Original subtitles

Dear Lord, I come with a troubled mind.

Please give me the strength

to curb my addictions,

to change my ways.

Lord, I can't carry on.

I need your help.

I ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

What do you do for a living?

I'm a professional master. What does that mean?

That means

I'm control them, capture them.

How often do you do this?

Every week.

Do you get paid for it?

Not every time.

Sometimes it's pure pleasure.

Why do you want to give up, listener?

I've had to live a life of lies. I don't want to anymore.

I wanna be truthful.

I wanna be honest.

If people find that uncomfortable and unsavory,

well that's tough shit because that's the way it is.

A town in the north of England is home to a man who calls

himself Rick.

Rick is paid by men to dominate them in acts of extreme sadomasochism.

He's been doing it for over twenty five years and says that

he now wants to stop.

Let me describe it like a menu. You can have the starters.

That's a few slaps, verbal diarrhea

as I call it, tying people up,

chaining people up, isolating them.

We can go on to torture, various toys of the anus,

fist fucking, strapping,

caning, beating, taunting.

I feel very blessed.

I've had twenty five years of being able to express

myself, being able to have people under my control.

That is very addictive.

By law, a person doesn't have the right to consent to an act which does

them serious harm, so Rick could be prosecuted for assault.

His client today is known as Amanda.

They met through an advert in a contact magazine.

I've got a regular client of mine over.

I've known him about a year and a half.

His favorite role is as a transvestite.

So he'll put on his female attire.

So he'll be treated as a she.

You know, there's no other way I'll look upon him as a man.

And I don't have a problem with that.

And, we're gonna do a salsicine,

which is more sort of torture

rather than role play.

At his busiest, Rick tells me that he had around six clients a week.

It's now a month since he and I first met,

and he stopped advertising his services.

Rick says he now has only three left.

This is the last time he'll see Amanda.

Do you know what Rick's gonna do to you today?

I think maybe some bondage and obviously some punishment.

Even now I'm starting to sort of get into the role

of being a man and being very submissive,

which is quite exciting.

I've put two tow rings on because I find that that's

quite tarty, and I really do love fishnets.

Again, that's

very tarty,

suspender belt.

It's a sort of a PVC costume that I'm wearing, very, very revealing,

that I'm wearing.

Very, very revealing.

I like to wear this because if there's any nipple torture to be had

or being whipped on my back and my buttocks,

then it's obviously easy

access, so that's why I like this, this kettle.

When I'm made up like this,

the punishment is actually

pleasure, and I quite enjoy it.

I quite enjoy the pain.

So I'm I'm really looking forward to it now.

Has there been a moment when you found yourself not able to

stop with a client?

I've been in a frenzy. Yes.

If they come into my domain and I'm in a bad mood,

then I am gonna take it out on them.

That's why they come back to me.

That's why they come back because they know even with

that moment of frenziedness, of pure violence,

of pure anger,

they're finding that a turn on.

That is what they're looking for.

Rick says he's always been the dominant partner in S and M relationships.

Kiss

it.

Sort you out.

I'm learning that rules are important in the arrangement

between master and slave.

Rick has told Amanda to shout a safety word when she wants him to stop.

Right. Remember. What's the break word?

You remember? Boxer.

Boxer, sir. Yes, sir.

Okay? Yes, sir.

Soon as you say that, we break.

Alright. Sit there and await your fate.

Rick has told me that he likes to build fear and anticipation

in his clients by leaving them locked up.

I'm also anxious.

I'm about to witness an S and M session for the very first time.

Right. We're ready now. Okay?

I thought you were gonna you don't wanna wait?

You don't wanna wait?

I'm an eager beaver.

Want some blood?

Bit more. I'm finished with your ass here.

Feel that now?

Yeah? Yes, sir. It's very painful, sir.

Nearly there, aren't we?

Yes, sir.

You're one word away, wouldn't you?

One word away.

You read my mind, sir.

Yeah.

Open.

Just do a bit of tip work now.

That RCO is cooling down now.

Mhmm. Mhmm.

Good.

Deep breaths.

Deep breath.

Good work, Helen.

You're done.

Let's just curl up the marks a bit.

You're not gonna be able to show your ass for a few weeks.

