1
No little girl grows up dreaming of becoming an escort. A sex worker. A whore.
Keep that in mind.
It’s a job, right. A lot of people do difficult work, and many don’t like their jobs. That’s a fact about being an adult. We suck it up for a myriad of reasons. Maybe because we can’t think of anything else to do. Or we don’t believe there is anything else we could do, as we don’t have qualifications, or opportunities or simply the energy to draft a new CV. We do, however, have rents or mortgages to pay, electricity, gas and the lure of the local pub that sells a really average chardonnay. So, we need to make money. From time to time, miners, couriers, sous chefs, debt collectors, refuse collectors, truck drivers, laborers on building sites and care workers (list not finite) must all complain about the way they earn money. And they are entitled to. All those roles incorporate high-pressure deadlines and have low income-growth potential. I’m just saying, none of us live in Disneyland.
Okay, PR girls, the ones in marketing and events management, you might very well be all wide-eyed and incredulous at this moment, you might be insisting, “But I love my job.” Good for you. You will also be thinking it is not paid well enough. You will be planning on marrying someone rich if money matters to you, or living in rented accommodation all your life if it doesn’t. If you are thinking of marrying someone rich to supplement your lifestyle, to allow you to continue to pursue your dream job, then you need to pause on that thought before judging me. Look, don’t take offense. I’m not saying you are like me exactly. I’m just saying maybe none of us are a million miles apart. Telling it as it is, is a core skill of mine. If I ever had to write a CV, I’d include it.
Being rich doesn’t really matter to me. That might surprise you.
Being valued does, and that might surprise you more, because people assume women who are prepared to accept money for sex have self-esteem issues.
Side note: being rich—obscenely so—matters to many, many people that I am surrounded by, so I know money is power, and I play the game. I know what money can and does buy. Anything. Everything. When we get to know one another a little more, I will elaborate on all of that. Let you in. Maybe even tell you how I started out. But not yet. I don’t think the best relationships begin with retrospection. It’s indulgent. I’m all about the moment we’re in. I nod to a future when I dare. Looking back isn’t my thing.
I think most sex workers would agree with me.
And that issue I mentioned, that no little girl grows up wanting to be an escort, well, that’s true, but they—we—had dreams. Plans. I know I did.
Today is perfect. The sun is shining just enough. The job I’ve just now finished was perfectly fine.
Fine. He didn’t want to insult me, humiliate me, urinate on me. He didn’t smell. I have a good nose. Well, I say good. In fact, it’s a mixed blessing in my line of work. I probably should retrain as a perfumer or something. You can imagine the drawbacks of having that heightened sense in my job. The smell of a good cologne is usually guaranteed, thankfully. Men who can afford me can afford decent aftershave. But other smells come into it. His balls, his neck, feet, crack. There are a lot of ways a man can become unappealing. I’ve learnt to breathe through my mouth. I just have to deal with it. If they do smell very bad, sometimes I suggest we shower together, take a bath. It is what it is. But today I wasn’t presented with any of those issues. I actually quite like him. Or I could, if I met him somewhere else. If I was someone else.
Both things are impossible. I mean, where else might we meet? It’s not like I’d ever turn up at his local neighborhood watch meeting, or the monthly executive board meeting at his enormous blue-chip company, or at any of the annual charitable trust meetings that he patrons, chairs or fundraisers for. Cancer, modern slavery, national ballet are his causes. These are the places he hangs out when he’s not with me. Being respectable. Being brilliant and philanthropic. With me, he’s filthier.
