You Know Nothing About Whores

Notes on survival, seduction, and the smell of men

Photo of author.

I have slept with over a thousand men for cash. The real number is much higher than that. And in the eyes of the wise, each addition to that grand total equates to a loss of even more moral fibre.

I've had dicks in my mouth. In my ass. Between my tits. In my ears. In my armpits. In my belly button. Up my nostril. The first three are something I would ordinarily choose to do. The latter three? Hm. No. Not so much.

Now. I grant you there is nothing wrong with fucking someone's armpit. It's not morally dubious. Mentally? Perhaps. That isn't for me to judge. But morally? No.

But what is morality? A set of invisible points we lose for every perceived deviation from the script? A tally card drawn up by people who have never once had to barter their beauty for heat, for rent, for power, for the right to eat something warm on a Thursday night?

If every man I fucked took a piece of my soul, I'd be dust by now. I'd be a pile of glittering bones behind a window with red velvet curtains and a laminated rate sheet. And yet—here I am. Not dissolved. Barely changed.

The body adapts quickly. It learns quick math. It knows how to split. How to compartmentalise. I am an expert in emotional amputation. I cut the feeling off at the nerve and still manage to walk.

Here in De Wallen, there are no rotas. There are no team-building exercises. We don't hold corporate events. We don't work away under the agonising gaze of a manager who is itching to fire you to save a few dollars on the budget.

In many respects, we live better lives than you. We are paid fairly for our labour at the rates we choose. We get free access to mental and physical health resources. We don't even have to pay for condoms.

Now, I grant you, I am gloating. Some would say I'm even boasting. Because to you, I am a lesser. And in truth, I'm not.

But I digress.

You know, I have my own space. It is a space where I am in total control, where I dictate the rules. Where I dictate how much fun someone has. I dictate how they feel when they leave. I dictate how much they gain and how much they lose.

There are several uncertainties. The major one is how many bodies will pass through my door on any given afternoon. There could be ten. There could be none.

Another is how many people, detached and without a stake in my world, will walk by and cast judgment on me. It could be ten. It could be none.

The one certainty that prevails is that you have absolutely no idea of what sex work is and what it means to be a sex worker—a prostitute. You do not have the foggiest. Of that, I am sure.

And why should you? You have no reason to know. You are not here. You cannot possibly understand. However, as humans, we have a tendency to cast aspersions and form false understandings about subjects on which we lack knowledge.

The desire to judge and be the most intelligent person in the room is such a profound evolutionary flaw that any opportunity to learn is rendered useless. So we don't. We don't learn. We stick to what we know, and as far as we are concerned, that is good enough.

I work in a window. You know this. That window is no bigger than a full-length mirror. On either side of that window are partitions. Each side has another human being with a beating heart and a mind more intelligent than you might expect.

For six to twelve hours per day, I stand behind that window. I'm wearing fishnets and almost nothing. People walk by as if I were an exhibit in a museum. I read every one of them. I look at their faces. I study them. I weigh up what type of person they are, and in a second, I make a judgement on whether I will service that person. A split second.

You see, it's all in the way they carry themselves. If they are drunk, I will say no. If they are cocky, I will also say no. If they are shy, nervous or, indeed, just relaxed, I will almost certainly say yes.

But that, my dear friends, is not the sole criterion for my consent. No. That is merely an initial assessment—the first test of many. Then I'll ask what it is they want. "A blowjob for thirty minutes." That's 80€. But in that process, I'll take a subtle inhale. I'll smell their breath. I'll smell them.

A stream of breath that airs on the side of stale is an instant rejection.

You'd be amazed how many men smell like old chicken. Or like they've been drinking Jägermeister through their toes. Or like they've never once been touched by water that wasn't in a beer.

There's a whole taxonomy of breath I could teach at a university if they'd let a girl like me in the lecture hall—Notes on the Evolution of Fetid Exhalation. And believe me, I've done peer-reviewed research.

I choose my clientele carefully. Very carefully. I have to. Reading people has become second nature. I do it in the same way a mother checks a child's temperature. One glance. One tone. One twitch of the jaw. If something is off, I can feel it in my chest before my brain even catches up.

And if the worst were to happen, I have a panic button in my office. Help comes fast and violently like a heroic tsunami of hope. It comes faster than most men do. And there is a fight, and there are questions asked, and I am provided with free mental health support at a minute's notice.

As I've said, if you're drunk, you are coming nowhere near me. If you're loud, cocky, or walk like the world owes you a living, I'll shake my head at you from behind the glass. No emotion will be painted on my face. It will be a swift shaking of my head. You might ask why. I don't need to tell you why. I don't care how much money you are waving. If my gut tells me no, it's no. I don't explain myself. I certainly don't offer refunds.

If your experience isn't what you expected, tough titty. Life is hard, kid. Still, you owe me 80€.

I offer one thing only: access. And that access is earned, not bought.

I'm not afraid of sex. I'm afraid of what surrounds it. I fear the tourists who stumble out of bars with pissy jeans and dead eyes. Of the gangs who circle the alleyways at two in the morning trying to sell baby powder to hedonistic Australian boys who think they're impervious to a scam. The real danger isn't the dick––it's the chaos that oozes from the urethra.

Still, I smile. I can't help but smile. I blow kisses. I dance. Although I'm selective, I still have to work. I need to eat. I have to get inside their heads. I have to make them believe they'll never get another chance. That this—me—is a once-in-a-lifetime offer. It's manipulative. It's morally dubious. But it works.

If I see a man walking with a woman, perhaps a girlfriend, I have no problem narrowing my eyes and winking at that man. Because, in the end, it is his choice what he does with that information. The onus is not on me. It is on him. No one forces him to sleep with me, and if he does, well, that's his pudding to choke on.

There is a strange freedom to all of this that you don't quite understand—this ritual of seduction. A freedom that is ever-so-lightly tethered to the brutal chains of financial necessities. Sometimes it works. Sometimes, they spit at the window. Sometimes they laugh.

I laugh, too. Because I so enjoy the ritual. I so enjoy making my tits bounce up and down, dancing, and winking, and biting my nail in the window. I appreciate it more than I could ever describe to you here. It's a feeling like no other, and I am truly addicted to that sensation—that ability to get into someone's head.

To have them need me while all the while not giving the slightest fuck about anything else except the financial reward that's a dance with the devil I've yet to name.

But it's all a game to them. And indeed, a game to me. It's a dirty little novelty. But I'm not a novelty. I'm not disgusting. I'm simply getting by.

Some men ask for the girlfriend experience. They want to pay me to pretend. Pretend to love them. To fuss over them. To listen. I find that more complex than the sex. Much harder. Because anyone can feign enjoyment. But faking affection? Faking the very thing they, and indeed, I, have been denied in real life? That's a whole different ball game.

Still, I do it. I do it because I can. Because when the timer runs out, I get to stop pretending. I get to exhale. Sometimes, after they leave, I sit in silence and feel nothing. And that, too, is a relief.

And no matter what you think, this remains my choice. This is how I choose to survive. This is how I thrive. You wouldn't ask a cleaner if he enjoys scrubbing your shit from the public toilets? He does it because it needs to be done. Because society runs much more efficiently when waste is handled correctly.

Sex is no different. Sex is a need. A constant. A pressure valve. It is recession-proof. Apocalypse-proof. Morality-proof.

And I, lucky me, am the one holding the wrench.

I hope this made you uncomfortable.

x

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