On a quiet road just off the high street, in a residential part of a British seaside town, there’s a small, unspectacular building sandwiched between houses and takeaways, its walls painted completely white. The owners refer to it as a massage parlour, but ask anyone in the neighbourhood and they’ll tell you: it’s a brothel.
Nobody who works there is allowed to talk about sex or exchange cash. That happens in the private rooms. The signs outside, meanwhile, remain coded. One simply reads, “A: £50.” But it’s not offering a massage treatment – it’s advertising anal sex.
“The [owners] told us when they put the sign up that if the police ask, it’s aromatherapy,” says Lydia Caradonna, a 21-year-old history student, sex worker and activist who operates out of the…