I’ve been looking after him for about five months, and we get together every couple of weeks in a small boutique hotel in Richmond. I assume he must work nearby. He hasn’t said, and I never probe; clients find it unnerving. I prefer hotels over private homes. My regulars are always easier jobs. I guess I enjoy them the most, or more accurately, I fear and dislike them the least. I know what I’m walking into. I can gauge their moods, their needs. It doesn’t absolutely remove the risk, because people are unpredictable, but it certainly reduces it. Today we had sex in an efficient, satisfactory way. The way a couple who have been together a decent period of time, and know their way around one another’s bodies, might. After the sex, he still had thirty-eight minutes on the clock. He’d paid up front for two forty-five-minute sessions. As he’s a regular, I might have allowed him to postpone the second session, but he didn’t want to. He wanted to talk. Some of them are talkers. They think they want sex but in fact they want company, so they pay for sex hoping that when it’s all over, they can have a chat. With those clients, I see my role as something similar to that of a therapist. Therapists will hate that analogy; they will be rushing to post outraged (although carefully phrased passive-aggressive) tweets refuting any parallel. They’ll be frustrated to discover I don’t have any social media accounts, so they can’t cancel me. I’m not trying to offend therapists. I apologize if I have. I do appreciate that very few people like their profession being put on a par with mine. I’m simply saying if I look hard enough, I can find the similarities, and I have looked. But it’s just my opinion; you don’t have to get worked up. Both my clients and the clients who lie on therapists’ couches undergo a stripping back; they are laid bare—either physically or mentally. Is it so different? Frankly, I think it’s easier to take your clothes off than allow access to one’s deepest and darkest thoughts. Take my deepest and darkest orifices over that, anytime. Sorry. I crack jokes when I’m nervous. I realize that I can come across as inappropriate. I guess I am the epitome of inappropriate. It’s a professional hazard. I did briefly consider being a therapist, but I figured it would be exhausting. All those feelings.
All that feeling.
Obviously, I don’t really do a lot of feeling in my line of work. It’s a golden rule to survival.
Anyway, all he wanted to do was talk. My client Daniel is almost forty. He is unmarried, and he tells me most of his friends assume he’s gay. I don’t get that vibe. Paying for heterosexual sex must be pretty low down on a gay man’s list of prioritizations, even if he were still in the closet. It’s quite obvious that he is in love with his best friend’s wife. He talks about her all the time. When I mentioned the idea, he looked horrified. Maybe horrified that I’d found him so transparent, maybe horrified because it was the first time the thought had occurred to him. I don’t know. However, in the moment the thought did occur to him, he must have known his love was doomed. Sisi (the object of his adoration and idolization) doesn’t know he is in love with her because he’s a shy, nice guy who has never dared make his feelings known, not in the time before she married his bestie and certainly not since. Daniel has placed Sisi firmly on a high-up, out-of-reach pedestal. No other real woman can come close. The majority of his relationships have not stumbled past the three-month anniversary. He tells me that the women he’s dated are too ambitious, not ambitious enough, self-centered, overly clingy, boring, exhausting...so on and so on. It’s a shame. Daniel, I admit, is no looker. He has a face only a mother could love, but he is decent, clever and very wealthy. I think he could be the answer to many women’s needs if not dreams. Daniel has told me that he’s stopped investing emotionally in relationships now. He’s happy paying me twice a month (to have the sort of sex a girlfriend might tire of) and then to chat about Sisi (something I think even the most understanding girlfriend would find irritating). Daniel is one of my favorite clients. I feel so comfortable with him that I shower before I leave. I dress in the bathroom, so he doesn’t see that I’ve shoved my lacy knickers in my handbag and have put on a pair of sensible cotton briefs. I wear my heels until I’m outside, back on the street, and then swap into trainers. I have to maintain standards no matter how easygoing the client is.
It’s a warm late May day. I sniff the air and can almost smell summer. I love spring but not in its own right, but because it’s the predecessor to summer, my actual favorite season. I have learnt that anticipation is genuinely a gift. Hot days slow my blood and heal my bones. They take me back to being young. Younger. I’m thirty-one, so some people would think I am young now, like the wives. But others—like the daughters—they would think I am old. My clients don’t know I’m thirty-one. I am whatever they want me to be within a range of eighteen to twenty-six. My manager, Elspeth, and I never speak of the age issue. I earn enough to indulge in all the high-end beauty treatments I want. I use lasers to vanquish spots and redness, lasers to build up collagen and tighten jowls, fat-dissolving acids to lose the extra bit under my chin, and radio frequency treatment for my neck, and I judiciously use filler and Botox. This, combined with a strict diet and lots of sleep, means I look like the angel I most certainly am not.
I am young, old, ageless; it depends on your viewpoint. I am all things. Sometimes it feels like I’m nothing at all.
