I try not to write about clients I like, probably for the same reason I tell clients I’m single when they ask about a boyfriend. I don’t want the worlds crossing. Even if the clients and I weren’t dancing a fantasy tango, where I’m just a single girl enjoying herself and the world, I wouldn’t want to drag someone as sweet and innocent as Conor into their gross lives. I feel bad when Conor sometimes becomes a part of my gross life.
So it works the other way too. I don’t drag the clients into my day-to-day. That’s why I didn’t explode at Sarah at work while she had her “personal issues.” I don’t hide, but I have to compartmentalize both parts of the day.
Ironically, I don’t worry about writing about the asshole clients. It’s not hard to be nice, especially someone you’re having sex with. I’m not a difficult person to get a along with. Obviously, I judge the clients, but I almost never say what I’m thinking. The only comments I make that even come close to negative are spoken when I’m worried about my own physical well-being.
Speaking of which, not to derail, but I have to cover another element of prostitution that astounded me when I started: Men, why are you all so bad at sex?
A lot of you are pretty much terrible at it. I am astounded men know so little about women’s bodies and, more confusingly, their own bodies. It’s like a starving person sitting down to a Big Mac and fries and smearing the food all over his face. How can you want something so badly and perform it so poorly?
Admittedly, claiming all men are bad at sex from data collected from my clients is perhaps a sampling error. It’s safe to assume that the men I see don’t have a lot of sex, at least not on a regular basis. The single guys usually resign themselves to escorts and masturbation and the married guys… well, they resign themselves to escorts and masturbation.
But, sometimes, I’m just like, come on. Get your head in game, guys. Firstly, stop jerking off with the G.I. Joe Kung Fu Vice Grip. It will make it impossible to get off with an honest to God vagina. Secondly, clitorises (clitori? Clitorae? Plurals of genitals are always confusing) are indeed north of the vag. But not directly north of it. Frankly, they’re a lot higher than you’re aiming. And you can’t touch them directly because they have twice as many nerve endings as your entire package has. That hurts. Not pulling and no biting, you sick freaks.
Third, and it makes my stomach turn saying this, you need to, you know, wash. Yourself. Especially our goyim friends. I have no idea what was said to Abraham or why, but God’s chosen people were certainly right about cleanliness when they started certain practices. Being born a Gentile is no excuse for shoddy personal hygiene. That part of your body should be stretchy enough to move. I’m not going to move it for you, because, heaven forbid if anything were to, uh, rip, I might go catatonic right there in the room at the airport Hilton.
I’m suddenly really sad I was eating while I wrote that.
Finally, me, the prostitute, a woman, and you, the client, a man, are different. The most obvious difference would be my more-than-daily commitment to bathing and my normal range BMI. But let’s not dwell on that. Women and men, when it comes to sexual pleasure are different. Your stuff is on the outside; our stuff is mostly on the inside, except our clitoria. Your junk likes action and maybe a little roughhousing. Ours is the exact opposite. However gently you’re doing something to us, do it more gently until we say otherwise.
As you can imagine, the clients try to make sure, “I’m enjoying myself.” This hardly ever means they want any feedback about their many, many shortcomings. It usually means they want to paw at me, lick my entire face when they kiss me, bite and yank any nerve dense area of my body and watch me fall into Bacchae-esque throes of ecstasy.
So the nice clients, being so few and far between, are valuable and a ray of sunshine.
I would like to say I would feel bad if a client were to read this and recognized himself. But maybe it will be as cathartic for him as it is for me. I don’t know how few people have stood up to them and given them an honest critique. Maybe it would build their character. At the very least they can always write me off as a stupid whore and never call me again, in which case, we both win.
But the nice ones are different. You just meet some people and feel comfortable with them. None of this is about my pleasure mind you. I assume that when I leave the house for the evening, I won’t enjoy any of it in a sexual way. If an orgasm sneaks up on me I let it happen, but never expect it. The absence of orgasms with clients doesn’t make an escort superior to them. I can certainly see how someone could go her entire escort career without getting off with a client, but it shouldn’t be an arrow in your moral or intellectual quiver.
