Couple of days ago surfing arround the web I found this article in Playboy and i decide to share this with you guys.
Believe or not maine subject is "If an escort girl can find a boyfriend " and how easy it is ...or not so , I would say , thinking that most of the girls are working moustly in the night so day life is practic non-existing .
I will leave this here and I would love to hear your opinion .
What you think ? Possible or not ?
" What’s an escort to do when a potential romantic partner can’t recognize that a blow job is just a job? A year in the lives of high-end escorts as they navigate the snaking line between work and love
It was a balmy August night in New York City and Maggie couldn’t recall the last time she’d felt butterflies. In a strappy blue dress, DKNY tennis sneakers and her brown hair in a ponytail, she’d walked the 14 blocks from her apartment to the north end of Union Square, where she began scanning the crowd. It didn’t take long to find Rich. Sitting on a bench in jeans and a paisley shirt, Rich, a graphic designer, looked just like he had in his pictures: dark spiked hair, angular features, a preternaturally youthful 32-year-old. Maggie waved. He smiled. As they set off to grab a drink, the chemistry was as immediate and intense as it had been on the phone for the past week. When they got to the wine bar, he opened the door for her, wiped down the table. Compared to her last relationship—two months with a self-absorbed photographer—Rich was a thrilling breath of fresh air.
Yet even as they talked and laughed effortlessly, Maggie knew that no matter the connection, her career would be an issue. After a very religious middle-class childhood in the Bay Area, Maggie became a high-end provider, a.k.a. an escort, a sex worker—someone who charges upward of €1,300.00 an hour for services. The 30-year-old vegetarian is a classic beauty, an astrology-obsessed empath and she is unwaveringly proud of her profession. But as the fight for sex-work legalization builds momentum, she and her fellow providers face a more personal, constant struggle: dating, relationships and love.
Although the job perks include Michelin-star meals, first-class flights to exotic locations and cash—lots of cash—the life of a provider is often isolating. Emotionally draining. Occasionally traumatic. The nine women interviewed for this story by no means represent the vast spectrum of sex workers who engage in prostitution, a line of work that includes multiple class strata and myriad genders. Nor are they victims of trafficking or beholden to pimps. The choice to enter the business was, and still is, their own. And as glamorous as the work can be, their lives bear little resemblance to hackneyed pop-culture story lines.
“Mainstream society at large is able to romanticize sex workers,” says Bre, a 28-year-old New Yorker who’s been in the business for five years. “We look at [sex work] as the most beautiful, tragic love stories that ever can exist, and I hate the way all of them end: She gets saved, or she dies on the block.”
But all the women interviewed for this story made one point very clear: The longer they remain in the business, the more they tend to understand the importance of a partner. The more many of them crave some sort of relationship.
“I have a monogamous mentality,” says Maggie. “And just because we’re sex workers doesn’t mean we don’t want love any less than anyone else.”
Finding a significant other in the modern age is hard enough for anyone, let alone someone who has sex for a living. But providers are well aware of the challenge.
“It’s complicated,” admits Maggie. “You just have to bolster yourself for the ensuing battle.”
So how do high-end providers meet potential paramours? No differently than most single people these days: dating apps like Bumble, Tinder, OkCupid and Hinge (where Maggie matched with Rich). The process, however, can be tricky. For obvious legal reasons, providers rarely reveal what they do for work on a dating profile. And since the apps are relatively sparse on personal information, escorts have to navigate around men who might react poorly to their profession. Red flags range from conservative politics to pictures from church functions to anyone who appears too buttoned up. Photos from Burning Man, kink pics and other progressive-alternative signals are encouraging. The most reliable app appears to be OkCupid, where members customarily provide more in-depth profiles. “You can post questions related to sex work and get lots of good information,” says Krista, a 37-year-old provider. “You can know ahead of time if they might be hostile or unpleasant about it.” Being a provider who’s also a woman of color can lend another level of awareness to the process of vetting potential partners. “You have this double consciousness,” says Bre. “I know that black women are hypersexualized; how does that work when you want to form a relationship with someone where you want to be your full self, but you also don’t want that full self to be misrepresented or misinterpreted? Then add on the difficulty of being a sex worker, where, by virtue of the job, you are commodifying your sexuality. It’s this really weird space, where you’re having a conversation with a partner, and as a woman you need to figure out ‘Is he a misogynist?’ And as a black woman, you have to ask, ‘Is he going to be misogynistic and racist?’” Once they’ve waded into the dating pool, the next step is like diving headfirst into the deep end. Time for “the talk.” Coming clean with what they do for a living. “I couldn’t have someone who didn’t know what I did,” says Sara, a 28-year-old escort. She isn’t alone. Some high-end escorts tell those closest to them—friends, family—and this would obviously include a partner.
