Getting into sex work is a piece of cake, but getting out of it is akin to getting off heroin. With no qualifications, how does one go about replicating the same or similar level of income that one has grown used to living on? Most clients and coworkers would tell me that I needed to get myself a husband.
I’d respond, ‘I don’t need a husband, what I need is an ex-husband; someone to send me a cheque every other week and babysit on occasion.’ Why would I need a husband, I already had the use of everyone else’s. Plus I believed that with my history no one would ever take me seriously and most certainly would not love me. I was fuckable, not marriage material.
This was reinforced by a man whom I believed to be my knight in shining armour, coming to save me and love me warts and all. His name was Mark. He was very handsome, very rich, very intelligent and he was amazing in bed. He had been a client for about eight months before I agreed in a moment of weakness to accompany him to a party. From the moment you cross that line in the sand it is very difficult to turn back. For a while I went to functions with him and played the dutiful role of arm candy, but if he wanted more, it was going to cost him. Against my better judgement we were becoming friends—he would drop in after work and join Poppy and me for dinner or whisk us both away for a weekend down south for a concert at a winery as a total surprise. Poppy adored him, which gave me permission to let my guard down. Before I knew it, there was no more exchanging of cash, and Cleo ceased to exist in my mind when I was with him.
We spent at least one night a week at my place and at least one night a weekend at his mansion. He showered Poppy and me with gifts, dinners out, trips away, concert tickets, he even helped me with all my night-school assignments. A little trick of his was to check my mailbox at night on his way in for dinner and go through my mail, commandeering all the bills. The following day he would pay them without saying a word to me about it. He had met all of my friends and I had met all of his friends and work associates. This blissful existence lasted about six months.
One morning over breakfast at his place while Poppy slept, he turned to me and said, ‘Can you believe by this time next year I will probably be married?’
I felt like some cage fighter had just sucker punched me in the gut and winded me. I could not utter a word. I just sat there staring at him.
‘What?’ he said, straight to my face. ‘I adore you, but I could hardly marry you, Mum just wouldn’t approve, and she is really on my case to settle down. You understand? You see, there is this other girl I know from work who I see once a week and I will probably have to do the right thing by her pretty soon before she walks.’
Tears were trickling out of my eyes. No one had ever insulted me so much in my life. Thousands of thoughts were churning through my brain.
‘Hey, don’t get upset, she is nowhere near as good as you in bed, I want to keep seeing you as well.’
I silently went to fetch my child, and took her and my dignity and left.
***
Why was it so impossible to see me as something other than a sex worker? I volunteered at nursing homes with Poppy every month. I didn’t abuse alcohol; I was an amazingly dedicated mother and financially responsible. I didn’t touch drugs, but apparently all that means nothing if you’re a whore.
People fail to think where the community would be without sex workers. Imagine where that guy with a penchant for schoolgirls would go if he couldn’t pay a willing sex worker to dress up and roleplay his sick little fantasy? If a bored married man couldn’t pay to stray, trust me, they wouldn’t sit around masturbating themselves blind. No, they will find affection in the first pair of open legs that presents themselves. My belief is that an affair of the heart is a far worse sin than getting your rocks off anonymously with a sex worker who has regular medical checks and uses protection.
Every person deserves affection, be it free or otherwise. Are we suggesting in the absence of free affection they are undeserving? When I think of all the clients I have serviced who I know would not get sex anywhere else it makes me emotional. The stutterer, the painfully shy man, the disabled client who will take whatever form of affection they can get. I remember the worst client I ever had was a man who’d had bowel cancer and now had a colostomy bag full of shit sticking out of his stomach. His wife had left him after his surgery, because she could no longer become aroused by him and his new appendage. He had tried dating only to be knocked back dozens of times when they caught sight of his bag. I don’t blame them. I just about vomited every time I would have to go down on this guy with my nose bouncing on his plastic bag of shit. He wanted love, not sex, but until it came along he was happy with the compromise.