A
lot of women who work in the sex industry are perfectly normal, happy
and well-adjusted types who use the work to bolster their financial
situation, or assist in their education. Me? I was one of the fuck-ups.
Suitably arty and blurry shot of my hooker shoes.
The preamble to this tale of misspent youth is that prostitution is legal where I am from.
Despite
spending years telling myself that working at an Erotic Massage Parlor
didn’t make me a prostitute (“But I don’t fuck them”), I have since
come to the conclusion that yes, trading sexual favors for money does
indeed a prostitute make.
I guess what you are
wondering is how a nice girl from a nice little town falls into that
kind of life? Really though, I was not a nice girl. I was a well-meaning
but selfish, naive, highly-strung, nymphomaniacal 19-year-old with a
taste for assorted substances, bouts of hysteria and shopping sprees.
I
can tell you that a lot of women who work in the sex industry are
perfectly normal, happy and well-adjusted types who use the work to
bolster their financial situation, or assist in their education. I know,
I met many women like this and a lot of them are very successful, make a
lot of money and improve their lot in life. Me? I was one of the
fuck-ups.
I used sex work to pay the bills when I
was otherwise unemployable. I left home and moved to the city. I found
work as an office temp and moved into a house with some other bohemians
and everything was going well… until I had what I guess amounts to a
breakdown, spurred on by relationship problems and drug problems.
My
unreliability, bouts of tears and half-hearted suicide attempts got me
fired from my office job, which was something of a relief -- pretending
that I was normal for eight hours a day became too much to bear. I spent
a few weeks floating around completely broke, having idle thoughts
about maybe trying to be a stripper, but my social awkwardness made all
that publicity seem kind of daunting.
Then, one
day I saw an ad in the adult services section if the paper. “Erotic
Massage. Good money, No sex.” No sex? If no sex, then what? I called and
arranged an interview.
The
address revealed itself to be a nondescript door on a busy main street
that opened to reveal a dimly lit staircase. Ah, the soft-lit staircase,
hallmark of the rub-and-tug parlor. I would go on to blindly fumble up
many of these in the next few years.
The
interview was pretty simple. A gorgeous, well-dressed older woman told
me about rates and hours and showed me around the rooms (all dim and
well appointed with a large massage table in the center -- a massage
table with TWO HOLES. Seriously.)
She filled me
in on the service -- a full body massage, then a "body-rub" (wherein the
masseuse oils herself and literally slides all over the customer.)
Then, a hand job. Oh, OK, no sex but hand jobs. Easy-peasy.
After
the tour she asked me, “So when do you want to start?” Of course it was
that simple. I was young and fresh and soft-skinned and my crazy was
well-cloaked under my glossy hair and pretty, crooked smile. Not that it
would have mattered anyway.
My first shift was
the next night and I showed up with some hastily bought make-up and
lingerie. The girls' room was tiny, with a futon, some cushions on the
floor and a TV with cable. At the shift changeover the place was crowded
with girls in varying stages of undress, all gossiping and kissing and
laughing. It was terrifying.
Being a high-school
outcast, I have always found large groups of beautiful girls to be very
intimidating. At first I was standoffish, but by the end of the night I
was in the middle of the futon, exhausted, one girl’s head resting on my
lap as another plucked my virgin eyebrows, watching music videos on the
TV.
With those girls, I grew to say goodbye to
my boundaries, one by one. When you are in a place like that, the
physicality is so raw that it is nothing to hold hands, cuddle and spoon
the other girls as you chat about dicks and cash and clothes.
You
would think that I would have crystal clear memories of my first
client. Yeah… I don’t. I remember that the booking was with another girl
(so I could get an idea of what to do), an older, brash and hilarious
New Zealander with a ridiculously thick accent and amazing tits. I
remember everything about her, she was gold. The client? He was just
Some Guy.
The majority of the clients were just
Some Guy to me. Nice enough. Not too grabby or rough. Just dudes on
their lunch-breaks or after work or in the middle of the night who
wanted a pretty girl to give them her undivided attention. They had
money and I was that girl.
I ended up being that
girl for another three years. Not all the clients were Some Guy, though.