That puts me up to business then, doesn't it?

Yeah. I'm afraid it does, being an old tart.

Fifty seven strokes in just over forty seconds with a

leather strap and studded paddle.

I'm shocked by how ferocious it all was and because Rick

clearly enjoyed himself.

Let's have a look. It's a look. It's a bit messy now, isn't it?

There's two wheels there.

That's the red toss that's caught it.

So it's a longer toss, whereas the other one was a paddle.

You know, that's full on like that flat.

So I mean, bit more of that and that would have broke the skin.

It's that side. It's that side. Yeah.

That way you you But you did very well.

I mean, you did absolutely I didn't want to cry out,

but I did initially.

But I think sometimes,

I think you perhaps don't quite know your own strength.

I mean, that that that was more than

I mean, when when you when you're being punished,

it it can be quite erotic.

But but that wasn't that that was but, you know,

for me that was that was pain and, that was punishment.

You're wanting it to stop and I I certainly didn't feel a route.

At the peak of it,

it seems as though you slightly almost lost yourself.

You know, just there was something a bit more.

I suppose it's like a rage.

You you work yourself up to a rage

and you can enjoy being in that rage for that moment in time.

It's slightly edgy because you you have lost control to a

certain degree and you're in a momentum.

You caught up in the momentum and you're trying to push yourself.

But for that split second or then few seconds,

you're actually in a state of ecstasy because

you're you've gone past that barrier.

For a man who appears to actively enjoy administering pain,

I'm starting to wonder how Rick will be able to give it all up.

It's several months since we first met and Rick takes me to

Piccadilly Circus, London.

Between nineteen eighty and nineteen eighty three,

a twenty year old Rick left home in the West Midlands to

work here as a rent boy.

Punters would be go around in a circle.

They'd see you, and they'd know you.

And then if they liked you, they'd give you the nod.

And you'd pretend you're looking in the window,

and then you start the small talk.

You're here for the day, and then they say,

are you doing business?

You'd say yes. They'd say how much? You'd say fifteen.

You can get hand relief.

I used to specialize in what I call a turbo wank.

Mate, no mistake about it.

I liked hunting here.

Going on the hunt here was exciting for me because I was hunting humans,

and they were my trade.

You see, I was just looking for a quick fix.

I was looking for the regular punter.

I wanted to learn about the people and to exploit their lives.

I wanted to get into their house,

into their lives to find out about them because then I could

make more demands on them then as as an operator.

Rick says that while servicing upmarket clients in the West

End, he was first introduced to S and M.

He recalls an incident at the time which then turned him into a master.

I met a client.

He wanted to be coughed and then beat in his hotel room.

Perfectly acceptable, run of the mill job for me.

So we got to the room

and he showed me the cuffs.

And he said, these are very special cuffs.

I need to show you how to use them,

because we don't wanna get in a mess.

Foolishly,

I put my hands out and straight away they were locked.

And that was me, doomed,

because then he suddenly changed,

and he became the master.

He got me onto the floor,

and he sat on my chest.

He got his cock out which was hard,

and he made me gag on it.

And then he got a knife and he said,

I've got this knife out of a bag

and I've kept this knife embedded in a piece of rotting meat.

I've kept it warm, and it's just come straight out the bag.

And he slit my chest with it.

Not very deep, just enough to break the skin.

And he said, that's the mark of a master.

I'm a master, and I'm not gonna be around.

So I'm gonna leave my mark on you. You're the chosen one.

Rick claims the wound became infected from the attack,

and his body still bears the scar.

This was the moment, he says,

when he vowed to never play the slave again.

Any one master here, boy? That's me.

Do you understand me? Yes, sir.

Right now, you belong to me.

You're my property, boy.

And I said, work on it. You can take it.

Good. Breathe in. Nineteen.

That's it. Block it up. Block it up. Go on. You can take it.

That's

Take it.

Bit more. Bit more. Bit more. Bit more. Bit more. Good.

Good.

Good.

Rick has always been a keen boxer.

Now he's seeing fewer clients,

he is forever working out in his local gym.

I seem to be spending more and more of my time watching him watch himself.

I love the whole bit about it.

Being fit, being in

the environment where there's, you know,

there's there's controlled violence.

