speaker 3 (04:10):
An article that got optioned?
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah? So are you right?
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Bye?
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Mom, I'll see you tomorrow morning. It's eight am on
a Tuesday, and my work day probably started out a
lot like yours, packing lunchboxes, making sure the kids eat
a healthy breakfast, finding socks and shoes, and homework. But
when my nine year old daughter Miranda kisses me goodbye
to catch the school bus, she knows I won't be
home until long after bedtime. That's because I'm a pimp.
(04:36):
More politely, I'm the Madam of the Batch, a feminist
escort agency I own in the North Island of New Zealand.
So let's get this part out there so a mid
audience know what we're talking about. An ethical pimp, a
feminist escort agency. What's that and how did it work?
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Well? I mean, let's be clear. I use the word
pimp in that article because I was deliberately being inflammatory, correct, right, yeah, readers,
readers on words. But what I meant when I said,
and still say, that we were an ethical and feminist
escort agency is that we were constantly guided by consent
at every stage of the process. The women were always
(05:17):
in control of who they saw and what they would and.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Would not choose to do with that client.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
And that went from making the booking to allowing him
into the room, to every step of the way during
the appointment. And if for any reason he left and
didn't pay, if they had taken off their clothes or
sexual contact had started, I would pay them out anyway.
So nobody was ever worried about, oh, I've got to
(05:43):
go through with this dodgy booking because I have to
pay my electrical bill kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
So you are as the listeners will be able to
tell from your accent originally from America, from the West.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Coast, yes, fran Francisco.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
But by the time you open the batch, you're living
in a tiny town, like not in Auckland, but like
a in a little country town in Northland, which is
a beautiful part of New Zealand. And you're there. You're
marriage is rocky, falling apart at this particular point, You've
got two kids. You start doing your research knowing you
(06:18):
want to open an escort agency, but you're starting from nothing.
How did you learn that you know the sort of
rules and guidelines that you've just spelled out for us
that made this a feminist, safe place to work for
the women. How did you learn that's what you wanted
to do?
Speaker 2 (06:36):
So women always exchange information with each other, whether they're
talking about something legal or not. Right, I think at
every stage in my life, I've always had a woman
or a girlfriend who I could talk to and get
the honest truth about something. And it turns out there's
this whole online community of anonymous sex workers and people
(07:00):
who work in the business who exchange information everything about
what makes a good agency to work at, somebody who
protects your rights, to how to stay safe in a
booking And it was they who taught me how to
design a place where the women's rights were held at
the forefront of everything that we did. And then, you know,
(07:23):
this didn't make it into the book. But when I
was still married to my husband, I sent him down
to a couple of places in Auckland, like so called
good brothels or escort.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Agencies to check it out.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
And he came back and he said, oh my god,
it's so depressing, like it's you go into this place,
it's sort of lit by these cheesy Christmas lights. There's
like a vinyl couch that gets wiped off between bookings.
He's like, there's a lot of glitzy, glamy stuff that's
supposed to look elegant and classy, but it's just makes
(07:54):
me sad. So I thought, oh, I think I think
we could do things.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
A bit better than that.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
And so the batch you end up opening is a
is in a motel, and you make it bright and
breezy and like a beach almost, like, well, that's what
a batch is in New Zealand, right, is a beach house.
And so everything from the inception of what it would
look like and feel like to the way that the
workers were treated was very different. I was really interested
(08:21):
in the process that you were just talking about about
the research going and talking to women. You talk to
a woman in the sex industry who tells you that
it's all about being a madam or a sex worker
is all about hold your power, she said, And I'd
love you to talk a bit about what that means, because,
to be honest, when I read examples in the book
(08:43):
of where you helped, you thought about that and implemented it.
I think it's something that all women, sex workers or
not could get a lot better at. Does it kind
of mean whole know you're worth?
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah, I think that's part of it, and we can
get into that part of it too, in that I
learned a lot from the men about asking for what
you want and not being afraid to ask, even if
it comes off as a bit cheeky. But I think
when she taught me about hold your power. I think
there's a reason why madams traditionally have been sexually unavailable
(09:18):
to the clients for the most part, and often older,
so that culturally they're considered no longer sexually interesting. Right
Because I had on regularly I would get proposition by clients.
They would try to find their way in around the
cracks and ask.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
All, will you see me?
Speaker 2 (09:35):
I'll pay top dollar? How much would you charge? How
can I can? I? Please?
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Please? Please?
Speaker 2 (09:40):
And what that's about is they feel like if they
can conquer you sexually, then they've won you over and
they don't have to play by your rules anymore. So
I think it's that's why it's so that's why I
think that madam position has existed traditionally is that you
need a woman in charge who is sexually unavailable and
completely unmoving in her ground rules.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
That's interesting what you just said about how age plays
into that, because it is true, of course that the
stereotype of a madam in my mind is definitely she's
older than the women who work, who do the sex work.
In your experience, I mean, I want to I'm going
to get to all the things you've learned about men
doing in that process. But is there an age cut off?
(10:24):
Do you feel like?
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Not at all? In fact, when you said that, I
wanted to jump in because the lady who made the
most money at our agency was older than me. And
the reason why well, there's a few reasons why she
made the most money. She was highly professional, and she organized,
and she would come in with a large Duffel bag
for what we called her day at the office because
she had back to back bookings of these elderly gents
(10:47):
who would book her for two and three hours at
a time, and she would put on a different lingerie
outfit for each one, and there was very little sex.
It was largely companionship. But she was really intuitively kind.
She was so genuinely kind. People really responded to that,
and she made the most money, so it really And
(11:08):
the other reason is that a lot of these guys
who come and see sex workers, if they're in their
seventies and eighties, they don't want to see a lady
in her twenties. They're like, my granddaughter is in her twenties.
That makes me feel like a pedo. So there really
isn't a cutoff, I would say in age for sex work,
and quite often the older ones do better. And in fact,
it was a bit of a red flag for me
(11:30):
and the other managers when we would get a new
client in particular, who would say who's the youngest? Yeah,
who's the youngest? Because what that means is either A
he thinks that women's quality degrades with age, which is
a big red flag, or more likely, B he thinks
he'll have a better chance pushing her boundaries if she's young.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Absolutely, and there is an experience in there with a
man like that. Just back for one more second to
hold your power. One of the first times in the
book that you like you think about doing that is
when a client is trying to talk you down on price.
And this is what I'd love to get to about
that idea of saying what you need and what you want,
trying to talk you down in price, and you this
(12:12):
is when the batch has just opened, and so you're
kind of like figuring it out. Yeah, and you were like, no,
I'm going to hold it and see what happens. And
of course he cames and says, sure, is that also?
Is it about also not the people pleasing the man
pleasing reflex?
Speaker 2 (12:30):
It was really hard to deprogram ourselves from that. I
can still remember, you know. We had a confirmation text
that we would send when people made a booking that
said you must park in this place, arrive on time
for your booking, do not arrive early, do not arrive late,
and so on. And the first draft I looked at
it and I saw that we'd started almost every sentence
with please, and I was like, we got to take
(12:52):
the pleases out of this one, because I'm not asking them,
I'm telling them. So that was really a process for
us to work that out. And yeah, I mean it
became quite clear early early on. So early the men
would would push back on the rules, and also they
would always ask for discounts and then and then not always,
(13:13):
but very often they would want to know, can I
do this?
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Can I do that?
Speaker 2 (13:16):
How about three of this? How far can I go?
How hard can I.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Say bad words?
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yeah? If you card?
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Can I fuck her? Things like that, I mean, sometimes
quite gross. But I think a lot of them just
thought they were being clear about the boundaries and they
wanted to make sure they got the best deal possible
for their money, which, okay, it annoyed us, and sometimes
we laughed uproariously about it, but also like, why don't we.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Do that more as women.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
I don't know about you, but me personally, Like even
the the least I negotiated on the motel a year
down the line, it was quite clear that I had
made some mistakes in my negotiation where I could have
I could have had that motel ticking along at a
much better.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Clip, But I just hadn't.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
I hadn't pushed back with the landlord because I think
I thought if I pushed, he'd yank the whole thing away,
which is not the case. That's not You're not going
to lose everything. If you ask, people are just going
to say maybe no. And it doesn't hurt, right.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
I know, But I mean, it's such a stereotype. But
I know it certainly is true of myself and lots
of midwomen. I know in particular that's what they're afraid of.