I’ve tried everything. I’ve been blunt, I’ve been delicate. I’ve asked if they’ve seen ‘Pretty Woman’.
So it’s not as much if they break the news to a potential boyfriend as when. “Definitely not the first date,” laughs Maggie. “That’s way too much information. But all girls have different comfort levels.” Developing those comfort levels can take time; trust needs to build. But waiting too long has pitfalls as well. “I don’t want to be one or two months in,” she says, “then admit I’ve lied the whole time and this is what I actually do.” With Rich, their instant rapport actually prompted Maggie to tell him over text before their first date. How then to share this information? Again, every situation and every provider varies. “I’ve tried everything,” explains Sara, who’s been a provider for nearly three years. “I’ve been blunt, I’ve been delicate. I’ve asked if they’ve seen Pretty Woman.” With one of her exes, she described herself as a “well-compensated, low-volume companion.” Maggie prefers not to beat around the bush. “I say I’m in the sex industry,” she says. “Then guys say, ‘What does that mean?’ I try to explain the job. But I ask, ‘Look, how much do you want to know?’” Rich wanted to know a lot. He wasn’t at all like the guy who’d called Maggie a “cum bucket” when she’d told him. Or the guy who said, “You must really know how to fuck a man.” Or the guy who screamed, “You’re going to give me HIV!” Still, sometimes Rich’s inquisitiveness concerned Maggie. Regular inquiries about her clients’ dick sizes, asking if she genuinely enjoyed having sex with these men. But they worked through it. Their lives became more and more intertwined. Within a few months Maggie felt “all the bs was gone,” and they were building a foundation. She was in love. Krista met Vic at a party in Brooklyn. They too had instant attraction. Who could blame them? The redheaded Krista grew up in a Southern California suburb, matriculated to an Ivy League college and possessed a fierce passion for politics and feminism. Vic was a tech consultant from South America, sharp and witty—that dry humor Krista adored. She’d felt so comfortable with him that on their first date she told him she was a sex worker. “He said, ‘Okay,’” recalls Krista. They quickly became an item and Vic proved to be warm and emotionally supportive. What Vic wasn’t, was jealous. “He had no curiosity about work,” says Krista. “I don’t think he saw much use in knowing. My assumption was he thought, I know what sex looks like.” Her theory is that certain people—herself included—aren’t biologically programmed with sexual jealousy. “You can tell if they are, fast,” Krista adds. “They try to hide it, but they still ask questions to scratch that itch.”
Someone like Vic is a rare find, because the work is all about sex. Despite the “escort” connotations, Krista isn’t simply accompanying some lonely gentleman to the theater and then heading home. She’s sleeping with (primarily) older, married, wealthy men. Those bookings might include the theater or dinner at Eleven Madison Park or a week in Tuscany, but regardless of the trappings, the modern day high-end provider is still practicing the world’s oldest profession. But no matter the programming, falling for someone can make the job excruciating. Especially during the “honeymoon” period of a new relationship. Providers talk about the euphoria of that first weekend with a new partner, living in a cloud of dopamine and serotonin, not thinking about eating or drinking, the two of them just lying in bed all day. Inevitably, explains Krista, that e-mail arrives. A job. Krista tried a variety of ways to cope. Sometimes she’d think of Vic while having sex with a client. Other times she completely blocked Vic out of her mind. “I never came up with an optimal way,” she admits. While the providers grudgingly go to work, they all attest that the sex with clients is nothing like it is at home. They use words like performative, robotic and perfunctory to describe “work sex.” That’s not to say it’s bad, especially with clients they like, but it’s not real. “I get to have orgasms,” says one escort who asked not to be named. “But they’re empty.” Intimacy with significant others is genuine, connective and, maybe most important, healing. “But it can get weird,” says Bre about having a significant other who knows what she does for a living. Example: “You’re super tired, and they’re like, ‘How was work?’ ‘Oh, it was great. I pissed in a champagne cup and then this guy drank it.’ And they’re like, ‘Would you want to try that with me?’ I’m like, ‘No!’” Which is not to say that sex in their personal lives is boring. Surprisingly, most providers say they’re far kinkier with their loved ones than with the men paying them. In addition to partners providing a safer space for experimentation, the real thrill for many clients is the mere idea of an escort. “I’m actually vanilla with my clients,” says Suzanne, a 27-year-old escort working toward her MBA. None of her clients ask to explore sexual fantasies with her “because I’m the fantasy. Not the sex acts.” During their first year together, Krista can’t remember a single argument with Vic. They fit perfectly; their life together was easy. One night, while they cooked dinner at her apartment, Vic told Krista he loved her. She laughed. “I was like, ‘I’ve known I’ve loved you for months.’” When Josie started escorting three and a half years ago, she looked at it as a refreshing “time out” from the dating scene. The 41-year-old from Montreal loathed the apps and thought the guys in New York City only wanted to get laid. Not only was she able to focus on her health, wellness and meditation practices, but setting up a business as an independent escort required a hell of a lot of trial and error, a process she couldn’t exactly google. “There’s a lot to figure out that first year,” laughs one escort. “You’re learning on your feet—and your back.” But as Josie got established and developed a steady clientele, she started to sense a common void. “I wanted that intimacy,” she admits. “That partner, that companionship.” Yet Josie was reluctant. Unlike many high-end providers, she didn’t want to reveal her identity. Didn’t feel comfortable doing it. On dates, she claimed she was divorced or in fitness training or didn’t need to work. “People don’t really ask questions based on that answer,” she says. The covers proved effective, although Josie realized they undermined her entire purpose. “I know I’m going to have to lie to somebody,” she says. “And what’s the point of dating someone with a prospect of a possible future when you start it with a lie?” Then, through a social media account—one that used her real identity—she connected with Alan, a TV producer. He lived in Atlanta. She had friends there she regularly visited. One night they met for margaritas in Buckhead, and soon she was flying to Georgia every few weeks. They had long dinners, went to Braves games and both liked trying different things in the bedroom.
I don’t care how cool he is; for the next 30 years his line at the end of an argument will always be, ‘You’re a fucking whore.’
Weeks turned into months, yet still Josie didn’t disclose her livelihood. Not without good reason. Revealing that information—particularly their work aliases—can throw unsuspecting men for a serious loop. Take Maggie: Her boyfriend Rich looked up her website, Twitter feed and Instagram account. While Maggie didn’t brag about lavish trips and pricey gifts from clients like many high-end providers, she did post racy selfies. She offered a “girlfriend experience” as well as duos with other female escorts. Rich wanted to know why she never sent him any nude selfies, why she didn’t act that adventurous when they were together. She tried to explain that social media was all smoke and mirrors. The duos with other escorts came with the job; it wasn’t who she was. “He felt threatened,” Maggie recalls. “He felt like I was pretending with him. That it wasn’t real.” As if that wasn’t incendiary enough, some escorts (including Josie) post client reviews on their websites—detailed accounts of their high-priced assignations. Highly complimentary? Without question. But the lurid play-by-play might send even the least sexually jealous boyfriend into an apoplectic rage. Sometimes telling the truth can be simply dangerous. Maggie cites an evening when a date she’d recently told came close to assaulting her. Several providers mentioned escorts who’d been outed by angry exes on infamous gossip website the Dirty. Suzanne will never forget the warning she once got from the owner of an escort agency where she once worked. “He told me, ‘Never tell anyone,’” she says. “‘Because I don’t care how cool he is, for the next 30 years his line at the end of an argument will always be, You’re a fucking whore.’”
After eight months commuting to Atlanta, Josie’s relationship with Alan came to a head. “At what point am I going to have to tell this person or get out?” laments Josie. “It came to that. I either do or I don’t. I didn’t.” Josie called Alan and broke it off. She blamed the distance. For several months, Maggie and Rich sailed smoothly. They traveled to Europe together. She met his brother. But as her feelings deepened, she began to sense a distance in him. A disconnect. When she’d say “I love you,” he wouldn’t respond. Comments about her job resurfaced, little daggers like, “What do you do all day?” and, “The sex is really bad with your clients, right?” But the red flags turned into a warning siren when Rich had a family wedding. He didn’t invite Maggie. “Why not?” she asked him, holding back tears. “Because you don’t see me in your future? Why are you hiding me? Keeping me away?” Rich’s gradual 180 isn’t a revelation in provider circles. All the women interviewed for this story have encountered guys who say they don’t have a problem dating a sex worker. They mean it too. But it’s impossible to really know what it’s like, how they will react, until they do it. Good intentions don’t qualify as actual understanding. Maggie tells the story of a “lovely young man” she briefly dated. When she told him she was an escort, he smiled and replied that it didn’t matter what she does; it only matters what kind of person she is. “I thought that was really sweet,” says Maggie. “But it’s all well and good to say that before you’re shoulders deep in a relationship and mama has to go out and blow someone.” Yet that’s precisely what dating an escort requires. Recognizing a blow job as a job and nothing more. “I always say to partners, ‘I wish you could do this for one day and understand what it’s really like,’” says Maggie. “Before I started I had no idea.”