You gotta like it.

Yeah. We do it because we enjoy it. We enjoy being hit.

We enjoy being scared.

Right. Make a trainer of you yet.

Get that shirt off the road.

Rick confesses that violence has been an important part of

his life since his school days.

I remember being bullied at school, and

I remember the control this lad had over me just with his voice.

I only had to hear his voice and I was already in a shrine state.

I wasn't a confident person then.

I didn't have a great physical presence.

He polluted me, he polluted my mind,

he made me do things because he was conditioning me.

All the time I was like his laptop following along.

His little lieutenant, if he barked an order,

I went running.

I didn't like attacking people.

But it was all under duress.

I didn't wanna do it.

But having done it, I then got a taste for it.

I love shoplifting.

I I went on to shoplift for years.

I couldn't go into a shop and not walk out with something.

It became an addiction.

I'm a very addictive person.

I get hooked on things,

and then it's hard to shake these habits off.

In his teens, boxing saved Rick from the playground bully.

Now in his mid forties,

he admits that he's not as strong as he once was.

I'm looking for a way out.

I shouldn't be doing that.

I should be like attacking it more, more, more, and I'm not.

I'm backing off.

As soon as it gets a bit strong,

I've had enough now.

It's almost

me wanting

I'm wanting to be punished in some ways.

I like the punishment as well.

Maybe I'm masochistic,

but it teaches me.

It's like a humbling,

and I think Jesus wants us to be humbled all the time.

I now understand why Rick likes boxing,

but I was really surprised when he broke the news that he's a

committed Christian and attends church on a weekly basis.

He says he sees no contradiction at all and that

he's able to keep all of the different parts of his life in separate boxes.

He tells me that it's time to get to know him better,

time to take me back to his hometown and show me more of his past.

My father left when I was nine,

so I was brought up by my mother on her own.

She had two other children to bring up,

and it was very difficult.

Once my father left, I seemed to

go within my own world.

And that meant putting my life into compartments.

And I've learned that the best way of coping with trauma and

stress is to put things,

put parts of your life into compartments.

Rick takes me to where his father is buried.

He says that when he was nine,

his father left home for another woman.

His father died eight years ago.

When I was a child, I I pined for him every day of the week.

You know, I I I think I was a daddy's boy and,

I think I numb the pain

over the years.

He was an alcoholic.

Oh, he's very promiscuous.

And he was into deviant forms of sex, scanned mags, hardcore.

Cheers, dad.

I mean, he had a a dog once that he used on various women.

He paid them to go with his dog.

I mean, that's pretty bizarre stuff.

I also supplied him with porn.

So we've got connection there about sex.

You know, he asked me to get him videos. I got him videos.

To find out how he died by his own hand,

that upset me.

I tried it once and he was the one who found me.

Dying by paracetamol overdose is what I was gonna do and

that's what he succeeded in doing.

So you want to try to take your own life?

Yeah. When I was seventeen.

Yeah.

I took fifty paracetamol

and a hundred

what was it?

Anidine and crushed them all up into a pint glass,

put a pint of gin on it and downed it.

But he was the one who found me and,

you know, took me to hospital.

I find it a bit disturbing really because

seemingly, he never got his act together either.

Like father, like son.

As he tells it, when Rick attempted suicide,

he was living in this tower block.

He remembers rumors had been circulating the estate that his

father was engaged in deviant

sex.

It was just depressing.

It really was.

I mean, every every night,

I'd stand on that balcony there and just wonder what the fuck

I'm gonna do with myself.

Which balcony?

Second one up on the corner here.

I was living with this older woman. She's a prostitute.

She always had clients, former clients coming around saying,

come on, you know, let's do some business.

And I just get very angry with them.

I got so angry, I bought a gun in a catalog,

and I used to take potshots off them from the balcony at night.

If they angered me, I just bang, take that home.

So you used to take potshots with air guns at Yeah.

I had a two two rifle. I had telescopic sight.

That was a pretty good shot. You know? Bang.

Steady your arm on there. It's a bit like Lee Harvey Oswald.

You know? I had time to steady myself.

You

know.

At the time, Rick was drifting through a series of dead end jobs

and then found work as a park keeper.