But I could lose it all. I don't know if
I deserve it. I don't know if I'm gonning.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
And it's.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
A few of the conversations I've had on this show
that have been enlightening, as when people say, very often,
when you ask for what you want, you get it.
Mm hmm, you know, but it's all about how you
do that. There isn't There isn't a moment in your
book where which I'd like to think is known only
in New Zealand moment, but maybe not where one man
offers to pay and crayfish.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Is particular to New Zealand. But I wouldn't be surprised
if burter is pretty common. I mean, I can tell
you for real burder for drugs is definitely yes.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
ANTHONYA and I are going to be back in a
minute to talk about the kinds of men who pay
for sex and the unconventional way in which she ended
up with her now husband. It does involve getting punched
in the nose. Just stepping back a little bit, you
say that, and I felt a gen x camaraderie with
you about this. You were sort of saying that you
(15:20):
had quite you had an adventuress, you had a non
conventional childhood, you say, I seen you rite. When I
was six months old, my mother's went. My mother went
to the United Nations Women's Conference in Mexico City, leaving
me with my dad. My father decided this was a
good time to attend the Hooker's Ball at the San
Francisco Highatt Regency with me swaddled in a blanket in
the backseat of his car. It was nineteen seventy five.
(15:41):
These things happened back then, and indeed they did. Our
nineteen seventies upbringings were kind of different, I think.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
And whearin as she got on the next flight home.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
I'm sure she did.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
But I think the reason why he went to that
is because my mother was sort of somewhat friends or
at least friendly with Margo Saint James, who was a
big sex worker, rates activist and feminist in San Francisco.
So they were peripheral aund that scene. And I know
my mother, as a second way a feminist would talk
a lot about the crossover between sex work and being
(16:18):
a housewife.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
For example.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
I want to ask you about that too. But that's
interesting because you also say in the book at some
point that the rules you'd internalize from your dad were
around like don't be a prick tease, don't wear a
short skirt, don't do this and that, So it's like
they're conflicting. You obviously had a sort of compared to
a conventional straight lag childhood, a relatively what's the right word,
(16:44):
I guess put me in there you go, But you
also were still internalizing all that messaging that women, young
women always do right about, like protect yourself, make sure
you know, don't lead men on, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Yeah, well, I think a lot of that is generational.
So my dad was born in the twenties and my
mom was born in the thirties. So even though my
mom was a strident feminist, I think her adage who
was like, look, if you you know, you show nipple
and and wear a really short mini skirt, you're gonna
get aggressive attention, so be prepared for that. It can
(17:21):
make you, know, your walk home that much more dangerous. Nowadays,
you know, people say, oh, it's not her fault, it's
his fault. She should be able to wear what she wants,
and they're absolutely right. Women should be able to wear
what they want. Also, I don't think my mother was
wrong that the micro mini is gonna make your walk
home a lot more complicated.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
To be honest, it makes it's interesting because I have
a fifteen year old daughter, you know, we it's we're
so much further along from this idea of like keep
yourself safe, do your top button up as you, as
your dad would say. But there's a part of you
that has learned those lessons yourself from being hyper visible
at that moment where you become hyper visible and you
(18:00):
want to kind of protect them from it. And it's
it's complicated.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
It is complicated, and in fairness, I think we've come
a long way and we've all so taking a huge
step backward with the amount of pornography that is so
easily accessible in everybody's back pocket and that apparently everyone's
watching from the age of ten, I know, and I
saw how that played out at the batch, and it
was everything from asking for sort of further and further
(18:28):
out fantasies, and it would be quite clear when a
certain fantasy was trending in porn because more and more
men would ask for it. Two men who literally could
not orgasm having vaginal sex with a woman because they
were so used to jacking it with porn, and so
they got used to this very specific touch and they
could no longer orgasm with a woman. So oh, and
(18:50):
then just like the total death of foreplay, Like how
many young men would get in there and think all
they had to do was put her legs up over
our head and pound away, and she's going to have
nine orgasms. I mean, these ladies, they would I talk
about it in the book. They at first they would say, Oh,
I don't want to see it. He's so old, you know,
he's fifty. He's going to smell old man. And then
(19:11):
they'd finally concede, and when they came down, they'd be like,
holy shit, that was the best shag of my life,
Like no one's ever been that courtly with me before,
you know, And he kept he was so important to
him that I feel good.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
I mean, they were just like baffled.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
And I guess also that because that's a generation that
hasn't grown up with the porn in the pocket. It's
interesting about this because I would imagine. I mean, so
you were running the batch from in the sort of
late teens, right the late twenty teens, and so you know,
we are living in this in the iPhone world, we're
living with porn in the pocket. I imagine that Tinder
(19:50):
and only fans in those things are very much disrupted.
Brothels and agency work.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Have they No, I don't think so. I mean they
may have. I couldn't speak to the before times because
I wasn't in an industry before, but I will say this,
something that really surprises people outside the industry is how
little sex there is. I mean it may be different
in the sort of street walker economy where people are
paying for fifteen minutes in the back of your car
(20:17):
or whatever. That's not the experience I can speak to.
What we sold was minimum thirty minutes, most often an hour,
sometimes two or three, and during that time there was
like maybe five minutes of sex. So men aren't booking escorts,
at least not at the price point and the time
(20:37):
span that we were offering for the shag. They were
booking for the companionship conversation, someone to pay attention to
them and make them feel like they were important. And
really for the touch. Like that was a huge wake
up for me, is how there just seems to be
this epidemic of loneliness and of lack of human touch
(21:01):
that people are just hungry for and will pay And yeah, okay,
we are only charging two hundred and forty dollars an hour,
but it twenty eighteen in Fungaday, New Zealand. Let me
tell you that was a big chunk of less people's
pay check. That was a big payout, so they were
that starved for it.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
It's interesting because you'd think in this porn saturated world
that you know that if anything, people were more, that
there's more sex, But then study after study is saying
that young people now are having less sex than they've
ever had. Right, And anecdotally it seems to me, I
work with lots of young women. Attitudes to sex and
(21:42):
monogamy are still quite conservative in some ways, I think
more conservative than gen x is are, Like totally, don't
you think I think that the intimacy and monogamy and
finding your person is still very much the ideal that
is upheld. What do you think about that?
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Well? I think a lot of things.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Some of the thoughts that came up as you were
talking were It's true, we were shagging so much more
than kids are these days, and we had the specter
of aids over our heads, like can you imagine.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
I know when as we came of sexual age with
that idea and the fear around that.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
I can tell you I'm not gen z and I'm
old and cringe to them. Right, But the one person
who will talk to me still touchwood is my daughter
who's fourteen. And one of the comments that she's made
which really resonated with me, is she said, I could
be photographed, Like every time I'm out in public, I'm
really careful about how I present myself because I could
(22:43):
be videoed or photographed at any time or recorded, and
then that can never go away, like it can ruin
your life. So I think there's more of a self
censorship because kids are worried about like just that it
can ruin your life, like we would do, get drunk,
do dumb stuff, be bad in bed with a lover
(23:05):
you didn't sync with, and like that's it. It's forgotten,
washed off, like the cigarette smell on your clothes after a.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Night at the clubs.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Right, they can follow them forever into jobs, any future relationship.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
I mean, what an enormous.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Wait, no wonder that anxious. This is depressing, depressing, I
wonder it's it's true, it's this. I wonder if we
could look back on our young adulthood and think we
were allowed to mess up an experiment and have adventures
in a way that they're probably not. I wanted to
get back to two things, well many things, but we're
(23:44):
jumping all over the place. But when you were running
the batch, so you're also parenting three young kids, your
oldest Silas had significant disabilities, your daughter Miranda's little and
you had a brand new baby, Matisse. So you were
a hustling working mother, which was one of the real
impetuses for you wanting to do that, and as it
turned out, so a lot of your ladies. You even
ran a crache at the batch for a while. How
(24:06):
does motherhood and sex work intersect? You mentioned it before.
How does that work?
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Well?
Speaker 2 (24:12):
I think a lot more than most people would think,
because mothers need flexible schedules, and mothers who've been left
alone with their kids need to make the money for
the whole household. Because the vast majority of absent men
aren't paying enough, right, so they needed to be able
to make real money to run a real safe household
(24:33):
for their kids. Sometimes they were in an educational program
to launch themselves into professional life, so they needed even
more childcare and even more of an income to pay
for that. And you know, how are you going to
make that work if you've only got a high school
degree and the only jobs out there for you with
that are like call center or working in a cafe
(24:54):
for minimum wage. Like it's just that the math doesn't math,
yea with that, which is why a lot of women
have a Mom's in particular, have turned to sex work.
