A good hooker costs as much per hour as a good lawyer. It’s a whole lot of money to spend in sixty minutes to get fucked.

Jason was a classic dilemma, one I had been expecting but was still ill-prepared for: what if I get a hot young guy, someone I’m genuinely attracted to, at least physically? True, guys like Jason are few and far between. All of the stockbrokers who previously had no time for girlfriends now suddenly found themselves with, well, more time on their hands after the crash. I hadn’t seen a young professional guy since I’d started with the agency.

When it comes to my clients, the old, lonely, medium-income traveling business man stereotype is, I’m afraid, true. They are often exceedingly physically unattractive. They are often so uninteresting or socially inept, conversation can border on the physically painful.

So how does one have sex with a person he or she is not attracted too? Well, most people have recreationally slept with at least one partner whom they later found to be reasonably ghastly. In my experience, this is usually caused by our baser recreational vices. How do you sleep with someone repellent and seem interested? Well, it is called sex work.

No one will ever tell you if you’re a good technical writer. They will only tell you when you mess up. It’s a slog of interpreting developer notes, internal jargon and blatant misrepresentation, the comprehension of which requires no less than ESP.

I get told by clients that I’m beautiful or charming or hot or adorable several times during their hour. During the day, I have a collection of people who are barely literate tell me that I should be fired.

This is causing self-confidence issues.

Moreover, I work with technical writers, which is not recommended for anyone. It’s a group of nerds who are also writers. It’s antisocial country around here. There are three people in my team.

We do not speak to each other.

We do not email each other.

We do not acknowledge each other

We most certainly do not work with each other.

I’m not really sure how this started, but we’re all locked in this pattern now, so there’s not much that can be done. Compounded with the paranoia that pervades the team from the daily recommendations that we all be fired, we’re a little on edge.

It’s fine. It’s how this whole technical writer thing works.

At my night job, I don’t have to be that antisocial person. I get to be someone else. I get to meet new people.

One night I got to meet Jason.

Most of my clients open with, “Hello,” but Jason greeted me with “You’re early! What the fuck?!” There was no conceivable way Jason’s house in Forest Hill could have cost less than a million dollars. His H3 rested in the driveway, framed by the snow-covered lawn. It was the second day of Hanukkah and at ten at night, the streets were awash with people coming home from the synagogue. They were glowing with the calm that comes with shared worship.

Jason was on his phone to someone, it seemed very serious so he likely missed my expression of disgust and disbelief at being berated from minute one. I should say that I was five minutes early. I wasn’t exactly catching him at a compromising time.

I followed him in and accepted a bottled water. The other agency girls have often told me they gently ask for something a little stronger. Even though the agency’s website explicitly says to offer us a proper drink (opened in front of us, of course) I’d say the cheap bastards I see only do it about 90% of the time.

“Sorry, someone from my fucking firm,” Jason said, ending his conversation, robbed of the satisfying slam of a telephone, he was relegated to gingerly pressing the “End” button on his Blackberry.

Jason was tall, dark and handsome. He couldn’t have been over 30 and looked like he’d done well for himself. His Hugo Boss jacket was slightly ill-fitting, a hallmark of a man who lacks the time to go to a tailor but has the arrogance to overspend on a schlumpy suit. He had piercing blue eyes and close-cut hair. I suspected then, and later in his small clothes, confirmed that a significant amount of time and energy was devoted to his physique. Tie now removed the gold charms on the chain around his neck, a cross and a medallion of Saint Andrew the Apostle, peeked out of his collar. Here we were, a pair, the only two goyim in Forest Hill during Hanukkah.

“I’m a corporate lawyer. A hired goon for Fortune 500’s looking to buy other smaller companies,” he said.

“Oh, I bet that’s nice,” I replied.

“Do you? Would you really know much about it? Do you have any education at all? Or are you just a hooker?”

Jason’s binary view of the world, hurt, I have to admit. I had already texted the driver, saying that everything was fine and he could start the clock. I was in all the way with this hot guy and his awful attitude.