Jim was funny, usually at my expense. He always joked that I had cold hands; I drank too much, or laughed too loud. It sounds mean, but it wasn’t. It was cute in the same way Conor makes fun of me when we race on our bicycles or we arm wrestle. I’ll be sitting on the floor, arm perpendicular on the coffee table and when he slips his hairy hand into mine and I push with all my might, he inquires, “Have we started then?” before pushing me back down and making some tea.
I first met Jim at the Hyatt on King. He had done something right even before I met him: he had booked for 90 minutes. Most agencies will offer this option in Toronto, and if I were on the client end, it’s the way I would go if I wanted to enjoy myself. An escort needs anywhere from 10-15 minutes at the end of a session to clean herself up and get ready for the next call. That eats into the client’s time, not hers. 90 minutes is a nice way to relax. It’s a lot easier to deal with these calls because it usually means the client wants to have a good time. He’ll usually have wine and won’t be in a rush. Even by some miracle if it’s a fairly young guy and he wants to go twice, there’s no rush and we can take our time. Keep in mind, I’m saying if “he wants to go twice,” not “he wants to go twice but likely can’t.”
Maybe I’m doubling up on the advice here, but I use Conor as a standard when it comes to virility and most men would be greatly served by doing the same.
Conor is 30, cycles 18 kilometers to work and back several times a week and plays soccer for 90 minutes twice a week. His idea of junk food is these gross dry biscuits (I could never call them cookies) he eats with his tea in the evenings. He’s never smoked a day in his life and, most baffling of all, drinks very occasionally. It may be why he had to leave Ireland.
Two go-rounds in an hour would be asking a lot of him.
If you have gray hair, were last inside a gym during a Bush presidency and eats Arby’s on the go between software sales pitches, you can’t screw twice in an hour. It may shock you to learn I have no medical training, but I’m not making this up.
Jim could go two rounds, though. I normally wouldn’t be attracted to someone like him, but he was different. He had either a shaved head or had gone completely bald, he was probably in his late thirties or early forties so it was hard to tell which. Skin pale white with the mustache-that-meets-the-goatee facial hair cartography that very few guys can pull off. He was tall and muscular, another typical turn-off for me, the muscular part, not the tall part.
Jim did something in public service, but he never elaborated beyond that. It may have been something important, or not. That’s always an awkward profession. It feels like my tax dollars, and I do pay taxes, should be going to something more wholesome.
Hotel rooms are difficult because they’re rarely heated when unoccupied. When I removed my clothes, my skin bristled.
“Well, that’s really nice to feel! What happened to your soft skin, Missy?”
“I can’t help it! It’s cold in here! You’ve got the room; turn on the heat for God’s sake!”
He had great taste in wine. That night it was Wolf Blass cabernet, but every other time I’d see him it would be Poilly-Fuisse or Chalk Hill Estate.
We flipped through the channels on the television, laughing and drinking. I usually balk at letting clients tickle me, but he found it irresistible. Once I was finally on my stomach, with his thighs under my shoulders, he let himself relax and watched me intently.
“You just looked at the clock!” He playfully accused.
“I wouldn’t dream of it! How very dare you, sir!”
Jim liked every type of sex. He knew what he wanted and was comfortable enough with himself to ask for it. I explained to him, that like all clients, everyone is different and I don’t read minds. I would show him what I liked and expected the same.
Jim liked what we call “Greek,” a code for a sex act that is pretty racially insensitive when you realize what it is. I was one of the few girls at the agency that did it with clients. Some girls confided in me that they did like it, but had to save something for their personal lives. It was never Conor’s bag, and I didn’t mind. When Jim asked, I required that he assure me he knew what he was doing. I always expected I would only like the “I’m pleasing you” part of it, and not experience any enjoyment for myself.
The rest of the hour and a half progressed enjoyably and sweetly. I saw Jim a few times after that and he was just as delightful. A good client is hard to find.
One night, drinking my own, much cheaper cab at my desk, long after Conor had gone to sleep, getting ready to take on the day as an engineer, I found a review about me. The events described sounded strikingly similar to what Jim and I had done together. The review was glowing. It couldn’t have been better if I had written it myself—and I’ve tried.
The last sentence read, “I forgot it was a service.” The highest praise a hooker can get. To make it feel like you’re not paying her.