And then I guess the other part of that question
is like, oh, how do you reconcile your life at
home with your life at the batch? But I mean,
I don't think in that sense it was really much
(25:14):
different from any working mother, Like when I'm at work,
I'm at work, and when I'm home.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
I'm mum'sy.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Well, there are some really interesting scenes in the book though,
when you are sort of dealing with your kids but
your phone the phone was pinging with messages and this
bit I found really interesting. Well, it's it's near the
beginning of your book. You're talking about you. You've run
quite a lot of the text messages you got sent
and they are quite shocking, Like if you're not in
(25:40):
that world, they're quite shocking. So I'm going to read
a couple of hours. So you're, you know, you're doing
what you're doing with the baby on your boom and
everything and you and you're getting messages that are like, hey,
do you have toys or suck without a condom? Show
me pussy face, tits and ass? And you say, is
this because this is obviously early in your experience, You're like,
(26:00):
is this how they talk when they don't have to pretend?
And I found that a really interesting insight because that's
exactly what I thought when I was reading it. I
don't think a lot of those messages would shock a
lot of my midlife friends are on the dating apps,
to be honest, they get a lot of that stuff,
and that not from people who are looking to pay.
(26:20):
But did you feel like you were getting, at least
at the beginning, that you were getting an insight into
the male psyche that was really disturbing? And also, do
you think that is how they talk when they don't
have to pretend that they respect us.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Well, Look, I have four older brothers, so I think
I had a bit of insight into the male psyche anyway,
and they would talk and say all kinds of outrageous
things about women when they were around me. I think
that I think probably all men think those things. I
think most men say them, and I think for many
(27:00):
men there is no contradiction between that and the fact
that they also respect women and their intellect. Like, I
think you can want to slap the ass and then
also have a conversation about civil rights. I don't think
that is necessary necessarily cancel each other out. But in
terms of an insight into you know, again, I think
(27:22):
men thought that they were being clear when they rang
up and they asked for, you know, can I get
a size six double D blonde please? And that. But still,
even though I knew they were not trying to be offensive,
it would it would just get, it would get. It
would wear you down because it was like, oh, they
(27:43):
just think of us as a collection of body parts.
And so that's why very quickly we realized like the
batch ran the best when we had three managers who
each just worked two days a week, because we would
just it would just be so emotionally exhausting to deal.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
With that.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
For thirteen fourteen hours a day.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
But that's an interesting point you make that it's not
that because when you wrote, you know, is this how
they talk when they don't have to pretend. I think
that sometimes when a curtain is pulled back a little
bit on that kind of language whatever, I can find
myself thinking they hate us, you know what I mean,
(28:26):
Really they hate us, and that's how they would like
to see all of us all of the time. But
that's a very simplistic way of thinking about it, isn't it.
It's these men are messaging you for a very specific purpose.
This is your job to find them the person who
possibly is going to fulfill their fantasy. It's not as
(28:48):
black and white as good bad.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Yeah. And I think that's a mistake that a lot
of activists make when they talk about sex worker really
people in general, when they talk about it without firsthand
knowledge of it. Is you know, feminists in particular in
Europe will say, oh, selling women's bodies for sex devalues women,
(29:11):
and it encourages men to treat us like objects to
be used. And I think again, that's assuming that because
a man wants sex with a woman. Therefore, he is
a predator who doesn't see her as a valuable human being.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
I don't think, I don't. I don't think that's the case.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
I mean, look, there are jerks out there, for sure,
and we had a few of them come to the batch.
But for the most part, I think men have well,
all people, I think have a need for sex and
intimate touch and to feel loved and appreciated, even if
it's an illusion. But I think men really feel it
(29:51):
like a like a like a drive, like eating.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
There's a point in the book where you sort of
run through this almost profiles of a few of the guys.
I'm just gonna find him. Ben is a widower in
his sixties who spent his whole life on his sheep farm.
He is cripplingly shy, and he has a bit of
a speech impediment. So these are kind of your your regulars.
Michael is a local salesman seems to be in a
happy marriage, but he has an enormous sex drive and
(30:15):
his wife is agreed that he can regularly go to
escorts as long as she doesn't have to hear about it.
Eric is autistic and he saves up his disability checks
for his visits, which his mum drives him to and from.
I think it's really interesting to consider this variety of
people who come, and I'd love to know because, as
(30:36):
I was just saying about hormone a lot for a
lot of mid women, sex can become a bit of
a battleground because your hormones might have been smashed and
so your libido is low, or you're in the familiarity
of a long relationship and that erotic charge is really
hard to find. Did you see lots of that? Have
(30:57):
you seen that kind of outsourcing of sex that's maybe
depicted there by Michael the guy whose wife agrees? Did
you see a lot of that? And does it work?
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Absolutely? I saw a lot of it.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
And it's interesting to me when people talk to me
about the threat that sex work poses to marriage, because
I think actually the reverse is true. A lot of
men would reach out to sex workers because their wives
were uninterested in sex sex had completely left the marriage,
but they didn't want to divorce and lose their families,
and they didn't want the risk of having an affair,
(31:31):
which could bring with it emotional attachment and all of
those complications, and so this for them was a way
to get their physical needs met without putting their families
at risk.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
Does it work? I don't know.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
I have no way of following up and finding out
if they're still married or divorced five or ten years later.
I can tell you that somebody I know and my
personal life has done that and it has saved his marriage.
That he says his wife told him explicitly that she
was no longer interested in having sex. And they are
in their sixties, and he said, I'm not ready to
(32:06):
die yet. Now.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Your own marriage, which is talked about in the book
of Course with Patrice, started in quite an unconventional way too.
So you were married to the father of your two
older kids and you opened your marriage. Right. Is that
the right terminology, I guess. And Patrice went at some
point from being your lover to your partner when you
got pregnant with Matisse, and your husband went and punished
(32:28):
him in the nose. And then I don't know why
I'm laughing. That's not really funny, but it's just it's
quite a scene. And then you say that your small
town turned on you at that point to a lot
of people stopped talking to you and I wanted to
hear about your ins and then you opened brothels. So
I'm sure that really, sure that really sorted out all
(32:50):
that judgment. How did that community handle you in a way,
and how did you learn to deal with that those
really entrenched conservative attitudes about both your personal and professional.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
I'm not Jeff, It's a blessing or a curse how
completely non confrontational quies are, because nobody ever said to
my face that they disapproved of what I was doing.
But it did hurt when friends just stopped, like literally
just didn't call back, didn't email back.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Just just cut us dead.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
And Patrice had lived in the community a lot longer
than I had, and these are people who he'd cared
for their kids over the school holidays because during periods
of time and he was only working part time or
between jobs, he like basically conducted a summer camp at
his house, took care of all their kids, and they
just cut us out. So yeah, that hurt would have Yeah,
and you know, honestly, as an American, I'd rather they
(33:43):
had had a conversation with me, because maybe we could have,
you know, salvaged some of the friendships. But alas that
was not to be. And I think I was so
overwhelmed at the time with new baby and profoundly disabled
child and two businesses and all the rest of it.
I wasn't a go door to door and say, Hi,
(34:04):
do you still want to be my friend? Like, I
just didn't have time for that. I had to simplify, you.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Know, judgment that you were copying for both that and
then I assume that it was public knowledge about the batch,
right like the town all knew about the batch. Did
you also cop a lot of judgment about that and
did you care?
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Well, It's hard to say. I only felt the judgment
when I tried to advertise, both for staff or for clients,
or when I tried to rent a premises, and I
was getting blocked at every point in the way. When
I when council tried to give us the boot, that's
when I felt the pushback. The rest of the time,
(34:42):
people really just did not confront I sometimes felt a
bit of a chill in the air, but nobody said anything.
And look, you know, I've worked out that fun Today
had a population about eighty thousand people, of whom let's
say half were men. Forty thousand and like maybe a
quarter of those are children. So of the thirty thousand
(35:04):
adult men in town, I had three thousand names on
my work phone. So like judgment are no judgment? They
were still ringing that phone.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Yeah, absolutely absolutely. It was obviously a service that was
needed in that community, whether they approved of it or not.
So you didn't. It wasn't like they're trying to run
you out of town. It was just more like icy,
an icy, like not looking at you in the shop. Well, yeah,
when we come back. ANTHONYA tells me about her experience
(35:38):
parenting a child living with a disability while also running
a brothel. Stay with us. Everything changed in twenty nineteen.