Some were memorable, in good and bad ways. The bad? Aggressive men who
called me a whore to my face and seemed to hate me despite the fact that
they were paying me to be there. The well-known boxer who literally
chased me around a room for two hours, blitzed on cocaine, mumbling
"Let me eat your pussy" repeatedly.
The worst
customer I ever had got so rough with me that I had to ask him to leave.
He didn’t like that, and stood in the reception area screaming
obscenities. The receptionists locked themselves in the office and left
me to deal with his rage, towel-clad and crying as I begged him to leave
and hoped he didn’t decide to punch me in the face like I was scared he
might.
He didn’t, but I did have to give him his money back. I got roughed up for free that day.
That
was truly awful, but I’m glad to say that the vast majority of my
clients weren’t bad at all. Being both young and young-looking meant I
got my share of creepy grandpa types, but there were also a few old
fellas who took such sheer delight, not so much in my youngness, but in
the essence of my youth and my touch that I couldn’t help but to be
affected by their joy.
The oldest was 94.
Ninety-four! The juxtaposition of his withered limbs against my plump,
smooth body was fascinating for the both of us. I always enjoyed the
hour-long sessions we shared together (and yes, if you are wondering, he
"functioned" perfectly well.)
There
was the obese man who barely fit on the table -- I would climb his
rotund form like a mountain. He had the softest, cleanest, coolest skin
I’ve ever felt and I could have slid over him all day. Whenever he came
back he always asked for me, loving that I took such pleasure in
conquering his expanses of flesh.
I was left both
confused and delighted by the gloriously plump middle-aged woman who
came in alone, told me I looked a little bit like her daughter, giggled
like a maniac through our entire 45 minute booking, then came
unexpectedly and explosively, like a plane hitting the side of a
mountain a few seconds after I put my fingers to her clit.
And
there was guy with the burns, or the man who just wanted to sit in the
spa and hug and talk books or the Scandinavian couple and that one time
when… Too many to recall. Too many to list here. When it sucked, it
really sucked -- but on good days I fed on the joy I gave out. I rolled,
full-bodied in the pureness of the sexuality that poured from me. I had
an endless well of it to share, and why not?
My exit from the sex
industry was without fanfare, catharsis or tales of redemption. I’d
worked my way all over the city (my unreliability, constant stoned demeanor and random outbursts of misery tended to burn a lot of
bridges) and ended up taking the day shift in a place that I coined
"where masseuses go to die."
It really was a
pretty sad place, suburban and exhausting. I’d calmed down a lot with
the drugs, and matured a little out of my hysteria. I’d just started at
university and I was tired of being completely unable to relate to any
of my new student friends -- you know, the kind who didn’t spend their
nights and days off pulling strange dick for money.
So
I just stopped asking for shifts and got a job as a waitress. It was as
simple as that, but also wasn’t. The money was hard to give up, no more
flush days coming home with eight or so hundred bucks in my back pocket
to be blown.
Sex work allowed a lot of free time
to study as I sat around all heeled and red-lipped, waiting for
customers. I could get away with being drug-addled, coming down or
chronically depressed when I was a masseuse, but that sort of shit
didn’t cut it in the "real" world.
It was hard to
be pretend to be normal in my new job, especially as I had so recently
emerged from my murky, daylight-less world. But I managed. Slowly it has
faded to a memory, to something that I’ve added to the bunch of
hilarious and madcap stories that make up my life.
I
thought about going back once or twice, especially when financial
matters got complicated. But I don’t think I’m made of the right stuff
for it now. I don’t have the patience to deal with the boundless
neediness of men, not any more.
I could write 10
more of these with the fruits of this experience in my life. “IHTM --
How My Boyfriends Coped (Or Did Not Cope) With Me Being A Sex Worker.”
Or “IHTM -- How Sex Work Enabled Me To Be A Drug Addict and Crazed
Lunatic For Several Years Unchecked.” How about “IHTM – I Met Some of
The World's Most Amazing Women in the Girls Room of A Rub & Tub
Joint”? Maybe one day I’ll get those stories out.
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