One day, in this park, he says that he was accosted.

What happened with the bloke in the park?

I knew him to say hello to, and for weeks,

I've been talking to him.

And he'd sit there on the park, very well dressed,

and I just engage him in conversation.

And and it it just escalated one day,

and he offered to solve my money problems if I go and have sex with him.

He took me off three times, and then he refused to pay.

He was conning me.

I was already an angry man, so he just he lit a fuse.

And that night, it just exploded.

I mean, I came back here.

Next minute, I'm got a gun siege on my hands.

After Rick ran amok in his flat with the air pistol,

he was arrested, sent for psychiatric evaluation,

but was discharged with only a caution.

You know, it's it's it's followed me around.

It happens now and then.

What?

Losing control.

I mean, you know, it does happen now and then.

It's just one of them things with me.

You know?

And coming back here today and looking back at this place,

what do you reckon to it?

It's still the shithole it was when I was there.

It's just the biggest shithole now because

I don't know. It doesn't get better, does it?

Only gets worse.

Ripped off giving gay sex at the age of nineteen,

a suicide attempt at seventeen,

and a father who walked out on him at the age of nine and then died.

Rick's youth, as he recalls it,

is one of vulnerability followed by rage.

If it's all true,

I can't help wondering if this is why Rick beats men up for a living.

But then, a few days later, he shares something more profound,

what he believes is his life defining moment.

He was in his teens at school and returning home from

training as an amateur boxing man.

You know, when you're doing that,

is it are you punching are you do you picture someone who

you're having a go at or is it just it's too intense in that?

The two guys that raped me.

But

I can't get them.

They're like that.

I didn't look at their faces.

I didn't see their faces.

They were behind me. One was in front, one was behind me.

It's that.

Sorry, Ebony.

That's what he was doing.

You relax.

Keep the fucking shut. That's what he kept saying.

Keep the fuck shut.

I was twelve. I was coming home from boxing.

I haven't been boxing long,

so I was cocked short but not altogether.

I was waiting for a bus.

I was approached

by a man from my past who I trusted.

He said his wife would

give me sex.

I was curious,

needy,

and vulnerable.

And I wasn't afraid because I trusted him.

I wasn't afraid at all. I was excited. I was pumped up.

He said, she'll give you oral sex and there'll be no questions.

She's just sat in a toilet and you just have to put it through the partition.

There's a hole in the partition.

Just put it through the partition

and she'll make you feel good.

So any boy, you know,

no sooner had I

unzipped,

got it out, put it in,

and it clamped down.

Slammed into the partition.

Didn't say a word. Just slammed me in the partition.

There.

There. There.

There. There.

Finished.

Seconds.

I'm in shock.

The pain.

I couldn't believe the pain.

I couldn't believe the amount of pain.

It just felt like my whole ass was coming us coming away.

I could feel him breathing. I could smell the smoke.

He smoked a certain

tobacco, and I could smell it breathing down my neck.

Now fucking stay there and don't move.

Don't move.

And they swapped over, and he clamped me.

He clumped me, and the big guy got behind me.

And he whispered,

sorry.

Sorry.

He said he was sorry.

For over twenty years, Rick has been a sadomasochist master.

He's kept a record of his conquests and wants to show me his trophies.

Right.

I'm gonna take you into the history room now and show you

part of my past.

In here,

I've laid these photographs

out for you to see,

and

I've decided it's time I got rid of them really.

They're photographs of what?

People that I've dealt with in the past.

Various situations.

There's male, female,

transvestites,

indoor, outdoor.

I can look all of this now and feel nothing.

Don't feel a thing. It doesn't do anything for me.

Doesn't give me a hard on.

It used to, but it doesn't now.

This is a woman who used to have various things

shoved in her bigger the better, really.

So I play doctor,

and I use various implements saying, well,

we've gotta do an internal examination,

and you just keep putting different implements of her.

And she'd get off on it, you know.

She she'd have her orgasms.

And that's hot wax. Yeah.

And of course, the the tits are tied and bound.

I mean, it's already blue.

You've gotta have a flow of blood.

It's gotta flow and not just sit,

and that's the blood just sitting there, you know.

This,

picture of what was that situation?