You lost your son, Silas. He died suddenly, and that
obviously changed everything. You. You packed up and left and
went to live in France for a year with your family.
And you didn't go back, did you. You've gone back
(35:59):
to New Zealand, but you've never gone back.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
No, I have not been back.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
I assume that there's some that's a massive life before
and life after moment.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
Yeah, well, I mean I from Gooday.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
For me, it was the years when I was parenting
Silas which were really hard. I mean I love that kid,
but it is so hard and isolating to have a
child who is so profoundly disabled. He was basically nonverbal,
he was incontinent. He would yell nonsense words repeatedly. And
(36:34):
so you know, people people shoot you are either really
uncomfortable or they shoot you annoyed looks because they think
your child is acting out. They don't realize that he
can't help it. I think we have a ways to go.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
I mean, that's another taboo.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
We have a ways to go before we're fully accepting
of the disabled, and so there's just a lot of
pain wrapped up for me in that time.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
I think the way that you write about with such
honesty about parenting Silas, mothering Silas will make a lot
of women, I'm sure they say that to you already,
but will make a lot of parents feel very seen
because I think I think you like you. You bring
You're very I mean as in all of the book,
you're very honest, You're very straightforward about it. You know,
(37:18):
you talk about how difficult it is and was, and
I think it's a real gift that because you know,
we we like to put little bows on difficult situations,
don't we.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Totally one, and thank you for saying that, because I
feel like that that the book does makes tries to
ship away a little bit at that taboo that we
have around disability, and it's bow is exactly the right
word for it. There's another writer, Andrew Solomon, who writes brilliantly.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Far from the Tree.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
All from the.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
Tree loved that book.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
He says, there's a tendency that people have of calling
them pillow angels. You know these these Hugh at the
time was writing about, I think a pair of twins
that were so profoundly disabled that they couldn't even sit
up on their own. They were basically lying flat on
their backs with the tube in their bellies to feed
them on pillows. And I can't remember if it was
(38:14):
the mother the people around them calling them pillow angels.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
I thought, wow, that's.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
So what it is is it's a racing of the child,
and it's a racing of the parent. Because look, Silas
could be a real little shit sometimes like every other kid,
and that's part of his humanity. He has the right
to be a little shit, and I have the right
to feel really unhappy about going into his room every
morning and changing an adult sized pooh, you know, and
(38:41):
that's also human, that's part of my humanity. And so, yeah,
I think too often what happens is that the parents
of people who are disabled, them very often into adulthood
of the child end up isolated at home because.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
No one is able.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
To They're either ostracized or there's this weird angelic halo
put on them, but either way, nobody wants to see them.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Yeah. Absolutely, and they don't want to hear They don't
want to hear your story about that, you.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Know, I think so playing on an animal level.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
I think that's exactly right. I think people don't want
to look at it, which is like, deep down don't
want to look at that experience, which I really appreciated
it being in the book. You did go back to
New Zealand though, And I'm really interested in post batch
life because obviously you've written this book, and this book
has been adapted into a TV show which is very successful,
(39:39):
has Rachel Griffith playing you. I don't know how that feels.
How does it feel to have Rachel Griffiths playing you?
Speaker 2 (39:44):
Is it really real?
Speaker 1 (39:47):
It's great? But so how did life play out post that?
Did you? You? Obviously you all went back to France.
I can't imagine what a difficult time this was COVID hits.
But you did go back to New Zealand. Why did
you go back to New Zealand? And how has life
changed since you wrote the book?
Speaker 3 (40:07):
Well, I mean that quick.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
The reason of why we came back to New Zealand
is that we both have shared custody of children with
our ex partners. Of course you do short of abandoning
those children, which I could never do. We need to
be in New Zealand, of course days them.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
But really the.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Only other option I think for me would be France
because the United States I feel less and less American.
It's been sixteen seventeen years now.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Did you write the huff Post essay and it got
optioned for the movie? But had you'd already been you
You've sailed through this book that you always knew it
was going to be a book, really, this Batch Adventure?
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Oh right, yeah, so you were asking me about life
since then? I always wanted to write about it, and
I had been writing about it during the time of
running the Badge. I would jot down notes and I
would talk about it whenever I could to a couple
of podcasts and so on, because I thought what we
were doing was really important and low key revolutionary, actually
(41:07):
putting the power in the hands of the sex wor.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Near the beginning of the book, you're like, you're in
this little town in New Zealand and you're kind of
going and you've got these little kids, and as discussed,
you know, life isn't easy, and you're working out what
to do. And you say, when you're young and dub
you make choices on a whim because you think everything
is reversible, and then one day you realize it's not.
And I that's one of the things about aging that
(41:32):
I bump up against a lot. I'm like, the choices
I've made that I didn't even really think about have
now led me to be for in my life. For example,
I live on the other side of the world to
my family and all those things. When you look back
at this time, at that time in your life that
this book is about, how do you feel about it?
(41:53):
Do you regret like being there? Do you wish that
life had been different already? Glad that it all played
out the way it did.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
I think it has to play out the way it does.
I mean, look, if I was gonna tell you one regret,
I'd say, I wish I hadn't dropped out of universe
level chemistry because I was really getting interested in endochronology.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
But I think, look.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
When my husband left and I was so terrified, and
I had all these kids to take care of, and Patrece,
my now husband, said he would be with me and
help me raise this child. But I didn't know if
he was a stick or not. I think something rises
(42:37):
up in mothers in particular, or we just go nothing
gonna put my babies in danger. And I just I
was able to find his strength of a hundred wildcats.
And I'm not flexing here like that. I think it's
I think it's a physical brain reaction when a mom
is backed against the wall. Uh. And I'm proud of
(42:58):
what we did. And I think I did it because
I was backed up against the wall. So yeah, I
think all that bad shit had to happen.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Thank you so much, Antony, It's been a really good conversation. Friends.
This has been the last traditional episode of season four
of mid We're going to be back in your ears
in April, and until then, I want you to keep
your ears free for a few little treats that might
drop your way in this feed. Also, I asked you
(43:29):
last week to rate and review and please continue to
do that wherever you're listening to MID. If you like
the show, If you love the show, if you have
opinions about the show, tell us jump in to wherever
you're listening to this and rate and review. Five stars
would be great. Also, if you have thoughts and feelings
about what we should be talking about next on MID,
(43:49):
we'd love to hear it. Follow us on instat and
send us a cheeky DM at MID by Mamma Mia
or me at Wainwright Holly. And last, but not least,
if you want more MID conversations about sex, scroll back
to our conversation with Leslie Morgan, who got divorced at
forty nine and embarked on quite the sexual adventure, or
(44:09):
with the author Julie Cohen about coming out as bisexual
as a married mom of forty Both of those episodes
are in our feed, and of course, a massive thank
you to the executive producer of MID. Her name is
Nama Brown, the senior producer is Grace Ruvray, the producer
is Charlie Blackman, and we've had audio production from Jacob
(44:31):
Brown and I will see you next season. Bye.
You're listening to a MoMA mea podcast. Mamma Mere acknowledges
the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast
is recorded on. Ask for what you want, know your
ground rules, and do not budge. Age is experience, and
experience is hot and comforting and kind and hot. Say
(00:35):
what it is you need and ask for what you want.
It's not always about sex. It's about touch and connection
and wanting to be wanted, and for some people some
of the time it's as essential as breathing. But sometimes
it's about sex, of course. Just ask for what you want.
(00:58):
Welcome to a shame free zone. What a midlife madam
learned about sex from years of juggling, pimping, as she
somewhat ironically calls it, with the school run and a divorce.
If you have questions, I'm glad because this is an
extraordinary story of love and connection and lots and lots
of pretty honest sex, of what men want and what
(01:20):
women want and why A lot of the stories we
tell ourselves about all of that are nonsense. So please
just ask for what it is you want. Hello. I
am Holly Wainwright and I am mid midlife, mid family,
(01:40):
mid blush This is a first for us on mid Today,
I'm interviewing someone who's already been here sort of. A
few weeks ago, I spoke to the incredible Australian actress
Rachel Griffiths about her midlife sabbatical, about having been on
all ends of Hollywood, about actresses aging, about the role
she's currently playing on our screens, a woman called Antonia
(02:02):
Murphy in a show called Madam. And now today I'm
interviewing Antonia Murphy herself. Antonia was raising three kids, including
one with a serious disability, in a small town in
New Zealand when her marriage unraveled. She's going to tell
me today how that set of events led her to
(02:23):
opening an ethical brothel in a tiny coastal town. I
know it's not what everybody would do in that situation,
but hey, Antonia has a very specific story. Sex work
is decriminalized in New Zealand, so there was nothing illegal
about what she was doing. But that didn't mean there
wasn't a lot of judgment, and judgment is something we
do a lot of unpicking today from all sides, because
(02:46):
as well as understanding what the women who worked at
the brothel wanted and needed, she learned an enormous amount
about what the clients, and in this example, they're almost
all men wanted and needed. And that is a lot
more nuanced and complex than you might think. I promise
stay with us. You're going to hear stories about the
men who were dropped off by their mothers or their wives,
(03:09):
a surprising fact about the preferred age of the women.