“Can I be both? I went to Waterloo and the Sorbonne.” Not true, but in escort world, those two institutions are dead ringers for McMaster and University College Dublin.

“Where the fuck is the Sorbonne?” He said, lighting a cigarette.

“Um… Paris. I thought most people knew that.” I said a little shocked that something so assertive came out of my mouth.

Jason didn’t respond and instead started upstairs. He was silent but the energy in the room seemed to indicate that I was meant to follow. When he finally spoke again, his tone had softened.

“In Greece, the parents sleep in the main bedroom and the children sleep in any other bedroom, so my room isn’t the master. I save it for when my parents are here.”

“Where do they live?” I asked, thinking they were in part sponsoring this amazing house in such a nice neighborhood.

“In Greece. They live back in Greece.”

“Oh lovely.” Using my fallback phrase to mask how bizarre it is to leave the master bedroom for your parents on another continent.

He gruffly commanded that I take my clothes off. I never worry about taking my clothes off in front of men. Between cycling ten miles a day and the sizable chunk of my paycheck spent at Victoria’s Secret and Agent Provocateur, comments, if any, are usually positive.

“So, like, we could have met in a bar, right?” Jason asked, a little desperately.

“Are we… ‘meeting’ now?” I replied.

It seemed like a sadness came over him then; a resignation. To be fair to him, I may have checked him out in some alternate universe where I’m single and go to clubs. But neither he nor I were in that universe. He was a lonely, young corporate attorney with too much money and too little patience, and I was the woman he was paying to have sex with.

I tried to be as enthusiastic as I could while I was giving him his blowjob. Unfortunately, it’s my main area where my enthusiasm for the act probably usurps my actual performance. My blowjobs are likely to receive an “A for effort.”

In any case, the fellatio ended the way it often does and Jason and I settled in before round two.

“How much do you make doing this?” He asked.

I try to stay off the topic of money with clients. This is probably because I am explicitly told not to tell clients what I make. If they find out they may try to schedule calls by circumventing the agency. Then I’m one step away from being chopped up into pieces and thrown into a ravine. In theory, anyway.

“Enough.” I said because I make enough.

“How much?” Jason pressed.

“Please don’t ask, you’re making me uncomfortable.”

He snorted.

When we had finally finished our uneventful coitus, by the end of the call I was ready to leave. I had wished for some relief from the old, fat, hairy financiers who were quickly becoming regulars. They had sex with me and, in their way, staved off aging for a few minutes as they watched and felt their youth and vitality slip away.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be psychiatrist. I liked listening to people and helping them. My teacher told me that to be a psychiatrist; you have to go to medical school. To go to medical school, you had to cut open dead people. Something about cadaver mutilation tarnished psychiatry’s sheen for me. So fifteen years later, I became an escort.

Jason was cruel to me because he had to be. He hated women because he hated himself. He probably hated most men too. No one could have been more of a classic case of self-loathing than such a good looking guy.

I would say I felt sorry for Jason, but I don’t feel anything for any of my clients. That’s kind of how this whole hooker thing works.

I thought when I started this I had a bachelor’s in the male gender and when I was finished with it I would have a Ph.D in boner-ology. I would figure out what went on in men’s minds when they thought about sex. I wouldn’t have to deal with any of this messy emotional penetralia because I assumed that men turned off their brains when a beautiful woman took off her clothes.

And as predictable as the act itself, I’ve learned that it isn’t that easy. I have clients who hate themselves. Most of the time, I hate myself. Most people I know hate themselves. Not the people I know through work, though; tech employees are astoundingly well-adjusted. It must be the superiority complex.

I got that home that night and washed the make-up off my face and changed into flannel pajamas. Like he always is when I get home late, Conor was asleep. I crawled into bed next to him. I slipped an arm over him, making him the little spoon. He purred and asked me how my night was. I told him it was fine and that I loved him.

That’s kind of how this whole girlfriend thing works.