Paying for It

Paying for It
Cover to the first edition
Creator	Chester Brown
Date	2011
Page count	292 pages
Publisher	Drawn and Quarterly
ISBN
Chronology
Preceded by	Louis Riel

Paying for It, "a comic strip memoir about being a john", is a 2011 graphic novel by Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown. A combination of memoir and polemic, the book explores Brown's decision to give up on romantic love and to take up the life of a "john" by frequenting prostitutes. The book, published by Drawn and Quarterly, was controversial, and a bestseller.

The book is concerned with Brown's conflicting desire to have sex, but not wanting to have another girlfriend after his partner Sook-Yin Lee breaks up with him. His solution is to forgo traditional boyfriend/girlfriend relationships and marriage. He takes up frequenting prostitutes, and comes to advocate prostitution as superior to the "possessive monogamy" of traditional male–female relations, which he debates with his friends throughout the book.

Brown presents his views in detail in the closing 50-page text section, which includes a 23-part appendix, end notes, and a note from friend and fellow cartoonist Seth. Despite being about the separation of sex from romantic love, Brown calls the book "a type of love story".

After then-girlfriend Sook-Yin Lee breaks up with him in 1996, Brown, who lacks the social skills to pick up women, spends a celibate three years mulling over what he sees as the negative aspects of romantic love in the modern world. He continues to live with Sook-Yin, even after she brings other men to live with them, and Brown witnesses their lovers' spats. He decides never to pursue a relationship with any one woman again — a condition he calls "possessive monogamy"—but he has "two competing desires -- the desire to have sex, versus the desire to NOT have a girlfriend."

Eventually, he works up the courage to see a prostitute. He rides around on his bicycle looking for streetwalkers, but being unsuccessful, turns to the ads in the backs of free alternative newspapers. After his first experience, he feels free from a "burden" he has carried from adolescence.