About the worst thing any parent can imagine happening happening
to Antonia. And generally you're going to be with me
in the presence of a woman who looked at how
you're supposed to carry on when you're a midlife regional
mum and said fuck that. And of course you are
(03:30):
going to hear about what it's like to have written
a book about your life, have it turned into a
TV show, and for Rachel Griffiths to be playing you
in a version of your life. Here we go, Anthony,
your book is brilliant. You're a writer, of course, so
you obviously know what you're doing, but the story is
(03:50):
fascinating to put the audience in place, as it were.
Can I read the intro to an article that you
wrote in the Huffington Post back in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Oh sure, I think I know which one it is.
Go ahead.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
I think this article kickstarted a few things. I think
it was after reading this maybe that the TV people
contacted you. Is that correct?
Speaker 3 (04:10):
An article that got optioned?
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah? So are you right?
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Bye?
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Mom, I'll see you tomorrow morning. It's eight am on
a Tuesday, and my work day probably started out a
lot like yours, packing lunchboxes, making sure the kids eat
a healthy breakfast, finding socks and shoes, and homework. But
when my nine year old daughter Miranda kisses me goodbye
to catch the school bus, she knows I won't be
home until long after bedtime. That's because I'm a pimp.
(04:36):
More politely, I'm the Madam of the Batch, a feminist
escort agency I own in the North Island of New Zealand.
So let's get this part out there so a mid
audience know what we're talking about. An ethical pimp, a
feminist escort agency. What's that and how did it work?
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Well? I mean, let's be clear. I use the word
pimp in that article because I was deliberately being inflammatory, correct, right, yeah, readers,
readers on words. But what I meant when I said,
and still say, that we were an ethical and feminist
escort agency is that we were constantly guided by consent
at every stage of the process. The women were always
(05:17):
in control of who they saw and what they would and.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Would not choose to do with that client.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
And that went from making the booking to allowing him
into the room, to every step of the way during
the appointment. And if for any reason he left and
didn't pay, if they had taken off their clothes or
sexual contact had started, I would pay them out anyway.
So nobody was ever worried about, oh, I've got to
(05:43):
go through with this dodgy booking because I have to
pay my electrical bill kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
So you are as the listeners will be able to
tell from your accent originally from America, from the West.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Coast, yes, fran Francisco.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
But by the time you open the batch, you're living
in a tiny town, like not in Auckland, but like
a in a little country town in Northland, which is
a beautiful part of New Zealand. And you're there. You're
marriage is rocky, falling apart at this particular point, You've
got two kids. You start doing your research knowing you
(06:18):
want to open an escort agency, but you're starting from nothing.
How did you learn that you know the sort of
rules and guidelines that you've just spelled out for us
that made this a feminist, safe place to work for
the women. How did you learn that's what you wanted
to do?
Speaker 2 (06:36):
So women always exchange information with each other, whether they're
talking about something legal or not. Right, I think at
every stage in my life, I've always had a woman
or a girlfriend who I could talk to and get
the honest truth about something. And it turns out there's
this whole online community of anonymous sex workers and people
(07:00):
who work in the business who exchange information everything about
what makes a good agency to work at, somebody who
protects your rights, to how to stay safe in a
booking And it was they who taught me how to
design a place where the women's rights were held at
the forefront of everything that we did. And then, you know,
(07:23):
this didn't make it into the book. But when I
was still married to my husband, I sent him down
to a couple of places in Auckland, like so called
good brothels or escort.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Agencies to check it out.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
And he came back and he said, oh my god,
it's so depressing, like it's you go into this place,
it's sort of lit by these cheesy Christmas lights. There's
like a vinyl couch that gets wiped off between bookings.
He's like, there's a lot of glitzy, glamy stuff that's
supposed to look elegant and classy, but it's just makes
(07:54):
me sad. So I thought, oh, I think I think
we could do things.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
A bit better than that.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
And so the batch you end up opening is a
is in a motel, and you make it bright and
breezy and like a beach almost, like, well, that's what
a batch is in New Zealand, right, is a beach house.
And so everything from the inception of what it would
look like and feel like to the way that the
workers were treated was very different. I was really interested
(08:21):
in the process that you were just talking about about
the research going and talking to women. You talk to
a woman in the sex industry who tells you that
it's all about being a madam or a sex worker
is all about hold your power, she said, And I'd
love you to talk a bit about what that means, because,
to be honest, when I read examples in the book
(08:43):
of where you helped, you thought about that and implemented it.
I think it's something that all women, sex workers or
not could get a lot better at. Does it kind
of mean whole know you're worth?
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah, I think that's part of it, and we can
get into that part of it too, in that I
learned a lot from the men about asking for what
you want and not being afraid to ask, even if
it comes off as a bit cheeky. But I think
when she taught me about hold your power. I think
there's a reason why madams traditionally have been sexually unavailable
(09:18):
to the clients for the most part, and often older,
so that culturally they're considered no longer sexually interesting. Right
Because I had on regularly I would get proposition by clients.
They would try to find their way in around the
cracks and ask.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
All, will you see me?
Speaker 2 (09:35):
I'll pay top dollar? How much would you charge? How
can I can? I? Please?
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Please? Please?
Speaker 2 (09:40):
And what that's about is they feel like if they
can conquer you sexually, then they've won you over and
they don't have to play by your rules anymore. So
I think it's that's why it's so that's why I
think that madam position has existed traditionally is that you
need a woman in charge who is sexually unavailable and
completely unmoving in her ground rules.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
That's interesting what you just said about how age plays
into that, because it is true, of course that the
stereotype of a madam in my mind is definitely she's
older than the women who work, who do the sex work.
In your experience, I mean, I want to I'm going
to get to all the things you've learned about men
doing in that process. But is there an age cut off?
(10:24):
Do you feel like?
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Not at all? In fact, when you said that, I
wanted to jump in because the lady who made the
most money at our agency was older than me. And
the reason why well, there's a few reasons why she
made the most money. She was highly professional, and she organized,
and she would come in with a large Duffel bag
for what we called her day at the office because
she had back to back bookings of these elderly gents
(10:47):
who would book her for two and three hours at
a time, and she would put on a different lingerie
outfit for each one, and there was very little sex.
It was largely companionship. But she was really intuitively kind.
She was so genuinely kind. People really responded to that,
and she made the most money, so it really And
(11:08):
the other reason is that a lot of these guys
who come and see sex workers, if they're in their
seventies and eighties, they don't want to see a lady
in her twenties. They're like, my granddaughter is in her twenties.
That makes me feel like a pedo. So there really
isn't a cutoff, I would say in age for sex work,
and quite often the older ones do better. And in fact,
it was a bit of a red flag for me
(11:30):
and the other managers when we would get a new
client in particular, who would say who's the youngest? Yeah,
who's the youngest? Because what that means is either A
he thinks that women's quality degrades with age, which is
a big red flag, or more likely, B he thinks
he'll have a better chance pushing her boundaries if she's young.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Absolutely, and there is an experience in there with a
man like that. Just back for one more second to
hold your power. One of the first times in the
book that you like you think about doing that is
when a client is trying to talk you down on price.
And this is what I'd love to get to about
that idea of saying what you need and what you want,
trying to talk you down in price, and you this
(12:12):
is when the batch has just opened, and so you're
kind of like figuring it out. Yeah, and you were like, no,
I'm going to hold it and see what happens. And
of course he cames and says, sure, is that also?
Is it about also not the people pleasing the man
pleasing reflex?
