The language of patronage

Somehow, sex is less appealing when it’s characterised as ‘equitable return’. Though I’ve heard the phrase used in a similar context a dozen times since, I wasn’t quite sure what it meant when I first encountered it three years ago. I’d been drafted in to persuade a wealthy businessman at an art auction that taxidermy was a foolproof investment when I was informed that he wanted to invest in something a little livelier, in me. The intervener in this matter explained, with all the flamboyance of a Plautan pimp, that his client was willing to whisk me away to dinner and even pay my doctoral fees, but that after a certain time he’d expect an ‘equitable return’ on his investment. By this he meant sex, I checked.

So this was modern benefaction. I pictured myself as Lizzie Siddal, stripping before Dante Gabriel Rossetti in exchange for a pork chop and some pointers on my art and poetry.