Paying For It - Chester Brown
Paying For It, "a comic strip memoir about being a john", is a graphic novel by award-winning Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown, released by Drawn and Quarterly on May 3, 2011. The book is concerned with Brown's "two competing desires--the desire to have sex, versus the desire to NOT have a girlfriend." Brown's solution to the problem is to forgo traditional boyfriend/girlfriend relationships and marriage and to take up the life of a "john" by frequenting prostitutes. Brown comes to advocate prostitution as superior to the "possesive monogamy" of traditional male-female relations, which he debates with his friends throughout the book, and then presents his views in detail in the 50-page text section, that includes a 23-part appendix and footnotes, which closes the book. Despite being about the separation of sex from romantic love, Brown says, "It is a type of love story."