Speaker 2 (12:30):
It was really hard to deprogram ourselves from that. I
can still remember, you know. We had a confirmation text
that we would send when people made a booking that
said you must park in this place, arrive on time
for your booking, do not arrive early, do not arrive late,
and so on. And the first draft I looked at
it and I saw that we'd started almost every sentence
with please, and I was like, we got to take
(12:52):
the pleases out of this one, because I'm not asking them,
I'm telling them. So that was really a process for
us to work that out. And yeah, I mean it
became quite clear early early on. So early the men
would would push back on the rules, and also they
would always ask for discounts and then and then not always,
(13:13):
but very often they would want to know, can I
do this?
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Can I do that?
Speaker 2 (13:16):
How about three of this? How far can I go?
How hard can I.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Say bad words?
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yeah? If you card?
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Can I fuck her? Things like that, I mean, sometimes
quite gross. But I think a lot of them just
thought they were being clear about the boundaries and they
wanted to make sure they got the best deal possible
for their money, which, okay, it annoyed us, and sometimes
we laughed uproariously about it, but also like, why don't we.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Do that more as women.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
I don't know about you, but me personally, Like even
the the least I negotiated on the motel a year
down the line, it was quite clear that I had
made some mistakes in my negotiation where I could have
I could have had that motel ticking along at a
much better.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Clip, But I just hadn't.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
I hadn't pushed back with the landlord because I think
I thought if I pushed, he'd yank the whole thing away,
which is not the case. That's not You're not going
to lose everything. If you ask, people are just going
to say maybe no. And it doesn't hurt, right.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
I know, But I mean, it's such a stereotype. But
I know it certainly is true of myself and lots
of midwomen. I know in particular that's what they're afraid of.
But I could lose it all. I don't know if
I deserve it. I don't know if I'm gonning.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
And it's.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
A few of the conversations I've had on this show
that have been enlightening, as when people say, very often,
when you ask for what you want, you get it.
Mm hmm, you know, but it's all about how you
do that. There isn't There isn't a moment in your
book where which I'd like to think is known only
in New Zealand moment, but maybe not where one man
offers to pay and crayfish.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Is particular to New Zealand. But I wouldn't be surprised
if burter is pretty common. I mean, I can tell
you for real burder for drugs is definitely yes.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
ANTHONYA and I are going to be back in a
minute to talk about the kinds of men who pay
for sex and the unconventional way in which she ended
up with her now husband. It does involve getting punched
in the nose. Just stepping back a little bit, you
say that, and I felt a gen x camaraderie with
you about this. You were sort of saying that you
(15:20):
had quite you had an adventuress, you had a non
conventional childhood, you say, I seen you rite. When I
was six months old, my mother's went. My mother went
to the United Nations Women's Conference in Mexico City, leaving
me with my dad. My father decided this was a
good time to attend the Hooker's Ball at the San
Francisco Highatt Regency with me swaddled in a blanket in
the backseat of his car. It was nineteen seventy five.
(15:41):
These things happened back then, and indeed they did. Our
nineteen seventies upbringings were kind of different, I think.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
And whearin as she got on the next flight home.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
I'm sure she did.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
But I think the reason why he went to that
is because my mother was sort of somewhat friends or
at least friendly with Margo Saint James, who was a
big sex worker, rates activist and feminist in San Francisco.
So they were peripheral aund that scene. And I know
my mother, as a second way a feminist would talk
a lot about the crossover between sex work and being
(16:18):
a housewife.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
For example.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
I want to ask you about that too. But that's
interesting because you also say in the book at some
point that the rules you'd internalize from your dad were
around like don't be a prick tease, don't wear a
short skirt, don't do this and that, So it's like
they're conflicting. You obviously had a sort of compared to
a conventional straight lag childhood, a relatively what's the right word,
(16:44):
I guess put me in there you go, But you
also were still internalizing all that messaging that women, young
women always do right about, like protect yourself, make sure
you know, don't lead men on, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Yeah, well, I think a lot of that is generational.
So my dad was born in the twenties and my
mom was born in the thirties. So even though my
mom was a strident feminist, I think her adage who
was like, look, if you you know, you show nipple
and and wear a really short mini skirt, you're gonna
get aggressive attention, so be prepared for that. It can
(17:21):
make you, know, your walk home that much more dangerous. Nowadays,
you know, people say, oh, it's not her fault, it's
his fault. She should be able to wear what she wants,
and they're absolutely right. Women should be able to wear
what they want. Also, I don't think my mother was
wrong that the micro mini is gonna make your walk
home a lot more complicated.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
To be honest, it makes it's interesting because I have
a fifteen year old daughter, you know, we it's we're
so much further along from this idea of like keep
yourself safe, do your top button up as you, as
your dad would say. But there's a part of you
that has learned those lessons yourself from being hyper visible
at that moment where you become hyper visible and you
(18:00):
want to kind of protect them from it. And it's
it's complicated.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
It is complicated, and in fairness, I think we've come
a long way and we've all so taking a huge
step backward with the amount of pornography that is so
easily accessible in everybody's back pocket and that apparently everyone's
watching from the age of ten, I know, and I
saw how that played out at the batch, and it
was everything from asking for sort of further and further
(18:28):
out fantasies, and it would be quite clear when a
certain fantasy was trending in porn because more and more
men would ask for it. Two men who literally could
not orgasm having vaginal sex with a woman because they
were so used to jacking it with porn, and so
they got used to this very specific touch and they
could no longer orgasm with a woman. So oh, and
(18:50):
then just like the total death of foreplay, Like how
many young men would get in there and think all
they had to do was put her legs up over
our head and pound away, and she's going to have
nine orgasms. I mean, these ladies, they would I talk
about it in the book. They at first they would say, Oh,
I don't want to see it. He's so old, you know,
he's fifty. He's going to smell old man. And then
(19:11):
they'd finally concede, and when they came down, they'd be like,
holy shit, that was the best shag of my life,
Like no one's ever been that courtly with me before,
you know, And he kept he was so important to
him that I feel good.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
I mean, they were just like baffled.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
And I guess also that because that's a generation that
hasn't grown up with the porn in the pocket. It's
interesting about this because I would imagine. I mean, so
you were running the batch from in the sort of
late teens, right the late twenty teens, and so you know,
we are living in this in the iPhone world, we're
living with porn in the pocket. I imagine that Tinder
(19:50):
and only fans in those things are very much disrupted.
Brothels and agency work.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Have they No, I don't think so. I mean they
may have. I couldn't speak to the before times because
I wasn't in an industry before, but I will say this,
something that really surprises people outside the industry is how
little sex there is. I mean it may be different
in the sort of street walker economy where people are
paying for fifteen minutes in the back of your car
(20:17):
or whatever. That's not the experience I can speak to.
What we sold was minimum thirty minutes, most often an hour,
sometimes two or three, and during that time there was
like maybe five minutes of sex. So men aren't booking escorts,
at least not at the price point and the time
(20:37):
span that we were offering for the shag. They were
booking for the companionship conversation, someone to pay attention to
them and make them feel like they were important. And
really for the touch. Like that was a huge wake
up for me, is how there just seems to be
this epidemic of loneliness and of lack of human touch
(21:01):
that people are just hungry for and will pay And yeah, okay,
we are only charging two hundred and forty dollars an hour,
but it twenty eighteen in Fungaday, New Zealand. Let me
tell you that was a big chunk of less people's
pay check. That was a big payout, so they were
that starved for it.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
It's interesting because you'd think in this porn saturated world
that you know that if anything, people were more, that
there's more sex, But then study after study is saying
that young people now are having less sex than they've
ever had. Right, And anecdotally it seems to me, I
work with lots of young women. Attitudes to sex and
(21:42):
monogamy are still quite conservative in some ways, I think
more conservative than gen x is are, Like totally, don't
you think I think that the intimacy and monogamy and
finding your person is still very much the ideal that
is upheld. What do you think about that?
