Like the dialogue of George Lucas, large parts of the web are quite beyond parody. Punter.net is a place for the customers of British prostitutes to get together and compare notes; and if websites were eligible for entry to the New Statesman weekend competitions, this would win a Golden Philistine Haemorrhoid for the most anaphrodisiac writing in history (see this week's competition on page 44). It's like watching a trade in Beanie Babies stuffed with real flesh.
Here, for example, is a "field report" on "Emmalouise" of Leeds: "I used this girl because of the reviews here. I also visit Lisa of Leeds. Bearing in mind I could see Lisa nine times for the cost of this visit I have to say this is very poor vfm. Emma is a nice girl but was in a rush and £200 for sex once and a rather uninspiring bj was not good. This would have been fine at £80 but £200 is too much for Emma. I won't be seeing her again at this price."
I found Punter.net while looking for its opposite: a site where prostitutes could rate their clients; more precisely, one where they could warn each other about the dangerous ones. This also exists, though it is about a tenth of the size and completely out of date, since the charity that funded it has stopped doing so, and there just aren't enough web designers walking the streets.
Punter.net is run by an expatriate Brit working in America who has a keen interest in prostitutes and calls himself (what else?) Galahad. The whores themselves are known as "ladies". I'm not sure about the legality of it: if anyone wanted to track them down, the women reviewed have their work telephone numbers and addresses on the board, and even details of the nearest car park. The site itself is based in northern California, at an ISP that hosts, among other things, the Oakland Freemasons Hall and a couple of family sites: while it is certainly legal there, it may be in breach of the contract about sub-letting space.
In lots of ways, it's just like any other nerd site. In jaundiced moods, I think it is the ultimate "web community": a place where people talk in obsessive detail about what they like to buy, and thus present themselves trussed and ready for basting (perhaps, here, literally) to eager advertisers. There are, in fact, a dozen or so prostitutes advertising on the site. There is a disclaimer to the effect that these are just escort services, and anything beyond that is a matter for private negotiation with the customers (or "gentlemen").
Perhaps this is the future of prostitution. No more junkies walking the streets, no more kerb-crawlers: just a set of hygienic screens, and a pseudonymous crowd of men swapping comments all around the country. But I'd have thought that the whole business of prostitution depended on the illusion of exclusivity, on each client believing that he was somehow special, and nothing could more clearly destroy it than to find yourself in a queue of customers. Obviously I'm wrong - in which case, there must be a fortune to be made by the first venture capitalist to combine the only two types of web business that have actually made a profit from what they sell, rather than their share price: pornography and auctions.
Instead of inefficient fixed prices, there would be rolling, 24-hour auctions of huge numbers of prostitutes, with customers bidding for their preferred time slots. Soon all human relations could be organised this way. If you need a wife, a nanny, a friend or a landscape gardener, these could all be auctioned, too. Imagine the convenience of a friend you never had to keep around after you were tired of them. This must be what Swift foresaw when he wrote: "Why should we grieve that friends must die? No loss more easy to supply."