And that took about half an hour of beating to get to that

point, and that guy wouldn't use the break word until there

was blood all over that sheet.

So we hadn't even gone through halfway there.

That sheet afterwards would have been covered in blood.

He's got a cock harness on it.

It's like a former chastity belt for men.

You have to put them on when the man's erect.

The the tight leather strap there will keep the blood

pumped up there.

Because I've done it for monetary reasons,

I've never actually turned on to it myself.

So I've been detached from it.

So fortunately, from that point of view,

my taste is quite normal.

I'm probably really quite boring in love. I don't know.

There you go. They're gonna go.

Which mean you're gonna go?

I'm gonna get rid of them. I'm gonna burn them.

So you'll see me burn them one day. Okay?

History gone.

Thus ended the lesson.

Rick has told me that he doesn't plan to see any more clients.

Several weeks pass, then he calls me to say he's doing one last

job and insists I come over straight away.

You know, I tend to wear leather because,

the beauty of leather is if you get if you get anything down

it, it wipes off.

I mean, look.

There's remnants of

something there.

I don't know what that is. It's some sort of shy grime or what.

I don't know. I've done that.

I'm not

these aren't for posing in discos.

These are for work.

These are work trousers.

I like to coordinate,

so I'm gonna put my bandana on that goes with these.

Sort of action man.

Yeah. Who am?

Kind of a commando look.

Here we go with the piss taking.

We're starting already, aren't we? Yeah. Action man.

Whatever you want. Whatever you want, I'll be your man.

So what's the procedure?

Well, he's due here in five minutes.

He'll be bang on time.

You are gonna have to

I I'll tell you what. I'll I'll tell you what I'll do.

I'll let you

come down

and see him before,

and then you're gonna have to leave the room.

I don't know what to expect. That's why I'm a little edgy.

I mean, you know, the moment I drive my fist off his ass,

it might be end of story.

He will

experience a lot of discomfort, and I'm not gonna stop.

So I told him once I start, I'm not gonna stop.

So unlike,

you know, a beating session,

we're not gonna go down that route where he'll say the brake

word will stop.

We're not we're gonna go through it.

We he's got to go through that pain barrier.

So and he's gagged.

I'm gagging him because I don't want him shouting the break room.

So we're gonna go there.

And is he paying you for this?

Yes. He's paying for the experience.

How much is he paying you?

It's a hundred.

So whether it lasts an hour or whether it lasts ten minutes,

I don't in my experience,

I don't think it'll last that long.

I think it'll be

quick, firm, but fair

Like I

always have.

Right. We're ready to begin now.

You're gonna have to leave.

I leave the basement room and go upstairs.

Thankfully, all I have to do is sit, wait, and listen.

Take it, and it's gonna hurt.

Now stop it.

Now relax. Relax.

Now take it out.

Count to three.

One,

two,

three.

Twenty five minutes later, Rick calls me back down.

Right. We're done.

As you can see.

It's just part of the human nature, human cycle.

What's what's disgusting about it?

Don't judge me.

I'm gonna go wash my hands first,

and then I'm gonna get a bucket and come down and clean it.

So it'll take all the two minutes,

so I'll be down with the bucket.

Don't ever say I don't earn my money.

Ruin that.

God. So it's all down the precipice?

Yeah.

Is that blasphemous?

Of course it's blasphemous.

It's blasphemous to have a fucking thing like that in the first place.

I don't need you to remind me of that.

Just hope God does forgive me, you know?

For only the second time since we've met, Rick is upset.

I seem to have touched a raw nerve.

When we get back upstairs, I ask him what's going on.

Have you made a living exclusively over the

years through doing a client here, a client there,

and paying you a hundred pounds a time?

I've had one major client that's been the backbone of

my life for fifteen years.

And he's given me the chance to

buy property that I can put dungeons in and not have to

worry about whether the clients are paying or whether they're just for fun.

And he died,

and that was, that that that was painful.

I'm not sure

how I'm coping with that, really.

I miss him.

I

miss him a lot, and

all was well.

I've spent over a year with Rick.

I thought I was getting to know him well.

Now he's telling me that he has had a long term client who kept

him on a retainer.

So what would you do for him?

We'd go down through every facet

of mind, body, and soul.