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Well? I think a lot of things.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Some of the thoughts that came up as you were
talking were It's true, we were shagging so much more
than kids are these days, and we had the specter
of aids over our heads, like can you imagine.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
I know when as we came of sexual age with
that idea and the fear around that.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
I can tell you I'm not gen z and I'm
old and cringe to them. Right, But the one person
who will talk to me still touchwood is my daughter
who's fourteen. And one of the comments that she's made
which really resonated with me, is she said, I could
be photographed, Like every time I'm out in public, I'm
really careful about how I present myself because I could
(22:43):
be videoed or photographed at any time or recorded, and
then that can never go away, like it can ruin
your life. So I think there's more of a self
censorship because kids are worried about like just that it
can ruin your life, like we would do, get drunk,
do dumb stuff, be bad in bed with a lover
(23:05):
you didn't sync with, and like that's it. It's forgotten,
washed off, like the cigarette smell on your clothes after a.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Night at the clubs.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Right, they can follow them forever into jobs, any future relationship.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
I mean, what an enormous.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Wait, no wonder that anxious. This is depressing, depressing, I
wonder it's it's true, it's this. I wonder if we
could look back on our young adulthood and think we
were allowed to mess up an experiment and have adventures
in a way that they're probably not. I wanted to
get back to two things, well many things, but we're
(23:44):
jumping all over the place. But when you were running
the batch, so you're also parenting three young kids, your
oldest Silas had significant disabilities, your daughter Miranda's little and
you had a brand new baby, Matisse. So you were
a hustling working mother, which was one of the real
impetuses for you wanting to do that, and as it
turned out, so a lot of your ladies. You even
ran a crache at the batch for a while. How
(24:06):
does motherhood and sex work intersect? You mentioned it before.
How does that work?
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Well?
Speaker 2 (24:12):
I think a lot more than most people would think,
because mothers need flexible schedules, and mothers who've been left
alone with their kids need to make the money for
the whole household. Because the vast majority of absent men
aren't paying enough, right, so they needed to be able
to make real money to run a real safe household
(24:33):
for their kids. Sometimes they were in an educational program
to launch themselves into professional life, so they needed even
more childcare and even more of an income to pay
for that. And you know, how are you going to
make that work if you've only got a high school
degree and the only jobs out there for you with
that are like call center or working in a cafe
(24:54):
for minimum wage. Like it's just that the math doesn't math,
yea with that, which is why a lot of women
have a Mom's in particular, have turned to sex work.
And then I guess the other part of that question
is like, oh, how do you reconcile your life at
home with your life at the batch? But I mean,
I don't think in that sense it was really much
(25:14):
different from any working mother, Like when I'm at work,
I'm at work, and when I'm home.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
I'm mum'sy.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Well, there are some really interesting scenes in the book though,
when you are sort of dealing with your kids but
your phone the phone was pinging with messages and this
bit I found really interesting. Well, it's it's near the
beginning of your book. You're talking about you. You've run
quite a lot of the text messages you got sent
and they are quite shocking, Like if you're not in
(25:40):
that world, they're quite shocking. So I'm going to read
a couple of hours. So you're, you know, you're doing
what you're doing with the baby on your boom and
everything and you and you're getting messages that are like, hey,
do you have toys or suck without a condom? Show
me pussy face, tits and ass? And you say, is
this because this is obviously early in your experience, You're like,
(26:00):
is this how they talk when they don't have to pretend?
And I found that a really interesting insight because that's
exactly what I thought when I was reading it. I
don't think a lot of those messages would shock a
lot of my midlife friends are on the dating apps,
to be honest, they get a lot of that stuff,
and that not from people who are looking to pay.
(26:20):
But did you feel like you were getting, at least
at the beginning, that you were getting an insight into
the male psyche that was really disturbing? And also, do
you think that is how they talk when they don't
have to pretend that they respect us.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Well, Look, I have four older brothers, so I think
I had a bit of insight into the male psyche anyway,
and they would talk and say all kinds of outrageous
things about women when they were around me. I think
that I think probably all men think those things. I
think most men say them, and I think for many
(27:00):
men there is no contradiction between that and the fact
that they also respect women and their intellect. Like, I
think you can want to slap the ass and then
also have a conversation about civil rights. I don't think
that is necessary necessarily cancel each other out. But in
terms of an insight into you know, again, I think
(27:22):
men thought that they were being clear when they rang
up and they asked for, you know, can I get
a size six double D blonde please? And that. But still,
even though I knew they were not trying to be offensive,
it would it would just get, it would get. It
would wear you down because it was like, oh, they
(27:43):
just think of us as a collection of body parts.
And so that's why very quickly we realized like the
batch ran the best when we had three managers who
each just worked two days a week, because we would
just it would just be so emotionally exhausting to deal.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
With that.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
For thirteen fourteen hours a day.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
But that's an interesting point you make that it's not
that because when you wrote, you know, is this how
they talk when they don't have to pretend. I think
that sometimes when a curtain is pulled back a little
bit on that kind of language whatever, I can find
myself thinking they hate us, you know what I mean,
(28:26):
Really they hate us, and that's how they would like
to see all of us all of the time. But
that's a very simplistic way of thinking about it, isn't it.
It's these men are messaging you for a very specific purpose.
This is your job to find them the person who
possibly is going to fulfill their fantasy. It's not as
(28:48):
black and white as good bad.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Yeah. And I think that's a mistake that a lot
of activists make when they talk about sex worker really
people in general, when they talk about it without firsthand
knowledge of it. Is you know, feminists in particular in
Europe will say, oh, selling women's bodies for sex devalues women,
(29:11):
and it encourages men to treat us like objects to
be used. And I think again, that's assuming that because
a man wants sex with a woman. Therefore, he is
a predator who doesn't see her as a valuable human being.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
I don't think, I don't. I don't think that's the case.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
I mean, look, there are jerks out there, for sure,
and we had a few of them come to the batch.
But for the most part, I think men have well,
all people, I think have a need for sex and
intimate touch and to feel loved and appreciated, even if
it's an illusion. But I think men really feel it
(29:51):
like a like a like a drive, like eating.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
There's a point in the book where you sort of
run through this almost profiles of a few of the guys.
I'm just gonna find him. Ben is a widower in
his sixties who spent his whole life on his sheep farm.
He is cripplingly shy, and he has a bit of
a speech impediment. So these are kind of your your regulars.
Michael is a local salesman seems to be in a
happy marriage, but he has an enormous sex drive and
(30:15):
his wife is agreed that he can regularly go to
escorts as long as she doesn't have to hear about it.
Eric is autistic and he saves up his disability checks
for his visits, which his mum drives him to and from.
I think it's really interesting to consider this variety of
people who come, and I'd love to know because, as
(30:36):
I was just saying about hormone a lot for a
lot of mid women, sex can become a bit of
a battleground because your hormones might have been smashed and
so your libido is low, or you're in the familiarity
of a long relationship and that erotic charge is really
hard to find. Did you see lots of that? Have
(30:57):
you seen that kind of outsourcing of sex that's maybe
depicted there by Michael the guy whose wife agrees? Did
you see a lot of that? And does it work?
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Absolutely? I saw a lot of it.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
And it's interesting to me when people talk to me
about the threat that sex work poses to marriage, because
I think actually the reverse is true. A lot of
men would reach out to sex workers because their wives
were uninterested in sex sex had completely left the marriage,
but they didn't want to divorce and lose their families,
and they didn't want the risk of having an affair,
(31:31):
which could bring with it emotional attachment and all of
those complications, and so this for them was a way
to get their physical needs met without putting their families
at risk.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
Does it work? I don't know.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
I have no way of following up and finding out
if they're still married or divorced five or ten years later.
I can tell you that somebody I know and my
personal life has done that and it has saved his marriage.
That he says his wife told him explicitly that she
was no longer interested in having sex. And they are
in their sixties, and he said, I'm not ready to
(32:06):
die yet. Now.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Your own marriage, which is talked about in the book
of Course with Patrice, started in quite an unconventional way too.
So you were married to the father of your two
older kids and you opened your marriage. Right. Is that
the right terminology, I guess. And Patrice went at some
point from being your lover to your partner when you
got pregnant with Matisse, and your husband went and punished
(32:28):
him in the nose. And then I don't know why
I'm laughing. That's not really funny, but it's just it's
quite a scene. And then you say that your small
town turned on you at that point to a lot
of people stopped talking to you and I wanted to
hear about your ins and then you opened brothels. So
I'm sure that really, sure that really sorted out all
(32:50):
that judgment. How did that community handle you in a way,
and how did you learn to deal with that those
really entrenched conservative attitudes about both your personal and professional.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
I'm not Jeff, It's a blessing or a curse how
completely non confrontational quies are, because nobody ever said to
my face that they disapproved of what I was doing.
But it did hurt when friends just stopped, like literally
just didn't call back, didn't email back.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Just just cut us dead.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
And Patrice had lived in the community a lot longer
than I had, and these are people who he'd cared
for their kids over the school holidays because during periods
of time and he was only working part time or
between jobs, he like basically conducted a summer camp at
his house, took care of all their kids, and they
just cut us out. So yeah, that hurt would have Yeah,
and you know, honestly, as an American, I'd rather they
(33:43):
had had a conversation with me, because maybe we could have,
you know, salvaged some of the friendships. But alas that
was not to be. And I think I was so
overwhelmed at the time with new baby and profoundly disabled
child and two businesses and all the rest of it.