And yes, I have a manager. You might think of her as my madam or my pimp, if you are the sort of person who thinks of your PA as a secretary. I text Elspeth, to let her know I’ve exited the job safely. Even though he is a regular client, we always follow procedure. She texts me back instructing me to drink lots of water and reiterating the importance of keeping hydrated for beautiful skin. After most jobs, she gifts me a little beauty tip. I think it’s her way of showing she cares. Texts swapped, we can both let out a sigh of relief, although we never acknowledge that we exist in a state of perpetual anxiety. My manager is well worth her thirty percent. Some girls balk at paying the commission. They try to get clients to call them directly. A route that always leads to trouble. I think it is money well spent because everyone knows you can’t put a price on your health. Health and safety have a totally different meaning in my job. Nothing to do with donning high-vis jackets or being given orthopedic chairs to counter the strain of long hours at a desk. Avoiding a beating or a STD is so much more immediate, don’t you think? Besides, she introduced me to an accountant that was prepared to manage my tax returns. Officially, I’m registered as a self-employed clairvoyant, an extremely popular one. Without him, I’d never have got a mortgage.
Our system, if you are interested, and I find most people arecurious, is that Elspeth’s telephone number is on my business cards and the agency’s website, as well as those of about twenty other sex workers. She is the filter. The barrier. Elspeth vets all my potential clients. She establishes that they have funds and ideally no criminal records. She does allow some white-collar convicts but never a perpetrator of a violent crime. My game, like every game in a capitalist society, is a matter of supply and demand. Elspeth maintains that with the sort of girls she supplies, we can afford to be choosy about our clients. She finds out what they are looking for and tells them which of her girls can accommodate their tastes. She does call us her “girls,” which annoys people who are devoted to politically correct nomenclature. We are in fact women, all above the legal age. However, all sex workers have been called much worse than “girls”; few of us lose sleep over this matter. Elspeth sets up the rendezvous. She alerts and bribes hotel staff so they can also be invested in her girls’ well-being. There have been two occasions during my career when hotel staff have reported a “funny feeling” about the client, and the assignments have been canceled. On another occasion, hotel staff called the ambulance.
When I arrive at an assignment, I text Elspeth to say so. She contacts the client, he transfers the funds, and I receive a text from Elspeth to say she has the fee. I can then proceed. If I don’t get her text confirming the deposit of the money, I leave. This administration is done in front of me, but I never discuss it with the client. I remain silent throughout the transaction. It helps create the illusion that I’d be there irrespective of the money that is changing hands. Elspeth sets up checks at sexual health clinics and also gives advice on a range of subjects from underwear, to clients with halitosis or unusual sexual proclivities (and they really do have to be unusual if they can’t be catered to by one of the girls in Elspeth’s portfolio). Elspeth has done her time as a sex worker and so is vigilant, practical and unsentimental. I appreciate all three things about her. She is just eight years older than I am. I suppose she embodies some sort of career path trajectory. I too might work up to the dizzy heights of managing my own girls one day. I don’t have an older sister, but if I had, I imagine our relationship would be something like the one I have with Elspeth. She makes me feel a little less alone.
2
It’s not late, so I decide to catch the tube home rather than take a cab or an Uber. I usually take cabs to jobs so I can arrive looking my glamorous best, not windswept by the elements or flustered by train delays, but I like to save money where I can and so opt for public transport when leaving, if possible. I like stations. I enjoy the sense of purpose and energy that people who have to get somewhere inevitably have. I don’t mind if they selfishly push to the front of queues or jostle for space on platforms; I can forgive that human frailty of assuming their journey is more important than mine if I experience the vitality and assurance in return. Sometimes after a job, even an easy one like Daniel’s, both things seep away from me, and I feel a need to be recharged.
