I've never told anyone this but… I worked as an escort, but not for the money
Interview with a woman, 30 years of age, identifies as female, heterosexual and worked as a former Sex Worker.
Q: Why do you think you haven't told anyone this?
A: Honestly, because there is too much judgement and too much stigma. I tried to tell one friend, but said it like I was 'thinking about it' or that it was a suppressed fantasy of mine and I wanted to see what she thought. I am really glad I said it that way because even though she is open minded and non-judgy normally, even she had a lot to say about this. So, I decided to keep it to myself and have this little secret to myself. I was single and living in a city away from my family and didn't have that many friends so it was really easy to keep it. In fact, it wasn't hard and I never felt a strong desire to share what happened or how I was spending so many of my nights.
Q: What made you want to become an escort? If you didn't need the money, what did you do it for?
A: Ever since I was 17 or 18 years old, I was really intrigued about stripping or sex work. I honestly didn't have the guts to do it. I didn't feel good about myself, I didn't love myself, my body, my sexuality or my femininity enough. By the time I reached my early 30s, I had really found my sexual height. I was in the prime of my life. My body had finally developed that feminine fullness I had waited so many years to earn and I felt like a freaking goddess! When I was younger I was skinny and boyish, A-B cup, no hips and so skinny. I had no presence. I really started seeing myself as powerful and wanted all aspects of my life to match with how I felt. I ended a relationship that wasn't right, I took on a promotion, I started making new friends and starting cool and interesting new hobbies I had wanted to try for years. The year after I turned 30 I had started doing a lot of mirror work and had really fallen in love with how beautiful I was, and you know what - people started to tell me what I was seeing inside of me. It took me seeing it for others to see it too. People would stop me on the street constantly and tell me how beautiful I was. I caught people staring all the time. My face and body hadn't changed. I had. I was oozing confidence and self love and it was catching. I also massaged my breasts daily by giving them words of affirmation and love. I told them beautiful, kind things and, well, I needed new bras! My small little A/B cups grew into double Ds without surgery or weight gain. I honestly couldn't believe it! Everyone was asking where I got them done - I just answered, inside my heart in front of the mirror! I honestly felt on top of the world. I decided to get some life drawings done of me and I even booked myself for a boudoir shoot. My one condition to myself was that I wouldn't get them retouched and I wouldn't train or diet before the shoot, which worked well because they had a last minute cancellation and I could just go in the next day and get it done. I cried when I saw the photos because I had never seen how beautiful I was until then. It took my self appreciation to a whole new level. I felt alive. I felt free. I felt totally and completely me.
So here I was in what I would classify was a real pinnacle point for me, and it felt really great. As I said this was always a lifelong dream of mine to try, and so I did and it was less glamorous than the movies, but it was still fun and I still loved it. It was something I always wanted to do, and did.
Q: What did you learn from this experience ?
A: I learned that every single person on this planet is longing for companionship, connection and love. We say that the most important thing in Maslo's hierarchy of needs is water, food, and shelter, but I think he got it wrong. You cannot be full without love. I met very very wealthy people who had such pain and anguish because all they wanted was love. I learned that you can strive for the wrong things in life, make millions and end up completely poor. A rich life is only rich if you have someone to share it with and someone that is willing to witness you exactly as you are. Honesty often lacked in these people I spent time with. They may have been with someone, but couldn't tell them what they wanted, needed or desired. I felt the pain of living a life without a pleasure-filled relationship. It felt sad to me to have to go outside and seek that out and pay for it because you weren't willing to reveal who you were or what you wanted to a significant other. I also saw and felt the pain of living with a partner out of love or where there had never been love in the case of certain arrangements made by family etc.
Q: What do you wish you could tell other Women?
A: It is so important to learn how to be a woman that a man can talk to. I learned ways of reading men quickly to get them to open up and talk. I felt that the more they could talk with me, the less anger or rage or sadness they would carry alone. I felt that was a service to the world because if men can let go of their emotional baggage, they can be better fathers, husbands, partners, bosses, colleagues, sons, friends and members of society. There is so much talk about toxic masculinity. For me, it is toxic silence that creates this. Men don't talk. They hold it in and then punch it out. If we can learn how to listen to men, because they talk differently to us, then there will be huge changes around the gender roles that could take place. There can also be less pain in couples, in families and between generations. I saw the pain of silence in so many men in my life, and choosing to take on this role and working out the best way for each one to open and release gave me a sense of accomplishment. It felt like I was doing Holy work for the greater good. It almost felt like, oh, this is why I've been so interested in doing this for so long but couldn't until I was emotionally in the best place of my life.
