Sorry if you're expecting a clever punchline to that - I don't have one, but that was certainly one question that kept swimming around my head as I read The Mistress Contract by 'She and He'.
Released as a book in and now adapted by Abi Morgan into a play at The Royal Court, it's been touted as both "the new Fifty Shades of Grey " and "an extraordinary true story. So, I had high hopes of The Mistress Contract being an illuminating and entertaining read - not least because I'd been a mistress myself. For sixteen years I'd had a rollercoaster affair with a married man who encouraged me to transform from a dowdy housewife to a sexy professional Dominatrix with my own dungeon in London.
Instead, I struggled to understand the fascination this unnamed couple had with their so-called 'unique' arrangement. It made me focus increasingly on what made the position of this mistress any different from a man simply buying sex from a prostitute. I'd certainly never felt like She did when I was a mistress. Perhaps I should elaborate on what I will generously call the plot: a meandering narrative more pre-occupied with existentialism and feminism rather than the 'sensationalism' it promised.
Based on 'intimate' conversations recorded during the early years of 'She and He's' affair, the book is the true story of a contract signed four decades ago between an anonymous couple. The contract that She - a well educated but divorced woman with a successful career - asked her lover to sign proposed that He would provide her with a home and an income, while She would provide 'mistress services' in return, including 'all sexual acts as requested, with suspension of historical, emotional, psychological disclaimers'.
He happily agreed to her terms and they began to tape their conversations. Now 88 and 93 years old respectively, She and He are still 'together' over four decades later: She cherishing her independence in a home provided by He, He still married and living elsewhere, albeit in the same city.