I always say to partners, ‘I wish you could do this for one day and understand what it’s really like.’
That lack of understanding fosters insecurity. Undermines trust. “And you have to trust your partner completely,” insists Sara. “And he has to trust you.” If those pieces are missing, boyfriends tend to grow resentful while providers feel more and more guilty. “I felt guilty all the time about work,” explains Maggie. Guilty about last-minute bookings, jobs over the holidays, trips out of town. “And I felt like I had to make up for it.” That means lots of mollycoddling. Constantly reassuring boyfriends that they’re special, returning from a two-week tour and having sex with your partner, not because you want to but because you feel obligated. Tolerating behaviors that shouldn’t be tolerated. “Rich liked things I wasn’t so keen on,” admits Maggie. “Like spanking really hard. I’d finally say, ‘Don’t do that—it hurts!’” Many providers have not only found themselves in unhealthy relationships, but they’ve also stayed with those partners because they don’t think they can find somebody else who would be as accepting of their profession. “We invest so much in our partner because we know we have a special situation,” says Maggie. “And we need to compensate for almost everything that happens.” Inevitably, Rich couldn’t give Maggie the love and support she needed. That she’d explicitly asked him for. Every day was a whirlwind of emotions, from romantic heartbreak to existential mindfuck. “He made me question my job,” says Maggie. “People make you feel bad about it because you’re just doing it for the money. And that’s seen as dirty, you’re a slut, easy. I spoke to a therapist about it and she said to me, ‘Do you really want a man who’s okay with what you do?’” “True. That’s hard!” agrees Josie. “The feminist in me says yes, but the romantic in me says hell no!” It’s all part of the ongoing battle Maggie had spoken of. Battles that are often lost. Finally, one afternoon, she called Rich from her bed, crying. They couldn’t go on like this anymore, she said. The relationship was over. They never saw each other again. “You can’t win,” she sighed. “I want someone to accept who I am and where I am at this point. Someone to love me for who I am and not what I do. It doesn’t define me. But do you still want a man who’s okay with you sleeping with other people?” In January 2018, after two and a half years together, Krista and Vic found themselves in uncharted, unhappy waters. The surprise? The issues didn’t have a direct correlation to sex. Time was the first real issue. Krista began landing more jobs, and she’d specifically changed her marketing to attract longer bookings that took her out of both New York City and the United States for significant stretches. When a client is paying hefty sums for meals, dinners, hotels and time, a provider can’t just hop on the phone and start texting people. Especially a boyfriend. Not only is it rude, it’s bad for business. “My last trip was five days,” explains Krista. “It’s like being on a date. I learned to do a lot of fast texting in the bathroom.” Krista and Vic came up with a solution: After a booking with a client in, say, Paris, Vic would join Krista in France and the pair, flush with Krista’s cash, would go carousing through Europe. They had a blast. Yet Vic didn’t have the same schedule flexibility, and the travel eventually cost him his sales position.
My last trip was five days…. I learned to do a lot of fast texting in the bathroom.
“My income was going up, and he lost his job. It affected his self-esteem,” says Krista. “Then we stopped fucking. He didn’t want to. Men feel emasculated when they’re not working. But if I don’t have sex I’ll start to break down.” To make matters worse, as the breadwinner, Krista started giving Vic money. To pay his rent, cover his bills, for some spending cash. The female as breadwinner of the American household isn’t by any means a new phenomenon, but it can strain any straight relationship, especially when one of the couple has the unusual mind-set of a female sex worker. “I had a problem supporting him,” she admits. Not because she didn’t love Vic, but because she began feeling like a client. Paying for Vic’s company. That in turn made her question the nature of their entire relationship. Was it simply transactional? Was she being played? She started to suspect it was all an act, that Vic was only going through the motions for the money. After an event one night, Krista came home and confronted Vic. “I don’t know if you love me anymore,” she claimed. “And what would you do without me supporting you?” “That’s probably true,” admitted Vic. “Okay. This is over.” Not long after Josie had broken it off with Alan from Atlanta, a man in New York City piqued her interest. He was successful and charming; they had similar interests and fantastic chemistry. The sex was off the charts. Josie had been so at ease during their time together that she’d revealed her real name and talked about her “civilian” life. The catch? He was a client. And he’d repeatedly asked to take her on an off-the-clock date. That wasn’t radical in the realm of high-end providers. Many have dated a client at least once, and some say their closest, most honest relationships are with the regulars who pay them. Take Bre, for example, who couldn’t be happier with her current significant other, who is not only a former client but is still married and in an open relationship. These clients provide a safe, albeit transactional, space where an escort can let her hair down without being judged or threatened.
