Interaction
August 13, 2008
If you’re not familiar with it, there’s a web site run by Susannah Bresslin, whereupon she places letters submitted anonymously from Johns, the customers of prostitutes. It’s called, appropriately enough, Letters from Johns. [There's a companion blog called Letters from Working Girls that publishes anonymous letters from prostitutes as well, by the way.]
A letter from July 29 caught my attention:
I met with a gorgeous older woman in her fifties. She was incredible. like nothing I ever encountered in streetwalker days. Gentle, cheerful, thoughtful. She seemed to truly enjoy having sex and talking with me. It was so much like a ‘girlfriend experience’ that it felt completely natural that I go down on her, which, again, she at least appeared to enjoy. She finished me off with a lovely blowjob. Laying around talking with her, I felt really comfortable. Walking up the block, I still could smell her scent on me. I realized that this had not only been the best sex I’d had with a prostitute, but some of the most memorable sex that I’ve had in my life, period. [Emphasis mine]
One of the neatest aspects of my job is the interaction I get with other people. I know everyone has the image of the prostitute-client interaction as a quick fuck-and-forget kind of exchange, and if truth be known, many are, especially those occurring on the street. This is also true for many escorts who try to work in as many clients in one night as they can. I can’t do that, for a couple of reasons.
First, I want the interaction with the client. I spend a good bit of time corresponding via e-mail then speaking with a potential client, and I won’t see someone who doesn’t exude at least some semblance of a personality (though there have been times where personality online didn’t translate into real life). To me sex as a prostitute without the interaction is objectifying (though I don’t subscribe to the notion of that being inherently negative - everyone who works is objectified to one extent or another. It’s just not my thing.). A lot of escorts tout themselves as providing a true “girlfriend experience,” and this personal interaction is a large part of what that is all about. That is one thing that sets the role of the escort apart from a “regular” prostitute, in fact.
Second, as I stated when I started down this path, my objective is to build a base of recurring clients, and one way to do this is to take some time to cultivate relationships with these people, to show them that I want and expect more than just the sex. Obviously that’s not going to happen in the absence of the interpersonal connectivity that must develop for two people to become truly comfortable with each other. Most of them have said they really enjoyed the sex (a good thing, of course), but many of them have also gone out of their way to compliment me on my personality and how I make them feel comfortable as a person, rather than making them feel as though they were just someone to take money from to allow them to fuck me. That’s an interesting, and perhaps surprising contrast, isn’t it? You hear stories all the time about the johns supposedly taking advantage of the women, whereas here I’ve encountered clients who have felt they were seen as just a source of money when they’ve used the services of (some) other escorts. They felt like they were being taken advantage of to a degree. Of all the irony.
Those are just a couple of the reasons why my appointment time/rate structure is configured the way it is, primarily to discourage the “fuck-and-forget” type of clients.
As a sensualist, prostitution gives me access to experiences which would be otherwise impossible for me. As a human, it temporarily provides for me a kind of companionship I spend long periods without. I’m only going to be alive once, so I really might as well.
I’ve said this time and time again, but those who criticize prostitution as always being “objectifying” just don’t understand the dynamic that goes on within a good number of these interactions. They have this image of the poor prostitute walking in, the john thrusting his cock into her until he gets off, and then him pushing her out the door. And that’s not the way it works in a great many cases. I know it pisses people like Melissa Farley off to even have to think about it like that, but it is the reality of the world many of us operate in.
I’ve only had a couple of handfuls of clients at this point, but I have yet for one of them to treat me with anything less than the amount of respect I thought I deserved or wanted. Now, I’m not naive; I recognize that much of this has to do with the class of people I deal with in my realm. But the reality is that, as I pointed out here, these off-street interactions represent the vast majority of prostitute-client interactions, and when you read what many other women in this field write about the work, by and large they tend to have the same kind of experience I’ve had to this point. Many of the clients genuinely seek companionship - some to the exclusion of sex, and so the whole exchange is built upon that, rather than just him getting off. Why they seek it is irrelevant from my individual business perspective (though it is interesting to study from a societal standpoint).
Asked how she feels about selling sex for money, Audrey doesn’t think that’s what she’s doing. “I’m not selling sex so much as I’m selling emotion, sexual entertainment, time and a human connection,” she says. [Source]
Quite honestly, I’ve been a bit surprised that the clients I’ve dealt with have generally been people who enjoy carrying on a conversation and can communicate with me to one degree or another. And even more so that these people want to do that, and not just have sex. The gentleman who wrote the letter I opened with seems to represent the type of men I’ve been with up to this point, so what he’s saying there doesn’t surprise me in the least. With the possible exception of one person, it’s been more than just all out sex. I’ve had some genuine good times and met some interesting and unique individuals, and had some incredible, deep conversations about a wide range of topics. It is quite surreal to be lying naked next to someone you’ve just fucked after just having met them in person for the first time, and be discussing the chances that the U.S. will end up with more medals than China at the Olympics. 
It’s not all bells and whistles, though. I had a client this past week who was one of those types lacking some pretty basic social skills. I’ve read material from other escorts where they’ve talked about these kinds of folks - they use prostitutes as a way to obtain sex because they don’t have the socialization skills that are necessary to be able to go out and go through the machinations necessary to develop relationships with women to the point where things become physical. This gentleman was the epitome of that. No matter how hard I tried, or what subject I brought up, I just couldn’t get him to engage in much more than monosyllabic banter. I kind of feel sorry that anyone finds themselves in that position to begin with, but I am also glad that what I do is helpful to them. He wasn’t half bad in bed, either. He wasn’t the best I’ve ever had, but he could hold his own (not that he had to. Heh!)
At any rate, I feel good that what I do is helpful in some way to the people I see, regardless of whether it is purely physical or approaches the metaphysical. We all want to connect with someone, and though it may seem strange or odd to some people I suppose, I enjoy being able to have that connection with my clients. That is incredibly odd because I once had a regular “customer service” kind of job - selling cell phones (*puke*). And I hated it with a passion. I hated dealing with people in that way. So to actually enjoy the one-on-one interaction that is built largely around such an intimate construct as sex is just….well, weird.
Posted by Alexa | Filed Under Miscellaneous, Work
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Wonderful post done with intelligence and love of the job!
I never thought about the dynamic like that, that’s very interesting.
It’s actually why I prefer not to have a corporate job and choose to do freelance technology consulting instead; I thoroughly enjoy the process of getting to know a client’s tech needs instead of just doing what a boss tells me.
Rock on, girl.
Lee,
Wonderful post done with intelligence and love of the job!
Thank you, sir.
Han,
It’s actually why I prefer not to have a corporate job and choose to do freelance technology consulting instead; I thoroughly enjoy the process of getting to know a client’s tech needs instead of just doing what a boss tells me.
That’s not unlike being an independent companion vs. working for an agency. The ability to freelance is the ability to pick and choose your clients as opposed to, as you put it, “doing what the boss tells me” (though in most cases, the agencies will allow individual escorts to decline to see clients they don’t wish to see).