The platform isn’t especially busy this evening. There are a few very tired-looking commuters who really ought to have escaped the office a few hours ago, a couple dressed up and ready to embark on a date night—I notice that the tag is still attached to the woman’s dress and I wish I could pull it off for her before her date spots it. I can’t, so I can only hope that the card scratches her slightly and she gets the opportunity to discreetly remove it herself. My eyes drift to a gaggle of students who have yet to learn how to handle their booze and have clearly peaked too early but seem unperturbed about the fact. Some of them are sitting on the platform bench, two deep as girlfriends sit on their boyfriends’ laps. Those who can’t squeeze onto the bench at all loll on the tiled floor. I used to sit on platform floors. Not in abandon or despair like a homeless person might. The opposite. When I was a student, I’d sit like I was king of the world. Not queen. King. Even then I knew being a queen is still second place to being king. I wanted to be top of the world, cream of the crop, number one. I was going places from A to B, C to D, on to E. It was limitless. Endless. I thought.
I notice that one or two of the students are surreptitiously checking me out whilst continuing their rowdy, cliquey, attention-grabbing conversations. The boys are wondering whether they’ll ever lay a woman like me (answer: you should probably hope not). The girls are wondering whether they’ll ever afford the Burberry trench coat I’m sporting (answer: it depends on what you are prepared to pay). The station is towards the end of the line and therefore aboveground. There is a waft of hash in the air and an occasional breath of cigarette smoke, despite the constant stream of public address that blares out reminding us that all forms of smoking are illegal in stations. I glance about and notice a tired-looking man in his fifties furtively flick a butt to the ground. He grinds his heel to stub it out. I turn back to the students; I marvel at their verve, their carelessness. It’s beautiful and painful to watch the very young people. Like looking at a photo of your favorite place but knowing you’ll never visit there again. My clients are often older than I am. Quite a bit older. Sometimes more than twice my age. There’s no point in my getting hung up about that. Fastidiousness about age or attractiveness is not something I can nurture. Everyone looks for something different in their career: I benefit from job security, rising wages, flexible hours and excellent working environments. I must be accepting visually, and I am. By contrast, the men who pay what I cost get to be extremely specific about the sort of woman they want to have sex with. They can, and do, tell us what clothes, nail gel and scent to wear. They can specify black, white, Asian; blue, brown, green eyes; curly, straight, long, short, blond, brunette or red hair; tall, tiny, full-breasted, small tits, voluptuous bum, androgynous limbs; freckles, long legs, dimpled thighs, big bush or no hair down there. The list goes on. We are laid out like chocolates in a box, waiting to be devoured.
There have been a lot of men. That’s possibly the thing people find most difficult to accept about me. It’s not just that I’m paid to have sex, but it’s the fact that I’ve had sex with very many men. I’m often asked how many exactly. I don’t know the answer. Most women have been sold the la-la, soul mate, fidelity thing, and even if their search for the illusive One means there are several along the way, that is palatable. Romantic even. I, and everything I embody, debunk the world’s most comforting illusion. No one wants to hear that we’re mammals, led by instinct, that sex is one of the most powerful instincts, just after hunger. Even my clients shy away from that.
I pull out my phone and tap in some notes about Daniel. Details about the day he first met Sisi, which he revealed during our postcoital confab. Naturally. I keep notes. It’s nothing sinister; it’s simply a level of professionalism, organization. I haven’t always kept my files up to date, which is why I can’t say how many men I’ve had sex with. As my career progressed, I realized that laissez-faire attitude towards my clients was unacceptable. Even a one-off encounter is now recorded. I keep notes on who they say they are and their professions, and if they talk about a wife, or family, or friends; bosses or competitors often feature. It’s all part of the service. They like me to remember things about them. They expect that. They are wealthy men, often important in their own field, in their own way—even those who I consider a bit sad—so they expect to be remembered. They are more alike than they imagine; than they’d like to imagine. I want to count the cash tip Daniel gave me. He handed me an envelope as I left. He usually does. Some men tip. The fee goes directly to Elspeth, electronic transfer. Strictly speaking, I should declare the tips. I don’t, and I don’t know a working girl who does. I don’t declare them to Elspeth or the tax man. There is a certain type of man whose tips rarely have anything to do with my sexual prowess. More often than not, they are to do with his. If he thinks he’s really pleased me, that he’s done really well, he tips heavily. I’m a confidence boost. That’s why I always behave as though I’m having the time of my life.
My phone buzzes in my hand. It’s Elspeth. “Darling, where are you?” she asks without any preamble.