So Josie agreed. They had fabulous sushi, sizzling banter and later went back to her place to have sex. But when he spent the night, it felt like, well, work. “He wouldn’t leave,” laughs Josie. “By the next afternoon, I’m like, ‘I’m tired, get the fuck out.’” She gave off clear signals that she wanted solo time, but he refused to read them—a by-product, she thinks, of her job. “It was what he needed to make it feel like it wasn’t a transaction,” she says.
The disappointment over her client didn’t last. Trying out an exclusive dating app, she connected with Simon. Someone, once again, who didn’t live in the same city. For the next few months, they spoke every day. Sometimes for hours. “They were some of the most meaningful, in-depth conversations I’ve ever had,” she recalls. “It gave me intimacy, but not the physical form. Emotional.”
Before long, Simon was dropping the L-word. But Josie resisted. The two hadn’t even met in person, and Josie hadn’t revealed she was a sex worker. Yet, like last time, the deeper she got involved with Simon, the more the duplicity gnawed at her. “I feel great about what I do,” she says. “It’s the double life that makes me feel shitty. It’s a constant struggle in this business.”
Revealing the truth can be a scary proposition for a provider, especially when that information has been withheld for a long time. But it can also be liberating; it can help a relationship. Suzanne, the escort getting her MBA, vividly remembers the night she told her casual lover—after two years. “I was absolutely terrified. I was shaking,” she says. “He said, ‘I feel so much closer to you now that I know this about you.’”
Finally, Josie booked a trip to visit Simon. She planned to see him for a few weeks to ensure their face-to-face connection was as powerful as what they’d been feeling for the past six months. Yet two days before she was scheduled to leave, Josie pulled the plug.
“I’m constantly in a conversation with myself because I want to live an honest life,” she says with a tinge of frustration. “But what’s my truth? Am I seeking these situations because deep down I don’t feel worthy of a real relationship?”
The struggles continue. Since splitting with Rich, Maggie has had a string of disappointing dates. Josie has all but given up on love for now, focusing her energy instead on wellness and traveling abroad. “There aren’t really any books on how to date a hooker,” says Suzanne. But what if the laws changed? What if the sex-work industry were legalized? Would the challenges to finding love remain? Maggie is confident they would. “I’d feel safer divulging the information to a partner earlier,” she says. “But I don’t think dating or relationships would be easier. The problem is the patriarchy, regardless of the legalities.” There was, however, one encouraging sign: Krista and Vic, who eventually got a job in the health care industry. “We’re back on,” she explains. “He’s a delightful, beautiful man, and he feels like my partner. I see a future together.” The future. That, too, providers have to consider. Escorts don’t intend to be in the business forever, as there is normally a shelf life to the job. Relationships are inevitable. That said, most of the providers interviewed for this story aren’t imagining themselves as part of some Norman Rockwell narrative. “I know for a fact I’ll never have a conventional lifestyle,” says Maggie. One of the escorts I spoke with agrees. “Why not go on an hour ‘date’ once a month?” she replies when asked about continuing to work if she gets married. “Why turn down that money I could put away for savings? I could see myself doing that, but it’s kind of hard to gauge now.” Whatever form of relationship they find, what will providers tell their partners of their past lives as sex workers? A few don’t intend to say anything. Several envision telling their significant other but underplaying their participation and “leaving out the nitty-gritty,” in the words of one provider. Most of them, however, feel like Maggie. “I would be straightforward,” she says. “This is going to be a part of me no matter if it’s the present or the past. Whoever I wind up with is going to have to be okay with it.”
Some names and minor details have been changed for privacy.
For more on how this feature article came to be, read our Q+A with journalist Tim Struby.
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