Life of a Prostitute
I'll be a sucker and put my hand up for this one. In three weeks, I will have been in the same line of work for two years. In one week, I'll be 21. I'm an escort - a very expensive prostitute. While I make a tidy living off it, it's not quite what people expect. It's not what *I* expected, but I love my job to bits and wouldn't choose anything else for myself right now (unless it was something like paid holiday reviews of tropical islands or a taste tester for some fabulous icecream company). Why isn't it what I expected? I'm supposed to be a prostitute, and the classic image of a prostitute is a woman who exchanges sex for money. Soon after I started, it became apparent that the men who were coming to see me weren't after sex, and most of them wanted to talk and just be held which caught me completely off-guard. When you're paying $2k a night, people expect more than sex. To my dismay, sex only occurs in roughly 20% of my bookings. Even then it's usually short and sweet, at his lead. I've got a healthy sex drive - it's not mad, but it's there. To have some handsome men paraded around in front of me in towels and then telling me I can't shag them even though I'm in their employ as a sexworker for the time being... Wa! It's a tough life ;) Being on the higher end of the scale, I usually have more potential bookings than I want or need, so I screen my clients for the best and most pleasant. I have a long list of who I won't put on my client list. This includes anyone under 25 (they're terrible in bed, terrible to talk to), anyone overweight, disabled (solely because there is no wheelchair access to my apartment), anyone who puts me off while I'm speaking to or corresponding with them. Also, trying not to get killed. Yes, it's legal here and the police are very kind to the girls (and boys) who aren't breaking laws. I've had nothing but good experiences with them. So, isn't sex the be-all and end-all of prostitution? At the end of the day, no. Even in an 'exotic dancing' venue, where lap dances and table dances and the like are happening, I wouldn't say it's about sex. Not entirely. For the men who go in and put their money down for time with a girl, for whatever purpose, what he's paying for is her time. That's not so much a polite euphemism as bland truth. Time, attention, affection perhaps, but mostly attention. The men I see are very lonely men. A pretty, healthy and cheerful young girl (in her knickers and a smile) giving you a big warm hug and listening to your day, your problems and your thoughts - and taking advantage of a blow job minutes before leaving after 2 hours, well. It's emotionally taxing just for having to listen to them. Physically, I don't find it taxing but I have found that I have more toned muscles and I've learned to play up my femininity a little as I was very much the tomboy growing up. My family, friends, people I know casually, they know what I do for a living. I'm comfortable with it and answer casually. It sets some people on the back foot. It intrigues some. Some gush forward with questions, I had one date pick me up from my apartment one evening (a personal date, not work) and he was running around looking at all my 'neat stuff' (spoils of a hefty disposable income) singing, 'I wanna be a hooker! I wanna be a hooker!' Yes, the date was terrible :) The people you have to watch out for, the ones who will make trouble and treat you badly are the ones who immediately start telling you how great they think it is and how empowered I must be - immediately going after all the shiny things and vocalizing them. Watch out for those ones, they're full of crap. At least with people who give you the evil eye straight up let you know where you stand. How'd I get into this line of work? A progression from multimedia college to digital photography to pornography to modeling to pornography to directing pornography to dancing in a club for 2 weeks to being an escort. Why am I a provider in the adult industry? It yields huge amounts of cash in little time. While those windfalls are large, they're infrequent and unpredictable. I had large mental health problems when I was 17, and needed the better part of a year off to recover. Turning 18 with no work experience for the last year, I tumbled into a photo shoot for Christmas money one year and liked it so much things just went from there. Due to that continuing mental hiccup, I'm not reliable. I can't work a 40 hour week, I need lots of recovery time after hanging out with people all weekend. maybe a week. One client every now and then is fine, and I can see them on my own grounds at my leisure. That brings in rent money and I'm free to be a sleepy, off-beat recluse the rest of the time. Not being a recluse sends my stress levels through the roof and triggers mental hiccups requiring more time off. It's all about consistency, prevention and taking care of my own brain. Feeding it all these endorphins at work is a pretty neat fringe benefit :).
DATE OF PUBLISHING
30-SEP-2004
SOURCE LINK
http://sexworkrecord.livejournal.com/