“Richmond station.”
“Good, you are heading back into town?” I live in north London, and so does Elspeth. Neither of us really accepts that Richmond is London, even if it is on a tube line. It’s Surrey. Practically provincial.
“Yes.”
“Would you like to take another job?”
“Tonight?” I’m surprised, because Elspeth rarely books back-to-back appointments. She knows the importance of down time.
“I wouldn’t ask, but the gentleman requested you, particularly. You’ve been referred by a friend of his.” Neither of us are convinced the sort of men I deal with deserve the term gentleman. It’s a laughable euphemism, but as such, useful. I try to limit the number of clients I take on to sixteen a month. Tops. My hourly rate is at the highest end of the sex worker scale, so sixteen clients offers me the financial security I need. I do four a week, or some months I like to do five in a week and then take a week off when I have my period. Two to four hours, four times a week doesn’t sound like a full-time job, but it can be exhausting. They grab at me, needy and greedy; expectant, entitled, like badly behaved toddlers. And besides, there are extras. Shopping for underwear and, if requested, specific outfits, visiting the beautician and hairdressers, health checks, that sort of thing. Believe me, it feels like a full-time job. However, since the pandemic, maintaining sixteen clients a month isn’t always achievable. This month has been lean; I shouldn’t turn away work. On the other hand, I am tired. I’ve just smiled for one and a half hours straight, breaking only to pout or suck.
“I don’t have fresh underwear with me,” I point out, buying time to weigh it up.
“I don’t think that will be a deal breaker.” Probably not, but I have my own standards. In an ideal world, I wear fresh, straight-out-of-the-expensive-packet lingerie for every liaison. Afterwards, I wash them and take them to Bravissimo, as they have bins for unwanted bras in their stores. For every kilogram they receive, they donate to charity. All the bras donated are apparently recycled. The useable ones go directly to women in developing countries across the world. Although I’m not sure my sheer, skimpy, peekaboo numbers make that cut; most likely, they are broken down into recyclable parts. Still, at least I’m not adding to landfill. “From my conversation with him, I think his needs are very straightforward,” Elspeth says encouragingly. “It shouldn’t be especially arduous.” Elspeth knows my limits. She jokes that I’m the most conservative whore on her books, but she never tries to wrench me out of my comfort zone. She knows we can both make a living because many of the clients like the fact I have a strict “no” list. They see me as almost wholesome. Well, if that’s a stretch, then at least, I’m not too intimidating. I enthusiastically partake in all the sex acts that cheerful girlfriends offer on special birthdays, but I don’t entertain the suggestion of anything that might be demeaning, painful or cruel. There’s no place for it in the fantasies I invent. The men who come to me have to be made aware of that. I might agree to be tied up. Ribbons, yes. Ropes, maybe. Handcuffs, no. There are men who like to think of me as classy and unattainable. Setting limits creates that illusion. It’s amazing what people tell themselves.
“It’s just with him being recommended by one of your regulars...” She leaves the thought hanging. Sometimes this is how regulars move on. They pass us on. You can’t let it worry you. They are paying for sex. Not a relationship. Men bore of sex they are paying for just as easily as they bore of sex they are not paying for. It’s not jealousy I feel when they move on. It’s irritation. A gap opening up on my calendar is a pain. The more thoughtful regulars are perhaps aware of this and so try to suggest a replacement. It’s still irritating. I guess this is how a schoolteacher must feel if a child leaves her class mid-term and a newbie arrives, all keen but anxious, needing to be shown the way of things.
“He wants to meet at—” Elspeth names a luxurious hotel in Mayfair that I know well. Some of the hotel rooms I’m invited to are bigger than my apartment, certainly markedly more sumptuous. This is one such place. The reception is enormous and easy-access—a quick in and out—and this seems appealing. If I agree, Elspeth will be pleased with me. Our working relationship is good. She likes it that I’m clean, sober, prompt, reliable. Not traits that can be attributed to every sex worker but important if you are charging what we do. It’s a profession. The oldest profession, we all agree on that, right? As Elspeth is ultimately responsible for my cash flow, it’s important to keep her respect and goodwill.
So I say, “I can be there by eight thirty.”
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