The hours of folly are measured by the clock, but of wisdom no clock can measure. – William Blake, from “Proverbs of Hell”
As I explained in December, I’m now answering reader questions in short columns (some even individually) rather than saving them up for the ends of months; I’m leaning toward making it a regular Wednesday feature, though of course it won’t appear every Wednesday unless there are enough questions to warrant that. Today there are four questions; if you have one of your own, please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.
Recently I met a lady who provides sensual massages; she is not full service, but does provide happy endings. We have become rather close and she has intimated that she has rather deep feelings for me; I feel the same about her, and over the past few months we have started to do things that she does not normally offer clients. Furthermore, I have seen her in a non-business setting where nothing sexual took place between us. How do I know that our relationship has moved from client/provider to other than business? I could ask, but I don’t wish to cause any undue stress to our relationship; also, she states that she has a longtime boyfriend. I want to believe that her feelings are also genuine, but how can I be sure I’m not being led on by a talented actress?
If she didn’t already have a boyfriend I would say that her giving you services that aren’t on the menu and seeing you off the clock would be pretty good signs that she is indeed interested in you; in that case I would suggest the next step would be simply to ask her out to a movie or dinner or whatever just as you would any other woman, and with as little expectation of her “putting out” in return. But the existence of the boyfriend makes it much more complicated; if she’s told you she has feelings for you and is giving you sex she does not think of as part of work, technically she’s cheating on him (with all that entails). I appreciate that you don’t want to press her, but at the same time she is sending you mixed messages and you need to sort it out before you get hurt. The best course of action would probably be to invite her to that same “non-business setting” again, and once you’re out of the work environment try to gently coax the story of her relationship out of her. I warn you that you may not like what you hear, but I think you need to hear it so you can make a sensible decision about how to proceed with her.
Can you give me advice on whether things have changed here in Ontario? Is it legal at an escort’s home now?
In Ontario, escort prostitution is legal. Until recently it was illegal to keep a location specifically for incall use, to accept money from a prostitute or to discuss the subject in public, but even those restrictions are in dispute right now; furthermore, even if the “bawdy house” law is upheld the prohibition is against “keeping” such a place, not visiting it. As long as you don’t cross over into territory ruled by fanatical American puritans, you should be safe from the police when contracting with any internet escort (most especially if she visits your house or office).
What advice can you give sex workers about underage clients?
Through most of my career I wouldn’t see anyone under 21, though I lowered it to 18 in 2004. I advised my girls to do the same, and many internet escorts have even higher thresholds (25, 30 or higher). Generally, we’re protected by the fact that young men generally don’t have that kind of money, though of course that doesn’t hold true for streetwalkers because they charge much less. I seem to recall once hearing of a hooker being charged with some absurd crime for seeing an underage client, but it doesn’t happen often.
I was involved in an online discussion about the discrepancy in reported sexual partners between men and women, and the question “what proportion of sex is with prostitutes?” came up. I figure if anyone knows of such a study, you would; have any idea?
Yep; the Potterat study is about exactly that. Some of the conclusions are erroneous because the researchers ignorantly assume all hookers are streetwalkers, but the client-side raw data is good and the prostitute numbers work very well as a streetwalker census, as I explained in “By the Numbers“.
So, I have to ask Maggie…have you ever in your career gone off the clock? And also, is it something(falling for a client) that even the strongest escort minds are still vulnerable to?
Just once, and I married him.
Like … what is she offering him? Is she offering him “The Most Fabulous Object in the World”? That’s a TIME BANDITS reference. Is she giving him sex? That’s what is not clear.
Unfortunately, my opinion here, but the arena of FBSM has a lot of potential for manipulation of the male client. Most of the providers are legit but a lot of guys do get teased and “upselling” is prevalent. The level of service can vary wildly from client to client. Some of these girls apparently aren’t “all in” to the practice of paid sex with just any man so they advertise as “FBSM” so the client doesn’t expect sex. Then, if they like the guy … they’ll upsell him to full service. I don’t know, I guess if you’re fat and slothy then no goods for you!
And here’s another thing – because I have a “regular” girl that I see and I pay her a lot. For instance, I asked her what her three hour rate was and she replied “For you, I’ll give you three hours at the two hour rate if you don’t tell anyone – otherwise it’s $700.”
Is she in LOVE with me or something? Uhm … I’m betting no. She knows me too well and she knows I’ll never cheap her on her rate and will show up with 7 Benjamins anyway plus a good tip. I’m a good client – so she takes care of me. She’ll email me several times during the week to talk sexy and see how I’m doing. She doesn’t bullshit me with the line that she “has feelings” for me – she’s pretty professional but she does offer me services that she SAYS she offers to no one else. I just look at this as the standard hooker song-and-dance – I’m not naive enough to believe it.
But an unscrupulous woman can manipulate a guy’s feelings and hook him into coming back to her on a regular basis by making him believe there is something more there to the relationship. These women look at clients – good and generous ones – as “investments”. Hell, they’ll even offer you a freebie on your birthday (which really makes you feel like you’re special) or something because they know, in the end, it all balances out when you keep lighting up their cell phone.
