A Photo Document at the Door, Whatever Your Age

Among the small moments in a booking, this is the one that tends to make a guest over fifty pause. The door opens, she smiles, and she asks, politely, whether she might see a photo document. The guest, who has not been asked for identification outside an airport in decades, is briefly puzzled. The explanation takes one paragraph, and afterwards most people find the request rather reassuring.

The rule is twenty-one or over, for everyone

Everyone involved in a booking with this house has to be twenty-one or over. That means every therapist on the roster, every guest, and anyone else present in the room. It is a standing rule, stated on every page and set out in full in the age statement. It is not a judgement about any particular person.

Why she asks someone who is obviously older

Because the alternative is asking some guests and not others, and choosing who to ask on the basis of how they look. That is both unreliable and a little insulting to whoever gets picked. A request made of every guest alike is fairer, and it means nobody at the door has to make a guess about anybody. She may not ask every time; when she does, it is the same question she would put to anyone.

What she looks at, and what she does not do

She looks at the document once, at the door, and hands it straight back. Nothing from it is copied, photographed or written down. The house does not keep a record of your date of birth or your document number, and nothing about the check appears in the booking thread. A passport or a national identity card with a photograph does the job.

It is worth having one to hand before she arrives, rather than rummaging through a coat pocket or a safe in the wardrobe. Most guests leave it on the table by the door.

If someone else is in the room

The same rule covers everybody present. If you are travelling as a couple and have booked together, both of you should be ready to show a document. If a friend happens to be in the apartment when she arrives, he or she is covered by the rule too, and a booking for one guest is a booking for one guest; the thread should say plainly who will be there. If she cannot settle who is in the room, she leaves before anything begins.

What happens if you would rather not show it

Then the visit does not go ahead. This is rare, and it is almost always a misunderstanding rather than a refusal; once the reason is explained, guests nearly always simply hand the document over. Where it does happen, the booking is treated as a cancellation made once she has set out, which on a booking with a deposit means the deposit is kept, and on one without a deposit means the share of the fee her journey represents.

What the document is not used for

It is not used to look you up or to check anything about you beyond one fact: that the person opening the door is twenty-one or over. The thread already holds the name you booked under. A guest who booked in his own name, is in the room when she knocks and shows a document if asked has done everything the house will ever require of him at the door, and the rest of the visit is about the evening rather than about paperwork.

A small courtesy in both directions

There is a symmetry to it. Each therapist on the roster is twenty-one or over, and her profile states her age. The guest is asked to show the same. For a first booking in many years, the check is also a useful signal that the rest of the arrangement is run on written rules rather than on impressions, which is the point of everything else on this site.

After the document goes back in your pocket, the evening begins the way every visit here begins: she sits down, and the two of you agree the warmth, the light and the pace. The first booking guide follows the visit on from there.