And also,

we could just sit and discuss anything and

pursue

it, s and m wise.

So, I mean, there wasn't any avenue that we couldn't go down comfortably.

And to find someone like that that you can have that sort of

relationship with is few and far between.

I mean, you know, I always said to him he was a gift from God.

It seems that the client who has just died was someone who

Rick trusted would always take care of him.

He had been relying on his retainer to support him in life

after S and M.

He was just saying all the time, you know,

don't worry when I'm gone, you'll you'll be taken care of.

And now he's gone, I haven't been taken care of.

And it's that feeling of betrayal that he was saying

that just to keep me

at bay, so as to speak.

There's this emptiness now.

He's gone.

But also, you know, I can't find out where I stood.

I thought I was

number one, and I wasn't.

I mean, I may have been number ten.

He may have had him all over the world.

I'll I'll never know that.

I can only imagine.

If Rick had a plan, then right in front of me,

it suddenly seems to be falling apart.

Think Richard Gere.

Right.

Let's go and hit him with it.

He now tells me that he wants to step back in the boxing ring

for the first time in over twenty years.

Does anybody like boxing?

Please say yes.

No.

I'm not selling you anything.

Honestly, I'm just doing a promotion unboxing.

Do you like boxing?

Yeah.

As I join him on a seaside promenade to promote the fight,

he appears to me to be more isolated than ever.

You're in your world and it's surrounded by perimeters and boundaries.

And all my boundaries are being pulled into me,

and I'm feeling closed in,

Totally closed in on my own and it's like the jailer wants to

lock me in and walk away and throw away the key.

I can lose everything.

All the material things as well and whatever.

The only thing I won't lose is my faith and that gets stronger

and that's amazing.

I find that amazing.

People should if they believe in God they should get

something out of this and say to themselves, well, you know,

there's so many people that turn away from God in their

moment of crisis and reject him.

I'm actually embracing him and he's embracing me and he's he's

putting his big arms around me and he's just

he's just

he's just stroking me.

It'll be alright.

How would it be alright?

I've got no idea, but I just I've got my faith in him.

Can we cut?

It's just getting all too much. You know?

I'm being pulled from left, right, and center.

I

just can't,

I can't see a way through it all.

I just don't know what I'm gonna do.

What what what is a person like me gonna do with a life?

Twelve months after deciding to give up sadomasochism,

Rick starts to get rid of his equipment.

He begins by destroying the crucifix on which he has bound

and beaten some of his clients.

I've been humbled. That's how it feels.

I feel like I've crucified myself by doing this, so

maybe I needed to taste that, to taste what it feels like.

I thought I was God at one point.

There's only one God, and it's certainly not me.

My opinion of Jesus is he was in your face.

Mary Magdalene, you know, he embraced her,

and he embraces me.

And that's the Jesus I have in my heart, you know.

He doesn't look upon me as the devil's disciple.

He looks upon me as a victim,

and he's there all the time when I need him,

and I need him now big time.

Why did you want to do that?

I just wanted rid of it.

It's

blasphemous and I regret it.

As the crucifix doesn't completely burn through,

Rick cuts it out instead.

That's it.

I feel happy about that now.

I shouldn't have got the damn thing in the first place.

It's not what I asked for.

I asked for a what I call a cross,

and he give me a crucifix.

There's a bit of a difference.

Some people call an x shape a crucifix, so

they just want an empty.

Isn't what I asked for.

That's what I

got.

I'm gonna get some of the stuff in the van to take

over to a punters of mine who's

gonna buy it off me.

So you're gonna sell it?

Not for a lot.

More interesting getting rid of it, really.

You, boy.

Behave.

This, used to fill it with cold water,

make them stand in it, and then tit torture.

Throw it in for free.

This is top of the vaulting horse that I used to use in the van.

Used to have chains coming down,

and they'd be on that and do the thrashing on that.

So it's ideal.

Seeing some action that has.

And what? You used to drive the van around?

Yeah. Like a takeaway service.

I thought I was being a bit clever with it,

but it never really took off.

You could be driving all around the country.

You get to someone's house,

and they'd go off the idea of time you got there.

Well, that's all he's having.

He's getting a bargain for a hundred quid, ain't he?