So I would be wary of this. Especially coming from an FBSM girl.
A sure-fired way of knowing if she sincere, and I just remembered this because I developed a relationship with a sex worker a long, long, time ago …
I had seen her for about six months and I was thinking she was a really good actress or we had a thing going. Didn’t know which. Then one day when I was with her – the condom broke. Only time in my life one has broke and I panicked. But I looked at her and she was laughing. I reached for another cover and she said … “Ah don’t bother with that … I think we have something here!”
Only problem is – condoms don’t break that much.
It’s not unknown for something like that to happen in therapeutic massage as well, at least over here in Europe. If the masseuse has a regular client that is reasonably sensible, certain additional services can be offered.
I always love the Q&A columns.
On the third Q&A: I have Potterat et al marked as “Good Paper” in my index of sex work studies; a rare and venerable distinction indeed! My one qualm with the study is that their estimates seems a bit skewed to me; the prevalence of full-time workers is estimated at 23 per 100,000 population based on data from STD clinic and police data. For comparison, the observed prevalence in New Zealand is 143.17 per 100,000 population (see Maggie’s Numerology column). At the same time, they estimate the number of unique partners a worker sees in a year to be 694 (almost 2 new partners every day, on top of seeing regulars/repeat customers).
If you take the NZ prevalence estimates and keep the number of unique clients the same, you get something closer to 112 unique partners per year, plus repeat customers. Note the interesting implication of either set of numbers: on any given year about 16% of the population (or 32% of men, since they make up virtually the entire buyer’s end of the market) hire a worker at least once during the year.
Maybe Maggie can comment from experience which set of numbers ring truer to her.
Thus ends today’s morning math rant! 😛
That’s exactly what I meant about their errors; assuming streetwalkers to be ALL prostitutes is a total rookie error, but as I showed in “By the Numbers” it works damned well as a streetwalker census and supports my 450,000 extrapolation from the New Zealand census. The figures I use for clients are: 69% of men at least once in their lives, 20% occasional (once or twice a year) and 6% frequent (once a month or more). I’d say that averages out to roughly the same as your 32% since that 6% accounts for a good bit of business.
The numbers certainly seem to come together. It’s hardly proof that said numbers are correct, but at least they corroborate one another. The fact that the study’s estimates of total sex workers (which, due to their sampling technique, is probably largely made up of street workers) is roughly 16% of that of New Zealand squared with another important number. The typical estimates of the proportion of workers that work on streets? Roughly 20%. That’s pretty close.
I usually use 15%. Many “authorities” like to claim 20%, but if you look at all the methodologically-sound estimates it’s more like 12.5%, so 15% is a good round number (though 12.5% would be as well, since it’s 1/8).
Regarding the situation in Canada, my understanding is that, although the laws are being challenged, the old laws ARE in place until the Supreme Court of Canada decides on the matter. And if the cops raid an incall, they can arrest anyone they find in there — workers AND clients. That said, visiting Ontario incall establishments is relatively safe. They rarely get raided. The police tend to focus more on streetwalkers and their clients.
I read somewhere — I’ve forgotten the location, of course — a study about the partners that men and women said they had had. This study, however, got their respondents to be more honest; men had consistently over-reported, and women had consistently under-reported the number of their partners, so that when the numbers were corrected there wasn’t such a large discrepancy. A bit like the difference between a “stud” and a “slut”.
I don’t buy it. That’s a common trend lately, to try to force male numbers down and female up to make them “more equal”, thus pathologizing sex work. The fact is that men DO have consistently higher numbers, and those numbers are with hookers (who are ignored in the “studies”).
A bit of both, perhaps. The corrected figures in the study I read still left a “gap”.
Not a big enough one to account for the fact that one out of five men sees at least one or two escorts a year.
I saw a WL off the clock, once. In the morning, she asked me if I wanted to meet her kids. I was a bit weirded out (never had kids of my own) and declined.
Years later, in her blog, she was talking about her relationship with some dude which had gone south, and said “he was the only man who ever expressed any interest in my kids”.
Dodged a bullet there. Many WLs – just like many women in general – are single mothers looking for a baby-daddy. All the usual caveats apply:
http://www.mgtowforums.com/forums/deadbeat-dads-fathers-rights/510-dont-date-single-moms.html
About underage clients: I wonder if some working girls take the attitude of, “Hell, I’m breaking the law anyway, so why not?”
I couldn’t blame them if they did, and wouldn’t it be a hoot if, because of criminalization (for the sake of the children, of course), more seventeen-and-a-half-year-olds were getting professionally laid than would otherwise be the case?
Just as an aside, I do love the pic “wind-window-by-shuka4.jpg”!
I do, too; my husband found that somewhere and sent it to me, figuring I might use it sometime. He actually does that fairly often; I put them in a folder and look them over when I need an illustration but can’t think of what I want, and it’s not unusual for me to pull something out of there…as I did with this one.