I wasn't a go door to door and say, Hi,
(34:04):
do you still want to be my friend? Like, I
just didn't have time for that. I had to simplify, you.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Know, judgment that you were copying for both that and
then I assume that it was public knowledge about the batch,
right like the town all knew about the batch. Did
you also cop a lot of judgment about that and
did you care?
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Well, It's hard to say. I only felt the judgment
when I tried to advertise, both for staff or for clients,
or when I tried to rent a premises, and I
was getting blocked at every point in the way. When
I when council tried to give us the boot, that's
when I felt the pushback. The rest of the time,
(34:42):
people really just did not confront I sometimes felt a
bit of a chill in the air, but nobody said anything.
And look, you know, I've worked out that fun Today
had a population about eighty thousand people, of whom let's
say half were men. Forty thousand and like maybe a
quarter of those are children. So of the thirty thousand
(35:04):
adult men in town, I had three thousand names on
my work phone. So like judgment are no judgment? They
were still ringing that phone.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Yeah, absolutely absolutely. It was obviously a service that was
needed in that community, whether they approved of it or not.
So you didn't. It wasn't like they're trying to run
you out of town. It was just more like icy,
an icy, like not looking at you in the shop. Well, yeah,
when we come back. ANTHONYA tells me about her experience
(35:38):
parenting a child living with a disability while also running
a brothel. Stay with us. Everything changed in twenty nineteen.
You lost your son, Silas. He died suddenly, and that
obviously changed everything. You. You packed up and left and
went to live in France for a year with your family.
And you didn't go back, did you. You've gone back
(35:59):
to New Zealand, but you've never gone back.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
No, I have not been back.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
I assume that there's some that's a massive life before
and life after moment.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
Yeah, well, I mean I from Gooday.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
For me, it was the years when I was parenting
Silas which were really hard. I mean I love that kid,
but it is so hard and isolating to have a
child who is so profoundly disabled. He was basically nonverbal,
he was incontinent. He would yell nonsense words repeatedly. And
(36:34):
so you know, people people shoot you are either really
uncomfortable or they shoot you annoyed looks because they think
your child is acting out. They don't realize that he
can't help it. I think we have a ways to go.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
I mean, that's another taboo.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
We have a ways to go before we're fully accepting
of the disabled, and so there's just a lot of
pain wrapped up for me in that time.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
I think the way that you write about with such
honesty about parenting Silas, mothering Silas will make a lot
of women, I'm sure they say that to you already,
but will make a lot of parents feel very seen
because I think I think you like you. You bring
You're very I mean as in all of the book,
you're very honest, You're very straightforward about it. You know,
(37:18):
you talk about how difficult it is and was, and
I think it's a real gift that because you know,
we we like to put little bows on difficult situations,
don't we.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Totally one, and thank you for saying that, because I
feel like that that the book does makes tries to
ship away a little bit at that taboo that we
have around disability, and it's bow is exactly the right
word for it. There's another writer, Andrew Solomon, who writes brilliantly.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Far from the Tree.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
All from the.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
Tree loved that book.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
He says, there's a tendency that people have of calling
them pillow angels. You know these these Hugh at the
time was writing about, I think a pair of twins
that were so profoundly disabled that they couldn't even sit
up on their own. They were basically lying flat on
their backs with the tube in their bellies to feed
them on pillows. And I can't remember if it was
(38:14):
the mother the people around them calling them pillow angels.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
I thought, wow, that's.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
So what it is is it's a racing of the child,
and it's a racing of the parent. Because look, Silas
could be a real little shit sometimes like every other kid,
and that's part of his humanity. He has the right
to be a little shit, and I have the right
to feel really unhappy about going into his room every
morning and changing an adult sized pooh, you know, and
(38:41):
that's also human, that's part of my humanity. And so, yeah,
I think too often what happens is that the parents
of people who are disabled, them very often into adulthood
of the child end up isolated at home because.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
No one is able.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
To They're either ostracized or there's this weird angelic halo
put on them, but either way, nobody wants to see them.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Yeah. Absolutely, and they don't want to hear They don't
want to hear your story about that, you.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Know, I think so playing on an animal level.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
I think that's exactly right. I think people don't want
to look at it, which is like, deep down don't
want to look at that experience, which I really appreciated
it being in the book. You did go back to
New Zealand though, And I'm really interested in post batch
life because obviously you've written this book, and this book
has been adapted into a TV show which is very successful,
(39:39):
has Rachel Griffith playing you. I don't know how that feels.
How does it feel to have Rachel Griffiths playing you?
Speaker 2 (39:44):
Is it really real?
Speaker 1 (39:47):
It's great? But so how did life play out post that?
Did you? You? Obviously you all went back to France.
I can't imagine what a difficult time this was COVID hits.
But you did go back to New Zealand. Why did
you go back to New Zealand? And how has life
changed since you wrote the book?
Speaker 3 (40:07):
Well, I mean that quick.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
The reason of why we came back to New Zealand
is that we both have shared custody of children with
our ex partners. Of course you do short of abandoning
those children, which I could never do. We need to
be in New Zealand, of course days them.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
But really the.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Only other option I think for me would be France
because the United States I feel less and less American.
It's been sixteen seventeen years now.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Did you write the huff Post essay and it got
optioned for the movie? But had you'd already been you
You've sailed through this book that you always knew it
was going to be a book, really, this Batch Adventure?
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Oh right, yeah, so you were asking me about life
since then? I always wanted to write about it, and
I had been writing about it during the time of
running the Badge. I would jot down notes and I
would talk about it whenever I could to a couple
of podcasts and so on, because I thought what we
were doing was really important and low key revolutionary, actually
(41:07):
putting the power in the hands of the sex wor.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Near the beginning of the book, you're like, you're in
this little town in New Zealand and you're kind of
going and you've got these little kids, and as discussed,
you know, life isn't easy, and you're working out what
to do. And you say, when you're young and dub
you make choices on a whim because you think everything
is reversible, and then one day you realize it's not.
And I that's one of the things about aging that
(41:32):
I bump up against a lot. I'm like, the choices
I've made that I didn't even really think about have
now led me to be for in my life. For example,
I live on the other side of the world to
my family and all those things. When you look back
at this time, at that time in your life that
this book is about, how do you feel about it?
(41:53):
Do you regret like being there? Do you wish that
life had been different already? Glad that it all played
out the way it did.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
I think it has to play out the way it does.
I mean, look, if I was gonna tell you one regret,
I'd say, I wish I hadn't dropped out of universe
level chemistry because I was really getting interested in endochronology.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
But I think, look.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
When my husband left and I was so terrified, and
I had all these kids to take care of, and Patrece,
my now husband, said he would be with me and
help me raise this child. But I didn't know if
he was a stick or not. I think something rises
(42:37):
up in mothers in particular, or we just go nothing
gonna put my babies in danger. And I just I
was able to find his strength of a hundred wildcats.
And I'm not flexing here like that. I think it's
I think it's a physical brain reaction when a mom
is backed against the wall. Uh. And I'm proud of
(42:58):
what we did. And I think I did it because
I was backed up against the wall. So yeah, I
think all that bad shit had to happen.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Thank you so much, Antony, It's been a really good conversation. Friends.
This has been the last traditional episode of season four
of mid We're going to be back in your ears
in April, and until then, I want you to keep
your ears free for a few little treats that might
drop your way in this feed. Also, I asked you
(43:29):
last week to rate and review and please continue to
do that wherever you're listening to MID. If you like
the show, If you love the show, if you have
opinions about the show, tell us jump in to wherever
you're listening to this and rate and review. Five stars
would be great. Also, if you have thoughts and feelings
about what we should be talking about next on MID,
(43:49):
we'd love to hear it. Follow us on instat and
send us a cheeky DM at MID by Mamma Mia
or me at Wainwright Holly. And last, but not least,
if you want more MID conversations about sex, scroll back
to our conversation with Leslie Morgan, who got divorced at
forty nine and embarked on quite the sexual adventure, or
(44:09):
with the author Julie Cohen about coming out as bisexual
as a married mom of forty Both of those episodes
are in our feed, and of course, a massive thank
you to the executive producer of MID. Her name is
Nama Brown, the senior producer is Grace Ruvray, the producer
is Charlie Blackman, and we've had audio production from Jacob
(44:31):
Brown and I will see you next season. Bye.
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