I started to see the extreme importance in sex work coupled with psychology and trauma response. Trauma shows up through sexuality all the time, and instead of talking to a counsellor in a stuffy office feeling embarrassed and more shameful, telling it to a sex worker or a dominatrix or a trained professional who can hold both your current sexual desires and deep trauma causing these desires, is pure genius. But then, imagine if that is your wife. Imagine if she can be that for you because she has been open to learning about opening her own sexuality to bring it in line with yours and then can hold space for you to talk and grieve or vent or whatever if anything comes up. I just cannot tell you how many times I thought how that kind of couples training could change the world. Real intimacy is born from trust, from a true desire to be there for another person, no matter what that something is, or how it is delivered. Without judgement, criticism, narrow thinking or being stuck in how you've always been, true intimacy can be achieved in even the stalest and unloving of relationships. Find that thing that you love about your partner, and about yourself, and grow that.
If you cannot find it in your partner, find it, grow it and become it for yourself. Mirror exercises and affirmations work if you work them. Finding a reason to love yourself is never enough, you just have to do it, because you can only be loved to the extent that you love yourself. That is also true for how you can love others only to the extent that you love yourself. If you want better relationships with your partner, children, friends, colleagues, whoever- work on your love for yourself first, and the rest will so easily fall into place when you are in a place of complete, unwavering and unconditional love for you and all that you are - exactly as you are. Your eyes will see your external appearance differently and your ears will hear your voice and soul differently, your heart will be able to lead you towards your passion, purpose and sense of joy far more easily than before. The world will reveal colours that were never there before and you will be transformed. Fall in love with yourself ladies there are no regrets to be reported so far!
Q: What have you learnt about yourself
A: So much. Where to begin. Although it was a very short experiment for me, it was really eye-opening. I know now that the validation that I most enjoy and most need is internal validation not derived from external sources. Not relying on my partner's opinion of my beauty, worth or value is something that really got mastered through this. Also, how I frame something is always my choice. For example, not everyone that you get booked by is Bradley Cooper (surprised?) and so, in those moments, when that person is fragile and feeling dejected from the world already, and they've often saved for months to have a night with you, it is imperative that you find something decent, sexy and appealing about them and really let them know what you like about them. It costs absolutely nothing to be kind and to see the world and everyone in it with this level of love and appreciation. It changes their world. For me it was the role of a priestess restoring love into mankind. I saw this as man + kind. That kind part stood out to me. I understood that my status in these interactions was actually the higher one (people don't actually get that until I point it out to them) and therefore it was my responsibility to be the kindness and the love that I am - and bring that to man: mankind. Just being this love could already change this person's life because they are devoid of it. They could spend time with me and be in my energy and grow from that alone. I showed up with the openness to bring someone to live in that love that I was in, and discover it in themselves. That is hugely different from being forlorn out on the street and sucking cock for crack. I tried to live up to a service role.
Q: Any other tips and tricks for partners?
A: Yes! Talk. Talk. Talk and if you cannot talk - try to find a way to break through that is gentle, kind and loving. Find a way of first revealing some of your vulnerabilities and come open, ready to bear all. The dynamic between the escort/sex worker and the client is that it is all anonymous (much like this interview) and that already gives this sense of I can say whatever I want (also much like this interview). You don't contact each other directly, you don't know each other's names, or any real true thing about the other. You have to spark chemistry with someone really quickly, and make sure they feel comfortable with you. You don't know what they like, what they want or what they need. But you cannot get that shopping list by asking those questions like that. There is a finesse and a seduction that takes place in order to find out how you can really help this person today and why they are here. When in a couple, that is 100% the same scenario, except that it can be harder to reveal this sometimes to someone you know and who knows you, at least on a level. Perhaps treating each other like strangers allows for the information you haven't revealed before to be more available… and then the relationship can take on a new level of intimacy.
Q: And lastly, why do you think understanding all of this is important?
Well - I've spoken far more about love and connection and trueness to self than anything else. And we all have a benefit from those things. Loneliness is the number one killer in this world and it is the pandemic of our ages that there is no vaccine for. If you are lonely, you may as well start smoking 15 packs a day, because loneliness will still be the thing that will kill you. It shows up in your epigenetics and will affect your descendants. It is our duty to connect with others and find love, because if we don't future generations will pay the price. People are so afraid of true self love. But what I've come to learn from this journey is that when you truly love yourself, a death occurs. A death of that part of you keeping you small, out of love and out of joy - and that part is scared of its death. That fear is your signal to keep going, to kill it and to reward yourself with a slavery free life of freedom, living in the realms of love. For me, every day I ask Love to introduce me to more Love than I've yet seen or known, and as far as I can tell it is endless. I have found so much boundless renewal in this practice that I wanted to share it with everyone I could. When I saw clients, I shared it with them and now I share with your readers. Love is all there is and all we ever need to be. What joy!