Monsieur Tout-le-monde or Mr. Every Man

When I first moved to Calgary, I answered an ad offering a room for rent on Kijiji. This is how I met Dennis. Dennis had tan hands from fake tanning, and liked slushies from Mac's that made his mouth turn blue. He wasn't the kind of pimp you see in the movies, but he was a pimp.

We stayed in the spare room in his pent house for 3 days. He kept saying how weird we were because we didn't like money and didn't want new things. He introduced us to one of his "girls". She was sweet, and only liked to drink Monkeys Lunch‘s because it ’just tasted like milk’. She had only been doing it for a few weeks, and was trying to pay off her student loans. 

We eventually listened to our gut, and left the situation quickly one evening while he was out. Dennis didn't frighten me, although maybe he should have. He was too stupid.

What frightened me upon learning of this world were the Johns. The nameless, faceless men who use the services with complete disregard for the countless victims.

“The main users of women in prostitution are regular men who are in regular marriages, study in regular educational programs, and have regular jobs, some of whom are entrusted with upholding the very laws that they violate. In other words, studies indicate that prostitute-users in general are not marginalized men, unlike the women they use and abuse.”((Janice G. Raymond, 2004, Prostitution on Demand: Legalizing the Buyers as Sexual Consumers, Violence Against Women, http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/Raymond%20Prostitution%20on%20Demand.pdf).)

Soon after meeting Dennis, I saw in the newspaper an initiative in the city to catch 'johns'. If you were found soliciting prostitution your car would be towed for a week, thus disrupting your life, and forcing you to explain yourself.

Interesting idea.
I have no idea if it still happens.

I have no idea what happens to Johns because no one ever talks about them. We just expect them to exist and don’t question them.

Today, 2 decades later, the biggest rape trial in history just put dozens of them in prison. I thought I'd revisit this post to see what I had said about them. Just that they're every man I guess and this is part of sharing a world with men. 

Here are their names:

Dominique Pelicot

Jean-Pierre Marechal

Charly Arbo

Cyrille Delville

Christian Lescole

Lionel Rodriguez

Nicolas Francois

Jacques Cubeau

Patrice Nicolle

Thierry Parisis

Simoné Mekenese

Nizar Hamida

Boris Moulin

Jerome Vilela

Didier Sambuchi

Quentin Hennebert

Philippe Leleu

Jean-Luc LA

Fabien Sotton

Karim Sebaoui

Joan Kawai

Jean-Marc LeLoup

Andy Rodriguez

Vincent Coullet

Adrien Longeron

Hughes Malago

Ahmed Tbarik

Husamettin Dogan

Romain Vandevelde

Joseph Cocco

Saifeddine Ghabi

Jean Tirano

Mohamed Rafaa

Ludovick Blemeur

Patrick Aron

Abdelali Dallal

Grégory Serviol

Cedric Grassot

Cendric Venzin

Mahdi Daoudi

Thierry Postat

Florian Rocca

Dominique Davies

Cyprien Culieras

Mathieu Dartus

Cyril Beaubis

Paul-Koikoi Grovogui

Omar Douiri

Redouane Azougagh

Hassan Ouamou

Redouane El Farihi