A few months ago, bored and lonely, I found myself looking at the Vancouver escort advertisements. I booked an appointment with a Burnaby agency and, since then, have been seeing the same girl on a regular basis. I really like this girl – a lot – but she says this is a business for her, and it is all about money. I do like her and wish we could have met under more conventional circumstances. I've gone to several massage parlours since then, hoping to quell the feelings by seeing another woman and realizing I am “paying for it”. It’s not working. Any suggestion on how to cut the emotional ties to her?
Did you ever see that Netflix series Love? There's this scene where the protagonist has just been dumped, and he’s mad about the "love lies" in popular movies. Thumbing through his Blu-rays, he pulls out the 1980s classic Pretty Woman and goes,"Pretty Woman is such a lie. A prostitute wouldn't fall in love with you; she would just steal your shit and sell it for coke."
Not every sex worker is going to rob you blind for drug cash, but the point is well made: Pretty Woman is fiction. If you ran the numbers on the amount of times a prostitute fell in love with one of her clients, I’m betting the odds would not be in your favour.
Of course you are going to be attracted to this escort. Duh! She is beautiful, with her Bambi limbs, shimmering make-up and coconut body spray. But this is her job: to look and smell good, and act even better. She is professional arm candy.
My pal, Lydia Faithful, worked as a dominatrix in Las Vegas’s Alien Cat House forever (she recently was promoted to Madame, which is a huge deal, but I digress). I first met Lydia because I was doing a promotional piece for Broadly, where I was to interview a sex worker and ask her all the questions people were too scared to bring up.
Lydia was game. Unfortunately, the company sponsoring the piece got their panties in a twist when Lydia got into some real talk, like giving hand jobs to dying men or pissing on submissive sheriffs, and cut some of the good stuff. You can read it here, which I highly suggest you do. Chances are your lady of the evening has similar principles as Lydia.
When I asked Lydia about what her first clients were like, she replied, “They were all married and annoying.”
Lydia was really good at the girlfriend experience, so a lot of clients fell for her and tried to coax her out of the brothel life with promises of money and love. She was not interested. Firstly, they can’t afford her 24/7. Secondly, she’s perfectly happy with her life as is. As Lydia told me, there is a power dynamic that the client should not ignore.
“I could never date a client,” she said. “There is no reset button after transactional sex occurs.”
“I’m very much an all-business kind of sex worker,” she added. “I don't date. I don't have relationships. I might text them to make arrangements or check in or say, ‘Hey, I'll be here during this time,’ but I don't pursue them, exactly. It's just safer that way for everyone.”
Like in any profession, each individual has their own way of doing business. This escort you have fallen for sounds like a no-bullshit sex worker who sees you as a client and nothing more. She wants to complete her job and move on. She probably finds your pining after her annoying. You have expressed your feelings for her, and she told you this is simply business. What more is there to grasp?
At a certain point, you have to wake up and stop fantasizing about the “what ifs”. Stop imaging you had met her in more “conventional circumstances”. You didn’t meet her that way and time machines are not a real thing. Shake your head out. You called up an escort to pay her for her services. Her services are to make you feel awesome when you are with her. I get why you have developed feelings for her, but you need to wake up to the reality of a paid girlfriend. This is her source of income, not pleasure. A good customer knows how to respect boundaries and she has laid hers out for you.
Don’t see her again. If you can’t handle your feelings, then the only thing you can do is distance yourself and find a new escort who isn’t your version of a perfect 10.
Send Mish you own sex questions and queries at sex@westender.com