Since the recent death of his long term client,

Rick says he now has to raise every penny he can.

You're taking those doors down?

Yeah. I had them custom made.

So,

I'm not gonna be able to flog them to anybody who's gonna put a dungeon in.

So I'll have to get them to a scrap dealer and

take a pittance for them.

I ain't got a pension plan.

I ain't got any sort of clever shares somewhere.

I haven't got,

a portfolio of properties earning me money anymore,

because I've just spent them thinking, well,

it doesn't matter.

There's more to come than there isn't.

It's gone.

That's a bit scary because

what do I do?

In the past, in difficult times,

Rick says that the controlled violence of the boxing ring has

helped keep his life together.

I join him at a trial fight at his local gym,

which he hopes will be the first bout of a new career.

I just thought I wanna have a go at it again.

I want to feel that pain.

I want to feel the the punishing side of being in the ring again.

I determined to go through this one and see how it goes.

It's just

I'm driven.

I shouldn't be doing it at my age.

I should not be getting in the ring,

but I just wanna taste it again and see what it feels like.

If you win, what will

it mean?

It will have proven to submit to myself that

I've still got a strength there,

and maybe that strength will carry me through giving up.

It is important to me. It's not just a boxing match.

It's a psychological

plaster for me and I need it.

Rick's opponent was once an amateur champion. Great.

The first two rounds are fairly even.

But in the final round, Rick takes a beating.

Rick.

And loses the fight.

Just terrible, ain't it?

Just felt my age.

Just couldn't get my shots off.

Kept grabbing him.

He's just holding on for dear life.

I just wanted to survive.

That's where I went wrong.

I spent too much energy putting the boots and tassels on.

And then I wanted to gel my hair,

and that's where I head guard.

So that put me right off.

It was all vanity at the end of the day.

I thought, you can't gel my hair.

What's the point?

What a vain bastard I am.

Where did it come from?

I've followed Rick for more than a year.

He's told me about his troubled past.

I've watched him with what he says are his last clients and

seen and heard things that I could never have imagined.

But I still feel there are some things which have been left unsaid.

And then, perhaps because he has no one else left to confide in,

he tells me, when it's just him and me.

In your mind,

will all this give up S and M?

Looking forward, I mean, what is there?

Let's think about all the hundreds of things which one

can do to earn a living in within humanity.

What is that?

Bouncer?

Policeman?

Jailer?

Surgeon.

Covering my hands.

Plumber clearing tubes. We're playing on words now.

But We're not playing on words.

We're having a serious conversation.

I can't think of anything. Do you want the honest truth?

I'm giving you the honest truth.

I can't think of anything that turns me on enough.

I'm just gonna drift from one day to the next,

hoping and praying somebody's gonna come along and say, this is it.

But at the moment, I can't answer that question.

I really can't.

And I'm not gonna make something up for you to

just have.

I haven't got anything. There's nothing in there.

There's nothing in there for me to tell you.

There's nothing. I'm in a wilderness.

I'm walking off into a wilderness.

And I just hope someone's gonna find me and say, well,

you know, have you tried this?

Because at the moment, I can't come up with their mountains.

And that's the frightening bit.

I am frightened, really frightened.

Because,

you know, I'm a loose cannon.

And if I'm not busy, and if I'm not focused,

and if I haven't got all this, who am I?

I've lost my identity. I've lost me.

I've been doing this for so long, twenty five years.

It's more than half my life.

And yet, I'm giving it up to do what?

I'm I'm not even giving it up to do anything.

There's nothing there.

I'm just giving it up. That's all.

You've gone on this journey of giving up and you've sort of

got to a stage where you can't kind of dress up anymore

This is you now

What do you see when you just see you?

What do you see?

I see a boy

crying.

Hurt.

That's what I see.

Who's the boy?

The boy who's deserted, the boy who's raped,

the boy who's left to be a man too early.

It's just that moment of rejection

of being rejected by my father.

What was the moment?

Me clinging to his leg,

begging him not to go.

Where was this?

At home

the night he left.

He got a big,

long coat on that he used for the buses,

like a military coat.

I love that coat.

I didn't want it to go.

And it did.

I begged it, and I screamed,

And it still went.

Have you ever

been lost in a different world